The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard (18 page)

"Feeding cow chips into a stove," I said unsteadily.

"Churning. I hated that."

"Weeding."

"Ham roast, ham loaf, ham cutlets."

"Overalls."

"The ladies up the hill. We weren't to speak unless they spoke first."

"That hasn't changed," I said, managing a watery laugh.

"Not yet. Just wait until we move next door to those ladies."

As we talked in the dark, quiet house, my last sobs ebbed, and when she offered to help me to bed, I let her. "Take the comfort you can," she said; good advice. In the morning, I went back to work like someone who is returning from a long illness. The floor manager asked if I felt quite all right and pinched my cheek until I smiled.

I was moved from linens to hosiery to millinery, every step a promotion. I now touched ladies' hair and held murmured conversations. From some of the ladies, the ones who cared to converse, I knew the names of children and their opinions of recent plays. I worked on the third floor now, the highest level. Nevertheless, Pete had no trouble finding me when he was ready. Stock-still behind the hat counter at Frenech's, I watched him approach with a dainty girl who floated over a froth of ruffles. She frankly leaned on him, though she was so tiny he might not have felt the weight.

"Sir," I said, smiling from the shock. "Miss."

"Nell," he said. "Miss Tucker would like a hat."

Miss Tucker tipped her dish-shaped face to look up at Pete. He must have liked that. I said, "What does miss favor?"

"Cocoa," she said. "Something small. I can't carry a wide brim."

"Miss has a very good eye," I said, my shoppie smile unwavering while I reached for a dark toque with pretty feathers skimming either side.

"She did not ask for feathers," Pete said. His voice was pleasant.

"Does miss prefer not to wear feathers?"

"A choice," he said, "would be nice."

Miss Tucker sensibly kept her face vacant of expression. From the display case, I selected several straw hats, one covered in taffeta, another in dark gold velvet with a knot at the back. I ran out of brown hats but politely suggested that our nice small toque in blue straw could be made up in brown. Note the fine pleats on this pink silk. One after another, I pulled the hats out. Frenech's did not have more than a dozen brown hats, but in total the display counter held nearly five dozen, and I showed them all to Miss Tucker, piling them on top of one another in a way that the floor manager would not care for. Every hat had at least one feather. It was how hats looked that year.

"We came here hoping for a choice," Pete said.

"Ostrich plumes are exceedingly stylish, and those at Frenech's are of the highest quality," I said. "Any of these styles would become miss."

"We had hoped to be shown hats of many varieties."

"Indeed." I spread my hand over the array. Short of sending them downstairs, where the old ladies went to get their sleeping caps, I had showed them every design, including several far too deep for Miss Tucker to consider. Her little face would disappear like a pea in a bucket.

I said, "Ladies from all over Los Angeles come to Frenech's for their millinery needs." If the floor manager was listening, he would hear no indication of battle. Pete, now a tactician, had ambushed me, choosing the place and the terms. I was left to make a redoubt of Frenech's gleaming counter and every hat I could heap before me. I made sure to smile, though Pete did not.

"I asked you for a hat without feathers," he said.

"Perhaps sir would consider other designs?" I could not quite keep the anger from my voice, and the floor manager made his way over as smoothly as if he were on wheels.

"I hope you are finding everything to your liking," he said.

"Is it impossible to buy a hat without feathers?"

My smile widened infinitesimally. Careless about inventory, the floor manager was likely not to know about millinery trimmings. He knew how to gather himself, though, and I watched his gaze sweep over the opulent heap of silk roses and velvet and satin ribbon. "Certainly. We would be happy to make a hat to your and the lady's express request."

I smiled. I had never heard such a promise made at Frenech's before and understood the person to fulfill the promise would be me. Pete's face indicated that he understood that as well.

The floor manager cunningly went on, asking the question I should have known to ask: "Is there a special occasion?"

"You might say." Pete touched the elbow of doll-like Miss Tucker. "We are to be married."

"You are to be congratulated," said the floor manager and I together. Pete nodded while Miss Tucker looked prettily at the wooden floor. I was grateful for my shoppie smile, which saved me the trouble of trying to create a new one. "Have you already selected a gown?" I asked. "The shop girls in our dress department would be happy to help you select something special."

Miss Tucker put her hand on Pete's sleeve and looked up at him timidly. "Might we go see, dear?"

"Gowns from Frenech's are featured every week in the rotogravure," I said. "They are noted for their sophistication."

Miss Tucker clapped her hands and Pete wordlessly turned, following the manager's directions to Fine Dresses. That was my satisfaction. In return, I worked past midnight with an un-trimmed straw hat, two yards of dark brown taffeta, velvet ribbon, and a tiny dove pulled out of a box of last year's hat trimmings. "For my own little bird," Pete said when I produced it for his approval. Miss Tucker blushed, as was right.

Pete's ambush had surprised me. He had always been kind, giving pennies he could scarcely afford to Mexican beggars or Negroes near the train station. I hadn't thought he would bother with a gesture so transparent, and so low.

What surprised me more was the effectiveness of that low gesture. Having seen Miss Tucker, I could not help but recall Pete's hands on me, his mouth, the sound of his voice when he reached for me and murmured, "Sphinx." In his mouth, it had been a lover's name. In the months since our excursion to Long Beach, I had not been to a racket, had not stepped out with any customers, had kept myself solitary and
clean.
Until this moment, seeing Pete's familiar hand at Miss Tucker's frail elbow, my sequestered days and nights had not seemed a sacrifice, but now I yearned to claim him back. I knew certain maneuvers that I was quite sure would be unfamiliar to Miss Tucker, and I wondered whether Pete had already found himself another shop girl to provide him the pleasures whose memory now stormed through my body. The bitter taste of him, which I had craved up to our very last day. It had been far better not to remember.

By now, Sally was used to hearing me cry, so she did not ask questions in the mornings, though sometimes she brought me an orange. When she judged that I was able to bear a conversation, she said, "There's a sign at Bloom's. They're looking for a girl with experience."

Bloom's paid very well. We all knew. At the outskirts of Pasadena, shop girls there made eight dollars a week. "You won't be going yourself?" I said.

Sally shrugged. "It's far. You go first."

At Bloom's, the floor manager wore a swallowtail coat. He sent me to the long counter that displayed men's silk umbrellas with bamboo or pewter or Bakelite handles. I saw right away that umbrella customers were drawn less to look at the wares than to look at the shop girl behind the wares, and I chatted with everyone, so pleasant, so friendly. I didn't have to wait long before a police officer came in, braying to the whole floor that he was ready to spend. He wore a huge mustache, like Pete's, but his was reddish and glossy as a fox's tail.

"The finest quality." I pointed to a coal-black bumbershoot. "You will not need to buy another."

"I don't carry an umbrella," he said. "A real man don't mind a little rain."

"Even left furled, an umbrella can be elegant," I said.

"Does a girl admire the look of a fellow with a fine umbrella?"

"Naturally."

"Then which of these"—he gestured at the case between us—"is the most elegant?"

I tapped the glass an inch away from his resting hand. "This, surely." I could have meant the dog head or the brass ball. He was looking at my face, and I was looking at the shoulder of his navy blue uniform.

"You guarantee that this will attract the ladies?" His voice had dropped a little, and his hand brushed mine. I would like to say that I drew back, but his hand was firm and pleasantly warm.

"I guarantee," I said, "that you don't need an umbrella to do that. But it is still elegant."

In a few moments, when the wrapper returned with his purchase and the cash girl with his change, he would offer to escort me home. "We appreciate your custom," I said, the words shop girls were instructed to use at the conclusion of any transaction.

"A fellow could make this kind of custom a custom."

"We at Bloom's would certainly appreciate that."

"You say you admire this umbrella?"

"I do." And then, forcing myself: "I am sure your wife will, too."

In the face of his scowl, I was glad for my restricting skirt, which forced me to keep my posture. A policeman might find it suitable to conduct a small investigation. A successful investigation could easily begin at exactly such rooming houses as I used to inhabit. A policeman would have the right to ask a store's management whether it wanted to keep girls who had lived in such questionable surroundings and had kept their lights burning so late. He permitted himself a flat smile. "You are good at your job," he said.

"Thank you, sir." I glanced down at the glass case that separated us. In the faint reflection, his mustache looked so wide it was foolish, like a dandy's high-buttoned lounge jacket. Seeing me engaged in conversation with the customer, the floor manager had strolled out of earshot. I took a deep breath. "Might your wife need a good dressmaker? I can copy anything, and my rates are reasonable."

"Would this mean that you come to my house?"

"Fittings are generally required," I said.

"See here!" he suddenly barked, and the manager materialized like a genie from a bottle. "This girl here," the policeman said, pointing. "She is exceedingly good at her job."

"We have always known that, sir." The floor manager gave me a sharp look, and I maintained my fathomless shoppie smile.

The policeman's wife was a stout lady with surprisingly delicate manners and a preference for dark skirts and raglan sleeves, good for her stocky figure. By arranging her fitting on a Sunday afternoon, when her children thundered at the piano behind us, I avoided most of her husband's attentions. When he accompanied me down the walk, I complimented his children ceaselessly, though they were dull things who prattled. No child in Kansas would have been allowed to hold forth to adults. "Such bright children!" I said. "So mannerly!" The policeman contented himself with pinching my hip and letting me go.

Then and on future visits, while I pinned and basted, I studied Mrs. Carlton's soft voice and convent-trained grammar. A policeman's wife! Yet she spoke like a duchess, and I practiced saying words as she did, adding French phrases from time to time. "So kind of you." "
Bien sûr.
" Pa and Jack would have laughed themselves sick, and even Pete would have teased me. But the men I had left behind were content to stay in place, every one of them, and I was not. Sometimes, aching from a night of wrestling with slippery satin, I could hardly even remember why I drove myself, or what I expected to find at the end of the journey. Work itself had become my comfort. But then I would take my place at Bloom's and watch a customer come in, sweetly spoken, genteel, her pretty shape all but obscured by a three-quarter-length coat so boxy in its cut that it might as well have been made of cardboard. Even as I was smiling and saying "How may we help you?" I was noting how the waist might gently be cut in, the points of the collar dropped in order to give length to the bodice. There was no customer who entered whose silhouette I could not improve, and I wondered sometimes whether I aimed to be a one-woman civic beautification league. At the back of my mind, I heard Jack's mocking laugh. Did he think I had forgotten my station? I had not. I knew my station with utter precision, as I knew a quarter-inch seam allowance, something I could measure in my sleep.

At the policeman's wife's third fitting, I felt confident enough to say, "I would not care to presume, but if you should know anyone else who is in need of dressmaking, I would be happy to offer my services."

"I know the commissioner's wife. She will require a reference."

I kept my eyes on the hem I was marking. "I had hoped you might provide one."

"I might provide one," she said.

"A bolero jacket would suit you," I said after a moment. "It is a classic shape."

"Would it come with gloves and a hat? I hate a patched-together appearance."

"I take pride in the appearance of the ladies for whom I sew." I raised my eyes just long enough to see the satisfied look on Mrs. Carlton's face. Even convent-trained ladies could bargain, which was useful to know.

Reference slowly led to reference—it helped that I was not Irish or swarthy, and that my hipless figure could easily model the new, corsetless styles, which all of my clients admired, though few of them could wear. As my business grew, I needed one week to fill my orders, then two. When a new customer asked peevishly why she would have to wait nearly a month for a dress that was no more than four seams and a row of lace, I explained that madame would have to understand; with so many customers, I was so very busy.

Late that night, listening to Sally's steady breathing, I lay on the plank floor and stretched my back from side to side. Waiting for the cramp to ease, I knocked on the leg of the bed beside me, reassured by its solid
thock.
People of quality did not store their money rolled into the legs of their beds, but I didn't want to face the questions that a bank manager might ask a girl arriving with a handbag full of dollar bills. Instead, I tapped the high part of the frame, where I had stored a ten-dollar bill. "You," I murmured to it, "are going places. Don't get too comfortable here. You're going to make me a businesswoman."