In the Shadow of Lakecrest(18)
I dabbed the drink from my dress with a napkin, and when I looked up, one of Marjorie’s friends was standing above me.
“Would you like to dance?” Dark-haired and ruddy-cheeked, he was nicknamed Boots, for reasons no one had explained.
“All right,” I laughed, feeling emboldened by the liquor coursing through me but unsteady on my feet as soon as I stood up.
Boots was too polite to comment on my stumble as he led me to the dance floor. If he wasn’t the most graceful dancer I’d ever partnered with, at least he didn’t step on my toes.
“Matthew’s a lucky man,” he shouted, but the music was too loud to have a real conversation. We wove through the crowd, backward and forward, until I began to feel dizzy. I looked toward our table. Marjorie was sitting in a man’s lap, one of his hands wrapped around her waist. George? Joe? All I could remember was that he owned his own plane and bragged about having met Charles Lindbergh.
Marjorie was an image of glamorous perfection, leaning forward as he lit her cigarette. But her beauty had a reckless edge, a trigger for dangerous emotions. The man’s lips hovered by her neck, and her eyes caught mine, issuing a silent challenge. Was she ordering me not to tell her brother? Or daring me to?
Boots spun me to the left, and I ended by flopping awkwardly into his chest. He pressed his hand harder against my shoulder blades, where my dress stuck uncomfortably to my back, and pulled me close. His jacket brushed against my stomach.
“I’m tired,” I said loudly over the music, wanting him to hear me. I felt flushed and uneasy, but he didn’t loosen his grip. His breath blew hot and bitter against my cheek.
“You’re a real doll,” he whispered, and then his tongue flicked against my earlobe.
I recoiled, twisting my head away as Boots forced me into another turn. My heart was racing with panic as we passed by Marjorie’s table. The faces were a blur, but I could tell they were looking at me and laughing, Marjorie loudest of all. Her voice had developed a harsh rasp, and her vivaciousness had toughened into something darker.
It was hard to think straight with my head buzzing and my steps clumsy from the alcohol, but I suspected I was the reason they were all roaring. Marjorie had never intended to befriend me; she wanted to see me humiliated. I pushed Boots away with an abrupt shove to his chest, and there was nowhere to go but toward the door, stumbling as tears blurred my vision.
A hand grabbed my arm, and a gentle voice asked what was wrong. I wiped the back of my hand across my eyes and saw Blanche. My dear, loyal cousin, whose kindness I didn’t deserve. The thought made me start crying again, and Blanche pulled me into the coat check, telling me to hush.
Through choked-back sobs, I apologized for ignoring her earlier.
“I get it,” she said. “No hard feelings.”
How easy it was to talk to her, how easy to confess my feelings of shame and self-doubt. With her, I could be the best version of myself, a fun-loving girl who went to the pictures and rode the streetcar. An independent girl with no worries.
“I want to go home,” I said impulsively.
“All right,” Blanche said hesitantly. “Want me to hail you a cab?”
“No,” I explained. “Home with you.”
I’d been happy in that boardinghouse, surrounded by other young women who didn’t think further ahead than what they’d eat for dinner that night. I could get a job, earn my own way, and never see Marjorie again. Or Matthew. I remembered the rush of feeling I’d had on our wedding day, my belief that we could be happy. But that fleeting regret wasn’t enough to overpower my longing for escape.
What if I’d done it? Rejected my marriage and the Lemonts and marched off with Blanche that night? I like to think Matthew would have come after me, but Hannah might have convinced him I wasn’t worth a second chance. He might have listened when she urged him to file for divorce. Our lives would have continued on divergent paths, and if that meant I would have been spared the horrors that followed, it also meant I would have missed out on the kind of love I didn’t know I was capable of. That night at the Pharaoh’s Club was a crossroads, one of those rare moments when one decision determines the course of a life. In the end, it wasn’t really a choice at all, because Blanche refused to take me in.
“You’re drunk and hysterical,” she said bluntly. “Otherwise, you’d never be talking like this. Tell you what—you sleep it off, then call me in the morning. I’ll bet ten bucks you thank me for talking some sense into you.”
“Matthew wants to move to Lakecrest,” I told her. “It’s miles away and absolutely hideous. I’m going to be miserable.”
“Oh, boohoo,” Blanche laughed. Then, imitating my sullen voice, “I have to live in a mansion and be waited on hand and foot. Poor me!”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Try living there with my new mother-in-law. Not to mention Marjorie.”
“You’ll probably hardly ever see her. Seems like she’s out every night.”
“I don’t know how she keeps it up. I’m worn out.”
“Maybe she has some help.”
Blanche said the words quietly, looking down, hinting at something I didn’t understand.
“What do you mean?”
Blanche beckoned me to the doorway of the coat check. She tipped her head toward the dance floor, where Marjorie was being swung around by her aviator friend, her head flung back in rapturous release.