Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk(20)
I gazed across the stage at Helen as she recited her Ismene lines, a bedsheet toga over her jumper of forest green gabardine. We’d both have preferred to have nothing between the white cotton and our skins—the better to be unfettered and authentic—but such costuming would be too risqué for the likes of Miss Lockhart, keeping our virtues under lock and key.
Both Helen and I had the men we were seeing—the men whom we let take us around town—in the audience: Dickie Prestwick, who worked in bonds, for me; and his colleague Abe Strong for Helen. In this way we could parade them respectably before the appraisal of Miss Lockhart, who would then permit them to take us out for dinner.
They’d met us at the ballet. They had wealthy fathers and money to spend on us, and aside from all that, we enjoyed their company.
Helen and I abridged the scripts ourselves so that the shows would not drag on, the better to have time for entertainment afterwards.
The end was nigh. Ginny was uttering her Creon lines, dooming me to death by being buried alive: “Away with her—away! And when ye have enclosed her, according to my word in her vaulted grave, leave her alone, forlorn—whether she wishes to die, or to live a buried life in such a home.”
Typecasting was not always a bad idea. Ginny had been born for that part, a goody-goody girl prone to tattling. Like Helen and me, Ginny wanted a career of some nebulous kind, having also arrived at the Christian Women’s Hotel to seek a profession and not just a husband. And Helen and I wanted to like her for being like us, for using the girls’ club as a port of call for a trip that differed from that of most of our peers.
Trouble was, Ginny was annoying, obedient to rules even if the rules were stupid. Full, too, of rules of her own imposition, like “Make a friend of receptionists in big offices,” as she’d told us once. “To have a friend, be one. These girls can help get the names of key executives, so your résumé will shoot the mark.” Or “Make at least three new friends every day, and keep driving!”
Involving her in the plays and allowing her a cut of the proceeds was our bribe to keep her from telling Miss Lockhart how late we snuck back onto the floor we shared after seeing Dickie and Abe.
As I let my Antigone-self be led away to die for my transgression, I could not see for certain, because Miss Lockhart’s watery blue eyes were behind the lenses of her spectacles, but I felt fairly sure I’d succeeded in bringing tears to them.
“Tomb, bridal chamber, eternal prison in the caverned rock, whither go to find mine own, those many who have perished, and whom Persephone hath received among the dead!” I cried to great applause.
We received a standing ovation from our fellow lodgers and their marriage-minded beaux, crowded though it was to stand among the makeshift theater seats consisting of every mismatched chair available in the Christian Women’s Hotel.
Miss Lockhart swept forward, after we’d taken our bows, to embrace and congratulate Helen and me.
“Another splendid run, ladies,” she said, clasping her hands to her chest and beaming. “That Antigone is spun from such strong moral fiber. Even if, historically speaking, she must have been a pagan.”
“Thank you, Miss Lockhart,” I said, careful not to look at Helen for fear of betraying inappropriate mirth.
“And Helen,” said Miss Lockhart, raising a hand to Helen’s radiant curls, marcelled and flaxen. “I doubt the boards have ever been walked by a more pulchritudinous Ismene.”
Helen answered with a curtsy at Miss Lockhart and a wink at me.
“Now what charity will we be donating the proceeds to, ladies?” said Miss Lockhart.
Then Helen looked at me with such mischief that I couldn’t not laugh, because the charity was the same, of course, as always: The Get Helen and Lillian Out of the Damn Christian Women’s Hotel Fund. But Helen, with grace, lifted the cash box from the matron’s hands as gently as if it were a kitten, and said:
“We’ll need to think about it. And possibly pray. We’ll let you know.”
Both of us had parents helping us, and both of us wanted badly to get out from under that arrangement: to enjoy the abundant fruits of independence that the flowering of financial solvency yields with its growth. We had both been applying for jobs like crazy, but neither of us wanted merely to be the confidential private secretary to a man of great importance, which, to date, were the only kinds of replies we’d been getting. And so we kept trying.
Abe and Dickie stepped forward then, greeting Miss Lockhart.
“Another commendable afternoon’s entertainment,” said Dickie, shaking Miss Lockhart’s hand, causing her to blush and rustle, the scent of her lemon verbena sachets rising from the folds of her high-necked blouse.
“Thank you, Mr. Prestwick,” she said, hewing to formality, though he’d told her last month that she could call him by his Christian name.
Miss Lockhart did not offer her hand to Abe, as she knew he was Jewish, a fact that her bigoted heart could tolerate, but only barely.
“May we help tidy up the performance space, while the ladies put away their costumes?” said Dickie, placing a neat square hand on the back of one of the folding chairs, beginning to collapse it. Abe did the same.
Strapping, I suppose, one could have called Dickie, his men’s eights crew days at college still much in evidence in his shoulders, broad from rowing.
Abe was shorter, snappier, and had a goofy handsomeness that made me want to laugh whenever I saw him, which is what Helen said she liked best about him. He was a suave and competent clown whose curly hair rarely stayed stuck down no matter how he pomaded it. When we met them months ago, that first night after the ballet, I immediately liked Abe better, but was physically attracted to Dickie. There could be no resisting.