Little Deaths(83)

“Johnny! How could you? It isn’t true! You know it isn’t true! Johnny—you of all people! You said you loved me! How could you?”





18


The judge called for a recess and Pete made his unsteady way into the hallway. Paced the corridor. Picked at his cuticles. Wondered what the hell he could do for her.

His mouth was dry and there was a line for the water fountain, so he found another one down the hall. As he was drinking, he became aware of two men walking by, heads bent, voices low. One of them had Devlin’s slow parade-ground tread.

Pete turned the water off and brought his handkerchief up to his face. Remained stooped over as though he was just wiping his mouth.

He heard “. . . just about finished. And by tomorrow she will be.”

And Quinn’s nervous tone. “Tomorrow, sir?”

“Tomorrow, Lena Gobek will be giving her testimony.”

He waited until they’d turned a corner and then he stood and tried to think about where he’d heard that name before. It took him ten minutes and a walk around the block, but he got there. He left a note with the bailiff for Scott, asking him to call him that night, and then he got in his car.

At home, he pulled out his old files and dug through them until he found her. He read back through his notes and then played the beginning of the interview he’d recorded with her. Lena Gobek was just a neighbor. She was no one.

Then he began to remember, and let the tape play all the way through.

He remembered a small apartment, the curtains closed against the sun. Lace tablecloths, a china cabinet, a doll in an old-fashioned costume on a chair in the corner.

He remembered a well-built woman with a thick Polish accent. Dyed red hair, a shapeless dress, swollen feet in slippers. She’d offered him tea and pressed slices of dry seed cake on him, which had stuck to the roof of his mouth.

She’d talked about her husband a lot. How they’d met just after the war when he came into her father’s restaurant.

“His dark wavy hair, his serious eyes. He was just like Gregory Peck.”

She’d described how her husband had courted her and how romantic he was. Had smiled as she said this. Touched her throat and traced her fingers along her collarbone.

“The wedding was wonderful, Mr. Wonicke. Here is my album—see? My dress. The cake. That’s Mama with my sister. And the meal at my father’s restaurant after the church was beautiful. Perhaps not quite what it would have been before the war, but then nothing was the same. Everyone was making the best of things: that’s what they said on the radio. Paul and I were no different from Joan Fontaine and William Dozier, not really. And we had champagne—oh, that was exciting! Papa managed that. I never had champagne before—I’d only seen it in movies. I felt like Myrna Loy.

“And then we moved here, to this apartment. That was in September. September, 1946. And Paul had his job, and I made us a home. And we waited for children, but God decided not to bless us with little ones, and we had to make our peace with His decision. It was not an easy time. Not easy.

“But we made the best of things. You have to. I went out and got a job. A sales position at Saks. You know Saks? On Fifth Avenue? Oh, a wonderful job. Elegant people, rich people. Ladies who bought beautiful clothes, jewelry. Luggage as soft as skin. They carried little dogs, little curly dogs with jeweled collars, and they had beautiful expensive handbags and shoes. They charged hundreds of dollars to their husbands’ accounts the way I would buy milk at the corner store. No one believed me when I told them. Paul laughed and made jokes about having a charge account at the bodega, but no one believed me when I told them how much these ladies would spend.

“I would stand behind the counter and they would give me the things they wished to buy: lipsticks, bracelets, wallets. The bigger things would be delivered or they would send a car to fetch them. I would wrap their cosmetics and their jewelry in pretty tissue paper and they would reach out to take them from me, and I would think—I remember thinking—that even their arms were beautiful. Gold wristwatches and silk blouses. The wool—thick. Like silk. I have forgotten . . . ah yes, cashmere. The cashmere coats. So soft. Everything so soft. They all had long polished nails, diamond rings, emeralds, rubies. Beautiful. Their hands were . . . oh, the skin was like satin. They used hand cream and when I picked up the pen they had used to sign the receipts, I would smell it. Roses or violets. Lilies. Can you imagine a life that smells of roses and lilies, Mr. Wonicke?

“And it was funny, all the time that I was working there and helping these ladies to buy things, I knew I did not belong behind that counter. I came to this country when I was fourteen years old and I know well how it is here. This is the Land of the Free. Opportunities. Work hard, get ahead. I worked hard, and I know I could have been just like those women. But I had bad luck. Such bad luck. God called our babies to Him before they even opened their eyes. Five babies, in nine years. And so I lost my figure, of course. And if I had kept it, I could have been just like those ladies. People always tell me I could have been pretty.

“But I had to give up my job. All those pregnancies made me ill. And I would get terrible headaches. Terrible. So I left in 1960 and now I spend my afternoons with my family—my niece had twins last year, two boys and now another on the way—and at the movie theater. I like the old films best—Clark Gable and Lana Turner, or . . . I saw last week, Gene Tierney and George Sanders. Beautiful. Magical. And so sad.