Lady in the Lake(11)
“I’m so sorry. I only dialed again because I thought I dialed wrong the first time.”
“What do you want?” Her tone borders on rudeness. But she was worried.
“Just to follow up on what I mentioned. About going to the Stonewall Democratic Club. I really think you might like it. I can even pick you up if I borrow my parents’ car.” Obviously, I want to check out the apartment, see if it is big enough. If not, I’ll have to persuade Maddie to take a two-bedroom.
“Oh.” It’s as if she has no memory of our conversation. She seems vague. If I didn’t know better, I would think she’s a little drunk. But nice Jewish ladies don’t get drunk on a Wednesday night.
“There’s a meeting next week. It’s interesting. I know, it seems like it’s not important, supporting Democrats in a state like Maryland, but you can’t take things for granted. The primary matters and there are so many ways to get involved.”
“Can I call you back? Not tonight, but—later this week?”
“Sure, I’ll give you my number.”
Maddie must have put the phone down. I hear the kinds of sounds one makes when trying to find paper and pencil, but also—something else. A rumble, a sharp little yelp from Maddie—“No! I mean—no!” As if she has banged her hip into a drawer, but also, it seems to me, as if she enjoys the sensation.
“I’m ready,” she says, and I rattle off my parents’ number, although by now I never expect to hear from Maddie Schwartz. Maddie Schwartz, I’m pretty sure, does not spend her Wednesday nights watching The Big Valley. I am surer still she does not want a roommate.
Settling in with my parents in front of the television, I try not to sigh as my mother talks on and on, sharing her every thought, some of them even related to the program we’re watching. My father is silent, as usual. He never really came back from losing Weinstein’s Drugs. I always thought that part of the problem was that his name was intertwined with the store, that seeing the business fall apart and the signs come down was like watching his own body dismantled and sold for pennies on the dollar.
Tonight, he allows himself one comment and it’s about the actress playing Audra. “She’s really striking.” Mama takes great offense. “Oh, so now you like blondes. That’s a nice change of pace for you.”
I have to find a way out of this house.
February 1966
February 1966
Maddie laid her head on the gingham cloth, marveling at what she was about to do. It seemed so unlikely—dangerous, even. But Ferdie wanted her to do it. Not that he had said as much, not in so many words. He hadn’t really said anything at all, just tried to run his fingers through her hair, only to have them repelled by the hairspray she needed to keep her longish bouffant in shape.
“I know a woman—” he’d begun.
“I assume you know a lot of women,” Maddie had teased. She did assume that. Ferdie might even have been married for all she knew. What did it matter? There was no way they were going to go any place outside her apartment, not with her divorce pending and not with—it just wasn’t a good idea, the world being the world, Baltimore being Baltimore.
“A woman for hair,” he’d said. “What they call a kitchen magician. She’d do it cheap.”
“Do what?”
“Iron it.” The word had come out as one syllable, arn. Ferdie was fourth-generation Baltimore, his roots deeper than Maddie’s. The Platt family had come north from the Carolinas after the Civil War, and thanks to a lawsuit in the early fifties, he had been able to attend Poly, a fact he had managed to drop into conversation early on. One had to be an outstanding student to go to Polytechnic, the all-boys public high school for those with an engineering bent, yet Ferdie was mysterious about the gap between his high school graduation and his decision to join BPD. To Maddie’s ear, he sounded like any working-class Baltimorean, with his long O’s and extra R’s. The first few times he had called her, on the phone he had insisted they needed, she had thought it was some strange white man. Although he was far from a stranger by the time she moved to the corner of Mulberry and Cathedral Street.
He had come by the apartment on Gist Avenue two days after the “burglary.” The matter had been turned over to two detectives, who took a report and told Maddie they would check with the pawnshops, but she shouldn’t expect much. Because she knew there was no ring to be found, she put the matter out of her head, so she was surprised—and a little fearful—when Ferdie Platt dropped by.
“Just checking on you,” he’d said. Every word seemed layered with irony and innuendo. Did his all-seeing eyes stop on the African violet as he scanned the apartment? Did he know its secret? Was it racist to think that a Negro cop suspected her when she hadn’t worried about the white detectives who took the official report?
Then he had stared at her, really stared at her, held her gaze and—oh. She had forgotten about that kind of look.
“I want to check that sliding door.”
“The one in my bedroom?” Her voice squeaked on the last word.
“The one where the burglar entered.”
“The one in my bedroom.”
“Right.”
She led him there, but they’d never made it to the sliding door. As soon as he had her over the threshold, he snaked his arms about her waist, turned her around, and started kissing her. In some part of her mind, she was offended by his presumption, but the rest of her body shouted down that remnant of Mrs. Milton Schwartz. She had been flirting with him in the drugstore that day, and if it had been an empty exercise at the time, she was glad to have her bluff called. She hadn’t felt like this—well, she wouldn’t say Milton never had made her feel this way, but she had been married a long time.