Lady in the Lake(7)
And there it is, between pages 242 and 243, Maddie’s orchid, brown and brittle.
Of course, the flower’s existence proves nothing; we are agreed that we attended the prom. Yet to me it is the smoking gun, irrefutable evidence—but of what? That everything happened as I said. Why did she deny it? My story is a testament to her power, the glory of her youth.
Anyway, it’s a good thing that nothing came of our date. At thirty-five, I am still young, my life nothing but possibility. I might be interviewing second-raters now, but one day I will talk to presidents and kings, maybe work for one of the networks. Whereas Maddie Schwartz, pushing forty, has nothing to look forward to.
January 1966
January 1966
It was only when the jeweler put the loupe to his eye that Maddie realized she had already mentally spent the money from selling her engagement ring. What would he pay her? A thousand? Maybe even two thousand?
She needed so much. The new apartment was a two-bedroom, sparse on furnishings. She had assumed Seth would be living with her. But he refused, said he would rather stay with his father in the Pikesville house, near his friends and his school. Even after she offered to drive him to school, he refused to move. Milton’s meddling, Maddie suspected. She comforted herself with the knowledge that Seth had only two years left at home.
But she would have chosen a one-bedroom in a better neighborhood if she had anticipated Seth’s resistance. And then she might actually have a phone, although not having a phone wasn’t completely tragic. It meant her mother couldn’t call her every day to discuss Maddie’s future and what Tattie Morgenstern unfailingly called her reduced circumstances.
Now that you are living in reduced circumstances, Madeline, you might want to clip coupons. I saw that Hochschild’s was having a good sale—you’ll have to get used to shopping sales and cutting coupons, Madeline, because of your reduced circumstances. With your reduced circumstances, it might make sense not to have a car at all.
The infuriating thing was that her mother was right. Everything about Maddie’s post-Milton life was smaller, shabbier. The apartment was pretty enough, but Gist Avenue, while on the right side of Northern Parkway, was not nice, it turned out. The landlord had persuaded her to meet in the afternoon, when the neighborhood was empty and quiet. At that time of day, the apartment reminded Maddie of a 3-D Paul Klee painting, with the warm winter sunlight creating golden squares on empty wood floors, glinting on the tiny pink-and-blue tiles in the bath. All she saw were shapes and light, space and possibility.
It was only when she started moving her things in that she realized while the apartment was charming, the neighborhood was decidedly mixed. Mixed on its way to being not so mixed. Maddie wasn’t prejudiced, of course. If she had been younger, without a child, she would have gone south to join the voter registration project a few years back. She was almost sure of this. But she didn’t like being so visible in her new neighborhood, a solitary white woman who happened to own a fur coat. Only beaver, but a fur nonetheless. She was wearing it now. Maybe the jeweler would pay more if she didn’t look like someone who needed the money.
When Milton had learned her new address, he said Seth couldn’t visit at all, not overnight. He said that she could spend her weekends with Seth at the old house if she liked, that Milton would vacate the premises so mother and son could be together. A kind act, a gracious act, but Maddie wondered if Milton had already started seeing someone. The idea annoyed her, but she consoled herself that a new lady was probably the only thing that could persuade Milton to stop fighting the divorce.
She had leaned farther over the counter than she realized, close enough that her breath was forming little clouds on the glass.
“You didn’t buy this here?” The jeweler made it sound like a question, but she had already provided that information.
“No, it was from a place downtown. I don’t think it’s there anymore—Steiner’s.”
“Yes, I remember. Very fancy place. Put a lot of money in the fixtures. We keep things simple here. I always tell my employees: In a jewelry store, it’s the jewels that should shine. You don’t need to arrange them on velvet if they’re of good quality. You don’t need to be downtown, where the rents are high and there’s no parking. Weinstein’s may not be fashionable, but we’re still in business and that’s good enough for me.”
“So my ring . . .”
He looked sad, but it was a polite, fake sad, as if an unlikable acquaintance had died and he was pretending to care more than he did.
“I couldn’t do more than five hundred dollars.”
It was like a gut punch, not that Maddie had ever been punched or hit in any way.
“But my husband paid a thousand dollars and that was almost twenty years ago.” Aging herself a little, for she was only thirty-seven and had married at nineteen. But two decades had more gravitas than eighteen years.
“Ah, people were giddy in the forties, weren’t they?”
Were they? She had been a teenager, a pretty girl; giddy had been her natural state. But Milton was a practical young man, careful about debt, smart about investments. He would not have chosen a ring without resale value.
Except—Milton never expected this ring to be sold. The most cynical man in the world didn’t expect his engagement ring to be sold; even the men who courted Elizabeth Taylor thought they would be with her forever.