Pasadena (51 page)

“I’d like to buy a dress.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“I was hoping you’d make an exception.”

“Your name, Miss?”

“Linda Stamp.”

Mrs. Dodsworth touched the blue-and-white cameo at her throat. She was of a grandmotherly age, and her white hair was shellacked around her face, and she seemed to Linda rather simple in appearance to own such a fancy store. “I was interested in the dress in the window,” said Linda, emboldened, and she touched her coat pocket, where her money was rolled in a wad.

Mrs. Dodsworth looked skeptical, but she cracked the door farther and decided to admit Linda. “It’s New Year’s, after all.”

The dog greeted Linda coolly, sniffing her shoes, and Linda knelt to pet him but Mrs. Dodsworth stopped her. “Mr. Huggins doesn’t like to be touched. Now, it’s the silver dress you’re interested in?”

Linda mentioned the ball at the Valley Hunt Club, and the patchy eyebrows of Mrs. Dodsworth, who was a 100 Percenter herself, lifted and she said, “I see. You said your name was Linda Stamp?” Mrs. Dodsworth moved to fetch the dress from the mannequin, and from behind the partition her voice rose, like a neighbor’s over a wall: “You’re visiting Pasadena, Miss Stamp, is that it?”

“For the season.”

Mrs. Dodsworth cooed approvingly, for nothing was better for business than an heiress camped at one of the hotels for three months. But Linda Stamp’s coat suggested she wasn’t an heiress at all. “Perhaps you saw our holiday fashion show at the Huntington?” Mrs. Dodsworth probed. Linda said she was sorry to have missed it. Mrs. Dodsworth returned with the dress lying delicately in her arms.

In a little closet with a curtain and a mirror, Linda tried on the dress. It was soft and as silver as a coin: “Platinum silk,” said Mrs. Dodsworth from the other side of the curtain. The sleeves cut off at the elbow, and the collar opened to reveal the cove of her throat. The silk lay smoothly against her flesh, and it felt almost obscene, touching her everywhere
like that. “Is it too short?” called Mrs. Dodsworth. “We can let down the hem.”

Linda emerged from the dressing room, and Mrs. Dodsworth, doing up the buttons at Linda’s back, clucked with approval. “Doesn’t she look handsome, Mr. Huggins?”

The store’s three-paneled mirror showed Linda off, and but for the coral pendant she wouldn’t have recognized the girl staring back: a girl Linda had wanted to become, and now there she was, tall and shimmering, and she knew that no one could possibly fail to notice her. She pushed her hair behind her ears, and Mrs. Dodsworth said, “Much better,” and Linda knew that Willis would stagger for words when he saw her, and that the men at the Valley Hunt Club would whisper
Who’s that?
, and that the women would know she had shopped at Dodsworth’s. And suddenly, all of this mattered to Linda: again, she was aware that she was wrestling, and beating, her fate. She held out her arms, and only then did she notice the little tag hanging from the sleeve.

Linda knew that the dress would be expensive—maybe two or three times more than the nicest dress at Margarita’s—but she had brought all her money and was certain that she could afford it. So when she turned over the little tag, she gasped, and immediately she became warm and could feel the blood rushing to her cheek and her body break out into a beady sweat and she worried about staining the silk.

“I know it is a bit
chère
,” said Mrs. Dodsworth. “But of course it’s just come in from Paris. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that everyone at the club will be looking at you. Examining you.”

Linda looked at the tag again—maybe she had misread it—but the little red zeros remained: as agape as a row of children’s mouths.

“May I wrap it for you, Miss Stamp?”

“I’m afraid I’m not going to take this one.”

“But heavens, why?”

Linda said that she wasn’t sure the dress fit correctly, but Mrs. Dodsworth, her eyes screwing up, said, “Nonsense. I told you we can let down that hem.” She stared at Linda as if she were reappraising her. “Then may I ask what it is you’re looking for?”

Linda hesitated. “Something a little less …”

“Yes?”

“A little less …”

“Extravagant?”

“Yes, extravagant. It’s not really my style, as you can see.” And together Linda and Mrs. Dodsworth looked at Linda’s plain dress hanging limply on a peg.

“Is there a budget you had in mind, Miss Stamp?”

Before moving to Pasadena, Linda had never thought of herself as either rich or poor, but now she was aware that she had nothing and that she would always have nothing, and that a cook’s wages would bring her nothing too. “Maybe I could buy the dress on credit,” she said. “I didn’t bring my purse.”

“Where are you staying, Miss Stamp?”

“At the Rancho Pasadena.”

“At the Pasadena? Are you a guest of the Poores?”

Linda shook her head, and Mrs. Dodsworth said, “Sorry, what did you say?” and Linda said, “I work there.”

“You work there?” And again: “You
work
there?”

Linda knew it wouldn’t help things, but she said: “As a cook.”

Mrs. Dodsworth snorted and began pulling her curtains and closing up her shop, and Mr. Huggins followed her around, snout turned up at his mistress’s heel, and Mrs. Dodsworth was saying she
didn’t have time for games
, she
didn’t have time for things like this
, and
Have a nice afternoon, Miss Stamp
.

“I’m sorry if I’ve caused you any trouble.” Linda was boiling up under the silk, and she could smell her heat rising from the bodice, and she longed for a glass of water. She felt behind her for the buttons but couldn’t reach. Mrs. Dodsworth was chattering at Mr. Huggins, and she pulled down the door’s roller shade and turned over a sign in the window:
CLOSED
.

Linda’s heart quieted, as if it had left her just then. She felt like an impostor, the silk soft against her skin, the dollars in her pocket as thin as lint. The dress touched her everywhere, caressing her, and as she looked at herself in the mirror one last time, she wanted the dress even more, and a spike of desire drove into her, again and again. “Would you be willing to take less, Mrs. Dodsworth? Seeing that it’s New Year’s Eve and you’re closing up?”

“What do you think I run? A bargain emporium?” Her arm lay like a gate across her breast. Mrs. Dodsworth wagged her finger, and her scent of hair shellac and rose water reached Linda, and Mr. Huggins sucked marrow from a bone. Linda needed help with the buttons, but
now she was too ashamed to ask, and she wished that she could disappear from the store. How could she have been so naïve? “You’re not from here,” Bruder had said weeks ago. “Never forget that, Linda. If you do, they’ll remember it for you.”

The telephone rang. Mrs. Dodsworth hurried to it while snapping at Linda to take off the dress. “I can’t,” said Linda, and Mrs. Dodsworth hurried back to Linda and unbuttoned the dress with quick, cruel hands and then lunged for the phone. Back in the changing room, Linda let the dress fall away, and in the mirror she saw her flesh that the silver silk had brought to life and the body that Bruder had seen and held, and the heat of her present shame. From the other side of the curtain she heard Mrs. Dodsworth say, “Yes, she is. Yes, she mentioned that. No, I had no idea. Right. Yes, I understand. No, no, I will. Yes, indeed.” There was a pause. “Yes, of course. No, thank
you
.”

When she was dressed in her own clothes, Linda pulled back the curtain and returned the dress to Mrs. Dodsworth. It looked like a deflated balloon, limp and lifeless. Mrs. Dodsworth shook the dress out and said, “It is a pretty one, isn’t it?” and she laid it over a length of red tissue paper while humming to herself, and as Linda moved to the door Mr. Huggins growled and Mrs. Dodsworth said, “Don’t you want the dress?”

“I thought I—”

“May I show you anything else, Miss Stamp?”

“But, Mrs. Dodsworth—”

“Do you have the right shoes for tonight?”

Linda protested again: Why was Mrs. Dodsworth putting her through this? Her money was worthless here. She might as well have come in with nothing in her pocket.

“Stop your worrying, Miss Stamp. It’s all been arranged. Now, do you have a wrap? The evenings can turn cold.”

“Mrs. Dodsworth?”

“That was Captain Poore. He said he saw you come into the store. He wants to make sure I send him the bill. I’m sorry about the misunderstanding. I should have been listening more carefully, Miss Stamp. I didn’t understand at first.” Mrs. Dodsworth moved to Linda, and Mr. Huggins rubbed against her leg, his snout twitching damply. Outside on the sidewalk, two of the girls from the packinghouse appeared and pressed their faces against the store’s window. Their moony eyes admired
the clothes in the shop and the boutique’s plush air. The girls didn’t recognize Linda—they looked through her, and she might as well have been someone else. They were holding hands and they looked at the dresses they would never own, and then they were gone, and later that night at the party behind the door in the alley, each girl, as she was being groped by a boy as poor as she, would wish that the dress that was being pushed up her thigh had come from Dodsworth’s.

Mrs. Dodsworth said, “Is there anything else you wanted to see, Miss Stamp?”

Linda was too startled to speak.

“A shawl, perhaps?”

Linda didn’t know what else she would need. Would the dress be enough to get her through the night?

“Or a hat?”

“A hat, Mrs. Dodsworth?”

“I have a lovely one, white, with a crystal-studded veil.”

“A veil?”

“Or this one just came in. Look at it, Miss Stamp. Isn’t it pretty? All white and fluffy like a snowball! It’s one hundred percent bald eagle.” She flapped her arms, like a large hawk.

“Eagle feathers?”

“I know what they say about conservation and all, but I saw it in a catalog from New York and I ordered two. The first one’s already been snapped up. Now’s
your
chance!” She placed the cap atop Linda’s head, and together the two women—one old and one leaving youth behind—stared in the mirror, and Mr. Huggins gnawed his bone, and Linda felt something leaving her, a ripple in the mirror’s reflection, nothing more than the cold sensation of early regret passing through her.

That evening
, when he came for her, Willis was wearing a raccoon coat and a beaver hat and boots covered in shaggy polar bear. As it turned out, the ball had an Antarctic theme and everyone would be wearing furs. He held up a grizzly coat for Linda, and inside on the lining was a loopy monogram stitched in gold:

LP

“Is it Lolly’s?”

But Willis didn’t answer. The coat was heavy and the fur was thick and woolly. Linda slid her arms up the sleeves, and the coat’s dense weight immediately restrained her.

“Do I have to wear it? Won’t I be uncomfortable?”

“You don’t have to do anything,” said Willis. “Everyone else will be in a fur, but if you don’t want—” He stopped. “I want you to fit in.”

Willis drove, and he didn’t say much as the car wound down the hill and passed through Linda Vista and crossed Suicide Bridge. Linda didn’t know what to expect at the Valley Hunt Club, and as she looked at herself in the mirror, the worry was apparent in her face. Beneath the grizzly coat she was heating up, and she felt the sweat bubbling on her lip. She had borrowed some of Rosa’s lipstick, and her red mouth beamed in the car’s dark cab and her lips tasted waxy and somehow not real, what a doll’s lips might taste like, she thought, a beautiful little doll; and this made her think of the day that Rosa, tiptoeing down the hall, led Linda to a locked door and opened it with one of the keys from
her ring and together they peered into a room crammed with hundreds of Lolly’s dolls, their bodies naked and pink and chipped like an old empty plate.

“Did you say something?” said Willis.

“Nothing.”

Linda cracked the window and let the cool air rush around her, and on the breeze was the scent of lavender and ryegrass and the bitter car exhaust. And, faintly, the orange groves.

“We’ll have some fun, won’t we?” said Willis.

And Linda, who once had been a fearless girl, heard the hesitancy in her voice, the wobble of an adult’s fright: “Do you think they’ll like me?”

“Oh, Linda,” said Willis, and his hand left the steering wheel and found its way to her shoulder and rocked her through the bearskin. “Will they like you?” His laugh wasn’t cruel but he laughed hard, and when he saw that she wasn’t laughing he said, “Don’t be silly.”

She welcomed the intimacy, the way she had once welcomed Edmund’s hand patting his bed, asking her to sit beside him while they talked—or was there more to it than that, and would Linda admit it if there was? What kind of girl was Linda Stamp? What kind of girl had she become? She looked out the window, at the mansions on Orange Grove, one after the other, where maids in the windows were drawing velvet blinds. Where am I going?, Linda asked herself, staring out into the night, and as they sped past the damp lawns and the lights reflecting in backyard swimming pools, Linda fell down into a well of echoing, mossy thought, a deep narrow well where the thoughts dripped like water
plip-plip-plip
and it was only Willis’s hand that pulled her out again. His hand was still upon her shoulder. It was a small but strong hand, and as he touched her—one hand on Linda, the other flat palm steering the wheel—his raccoon coat opened and his white tie peeped out like a bright, toothy smile in a dark empty room.

The clubhouse was decorated with thousands of flowers, lilies round the banister, sweet peas framing the
plein-air
paintings of Eaton Canyon and Devil’s Gate, snapdragons biting the air. In the ballroom, a “1925” sign made of button chrysanthemums hung above the orchestra stage, and the waiters wore Pink Perfection camellias in their lapels. There were hundreds of people, members and their guests, and all were
buried beneath coats and ponchos and sweaters and shawls of animal skin: tawny cougar, grizzled coarse coyote, black seal and buff sea lion, mule deer, pale gray elk, glossy otter, hognose skunk, long-tailed weasel and marten, white-tipped fisher, winter-coated ermine, mink and silver-flecked sable, red fox kit, yellow-gray ringtail, black bear, old zebra and jaguar, and stiff-feathered penguin.