White Collar Girl (24 page)

When the doctor showed up, I waited outside her bedroom door, pacing. Fifteen minutes later he came into the hallway, looking at me with such grave disappointment.

“Who did this to her?”

“I don't know.” It was the truth. I didn't know the guy's name. Hell, I didn't even know who the father was. “Is she going to be okay?”

“She's lost a lot of blood. She'll recover, but if you'd waited any longer, she could have died. You girls, you.” He shook his head and handed me a prescription. “Get this filled. Make sure she takes it. All of it.”

I stayed with M that night, preparing cold compresses for her forehead and forcing tea and dry toast on her. It was the first time I'd ever seen her without makeup, without the false lashes, the penciled-in beauty mark, the painted-up lips. It was surprising just how truly beautiful she was as herself.

She moved in and out of sleep during the night while I kept watch from a chair parked in the corner of her room. There was a stack of movie magazines on the floor next to me. I leafed through issues of
Photoplay
and
Movie Life.
I was reading about
Ava Gardner when M began muttering. More cool compresses, more medicine and she fell back asleep.

I got up to stretch my legs and wandered out to the living room. M's place was nearly twice the size of mine. I couldn't imagine how she afforded it and I knew now that her father really had died, so he wasn't the one paying for it. I wondered if it belonged to the baby's father.

Big as it was, the place was a mess. There were more movie magazines strewn across the couch and floor, dirty glasses and coffee cups on the tables, lampshades hanging cockeyed. I straightened up the stack of magazines and set them on a bookshelf next to the fireplace. I couldn't help but notice that most of the titles she had were romance novels. One book,
A Certain Smile
by Françoise Sagan, was resting on her coffee table. As I picked it up a bookmark—or what I thought was a bookmark—fell to the floor, facedown. When I reached for it and turned it over, I was speechless.

I was holding a strip of photographs, the kind taken in a photo booth. What I found shocking was that the people in the photographs were M and Mr. Ellsworth. Together. Smiling. Cuddling. Kissing. I studied the shots one by one. There was no mistaking what I was seeing and yet I was confused. Mr. Ellsworth was married and M seemed to always be dating other men. She had a string of them, a dinner or two with this one or that and then she'd be on to the next.

I looked again at the photo strip. M was seated on his lap, an arm thrown over his shoulder, her face nuzzled into his collarbone, then his neck and finally it was her mouth on his. A new picture of my own was forming inside my head. I thought back to Christmas Eve and the shocked look on Mr. Ellsworth's face when he saw M all dressed up, and how he'd questioned me about her plans later that night. This was not just some fleeting
affair. I realized Mr. Ellsworth must have been the father. He was the one paying for this apartment.

I studied the first shot. I'd never seen Mr. Ellsworth smile before. I'd never even seen his teeth, always hidden by his beard. For an older man, he was handsome. So where was he now? She needed him. He should have been there with her now, not me.

I heard M stirring in the bedroom and went to her. I didn't say anything about Mr. Ellsworth. She had enough on her mind as it was.

But the next day, when I went into the city room, her secret was eating me up inside. As the day wore on I became aware of Mr. Ellsworth passing by M's desk, looking for her, for signs of her: a cigarette burning in the ashtray, a steaming cup of coffee, a sweater tossed over the chair—anything. Surely he knew why she wasn't at work.

It took all my will not to scream at him to get himself over to her apartment. I knew I couldn't say a word. He was still my managing editor and this was none of my business, despite M having dragged me into the middle of it.

I went back to my typing, unable to look at Mr. Ellsworth.

•   •   •

I
knew it would happen sooner or later. After all, there were only so many bars the newspaper gang went to and I'd already run into Jack at most of them. Short, friendly encounters, quickly forgotten after the next drink.

But there was that one night in October when I glanced across the hazy, smoke-filled room at Andy's on Hubbard Street and saw Jack Casey with another girl. A beautiful girl with long dark hair that reached her rear end. I sobered up. It was like someone had just thrown ice on my heart.

I had to turn my back to them, but M was with me, reporting the details.

“They're laughing about something,” M said. “Sitting pretty close together. But they're not holding hands or anything. . . . And don't worry, she may have that hair, but you're much prettier than she is. . . .”

Honestly, I didn't know why it bothered me. It wasn't like I wanted him back, and of course I would have expected him to move on. After all, we had split up more than a year ago. But still it stung because this girl was the first after me. Or at least the first one that I knew of.

M and I left our drinks on the bar and slipped out of Andy's undetected. We grabbed a bottle of vodka at the liquor store around the corner and went to her place.

From the very beginning I considered M a friend. But after everything we'd gone through with her abortion, we had formed an even tighter, almost sisterly-like bond. And yet as close as we were, we both guarded our secrets, refusing to share them with each other. She never told me about Mr. Ellsworth and I never told her about Ahern. She never spoke about the abortion and never questioned who the mysterious Richard was who'd accompanied us that day.

When we keyed into M's apartment, she went right over to a little bar cart in the corner and poured us both a healthy splash of vodka. After dropping some ice cubes in as an afterthought, she said, “I know exactly what you need. Come with me.”

“What are we doing?” I asked, following her into the bathroom, which sparkled with glass shelves filled with perfumes and decorative bottles. A little pink fringe area rug matched the towels.

“You'll see.” M opened a drawer and pulled out hairbrushes and combs, clips, bobby pins and God knows what else. She closed the lid on the toilet seat and gave it a pat. “Come over here.” I went and sat while she draped a bath towel around my shoulders. “Trust me,” she said. “A new hairdo will cheer you up.”

“But I don't need cheering up.”

“Nonsense. You just saw the love of your life with another woman.”

Funny, but I didn't consider Jack the love of my life. Actually, it was Scott who popped into my mind when she said that. It surprised me.
How deep do my feelings for him really go?

I cleared my head and sat quietly while M slathered my hair
with setting lotion, making the bathroom smell like a beauty parlor. I lit a cigarette to keep from choking on that sweet, powdery scent.

“You had such a cute hairstyle when I first met you,” M said, holding a curl in place while prying open a bobby pin with her front teeth. “Why didn't you keep it up? Why did you let it grow out?”

“For the same reason I stopped wearing my new dresses. I wanted the men in this business to stop looking at me like a woman and start treating me fairly.”

“Well, honey, you still look like a woman.” She scissored her fingers, and I handed off the cigarette to her. She took a puff and returned it with a big red lipstick smear on the filter. “It's not like you're Gabby. She's about as plain as they come.” M wound the last pin curl and secured it with a clip. “That poor girl hasn't been on a date since I've known her.”

“She probably doesn't have time for dating. She helps her sister out a lot.” I stood up and looked in the mirror, patting the metal clips and bobby pins in place, making sure they were secure.

“Well, I think that's a big mistake, if you ask me. How's she supposed to meet anyone when she spends almost every Saturday night babysitting her sister's children?”

“Maybe she likes doing that,” I said, turning my head to the side. I looked like I was wearing a metal helmet. “I know you'll find this hard to believe, but a man isn't always the answer.”

She didn't like hearing that and changed the subject. “Oh, before I forget, stay right there. I want to show you the new dress I got.”

While she went into the bedroom for the dress, I went out to the living room and sipped my vodka as I glanced around. My
eyes landed on a pair of crystal candlesticks on her dining room table with wax stalactites hanging off them, suggesting a recent romantic dinner. I looked at the stack of records next to the record player: the recordings of the Everly Brothers, Sonny James and Bobby Darin all pulled from their cover sleeves. I was sure I detected the lingering scent of a man's aftershave and I knew who the man was.

A few moments later M appeared in a low-cut black satin dress that hugged her hourglass curves.

“Ta-da!” She set her hands on her hips.

“It's stunning. You look gorgeous.”

She smiled. She didn't need me to confirm how she looked in that dress.

“Did you get that for a special occasion? Do you have a big date coming up with someone?”

“I saw it at Field's and just couldn't resist.”

“C'mon, you had to have someone special in mind when you bought that.”

She gave me a coy shoulder shrug and I rolled my eyes in response. I don't know why it bothered me that she wouldn't tell me about Mr. Ellsworth, but it festered, and I found myself dropping more and more hints, hoping to make her confess.

“Wait till you see the shoes I got to go with it.” She disappeared back into the bedroom.

I called out to her, “How are you affording all this?” She made even less money than I did, and I thought she was tapped out from the abortion. “You told me you were broke.”

She never replied because the telephone rang. M answered on the extension in her bedroom. “It's not a good time,” I heard her whisper. “I can't tonight. . . . I have company over. . . . Don't worry—it's a
she. . . .
”

When M came back into the living room I asked if everything was all right.

“Of course.” She reached for a cigarette and a marble and gold lighter.

Something about that lighter—that lighter that probably cost more than I made in a month—set me off. “Who was that on the phone?” There was an edge to my voice.

“Just a friend.”

“Oh, c'mon, M. I know who it was.” I blurted it out. “I know about you and Mr. Ellsworth.”

She nearly dropped her cigarette. “Who told you?”

“No one. I just put the pieces together.”

“I see.” She drew hard on her cigarette and exhaled toward the ceiling.

“M, he's a married man.”

“Yes, thank you. I'm well aware of that.”

“So what are you doing?”

“Waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For him,” she said matter-of-factly. “He's going to leave his wife, and then we'll be together. And don't look at me like that. He's my soul mate.”

“So he's going to get a divorce? Are you in love with him? Is he in love with you? How old is he, anyway? How long has this been going on? And where was he when you were so sick after the abortion? Hell, where was he during the abortion?”

M looked at me, exasperated. “Easy with the questions.” She sat down hard and cradled her forehead in her hand. “Yes, he's going to divorce his wife. Yes, I'm in love with him. Yes, he's in love with me. And if you must know, we have a plan.”

“What do you mean, a plan?”

“A plan. The plan.” She said it louder the second time, as if that would make me understand. “He's going to get divorced and then we're going to start courting openly. Then we're going to get engaged and get married. And then—after we're married—then we're going to start a family.”

“Why didn't he just get a divorce when he found out you were pregnant?” I had shifted into reporter mode and was prepared to challenge her.

“He couldn't do that. Think about it. He's the managing editor of the
Chicago Tribune
. He's an important man. He has a reputation to protect—”

“So do you.”

She discounted that with a wave of her hand. “He can't afford to have a scandal like that on his hands. I know what I'm doing, Jordan. And I don't need a lecture about married men.”

“But what about that one guy from Ogilvy? He's not married and you were seeing him.”

“We had two dates.” She took a puff and ground out her cigarette. “That was nothing. You know me—I'm a big flirt. Besides, I only went out with him to make Stanley jealous. Sometimes I get angry with him and so I go out with other men just to get back at him. But they don't mean anything. He knows it, too.”

Stanley.
I had almost forgotten that was Mr. Ellsworth's first name.

Now that I knew about the two of them, it seemed so obvious. I remembered the times he'd slip out of the city room, announcing a bit too loudly that he was heading down to the composing room, and sure enough, five or ten minutes later, M would disappear as well. They'd stagger their returns to the floor, her cheeks still flushed, his hair ever so slightly rumpled. I was aware of the lunch hours when they were both gone, returning one at a time. I
saw the joy in her eyes when he walked by her desk or acknowledged her in some small way.

But I also saw the pain grip hold of her at his slightest rebuff, and I knew all about her restless nights. It had gotten so bad lately that her doctor had prescribed sleeping pills for her. How had I not noticed the two of them before? I was supposed to be observant. It made me question what else I had missed.