Rust & Stardust Page 3

  Ella scowled. Sally never talked about girlfriends before. Never had anyone come over, never had she been asked to play at anyone’s house. She was a lonely girl, just as Ella had been as a child.

  “What friend?” Ella asked, taking her reading glasses off and setting them next to her sewing machine. She still had hours to go, a million stitches.

  Sally bit her lip and looked around the room almost nervously.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Ella asked. “Lord, you are acting strangely.”

  “Vivi?” Sally said, eyebrows raised. “Vivi Peterson?”

  “I don’t know no Petersons,” Ella said, shaking her head.

  “They’re real nice,” Sally said. “And they’ve invited me on their family’s holiday. To the shore.” Sally was sweating; Ella watched the beads of perspiration form on her upper lip.

  “Take your sweater off,” Ella said.

  Sally slipped her cardigan off and hung it over the back of the dining room chair. Poor Sally, this moonfaced girl with dull hair and pale eyes; so plump and earnest. So eager to please. What would become of this girl? Would she wind up the way Ella had, marrying the first boy to give her a compliment only to be left ten years later with two young children to raise? Would she be duped, as Ella had been, by a charming drunk who wrecked everything he touched?

  “Who’s gonna help me around the house while you’re away?” Ella asked.

  “Susan?” Sally said, though she had to have known that was unlikely. Susan was caught up in her own new life. Not just married now, expecting, but also helping run her husband’s family’s greenhouse. Sally’s voice sounded peculiar as she continued, “Vivi said the shore’s so lovely this time of year. We’re going to stay at a fancy resort hotel right on the boardwalk.”

  Ella slipped her glasses back on and peered down at the stitches she’d made; sometimes after she’d been sewing for a few hours, they started to look like train tracks. Two parallel lines moving endlessly across the vast fields of fabric, those rolling hills of brown and green.

  “How long they keepin’ you?” she asked, softening. A vacation at the shore. It did sound lovely.

  Sally shook her head. “I don’t know, Mama. Maybe a week?”

  She couldn’t give Sally much, but she could give her this. After all, she was still just a child. And now someone was showing an interest in being her friend. How could she deny her this?

  “What did you say her name was again? Peterson?”

  “Yes, Mama. He said he’ll call you tonight. I gave him our telephone number. We’ll take the bus to Atlantic City tomorrow.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Peterson,” Sally said, blinking hard, speaking slowly. “Vivi’s father. Vivi and her mother are already there. He had to stay behind in Camden for work one more day.”

  “They go to our church?” Ella asked, though after Russell’s funeral she’d been too ashamed to show her face in church, suffering through the whispers and stares only on Easter and Christmas.

  “I don’t know, Mama.”

  Ella looked up at Sally, whose eyes were now spilling tears down her cheeks. It embarrassed Ella to see her like this, and so she pressed her foot on the treadle and busied her hands. “Let me talk to this girl’s father.”

  SALLY

  The next morning, Sally packed the little red suitcase her mother found in the downstairs coat closet, wondering how one packs for a courtroom trial. Because that was where he said he was taking her. He was going to deliver her to the FBI headquarters in Atlantic City to stand before a judge, where she’d get a chance to plead her case. If the judge took pity on her, he might release her then and there. Let her go. She could get back on a bus to Camden straight away. Her mama would never be the wiser.

  “I’ll testify on your behalf, of course,” he’d said. “But you still need to be prepared for the worst-case scenario.” He’d warned her the judge might not show any leniency at all; she was a felon, after all. “You got any idea what the punishment is for stealing? Larceny’s a federal crime.”

  Clean white blouses, her school skirts, bleached bobby socks, and her hairbrush. She sobbed as she closed her suitcase, which did not seem to want to be shut. She peered around her room, the one she and Susan had shared. Where they’d huddled together during thunderstorms and suffered through summer heat. (Susan gathered bowls of ice and situated them in front of the one feeble fan they shared; they stripped down to their underwear and lay sweating on top of their bumpy chenille spreads.) In this room, she’d watched Susan put makeup on and carefully select the dresses she wore when she went out on dates. Those nights, Sally stayed awake, waiting for her to come home. When she did, Sally tried to guess where she’d been simply from the scent she carried with her: the faint buttery smell that meant a movie, the fresh grass scent of a midnight picnic, and once, a musky, meaty scent she didn’t recognize. That night Susan had scribbled furiously in her journal for nearly a half hour before turning out the little pink glass lamp on her nightstand. Sally swore she could hear Susan’s heart beating that night, though perhaps it was only the rhythmic clacking sound of the wheels of the train. Susan’s bed had been neatly made since her wedding to Al. That night, when she and her mother had come home from the reception, Sally had carefully untucked her mother’s hospital corners, slipped into Susan’s bed, and cried until the pillowcase was damp.

  If she were in the club with those girls, she might have one of them come to stay over. If she hadn’t gotten caught stealing the notebook, she might be planning to invite Vivi over for a sleepover right now instead of packing her suitcase to go to jail. She looked at the empty bed, and it seemed to mock her.

  “Hurry up, Sally,” her mother hollered up the stairs. “We’re supposed to meet Mr. Peterson at the bus depot in fifteen minutes.”

  Sally stared at her reflection in the mirrored vanity where Sue once demonstrated how to make hunter’s bow lips. Oh Sally, you look just like a young Lauren Bacall, Susan had marveled, and Sally had blushed so deeply she didn’t even need the crème rouge Susan offered.

  “Sally!” her mother hollered again. “It’s time to go.”

  ELLA

  Ella and Sally made their way to the bus depot, each step causing agonizing pains to shoot up Ella’s legs.

  “You okay, Mama?” Sally asked.

  Ella nodded. She’d learned a long time ago that complaining didn’t do anybody any good. And it certainly didn’t take the pain away.

  “Are you sure you’re gonna manage okay without me?” Sally persisted. “Because maybe I don’t have to go.”

  “You call me when you get there,” Ella said. “I’m sure the hotel has a telephone. Just ask the operator to reverse the charges.”

  Ella had gotten dressed that morning with extra care, powdered her face, and put on her Sunday clothes, noting that the buttons struggled to stay inside their respective buttonholes; the fabric stretched and complained. She’d tried to recall the last time she’d walked this far and couldn’t. When she spoke to Mr. Peterson on the phone, he said he was so pleased his daughter would have another girl to pal around with at the shore. He seemed like a real gentleman. When he suggested Ella walk Sally to the bus depot, where he would meet them, she was too embarrassed to explain her poor health, and instead agreed.

  It was a lovely June day; she expected they’d have beautiful weather at the beach. When she and her first husband, Bobby, were courting, he’d taken her to Atlantic City once. She’d basked in that glorious sun and gotten such a terrible sunburn, her skin had bubbled and she’d had to bathe in oatmeal for a week.

  “You got a sun hat?” she asked Sally.

  “Yes, Mama,” Sally said.

  “You make sure you use an umbrella at the beach. And watch out for the undertow. It’ll suck you right under if you ain’t careful.”

  Sally was staring at her feet as they scuffed along the sidewalk. What on earth was wrong with this girl?

  “You be polite. You say ‘please�
�� and ‘thank you,’ and you keep a napkin in your lap during meals, you understand?”

  “Mama, I’m not feeling so well. Maybe, maybe I should stay home?” she said. “I can always go to the shore another time.”

  Ella stopped walking and scowled. “What is the matter with you, Sally Horner? You act like you’re walking to your own funeral.”

  Sally’s lip quivered. There’d be waterworks soon if Ella didn’t put her foot down now.

  “Just imagine all the amazing things you’ll get to see, Sally. You’re a lucky girl. Don’t you forget that. And don’t forget your manners, either.”

  At the bus depot, the man, Mr. Peterson, was standing with a pretty young woman in a peach-colored suit, her shiny blond hair done up in two victory rolls. He set down a battered valise next to his own suitcase, tipped his hat, and extended his hand.

  “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, ma’am,” he said, smiling. “This is my assistant, Miss Robinson. I’ve asked her to come along, since Miss Sally here is a minor and all. It wouldn’t be proper, otherwise.”

  Ella nodded. Yes, what a gentleman, she thought. How nice for Sally to be associating with such people. But Sally clung to her when the bus arrived, her body trembling. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? A girlfriend to spend time with? It was what Ella had wanted at that age. What she wouldn’t have given to spend a week at the shore with nothing more to worry about than keeping the sun out of her eyes.

  “Come on now, Sally. You’re making a spectacle of yourself,” Ella said, blushing at Mr. Peterson, who stood patiently waiting and pretending not to notice this display.

  “I’ll be home soon, Mama,” Sally said, as Miss Robinson reached out for Sally’s bag.

  “You call me soon as you get there,” Ella said, nodding. “Thank you for having her along, Mr. Peterson.”

  “Please. Call me Frank,” he said, and held out his hand to help Sally onto the bus. “And the pleasure’s all mine.”

  SALLY

  Sally and the lady in the peach suit sat side by side on the bus to Atlantic City. The FBI man sat across the aisle from them smoking, and the lady read a Life magazine. Sally leaned her head against the warm window and squinted until the trees became a blur of green, rehearsing what she would say to the judge when she got a chance to plead her case.

  “You like magazines?” Miss Robinson asked, offering it to her.

  Sally nodded, though she preferred Photoplay and Movie Life.

  The lady had bright white teeth and a dimple below her eye that was shaped like a tiny star. Sally thought maybe she would be able to convince her she wasn’t a bad girl. A criminal. That it had all been a terrible mistake. And maybe Miss Robinson could explain to Mr. Warner, that was what he said his name was, though now she was confused, because she’d been calling him Mr. Peterson for her mother’s sake.

  The magazine had a picture of a girl about Sally’s age on the cover, sitting Indian style, wearing a long-sleeved shirt with a hood attached and shiny sandals. She was on a beach, a swath of white sand and a battered fence behind her. Was this what girls were wearing at the beach these days? She’d only ever been to the ocean twice: once last summer with Susan and Al and once when she was still a baby (she didn’t remember that trip, but there was a photograph she’d found in the back of her mother’s closet when she was snooping). In the photo, there was a man with huge hands holding her, but his head was outside the photo’s frame. The man was their real father, Bobby Swain, but she had no memories of him. He left them just a few months after that picture was taken, and then her mother had met Russell. She couldn’t remember her real father’s face, and wondered if he might look like one of the movie stars she loved. Jimmy Stewart maybe, or Humphrey Bogart? She told her mother once that she could remember him singing to her, but her mother said that was impossible. She must be confusing him with Russell. First, because her real daddy took off when she wasn’t even two years old, and second because Russell was the musician; Bobby Swain couldn’t carry a tune. That phrase had captivated her. It made it sound like music was something you could hold in your hands.

  “You ever been to Atlantic City before?” Miss Robinson asked, startling Sally.

  Sally shook her head.

  “Me neither,” she said. “I hear there’s a diving horse. It leaps from a platform two stories up. Can you believe it? Maybe you can go see it with your girlfriend?”

  Sally scowled, confused.

  “Frank told me that you all are going to the beach to meet his family. That you and his daughter go to school together.”

  Sally struggled to make sense of what she was saying. This was the story he’d told her to tell her mother, the lie so that she wouldn’t know what a terrible thing Sally had done. It was to protect her, he said. How ashamed would her mother be to know she had raised a juvenile delinquent? But Sally had assumed that Miss Robinson, as his assistant, knew that she was being arrested. Why would he lie to her if she worked for the FBI, too?

  She had been afraid to look at Mr. Warner, who hadn’t said a word to her the whole way there. She stole a glance now. His hat was tipped down to cover his face, his bony hands folded in his lap as though he’d fallen asleep while he was saying a prayer.

  “I’m most excited about the shows, of course, seeing as how I’m planning on becoming an actress. All the talent agents from New York City summer in Atlantic City, you know. Looking for girls. Frank says he can help me get all the way to Broadway, if you can imagine that. No way I’m gonna be dancin’ for dimes my whole life.” Words popped from Miss Robinson’s mouth like soap bubbles.

  Sally was completely puzzled. What was she talking about? Did she plan to quit her job with the FBI to become an actress? Sally looked at Mr. Warner again, and she was close enough to hear the soft rumbles of a snore. She turned back to Miss Robinson, who was peering at her reflection in a cracked compact, moving her head this way and that to see herself from all angles.

  “Ma’am?” Sally said, and felt tears stinging her eyes; she’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry. That she wouldn’t pity herself; it was nobody’s fault but her own what happened at the Woolworth’s.

  “Oh, don’t cry, sweetheart,” Miss Robinson said, gazing away from the mirror to look at Sally.

  Sally lowered her voice until it was barely a voice at all. “It’s just that my sister’s having a baby soon. I’m going to be an aunt. She told me I could babysit for her. That she’d pay me so that she and Al could go out dancing every now and again. If I miss it … if I’m not there…”

  “How lovely,” Miss Robinson said, seeming confused. She hesitated, then pulled a handkerchief from her blouse, offering it to Sally. “Are you homesick already, sweetheart?”

  Sally nodded. She took the handkerchief and caught the tears before they fell.

  “I’m a little homesick, too,” Miss Robinson said, and squeezed Sally’s hand. “I come from Philadelphia. That’s where my people are.”

  Sally glanced at the man again. His small chest rose up and down, his snores like soft whistles.

  “Do you know how long they might keep me?” Sally said softly, just barely above a whisper.

  “What’s that, doll?” Miss Robinson asked, clicking her compact closed.

  “How long I gotta be locked up?” she whispered. “I’m supposed to start the sixth grade this fall.”

  Miss Robinson cocked her head. “Whatever do you mean?” she asked. “Locked up?”

  Sally’s stomach somersaulted. Didn’t she know Sally was on her way to the courthouse? What sort of awful place would he be taking her if his own assistant couldn’t know?

  But just as she was about to explain, across the aisle, Mr. Warner let out a loud snore, which startled Sally and rattled him awake. He plucked the hat from his face and turned to them; Sally felt faint. He looked at his watch and leaned across the aisle.

  “Just another half hour to go,” he said.

  Atlantic City, New Jersey

  June 1948
>
  SALLY

  ATLANTIC CITY: AMERICA’S FAVORITE PLAYGROUND, the sign said as they stepped off the bus. And Sally thought of the playground at school, of those girls and their sisterhood beneath the trees. How could she have been so foolish? What she wouldn’t give to go back to that moment when she sat on the swings, watching them from afar.

  Carrying their suitcases, she and Miss Robinson followed Mr. Warner down the crowded boardwalk along the beach. He walked quickly, a few paces ahead, and she had to practically run to keep up. Miss Robinson smiled at her sympathetically, though she was the one wearing heels, and Sally just had on her old pair of loafers.

  Shops and restaurants lined one side of the boardwalk, and on the other was the beach, the Atlantic Ocean as vast and blue as the sky. The beach was filled with people, the sand littered with colorful umbrellas. The boardwalk was bustling with activity as well, and Sally looked around anxiously at all the people, families and teenagers out for a day of fun. A group of girls about her age was walking their way, each of them holding a towering cone of pale pink cotton candy. They leaned into each other, giggling and skipping. She felt a surge of longing as they passed by her as if she were nothing but a ghost.

  “Coming through!” someone hollered, and to Sally’s left a man pushing a bright yellow wicker cart rushed by her, nearly knocking her over. Her hand flew to her chest. The female passenger in the cart looked back over her shoulder at Sally and mouthed, Sorry! The woman looked just like her sister, and Sally’s wildly bobbing heart became a lead sinker.

  “You two hungry?” Mr. Warner asked as they arrived at a vendor selling franks.

  “No, thank you,” Miss Robinson said, smiling. “I’m watching my figure.”

  “I’ll take one,” he said to the vendor. “Extra onions and mustard. Sally?”

  Sally felt too sick with worry to eat. She was hungry, however, and so when the vendor handed her the little paper cup of Italian ice and winked at her—on the house—she nodded and accepted it. She used the flat wooden paddle to scrape at the cherry-flavored ice. But it was too sweet and melted too quickly in the muggy heat.