The Light of Evening (8 page)

Two hundred and forty brides from eleven cities, Detroit, Chicago, St. Paul, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Providence, Denver, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, all brilliant home-makers who did not sacrifice their charms or their good looks and why, because of that certain soap powder that they all used.

Nevertheless, some of those brides were troubled by doubts and, living in a distant city as they did, were without a confidante to turn to. Then, the sorry saga of Leonard and Beth. Bliss-

fully happy until misfortune struck, Beth was unable to confide in her dear darling mother, so as not to show her husband in a bad light. He was a salesman for office furniture, a job that entailed traveling great distances. Beth loved her new home, cuddled her new baby, and Leonard was an exemplary husband who at weekends got up at night if the baby cried. They had never had squabbles, never disagreed over money matters, their marriage ideal until a rival stepped in and Beth learned of it. Her friend Mary Jo who had just come from Cleveland had bumped into Leonard walking down a street with a girl, the pair of them linked, laughing. Not long after a letter came for Leonard in a feminine hand and though Beth was tempted to open it, she remained stoical, handing Leonard the letter when he came back, which he reluctantly opened and then put away. Brushing her hair before her mirror that night, Beth broke down and upon being questioned, Leonard said yes, he had met Flora, an old friend who did all she could to vamp him. He tried, oh how he tried to fend her off, even depositing her on her own doorstep after a dinner out, but sadly she returned to his hotel and the inevitable happened. He swore that he loved Beth but Beth could no longer believe in that love, her trust had been quashed, sinking deeper and deeper into the dark grotto of her despair.

We waited on tenterhooks for the next installment, wondering what the outcome would be.

Photographic Studio

“bring your dreams to life.” Bring our dreams to life.

We saved up.

The photographic studio itself was up a side stairs with a stool on the landing. There was a couple in mourning, black from head to toe, the black ribbons fluttering on the brim of the husband’s hat, and an engaged couple staring down at the ring, the diamond no bigger than a grain of sand. The photographer with his coffee-colored skin and his coffee-colored suit beamed when he saw us, said he would take us last. He walked with a waddle.

The room where he took the photographs was almost dark, the camera on a tripod with a big black cloth over it and an opened black umbrella, which at home was always deemed unlucky. Incense wafted from the nostrils of a bronze Buddha, which, as he said, was for the ambience. Everything was ambience.

We were star material, he saw that at once. Our two faces, Solveig’s ivory cheeks and my peaches and cream, would be mounted side by side on a white card, embossed with violets and put in the showcase in the entrance hall. The masculine and feminine world of passersby would be set agog at the sight of us. We were lucky to catch him in. Stars of stage and screen were forever vying for his services, often he had to shut shop and dash to snap a famous screen actress during her lunch break. He was number one in his field, his tones, his shadowing, his definitions, unique, his competitors crazy to find out the secret that was his

alone. But to us he would reveal it. He grasped the personality, the soul, he looked into the eyes, the windows of the soul, and saw what girls were dreaming of.

Might we step into something dandier, more eye-catching, he wondered. From a trunk he pulled out boas, fox tippets, capes, and frocks and ushered us behind a screen to change, telling us to be as daring as possible.

“I am a little boy now,” Solveig said as she appeared in a sailor suit. It thrilled him. Boy and girl. Bride and groom. He ran to get a cigarette case, made her practice opening and shutting it, like a swain. Then he stood her on a box to be taller and put me sitting, made me cross and uncross my legs several times to show to advantage the green silk shoes that matched the peppermint-green satin dress.

When I sent the photograph home my mother wrote back, aghast, asked was it a streetwalker I had become and who was the insolent boy with me.

The photographer urged us to think of our sweethearts. We were bound to have sweethearts, what with our skins and our complexions, oodles of sweethearts. Solveig raved about her grandparents, their cottage in the countryside where she spent her holidays and the small lake and the small boat, her grandmother reading her stories of princesses, reading only nice stories, not wanting to scare her, her grandmother combing her hair, and telling her there was
gund
in it, and
gund
signified gold, which meant that she would marry a very rich prince. Her grandma, her mother, and herself at Christmastime carrying a small sheep or a small cow to the pastor, to give to baby Jesus and the shepherds, then home for the feast, meatballs, tiny sausages, sliced potatoes with anchovies, and then the big treat that her papa handed out, marzipan pigs with red ribbons on their bellies that would make people richer in the year to come.

He wanted us to kiss. He said it wasn’t like kissing him, it was just two young girls on the brink of stardom. He saw only riches,

our names in lights, “It” girls, snapped up by some Hollywood agency and heading for Tinseltown. On the cusp of being discovered, but still we wouldn’t kiss.

He said if Hollywood seemed too far afield, too outre, he could find us attractive work in our spare time, as he had contacts with the advertising people, all crying out for new faces, fresh faces to model soaps and face creams, or even lingerie in private homes, a tempting nest egg, as he put it.

“You are a little bit of a scoundrel,” Solveig said. God knows where she had heard the word. He was fuming. He pulled down his shirtsleeves, pulled up the blind, pointed to a photograph of his wife, a sallow woman with a child in her arms. Then he got very businesslike and demanded the deposit, which earlier he had promised to forgo.

Walking up the hill toward home, the lamplights roosting in the trees that skirted the park, we’d stop and laugh and go over every bit of it, his lips puce as if he’d painted them, his coffee-colored suit, his waddle, the Turkish Delight he fed us on a wooden spatula, wiping the sherbet off our lips, and the sudden umbrage in him at being called a scoundrel.

Dear Dilly,

I yet again take my pen in my hand since we have not heard from you in four weeks. Are you sick or what? We understood that people have good health in America. Making and trimming bonnets or having yourself photographed cannot take up all of your time. We are crazy with worry over your brother. He is a wanted man because of an ambush in a graveyard beyond Moynoe two weeks ago in which a British soldier died. A thousand pounds on his head. His picture on posters nailed to trees with three other suspects who are also on the run. He called once in the night, stole in while your father and I were asleep and took a pike that was in the thatch. He lives in bog holes and potato pits. If the army don’t get

him then pneumonia will as the weather is wretched. Raining, raining, raining. With the last money you sent us we repaid one set of cousins, the Duracks, for their contribution toward your passage. I keep seeing you in my dreams. If only you knew how I miss you, especially on Sundays when I sit in the plantation for a rest. I enclose a prayer. Tuck it into the cavity in the back of the amber brooch that I gave you.

The days grow longer

The nights grow shorter

The headstones thicken along the way

Life grows shorter and love grows longer

For Him who is with us night and day

I hope your silence does not denote anything serious. I bring this scribble to a close.

Your worried mother,

                                        Bridget

Bless This House

it began great.

“Bless this house, O Lord, we pray. Keep it safe by night and day,” played over and over again on the gramophone. It poured down the steps to where Solveig and I were working helter-skelter. The singer was a favorite of Pascal’s and he kept clippings and photographs of him coming out of concert halls in cities all over Europe.

“Bless the people here within. Keep them pure and free from sin.

Earlier when she came from Mass, the missus was in a foul mood, yelling at Solveig and me because one of the fires smoked, the logs were not properly stacked in their brass boxes, the goose not pierced of excessive fat, the napkins not folded into miter shape, which she had particularly requested, in order to show off the monogrammed M in blood-red silk needlework.
M
for Matilda.

It was all bustle. A ham with cloves and crusts of brown sugar lay on a platter, a white paper frill around it, dishes and chafing dishes being kept hot, boats for different gravies, and the sizzle sound of the goose when Solveig basted it. The trifle, jellies, and a blancmange dyed green for the patriot effect were on the pantry floor to be kept cool. In small bowls of carnival glass the bonbons, the crystallized violets, and the maraschino cherries for when they would have their liqueurs.

Mr. and Mrs. McCormack’s annual Christmas “at home.”

The rooms were decorated differently for the contrast, the drawing room all light and blaze with two roaring fires and the fobs and pendants of the chandeliers that I’d washed in sudsy water and rinsed, twinkling as if to say, “We’re here … we’re here.” The cushions and velveteen sofa had to be re-covered because the chimney sweep being so absent-minded, he only put the dust sheets down in half of the room. An impertinent little squirt, with his brooms and his brushes and his set of rods, ordering Solveig and me about as if he owned the place.

A man had done the hall, spent days doing it, dressing the tree that was as tall as the house and decking it with the small penny candles like the ones in the chapel because the missus wanted a woodland effect. Along with the candles, there were yellow fleece birds that chirruped a song every so often, nearly lifelike. There was holly twined and wreathed on several banisters of the stairs and the door outside framed with myrtle and the heads of hydrangeas that had been bronzed, so that it was like entering a castle.

The dining room was a “little Ireland” with fat red candles in scooped-out turnips and glass harps, as a gift, at each place setting. They had come from a foundry in Italy.

Chrissie was the first to arrive, craned to take a bite out of the satin apples and satin pears that hung from the tree, said they reminded her of the days when she played snap-apple at home, on Halloween. She had a limp, one of her boots with a heel higher than the other, effusive, kissing Mr., kissing the missus, and then having to be hoisted up to kiss the big sprig of mistletoe that was above the drawing room door. She asked if there was any nice fellow come that would walk her home and Mr. told her that there was Kevin, as per usual. She scoffed, said, “Ah, sugar, he tells the same ghost story every year, about the girl with the consumption.”

There were eleven guests in all and twelve if the congressman

came. Everything hinged on the congressman’s coming except that it must be kept secret, in case at the last minute, as Mr. said, he had a more pressing engagement.

“Answer it, answer it,” the missus barking for me to get to the hall door posthaste, taking their coats and the presents, the presents in gorgeous paper with yards of different colored ribbon, left on the hall table for etiquette, the fur coats up to the bedroom for minding.

There was Mr. and Mrs. Keating, Mr. Keating with a black ebony cane and Mrs. Keating keeping her ermine wrap on although the room was boiling. Next came Felim and Mrs. Felim, then two bachelors, Eamonn and Kevin, to correspond to Chrissie and Jenny, who were both unmarried, and Father Bob, the missus’s private confessor, who came once a fortnight from Long Island to hear her confession in the morning room and afterward sat by the fire for a high tea that had to include apple fritters because he had a fad for them.

A punch cup to start, Mr. ladling it into silver mugs that had a gold lining, like little chalices. The visitors were in raptures, the missus showered with compliments, her hair, her crushed velvet, the ruby necklace that lay on her chest, so dazzling, so scintillating, so unusual and priceless.

“She has me broke,” Pascal said and held up the ornamental alms plate to get a laugh.

“Is that Rococo, Pascal?” Chrissie said as she stood by the missus’s desk, peering into the nests of pigeonholes and cubbies.

“Oh, don’t touch there or you’ll be shot,” Pascal said, because it was where the missus kept her souvenirs, love letters from men before him, locks of hair, dried shamrock, and the words of songs that she rehearsed for her parties. Her family was musical, always boasting about it, her father could make a tune out of a blade of grass.

Chrissie tried all the chairs, the armchairs, the high chairs, the spindle-back chairs, “Is that apple wood, is that tulip wood, is

that rosewood, Pascal?” People pitying her with her limp, in a yellow summery dress with a wide green sash as if she was entering a dance competition. Remarking on the holly to be so rich with berries, she said a good crop of berries always meant an addition to the family, a babbie, and the missus gave her a glare.

But as the others arrived she went all soft and unctuous, shrieks of delight at each newcomer, marveling that they had ventured out on such a rotten day, freezing cold and slippery to boot, could break their necks on the steps even though she’d got Pascal to sprinkle the coarse salt. She was in her element, offering her hand to be kissed by the men and her powdered cheek to be brushed by the ladies, every so often scolding her husband on account of a glass being empty, or a sod fallen onto the tiled fireplace, or Jenny all alone in a corner, like a wallflower.