Before March. It was already February. Mardi Gras approached on February 21, and the parties and balls were already under way. Willie would be keeping the house open longer each day to cash in on the “high-time hoopla,” as she called it. She had extra seasonal girls arranged and two rooms reserved at the motel nearby. The girls would work in shifts, taking time to bathe and sleep a few hours at the motel in between. I’d still clean in the morning, but it would take longer, and there were always errands during Mardi Gras.
I stared out the window from the counter of the bookshop and watched the passersby. John Lockwell would also be busy during Mardi Gras. When I was in his office, I saw a photo of him with Rex, one of the oldest Mardi Gras krewes. If I didn’t get the recommendation letter before Mardi Gras festivities started, I wouldn’t get it at all.
Residence
Smith College has the policy of placing groups of students from each of the four classes in houses of its own. Each house has its own living room, dining room, kitchen and is supervised by the Head of the House.
The “Head of the House.” It sounded like Willie. I looked at the return address from Charlotte. She lived in Tenney House.
Expenses
Tuition fee $850
Residence fee $750
Books $25–$50
Subscriptions and dues $24
Recreation and incidentals $100
Enough. I slid the stack of papers under the counter. Looking at the expenses made my stomach churn. Nearly two thousand dollars. Eight thousand dollars for four years. My life savings in the cigar box was less than three hundred dollars. Sure, I always had seven cents for the streetcar and a nickel for a soda, but two thousand dollars for one year? Willie said she’d pay for Newcomb or Loyola, but they were a third of the cost of Smith. I would apply for financial assistance and scholarships. They’d be my only hope. Somehow I had to turn the salted peanuts in the cigar box into petits fours.
I stared out the window. A woman in a smart suit crossed the street toward the shop. I estimated her to be in her midfifties. People naturally parted from her course as she made her way to the door. Literary fiction. I put my thumb on the counter, signaling to Patrick, who wasn’t there. Habit.
“Good afternoon,” I said as she pushed through the door.
The woman cut a path straight toward me. She placed her pocketbook on the counter and smiled. It was a polite smile, but reserved, as if her teeth desperately wanted to peek out, but she wouldn’t let them. Her hesitation indicated appraisal. Her head tilted slightly as she looked at me. The hair at her temples was pulled tightly toward her bun. The skin was stretched like flesh-colored taffy.
“Miss Moraine?”
I nodded.
“I’m Barbara Paulsen, chair of the English department at Loyola. Patrick Marlowe was my aide for a year.”
“Oh, yes. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Patrick tells me you went to Smith.”
“Indeed.” Her head tilted again, this time in the opposite direction. Full evaluation. “And he tells me you’re applying. You’re quite late, you know. Most girls apply before their senior year of high school.”
“Yes, but I’ll make the March deadline.”
“Patrick said your grades are strong. And your extracurriculars?”
I stared at her.
“You do have extracurricular activities for your application? Achievement awards?”
I shook my head and continued shaking as she sprayed me with student council, language club, social committee, and all the other affiliations that any girl applying to an East Coast school would have.
“My extracurricular was limited. I had to work several jobs during school,” I explained. Limited? More like nonexistent.
“I see. What other forms of employment did you have besides working here at the bookstore?”
She was asking if I could afford it, which I couldn’t. I looked at the hair tearing at her temples and tried to formulate a safe answer. “I work as a housemaid in one of the homes here in the Quarter.”
Miss Paulsen didn’t react with the shock or horror I expected. She seemed to appreciate my candor and fiddled with the strap on her pocketbook. “Patrick explained that your father is absent. What about your mother, dear?”
Mother? Oh, she’s in a dusty motel in California right now, cooling herself with a cold Schlitz in her cleavage.
“My mother . . . cleaned homes as well,” I told her. “She’s pursuing employment out of state at this time.”
Silence ticked between us until she spoke. “Charlie Marlowe and I are old friends. Patrick was one of the best students I’ve ever had. He’s not the writer his father is, but he knows literature, and I think he’d make an excellent editor. I’ve always encouraged him in that direction but—” She stopped and waved the topic away with her hand. “What I’m saying is that I have the utmost respect for Patrick, and he seems to have the utmost respect for you.” Confusion dangled from the end of her sentence.
“Patrick and I have been close friends for a long time,” I explained.
“Are you dating him?” The words came out quickly, too quickly, and she knew it. And there was something else pulsing behind her question. Not jealousy exactly. Some sort of curiosity? “Not that it’s my business, certainly,” she added.
“Oh, I don’t mind the question. We’re just friends,” I assured her.
“I’ve just always wondered why he stayed in New Orleans. Everything’s okay with his father?”
“Perfectly.” I smiled.
“Good. I’d like Charlie to visit my writing class again this year.”
I imagined Charlie at the head of the lecture hall in his underwear, clutching the heart-shaped box to his chest.
“Well, you’ll need some strong recommendations for your application. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to write one for you. I’ve already written one for a girl at Sacred Heart, you see, and that recommendation would be diluted if I were to write another one. But I do encourage you with your application, Miss Moraine. These exercises, no matter how futile, build character.”
Futile. She was telling me it was useless. That I was useless.
“I believe you have a book for me?” she prompted. “I paid in advance when I ordered it.”
I had seen the book—Le Deuxième Sexe by a French author, Simone de Beauvoir. Patrick had ordered it from a press in Paris. He said it was an analysis of women. I took the keys from my pocket and walked toward the bookcase. I opened the glass door and pulled the book from the shelf. I felt a warm shadow behind me. Miss Paulsen was inches from my back.
She pointed over my shoulder. “A Passage to India. What edition? I’d like to see that as well.” She held out her hand.
TWENTY-FIVE
I was a liar.
I’m sorry, Miss Paulsen. A Passage to India is currently under restoration. No, Patrick, I don’t know who Mother was with near the Roosevelt Hotel. Yes, Jesse, I’m going to meet Patrick tonight. No, Willie, I didn’t know Mother had left for California. No, Detective Langley, I didn’t find Forrest Hearne’s watch under my mother’s bed, a bed in a brothel with a bullet hole in the headboard.
It went on. Each lie I told required another to thicken the paste over the previous. It was useless, like when I learned to crochet and made a long string of loops. Being useless builds character, Miss Paulsen had said. Perhaps she was home now, drinking a weak Earl Grey from last night’s tea bag, massaging her taffied scalp.
I sat on my bed, staring at A Passage to India in my lap. How foolish of me to keep the book downstairs in the shop. But the pieces still didn’t fit together. If Forrest Hearne hadn’t come to Willie’s, then how did the watch end up in Mother’s room? If Mother knew about the watch, she certainly wouldn’t have left it. No, it would have been quite the complement to Cincinnati’s wardrobe of death. And Frankie said Mother had been at the Roosevelt Hotel on New Year’s Eve.
I crawled under my bed and pulled back the loose floorboard. I wrestled my hand through the opening, retrieved the cigar box, and inserted the book in its place. I made room for the box of money in the bottom of one of my desk drawers. Two things volleyed in my head:
Mr. Hearne hadn’t thought I was useless.
Someone who had been with Forrest Hearne had been at Willie’s.
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