The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress

Chapter Twelve





SMITHSON TAILORS, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1930



“OWNEY Madden is sending a car to fetch you, Mrs. Simon.”

Maria glanced up from her stitching. Donald Smithson stood beside her station, inspecting the work she’d begun on one of Owney’s suits. He nodded in approval.

“Why?” Maria never stopped sewing, but kept her eyes on Smithson. The mention of Owney’s name made her careless, however, and she pricked the tip of one finger with her needle. She jumped at the tiny surge of pain. “Is something wrong?”

“On the contrary. He’s very pleased with you. Requested that you do a custom tailoring job for him.”

“Sir, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to be running around the city with a client. Why doesn’t he bring the work in, and I can do it here?”

Smithson did not look up from her work. He turned it over. “Because the clothing is currently attached to the bodies of several chorus girls. We can’t very well ask them to accommodate our schedule, can we?”

“What does that have to do with Mr. Madden?”

Exasperated, Smithson set down the material. “Our client is a financial backer of several Broadway shows. This one in particular is having an issue with a few costumes. And when a client is willing to pay double the going rate for custom work, we say yes. Understand?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Get your things ready. His driver will be here any moment.”

While she was debating whether to call Jude and let him know, a black Cadillac pulled to the curb, driven by a jumpy little man in a bowler hat. Smithson shooed her out the door before she could argue further.

The driver stuck out a hand. “Shorty Petak.”

“Maria Simon.” She shook it in reply.

Shorty helped her into the backseat and rushed around the car. He lurched into traffic as soon as his door was shut. “Hold on tight. Show starts in an hour, and several of the girls are having trouble with their tail feathers.”

She spent much of the ride gripping the door with her eyes closed. The massive Cadillac roared through the streets of Manhattan, swerving around vehicles, ignoring traffic signals, and blaring its horn. When they finally ground to a stop in front of an alley, Maria felt ill.

Shorty hurried to open her door and then escorted her across the alley and into the employees’ entrance.

“This way.” He led her down a broad hallway crammed with stage props: artificial trees, an assortment of rowboats, a dining table, and a stuffed grizzly bear. She felt as though she were passing through a storage room for bizarre dreams.

They ducked between a set of leafy palms and stepped into a large area backstage. He pointed toward a door. “In there.”

“I just go in?”

“They’re expecting you.”

Maria grasped her sewing bag and slipped through the door. A crowd of showgirls jostled for a spot in front of a long mirror rimmed by lightbulbs. Blondes, brunettes, and redheads laughed and elbowed one another. Most of them were topless, and Maria let out a small gasp of surprise. She looked away, but the room was filled with bare skin.

She watched the women prepare for the show. They helped one another into sequined tops and towering feathered headpieces. The costumes, though skimpy, seemed to take a great deal of dexterity to get into, and the women had a system in place that was fascinating. She wanted to examine the outfits to see how they were stitched together for such flexibility What kind of fabric allowed for that kind of movement? The dancers bent and stretched and kicked their feet above their heads as they warmed up, all of this in three-inch heels.

Maria cleared her throat.

A busty redhead looked up from her place at the dressing table. “Who are you?”

“The seamstress.”

She turned toward her friends. “Hey! Who needed their tail feathers fixed?”

A show of hands, and then several women went to grab costumes from the long racks against the wall. While they were gathering their things, Maria looked for another face.

“I thought you were a maid?” The quiet voice betrayed a hint of anger, and Maria spun around.

Sally Lou Ritz had her arms crossed over a blue satin robe, a lit cigarette dangling from the fingers of one hand.

“In the mornings, yes. It helps pay the bills. But this is what I do best.” Maria unpacked her sewing bag on the table and looked at Ritzi, uncertain. “Am I working on your costume as well?”

“Mine? No. At least not yet.” She shrugged off her robe and hung it over the back of a chair. Her undergarments were small and sheer and expensive, revealing the hourglass suggested beneath her robe. She cleared her throat. “I might need your help later.”

“Might?”

Ritzi dropped a hand to her stomach. Patted once. “Depends on how these costumes fit in a few months.”

So cavalier, that movement. As though getting pregnant were as easy as catching a cold. Maria counted the years she’d been trying to conceive a child. How she often lay on her back with her feet on the wall after she and Jude made love. He laughed at her for that. But she heard once that it worked.


“It’s simple enough to let out a garment, make more room in the midriff,” Maria said.

“The costumes run small. The producers do it on purpose to keep us little. Nothing like the fear of popping a seam midshow to ensure you don’t eat. Needless to say, they are not accommodating to certain situations.”

Maria rearranged the pins on her pincushion. “I’m at Smithson Tailors in the afternoons. Let me know when you’re ready.”

“Thank you.” Ritzi put the cigarette to her lips and inhaled. She blew two long streams of smoke out her nose. “It took the costume designer three months to make these things. But some of the girls are losing their tail feathers on the high kicks. It’s embarrassing.”

“Shouldn’t be that hard to fix. I just need to reinforce the clasp.” The dancers lined up in a row, and Maria knelt beside them, a seam ripper and a needle pinched between her lips. “Stand still,” she said. “I don’t want to nick you.” She sliced into the first costume with the small hooked blade until the clasp was exposed.

The costume designer had used the wrong thread. Maria dug around in her bag for a topstitch-weight polyester thread. By the time the girls were needed onstage, she’d replaced the clasps on all five costumes.

As the girls bustled from the dressing room, Maria grabbed Ritzi’s arm. “I can help you. Please let me.”