He had narrowly managed to keep his wife from going to the orphanage and reuniting these two. The very mention of the boy gave him a start and made him angry. He had taken her away from the governess job to get her away from him. He worked very hard not to roll his eyes when she claimed the boy was talented. He could only imagine what sort of ridiculous tunes he would be able to pick out. He felt sure that if Rose were to see this boy again, she would be utterly disillusioned. He was keeping Rose in the lap of luxury, and there wasn’t another orphan in the world experiencing the same treatment. This delicate boy she spoke of was probably working at a factory. He had become hard. He was uneducated. Whatever bit of knowledge he had picked up in school with the nuns had no doubt been unlearned. Rose wouldn’t even be able to have a conversation with him. McMahon was sure of that.
“When we went to the rich people’s houses, they sometimes gave us warm clothes. Once the boy I traveled with was given a scarf that was much too long. It went around and around and around his neck. He looked as though his head were being engulfed by a huge boa constrictor.”
Rose laughed. McMahon had an urge to slap her. He gave her his presents. He handed her red carnations. For some reason they looked to her like tissues that had been held up to a bloody nose. He presented her with a box of Turkish delight. The candies resembled slugs amassed on a dead thing. He gave her a black corset that looked like a cage. She thanked him and spread them out on the bed around her. She smiled. But her smile kept slipping down, like old stockings that wouldn’t stay up. “I honestly can’t tell you why I’m thinking about him all of a sudden. Silly, really.”
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ROSE ACCEPTED her role as a mistress. What else could she do? She was twenty-one years old. There was a Depression going on. Rose felt like a possession now. There was something that was capitalistic about her sense of self-worth. Things about her had definite currency: her jokes, her laughing at his jokes, her smiles, her hair, her sitting next to him in a booth in a tiny restaurant, her eating a grilled-cheese sandwich next to him—these things had a price. She ought to be keeping a receipt book to itemize her expenses.
McMahon sent her shopping at the giant department store. She went first to buy underwear in the lingerie department. She began her makeover right at the bottom. Like when you make a pencil sketch on the canvas before you put down the thick coat of oil paint.
She took off her woolen tights. They had been mended so many times. Her underwear was shabby and kind of loose. She had an undershirt that had been taken advantage of by a moth. There was a little hole that her right nipple popped out of. She wasn’t used to seeing herself in a full-length mirror, but there she was.
McMahon said seeing her in her old underwear was like taking the wrapper off a candy and finding a little stone underneath it instead of a sweet. She tried on some pink underwear the color of rose petals, made of silk. They were so cold they sent a chill through her. When you were wearing undergarments like that, it was important to hurl yourself into someone else’s arms to warm up. She got a pile in her size.
She stopped to smell all the different perfumes. They were in round bottles. She wanted one that smelled just like her name. Everyone always said that she smelled just like roses. She thought that might be the power of suggestion. There was one bottle that smelled as if it had a hundred rotting roses crammed inside it. That was the one she chose.
She bought seven dresses, one for each day of the week. She had a dark blue one with a white belt that sat just below her waist. She got a pair of long white gloves that went up to her elbows, to accompany the dress. That was her favorite of the outfits, and she asked to wear it home. Everyone nodded at her as she walked up the stairs as though she were a lady, which she supposed that now she somehow was.
She fell asleep for a second while the saleswoman was slipping her feet into various shoes. She woke up as the saleswoman was crying out about how absolutely marvelous a pair of pink high heels were.
Rose quite loved the idea of being warm, and perhaps not having to wear two dozen layers of clothes. She remembered once, when she was little, stuffing a sock in her pocket to puff up her jacket in an attempt to insulate herself against the cold. She asked to be taken to the very warmest clothes. They led her to an elevator, which was a golden prison cell. There was a woman with a light blue pillbox hat inside, pulling the up and down levers. She brought Rose right up to the eighth floor, where the fur coats were. Rose chose herself a white mink coat to go with her old white hat, which was the only thing she had that looked fancy enough to keep.
She stopped at the bookstore on the way home. She bought herself a Russian novel. She stopped at the ice cream counter. She ordered herself a root beer float. She sipped at it as she read her Russian novel. She was content because she got to read. Maybe it wasn’t so bad.
She stood in her underwear with all her different outfits lying on the bed. As though she were a paper doll.
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MCMAHON CAME TO HER ROOM at the Darling Hotel. He held the two brandy glasses in his hand as if he were fondling breasts. She told him to take off all his clothes. Her favorite thing about him was just how fat he was. Whereas his wife would always say he was a pig and would beg him to lose weight, Rose loved how it felt to be squished underneath him. And she loved how it felt to be on top, riding him. Like he was a giant bear.