“YOU WILL DO NO such thing.” Nola’s voice was firm, leaving no room for argument. “Joseph has the car ready. When Tessie has finished with my hair, we are going shopping, Elizabeth.”
Tessie, a small, dark-haired woman whose nimble fingers were arranging Nola’s thick, fair hair, tightened her lips in disapproval as Elizabeth began arguing with her mother. “I promised Max! And I’m keeping my promise. Haven’t you always said a lady should never break her word?”
“You had no business making such a promise in the first place. You knew we had this shopping trip planned.”
Elizabeth threw up her hands. “We always have a shopping trip planned. Most of our lives are spent shopping! We spend more time in Lord & Taylor than we do at home. Why don’t we just set up cots there so we don’t have to go home when they close?”
Tessie, who had four children of her own, clucked her tongue, shook her head, the message being, If any of my children were to talk to me that way….
Elizabeth ignored her. “I’m going on a picnic with Max. I’m going to have some fun for a change. I’m not an old lady and I’m not going to live like one.”
Tessie gasped in shock, and Nola’s beautiful face went bone-white. Elizabeth had scored a direct hit on her mother’s vanity.
Realizing her mistake, she floundered. “I … I didn’t mean you were old, Mother, you’re not, of course you’re not, everyone says how young you look. I just meant … all those ladies who go shopping every afternoon and then meet later for ice cream sodas, well, they’re all married, and have children. I … I feel out of place with them, that’s all I meant.”
“My friends are not old, Elizabeth,” an only slightly mollified Nola said coldly. “And you know perfectly well we do more than just shop. We spend a great deal of time doing charity work. We care about the unfortunate poor. And some of us have been very active in establishing memorials to the victims of the Titanic.”
Elizabeth frowned. What did any of that have to do with a picnic in the park? Max was waiting for her. If she disappointed him again…. “I’m going, Mother. I don’t want to be late. Max already thinks you’ll change my mind for me. If I don’t show up on time, he’ll go on without me.”
Nola’s demeanor changed suddenly. She sagged in the pink upholstered chair, her head went down, and her voice lowered to almost a whisper. “What would your father say, Elizabeth, if he saw you defying me like this?”
Elizabeth had been prepared for this familiar tactic. Nola used it when all else failed. “He would suggest that you go shopping with Betsy and Caroline and let me spend some time with people my own age.” She couldn’t be positive her father would say that, given the instructions he’d delivered only moments before she and her mother climbed into the lifeboat. “Take care of your mother,” he had said. But he couldn’t possibly have meant that she should spend every waking minute at her mother’s side. Surely he wouldn’t mind if she took a brief holiday on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Once in a whole year? That wasn’t so terrible, was it? “Father would see that as fair, and you know it, Mother.”
Her spine straight as a flagpole, Elizabeth headed for the door. Inside, she was shaking, but aloud she said, “Have a good time shopping, Mother. I’ll look forward to seeing all your purchases when I get home this afternoon. Buy something in sapphire blue. It’s your best color.” There! Now if her mother should suddenly die in a traffic accident while her disobedient, disrespectful daughter was out picnicking in Central Park, at least their last words hadn’t been hateful ones.
“Elizabeth!”
Elizabeth was careful to close the door quietly behind her.
“I knew you’d make it!” Max cried when she stepped out of the taxicab. He was sitting on the steps of his building, dressed casually in slacks and a white sweater, a wicker picnic basket beside him. Two bicycles were propped against the steps. Max always looked more handsome when he was happy, and he was happy now. His deep blue eyes glowed with warmth. “I knew you wouldn’t back down.”
“No, you didn’t,” Elizabeth replied calmly, smiling and reaching out to take his hand. “You thought I’d give in. But here I am. And you look happy to see me. I like that.”
“I’m always glad to see you. I just wish I saw you more often.”
“You’ve been busy, too, Max,” she reminded him. “I’m so anxious to see your new work. Couldn’t I see it now, while I’m here?”
“Nothing’s ready yet, Elizabeth. Won’t be for quite a while. I’ve got this new idea … well, I figure, maybe around Christmastime?”
“Christmas! That’s months away! I can’t wait that long.”
Max shrugged. “Sorry. I’m working as fast as I can, but it’s got to be right. It’s all got to be just right, and that takes time.” He balanced the picnic basket on the handlebars of one of the bicycles, strapping it in place with ropes. “Can you stay for the evening? Some of us are going to the roof garden at the Victoria. They have a trained monkey, you know, and singing waiters. It might be fun. Give you a chance to see another side of New York life.”
Elizabeth knew about the rooftop restaurant at the Victoria. Her mother thought it “vulgar,” and would be horrified if she knew Elizabeth had actually gone there. “I don’t see how I can make my mother any angrier than she already is, so perhaps I will go.” Glancing down at her white middy and navy blue knife-pleated skirt, she asked, “Can I go dressed like this? I have no evening clothes with me.”
Max cared little about clothes. He shrugged. “You can wear whatever you want. Anne won’t be dressed up. She never is.”
Elizabeth nodded. A large, plain girl, Anne often dressed in suits, bought at thrift shops, claiming they were more comfortable than “stupid hobbled skirts which make it impossible to walk freely.”
“I’ll go to the Victoria, then. But I don’t want to worry my mother, so I’ll have to be home by ten.” She would deal with Nola’s anger then.
They had a wonderful time in Central Park. When they had tired of riding, Max spread an old but clean blanket in an uncrowded, grassy spot, where they ate a delicious lunch of cold chicken and potato salad, topped off with thick slices of chocolate cake. While they ate, they watched people playing lawn tennis, walking their dogs, bicycling by, and Elizabeth marveled, as she always did, at the sheer number of people who frequented the enormous, beautiful park in the heart of the city. It was a wonder to her that this valuable piece of real estate had never been sold to a developer to put up yet another cluster of skyscrapers. She hoped it never would be, but that seemed unlikely.
Max had brought along a ball. They played catch in the sunshine for nearly an hour. Elizabeth could feel the sun’s heat on her face, and knew Nola would remark on it first thing. “You might at least have worn a hat to protect your fair skin from sunburn,” she would say. That is, if she spoke to her daughter at all.
When they were resting on the blanket following their game of catch, Max asked, “You’re not feeling bad, are you? About deserting your mother, I mean?”
“We were just going shopping, Max. It isn’t as if we had dinner plans or tickets to the opera. I am so tired of shopping, and I told her that.”
Max traced the outline of her cheek with one finger. His eyes were very tender, his smile sweet. “You stood up to her to be with me. I can’t tell you how good that makes me feel, Elizabeth. And you were right, I wasn’t sure you would come today. You’ve been so different lately. Ever since we came back….”
Elizabeth put a finger against his lips. “Shh! I don’t want to talk about coming back, because if we do, then we might end up talking about what we came back from, and I don’t want to do that. Not today. I do want to, sometime. Just not today, all right? Let’s just pretend we met right here, in New York, maybe even here in the park. Wouldn’t that be fun? We could pretend we just met, right here, today.”
Max shook his head solemnly. “Oh, no, we can’t pretend that. Because if we’d just met, I couldn’t do this. It wouldn’t be proper.” And he leaned over and kissed her.
To Elizabeth it was the sweetest kiss they’d shared in a long while. The beauty of the park, the sun warming her clear through to her bones, the budding trees, the clear blue sky overhead, and Max holding her, all combined to make the afternoon so pleasurable, she was willing to take whatever the consequences might be for her defiance. She was feeling happy again and young again, and loved again.
As their lips parted, Elizabeth laughed softly.
“What’s funny?” Max began packing the picnic basket, a sign that he was ready to leave.
“I was just thinking, if my mother had seen that kiss, she would add ‘a public display of affection’ to my list of offenses, and I wouldn’t be allowed to leave the house again until I was forty-five years old. Maybe fifty. She detests public displays of affection.”
Max glanced around. “There are other couples kissing.”
Elizabeth laughed again. “Yes, but those young women are not related to my mother.”
When they had rested a while from their bicycle ride back to Max’s apartment building, they set out to meet Anne, Bledsoe, and Max’s friend Gregory at the Victoria. She couldn’t wait to tell Anne she’d decided to stay in the city for the summer, and apply to college. Anne wouldn’t believe her, of course. “You and your mother are going to grow old together,” she’d said one afternoon when they were browsing in the library. “Doesn’t that make your blood run cold?”
Elizabeth almost answered, “But, Anne, my blood always runs cold. It has for nearly a year now.”
Now, holding Max’s hand in hers, walking to his car, Elizabeth felt lighter of heart than she had in a very long time. I wish I lived here in Greenwich Village, too, she was thinking. There is so much going on here. Even in late evening, the Village streets were busy with people. Twilight cast a pale purplish glow over the budding trees and the red and brown brick buildings. On Murray Hill, the streets would be hushed and deserted as families prepared for their evening meal. But here, the streets were as crowded as at midday.
Elizabeth continued to daydream. I would like to have my own little apartment, like Max, and walk to the store on the corner to buy food for my dinner, and maybe have a nice job teaching school or as a secretary. To have my own money, my own home, to be independent and not have to go clothes shopping every day of my life, that would be heaven. She had read about secretaries in Collier’s magazine. She would live in her own apartment, probably a walk-up, and work in a nice office in one of the tall buildings. On weekday mornings, she would get up and dress for work in a simple suit, water the plants on her windowsill, eat an egg or a biscuit with her coffee, then run to catch a trolley car or perhaps the subway to her office building. She would lunch at Child’s with the other girls, and once a week they would all go to the movies after work, and maybe to the Automat for dinner. One article she had read mentioned how tasty the Automat’s raisin pie was. She had never had raisin pie.
But, she thought soberly, before I can get a job of any sort, I need to know how to do something for which someone would be willing to pay me. I need to know more. I need to go to college.
If she didn’t get to Vassar, she could go to the City College of New York. CCNY wasn’t as expensive as Vassar, that much she knew. If she worked and saved her money, perhaps she could afford a few classes there.
But what would she do about Nola? “Take care of your mother….”
Unwilling to ruin the lovely afternoon by wishing for what she didn’t yet have and wasn’t sure she ever would, Elizabeth put all thoughts of college out of her head and concentrated on the pleasant time at hand.
She would deal with her mother when she got home.