On the Thursday after we returned from Italy, Joe called me at work.
I didn’t have my own telephone—not even my own desk, really. Since I spent most of my time filing, Mr. Franklin had only given me a little chair at the far wall of his secretary’s office, and a side table smaller than the desk I’d had in grammar school. Still, it wasn’t a bad job. Mr. Franklin treated me respectfully, and though Mrs. Whitacre, the secretary, appraised my outfits in disapproval every day, she kept her comments nonverbal—grunts and nods.
After she answered the phone, Mrs. Whitacre ambled around her desk, holding the receiver and handset. She passed these off to me with a sneer. “You have two minutes, Louise.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I swung my knees toward the wall, as though that offered any privacy. “Hello?”
“Tell me, what’s it going to take for a fellow to take his girl to dinner tonight? Do I have to climb your fire escape with a dozen roses?” Joe’s voice was airy and upbeat, and despite myself I swooned to hear it. “Because I’ll do it, Louise, don’t dare me.”
“Two dozen might suffice,” I replied. “Roses, that is.” We’d been home for four nights, none of which I’d spent with him. He knew he was in the doghouse, after the way he’d treated me on that walk back to our hotel. Each day since our return, he’d called to see if he could come by for a nightcap, and each time I’d refused. I’d wanted him to know he couldn’t rough me up that way.
“You sly dog,” I whispered, glancing toward Mrs. Whitacre. “You rang me at the office because you knew I’d have to say yes, didn’t you?”
“Catching you off guard,” he said. “Is it working?”
I exhaled, smiling. “It’s working.”
“Good. How would you like dinner at Minetta Tavern? Harry’s asked if we’d tag along, a double date. He wants to spitball some ideas for a new feature he’s working on.”
“A double date,” I repeated. A reason to get dressed up, and possibly to contribute something, even if it was just brainstorming, to the magazine. “What time can you pick me up?”
“I’ll be there at seven.”
“Don’t forget the roses.”
He laughed. “I won’t forget the roses.”
Dinner in the Village called for an exciting new getup. That evening I slid into black cigarette pants with side zippers—these were a bit snug, but I did some deep knee bends to break them into shape—pony flats, and a Swiss-dot blouse. I was just finishing poking pearl studs through my earlobes when the telephone rang, in my code for the party line. I ran for it, hoping it wasn’t Joe saying he’d be late.
A frantic voice greeted me. “Louise? Louise, I need your help.”
“Mother.” My breathing quickened. “Can’t speak right now. I’m about to go to dinner with a friend.”
“Dinner out? How much does that cost?” I could picture her seated at the kitchen table with a cup of tea steaming before her, despite the summer heat. Her hair, dyed mahogany, would be up in curlers or a shower cap. Her hands would be dry, skin flaking and white from constant contact with bleach. “It’s this money your brother sent home; I can’t figure out how to spend it. You have to help me.”
Instantly quivery, I pressed my palm to the wall. “You’ve heard from Paul? He sent you more MPCs?”
“No, no, I haven’t heard from Paul since March. I thought you might have gotten word from him?”
I deflated. “Last he wrote to me was in April. You know that.”
“Well, why did he write to you in April, and not me?”
I pressed my fingertip to the bridge of my nose. “Mother, how many times are we going to have this—” I glanced at the clock. “I really do have to go. Why do you still have military payment certificates? Didn’t you convert them to dollars already?”
“I didn’t convert them all at once. I saved some.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Through the line I heard her sniffle. “I wanted to keep a few things he touched.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. Tears threatened my mascara. Images of my brother flashed through my mind: six-year-old Paul grinning at me behind our birthday cake, skinny teenage Paul holding up a smallmouth bass. “Oh, Mother.”
A polite knock sounded at my door. Joe—but I hadn’t heard the buzzer. Someone must have let him in downstairs. “I have to go,” I whispered.
“You most certainly do not! Don’t hang up on me, I’m your mother. Louise!”
“I’ll call tomorrow.” I laid the phone on the receiver gently, as if to soften the blow of hanging up on her.
“Lou?” came Joe’s muffled voice from the other side of the door.
“Coming!” I called as I grabbed my leather clutch. I grasped the knob and found him standing on my mat, beaming, two dozen blood-red roses clutched in his arms.
He started to say something, then exhaled sharply, as if he’d gotten the wind knocked out of him. “You’re stunning.”
I pulled him in for a kiss. It felt good just to be near him, to smell the scent of his soap and feel his lips curve into a smile against mine. I pulled back to take in the tall drink of him. He seemed relieved to see me as well, and, clearly, he’d dressed up on my behalf. He wore a tie I’d given him the summer before, a pale-blue paisley.
Thank God my mother hadn’t called just a few minutes later, I thought as we put the flowers in a vase. How embarrassing—this man had been to Harvard, and here was my mother scrabbling over what likely amounted to a dollar and a half in military certificates.
I’d been to Minetta Tavern, tucked away on a corner of MacDougal Street, once, with a few girlfriends, and we’d stuffed ourselves full of lasagna and Bloody Marys. But as Joe and I crossed the threshold together, I thought I’d place my usual demure dinner-date order: cold chicken, or just a green salad. Italy had been an exception; in general, I wanted Joe to consider me delicate, not ravenous, as well as practical.
That changed when we got to the booth, and I saw Harry and his companion merrily slurping their bowls of red chowder, a pound of mussels splayed on a platter before them, most of the shells shining purple and empty. Harry’s martini glass was already drained, as was the drink belonging to his date. His date who was most definitely not Glenys, whom I’d been anticipating.
It was Beverly.
Joe, to his credit, seemed just as stunned as I was as he and I took the two chairs on the opposite side of the booth table. He at least had the decency to blush a deep crimson. Predictably, Harry didn’t seem to notice anything uncomfortable going on. He signaled the waiter to bring us drinks as Beverly appraised me. She sat comfortably against the leather bench, wearing a lavender halter dress that left her sharp shoulders exposed.
“I didn’t know,” Joe whispered to me as our cocktails arrived. He must have noticed I could barely speak. If Harry and Beverly were this serious, what might she have told him about me? And what did it mean that I was here, on a double date with not the wife but the mistress?
Harry introduced Beverly and me, and, mercifully, she didn’t let on that she’d met me before. I had just relaxed one iota when Harry added, “You know Joe, of course.” She offered him her delicate hand as a zing of fear shot down my back.
“I haven’t been to this place in ages,” Joe said, looking up at the tin ceiling.
“Oh, I hang out here all the time,” Beverly said. “I live just a few blocks away.” Her eyelids were shaded pale purple to match her outfit, her eyeliner catlike. “What about you, Louise? Where do you live?”
“The Upper East Side,” I muttered, feeling stodgy.
“Speaking of uptown,” Harry said, gesturing with a mussel shell in his hand, “I was just telling Beverly about this new story I’m concocting.”
“Ah, yes,” said Joe, putting his arm across the back of my chair. “The legend of Frank’s.”
“Frank’s,” Harry held forth, placing the shell in his empty soup bowl, “is one of the few integrated joints in Harlem. Most of the restaurants there are staffed by locals, but won’t serve them. Can you imagine? Frank’s was the same way. Then Joe Louis started going there and changed all that.”
I took a deep breath through my nose. I’d recovered somewhat, probably thanks to the martini. I glanced around Minetta’s; everyone in view was white. I wondered what Baldwin would think of Harry’s idea. “What’s your working title?” I asked Harry.
“I’m thinking ‘One Night in Harlem.’ Show Harlem’s good side. White and Black faces in the same dining room. It’s not the Cotton Club.”
“Maybe you should call it ‘Two Nights in Harlem,’ instead,” I offered.
Joe stabbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and blew a jet of smoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Two nights? Doesn’t have the same ring to it.”
“Two nights, to show the two sides. So you get the whole picture. Write about Frank’s, then write about the Cotton Club.”
Harry frowned and tilted his head as if he’d consider it. Joe coughed and lit another cigarette. Only Beverly looked me in the eye and gave me a little nod.
“Frank’s.” Harry tapped the tabletop impatiently. “Frank’s is the place we should write about. Profile Joe Louis, get the cool fight angle, talk about the writers who go there. It’s one of Langston Hughes’s favorite restaurants, did you know that? Baldwin, too, when he’s in town.”
“You could have Hughes write your article,” Beverly chimed in.
We all stared at her. I realized I’d been assuming she should know her place—her role as Harry’s side dish was to remain silent and just remember she was lucky to be included. Instead, she had the nerve to make editorial suggestions.
“Hughes is a writer, and you say it’s his favorite restaurant,” she continued. “What if you asked him to write about it, give his perspective? Or Baldwin—Joe, didn’t you just meet with him in Rome?”
I looked from her to Joe. How well did she know him? What else had they discussed? Joe ate his clams casino calmly, his face revealing nothing. Queasily, I realized they all must have gone out together sometime in the past couple of days, when I’d been giving him the cold shoulder.
I glanced at Harry, whose face had turned an oxygen-deprived shade of purple after Beverly’s suggestion that he hand over his essay to someone else. Fortunately for him, Joe took a sip of his drink, cleared his throat, and smoothed things over.
“Hughes is a bit untouchable right now, my dear,” he told Beverly, “what with his testimony before the Senate a few months ago. And, besides, Harry’s a stellar writer. Surely you agree he’s up to the task, Beverly?”
“Of course,” she said, trying to take Harry’s arm, which at the moment appeared to be made of lead.
“Why did Hughes appear before the Senate?” I asked.
Harry answered. “It was the Subcommittee for, er…” He waved his hand about, searching for the words. “Anti-government activities. That stuff.”
“Think HUAC, but in the Senate,” Joe added.
Beverly opened her mouth, but I beat her to the punch. “You don’t think Langston Hughes is actually a Communist, do you?” I said.
“Most poetry sounds a bit pinko, if you think about it,” Beverly added.
Our eyes met again, as if we were in league with each other. I didn’t like it. I couldn’t let the fellows think of us as cut from the same cloth. She was a waitress who’d slept with the host of the party. I was the writer girlfriend, the serious prospect.
Neither Joe nor Harry answered right away, just gave each other a look as if to ask what to do with these two broads and all their questions. “I don’t believe that’s up to us to decide, ladies,” Joe said finally.
By the time the waiter arrived, Harry seemed to have forgiven Beverly. He turned his chair toward her and gazed as she ordered stuffed calamari, one of the most expensive items on the menu. I remembered Glenys at home with a knot in my stomach.
“I’ll have the baked Delaware shad,” I said, matching the price of Beverly’s order even though I wasn’t hungry anymore. “The special. And I’m headed to the ladies’ to freshen up.”
“I’ll join you,” Beverly said. She shot out of her seat.
“Enjoy,” said Joe, looking at me warily.
The bathroom was tiled in deep forest green, with a row of brass lights above the sinks. It seemed we were alone. I’d hoped to touch up my lipstick and gather my thoughts in peace, and now here was Beverly beside me, dabbing bits of rouge onto her fingertips and rubbing them into her cheeks. After a few seconds, I snapped my compact closed and turned to go, but she stopped me.
“I want to get something out in the open, Louise. I know you don’t want Joe to know you were a waitress at that party last year. You don’t even want him to know you know me. I don’t understand why, but listen: the cat isn’t out of the bag.”
I felt the blood vessels in my face expand in embarrassment. Surely Beverly understood that, the longer a lie went on, the harder it became to tell the truth.
The night Joe and I met, at that Christmas party for New Yorker staff when Beverly and I had been working as waitresses, I’d watched him all evening, captivated by his intense stare, his hearty laugh. I could sense he was the kind of man who really listened to people, who didn’t just like to hear himself talk, and I liked that about him instantly. By the end of the night, there were so many gate-crashers it was hard to tell who was who, and at midnight I ditched my apron, let down my hair, and shimmied into the little crowd gathered around him, drawn into his orbit. When he turned to me and asked, “What do you do, miss?” I’d simply said: “I write.”
Granted, all I’d been invited to publish by that point were a boysenberry-jam recipe and a featurette on hoteliers’ tricks to keep your linens white.
“I suppose you expect me to thank you,” I said to Beverly. “For not telling on me.”
She stepped back, lifting her head high. “You could start by acknowledging we’re not so different, you and I, and stop treating me as if I’m invisible.”
“But we are different,” I said, perhaps to convince myself more than her. “For starters, Joe isn’t married. We are an actual item.” I made for the exit.
Beverly watched me go. “An item, eh?” she said as I yanked open the door. “You know that means at some point you’ll have to come clean.”
The plan after dinner was to go dancing on Fifty-second Street. Gleefully, Harry informed us that, since it was Thursday night, the maids from all over Manhattan would have the evening off and be eager to dance. Beverly held his hand, seemingly undaunted by the idea of Harry’s ogling maids at a dance club. She and I had avoided speaking directly to each other for the remainder of dinner.
“I don’t think I’m dressed to go dancing,” I said when they asked if we’d join them, and everyone nodded as if this were the correct response.
After we said goodbye to Harry and Beverly, I found I was walking quickly, a few steps ahead of Joe, toward the Houston Street subway stop.
“Ah, Lou—Lou, wait.” He caught up to me and grabbed my arm. “Why are you skipping off so fast—what’s wrong?” His brown eyes searched my face. “Come on, honey, I’ll get us a taxi.”
“That’s all right,” I said. My voice wobbled a bit. So many worries tugged at me: the weight of the lie I’d told, the way I’d treated Beverly. “I thought I’d just take the train home.”
“The subway, at this hour?” He put his hands under my hair, lifting it off my neck gently. It felt good in the heat. For a minute, we stood in the harsh light of a shoe store emblazoned with neon starbursts, until he guided me around the corner to the façade of a darkened bar. I leaned with my elbows against the brick wall, studying the ground.
“I’m so sorry,” Joe said. “I never should have brought you out with Harry and his…with her. That was completely inappropriate. We don’t ever have do it again.”
But you will see her again, I thought. Just without me. The spheres women had permission to occupy felt so tiny compared with those of men. Men were allotted the whole world, we our narrow parcels. What would happen if Joe came to decide I belonged in a different role?
“It’s…” I looked up as the moon, a swollen gibbous, ducked behind a veil of cloud. “It’s sad,” I said at last. “Seeing Harry out with Beverly while Glenys stays back with the children.”
“It is.” Joe stood with his hands folded humbly in front of his belt. He took a deep breath, and when he finally spoke, his voice came out slightly nervous. “I would never go behind your back like that, Louise. Do you understand? I’d never do that to you.”
For a while, we just looked at each other. We hadn’t discussed marriage before. This felt like the closest thing so far to a hint at our future. I’d never heard a man make a promise along these lines, and I’d wondered if I could even dream of asking for fidelity, having witnessed so much flamboyant cheating. I searched Joe’s face for any signs of insincerity and found none, only a pair of earnest dark eyes that expressed desperation to make things better. I reached out to touch the smooth skin along his jawline, and he closed his eyes and kissed my hand.
He said it again: “I wouldn’t go behind your back like that, Lou. You’re all I want and all I can think about. It’s just us.”
“Just us.” My face went warm with pleasure. We leaned into each other and kissed, long and languorous, until someone driving past us beeped and hollered. Through my closed eyelids, I sensed the moon emerge from behind the cloud, bathing us in her white-blue light.