IS SHE DREAMING, the next afternoon, when the Locomobile rolls in? Certainly the auto has the shape of something dreamed, curvy and voluptuous and sleek. Its growl sounds both forbidding and seductive. Yes, then: a dream. It must be. Dreams are always filled with contradictions.
She was picturing Felix as she stared past her window, thinking she had found a win-win plan: let him pay off Mama's debt to Hirsch. (Frieda would then be saved without quite having taken aid; Mama, more than she, would be beholden.) Mama thought she'd have Frieda back within weeks, as soon as the doctor gave approval; the matron had said so on the phone. But no, Frieda would give Mama the gift of her own absence, and a chance to be—if maybe not exactly happy, at least slightly less unhappy. That's what Frieda owed her, truly: not a sum of money, but a freeing from the reminder (she herself was that reminder) of all the mistakes Mama had made. Reminder of all their mutual mistakes.
Felix would make it possible, would make everything possible. That's what his inheritance would buy her, Frieda thought: a wealth, not of possessions, but of possibility. Felix! His very name gave her cheer. She envisioned him abstractly (the thrust of his impatience), and then in more intimate specifics (his thin wrists, hard and sharp with bone).
So when Burnham opened the gate and the Locomobile skimmed in, how could she not think that she had called the car forth by the power of her concentrated longing? She'd assumed that Rattigan, enraged by her spurning, had tossed out her letter, maybe burned it. Even if he had sent the letter off to Devens, she didn't expect Felix to come this soon—not until his fractured shin had mended.
But here now is the speedster with its thuggish elegance, even its fabric top full of luster. She checks its plate: the year of Papa's birth. Tipsily she rises and stands at the window, practically disabled by desire.
She watches as Burnham swashes out to meet the car and leans toward the driver's side curtain. He beetles his brow, listening. He nods.
It's not fair that he gets to greet Felix first! She wants him, undiluted, to herself.
Flossie and Yetta, too, clamber from their bunks and fight for elbow room before the window.
"Who the heck?" asks Yetta.
"Don't know, but I'd sure like to. Rode in a car just like that, once—Mayor Curley's."
The Locomobile glimmers with golden flares of light, like a flipped coin spinning in the sun. Frieda puts her palm up to the pane. Should she tell them? Should she run out to the yard? The matron would have her neck for it; no, she needs a plan. Better to wait, to think what fib to tell.
And here she comes, Mrs. Digges, kicking clouds of dust as she strides out and takes Burnham's spot beside the driver. (God damn the sun and its glare upon the windshield, which keeps hidden Felix's face.) The matron starts a speech that from this height can't be heard, but Frieda well imagines her gist: I'm afraid not ... too disruptive ... our policy ... never come again.
As Flossie ogles the auto ("Don't you just want to lick it?"), Frieda starts cooking up her story. She'll say that he's a cousin, her father's sister's boy. A cousin who made good but remembers where he's from, and now has come to rescue his relation. (The matron seems to fall for plots like that.) A Harvard man, she'll say—that part's true.
Mrs. Digges appears to be hearing Felix out. A small, flattered smile breaks on her mouth. Is he charming her? Frieda wouldn't doubt it. The matron's smile then sinks to a flat, mistrustful line, and she walks back unsparingly toward the Home. The Locomobile idles in its place.
"Maybe it's her beau," jokes Flossie. "And they're having a lover's spat."
"Beau?" says Yetta. "Who would go for her?"
Frieda, keeping quiet, fluffs her hair, smoothes her cheeks. If she waits any longer, she fears that he'll be gone. How will she ever sneak past the matron?
"Frieda! Frieda, come right down." The matron's voice sounds like a stuck drawer being yanked. She's calling from the bottom of the staircase.
"Yes," says Frieda, "coming," in her most kowtowing tone. If Felix can be charming, so can she.
She scurries down the staircase in such an anxious bother that she barely hears the other girls stalk after her. Not just her roommates, but half a dozen more who must have been watching from their windows. There's Edith, with her shivery, undue veneration, and Lisbeth, and even sickly Bess. The only one conspicuous by her absence is Jo. The fox killed another hen last night, and maimed a second. The squawking and the flapping woke the girls, but not in time, and now Jo is holed up in the coop. Just as well, thinks Frieda; the last thing Jo needs, with Walter due tomorrow, is to watch her and Felix reuniting. But maybe Felix will have some advice about Jo. Maybe he'll know how to stop Walter, or buy him off. Can a soldier arrest a crook, turn him in?
Mrs. Digges stands before the door, barring passage. "A guest," she says to Frieda, "is most unusual, as you know. A clear violation of the rules."
Girls whisper: "Who is it?" "Why her?"
Frieda isn't conscious of her hand rubbing the newel—up and down the unwholesome carving—until Hattie takes hold of her arm. "Easy, girl," she says. "Steady now."
"In this instance, however," says the matron, "I'll allow it. Only because he comes with such impeccable credentials. If Meyer Morse is vouching for him, that's good enough for me. But you'll greet the guest outside, by no means in the building. Twenty minutes for his business. No more."
"Oh, thank you," says Frieda, the words leaping, as does she. In three floaty steps she's through the door.
"Another thing," calls Mrs. Digges. "I don't want you other girls—"
Too late. They've bustled out behind her.
The full-bodied Locomobile exerts a sort of gravity; tittering, the patients moon around it. But Frieda approaches the speedster more slowly, relishing the pull of it, the thrill.
"Girls!" shouts the matron from the porch. "Keep away. Come on, now. Have some decency."
Not one girl scatters, but Frieda doesn't mind. Let them all watch her good fortune!
The matron retreats into the Home. Is she offering Frieda some measure of privacy, or can't she bear to see Frieda's romance reignited?
Worshipfully crouched beside the Locomobile's hull, Burnham runs his hands along the molding. The wheel well, the double spare tires. "Jesus H. Christ. What a gem."
You don't know the half of it, thinks Frieda. She opens the door and hurls herself in.
From the driver's seat, a question: "Miss Mintz?"
She harks back to the first question Felix ever asked ("Do you have a last name, Miss Lovely Frieda?"), but this man—this oaf—isn't Felix. Not Felix at all. Just a stranger.
"Who are you?" she says.
"Mr. Morse," he responds above the engine's baffling thrum, "sent me here to have a word with you."
"But why did Felix ... why didn't he come himself?"
"Not Felix. His father. Mister Morse."
She swallows the tannic taste of disappointment.
He's Jewish by the looks of him, his hair dark and curled. Fish-pale and belly-proud, less fat than overstuffed, like a skinny man suddenly pumped with air.
"Mr. Morse was very pleased to meet you on the Fourth." The driver's silky voice belies his size. "But he tells me there was some misunderstanding? A case of mistaken identity?"
Frieda glares. "It wasn't a mistake."
The smooth leather seats smell just as she remembers: an unctuous, overindulged scent. The buffed dashboard shows no fingerprints.
"Okay, okay now," he says. "You're clearly ruffled. Which brings me to the point of my coming." He shoots his cuff. A platinum cuff link beams. "Mr. Morse is sorry that he may have left you feeling less than ... well, fully appreciated. He's prepared to offer you a helping hand."
Mr. Morse? Sorry? It's nothing but preposterous. Unless Felix managed to persuade him. "A helping—" Frieda starts, when a knock interrupts her.
It's Flossie, with a meddlesome, monkeyish expression, peering through the side curtain's pane.
Frieda squints at her and snaps, "Quit."
Flossie pretends she doesn't hear. The other girls, too, have closed in on the auto, hiving about, pruriently abuzz. "Lookit," Edith marvels. "See his cuff links?"
Where is the matron now, this once that Frieda needs her? "Please," she says. "Please, leave us alone."
"Frieda's got a feller," Lisbeth taunts.
"Please." She hides her face within her hands.
The girls must think she's bashful with romancing. Together, they take up Lisbeth's taunt.
"Can't they see," the driver says, "we're talking?"
She might appeal to Burnham, but how could he take charge when he's so busy loving up the car? He fingers the grille, shines it with his sleeve.
The girls pound the hood. "... got a feller!"
"Christ!" shouts the driver. "That's enough." He jabs the horn button—the patients stagger back—and shoves the gearshift into reverse. He stomps the throttle pedal to the floor.
"You can't!" Frieda says—Mrs. Digges will have a fit—but their rapid backward motion contradicts her.
Burnham, looking dumbfounded by his brush with luxury (or maybe by its sudden revocation), stands there on rigid legs, gaping. Does he realize he left the gate ajar? The girls, too, look stunned, but break into applause. Flossie pumps her fist into the air.
The driver brakes, shifts, performs a tight turn. Frieda now remembers: the teeter and the risk, the Locomobile's prowess as it surges. In one stirring swoop the car escapes.
The engine as it races makes a rising war cry. Frieda has to stifle her own whoop. "I don't believe you just—I can't believe it!"
The driver chuckles. "Well? Start believing." His gut jiggles against the steering wheel.
They drive past the rendering plant, the narrow graveyard lane, turning corners—Frieda loses track. Wind spills through the curtains with an agreeable swish. The air is charged with leafy summer scents.
It's madness: this stranger could make off with her anywhere, but she's happier—happy—not to ask which way they're headed. How long since she's had a good surprise? She lets herself forget about the punishment she'll face; the deed is done, might as well enjoy it.
"I knew it," he says.
"Knew what?" Can he read Frieda's thoughts? Can he tell how free, how malleable, she's feeling?
"I knew," he says, "that once you smiled, you'd be even prettier."
If she wasn't smiling before, now she is. Self-consciously, she feels the grin widen.
"Attagirl," he says. "Just like a model."
Will she ever grow immune to the spell of a man's sweet talk? Even a man as glib and slick as this? She'll have to ask Felix if expertise in flirting is a prerequisite for service with the Morses, as it surely is for membership in the clan. "Should've seen," she'll tell him, "this roly-poly man—no one I'd normally look at twice—acting like some raging Casanova. So silly it was almost sort of cute."
The driver turns right, at the next lane right again, then pulls onto a smaller, bumpy track. In the bower of some craggy elms, he parks.
The engine's noise quits and is replaced by forest sounds: leaf-damped breeze, a rhyme of birdsong. He asks if there is anything she wants.
"Anything of what kind of thing?"
He reaches behind the seat and whisks away a blanket, unveiling a small wicker basket. "Chocolate? Don't imagine you get that here."
"No," she says. "But no thank you. Not hungry."
"Hmm. Something stronger, then. Gin?" He shakes the basket. Glass bottles clink.
Again she tells him no thanks, she's fine.
He pokes at her knee with fat fingers. "I really can't tempt you? Not at all?"
She shoves him off. "What did you mean before: 'A helping hand'?"
"Ah. Business first, pleasure later?"
His breath smells metallic, like old coins. She twists her body closer to the door.
"Okay, okay," he says. "How much, you want to know? How does two hundred and fifty dollars sound?"
Frieda looks down so he won't see her shocked expression. It's half a year's salary at Jordan's. Half what Mama owed to Pinchas Hirsch. "Two hundred—"
"And fifty dollars. A lump sum."
What will she have to give—to do—as recompense? Something half as bad as marrying Hirsch? Skeptically, she says, "Just like that? From the goodness of his heart?"
"He's a goodhearted man," says the driver. He flashes her a tight, evasive grin.
She waits for something more (is it something about Felix? a promise not to go after his money?), but the driver only sits there. His grin. He fastens a loose button on his vest.
Two hundred and fifty. She could live out on her own.
Or no, a place big enough to share—a sanctuary. For other girls in trouble. For Jo.
"There are, of course," he says at last, "a couple of conditions."
She knew it, so why does the word still catch her off guard? "Conditions?"
"Only reasonable," he assures her.
One: Mr. Morse keeps his good deed confidential. Two: No further association will be allowed. With Mr. Morse or any of the Morses.
Stop right there, she says. She's not interested.
"But you are. You are. Look at you!"
What does he see? Does her neediness blaze? She sets her jaw, trying for dispassion.
"Think about it," he says. "All that dough for doing nothing—actually, for not doing something. It's simple: just meet all the terms of the agreement, the money will be yours, end of story."
Maybe she can take the cash and still run off with Felix. Once she has it, what could Morse do? "But how," she asks, "would I get it from you? It's no good to me here. I'd need it on the day they let me out."
"Oh," he says. "No. I guess I didn't mention? The money would be yours in November."
"November? That's almost four months. It's too far—" And she stops as it hits her: the election. "A bribe? To keep quiet! That's outrageous."
"A gift," he says. "A charitable contribution." From his vest he unfurls a monogrammed handkerchief and emits a patronizing sniff. Neatly, he folds the cloth again. "You understand, I'm sure, that political campaigns can get nasty, full of slung mud. Especially when the candidate is ... well, you know, of our faith."
It's not clear if he means to include Frieda in that our. She wants to have no part of it, of them.
"It seems there's a reporter—I believe you met the man—nosing at some spurious story. A story about you and Felix Morse." He pauses, as if expecting the name to hypnotize her. His breath, aimed right at her, is clammy. "We doubt that this reporter will be idiot enough to push any further with his lie. But simply to make sure that his bases are all covered, Mr. Morse has to be prepared. And that's why, Frieda, you're going to sign a statement affirming that you never met Felix."
"I won't. I won't! That's the lie."
"Oh, Frieda. Stop a sec. Think about it."
"No," she says. "What makes you think I will?"
The driver reaches deep into his jacket's inside pocket and rustles something papery, like bank notes. "Would five hundred dollars do the trick?"
"I don't need it." She doesn't—doesn't need these thugs at all. It's they who need her, and she'll refuse. She'll make them tremble with fear of what she'll say.
"Don't be dumb, Frieda. You do so need it."
"No, I don't. Not when I have Felix. When he gets his money, I'll be fine."
The driver laughs a soft, ghostly laugh. His fingers find her knee again, a blade upon a neck. "You think Felix would risk his inheritance for you? For a sad case he's never even met?"
"What do you mean? Of course he's met me. Of course he has. You're crazy."
He saws his fingers slowly back and forth. "Funny—that's not what Felix says." Now, from his pocket, he takes the rustling thing—not cash, but a letter, creased square. With the deftness of a schoolboy plucking wings from a live fly, he unfolds the page, crease by crease. "Can you read?" he asks.
She snatches the letter from him.
The driver starts to explain how it's signed and notarized, but Frieda needs no proof that Felix wrote it. Who else but he could have penned these antsy strokes? She feels in them his urgency, his slant.
Father, it begins, and she's heartened by his bluntness (nothing like the "Sweet FM" for her), but that's the only hopeful part about it. She gets stuck at the second paragraph:
The girl you met is someone who has hounded me of late, because she somehow found out who I am. Or rather, she found out who you are. It's our money she's after, nothing more. Nothing is what she'll get from me.
"That's not him," she says.
"See the notary seal, there?"
"No, but it's—you made him. Or someone did. His father." With each word, her confidence tatters. It's Felix, but not Felix, not the one she knows. What if the one she knows is the impostor?
Again she scans the writing, his adamant black marks. She crumples the page and flings it at the driver.
"Hey," he says. "Let's calm ourselves, all right? I hate to see a girl get all worked up." With a chill, meaty hand, he reaches for her wrist, and grips it as, before, he gripped the gearshift. "The statement's in the pocket of the door."
"Ow. Your hand is hurting me. Let go."
He does. But his ease, his bulky calm, is just as bad.
"Sign the thing, Frieda. You'll be happy."
"Don't make me," she says, almost wishing that he could; making the choice herself is much worse.
And that's what hurts the most about Felix: he might have been—probably was—made to write the letter, but what, in the end, does "made to" mean?
Yes, she thinks—she hopes—he was pressured by his father. And maybe all his lying was strategic: deny Frieda now to secure his legacy, and then, his wealth assured, come and find her. But even so—even so, what future could they share? Wouldn't she always worry what the next time would be when he'd deem her trust expendable again?
"Sign it," says the driver. "Or else you've got nothing."
She stares at the smooth lacquered dashboard. Not nothing, she thinks. Her honor. Her self. If she doesn't accept something, it can never be rescinded. Sometimes taking less gives you more.
"I want to go," she says. "Take me back."
"Back?" he says. "Where do you think you are?" Chuckling, he points through a gap between the elms: the high wooden fence, the barbed wire.
All this time, parked behind the Home.