The Starlite’s first Valentine’s Day Bash had been a last-minute affair. The ladies had listened to the radio and nibbled on Madeline’s homemade cupcakes, in decorous avoidance of the burned parts.
But now they were at the Fifth Annual Bash—a startlingly different affair. It was a big and beautiful hoopla, with three kinds of strawberry cakes, four varieties of cocktails. Thousands of pieces of pink confetti fluttered through the air like rosebuds.
This night was alive with dazzling music. Catherine Huxley worked at full strength, belting out her gorgeous songs for hours on end. A clear and powerful jazz singer, she concluded her sets with flourishes of her delicate wrists. Between these sets, Madeline set Elvis on the turntable. Then at eleven o’clock, it was rhyme-and-rhythm time. Elaine Huxley read her poetry, and the rest of the literary circle presented the audience with works about love, lost and gained.
After midnight, the three sisters from Italy put on a play near the fitting rooms. They opened and closed the fitting room doors, and each assumed the part of a different character in a performance about looking for love in Brooklyn. The sisters took turns playing the roles of failed suitors. Graciela was a long, limber brunette who usually had a heavy Italian accent, but in this performance she put on the voice of a Brooklyn guy and postured with her legs spread wide, mocking.
“Why don’t we just go and eat a hot dog at Nathan’s?” She slouched forward, laughing, everyone in on the joke. “Hey, I have an auto dealership on Eighty-Sixth. I’ll take you for a ride after.”
Everyone was giddy at midnight. They laughed until salty tears flowed from their eyes into their drinks. They giggled into their cocktails and nearly snorted them backward, in chokes and sputters—it didn’t matter. Someone put Elvis back on, and Madeline took out the roses she had bought for a couple of dollars on the avenue and stored in the back room all day. She passed the roses to the women, who began to toss them on one of her mannequins, and then someone made a sign for the mannequin’s neck: Aphrodite. More and more women joined in; soon Aphrodite was transformed into a goddess in full bloom, strewn in an array of crimson petals.
Madeline posed next to the mannequin, beckoning everyone onward, and the ladies took the cue to decorate her too. She became their own goddess in full bloom as the ladies sprinkled rose petals on her hair, gathering the petals back up from the ground in a chorus of laughter, then showering her in a floral cloud.
Petals fell from her auburn locks, and Madeline twisted to the music with a beatific smile on her face.
Everyone danced, danced, danced and she cranked up the record player. She had made a little red mark on the dial, as she knew just how loud they could get before the music leaked through the door. She maintained the volume at this careful threshold, enough to fill their ears without drawing attention from the outside.
Men weren’t supposed to know about the Starlite’s social club, after hours.
Madeline’s high-backed mannequin displays stood in front of the windows, along with her tallest dress racks. Everything was positioned strategically to obscure the bustling activity within the shop.
Now, it was time to eat. Madeline brought out the chocolate cake, along with some champagne, and the confetti flew everywhere—landing on bouffant hairstyles and ballerina buns. It even adhered to the cake. Everyone squealed when the little pink squares stuck to the cocoa frosting on their plates and lips.
Madeline was everywhere at once, and she mingled with all. But when it neared two in the morning, she was almost asleep. The dress shop had been open since midmorning; she had been going for hours.
Yet most of the women remained in the store. Madeline gave them a hint with some big-band music—slow-tempo swing, a wind-down. At three in the morning, the shop was almost empty. All that remained were those few who always stayed later to help clean up.
They started to do what they usually did when they cleaned: argue about the movies. Tonight, it was Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Madeline declared that Holly Golightly was a misunderstood fashion plate, but the other girls called the character “weak” and “irritating.”
“She has no real backbone!” Harriet was adamant, her brown eyes blazing. “She’s living life for a dream!”
“Well, what is anyone doing? We’re all trying to live our dreams!” Madeline bit her lip, her eyes stuck on the piles of trash strewn about.
Together, the women plucked little pieces of confetti from the carpet.
Harriet shook her head. “You know, Madeline—Holly Golightly doesn’t even come close to living her dreams. I mean, don’t you get that she’s a hooker?”
Gloria chimed in, her hazel eyes flashing with earnest indignation. “And what about her desperation? She was selling herself to these bastards!”
Cynthia shook her blonde curls in laughing disbelief. “I mean, Audrey Hepburn is beautiful, but let’s not confuse a beautiful woman with a crazy character!”
“I guess.” Madeline’s voice went low. She picked at the confetti, which clung to everything. “Listen, why don’t you girls just bunk in the back room for the night? I got a few extra bedrolls, you know, and a space heater.”
The women smiled at her, thin lipped. They made excuses, reasons why they had to leave. Everyone was on borrowed time. Gloria lived with her parents—they believed she was babysitting. Harriet’s husband was coming back home from a business trip, and she had left her phone off the hook. Cynthia had to be in Canarsie in a few hours for her shift at a convenience store; she was able to change her hours only with well-timed references to an “ailing sister.”
The women soon pulled on their muffs and hats to leave. Madeline trudged around and switched off the small red lamps she had placed out for atmosphere. They said good-night to her, and she locked the door.
Only the clothing racks and bags of garbage remained. She turned off the overhead lights and raced into her little bathroom. She always sprinted to the back rooms, in a flush of heat, to outrun any rodents or shadows that might slink in the desolate space. Once she had seen something move, a shape like a rat beneath the clothing racks. She had screamed so hard that her voice didn’t work quite right the next day.
In the bathroom now, she gave herself a sponge bath to wash away the sweat of the evening. She pulled her nightdress over her head and dabbed some cold cream in the corners of her eyes, and then she headed to her back room to set out a blanket on the fold-out sofa. It was chilly, but cheaper to bundle up than to keep the heat on.
She slipped on her sateen eye mask and tossed in discomfort on the lumpy mattress of the pull-out sofa. The Valentine’s soiree had been a smashing success, and there had been no disagreements except for that Breakfast at Tiffany’s incident.
It had been a time of laughing, crying, and being free.
It was almost enough to make Madeline forget that she had been living at the shop for four years, since ’57.
None of the girls even knew that Madeline didn’t have her own apartment. She still didn’t have enough to pay rent on a place of her own, since any extra money from her dress shop went straight back into the social club.
She was choosing to support something even bigger than herself.
The social club had started off small, as just a fun activity—finger foods and chats in the evenings. Madeline still had her apartment at the time, but she needed something to distract herself in the evenings so she wouldn’t think about Fred.
From the outset, she tried to make it special. Fresh flowers. The latest records.
It wasn’t too long before she had started to draw a little crowd. It was a small group of women during those early months—invitation only, a select group of customers from the dress shop to join her after hours.
Back in ’57, as she readied herself for the fifth meeting of the club, she decided to get a strawberry shortcake from a place on Henry Street to share with the girls. But she wasn’t quite fit for the outside world; sweat dripped down her neck from unpacking boxes of nylons all day, so she dashed to her apartment first so she could freshen up and fix her makeup.
She climbed the stairs in her building, puffing with exertion. For a moment, she stopped to rest and leaned on the banister. From upstairs piped two voices: a baritone and a tinny squeak. She shook her head back and forth, trying to clear her ears.
At the final flight of stairs, a pressing pain punched through her rib cage.
She knew the baritone, and soon she observed the source of the tinny voice.
Fred—in her very own kitchen. He was sitting next to his mistress.
Fred’s unsightly girth was parked on one of Madeline’s kitchen stools—and he was wearing a shirt he often wore to city council meetings, a shirt that she had sewn for him once, by hand.
It had been a month since Fred paid Madeline a surprise visit. When she came home from work that last time, she’d found him at her kitchen table with a bouquet of flowers, red in the face. His big drops of sweat dripped down on her tile.
“I want to start over with you,” he panted.
“Did Rachel kick you out?” She gave him a short laugh.
“No, babe. I just keep thinking of you. I made a mistake. You’re the one for me. You’ve always been.” He moved to touch and kiss her. His great tire of belly fat leaned into her as he caressed her neck.
“Get off me!” She tried to shove him away, but he persisted, hands on her waist, moving them downward, whispering in her ear like when they were new.
With a final force, she pushed him away, and he smirked. He cleared his throat with his signature cough. “We have an event tomorrow, Maddy. A soiree at the Bridge Club. The theme is black and white. I’m sure you can find something to wear.” His moustache flexed upward in a grin.
Fred held Madeline by the reins of his money—cash he gave her toward rent on the apartment, even after he started living with his mistress.
He always arrived unannounced. He would slide an envelope of cash across her countertop and ask her to play the role of wife for another society event.
When Madeline had first caught him in the act, she kicked him out of their apartment. He pleaded desperately to prevent an annulment, not wanting his Brooklyn city councilman’s name tarnished.
She didn’t fight Fred too hard. He could spread lies, after all. She knew he would sully her name and discourage the other councilmen’s wives from visiting her store. Those society ladies bought a lot of dresses, a substantial part of Madeline’s earnings.
She had kept her lips drawn, yet she was in no position to deny him.
But this was the first time Fred had brought her to the apartment. Madeline had never seen the girl up close. At barely twenty years of age, Rachel was a skinny mouse, with stick-figure legs. Sitting with Fred at Madeline’s pink counter, she kicked her patent-leather heels in rhythm as she licked brown sauce off her knobby fingertips. She dug heartily into a bag of food, smearing the grease on Madeline’s baby-soft leather swivel stool.
Fred chomped down on the gristles of animal fat like the most relaxed man in the world. His voice caramelized into burnt honey even as he gnawed at his greasy meat. “Rachel’s telling me I should divorce you.”
Madeline stared wide-eyed, a deer in headlights. Her silence was interrupted only by the cuckoo clock, which chirped the hour.
Fred threw back his head and chuckled: a scratchy, raspy laugh.
Madeline’s eyes locked on her shoes. She studied her neatly polished heels. She shut out the sight of their poultry bones on their paper napkins. She closed her nose to the smell of rendered grease and department store cologne.
She started to walk out.
The two of them continued to eat, their lips smacking.
“She must be in shock.”
A low giggle passed through the kitchen door as Madeline closed it.
She trembled, like a leaf in the wind.
Her hand rested on her doorknob at the exit to her own apartment. The cuckoo clock rang out with the final ding of the hour, and her body froze. A piece of pink caught her eye. It was a receipt on her coffee table; she had prepaid for the shortcake when she ordered it.
The bakery on Henry Street would close at five thirty.
Her new social club was set to convene at six o’clock. She picked up her RSVP list—over thirty women had signed up in the affirmative.
With a deep breath, she burst back into her kitchen with newfound energy.
“This is a ridiculous game we’re playing. I’m tired of it.”
“C’mon, Maddy, I want you to tell her. Isn’t it true that you don’t want a divorce?” His eye twitched and he jawed his gums, his greasy moustache moving up and down.
“Well …” She caught a glimpse of some errant, pointy hair in his moustache. He never groomed himself to look flawless—only to look powerful.
Fred represented a swing district in the council. He usually gave her a third of the rent and maintained the annual lease of her shop in his name; initially, her landlord wouldn’t assign leases to women.
“I think I do want a divorce, Fred.” Her knees shook as she clutched the doorframe.
Fred began to cough on a chunk in his throat, and Rachel patted him on the back, showing no effort to hide her glee. He gazed at her with one half-closed eye, over his hacking cough.
Madeline’s entire body continued to tremble. An invitation sat on her counter, addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Abbott. Its glossy stationary announced a banquet, yet another function that would begin with a cocktail hour in which councilmen slapped each other on the back and talked in code about resolution numbers, ballots, and other things they made no effort to explain.
She suddenly removed her hands from the doorframe, her posture erect. “Yes. I do want a divorce.” More of her words poured out, crystal clear over the havoc of Fred’s coughing fit. “I’ll pay my own way. You give me back your key to this apartment, and you and your girlfriend could leave right now.”
It would be the fifth meeting of the social club. She looked at her watch.
“Maddy, let’s talk about this a little bit more.” He tried to plead and grabbed her arm as Rachel shot him daggers with her eyes.
“Give me the key.” Madeline held out her hand, fingers trembling.
Fred stood motionless, but his mistress thrust her hands into his coat pocket. She removed the key and slapped it down on the counter.
“We need to talk about this, Maddy.” Snapped out of his paralysis, Fred assumed a saccharine tone, trying to submerge his sins under a wash of sugar.
“I can’t talk about it. I have to be somewhere. And I have to pick up a cake.” A new kind of earthquake rumbled in Madeline’s core. “My lawyer will be in touch about the divorce.”
There was no lawyer yet.
Fred wiped the grease from his chin, sputtering about the financial help he had given her, and his mistress yanked his sleeve with her skeletal arms, dragging him out the door.
Madeline stood slack-jawed in the middle of her living room.
She looked at herself in her ornamental mirror. Fantasies flickered in her eyes.
A new thrill in her blood coursed through her veins, deepening the color in her cheeks. Like a dress design gone astray, she would toss her marriage in the trash, and start anew.
Fred told the other councilmen in due course.
It wasn’t too long before the society ladies stopped patronizing her store, and she entered a deep debt—a darkness she couldn’t admit.
She had to sell her things. She couldn’t take care of herself. She cried as her neighbors rifled through her treasures for sale. These were people she used to greet in the lobby, exchanging niceties as they brought up the mail. She had laid out her best china and all her dearest possessions. They scrounged through her belongings as though she were dead and gone. The neighbors paid pennies for her most beautiful hats, and her dresses—the ones she had fashioned with her own two hands.
The net of the sale was enough to pay for one month’s rent on the apartment.
After the month was through, she left before she could be evicted, moving into the back room of the Starlite with only a small suitcase, two pairs of shoes, and a coat.
After Fred was out of the picture, she had to beg the landlord of her dress shop to reassign the lease in her name. Over the years, there were times when she could barely make rent for the storefront alone. But she was finally starting to put away a bit of money. There had been a recent uptick in sales from a larger, more loyal customer base—girls from the social club.
Madeline tossed and turned on the fold-out mattress in the back room. Through the open doorway, she eyed the vagabond Aphrodite mannequin, now in the shadows. Cleared of her flowers, the mannequin was bare, open to any possibility.
The sun would rise in a couple of hours, yet Madeline still couldn’t sleep.