The Testament of Judith Barton
A Novel
by Wendy Powers & Robin McLeod
Incorporating characters and dialogue from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo,
original screenplay by Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor;
excerpts used with permission of The Alfred Hitchcock Trust
“I have a new idea about the story,
that it should be told from the start,
from the lady’s own angle.
Indeed, I keep having crazy ideas.”
–Angus MacPhail, screenwriter,
to Hitchcock’s assistant Herbert Coleman;
MacPhail was not hired
Copyright 2011 Wendy Powers & Robin McLeod
Cover design by Robin McLeod
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Table of Contents
It would’ve been easier if I’d become his mistress.
He walked me out of the hotel’s opulent lobby, into its cobbled courtyard. We’d gone out for drinks, and the martinis we’d had in the bar were going to my head, if not to his. “Shall I call you a taxi?” he asked, his hand on the small of my back. Before I could answer, he waved one over.
A yellow-and-black inched forward from the queue. I could feel the eyes of the cabbie on me, moving up and down my body, drinking in my skin, the fabric of my dress and what was underneath.
Gavin Elster leaned into the driver’s window, whispered a few words, opened the rear door for me – and followed me in.
“Judy, I’ll accompany you home,” he said with his predictable assurance. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, wasn’t it? My head was spinning, I shouldn’t have had that second drink.
I lived only a few blocks away. It would have been just as easy to walk, and maybe safer than the situation I was in now. At least the foggy chill would have cleared my head. But here in the warmth of the back seat, with Elster’s left hand resting lightly on my shoulder, I was almost drowsy.
The taxi tipped sharply down Powell Street, but where the cabbie should have turned right on Sutter to take me home, he kept going down to Market.
“Oh, we should have turned there,” I protested, only mildly, I confess. I could see where we were going.
And we did turn right, eventually, on Market, near the cable car turnaround. For every block we drove, Elster’s hand slipped another inch down my arm. We made our way up Market Street, past upscale stores and banks closed for the night, neon-lit movie theatres, bums and sailors. Ladies in hats and white gloves, no older than I at twenty-five but protected by the rings on their fingers, were hurrying home along the wet sidewalks. The soft lights of San Francisco, signals blinking on the dark asphalt, shimmered over the misty streets like some mirage … only by now I was too intoxicated with the warmth of the drinks and the swaying taxi, and too conscious of his roaming hands, to notice.
He was discreet. In his mirror the driver could not have seen the hand brushing along my breast, or the other sliding smoothly up my calf. “Call me Gavin,” he said with equal fluidity. He kept his face an appropriate few inches from mine, and kept his talk small. I didn’t stop him yet.
“I’ve asked our driver to take us for a little tour before taking you home. Not that far, I promise, only up the next hill.”
We were crossing Castro Street, now winding up Market to the top of Twin Peaks. His left hand had found my knee, pushed the fabric of my skirt aside, and was working its way up my leg as steadily as the taxi’s engine pushed up the hill. By the time we reached the summit on the twisting road I was a little dizzy. He had found the top of my stockings, and the bare skin underneath.
I thought about his wife. Then he brought her up.
“The Indians had a story about these two mountains,” he said as casually as if his hands were in his own lap. “They said the mountain was one at first, a couple united in marriage, but they argued so much that the gods split them in two.”
Like I said, he was discreet. Gavin Elster was more than clever enough to allude to one thing while pursuing another.
My eyes had closed, so I didn’t quite know where we were. But my body was waking up to one skillful hand under my sweater and the other under my skirt, so I hardly noticed the gentle bump when the taxi stopped.
The driver was catching on. “I’ll go for a smoke, if you don’t mind,” I heard him say through the dark. He might have added, “The meter’s running.”
So was mine. I’d let Elster take me this far, and I admit I enjoyed his attention and finesse, but I hadn’t decided what I wanted. He obviously had.
He planted his smooth, insistent mouth on mine, though the hairs of his mustache bristled sharp against my lips. Then his tongue was at my earlobe, alternately kissing it and whispering, his breath whistling in my ear.
“When the Spanish adventurers passed here, they called these two peaks ‘Los Pechos de la Chola,’ he said, his voice so close it heated my skin. “The breasts of the Indian maiden.” Now both his hands had found their way under my sweater, and were kneading at the fabric of my brassier. “But her breasts are no lovelier than yours, Judy,” and he leaned down to kiss one – “No more perfectly rounded” – then the other – “or full…” his lips moving back and forth between them.
I pulled him up by his shoulders and nipped at his ear. “But if the Indians thought the peaks were man and wife, what happened to the husband?” I cooed, playing the coquette. “Where had he gone, by the time the Spanish came?”
He let out a deep sigh that clouded the back seat with the mingled aromas of vermouth and expensive cologne that I could already smell on my skin.
“Ah. Perhaps he ran away, his wife hectored him so. But she could not possibly have been as beautiful as you, or he would never have left.”
He pressed his flattery with more long minutes of squeezing, groping, and intense kisses, as I submitted and resisted, seduced and reluctant.
“Judy, I’ve been so unhappy,” he murmured. “My wife, she is so … devout, so cold. If anything ever happened to her…,” his tongue tickled my ear, then his lips pushed in to whisper: “You could be… the second Mrs. Elster.”
He had miscalculated. Such talk about his wife, rather than arousing any sympathy in me, jolted me to my senses. I did remember what my upbringing said about adultery. I would not be his concubine.
I wrenched myself out of his arms and clambered out of the taxi, my sweater askew, a stocking falling down, stumbling on a dangling heel. I needed air.
A chilly breeze blew back the fog, and I saw where I was – high above San Francisco, nearly its tallest point, three times higher than any peak I’d climbed at home. I saw the whole city, and it saw me, half undressed, its lights winking at me through the mist. And there was Elster’s breath on my neck, and his hands on my shoulders.
I whirled on him. “What do you think I am, some girl in a French novel?”
No. I was a girl from Kansas, still finding my way in this dizzying city of fog and hills.
“Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.”
– Salman Rushdie
“Judy, what are you hiding behind your back?”
Standing behind the counter in his shop, I turned to face my father as he emerged from the back room.
His workplace was divided into two unequal parts. The front reception area was so small it would have seemed cramped if not for father’s hospitality when a customer brought in a bracelet or carried in a clock. The room was no more than seven feet by nine. A leather chair, faded by light and softened by use, mine most of all, sat in the corner. There was no space for a second, and papa always invited his guest to take the seat. A counter of oak, the color of the Kansas prairie baked in the summer sun, faced the front door, its glass top often smudged by a seven year-old girl’s fingers as I peered into the case. Here he displayed a few items for sale; the back room, where he actually worked, was much larger.
I was proud of father’s work. He could repair most any piece of jewelry brought to him – and the watches! How startled I was to see him pry open the backs of the delicate little cases entrusted to his care.
“Papa, I was just looking at this rock,” I answered, revealing the necklace in my palm.
“Gemstone,” he corrected mildly, “and it’s called a ruby. Don’t startle so, poppin, I know you weren’t hiding it.” He smiled, placing his palm over the crown of my head.
“Maggie would love it! It’s her favorite color. So dramatic – how would she say?” I tried to mimic my older sister’s cultured tones, “It would show well on the stage.”
“Yes, very good,” father said with a chuckle. Maggie was not quite ten, but already acting in church pageants.
Picking up the ruby from my outstretched hand, Papa opened the counter gate and carried the gem to the windows. “Your sister would like this. She’s always attracted to the reds.”
The repair work father kept in back. This necklace, brought in that morning and placed under the counter, hadn’t made it there yet.
I slipped under the triangle made by his arm and the raised gate, and went to the window; outside hung the edge of his sign, “Nethers & Barton Hardware.” It was simple, drawn without picture or flourish. He should have designed the sign himself, I told him, because I knew he could have painted something beautiful. But he’d left the sign to his partner. Mostly papa did watch repair, he was good at it and made a steady income. Once he’d even been asked to repair the town clock on the First National Bank building at the crossroads of downtown Salina. This clock couldn’t exactly come to him, and so I’d watched him climb the tall ladder and open the face to fix the big mechanism.
But when he had a spare hour, father would craft his own jewelry pieces.
And from time to time, one of the wealthier ladies in town – there were still a few, even during the 30’s – would bring him a bracelet or necklace to repair, if the setting was loose or the clasp wasn’t catching. The ruby in his hand hung from a gold chain long enough for a necklace.
“Look at this, Judy,” he beamed, holding it up to the light streaming through the window. The shop faced west, and the afternoon sun was bright enough for him to read a stone’s worth. “Mrs. Holroyd brought it in today, to see if I could make the clasp secure again. See where it’s loose?”
“How will you fix it?”
“I’ll show you, but first look through this ruby. See the color?” he asked, turning it round and round on the chain. “This shade is called pigeon-blood red – don’t make a face!”
“It’s an awful name!”
“It’s just what it’s called, and by it you’ll know the finest rubies. Cheaper ones are light red or even pink in hue. And see how you lose your vision in the middle, if you stare straight into it, you can’t see through it?” he asked, handing it back to me.
I’d been blinking so long into the sunlight I had spots before my eyes. “Yes, papa,” I answered.
“If you can see through the cut facets to the back of the stone, it’s poor; if the ruby is so muddy with inclusions you can’t see through it at all, it’s also poor. This one is just right: your eye is drawn into the stone and lost there.” We both stared into it, hypnotized for a moment.
“Can you keep a secret, for a long time?”
I nodded vigorously.
Father smiled. “Someday I’d like to buy a ruby like this for Maggie.”
“Really, could you?”
“Yes, and set it myself. And another stone for you, perhaps.”
I looked up in expectation.
“But rubies aren’t your favorite, are they?”
I shook my head.
“Perhaps something more subtle,” he offered. “Well, you’ll figure out your favorite in good time. Probably before I’ve saved the money for it,” he said, winking. “Seems like dreaming, your mother would say. But we’ve held onto our little house and job through these lean years, and have plenty of time yet before you girls graduate high school.
“Come watch me fix the clasp,” he prompted, holding the necklace in one hand and guiding me by the shoulder under the counter gate with the other.
The back room was three times the size of the reception area. The noise, however, was seven or eight times as much: repaired clocks, waiting for their owners, hung on the workroom walls, mechanisms whirring and pendulums swinging. The watches ticked quietly, but all the clocks clanked and rang on time, a deep ringing I sometimes heard in my sleep.
My father, as I remember him now, was a kindly man. His hair was still thick but prematurely white, almost platinum; he’d been blonde as a young man, blonde like Maggie, and she had his blue eyes. He was tall and slender, but his shoulders and back had been rounded by the workbench, his eyes near-sighted from the intricate labor. His hands, though, remained steady and strong as a sculptor’s. He never quite sat, but perched on a high stool over his bench, where he laid out the gem’s cord.
“See this, the spring isn’t clicking,” he demonstrated, moving it back and forth. “It’s keeping the loop from catching.”
He re-seated the spring with tweezers finer than those Maggie used on her well-groomed eyebrows and a pair of pliers smaller than one of the dollhouse toys I’d lost in the backyard.
I stopped here most days on my way home from school, to watch him work with the small, fine tools. Off popped the back of a watch, and I’d be afraid the insides would spring out; or that a gem would roll away from its setting. But my father’s hands never wavered.
“Here, see if you can loosen it,” he said, handing the tools to me when he noticed my eyes following his every move.
_____________
“Judy, dinner time!” mother called from the screen door. “Your father’s home, and Maggie’s already set the table.”
In the backyard, spinning in circles on the tree swing, I’d see how dizzy I could make myself before tumbling into the soft grass. I stayed outside long as I could these early June evenings, while the dusk fell and the heat waned. The humid air clung to my skin, but at least the yard was shaded by this hour, and the thermometer on the back porch had dropped out of the nineties.
Maggie and I had played together like this in the backyard when we were younger, and I stayed on there long after she retired indoors for more ladylike pursuits, saying she was too old for the trees and the swing. She insisted I was too, but I paid her no mind.
“What’s on the table?” I asked, bounding in hungry, after climbing down from my perch in the branches of the backyard walnut tree. Other than visiting papa’s shop, I wanted nothing more than to be outside, so I was glad we ate dinner late those months when he worked longer in the summertime. But mother had called, so I hurried inside.
Years had passed since I’d begun watching father work, though my life felt little different other than the advent of the War. My sister had grown into a sophisticated teenager, but I still felt like a little girl. Maggie had stepped into high-heels and stockings, while I had callused feet and scarred knees; she bought make-up, I got freckles. Where Maggie was blonde, I was brunette; she was delicate, I was strong; she was slender, I was “sturdy,” as our mother put it. I had dark hair like mother, and my skin was tanned. I had her eyes, too, a mossy agate green, while Maggie’s eyes were blue, “like a London topaz,” father said. Mother said we looked alike in the face, but I couldn’t see it.
Neither could most of the boys. They stole glances or outright stared at my sister. We wore the same grey uniform, but it was Maggie they watched stroll along the sidewalk that divided our schools.
Mother didn’t mind that I stayed outside so much, since Maggie helped in the house, chores like the dishwashing or changing the linens. But I did the laundry, pinning it on the line in the back yard. That way I could stay outside even longer, bending and stretching in the humid breeze, free after finally hanging up my school uniform and heavy black shoes. Father laughed at me, calling me a tomboy – “almost as good as having a son” – while he called Maggie a princess. “The first-born with the title,” he’d proclaim.
Maggie was only a year ahead of me in school, if nearly two years by the calendar, but she sounded like our mother already. “Take your spoon out of there,” she said as I stole a scoop of sweet potatoes. “Wait till we’re seated.” It was an exchange we had most every evening, like she was practicing her refinement on me. Maggie was blonde and glamorous, a gardenia in a wheat field, with a style and grace beyond her age – she had studied it on the silver screen Saturday afternoons, with Veronica Lake for a teacher.
I ate my fill, while Maggie picked at her food even though she’d helped prepare it. Despite the heat, I was always hungry after an afternoon outside, and tonight’s chicken fried steak smothered in gravy was a favorite.
In places with far-away names like Bastogne and Leyte Gulf, World War Two raged on, and came to our table every evening on the cathedral radio. Down the street the war had taken a family’s eldest son. But tonight the news on the radio suggested that recent Allied advances might end the War, and our parents were feeling upbeat. Recalling it now, though, what mattered most to me was that my father wasn’t drafted. I was so relieved that he didn’t enlist, it didn’t occur to me to ask why.
“If you don’t eat more yourself, Mary Margaret, we’ll think you poisoned our dinner,” father laughed.
“She’s watching her figure,” mother commented.
“Make this child her favorite dishes, then, so she can’t help but eat as hearty as her sister!”
Maggie rolled her eyes at father, and jumped up to fetch the vegetables out of the oven.
“You have two girls here, Anders,” mother tapped his elbow, passing the salad bowl, “even if one of them isn’t so lady-like,” she teased. “What about Judy’s favorites?”
“Oh, I’ll eat most anything,” I admitted, looking up from my dinner and nearly ready for seconds.
“And you’re looking like you’ll wear almost anything, too, my dear. We should go shopping for a new dress,” mother said.
“Oh mama, I already have a dress to wear to church!”
“Mary, the girl has to wear a uniform to school every day,” father said winking at me. “Let her wear what she wants after school.”
“Mother, we’re going to the Grand Theater this Saturday – would that be alright?” Maggie called casually from the kitchen. “Andy would like to drive us both.”
“First I’ve heard –” but Maggie nudged my shoulder to silence me as she passed.
“Andy Holroyd? Oh, he is a nice young man,” mother said.
Father was surprised. “He has a car?”
“Yes, would you believe it? His parents just gave it to him for his sixteenth birthday. So he wants to take us both, me and Judy, to the movies.”
“As if you couldn’t walk to the Grand.”
“Father!”
“Maggie, pay no mind, he’s just protective of you – when he has no need to be with that boy, not to mention with Judy going as well.” Mother turned to father, “Oh! Don’t you remember, when the Grand was still called the Convention Hall, and we used to go? When I was a little girl, I saw Ginger Rogers on stage there, before she was famous with Fred Astaire.” Mother looked at Maggie admiringly. “You have dancers’ legs like hers, Maggie.”
“When the movie is over, straight home on Walnut, you hear?” father ordered. “No ‘draggin’ the ’Fe,’ as you call it, in his car.”
We both rolled our eyes. Santa Fe was Salina’s main street, and on Saturday nights it was packed with teenagers.
As usual, Maggie kept busy at the dinner table by serving us. “Here, take more meat,” she encouraged father as she spooned out vegetables for mother from the dish she held with the checked potholder. Father smiled at her with unalloyed admiration, as though royalty were serving him the potatoes.
He mopped his brow. “Mary, was it very hot in the house today?”
“No, it cooled off some after the thunderstorm. How was work?”
These pleasantries were exchanged, I remember, over dinner most nights. Our family was small, compared to many of the others in our church: just the four of us, father the only man in the house. Or as he put it, “outnumbered by pretty girls,” kissing mother after dinner, while Maggie donned dish gloves and cleared the plates. How she knew to wear the gloves, I don’t know – perhaps a beauty tip from one of her Hollywood magazines.
Our lives stayed much the same even through the War, though father grew a little tired, and Maggie even more beautiful, with each year.
_____________
Our home was nestled in a row of single-story houses in the southwest suburb of town, only two bedrooms, our parents’ and mine and Maggie’s. So even during the war years when so many of our neighbors rented out rooms to military men, we had no such houseguests. The war stayed out of our home, except for the radio reports.
When the dark from the prairie reached into our porch, I’d settle cross-legged on the floor of our bedroom, my books scattered across my blue-flowered bedspread. Maggie would sit at her desk with her legs elegantly crossed, poised over the books opened neatly before her.
“How do you solve this equation?” she asked, showing me her math paper. The nuns sent home some schoolwork at the end of summer, exercises we had to bring back to show we hadn’t forgotten last year’s learning.
“Here, carry this number and make it equal to the other side,” I explained softly. Maggie was smart enough, but she didn’t crowd her mind with information she didn’t think necessary, such as math – so she turned to me when she forgot last year’s lessons. Her pencil scratched, then she asked, “Did you see Andy today?”
“Yes.” I smiled. He’d brought in another piece of his mother’s jewelry to father’s shop. “Why?”
“No reason, just asking.”
“You like him, I know you do!” I laughed, reaching over to poke her gently with my eraser. “You like him, admit it!”
Maggie could have had most any boy in school with her looks, but it was the shy, smart fellow she seemed to like.
I pushed: “Maggie, I know he likes you, he asks me about you whenever I see him.” I’d seen her let him kiss her, after school, when she thought no one was looking.
“Maybe he does,” she answered reluctantly. “We’ll see.”
“Don’t you want him to like you?” Why else, I wondered, would she have let him kiss her?
“Well … I do, and I don’t. Maybe there’s something else I’m thinking about more – Look at this!” Maggie pulled a neatly tucked magazine, with the words “Motion Pictures” in bold print and a photo of Cary Grant on its cover, from under her schoolbooks.
“See! This is what I really want!”
“You want to marry a movie star?”
“No, silly Judy! I want to be a movie star. I want to be an actress, and get on the cover of a magazine.”
Every third girl in our class said she wanted to be a Hollywood actress, every other boy wanted to be an athlete like Joe DiMaggio. But Maggie was more serious than most.
“I’m going for drama next semester. I signed up for it today.” The nuns had held an early registration day for school clubs, which I’d missed. It was only early August, and I wouldn’t let them drag me back indoors a day sooner than I had to.
“Have you told mom and dad yet?”
“No, but why would they mind?”
“I suppose they wouldn’t. But they might not like that,” I ventured, pointing to the glossy magazine.
“Well, I won’t tell them about that! They will approve of Shakespeare, of course – that’s the school play. Remember, mom has told us how she used to want to be in her school’s Shakespeare plays, but she had to go home right after class to help with all those sisters and brothers.”
“Aren’t you glad it’s only us?” I liked our family small, so that I didn’t lose my place.
“You’ll be good, I’m sure, Maggie. I know you will!” I said, bouncing up and down on her bed, sitting on my hands.
“You could try out too, Judy. There’s lots of smaller parts.”
“No, I’d rather not,” I said, turning my chin to my shoulder.
“Don’t be so shy!” she urged, sitting down next to me. “What else are you doing at school these days? You’re not signed up for anything.”
“Oh, I don’t know … I just like to wander after school, down by the river.”
“And climb trees,” she sighed.
“Today I made it to the top of the oak!”
“Yes, and sit in papa’s shop watching him, rather than ever talking to a boy your own age. Judy, don’t you see? You could be as beautiful as a movie star. You hide your figure in dumpy clothes, when you’re curvy. And what I’d give to be taller, like you! Tall is good for stage presence. If your hair turned a little more red – I’m surprised it doesn’t, with all the time you spend in the sun – you could be like Rita Hayworth.”
“She grew up Catholic, like us, didn’t she?”
“There you go!”
But it was Maggie who could take the nickname Rita; and even Rita Hayworth would end up trying to be a blonde like my sister.
I must have looked a little hurt, because she stopped teasing me. “Brush your hair?” she asked, picking up my ponytail and releasing the barrette without waiting for my answer.
She gently drew the brush through my brown hair, her hand resting between strokes on the back of my neck.
“Maggie,” I began slowly, feeling soothed by the rhythm of the brushing, “have you ever played ‘light as a feather’?”
“Light as a feather? What’s that?”
I was afraid to ask her, it had scared me so. “Remember last month, I went to Jenny’s slumber party? The girls played this game, they called it ‘light as a feather, stiff as a board.’”
She stroked my hair again and again, counting towards a hundred under her breath. “How does it work?”
“They lay me down in the middle of the floor,” I remembered the scratching of the carpet against my shoulders, where my nightgown had rolled back. “The girls sat around me, and said to close my eyes,” I felt their fingertips slipping under me. “Then they began chanting this phrase, ‘light as a feather,’ quietly, but over and over, and their fingers, only the little tips of their fingers, pressed into my back,” as I felt the tips of Maggie’s fingers brushing down my neck now. “And they lifted me up off the floor.”
“I don’t believe it!” she exclaimed. “No offense, dear sister, but you’re no lightweight – how could a few girls lift you with just their fingertips?”
“I don’t know, but they did. At least, I think they did – it felt like I was up in the air for a few moments.” What I didn’t tell her, what had scared me, is that they said to imagine I was dead, laid out on a table, and it had felt like my spirit was drifting away.
“Just a silly party game!” Maggie dismissed it with a stroke of the hairbrush as she counted off one hundred. “You played it in the dark, didn’t you?”
“Yes, it was dark.”
“Thought so.” She kissed me on the cheek, then let loose her cascade of ash-blonde waves. “Stop being afraid of the dark, Judy. Time you grew up – the war’s almost over, and you’re in high school now. Here, brush mine.”
_____________
I was born in St. John’s, the Salina hospital at the corner of Ash and Pennsylvania Streets, in 1931, and this small town was all I knew for over twenty years. While the town grew during the war, swelling with soldiers like the river in heavy rain, the military men were only visitors to me, adventurers who would not stay and settle down.
We lived in an average house in the southwest neighborhood, on Maple Avenue, but if I walked east past father’s shop, through the town crossroads, I’d come to the banks of the Smoky Hill River where mother let me run free in the summer. In the winter snows she took me and Maggie on charity visits to Our Lady of Guadelupe, the Catholic parish in the northeast corner of town by the railroad tracks, where the Mexicans lived. They looked at Maggie as if she were a goddess, but if my summer tan was deep enough to last, I’d almost blend in with the young girls there, unnoticed.
When summer came, I’d stroll out to the river most mornings and wander among the rocks and eddies, daydreaming of some vague future, until I fell asleep in the tall grass under the hazy summer sun, in the shade of the weeping willow branches. Then deeper dreams would come, though I remember no nightmares from those days. I suppose the only trouble with my upbringing was its lack of trouble: I was too accustomed to happiness to be ready for the heartbreak I’d find in the world.
I knew that Salina was in the dead center of the country, almost exactly, our parents said, by mathematical measurements. But despite our downtown’s flat grid of streets, when I reached the river and looked for the horizon I couldn’t see how this was the middle of anything but predictability. To the east was the Iron Mound; turning counterclockwise I’d see the North Pole Mound; and to the south was Soldier’s Cap. All small hills by other state’s standards, but they cut off my view from anything farther away. When the summer heat waves shimmered over those Smoky Hills, I imagined they were smoke signals from the ghosts of long-dead Indians buried along the river.
Coming home, I’d cross the creaky porch that wrapped around our little house, where we sat on long summer evenings in the western light. I suppose we must have had tornado warnings, but I don’t recall any touching down. I remember them more from movies than real life.
Maggie and I went to a movie nearly every Saturday, though they’ve all run together in my mind. When I was nine or ten, The Wizard of Oz came to town. I marveled at the Emerald City and its jewel-like colors, though I wondered why Kansas was only black and white – my home didn’t seem colorless to me. Maggie was more excited about Gone with the Wind; when I told her that I thought Scarlett was selfish, she said Scarlett had “admirable determination.” Both movies played a long time: I don’t remember which arrived first, though I do remember the war newsreels that soon followed.
And if we spent Saturday afternoon with the pageantry of the movies, we spent Sunday mornings with the rituals of the church. Our parents belonged to the Sacred Heart Cathedral in all its brick gothic grandeur – though there was a smaller Catholic church in town closer to our house, mother preferred the big one. She said the high, coffered ceiling helped her spirit rise up to God; years later I would understand what she meant. Father once joked that it was like “going to the movies” for her, though she slapped him on the arm for his irreverence. She prayed the rosary every evening, she attended each holy day of obligation, and Maggie went with her. Father had been a Lutheran, I learned, converted just to marry Mama, but he still managed to miss most masses. He said he felt God’s presence more working with His creations, whether it was the stones he secured in settings, or the time in the clocks he repaired.
I liked church for the painted statues and stained-glass windows, jeweled with ruby-reds and emerald-greens that dazzled me. These visions often drowned out the droning of the mass, and I hardly listened. I did want to take confirmation with Maggie, but had to wait a year. Her white dress was beautiful, and she said she didn’t mind if I wore it, too, when I took my classes. Mother had to let it out an inch, since I was such a “sturdy young lady,” but she said she was glad for us to get more use out of it.
“You and I, Judy, don’t have that Nordic bloodline your sister got from your father’s side of the family. Maybe if we’d had more children, like my family… but it wasn’t meant to be.” Maggie and I never could share that many clothes, since by the time she grew out of them, they were too small for me, too.
The Cathedral was just north and west of the center of town on Ninth Street, and the Sacred Heart Grammar and High Schools were attached to it. Though mother drove us there on Sunday mornings, Maggie and I walked the same distance five days a week for school. It was a long mile each way, crossing from South to North Ninth Street. We often didn’t go together as we grew older; Maggie was signed up for so many activities, she’d leave early and come home late, or she said she was heading to the Carnegie Library at Iron and Eighth. I’d leave late because I knew I could just make it by the last stroke of the school clock if I left by a quarter till, walking as fast as I could across town in my straight-cut school skirt. I passed pawn shops and diners on the Salina sidewalks, in the shadows of grain elevators and flour mills on the prairie horizon.
Our Sacred Heart uniform was light grey with a white blouse and heavy black shoes. The style varied as we grew older, from a short pleated skirt to a long pull-over dress with a black belt. But the color was constant. And we wore the same outfit year-round, so in hot weather its starchy fabric chafed and scratched. I had to pull my hair back, too, which Maggie didn’t mind because she was good at pinning hers up. Mine would keep falling down to my shoulders no matter how often she taught me to arrange it or how many pins I used.
The Sisters who founded our school told us how their convent had ties to the nuns of France who were martyred in the French Revolution, how only a few escaped into hiding and brought the faith to us. The nuns loved history, if I didn’t. They told us how ‘Salina’ was supposed to be pronounced like the word for salt, but the early settlers were afraid that would discourage farmers so they began calling it Salina with a long i.
I didn’t think much about it, going to a Catholic school, because all our friends did. I knew there were public schools in town, Washington High and Dunbar for the colored, but I didn’t know anyone who attended them.
I have many memories about the war: how my mother, and Maggie too in the summer, knitted mittens and beanies, sewed surgical dressing sleeves for the soldiers. How my father manned the scrap drives, and I helped him sort out the aluminum and steel fragments that would be melted to make tanks and planes. The piles of scrap grew out behind father’s shop, low echoes of the hills on the horizon. All of us were involved, no matter our age or occupation: even the nuns at school became air raid wardens, patrolling our sidewalks in full habit at night.
But just as I was about to start high school, on August 15, 1945, the radio broke the news: the war was over. Mother hurried me and Maggie off to the Cathedral to give thanks – even father came with us that day. As we turned up Ninth Street, the summer air suddenly filled with snow, as clouds of confetti poured out of office windows. It was torn-up newsprint – I could make out few words, but they all meant victory. We were heading into a new world where the war was over. What would fill the void it left?
I knelt at the pew and prayed. I remember the day of my confirmation. I remember the Christmas Eve masses in the winter and harvest masses of thanks in the late summer. I don’t remember my baptism, of course – but I saw many children in later years, there in the Cathedral, marked with the font’s holy water. When I was younger I’d sometimes play at the river and pretend I was the priest, marking myself with the water I scooped from between the stones on the bank. Maybe I liked the ritual of church, like mother and Maggie; or maybe it was the comfort of fine physical movements, learned from my father. Such things were only play to me then.
_____________
Father’s workplace was half-way between home and school, on South Santa Fe, the commercial street in town, which ran parallel to Ninth and was just three blocks farther east of it. This was the neighborhood of banks, insurance offices and accountants, ladies’ shops and stores with men’s suits. The windows were better-stocked now. On the way home from school, walking down Ninth, I’d turn left and stop to see father.
When I was very little, only five or six, I sometimes spent a Saturday or a summer day playing around the shop. It impressed me that my papa actually had his own business, that he was, as mother had taught me the word, “a proprietor.” When I grew older I began to realize that his shop was rather small and his business limited – the adjoining hardware store next door was much bigger.
The little brass bell hanging inside the door jingled when I walked in. Schoolbooks in my bag, I’d duck under the counter calling “Just me!” before papa could trouble himself to get off his stool.
“And how was school today, poppin?” I was a little too old for that word now, but father hadn’t noticed.
I sighed, “Same, I guess. Science homework is really hard this week. The chapter on geology is interesting, though – can I show you?”
He peered over his magnifying glasses. “Maybe I can help. I’ll take a look when I finish this bit,” he smiled. Then added, “Your hair looks like it’s been through a twister – did I miss the weather forecast today?” Self-conscious, I put my hand up to it, smoothing it down best I could.
“Oh don’t fuss, Judy. I’m only teasing. I wouldn’t have my gal any different, not a strand of hair in place.”
I sat on the floor in the corner of the work room, back against the wall, reading a novel for English class until my behind went numb or papa came to a stopping point in his repair work, whichever came first. If I had to stand up before he was ready to help me, I’d stroll outside for a few minutes, looking up and down the street to stretch my growing legs.
“Well, hello Miss Judy!” exclaimed Mr. Nethers. “How are you today? Taller every time I see you, little girl!” He and father had started the hardware store together, with the intention that father would do repairs and Nethers would sell; over the years, father focused more and more on repairing ever-smaller metal items, while Nethers instead broadened his trade to stock a wider range of goods. I suppose we were indebted to him for father’s place in the original investment; the share in the hardware store brought in more money, I gathered from overheard conversations, than father’s repairs. Nethers was a nice enough man, earnest in his religious belief, like mother; but for some reason I was uncomfortable in his gaze. He made me feel awkward. He made me too aware of myself, commenting on what I wore or how I looked. I was not yet used to the attention of men, even when they meant well.
“Hello, Mr. Nethers,” I answered softly, nervously tapping my black shoe on the cement sidewalk. He stepped closer, leaning his broom against the storefront window.
“And how’s your pretty sister? I don’t see her here half as much as you.”
“Busy with school and all.”
“Come on in and pick yourself out a piece of candy. Least I can do for my partner’s daughter,” he smiled. “Take more than a piece if you want. We’re getting more in, now that sugar rationing’s been reduced.”
“Thank you, Mr. Nethers,” I answered, shyly walking inside. I took a Mary Jane, then bolted for the door and back to the safety of father’s shop.
“Did you get some candy from next door?” father asked, glancing up.
“Oh, he insisted!”
“I know, dear, I wasn’t suggesting you stole it,” father smiled. “He likes you.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my school grey. “He’s odd.”
“No, Judy, Dick is a decent man. He’s a little awkward … never married, you know, and sometimes, I think, he wants to be sociable but just doesn’t quite know how. He is a God-fearing man, as your mother says. But I think it’s hard when one always lives alone. He, how shall I say it? … forgets how to talk to people naturally.” I probably made a face at this, because father laughed and said, “Be nice, dear, and I’ll help with your homework.”
“I just don’t like long equations much,” I complained.
“I’ve noticed. But Judy, if you’d like to learn more about what I do, and I think you might have a talent for it, a little math won’t hurt. See this clock I’m working on?” he asked, pointing back to his table. “I had to calculate how far the pendulum would swing to know how much to weight the balance, and …” so his lesson went. As I grew older, if I wasn’t busy doing homework, father began to teach me parts of his job. I was less interested in the machinations of the clocks than the jewelry repair, when a piece came in the shop. “Just like a woman!” he laughed. “Jewelry first – soon it’ll be fashions and boys, and then I’ll lose my tomboy.”
I learned how to hold the pliers and tweezers, files and sharpening stone; how to work the rotary tool and stamp, how to hold the gauge and vise. I was left-handed, and the tools felt awkward, but papa showed me how to compensate. He taught me, instructed me, and sometimes lectured me. I could use the wire twister to repair a simple broken bracelet, and soon father let me fix one by myself and gave me the money his customer paid.
“But I don’t need it, father!” I protested.
“You never know, Judy – save it for some adventure. Your sister may marry up early, but you’re a more independent, spirited sort…”
What I liked best, though, was when he told me about the gemstones.
_____________
Looking out the window, I was dreaming of running to the river as soon as the classroom clock marked three. Bad luck for me, I was in Sister Teresa’s line of sight, and she caught me out.
“Judy, what is the answer to the seventh question on page one-hundred-thirty-six?”
I turned from the window, looked around my history class and realized I had been daydreaming. I didn’t remember the last six questions, nor their answers. Many of my friends had their hands raised, yet she’d called on me.
“I’m sorry, Sister Teresa,” was all I could offer. “I don’t know.”
The bell rang, but it didn’t save me. “You will stay after, Judy. Class dismissed.” Twenty-three other students jumped up, leaving me behind. I bit my lip and looked down at my desk.
“Judy, come here to the front.”
I picked up my books, the bag’s shoulder strap falling down my arm as I shuffled to the first row. With her long bony hand, she pointed at the desk dead center in front of hers, and I sat in it. But she didn’t stay at her big desk opposite me; rather, she walked over and sat down next to me.
She was so skinny, we used to say she’d won the self-denial contest with the other nuns by giving up food. Her straight hair was pulled back, never one thin strand of it astray.
“I don’t like to see you – or any of the students – not paying attention, when you could be helping yourself. You know I knew you weren’t listening, yes?”
I nodded.
“We won’t mark this as official detention, how’s that? But I want to talk to you for a few minutes before you leave.”
“Thank you, Sister Teresa.”
She reached a long pale arm over and placed a Bible on the desk where I sat.
“Open up to The Book of Judith, dear.” While I flipped through the pages of the Old Testament, she continued. “Do you know The Book of Judith well?”
I shook my head.
“You should, she’s your namesake. And do you realize that her story isn’t even in the Protestant Bible? They took it out. All the more reason for you to know this chapter, and well.” I opened the Old Testament, found the first page, and looked up at her.
“Go on,” she urged. “Begin reading.” I looked down. “Out loud.”
“In the twelfth year of the reign of Nebuchad- Neb-”
“Nebu-ked-nezer,” she prompted.
“Who reigned in Nineveh…”
Page after page turned slowly, one, two, three chapters down.
“Judy, do you understand how brave she is? She’s just a widow, all alone, but she’s determined to save her people.”
On to the seventh and eighth chapters, and I read aloud: “Enquire not ye of mine act: for I will not declare it unto you, till the things be finished that I do.”
I looked up at Sister Teresa, who by now had returned to her desk and was marking homework while I read. “I don’t understand, she doesn’t have any weapons, yet she’s going into Holofernes’ camp. How will she get in, and won’t he just kill her?”
“Keep reading, Judy. See what she does.”
I didn’t make it to my father’s store that afternoon, I barely made it home in time for dinner. Sixteen chapters aloud, large words and all, took the daylight before I went running down Ninth Street.
“Did Sister Teresa make you stay late?” Maggie whispered in my ear when I got to the table for dinner.
“I didn’t have detention, no!”
Father prompted, “I missed you this afternoon at the shop. Where were you?”
“Sister Teresa asked me to stay, to read from the Old Testament. We read The Book of Judith together.”
Turning, I asked mother: “Did you name me for her?”
“Not exactly,” she laughed. “I just liked the name, Judy. But my goodness, that’s a provocative story for Sister Teresa to be teaching.”
Father egged me on. “I don’t think I remember that chapter of my Bible so well. Remind me what happens in it.”
“Anders!” mother exclaimed.
He looked all innocent, adding, “Surely talk of the Bible is appropriate for dinner, dear?”
Maggie, who knew her Bible well, was laughing up her sleeve.
“Alright, go on,” mother said. “I am curious to know what Sister Teresa thought was important for you to learn in that story.”
“Well,” I began shyly, “she said I should know how my namesake was strong, how she defended herself – and even saved others – with whatever weapons she had.”
“What weapons were those?” father laughed again.
“The sword, of course, that she used to cut off the head of Holofernes when he was going to kill her people.”
“Yes,” father smiled, “but as I recall” – he winked at mama.
“I thought you said you didn’t remember the story!” she exclaimed.
“As I recall, she used another weapon to get inside the camp.”
My sister, father, and even mother looked at me in mild amusement. I answered, “She used her beauty to get inside. She had been a widow, in plain clothes, but she got dressed up, changed her hair and jewelry and make-up, to be beautiful to Holofernes. Sister said even the most powerful men let down their guard at the sight of beautiful women.”
“I’m certain Sister Teresa didn’t want you to take the lesson too literally …” mother concluded, “but she’s right: remember that you have the name of a strong woman, a woman who stood up to evil and was not afraid.”
Before I went to sleep that night, while Maggie whispered her prayers, I opened my Bible to Judith’s chapter, and read again: “And now thou art both beautiful in thy countenance, and witty in thy words: surely if thou do as thou hast spoken, thy God shall be my God, and thou shall dwell in the house of the king.” I fell asleep thinking of how brave she was, even brazen. But in my small and quiet life, I couldn’t see what her story meant for me.
___________
“Father, I think I know my favorite gemstone,” I said tentatively.
I’d been working at his shop, really working, not just lingering, for a year since the War had ended. I didn’t work on the clocks, they didn’t interest me as much; I learned how to do simple jewelry repairs, including clasps on wristwatches. And while very few actual gemstones came to us, mostly just bracelet chains and paste, I had read about all of them. “Cracked ice,” I liked to say, not sure if I heard that name somewhere else or made it up, but it was my own phrase for these rocks that glinted in the sunlight.
I knew what were the best colors for each gem: how an amethyst, for example, should be dark purple, not light lilac. I knew the difference between a stone cut in cabochon and one with facets, and I could even name the different types of faceted cuts: from a simple princess or round brilliant to a marquis or lone star. Some cuts I had never seen in person, but father had books picturing all of them, pages I had studied as my fingers traced the cuts made by a man chiseling raw beauty into a shape he liked.
I’d learned how to look for inclusions or impurities in stones – I had seen these often, for most of the stones brought to us were not high in quality. Father explained that there could have been another mineral trapped inside the stone when it was formed, or even a crack deep inside, one we could only see by the inclusion it caused.
He said that an inclusion could sometimes – rarely, but sometimes – actually make the stone more valuable, if it formed a unique shape, a flower or star. I didn’t think so; I wanted the stone to be perfect.
I also wanted the stone to be pure, which I learned they often weren’t. Rubies, Maggie’s favorite, were almost always man-modified: oiled or waxed, exposed to high heat or chemicals.
“So what have you chosen as your favorite, dear?” father asked, looking up from the clock on his work table.
“The emerald.”
“You would pick the most expensive one!” He laughed, “Oh, Judy, don’t let anyone say you have common taste. A really good emerald is one of the rarest gems in nature. Every one I’ve ever seen is either dark and dull, too included, or has too much yellow in it. It won’t be easy to find one for you. What about a jade instead, to go with your eyes?”
“Oh, papa,” I protested, “I wasn’t saying you had to buy me one! It’s just that you asked me my favorite – and now I know.”
I was aware of the emerald’s cost. A jade was cheap, cheaper than a ruby. But a fine emerald was worth more than a diamond.
“They are beautiful. And they’d do well against your auburn hair, I think,” he added, stroking it. “Have I told you about synthetic stones?” I shook my head. “I’ve been looking for a book about them, but there isn’t even much written on them yet.
“They’re gemstones created by man: they may be real in their mineral combination, but they’re forced in a laboratory under artificial conditions, in a short amount of time. Man-made. They are less valuable, of course, than natural ones.”
He tapped the desk with his pliers.
“In fact, I was reading something about artificial emeralds recently, where was it?” And he stood up to shuffle through some papers on the cabinet to his side, while I looked into his work, an exposed clock mechanism on his bench.
“Here it is! A scientist has begun making ‘created emeralds,’ he calls them, in San Francisco. Carroll Chatham is his name. He started about ten years ago, in the thirties, but the news is just now getting around to jewelers.”
“I would like to see one,” I said – “I wonder if I could tell the difference?”
“Who knows, Judy – maybe someday you’ll get to San Francisco and you can look him up.”
San Francisco – that sounded as far away as the Hollywood Maggie talked about in our bedroom after dark.
___________
While I was absorbed in gems and jewelry, Maggie was becoming an accomplished actress. She was in each semester’s production, and she landed the lead half the time. I went to every performance, and I was as proud as mother and father.
At the beginning of her senior year, she bounced into our room, full of news about the fall semester’s play. “They’ve picked Twelfth Night, by Shakespeare. Oh Judy, I’ve wanted to play Viola since I read it in English class last year!”
“I’m sure you’ll get it, then. It’s the lead, right?”
“Yes …” she paused, taking both my hands and sitting me down on the bed. “Judy, do you know Twelfth Night?”
“No, my class hasn’t read it yet. Why?”
“Viola, the lead role, is supposed to be a twin. She has a brother who looks so much like her, that when she dresses up as a boy, everybody mistakes them for each other. It’s really important in the plot.” She stared at me with a pleading look.
I shrugged my shoulders. “So – ?”
“Judy, you know what would guarantee me getting to play Viola?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “If you would audition for her brother’s part, Sebastian!”
“But I’m a girl!” I protested.
“Doesn’t matter! It’s a theater tradition – if we’re short on boys the two parts are played by women.” She held my hands. “Women who look alike.”
“But you’re not short on boys – there’s a school full of them right across the quad.”
“Yes – and you’ll never talk to any of them if you won’t try out for this play!”
“Oh, no you don’t! I won’t! I don’t want to!” I cried, starting to stand up.
“Oh, please Judy, you know it would mean so much to me.” She pulled me back down. “And you might like it!”
“Like it,” I howled. “It sounds awful. I don’t even like reading book reports in class, you know that. I’ve never liked public speaking like you do, people staring at me. And I don’t have a good memory for things like you, I couldn’t learn all the lines!”
She cooed in my ear, “But you know I’d help you learn, and it’s not a very big part at all. Sebastian only has a couple scenes. Well, a few; but they’re short!” she smiled triumphantly as if that clinched it. I sat silent.
“You see, I told Sister Lucia this afternoon that you’d probably do it.”
“You did what?”
“That you’d come by her classroom tomorrow afternoon to read the part for her. And I have the script here, we can go through it tonight.”
“But how can I learn all those lines!”
She just laughed, “Silly Judy, you don’t have to know them all for tomorrow! That’s what rehearsals are for.”
I shook my head.
“Please, it’ll be so good for you.”
I thought of another tactic: “You know father expects me to help in his shop after school, I can’t stay late for rehearsals.”
“Oh yes you can, I asked papa already.”
My jaw dropped.
“He says it would be good for you.”
I felt cornered.
“Father said he would like to see the two of us on stage together,” Maggie grinned.
I knew I was done for if they were all for it. I could feel my heart racing already just at the thought of it, an auditorium full of people watching me.
“Here,” she smiled again, kissing me on the cheek, “is the script. Let’s read over the few scenes Sebastian has, you’ll see it’s not so bad.”
And so I found myself, the next afternoon, reading those same scenes in front of Sister Lucia. And that was how I ended up on stage the beginning of my junior year.
___________