“I know. I don’t really believe it’s going to snow later this week. If we can believe what the weathermen say.”

“A big if. Look, we don’t really know each other, but I know who you are. Of course.”

Of course? Why of course? For a confused second, Maddie thought she was the woman she almost became, a seventeen-year-old girl embroiled in a scandal. But, no, she had avoided that fate. The problem was all the other fates she had avoided as well, the lies she had told herself, which she had come to believe. When Judith said she knew who Maddie was, it was probably because of gossip at the club, that terrible nouveau clique run by Bambi Brewer, with her airs and her Salems and her acolytes. The Morgensterns were old money relative to that crowd.

“Is there something you need from me?”

As if anyone wanted advice from a middle-aged woman trying to sell her engagement ring. The world was so different now. This young woman crouching by Maddie’s car couldn’t possibly have had the same problems Maddie had known twenty years ago. Today, young women could have sex worry-free by taking a daily pill. Of course, most probably still pretended to be virgins when they found the men they wanted to marry, but that was as much for their mothers as for the husbands.

“I thought you might be interested in attending a meeting at the Stonewall Democratic Club. There’s an open governor’s race this year. It’s a good way to meet people. My brother—not Jack, Donald, Jack’s a bit of a jerk, but Donald is a sweetheart—he’s very active in politics.”

“Is this a fix-up?”

This question seemed to amuse Judith. “No, no, Donald’s not—in the market, best I can tell. He’s a bachelor, and content to be one. When I say ‘meet people,’ I mean just that—people. Some are men. Some are single. For me, it’s a way to get out of my parents’ house without so many questions. And if I started going with a nice lady from Northwest Baltimore, they might not worry so much about what time I come home.”

Maddie risked a tremulous smile. Kindness could be so much more painful than cruelty. She scrambled for a piece of paper from her purse, wrote her mother’s number on the back of a cash register receipt from Rexall, checking first to make sure there was nothing embarrassing on it, like feminine products.

She drove home, although it was hard to think of the apartment on Gist Avenue as home. No Seth, so little furniture, and the neighbors snubbed her, as if she were the undesirable one in this neighborhood of maids and laundresses, milkmen and streetcar conductors. Once inside, she felt strangely warm; the landlord, usually so stingy with heat, had the radiators set too high. She opened the sliding door to the little patio off her bedroom. Then, on what she wanted to believe was an impulse, she took her engagement ring and shoved it deep into the dirt of a potted African violet she kept on a rickety table near the patio door. She pulled the sliding door so only a faint wisp of winter air sneaked through. Methodically, she created the appearance of chaos by opening drawers in the kitchen and bedroom, tossing some of her clothes to the floor.

She then took a deep breath and ran into the street, screaming for help. Within a block, a patrolman, a Negro, rushed toward her.

“I’ve been robbed,” she said. Her breathlessness made it easy to sound frightened.

“Here on the street?” he asked, looking at the purse in her hands.

“My apartment,” she said. “Jewelry—mostly costume stuff, but I had a diamond ring and that’s gone.”

Ferdie Platt, for that was his name—“Short for Ferdinand? Like the bull?” she asked, but he didn’t answer—walked her back to the apartment. His eyes studied the not-quite-closed patio door, the apartment in disarray. Did his keen brown eyes also sweep across the African violet, taking its measure? It suddenly seemed to Maddie that the impressions of her fingertips were visible in the soil. She checked her nails surreptitiously for signs of dirt. He was one of those men who seemed particularly spick-and-span, always smelling of soap. Not aftershave or cologne, just soap. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he had broad shoulders and moved like an athlete. He was too young to have to worry about getting exercise, maybe ten years younger than she was.

“Let’s call the burglary detectives,” he said.

“I don’t have a phone. That’s part of the reason I ran into the street, calling for help. But also—I was worried that the burglar might still be here.”

Her fear was almost real. She was beginning to believe that she had been burglarized, that a stranger had done these things. She could have been a very good actress if only she had pursued it.

Patrolman Platt said: “And I don’t have a radio because—well, I don’t have a radio. But I have a key to the call box, which is close to a drugstore. I’ll put in the call and we’ll wait there. We don’t want to risk disturbing anything here.”

At the drugstore, his call made, he bought her a soda. Maddie sat at the counter, sipping it, wishing it were a cocktail. Wishing, too, that he would sit down instead of standing over her, arms folded, watching her like a sentry.

“I don’t see you in this neighborhood,” he said.

“I’ve lived here only a few weeks.”

“I don’t mean it that way. I mean—this isn’t the right area for you. I don’t see you living here.”

“Because I’m white?” She felt pert. She felt things she hadn’t felt in years, maybe ever.

“Not exactly. You need to be in a place where you don’t stick out quite so much. A place where you’d have privacy. Maybe more downtown, you know?”

“I signed a lease. I paid a deposit.”

“Leases can be broken. For cause.”

Two weeks later, Ferdie Platt did just that. Convinced the landlord to break her lease without penalty, even got her deposit back. Maddie thought it better not to ask how he had accomplished that. Then he inspected the apartment she found near the downtown library, a location he decided was at once safe and private. “Your comings and goings won’t be notable here.”

A week after that, he helped her break in her new bed, the one she bought with part of the insurance. She had the money for selling her car, too, although that had required Milton’s permission, of all things. So infuriating. But she had a new phone on the bedside table, in a delicious shade of bright red. Next to it, the African violet stood guard, serene and silent.

The Clerk

The Clerk

I have always been preternaturally patient. Everyone says so. Well—everyone says I am patient; only Donald, my favorite brother, uses words like preternatural. When I want something, I can plot and plan for months to make it happen. Possibly years if it comes to that. From the moment I sized up Madeline Morgenstern Schwartz, trying to sell her engagement ring as if she couldn’t care less how much money she got for it, I saw a means to an end. Maddie Schwartz is my best chance to get out of the house without marrying first.

I am the youngest of five children and the only girl. My brothers were not forced to live at home until marriage, but they are men. My mother, who rules the household, has decreed that I must stay here until I marry, something I am not keen to do. I wasn’t a wild child, quite the opposite, and I’m not a wild girl. But I am increasingly sure of what I do not want. I do not want to teach school or go into nursing, the kind of stable jobs that would free me from my parents’ home. I do not want to date men like my brothers or my father. I don’t really want to marry, not yet.

But because I am a nice Jewish girl, I have to live at home until I marry. My parents are old-fashioned that way. “We would be comfortable letting you live with another girl, if we approved of her, but your friends are so flighty,” my mother said. Are they? It doesn’t matter. My mother has spoken. The only tactic available to me is to tease out information about what actions might merit my mother’s rare approval.

That’s how I managed to attend college. My parents were not going to let me go away, even if I received a scholarship that covered everything. They didn’t trust me to be out of their sight. Besides, money was too tight after my father’s bankruptcy, no matter how much my brothers kicked in. College Park was impossible for a commuter without a car.