PAMELA TREMBLED WITH JOHNNY'S automobile as it lurched to a jarring stop.
Instead of opening the door, Johnny turned towards her, his eyes blackened by the night. The streetlights had come on, though that night they seemed less beautiful than they had before. The neon sign above the apartment across from them made Johnny look like a ghost.
"You sure you don't want me to go back to Albright Trimmings for anything?" Johnny asked for the umpteenth time.
Pamela shook her head, not wanting him to say another word. She wished he would just let her off and never speak to her again, but she knew that wasn't possible. The turmoil within her bizarre life would not subside until Johnny had manipulated her father into a business deal and accomplished whatever else he had in mind.
"What about all your stuff? Your clothes?" Johnny persisted, making Pamela wonder why he cared so much about her belongings. She had little energy left to care about her possessions. She didn't want to think about Albright Trimmings just yet—not until it had faded into the long-ago stretch of time behind her—like an unwinding road in the rearview mirror of an automobile.
"I don't need them," Pamela said. She had enough frocks and cardigans within the sanctuary of her childhood bedroom to rival a princesses wardrobe. Despite failing to provide her with love or affection, her mother had ensured she never wanted for anything of the material variety.
Johnny shrugged, hoping to look apathetic, though lines of concern stippled his face.
"You might wanna wipe that thing off before you go in." He gestured to the fine trickle of blood on the bodice of her gown as if it was just a bothersome dash of ketchup she had gained from eating French fries. "Or I can help you."
He extended a hand to assist her in removing the blemish. But Pamela jerked away at the last moment. "My mother will be asleep. So will my father. I'll go to my room and freshen up before they know I've returned. You should really get going, Johnny. Bring Caterina home and see to it she has something to eat, or she'll feel terrible tomorrow morning."
The two turned to look at the backseat passenger, still comfortably asleep with shallow snores escaping her half-open mouth.
"I guess I'll come back tomorrow morning for brunch. You'll tell your folks about me before then?" Johnny said, his tone a mixture of hopeful and excited. Either he was an excellent actor or he sincerely believed that he was about to meet his future in-laws.
"Sure." Pamela grappled in the dark for the drawstrings of her purse, but found Johnny's arm instead. Pulling away in embarrassment, she saw his eyes soften with a wounded look.
Before she could take her leave and dispel the unpleasantness of the evening from her mind, Johnny placed a palm on her shoulder innocently, as a brother would do, to comfort his sister. "Are you truly swell?"
Pamela wanted to scream NO so badly that her chest hurt.
Instead, she whispered something of the same sentiment. "How do you expect me to be swell at a time like this, Johnny? You've forced me into an engagement with you to appease your bloodthirsty gang and needle an illegal business deal out of my father. They could have shot me tonight, thanks to you. And yet you expect me to pretend that I like you?"
Johnny stammered a half-hearted apology, but Pamela couldn't hear it as she made a beeline for the place she had grown up in.
~~~
Pamela stood outside of the apartment door for a few minutes, praying for some kind of divine intervention. Maybe her parents were vacationing in the Hamptons, or Havana, as they often did during the winter. Maybe then she could explain to Johnny that they had moved, and he would release her, freeing her to sail to captivating Australia or disappear into the quaint Midwest.
She took a chance and knocked, her knuckles barely grazing the polished wood of the door.
An eternal moment passed.
Pamela was about to turn, but someone undid the chain with a clank and a warm face leaned out at her from the ajar door.
Lorna, her velvet fascinator clipped to her black curls and lines of exhaustion grooved into her face, grasped Pamela's shoulders to prove she wasn't just a vision. "Pamela Anne! I almost thought I saw a ghost. I've been praying and praying for some kind of sign that you were safe, and here you are, right in front of me! Thank God!"
"I've missed you terribly, Lorna." Pamela sniffed, attempting to contain the sobs desperate to rupture through the surface of her chest. Lorna had been more than a fixture in her childhood: she had been a beloved friend and guardian. She had been more of a mother than Caroline Kelly, and not having her kind and enduring presence caused great emotional affliction.
"I've missed you too, honey." Lorna abandoned social formality and enveloped Pamela in a reassuring hug. "But at least you are back here with us now. What happened, my dear? Where were you?"
"I'm sorry for worrying you..." Pamela allowed the tears to stream down her cheeks, no longer caring to compose herself. "Mother wanted me to marry Timothy Atwell, but I couldn't, so I took a job as a salesgirl on Fifth Avenue, and tried to make my own way in the world."
"I understand, dear one. I was on my own at seventeen, younger than you are today. Sometimes a little independence helps us grow. I could only trust the good Lord that you were out of harm's way." Lorna smiled, the scent of dishwashing soap and basil leaping up from her ash-coloured uniform.
Pamela remembered what had happened to Lorna from her mother's gossip circles: she had fallen pregnant with the child of a soldier leaving to fight in the Great War. She had run away from home and her baby had died from the Spanish flu, the soldier never to be seen again.
"You haven't gone off and fallen in love with some boy, have you?" Lorna's dark eyes glinted with mirth.
"I... I do think I've fallen in love with someone." Pamela's admission was startling even to her. She had wanted a confidante so badly that the words had simply bared themselves. "I—I met a man when I was away. I didn't mean to fall in love. It just happened."
"Does he treat you well? Just as the child of God you are?" Lorna asked sternly.
Pamela nodded.
"That matters the most."
A hallway clock ticked softly. Gentle footsteps padded on the floor above them and the whooshing sound of traffic passing by the apartment outside created a sense of calm.
"I hope they've been treating you well here." Pamela whispered, not wanting to disrupt the silence.
A look of painful understanding passed between them.
Her parents, especially her mother, were not always kind to Lorna, despite the many years she had worked tirelessly for them. Though the words were ordinarily left, unsaid—Caroline and Stuart Kelly thought themselves above Lorna—owing to the colour of her skin. There was no question that she, along with the other black employees of the Kelly residence, were treated differently from the rest of the help. It wasn't fair. And it was yet another reason Pamela resented the family she had grown up in.
"Don't worry on my behalf. They've been treating me the same as ever." Lorna patted Pamela on the arm. But the statement was no consolation.
"Why don't you leave, like I did?" Pamela insisted, lowering her voice in the quiet of the hallway. "If I could get a job, I'm sure you can too. There are plenty of places hiring, and I could help you find one with good pay."
Lorna's smile faded, and she shook her head with obstinacy. "Places are hiring young white girls like you, Pamela, not me. But I can manage, as I have all these years. And maybe, someday, I can start my fancy restaurant downtown. Remember how we used to talk about that? You'd keep the books, and I'd cook the food?"
Pamela laughed, remembering. But the dismal truth of Lorna's proclamation echoed in the chamber of her mind. She couldn't just up and leave as Pamela had. The world was a cruel and twisted place, in more ways than one.
Before Lorna could continue their conversation, a commanding voice shattered the sentimentality of the reunion. The two women withdrew, standing to attention as if they were soldiers in the American army.
"What is going on here?" Caroline Kelly, her dyed hair wound tightly in curlers and her face wet from an Estee Lauder night mask for ageing skin, marched through the doorway.
Her reserve almost deteriorated when she beheld her long-lost daughter, but after a crinkling of her nose and a tightening of her mouth, she resumed her untouchable demeanour.
"Oh my, what a delightful surprise." Caroline Kelly said, her eyebrows arching. "You must be proud of all the commotion you've caused, nearly frightening the better part of the city to death."
Pamela bent her neck, finding it painful to stare directly into the seething gaze of her mother. "I am sorry for my unexplained absence. But you must understand, Timothy and I would have been awful for each other, and I wanted to..."
"Never mind that. You wasted a perfectly good opportunity to chase a girlish dream. And what came of it?" Caroline demanded, waiting for Pamela to speak of her disastrous failure and how she regretted her impulsive nature.
"I'm engaged," Pamela said dryly. She didn't look at Lorna as she said it. She hated lying to Lorna.
Almost instantly, Caroline's nostrils flared and her night mask cracked. She threw her hands to her hips, her hair flopping out of the curlers. She uttered a word crude enough to startle all the mafia in New York State and pinned Pamela with her glare.
"You are what?"
"Engaged Mother, to be married," Pamela repeated, marvelling at the switch between them. Caroline Kelly had always been the one to make her daughter squirm, not the other way around.
"To whom?" Caroline exclaimed, pacing into the parlour.
Pamela and Lorna followed her in. Caroline perched herself on the edge of the sofa in the living room, rubbing her lean fingers against her temples to soothe herself.
"Johnny Siciliano," Pamela folded her hands into her cardigan pockets, "I met him when I was a salesgirl."
"An Italian fellow? Really, Pamela Anne?" Caroline agonized, rocking back and forth like a woman in mourning. "From Sicily, no doubt. Your father and I vacationed there in fifty-two. They were wretched, poor people, begging for crumbs on every street corner and cathedral step."
Pamela wanted to point out to her mother World War II had induced the poverty in Italy when the country had been left toiling in economic and social trauma. If she kept up with current events more or studied basic history, she would know better.
"Your parents resented Father for being Irish, yet you married him." Pamela reminded her mother instead.
Caroline rolled her eyes, ignoring her obvious hypocrisy. "This can still be fixed. Timothy has been going steady with a girl from the rotary club named Betsy something, but his mother disapproves of the match. She hasn't the connections. Your disappearance will be forgiven, and the wedding can come about this May."
Pamela maintained a safe distance from her mother, Johnny's instructions clear in her mind. "He has money, Mother."
The words were a balm for Caroline's grief, and she rose, waltzing across the room to her daughter. "How much?"
"His income must be at least sixty-thousand a year." Pamela was guessing because she did not know how much Johnny made. She knew her father made around that, or more. But as a salesgirl, she had hardly made five thousand.
"Well, I won't believe it until I see him in the flesh." Caroline sniffed, dabbing the skin beneath her eyes with her manicured fingers. Pamela noticed that her wedding ring was missing, the one with the behemoth of a diamond and the little sapphires.
"He wants to come for brunch tomorrow morning."
"I suppose you'll be staying then," Caroline said, her lips thin and pursed but her blue eyes wide and clear. If Pamela wasn't mistaken, she saw a kind of longing there.
"Yes, Mother," Pamela replied. "I will stay here with you and father."
"I shall send for your father in the morning." Caroline nodded, a vague affection glistening in her eyes before she whirled around.