The woman directed me to a parking spot under a large oak tree. When I opened the door, she asked, “Parker, four nights? I wondered where you were. I thought you may have changed your plans without letting me know.”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you Parker? Mrs. Helen Parker? Double for four nights?” She peered around me into the car. “You’re by yourself? What do you need the double room for? I have a full house tonight—I could use that double elsewhere if you can take a single.”
I could be anyone I wanted to be.
“A single would be fine.”
The woman told me to wait in the foyer while she got my key. Inside, people were scattered everywhere. Miles Davis floated from an unseen radio. In the large room to my left, a man sat at an easel in front of a tall window. A few others sat around him, lounging on various couches and chairs. Some smoked, one sipped on brown liquid in a highball glass. They all gestured wildly, pointing to the man’s canvas and out the window. The artist laughed and flicked a bit of paint at one of the women.
Down the hall in the kitchen, someone stood at the stove singing. Her back was turned, showing off dark hair hanging all the way down to her bottom.
The woman came back down the hall with a key in her hand.
“I’m Evelyn DeBerry. I’m the owner here, and I’ll give you a rundown of the rules.” She glanced at my gray-checked Christian Dior dress and black peep-toe heels. “Although it doesn’t look like you’ll give me any trouble.” She smiled at me, then gestured toward the group of people on the couches and rolled her eyes. “Beatniks.”
I knew I looked like a dutiful housewife. It was what I was expected to look like, and I’d never questioned it. Not really, anyway. But I was no longer dutiful. I had escaped, and my sense of liberation was powerful. Now, I felt more of a connection with the beret-wearing crowd on the couch than I did with Mrs. DeBerry, who sported pearls and rolled hair like mine, despite the age difference. I could feel the stares from those on the couch. “Oh, how sweet. June Cleaver in the flesh,” their smirks seemed to say.
As Mrs. DeBerry rattled off a list of rules, I looked past her into the living room again. A man I hadn’t seen at first sat among the artists. He wore dirty blue jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt. No beret, no cigarette, no brown liquid. But his blond hair was long. To his shoulders. For some reason, it caught me so off guard. I had to stop myself from crossing the room to touch it.
As I watched him in my peripheral vision, he turned to me. In response, my whole body turned toward him without my permission. In that never-ending moment, everything about me was reflected in his face—the way I looked on the outside and everything roiling around inside me that didn’t match my appearance. It was as if I’d been hollowed out.
Then the moment passed. He gave a small smile, pulling just a corner of his mouth upward, and rejoined the conversation around him. The encounter left me disoriented. I took a deep breath to slow my heart.
“Mrs. Parker, are you okay?”
It took me a moment to realize Mrs. DeBerry was talking to me. “I’m fine.”
I struggled to regain my composure. I glanced at the man again. His back was to us now. For all I knew, I had imagined it all.
5
MAGS
JANUARY 1960
Mrs. DeBerry led me upstairs to my room. It was large and filled with stuffy antiques—a mahogany rolltop desk, a Chippendale curio cabinet, and enough occasional tables to hold a dinner party’s worth of drinks. Mother would have loved it. Mrs. DeBerry stood at the door waiting, so I thanked her and told her it was lovely. Satisfied, she turned to go, then paused and stuck her head back in the door.
“The arty types just keep filling this place up. The worst part is, they don’t pay half the time! They feed me lines about money coming in—I know it’s all lies, but the bills keep coming, so I have to take whoever shows up. Henry never would have let this happen . . .” She trailed off, staring out the window.
I longed to finish unpacking, crawl into bed, and disappear for a while, but I didn’t want to be rude. I sat on the edge of the bed and waited.
“Let me know if anyone gives you any trouble. Mr. DeBerry may be gone—he passed away last year, God rest his soul—but I’m no pushover. I’ll kick them out in a heartbeat if they cause any problems for a regular guest.” She smiled at me like we were in this thing together, then left the room.
Mrs. DeBerry had taken one look at me and lumped me in with the “regular” people. I knew I looked the part, but I also knew what stirred deep in my soul. I wasn’t “regular” if it meant socializing only with those who had money and the right appearance and peering down my nose at anyone who fell outside the lines. Or if it meant sticking with a marriage that had crushed any dream I ever had about what marriage could be. Not anymore.