Glitter

This piece is part of the saga of the Troy Hill ladies--Georgie, Looey, Emma, and Kate--who have been friends since high school back in the late 60's. They are now in their late 50's and all face life changes that are challenging and difficult. Georgie is facing bankruptcy and the revelation of a secret that may sever her lifelong friendship with the girls. Here, she looks back on an earlier traumatic event in her life, hoping to find some encouragement to face the problems confronting her now.

I’m sitting on the fire escape of my fourth floor walk-up in Red Hook, a waterside community in Brooklyn. It’s too cold to be sitting here on this early evening in April because the breeze from the East River is brisk and chilling. But I can’t go back inside because as cold as it is out here, it feels better than the suffocating heat inside that blasts out from the old pre-war radiators whose valves are frozen and stuck on high. I’m nineteen years old, or almost 19, my birthday is just a two months away, and the love of my life, my husband of just barely eight months, has left me with nothing but an apartment I can’t pay for and the $20 bill he gave me for groceries on Monday.

I don’t understand what’s happened, but I’m as lonely and forsaken as I’ve ever been in my life. As I sit here shivering, the biting cold seems like a just punishment, something I deserve for being so impulsive and foolish, for eloping with Buddy only six weeks after meeting him, for thinking my life couldn’t start until I got out of Troy Hill, for being so sure at 18 that I knew exactly what I was doing.

Whatever sureness I had then, I don’t have now. I don’t know what to do. I wish I could talk to mama and daddy, but I’m so ashamed and scared. And what would I tell them? I can’t explain it to myself, much less to them. All I know is Buddy is gone and I’m broke and alone.

I don’t know where he is or why he left, but I think he’s in trouble. The afternoon he left, he rushed in from work, saying, “Georgie, there’s a crisis in this deal I’m working on and I’ve got to leave town for a few days.” He grabbed his suitcase and started throwing clothes in it. Then he panicked because he was looking for something in his desk that he couldn’t find, yanking drawers out and throwing the contents around. “God damn it, God damn it. Where is it?”

“What are you looking for Buddy? Let me help.”

"Nothing, no, just something. It was here; I know it was here, but I can’t find it.”

“Oh, well, sweetie, I’ve been cleaning out the closets and reorganizing everything. I’ve done all the cabinets, alphabetized the books in the bookcase, and yesterday I cleaned out the desk.”

Buddy jerked around. “You what?” he shouted. “Where did you put everything?”

“It’s all there, honey. I just put all the papers in folders and straightened everything up? Tell me what you’re looking for and I’ll help you find it.”

“Georgie,” he gritted, “don’t ever touch my things, ever again. Where are the papers and my passport that were in this drawer? Where are they?”

 “I put them all in an envelope in the bottom drawer. But Buddy, I wanted to ask you about them. It was really strange because there were all sorts of identification cards with different names on them. I wondered what you were doing with them.”

He flung open the drawer, grabbed the envelope, and spit at me, “Don’t mess with my things, Georgie.”

He picked up his bags and started for the door. Then put them down, grabbed me, kissed me on the top of my head, and said, “I’m sorry, Georgie. Take care.”And then he was gone. That was two days ago and he hasn’t come back. What’s worse…I don’t think he is coming back.

 A steady stream of cars creeps across the Brooklyn Bridge, the headlights casting an eerie glow along the water below. It was just last September that Buddy took me on my first walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.  Like so many other lovers before us, we fastened a padlock on the wire struts and threw the key into the East River below to symbolize that our love was forever, could never be broken. We strolled down the bridge, stopping now and then to look closely at an occasional padlock that caught our attention. They came in all sizes. Some couples had engraved their names on the locks, while others had painted their names, and one lock was entwined with a faded bouquet that dangled and bobbed in the wind blowing over the bridge.

I guess Buddy and I had what some would call a whirlwind romance, more like a hurricane romance as I think about it now. I had just graduated high school and was working in the Troy Hill bookstore, marking time until I decided whether I wanted to go to college or not.  Buddy breezed in one afternoon, tall, handsome, and energetic with a gorgeous smile. “Hey Red, where’d you get all that gorgeous copper-colored hair?” he’d asked. “You must be a Scot. I need a book on local history and a date for dinner tonight. Can you help me out?”

We started talking and before I knew it, it was quitting time and I was having dinner at Almondine, Troy Hill’s finest and, for that matter, its only French restaurant. Buddy was telling me his life story, how he was on a special temporary project for his land development company in New York City and would be in the Troy Hill area for the next month or two.  We were together every minute I wasn’t working from that point on. He never did get that book on local history he asked about. He never even mentioned it again.

Looking back, trying to remember that summer now, everything seems so blurred. It all happened so quickly. But one memory is clear and it echoes in my head— mama’s comment after she met Buddy for the first time. Oh, she’d made me so mad.

I was spending all my free time with Buddy and finally daddy said he thought he and mama should get a chance to get to know my new prince charming, so I invited Buddy to dinner. He was the star of the night; he twinkled and shone as bright as these stars winking above me here in Brooklyn. We never quit laughing all night. He kept everyone giggling with all his stories and crazy experiences. He’d been all over the world or so it seemed. He had stories about Paris and London and New York City.

“You’re an awful young fellow to have travelled around so much,” Daddy said at one point. “How old are you?”

Buddy said he was just 25, but he’d been a military brat and his father had been stationed in a lot of foreign countries. Daddy asked him about his work, and Buddy told him about the temporary assignment he was on looking for possible land acquisitions for his company. He said he’d be returning to the New York City offices in about six weeks for a new project scheduled to get underway in the fall, but that he’d fallen in love with Troy Hill and didn’t want to think about leaving.

Then, he looked at me, winked, and said, “I’ve fallen for everything about Troy Hill, haven’t I, Georgie?”

I blushed and rose to help mama clear the table. Isn’t he wonderful, I’d demanded of mama as we washed up the dinner dishes?  Isn’t he just the handsomest, most charming, intelligent, sophisticated, fun-loving, witty man you’ve ever met? I asked?

 “Well, Georgie,” she said. “He sparkles and shines all right. I never heard a man so full of funny stories and wild tales in my life. I don’t know how he managed to eat his dinner. It seemed like he never stopped talking long enough to swallow.”

“Oh, I know, mama,” I crowed. “He’s so interesting and so smart. There’s never a dull moment. He’s been everywhere and done everything and he’s only 25. And to think, he just adores me. He says he’s never, ever met a girl like me and, you know, mama, as handsome as he is, he must have met a lot of girls. I must be the luckiest girl in the world.”

Mama was washing the dinner dishes and I was drying. She stopped with her hands sunk deep in the soapy water. For just a brief moment, I thought I saw her swallow hard, almost like something was stuck in her throat. Then, she turned to me with that look that I call her “teacher” look, the one I know her high school English students must dread as much as I do. It’s when she gets real serious, lowers her head, peeks over the top of her glasses, and stares you down.

She took her soapy hand, pulled my chin toward her so we were eye to eye, and said, “Georgie, my girl, just remember that all that glitters is not gold. Don’t go losing your head now. Keep your feet on the ground.”

Oh, how furious I was with her for issuing her usual warnings and cautions with that school teacher sternness, dragging out her tired old aphorisms and clichés—she had one for every situation in the world and I was sick to death of them. I couldn’t wait to get out of Troy Hill. I didn’t think I could stand one more minute of living in that house and listening to mama: “You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.”

All that glitters isn’t gold, my eye, I thought.

I huffed out of the kitchen, telling mama, “You wait and see, mama. He is solid gold. He is!”

I couldn’t resist throwing one of her sayings back in her face. “Besides, you can’t learn to swim if you never get in the water.” I don’t even know what I meant by that. But mama just turned back to the dishes.

“That’s true Georgie,” she said. And then I thought I heard her say under her breath as I flounced out of the kitchen, “Oh my, love is so blind.”

I was so angry. I made up my mind to show mama that she was wrong. Maybe that’s why when Buddy asked me to marry him, I didn’t even think twice. I couldn’t wait to tell mama and daddy, but Buddy said we should wait awhile and let them get used to him. The next week, he told me he had to return to New York and he couldn’t bear to go without me.

“Let’s get married, Georgie, right now. We won’t tell anyone. We’ll just elope and you can come to New York City with me. We’ll call your parents and friends when we get there. We’ll have a big party in the fall and everyone can come and celebrate, but let’s just do it now.”

So, for three more days, barely able to contain my excitement, I quit my job, telling the owner I had decided to go to college, but that I wanted to surprise my parents so not to tell anyone I was quitting. One afternoon while mama was shopping and daddy was at work, I took my bags and hid them in the bushes by the driveway and waited for Buddy. We took off for San Francisco, got married at the courthouse, and I took my first airplane trip with Buddy to New York City.

I don’t think mama and daddy, not to mention Emma, Looey, and Kate, are over the hurt even now of my running away. But I wasn’t thinking about them. I could only think about Buddy and a life in New York City. I was a selfish, foolish young girl, but I was in love and what we do for love often has no rhyme or reason to it.

How I miss all of them now—mama, daddy, Burt, my brother, and the girls. I want to call mama, but I haven’t talked to her much since Christmas and things here in Brooklyn began to get so confusing. I even quit calling Emma, Looey, and Kate once things started changing here. I was confused and I knew they’d feel it, they’d know something was wrong, and they’d want to know. The problem was that I didn’t know what was wrong. Didn’t even know if things were wrong. I just knew things had changed.

And things had changed so quickly. Buddy and I went from eating out in fancy restaurants, going to Broadway plays, taking weekend jaunts to Atlantic City, visiting all the famous city sights, walking at night holding hands, stopping for after-dinner drinks at the bar down the block—to well, I don’t know, what it turned into, but all of a sudden Buddy was in a terrible mood. He quit going into work at all, just lay around the apartment for a few weeks. He said things were slow at the office and he was waiting for another project assignment. Then all of a sudden, he changed again. He’d shower, shave and leave for the office by 8 a.m. He said he had a big deal working and was really busy. He said he might even have to leave town for a few days in a couple of weeks, but didn’t know for sure yet. He worked all the time, didn’t come back until late at night and didn’t call when he was late.  When I asked about this big deal, he was vague and said it was confidential, that he couldn’t talk about it right now.   

“Confidential,” I’d complained. “I’m your wife for heaven’s sake. You can’t tell me what’s going on? Come on Buddy, please tell me. It must be exciting. You spend so much time on it and I don’t have much to do here, so let me live vicariously. Tell me about it.”

“Ah, Georgie,” he’d suddenly turn playful and fun again. “Give me a kiss and remember all things in good time. You’ll know soon enough.”

“You sound just like my mother,” I said. “She’s always telling me things like that—hold your horses, Georgie. I can just hear her now; a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, all the glitters isn’t gold, blah, blah, blah.”

I guess I was so starry-eyed, so newly married, so inexperienced with men and married life that I didn’t think to question how up and down Buddy had been. We’d had plenty of money, at least at first. Buddy spent freely and all I had to do was ask and he’d take out his wallet and give me whatever I asked for. Then about Christmas, just about the time Buddy started staying gone all day and late into the night, money got tight. 

We stopped going out for dinner all the time and I decided to learn to cook to save money. I didn’t tell Buddy, but I opened an account at the grocery store down the block where I shopped. They delivered the groceries for me and that was convenient. I started reading magazines for recipes and tried a few meals now and then. But Buddy wasn’t home for dinner too often, so I was mostly cooking for myself. Then the monthly bill from the grocer came and Buddy hit the ceiling.

“But I’m trying to save us money by learning to cook, Buddy,” I explained. “It’s just that I’m not very good yet and sometimes I don’t buy the right ingredients the first time and have to get others or sometimes I buy way too much and can’t use it all. But I’m learning, really I am. You haven’t been home much, but don’t you like what I’ve fixed so far?”

Buddy looked abashed and gave me a hug.

“Sorry, Georgie. It’s just that I can’t have any unexpected expenses right now.  This new project is taking a lot of investment capital and all the fellows are kicking in to make it go. I don’t have time for dinner at home very often, so why don’t you just plan soup and sandwiches from now on. That way if I’m not here, you don’t waste a lot and it won’t cost so much. Just for a while, Georgie.”

That’s the way it’s been for the past few months. Tuna fish sandwiches and chicken noodle soup, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, now and then a BLT if I splurge and buy bacon. Buddy gives me $20 every Monday and I’ve been making it on that for the week. But even with money tight, I was happy and I thought Buddy was happy. I knew he was busy and preoccupied, sometimes he was a little grumpy and short with me, but I was proud to see him work so hard and take his job so seriously, putting so much time and effort into it. And at night when he got home, he’d crawl into bed, grab me close, and kiss my neck. Sometimes, I even thought I heard him whisper, “I love you, Georgie girl.” So, I never saw it coming, never imagined that he would leave, that this could happen. I just don’t understand.

The sky is so clear and the stars so glittery tonight, but the breeze is picking up and chilling me to the bone. I take a last look at the night sky and step through the window to the apartment. I shouldn’t spend the money, but I think I’ll go down to the corner cafe and get a hamburger tonight. I need to get out of this apartment for a while.

My purse is on the table. I pull out my wallet and open it to take out the $20 bill. But instead the pocket is stuffed with money and clipped with a paper clip. I count it and there’s $300 here. Underneath the paper clip is a note from Buddy.

“Georgie girl, take care. This is all there is. You deserve more, but it’s the best I can do. Love, Buddy.”

I finger the crisp new bills and carefully place them back in the pocket of my wallet. I pick up my purse and sling it over my shoulder. I turn once before going out the door and look out the window. The only thing left glittering now are those stars in the night sky outside my window.