Three Women (20 page)

"What are you trying to say?" she rasped hoarsely.

"A lot of things all at once, I suppose. But you might as well know it. Byrne is dead."

The room began to spin. A slow nausea rocked inside Paula.

"When she left here today," Phil continued, "she phoned me from an outside booth. She said if I didn't hear from her again by six, I should go to Greta's place. And that I'd find you waiting here. I guess she knew somehow that Greta wouldn't go quietly to a sanitarium. She must have had a premonition." He took two cigarettes and lit one for Paula. "I suppose Greta had a gun hidden that Byrne didn't know about. When I got there, they were both—" He shrugged.

"I can't believe it! I won't believe it!" Paula strangled on the words she knew were futile. "Oh, my God," she choked. "And I wouldn't even smile for her when she left!" The echo of Byrne's voice came to her: "See you soon..."

She would never see Byrne again. Never. Hot and cold, the dizziness chased round and round in Paula.

"All she wanted was my faith and I wouldn't give it to her!" Her voice sounded thin and small like a little child's.

Byrne had gone to risk death at the hands of a mad woman. For Paula's sake, and Paula had denied her faith.

The room went suddenly black as Paula fainted.

When she opened her eyes, Phil was sitting beside her on the couch wiping her forehead with a damp cloth.

"Byrne trusted your courage,'' Phil said. "You're not going to let her down, are you?"

She fought to sit up but weakness held her down.

"I would live with Greta right here in this house if only it could bring Byrne back." Her voice was toneless.

"You didn't hear me," Phil said. "I said Byrne believed in your courage."

"I wish I were dead, too." Huge tearing sobs racked her. She put her head on Phil's lap and pounded his knees with white fists as if to beat her way through death's door to Byrne.

And so he held her until Paula could cry no more. Senseless from grief, she became as inanimate as a doll.

Phil gave her a sedative and put her to bed.

Yet Phil's words came to her even in sleep. "Byrne believed in your courage..."

She must not fail Byrne. She had failed her in life, but she must not fail her forever.

When she awoke, she let Phil feed her some hot broth. She must eat and regain her strength. She must live and live well. She must become the woman Byrne believed she was and could be.

"I don't suppose you’ll want to see me, at least for a while." Phil's voice interrupted her thoughts. "If you need anything, I'll be at the store." He scribbled the number on a piece of paper and placed it on the night table. "It might be good if you got out of this place."

Paula let him go, grateful inside her for his attention, but she could not bring herself to say so. And she was even more grateful that Phil didn't look upon her as a queer or something to be sneered at. The thought comforted her with its suggestion of large hope.

Days went by and she wouldn't leave the apartment. In time she learned Byrne had designated her chief beneficiary in her will, but the thought of wealth meant nothing to Paula. She touched pieces of Byrne's clothing and for the first time realized what her mother must have gone through when Pa died. But remembering what her mother had finally done, Paula took the suits and shirts and jackets, put them into a carton, and called the Salvation Army.

Time went by and one day Paula took a book off the shelf and drew a sketch with a pencil near the easel. She remembered the first time Byrne had posed for her nude and smiled at the memory of her fright and nervousness. She went out and replenished her supply of drawing pads.

The discipline of art brought her thoughts into focus. She worked hard, knowing what would have pleased Byrne, what would have brought reprimands, and almost hearing Byrne's comments.

On the flyleaf of one of the books, she saw the inscription: "Life is short, Art is long."

Yes, art was long. And her life was too short to lock it away with sketching.

Byrne was dead for the sake of Paula's life. Such a debt could either be a chain or a marker to new freedom. And Paula understood what Byrne would want.

* * *

Paula put on her coat and went to the paint store. Looking through the window, she saw her brother taking down a bag of cement and plopping it heavily on the counter. Smiling, she realized that Mike had strength she never even knew about. His expression was serious and adult as he spoke to a customer.

Paula sauntered in but Mike didn't see her right away. She waited until he had written out a sales slip.

"A gallon of white ceiling paint," she said.

He jerked his head up. For a second he didn't say anything and she saw that the patches of beard were clean-shaven on his face. Then a quick smile broke all over it.

"Geez," he said.

"You look great, Mike."

"Hey, Phil!" he called.

From the back room Phil came out wiping his hands on a cloth.

"Look what blew in," Mike said.

Phil's dimples dented into place. "Yeah, look," he said.

They both stood smiling at her as though she had just been elected president. She felt a slow stinging sensation and knew that her heart was alive again.

"This place is terrific," she said. "I didn't really imagine it was so large."

"Well, it's big business," Mike said. "What do you think, we work for peanuts?"

"Not on your life," she replied. "I know a smart operation when I see one."

"Look," Phil started. A warm glint twinkled in his black eyes. "I know an even smarter operation. Mike's taking me home for supper tonight. Why don't you come along and save a couple of dollars?"

Paula hesitated. But she wanted to see Ma. No matter what had happened, she had to show Ma that she had come out on top. And she had two people on her side already.

"Okay," she laughed. "I think you've got a deal" It was fifteen minutes to closing time. She waited while the two men cleaned up, and then they all took a cab home.

The familiar homey smell reached out to her as Mike opened the door. Head high, Paula stepped inside and spoke loudly to let her mother know that she was coming in.

Mike shouldered past her and said, "Say, Ma, look who's come to do the dishes."

The woman slowly turned from her position at the stove
.
She looked at Paula—not at the clothes or the make-up or the new hairdo, but deeply into her eyes.

Apparently what Ma saw there satisfied her. She let Paula come to her and kiss her on the cheek. The sweet odor of pomade drifted deliciously to her nostrils.

"So take your coat off and help me serve," Ma said in the old way that was better than any greeting.

* * *

In a few months, Paula began to find the Eleventh Street apartment too far away from the store. It took Phil more than thirty minutes to get there during rush hour. Busy with the prospect for improvements, he listened to her ideas for decorating and advertising. Sometimes she spent days at the place working out the suggestions she and Phil agreed on and drawing up new plans.

Then sometimes, they would go to the movies or for a drive and not talk about anything in particular at all.

The most natural thing in the world was Paula's decision to move uptown. Phil agreed to go apartment hunting with her.

After they'd looked at a few small places, Phil brought her to a five room apartment on Lexington Avenue. The sunny bedroom overlooked a garden and so did another room right beside it.

"What's this one for?" she asked him when the superintendent had left them alone to decide.

"That?" For the first time she saw how a dark-skinned person could blush. "That's the nursery."

And Paula laughed.

* * *

Some years later, when a little girl with dimples made her first crayon marks on the wall, Paula went out and got a large pad of drawing paper. She set it before the child and left her to scribble as she pleased. Smiling at a distant memory, she went to the closet and took down a heavy volume of anatomy for artists. On the flyleaf she read: "Life is short, Art is long." But she knew, with a mother's intuition, not to hurry her.

A new revolution was underway at the start of the 1940s in America—a paperback revolution that would change the way publishers would produce and distribute books and how people would purchase and read them.

In 1939 a new publishing company—Pocket Books—stormed onto the scene with the publication of its first paperbound book. These books were cheaply produced and, with a price of twenty-five cents on their light cardboard covers, affordable for the average American.

Prior to the introduction of the mass-market paperback, as it would come to be known, the literary landscape in America was quite different than what it is today. Reading was primarily a leisure-time pursuit of the wealthy and educated. Hardcover books were expensive and hard to find, so purchasing books was a luxury only the rich living in major metropolitan areas could afford. There simply weren’t many bookstores across the country, and only gift shops and stationary stores carried a few popular novels at a time.

The Pocket Books were priced to sell, however, and sell is what they did… in numbers never before seen. Availability also had a great effect on sales, in large part due to a bold and innovative distribution model that made Pocket Books available in drugstores, newsstands, bus and train stations, and cigar shops. The American public could not get enough of them, and before long the publishing industry began to take notice of Pocket Book’s astonishing success.

Traditional publishers, salivating at the opportunity to cash in on the phenomenal success of the new paperback revolution, soon launched their own paperback ventures. Pocket Books was joined by Avon in 1941, Popular Library in 1942, and Dell in 1943. The popular genres reflected the tastes of Americans during World War II—mysteries, thrillers, and “hardboiled detective” stories were all the rage.

Like many of the early paperback publishers, Dell relied on previously published material for its early books, releasing “complete and unabridged” reprints under different titles by established authors. Within a couple of years it was focused exclusively on mysteries, identifiable by the Dell logo on the cover—a small keyhole with an eye looking through it. Many of the Dell mysteries also featured a colored map on the back cover representing the various locations pertaining to the story’s crime. These “mapback” editions became extremely popular and by 1945, Dell was publishing four new books a month.

The new paperback industry was faced with some difficult challenges during World War II. In particular, the War Board’s Paper Limitation order placed serious restrictions and rations on the use of paper. Publishers began to worry whether they would have enough paper to satisfy both the civilian and military appetite for paperbacks. Manpower shortages and transportation difficulties were also proving to be difficult challenges. In response, some publishers—Pocket Books, for instance—reduced their publication schedules and reset their books in smaller type thereby reducing the number of pages per book. Others simply rejected longer books in favor of shorter ones.

In the end, World War II proved to be a boon to the emerging paperback industry. During the war, a landmark agreement was reached with the government in which paperbound books would be produced at a very low price for distribution to service men and women overseas. These books—Armed Services Editions, as they were called—were often passed from one soldier or sailor to another, being read and re-read over and over again until they literally fell apart. Their stories of home helped ease the soldier’s loneliness and homesickness, and they could be easily carried in uniform pockets and read anywhere—in fox holes, barracks, transport planes, etc. Of course, once the war was over millions of veterans returned home with an insatiable appetite for reading. They were hooked, and their passion for reading these books helped launch a period of unprecedented growth in the paperback industry.

The reading tastes of these veterans were directly reflected in the popularity of certain genres at the turn of the decade. In the mid- to late 1940s, mysteries, romance, thrillers, and hardboiled detective stories seemed to sell better. In the early 1950s new genres—science fiction, westerns, gay and lesbian, juvenile delinquent and “sleaze”, for instance—gained in popularity as readers were presented with stories never before seen in print. Publishers also came to realize that sex would sell books… lots of books. In a competitive frenzy for readers, they ditched their conservative and straightforward cover images for alluring covers that frequently featured a sexy woman in some form of undress, along with a suggestive tag line that promised stories of sex and violence within the covers. Before long, books with sensational covers had completely taken over the paperback racks and cash registers. To this day, the cover art of these vintage paperback books are just as sought after as the books themselves were sixty years ago.

Science fiction titles reflected the uncertain times during which they were written. The Cold War was just beginning, the threat of nuclear annihilation was on everyone’s mind, governments in Eastern Europe were falling to Communists, and Senator Joseph McCarthy was looking for “un-American activities” everywhere in the United States. Many science fiction stories in the early days of the paperback revolution were little more than soap operas or westerns set in space—good guys taking on bad guys while rescuing damsels in distress—that were short stories taken from the pulp magazines. In 1952, however, Ballantine Books changed all that by becoming the first paperback publisher to release novel-length science fiction stories that were sophisticated, intelligent and thematically serious. In 1953, Ballantine Book No. 41 was released—Ray Bradbury’s
Fahrenheit 451
—and the paperback’s science fiction genre launched like a rocket heading to Venus.

The popularity of this new genre wasn’t lost on new paperback publisher, Ace Books, which became known primarily for its publication of sci-fi titles. Not content with publishing one science fiction novel at a time, Ace came up with an interesting gimmick—the double novel. Priced at thirty-five cents, the “Ace Double” featured two paperback novels bound back-to-back with the back cover appearing upside-down in the racks. The stories contained within these “double” paperbacks were novellas or long short stories, rather than novels, but the reading public didn’t care—they loved getting two books for the price of one! The format also worked to the advantage of Ace Books, as they were able to combine the work of an unknown (and, therefore, less expensive) writer with that of a prominent and popular author. As a result, the careers of more than a few aspiring science fiction writers were launched via the innovative “Ace Double.”