Bad Girl (Delmar)/Chapter 9
Eight subway stations from Harlem and up four flights of stairs, Dot found her ideal apartment. Not right away, of course. First there had been a week of terrible discouragement and unbelievable weariness. But that was forgotten now. She and Eddie were firmly ensconced in their home.
Dot had liked the house at first sight. She had admired the big orange lights which hung outside and the way the building was divided into two parts. There was space for fifty families in the building, twenty-five on each side. The janitress was a terrible woman and easily nettled, but one couldn't have everything—and the apartment was so adorable.
There were five apartments on each floor. The Collinses had the middle one, and it lay behind a lovely reddishbrown door. Of course it was on the top floor, but then neither Dot nor Eddie minded the stairs. Dyckman Street was just around the corner and Two Hundred and Seventh Street a few blocks away.
What Dot liked best about the apartment was that it had no hall. She hated apartments with halls. Nobody would be mean enough to count the place which could be crossed with one large step a hall.
And the living-room was right there, in front of the one large step. Dot thought it a very large living-room, considering that her apartment was only three rooms. The room was thirteen feet by eleven and had one nice, large window which looked on the street. It annoyed her a little that she couldn't see much of the street because the gray wings of the house jutted out on either side, but she consoled herself with the thought that she could see who was passing her door.
Dot had "done" her living-room in delft blue. There were blue voile curtains at the window. Delft-blue voile. Dot had made them herself, and she was well pleased with the window.
It irritated her that the rug wasn't delft blue, but still it was awfully nice in its reddish-greenish-tannish way. Dot had never before seen such plump roses, and they were tan roses, too, but the rug had been Edna's, thus erasing all doubt of their authenticity.
Dot was doubtful about the golden-oak table. Ought it be square? Oh, well, it was square, and she didn't know anything that could be done about it except to keep an ecru cover on it and in the center a little fern that almost looked real.
One of the chairs was golden oak, too, and it beamed with a sickly yellowish smile upon its partner who was only mission wood.
There was a Morris chair. The cushions on it wrere not delft blue. They were bottle green and a little worn, but Dot didn't mind that. She thought Eddie wouldn't be nearly so comfortable in a stiff new chair.
Catty-cornered in the southwest corner was a table. Edna's mother-in-law had got it from her mother-in-law as a wedding present. Dot liked it least of all the things in the room. It was so terribly heavy and old-fashioned. She had Eddie's radio set on it, so people wouldn't notice that the table was a hundred and fifty years old.
Of course there was a sofa. It was cherry-wood and not upholstered in delft blue. It had a pale gray background and was brocaded with tiny pink buttercups. It was a very comfortable sofa. The first day in the new apartment, Dot had made Eddie lie on it and had asked if he could honestly say that he had ever encountered a more comfortable one. There was a bridge lamp beside the sofa. It had a black iron base and a charming shade upon which was the silhouette of a geisha being obligingly carted about town in the silhouette of a jinrickshaw.
Against the opposite wall was a chest of drawers where Dot kept the dining-room and kitchen linen. It was chestnut and had knobs which, as though they themselves were not adequate for their jobs, provided little metal pulls on their neat rounded ends.
The wall paper was unfortunately not delft blue. The landlord had of course given Dot her choice of several samples, but inasmuch as there was not a delft blue in the collection, she had chosen sand color.
Edna said that sand color was a good background for pictures; so Dot had to have pictures. She dumped a photograph of her brother Jim out of a gilt oval frame and replaced it with a shiny green likeness of Pola Negri cut from a movie magazine. Then there was the picture that Edna had had taken of herself and Floyd while Floyd was still young enough to be manageable. Whistler's "Magnolia Tree" was Sue Cudahy's contribution to the living-room. A plaster-of-paris plaque of a Gibson girl in linen duster, veil, and goggles gave a hint of the esthetic pursuits of Edna's youth.
Dot's heart had been set on candlesticks. There's something dressy about mahogany-stained candlesticks with tall, imposing candles. On the day that she made these purchases, the Woolworth had been out of delft blue candles; so she had taken pale green ones.
The pictures and the candles were indeed big factors in the success of the living-room, but Dot felt that not enough credit was given the chandelier. It belonged to the house, of course, and Dot tried not to think that she might some day move away from it. It was a white bowl supported by a thick brass chain and nicely finished off with a row of white glass lace. It hung a little low, Dot thought; two links shorter, and Eddie might have saved himself that nasty crack on the forehead.
All in all, the living-room was very satisfactory, in fact, quite lovely. Thinking it over from an unprejudiced angle, Dot decided that she hadn't made a mistake in "doing" it in delft blue.
The kitchen was of course much smaller than the living-room. Dot liked a small kitchen. It saves a great many steps, and this one had the advantage of opening right out from the living-room. There was a swinging door between. Dot hoped Eddie hadn't seen her swinging the door back and forth and back and forth again for the sole purpose of watching it work.
There was a big white sink, and Eddie had bought a fixture which, when attached to the faucets, made it possible to warm the cold water or cool the hot water. It was just an ordinary black gas stove the Collinses had, but it roasted beautifully. The ice box had been relined when they moved in. It would have cost ten dollars to cover the floor with linoleum; so Dot had decided on oil cloth. They had saved four and a half dollars that way, and Eddie had varnished the entire surface, which was bound to make it last even longer than linoleum. It was a pretty pattern, blue and white squares. The kitchen window looked out on the rear. It had a little white curtain with a checkered gingham edge. There was a shelf above the tub, and four dazzling white canisters sat thereon. The largest was labeled "Flour" and the smallest "Tea." The two between were the sugar canister, which could accommodate four pounds without discomfort, and the coffee canister, which could accommodate two pounds with terrible discomfort. There was the salt box there, too, the pepper box, and many other boxes, jars, and cans.
Behind the cupboard doors Dot kept her set of dishes, of course. There was a bowl of fruit on the little white table that stood so self-consciously between its two white chairs. It knew it shouldn't be there with its chairs telling the wicked secret that Dot and Eddie frequently took their meals in the kitchen. Dot often gave the table an admiring glance so that it shouldn't feel too bad. The bread box on the built-in sideboard matched the canisters. Oh, triumph of domestic art! It was white, and upon it in blue letters ran the legend "Bread and Cake." Woe be unto the infidel who tried to push past the smart sliding door an unwanted pie.
Beneath the bread box were two drawers. In one lay the good cutlery in pomp and splendor upon a yard of green velveteen. In the other were the kitchen knives and forks, the coffee-strainer, egg-beater, pancake-turner, potato knife, wooden spoon, and mixed in with these little industrious utensils, bewildered and dazed, were a mess of grid leaks, discarded dials, odds and ends of wire, a burnt-out "C" battery, an insulator, and a tube that had once been a darn good detector. Underneath, in the closet where the shining aluminum pots, pans, percolator, and electric iron made their home, Eddie had hidden all the parts of dismantled radio sets that were too big to fit in the drawer.
To feast her eyes on her bedroom Dot had to return through the living-room. She had to walk out into that little place that could hardly be called a hall and then walk right past the door that led to the outside and turn quickly around a little angle, and there she was in the bedroom. It had two windows. These looked right smack across twenty-five feet into somebody else's bedroom, but Dot didn't look, except straight down with her head to the left side, and then she could see the street again just as she did from the living-room.
There were pink voile curtains at these windows, but Dot hadn't made them. Bedroom curtains are nicer when they're all frilly and ruffly. It was the ruffliness that had scared Dot out of making them. She had bought them from the department store at Two Hundred and Seventh and Broadway. Two and a quarter a pair.
Coming at one from the center of the north wall was the bed. A full-size, bird's-eye maple bed with carved scroll-work in two places. It had three pillows; Dot liked two and Eddie liked one. The spread was just plain white. To Dot there was something touching about that white spread. It seemed so wistfully envious of the beautiful pink curtains, so sure that no one could ever admire it while the breezes insisted upon making lovely, delicate sails out of the pink voile curtains. Dot always patted the spread lovingly.
The rug was leaf green with, Dot thought, pineapples in it. She decided to refer to them as "figures." If she called them pineapples Edna might think she didn't like them. When Dot sat down on a maple-wood chair she was able to see under the bed where there was a worn spot in the rug, but—comforting thought—few people sat on the maple-wood chair. Another chair was upholstered in yellow brocade and absolutely smirked with self-satisfaction.
Dot admired Eddie's chiffonier terribly. It was chestnut, because chestnut was the only wood that Martin Driggs knew by name and he had been badgered into choosing his own chiffonier. A matting-covered chest stood in one corner of the room. It held some of the bedroom linens and towels. The overflow was accommodated in Eddie's chiffonier. Eddie, statistics proved, could do nicely with two drawers and a laundry bag.
Dot frequently opened the door of her closet. It had a large wooden arm, stretched between its walls, which held her dresses in neat array. Her hats and shoes stood on the shelf above. There was no sign of Eddie there except a pair of discarded shoes which he hadn't yet accustomed himself to the idea of throwing out. A cretonne-covered box on the floor was where Dot kept her more intimate garments. She had no bureau, chiffonier, or chest of drawers. Instead she had what Mrs. Williams had suggested Eddie should give her in honor of their first home, a vanity table, a frail, mahogany-stained, trimirrored vanity table with two shallow little drawers and knots of forget-me-nots painted helter-skelter with fine disregard of balance. It was Dot's pride and joy.
Sometimes when her work was all done, she'd go whisking about the apartment, patting the white spread, smiling at the kitchen table, and admiring her blue voile curtains. Even the bathroom with its sparkling white tub and perfectly workmanlike shower bath came in for its share of praise.
Dot would stand on the little blue bath mat and study the gleaming white tiles surrounding it. And sometimes she would suddenly burst into song, and other times she felt as though she'd just like to cry.