The Shining Girls

Alice ^{1 DECEMBER 1951}

‘Alice Templeton?’ he says, not sounding sure.

‘Yes?’ she turns.

It is the moment she has been waiting for her whole life. She has played it out in the cinema in her head, rewound the reel, played it again and again.

He steps into the chocolate factory and all the machines grind to a halt in mechanical sympathy, and all the other girls look up as he strides towards her and dips her low, and before he presses his mouth against hers and takes her breath away, he says, ‘I told you I’d come back for you.’

Or he leans rakishly across the cosmetics counter, while she is applying rouge to some society lady who will spend more money on a lipstick than she earns in a week and say, ‘Excuse me, miss, I’ve been searching all over for the love of my life. Can you help me?’ And he will reach out his hand for her and she will climb over the counter, past the tutting matron. He will spin her round in his arms and set her on her feet, looking at her in delight, and they will run through the department store, hand-in-hand and laughing, and the security guard will say, ‘But, Alice, you’re still on shift,’ and she will unclip her gold name-tag and fling it at his feet and say, ‘Charlie, I quit!’

Or he will walk into the secretarial pool and say, ‘I need a girl! And she’s the one.’

Or take her hands and lift her gently from scrubbing the diner floors like Cinderella on her knees (never mind that she used a mop) and say, with terrible tenderness, ‘There’s no need for that now.’

She was not expecting him to come to her while she was tramping to work. She wants to weep with relief. But also frustration, because she is so awfully unglamorous at this moment. She has a scarf tied over her hair to hide that it’s unwashed and limp. Her toes are frozen inside her boots. Her hands are chapped, her fingernails bitten. She’s barely wearing any make-up. Having a job where you talk on the phone all day means people only judge her by her voice. ‘Sears Wish Book sales, what would you like to order?’

She once had a farmer phoning in to order a new tachometer for his John Deere who ended up proposing to her. ‘I could wake up to that in my ear,’ he declared. He begged her to see him when he next came up to the city, but she laughed him off. ‘I’m not all that,’ she said.

Alice has had bad encounters before with men who were expecting her to be more and less than what she is. Some good ones too, but usually when they already knew what they were letting themselves in for, and usually only for brief passionate clinches. She wants ‘A Sunday Kind of Love’, as the song goes. One that lasts past the gin-flavored kisses of Saturday night. Her longest relationship was ten months and he kept breaking her heart and coming back. Alice wants more. She wants it all. She’s been saving up to go to San Francisco where it’s easier, the rumors say, for women like her.

‘Where have you been?’ She can’t help herself. She hates the petulance that comes rushing into her voice. But it’s been over ten years of waiting and hoping and reprimanding herself for pinning her dreams on a man who kissed her once at a county fair and then vanished.

He smiles, rueful. ‘I had things I had to do. They don’t seem so important now.’ He links his arm in hers and turns her round in the other direction towards the lakefront. ‘Come with me,’ he says.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To a party.’

‘I’m not dressed for a party.’ She stops and wails, ‘I’m a frump!’

‘It’s a private affair. Just the two of us. And you look wonderful.’

‘So do you,’ she says, flushing, and lets him lead her down towards Michigan. She knows with a pure certainty that it won’t matter to him. She could see that in the way he looked at her back then, all those years ago. And it’s still in his eyes, bright desire and acceptance.