31
Christina
Dr. O seemed tense at the office. Daisy was sweeping up more figurines than usual. Christina kept count of them. One day there were five dwarfs left on the shelf, and the next, only three. A few days later Daisy took her aside. “He can’t decide whether to take the offer to open a practice in Las Vegas or not. His friends are building a modern medical-dental center and they’re begging him to come. If he does, I’m willing to go with him. What about you, Christina—would you consider starting a new life after graduation?”
“You mean move to Las Vegas?”
“If he decides to go.”
“I don’t know. Jack would have to want to go, too.”
“You should tell him there will be great jobs for an electrician out there. Think of all the hotels they’re building.”
“But it’s so far away.”
“It is far away. I can’t deny that.”
“My parents…”
“I know. It’s hard to leave family behind.”
“They’d never agree to let me go.”
“But you’d have plenty of vacation time to come home and visit. And you could make it a two-year commitment, like going away to college, except instead of paying, you get paid. You’d make good money, too.”
“But I wouldn’t know anyone.”
“You’d know me. And Dr. O. And you and Jack would make new friends.”
“Jack is 1-A. He could get called up at any time.”
“Let’s hope that ridiculous war ends before then.”
“Daisy—can I tell you something? You’d have to keep it to yourself. I mean it, no one can know. But if I don’t tell someone, I’m going to explode.”
“You can trust me, Christina.”
“I know I can.”
Daisy waited for more.
Christina finally bit the bullet and blurted out, “Jack and I are secretly married. We eloped to Elkton.”
Daisy came out from behind her desk. “Oh, Christina.” She put her arms around her. “I hope you’ll be very happy.” Then, “You didn’t have to get married, did you?”
Christina laughed. “No. And that doctor you sent me to…he fitted me for a diaphragm so I won’t have to worry.”
“When are you going to tell your parents?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“Well, don’t say anything about Las Vegas yet. First, Dr. O has to make up his mind. But I have a feeling he’s going to do it, and I admit I’m kind of excited about going. I’m starting to feel like a pioneer.”
A pioneer, Christina thought. The Wild West. She’d have to learn to ride a horse, she supposed. The idea of it made her giddy.
Daisy
Christina and Jack were married! She knew Christina had something on her mind but a secret marriage had never occurred to her. She should have guessed. Hadn’t she done the same at Christina’s age—running off with Gerald Dupree, né Dorfman, to Elkton? Gerald Dupree. What a name. And Daisy Dupree—even better. A fabulous name, she’d thought at the time, a name fit for a stripper, or, even better, a movie star, which made her laugh—the only good thing that had come out of her hasty young marriage, annulled two weeks after they’d eloped.
But that was a lifetime ago. Gerry had been older, twenty-five to her eighteen. He’d been working for ten years by then, for the Stasio boys, number runners, then bootleggers. It was 1936, times were hard. She was a year out of Linden High School, where she’d won every award in the business program—for typing, steno, bookkeeping. She was lucky to find a job working as a secretary for an insurance agent in Newark. She wasn’t his número uno, as he called his longtime secretary, but he liked Daisy, admired her for her organizational skills. With her first paycheck she went for an eye exam, got prescription glasses and the difference in the way she could see felt like a miracle.
Tall, with perfect skin and thick dark hair cut short, a good body, excellent posture, Daisy could have passed for twenty-five. Her older sister, Evelyn, had taught her a thing or two about using makeup, about flirting.
She’d met Gerald Dupree at a lunch counter, where they’d both ordered split-pea soup. When their checks came he put down the fifteen cents to pay for hers. She married him on a whim, two months later.
She knew what to expect on her wedding night, but nothing beyond that. In a motel outside Elkton, Gerry became frustrated with her. “What’s going on down there?” he’d asked.
“How should I know?” she’d answered.
“I can’t get in.”
“I told you—I’m a virgin.”
“I’ve had my share of virgins, baby, but this is something else.”
He sent her to a doctor, who broke the news. She would never be able to have children, would never have normal sexual relations. She understood about not being able to have children. But what did she know about normal? What did she know about sexual relations? She didn’t ask questions, and the doctor didn’t offer explanations.
When she told Gerry she would not be able to have children he seemed more angry than disappointed. He didn’t hold her or kiss her or say he loved her anyway. “Did he tell you why you couldn’t have children?” he asked.
“Something about missing female body parts.”
“Jesus, body parts! What body parts? You mean you’re a freak? I married a freak? Did you know? You must have known.”
“I didn’t know.”
“How could you not have known? You tricked me into marrying you.”
“How did I trick you?”
“You gave me the come-on from day one. You were such a sexpot. Did you think I wouldn’t find out? What did you think would happen when…oh, Christ, never mind. We’ll get it annulled.”
“What’s ‘annulled’?”
“It means, since the marriage was never consummated—”
“What’s ‘consummated’?”
“We never had sex. Do you know what that means?”
She wasn’t an idiot. She just didn’t understand what was happening.
“So now we go back to the way it was before we went to Elkton,” he told her. “We go back to our lives before we met.”
“Can I keep your name?”
This made him laugh. “Dupree? You want to be Daisy Dupree?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck, Daisy! How’re you going to explain that to your family?”
“That’s my business.”
“Be my guest.”
—
AFTER THAT, she’d reinvented herself. She’d learned to throw back a Scotch, to straddle a chair, smoke a pack of Camels a day and laugh at off-color jokes. She even told a few herself.
When her brother-in-law, Mel, said, You’ve turned into a real broad, Daisy, she’d said, Good for me!
She became strong, even tough if she had to be, a woman who made friends with men but who never let it get romantic. She was done with all that, with girlish dreams of houses with picket fences and little children calling her “Mommy.” She was a female in every way but one. So she was missing some of her lady parts. So what? The doctor had referred to her as “juvenile” down there. Well, that was the only part of her that was juvenile. She’d never have to worry about why she wasn’t getting pregnant, the way her sister, Evelyn, did. Maybe Evelyn was missing lady parts, too. She hadn’t told Evelyn or anyone else about her condition.
She lived with Evelyn and Mel in the small house she and Evelyn had inherited from their father. When Mel was killed driving home one rainy night on Vauxhall Road, Daisy was there for her sister. After a few months she encouraged Evelyn to take a refresher course at Katharine Gibbs, using some of the insurance money she’d collected when Mel died. “Get a job,” Daisy told her. “You’ll feel better.”
But jobs were scarce. The insurance agent was sorry he had to let Daisy go but the Depression was taking its toll, as if she didn’t know. She learned to drive her father’s old car, which had been sitting in the garage since her father’s death. The mechanic down the street got it running in exchange for a few bags of groceries. She heard about a dental practice in Elizabeth, looking for an assistant. She was interviewed by the dentist and his wife. They hired her on the spot. They hoped things would improve soon, and when they did, they’d promised her a raise.
—
AFTER TEN YEARS working for Dr. O, he’d asked out of the blue, “I don’t mean to pry, Daisy, but how is it a beautiful, accomplished woman like you has never married?”
She’d burst into tears, surprising herself and Dr. O.
“There…there…” he’d said, holding her, patting her back the way her father might have.
She felt so safe with him, trusted him so completely, she told him about Gerald Dupree and her condition.
He took a minute to respond. “Would you like me to set up an appointment with a specialist for you?”
“Yes,” she said, surprising herself again. “I would.”
The specialist confirmed the first doctor’s findings. He gave a name to her condition, though she would never use it. She asked Dr. O to tell no one, not even his wife.