“Where is she?” His eyes looked as wild as Margaret felt, strained and worried, but the rest of his collected demeanor demonstrated the reliability that she’d always appreciated in him.
“They wheeled her away. They said we can wait on the fourth floor and they’ll bring us news when they have some.”
* * *
“Hey, doll.”
Sharp needles of pain shot through Margaret’s back as she untangled her limbs from a most awkward position. She rubbed her eyes and Gladys came into view.
Where was she?
The hospital! Had she slept through the baby’s birth?
She stood up on wobbly legs and Gladys pulled her into her arms to steady her.
“Did I miss it?” Margaret asked.
“Nah. Dottie wouldn’t dare have a baby while you were asleep. Things slowed down for her as quickly as they’d sped up.”
“What time is it?”
“Just past midnight.”
She remembered now. George had brought her a cold chicken dinner from the cafeteria and magazines from a nearby newsstand. She hadn’t been able to read a word. Even the one with Lauren Bacall on the cover, reminding her of Gladys’s time at the Stage Door Canteen. Instead, she’d watched George pace for hours and hours.
She pulled away from Gladys and looked around. George had at last retreated to the couch across the room, his long frame curled into a ball.
“How did you know to come here?” Margaret whispered.
“Sometime while you were getting your beauty rest, George called the party line at my building incessantly until someone picked up and agreed to leave a note on my door.”
“Is Oliver with you?”
Gladys shook her head, and her curls, flattened from the length of the day, looked as if they, too, had endured much. “He wanted to write his story while it’s fresh in his mind. He’ll join us later.”
Margaret grinned. “Soooo did you have a nice day?”
Gladys shrugged. “If you call it ‘nice’ to spend hours and hours among dusty shelves at the NYPL and being told more than once to shush by a male librarian who wouldn’t know his behind from a cantaloupe, then yes.”
“I mean with Oliver.” Margaret pursed her lips together to keep from giggling.
“Sure, then. It was a nice day.”
“You’re a sphinx.”
“What do you want me to say? That we’re in love and I want to get married and have his babies?”
“Don’t you?”
Gladys sat down in the chair nearest her and Margaret collapsed back onto the sofa. “Marriage, maybe. Maybe.” She held her hand up to signal stop. “Which is more of a concession than you’ve ever gotten from me. Or ever will. But babies, no. I’ll leave that to the Dotties and Margarets of the world.”
“That’s progress, at least.”
She shrugged. “For someone who believes that’s the natural course of life, then perhaps. Whatever you want to call it.”
They glanced over at George, who resembled a Coney Island pretzel. Margaret recalled a conversation they’d had while they were waiting for news.
“Speaking of marriage and the natural progression of things, he told me while we were waiting that he wants to marry Dottie.”
“That’s nothing new.”
Margaret leaned over the arm of the chair. “No, really. It’s more than words. He bought a ring and everything. Spared no expense on a top-tier diamond—wait till you see it. A half-carat round, set in a gold band with beveled edges. I know he could have afforded an even more dazzling setting, but he had the discretion to know that her head isn’t turned by such things.”
Margaret smiled at the thought.
“He…he asked for my permission,” she continued.
She wouldn’t have thought anything could surprise Gladys, but her eyes widened and then narrowed. “What did you say?”
Margaret folded her arms and sat back in the chair, remembering how kind and sincere George seemed when he spoke to her. About how much he’d loved John and could never replace him. How he knew he’d always be second in Dottie’s heart. But that even so, he wanted to take care of her—and the baby—for the rest of his life. “I told him that the only thing that would make me happier is hearing that mother and baby came out of the delivery good and healthy.”
“What do you think Dottie will say?”
Margaret shrugged. “I don’t know. She and John—there are few people who get to have what they had. But George—she would never have to work again. Or worry about her parents turning her out. It makes a certain kind of sense.”
“You don’t think she’d marry him just for that, though, would she? Haven’t women prostituted themselves for enough centuries just for name and security?”
“Gladys! It’s not like that for her and you know it.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. Maybe deep down I have a little romantic bone that wants to see her marry for love.”
“It’s your stapes.”
“My what?”
“Your stapes. It was one of the words in the New York Times and I haven’t gotten to use it yet. It’s your middle-ear bone. The smallest bone in the human body. That’s your tiny little-engine-that-could romantic bone.”
Gladys rolled her eyes and fanned her hands at Margaret.
“And what’s it for? So he can whisper sweet nothings in my ear just like they do in the novels?”
“You said it, not I,” teased Margaret. “But returning to Dottie, if she says yes, it will be for love. I’m certain of it. Just a different variety. A George love.”
George stirred and sat up and Margaret hoped he hadn’t heard them talking. He stretched his arms out and yawned. His glasses sat askew on his head and he pulled them down.
“Hey, Glads.”
“Hey, George. Thanks for calling in the note. No doubt the building inhabitants will want their pound of flesh from me, waking them up as you did. I understand that you were quite persistent.”
“Any time,” he said, ignoring her hyperbole.
“I hear you—”
Before Gladys could finish her sentence, a nurse came out and walked over to George.
“Congratulations! You have a baby girl. And you can come and see your wife now.”
* * *
Dearest William,
Things have been a whirlwind in the last few weeks. Dottie had her baby—a sweet little girl named Joanna Margaret. Isn’t that just beautiful? I am moved by how they incorporated John’s name into hers. It was George’s idea. Dottie had considered Rebecca—Beck for short—but I think Joanna is exactly the right name.
A nurse mistook George for Dottie’s husband, but he came back from seeing her a happily engaged man. I wouldn’t have thought a hospital room had an ounce of romantic air in it, certainly not enough for a proposal, but it turns out that Dottie was more smitten with him than she’d let on to any of us. She just hadn’t wanted to hurt me with that admission.
Oh, the secrets we keep. If only we let our feelings be known, especially to our best friends.
Dottie didn’t proffer how he’d gone about it and I didn’t ask. I guess if they are to be married, they are allowed some of those privacies.