The Longings of Wayward Girls Read Online Free PDF Page B

the empty house, and then sit for hours in the living room reading, the dust motes and the warmth of the sun through the front window soothing. Mrs. sidelman’s library was composed of book-of-the-Month Club selections from the forties and fifties, and secondhand books with faded inscriptions: To Maureen, my little concubine, forever, Simon. sadie immersed herself in The Catcher in the Rye, Appointment in Samarra, The Sheltering Sky, the smell of the pages one she recognized from the town library, which she would come to learn later was a combination of chemical compounds formed from the disintegration of glue and paper and ink. she turned the yellowed pages carefully. she imagined where the books had been, who had read them, whose pencil had created the marginalia. sometimes she slipped into the kitchen and found food to eat—saltines with butter, a jar of sweet pickles. each day she explored more of the house, venturing upstairs to lie on Mrs. sidelman’s childrens’ abandoned beds like Goldilocks. From the master bedroom window she could see into Filley Farm’s pasture, and sometimes ray Filley himself with his dogs, the dogs running loose and fast between the pines. sadie had always been conscious of ray Filley, casting him as pretend characters in scenarios she’d dream up—as a british intelligence officer during world war II or a surly cowboy on a California ranch. but that summer she sat and watched him clap his hands for his dogs, brush his hair back, and imagined inviting him into Mrs. sidelman’s house. what they might do, or talk about, was always open to speculation, changing from day to day. sometimes, after ray disappeared, his younger sister, beth, would appear. laura loomis had been beth Filley’s best friend, and after laura went missing beth was taken out of public school and enrolled, like ray, in private, as if that would prevent her from going missing, too. sadie watched beth, small and spry, follow secretly behind ray, and she marveled that beth moved so fearlessly through the pastures and woods alone. sadie quickly ducked back from the window when she saw her, as if beth’s boldness revealed her as some sort of magical being with the ability to spot her.
one afternoon, sadie investigated Mrs. sidelman’s breakfront, her desk, the kitchen cupboards. she knew that everyone had secrets: a diary hidden under a floorboard, a notebook of poems written in fading ink, a hatbox filled with high school mementos. Finally, slipped beneath a soft pile of sweaters in a cedar chest she found an old playbill: Billy Rose’s Aquacade, New York World’s Fair 1939, a swimming exposition starring eleanor Holm and Johnny weismuller. eleanor posed in a white bathing suit and high heels. she had her head thrown back, her mouth open and laughing, her hair curling around her pale shoulders. Had Mrs. sidelman gone to the fair and seen the show? Had it been a momentous occasion for her? It was a large booklet, and sadie flipped through it quickly and a small packet of letters fell out. They were addressed to bea brownmiller, postmarked 1947. sadie set the packet of letters aside. There were no marks in the playbill until the back, after the ads for Kern’s Frankfurters, Chesterfield cigarettes, and Pabst blue ribbon beer, where the cast of the show was listed and a name was underlined with a careful hand: bea brownmiller. sadie knew Mrs. sidelman’s first name was bea from her mail retrieval. she looked at the name, listed under “Aquafemmes.” Mrs. sidelman had been in the show, alongside girls named Constance Constant and loretta orleta, girls who performed at billy rose’s nightclub the Diamond Horseshoe.
sadie turned to the letters, opening each one carefully. The writer had used a fountain pen, and the ink on the thin paper in the fading light in Mrs. sidelman’s bedroom rendered the handwriting difficult to translate, but all of the letters were written by the same man, who signed his name Bud . The