Spark [Sheldon_Sidney]_The_Other_Side_of_Midnight(BookSe | Page 15

the bittersweet nostalgia that filled her, but it was a nostalgia for a future that had not happened yet, as though somewhere, sometime, she had lived a wonderful life and was restless to live it again. She had begun to have her periods, and while she was physically changing into a woman, she knew that her needs, her longings, this aching-wanting was not physical and had nothing to do with sex. It was a fierce and urgent longing to be recognized, to lift herself above the billions of people who teemed the earth, so everyone would know who she was, so when she walked by, they would say, “There goes Catherine Alexander, the great—” The great what? There was the problem. She did not know what she wanted, only that she ached desperately for it. On Saturday afternoons whenever she had enough money, she would go to the State and Lake Theater or to the McVickers or the Chicago, and see movies. She would completely lose herself in the wonderful, sophisticated world of Cary Grant and Jean Arthur, laugh with Wallace Beery and Marie Dressier and agonize over Bette Davis’ romantic disasters. She felt closer to Irene Dunne than to her mother. Catherine was in her senior year at Senn High School and her archenemy, the mirror, had finally become her friend. The girl in the mirror had a lively, interesting face. Her hair was raven black and her skin a soft, creamy white. Her features were regular and fine, with a generous, sensitive mouth and intelligent gray eyes. She had a good figure with firm, well-developed breasts, gently curving hips and shapely legs. There was an air of aloofness about her image, a hauteur that Catherine did not feel, as though her reflection possessed a characteristic that she did not. She supposed that it was part of the protective armor she had worn since her early school days. The Depression had clutched the nation in a tighter and tighter vise, and Catherine’s father was incessantly involved in big deals that never seemed to materialize. He was constantly spinning dreams, inventing things that were going to bring in millions of dollars. He devised a set of jacks that fitted above the wheels of an automobile and could be lowered by the touch of a button on the dashboard. None of the automobile manufacturers was interested. He worked out a continuously rotating electric sign to carry advertisements inside stores. There was a brief flurry of optimistic meetings and then the idea faded away. He borrowed money from his younger brother, Ralph, in Omaha to outfit a shoe- repair truck to travel around the neighborhood. He spent hours discussing the scheme with Catherine and her mother. “It can’t fail,” he explained. “Imagine having the shoemaker coming to your door! No one’s ever done it before. I have one Shoe-mobile out now, right? If it only makes twenty dollars a day, that’s a hundred and twenty dollars a week. Two trucks will bring in two hundred and forty a week. Within a year I’ll have twenty trucks. That’s two thousand four hundred dollars a week. A hundred and twenty-five thousand a year. And that’s only the beginning…” Two months later the shoe-maker and the truck disappeared, and that was the end of another dream. Catherine had hoped to be able to go to Northwestern University. She was the top scholar in her class, but even on a scholarship college would be difficult to manage, and