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