Whispering Hearts Read online

  “Such a thing never entered my thinking,” she told me. “And if it had, I’m sure it would have popped like a soap bubble.”

  When she said that, I thought I heard a note of regret, not that she would ever admit to it. There was something terribly sad about her whenever she reminisced about her childhood. I could almost smell her thinking about missed chances. I often wondered, if she could have a second go at it, would she still have married my father? She was surely pretty enough to attract most any man. Whatever good features I had, I had inherited from her. But that was all I really wanted to take from her.

  Most girls would want to be something like their mothers, but deep in my heart of hearts, I knew I didn’t. My mother was full of compromise. She lived solely to be sure my father was happy and content. I loved her, but she was too eager to think less of herself. It’s often a good thing to think about someone else before yourself, but there are parts of yourself that you must cherish and nurture if you want to be proud or simply be satisfied with life as you know it. I would never tell anyone that my mother was really unhappy. She was; she just didn’t realize it, or want to realize it.

  I knew I would never be happy if I didn’t set out to see where my future was. Hopefully, it was waiting for me on a stage, behind a microphone, or in front of a television camera. When I left my house that day years later, it was as if someone who had been living inside me for all my life had finally fully emerged. It was her body now; she was taking the footsteps to the taxi, she was boarding the airplane, and she was looking out the window when the New York skyline appeared and, although no one else could see it, fireworks were exploding in the sky.

  Emma Corey was coming.

  Get ready, world.

  This rebirth didn’t happen overnight, of course. It took me years to work myself up to the point where I could be so independent and determined. As soon as I was sixteen, there was a second big event in my life that helped me become so. My father knew who owed the bank money, and because of that knowledge, he had influence with many of the smaller businesses in Guildford. As soon as my birthday celebration was over, he informed me that he had found a nice weekend position for me at Bradford’s Department Store on High Street.

  “Mr. Bradford himself has seen you walking to and from school and thinks you’re a perfect fit for his perfume counter. You can take that as a compliment,” he added. “He knows you’re still in school, of course, so you’ll work nine to five Saturday and Sunday. He’ll pay you twenty-five pounds a day at the start. In six months, if you work out, which I’m sure you will, he’ll raise it to thirty quid. That’s a tidy sum for doing nothing more than squeezing scents at women who think an aroma will overcome their ugly faces.”

  “Oh, what a terrible thing to say, Arthur. Beautiful women wear perfume, too,” my mother said.

  Daddy grunted, which was really all he would do when Mummy corrected him.

  “What about church on Sunday?” my mother asked.

  “She can go to the early service if she wants.”

  My father was not really a churchgoing man, but he did attend services on Sunday occasionally, more, I thought, to chin-wag with some of the successful businessmen who did business at his bank than to pray to be forgiven for his sins. He looked at everything in life from the point of view of profit and loss, even prayer.

  “When will she do her homework?” my mother asked him. “They get homework to do on weekends.”

  “In the evenings. She has both free.”

  “I’m singing on Fridays, Saturdays, and probably Sundays soon at the Three Bears,” I told him.

  He stared as if he was trying to decide if I really was his child.

  “They give me ten pounds, Daddy,” I said proudly, but mainly to measure it in the terms he would appreciate.

  “Now, let’s see how good you are in math, then. Here,” he said, holding out his right hand, “is Mr. Bradford offering you twenty-five to start, and here,” he said, holding out his left hand, “is your ten pounds at the pub. How much more will you have if you work at Bradford’s and do your homework at night, forgetting about the pub?”

  I looked away, and then I smiled. I held out my right hand. “Here’s my twenty-five quid at Bradford’s, and at night,” I said, holding out my left hand, “is my pub ten. That gives me ten on Friday, Saturday, and maybe Sunday, thirty-five on Saturday and thirty-five on Sunday at Bradford’s added to it eventually. And when I get my raise, that becomes forty a day. So I’ll do my homework early in the morning on Saturday and Sunday or at night when I return from the pub. I could be up to ninety quid over the weekend, including Sunday and my pay raise.”

  “We have Sunday tea. Forget about the pub on Sunday,” he snapped, annoyed that I was using his kind of logic successfully. “It disrespects your mother and me to miss Sunday tea.”

  “Subtract ten, then,” I said with a shrug. “I’m still ahead quite a bit.”

  “If you’re tired when you are at work at Bradford’s and drag yourself around yawning in the faces of customers, he’ll let me know bloody fast,” my father warned. “You don’t embarrass me out there, hear?”

  “Yes, Daddy. Don’t frown so much. You’ll get wrinkles and look like an old sod.”

  I glanced at Julia. She was always astonished at my cheeky way of responding to our father. She would never have dared utter the smallest defiance. Secretly, I thought she wished she was more like me.

  Ironically, in the long run I really had my father to thank for enabling me to go to New York. He’d never have given me a penny for the trip, but by working in Bradford’s and with the additional pounds I made singing in the pub and other places, as well as gifts of money on my birthdays, I was able to save a tidy sum, enough to give me the confidence to go forward. My father thought my miserly way when it came to spending my own money was simply due to his good influence.

  Probably some of it was his influence, but I wouldn’t dare thank him, although at the moment I was leaving and he was raging at me, I was tempted to do it. I wanted to throw something back at him that would put him on his heels and stop him from stringing along his threats. He’d stutter and stammer like an old car engine.

  I always tried to swallow away the images and words of that day. It wasn’t how I wanted to remember my father. Although he was a stern, unforgiving man, he was generous when it came to dispensing his wisdom, and I would never deny that he was doing so to ensure our welfare. Probably, that was the most I missed from him or about him the day after I had left my family: hearing his advice, his prophetic declarations and firm conclusions. No matter where I went, I would hear his voice often. And in New York, I would meet many men who reminded me of him.

  I suppose the greatest bit of wisdom he didn’t have to preach to me to get me to believe was that no matter where you go or who you become, you cannot really escape your family, not that I ever really wanted that. They are forever part of you, and whether you realize it or not, they determine who you really are.

  But I would meet people, including the man I eventually would marry, who lived to do just that, escape their own families and, in a true sense, escape who they really were.

  TWO

  Despite my determination, I almost turned back a few times before boarding the plane for New York. Besides the fact that it was my first airplane ride, the sight of all these people coming and going was almost overwhelming enough to send me home. I never really grasped what writers meant when they wrote “a sea of humanity” until I saw the crowds at the airport. People from so many different countries were coming at me and passing by me in waves full of conversations, laughter, hugs, and kisses, many dropping loved ones off and many, out of breath from excitement, rushing to greet arrivals.

  There was no one there to bid me a fond farewell, and there would be no one waiting in New York to welcome me. There would be no kisses and hugs. The tears I left behind were so full of sorrow that they would look like droplets on a hot stove, sizzling with sadness. I had kept my
travel details secret from friends, but now, at this moment in the airport, I never felt like more of a stranger in a strange land, someone truly alone, and technically, I hadn’t yet left England. I wondered if I had made a mistake being so secretive after all.

  I tried desperately to hide how much of a novice I was when it came to traveling. If I didn’t build up my self-confidence before I left, what would I be like when I arrived in a city with a far larger population mainly quite different not only from me, but many from each other? More often than not, I had been told, New York was a city of strangers rushing by and around one another. I would see someone lying on the sidewalk, maybe on a piece of cardboard with a sign advertising how desperate he or she was, and I would witness how easily people walked by as if no one was there.

  “In New York, people are quite invisible,” Mr. Wollard had warned me. “It’s the way of big cities. They make people afraid and therefore indifferent simply to avoid trouble. Don’t expect to make new friends quickly.”

  Mr. Wollard was the only one in whom I had confided about my final decision to go. He did continually inquire about whether my parents were aware. I didn’t want to lie to him. Instead, I admitted, “No, but they’re suspicious. I will give my mother and sister all my details before I leave and then tell my father as well.”

  Mr. Wollard still looked concerned. “I don’t know if that’s wise, Emma.”

  “I’m eighteen, Mr. Wollard. I don’t need to get permission, and I’m using only my own money. I have to try, and they’ll only try to stop me.”

  “True, you’re an adult, Emma. I’m hoping something good will come of it. I’ve told many of my students who were in my musicals the same thing when they asked if they should continue pursuing a career in show business. If you have to ask, the answer is no. You were one of the few who didn’t ask that. Instead, you asked what do you do next. You knew what you wanted, and that reveals persistence, determination, and courage. Besides, you’re a talented young lady. If the Americans aren’t total nincompoops, they’ll realize it fast.”

  He shrugged. “You can always come back and try here or go to a school with a performing arts program like our own University of Surrey. I just think you’re head and shoulders above their best graduates already. You not only have the beautiful voice, great range, but you have the personality that brings smiles when you sing, and you have the poise.” Then he confessed, “I wish I would have had the courage when I was your age.”

  He had told me about the theater actors’ publication Playbill, in which open auditions were advertised. He explained that it was difficult getting an agent right from the start, but if I was fortunate enough to land a part, an agent would most likely follow. He said he had never taken the first step and looked melancholy for a moment.

  Everyone has a secret ambition. Some are planted in a garden to grow, and some are smothered, I thought. But as I walked toward the boarding gate, I heard his words again and wondered if my father wasn’t right when he said Mr. Wollard should be careful “blowing up a young girl’s image of herself.”

  Was Mr. Wollard living his dream vicariously through me? It made me shudder to think so.

  My father was right about so much, I thought, but I wouldn’t let him be right about this.

  My second moment of hesitation came when they announced the boarding of my flight. I stood there for a few moments staring at the attendant, a young woman who looked not much older than I was. She smiled and lifted her shoulders, asking with her expression, Are you going or not?

  My upper body surged forward in my impulsive lunge, forcing my legs to catch up.

  She laughed and checked my ticket. “Have a great flight,” she said. As I started toward the gangway, she asked, “First time?”

  “Yes,” I said. “How did you know?”

  “I looked the same way on my first,” she said. “Good luck in New York.”

  “Thank you.”

  I felt my whole body relax. Maybe, just maybe, the world out there wasn’t as cold and as indifferent as I had been told. I had the same feeling reinforced after spending the journey next to a woman who wasn’t much more than in her mid-thirties. She was posh, with her designer clothes, beautiful watch, pearl earrings, and matching pearl necklace, but from the warmth in her blue-gray eyes, I would hesitate to call her arrogant or snobby. Her name was Lila Lester, and she told me she worked in public relations for an up-and-coming women’s cologne and perfume company. She showed me a gold bracelet the owner had given her on her recent birthday. It had an inscription, a quote of Coco Chanel’s: “A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I worked at a perfume counter in a department store in Guildford but never bought any of the expensive perfumes, even at an employee’s discount. I was saving all my money for this trip.”

  I had sprayed on my inexpensive cologne, which probably had evaporated by now.

  “Don’t look so worried,” she said, and reached into her purse to produce a small perfume sample from her company. “Here. This will get you through the day.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and smelled it. “Very nice. A little like Norell.”

  “Very good,” she said. “It is.”

  After that, she told me about herself, about what it was like growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and what her high school and college life was like. She described how she had met her husband, who now worked at an insurance company in New York, and told me so much about their twelve-year-old daughter, who was showing talent on the piano, that I didn’t feel reluctant at all about describing what I was doing. She thought it was exciting. She told me I was quite brave because I didn’t really know anyone across the Pond.

  “You must really want it,” she said.

  “I do. Oh, I so do.”

  She nodded and smiled. “If there weren’t dreamers, nothing new would happen.”

  I didn’t say it, but my father would strongly disagree.

  When we landed and left the plane, she said good-bye, expecting I would fall quite behind going through customs, but somehow I was moved through quickly. Lila Lester was still waiting for her luggage and waved to me from the carousel.

  “Slow today,” she said when I reached it to pick up my suitcase. Just then, the bags started to come. “Guess they were waiting for you.”

  Hers came first, but mine was right behind it.

  “How are you getting into the city?” she asked.

  “I guess a taxi.”

  “I have a car waiting. We’ll drop you off,” she said. “No worries. I live off Central Park West. It’s not terribly out of my way.”

  I wasn’t sure where I was going to live exactly, of course, but I had given her my new address. In the limousine, she described what it was like for her, someone from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to come to New York to live.

  “I wasn’t much older than you are now and just as frightened.”

  “Oh, I’m not really frightened,” I said.

  She smiled. “Sure you are, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, if you weren’t, I’d say you were in for a worse time because you won’t be careful.”

  She told me that not long after she had gotten married in Wisconsin, her husband was promoted to an executive position at the insurance company, so they moved to New York.

  “I think I trembled for weeks whenever I would go out alone with my daughter.”

  After her daughter had reached the age of eight, Mrs. Lester decided to pursue her own career and quickly went from a small public relations firm to her present position.

  “So don’t let anyone discourage you,” she said. “If you’re determined, you’ll find your place.”

  I tried to listen to her, but my eyes were being drawn to everything we were passing, especially when we arrived in the city. Of course, I had seen pictures and movies set in New York, but actually being here, my new home now only a step out of the car away, was more than just exciting and intimidating. It was almost unreal. I
felt like someone who had stepped into a storybook.

  I should have been very tired from the journey and the time difference, but I couldn’t stop my heart from pounding. When we passed some Broadway theater marquees, I was totally gaping. I’m sure I looked like what they called a “rube.” Mrs. Lester laughed and squeezed my hand.

  “Being with you,” she said when we reached the address of the apartment building, “is like reliving my youth. Good luck, Emma. Just keep telling yourself, ‘I can do this. I can do it.’ And before you know it, you will.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  The driver pulled to the curb and got out to open my door and get my suitcase out of the trunk. She slid over to wave. I took my suitcase, smiled and thanked her, and then turned to look at the doorway to my new home.

  The building was nothing like I had envisioned. It was a narrow brownstone about four stories high, with a short stoop to a small gray concrete platform with black pipe railings. The street itself was quite busy with traffic and pedestrians. No one gave me much more than a passing glance as I carried my suitcase to the steps. It was obviously a busy rush hour. Everyone was hurrying to get somewhere, and the taxi drivers and other drivers on the street were impatiently pressuring one another. Someone double-parked and caused a cacophony of horns and shouts. When I looked at the faces of those upset, I thought I saw a dozen potential serial killers. The double-parked driver emerged indifferently and opened his car trunk to take out someone’s luggage, moving at his own slow pace. The horns grew louder.

  Patience is obviously not a virtue here, I thought. The driver glanced back at the traffic behind him with indifference and moved casually into his vehicle. When he pulled away, it was like watching a clogged pipe empty out. How different from the traffic in Guildford, I thought.

  Get used to it, Emma Corey, I told myself. This is going to be your new world.

  I started up the stoop. At the side of the door was the directory. I saw there were eight units, all having names beside the buttons. Which one was going to be mine with whoever I talked into sharing the cost with me? I wondered. The bottom slot listed Leo Abbot, manager, so I pressed that button and waited, expecting him to come to the door to greet me, but instead, I heard a buzzer, which I understood to mean the unlocking of the front door. I stepped into the short entryway, where there was a second door opening to the hallway. I quickly realized there was no elevator.