Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom [2]
Mr. Klein usually drove up beside me as I was walking to the bus stop. When I saw the tip of his huge, unfashionable blue Cadillac slowly slide by me and pause, I skipped ahead and dropped my books on the front seat, spared another day of riding the school bus. He dropped me off in front of Arrandale Elementary School as the buses discharged all the kids I had managed to avoid thus far.
On the mornings Mr. Klein failed to appear, I kept a low profile and worried about him until the routine of school settled upon me. I was vulnerable again only at recess. The first two days of kindergarten had taught me to carry a book everywhere, and as soon as I found a place on the pebbled asphalt, I had only to set my eyes on the clean black letters and the soft ivory page and I would be gone, spirited right out of what passed for my real life.
Our first trip to Furs by Klein was incidental, barely a foreshadowing of our afternoons together. Mr. Klein passed me on the way home from school. Having lost two notebooks since school began, I’d missed the bus while searching the halls frantically for my third—bright red canvas designed to be easily seen. I started home, a couple of miles through the sticky, smoky leaf piles and across endless emerald lawns. No one knew I liked to walk. Mr. Klein pulled up ahead of me and signaled, shyly. I ran to the car, gratified to tears by a smile I could see from the road.
“I’ll give you a ride home, but I need to stop back at my shop, something I forgot. All right?”
I nodded. It was better than all right. Maybe I’d never have to go home. He could drive me to Mexico, night after night through the Great Plains, and I wouldn’t mind.
Furs by Klein stood on the corner of Shore Drive, its curved, pink-tinted windows and black lacquered French doors the height of suburban elegance. Inside stood headless bodies, six rose-velvet torsos, each wearing a fur coat. There were mirrors everywhere I looked and a few thin-legged, armless chairs. The walls were lined with coats and jackets and capes. Above them, floating on transparent necks, were the hats.
Mr. Klein watched me. “Go ahead,” he said. “All ladies like hats.” He pulled down a few and walked discreetly into the workroom at the rear. I tried on a black cloche with a dotted veil and then a kelly-green fedora with a band of arching brown feathers. Mr. Klein emerged from the back, his hands in the pockets of his baggy grey trousers.
“Come, Lizbet, your mother will be worried about you. Leave the hats, it’s all right. Mondays are the day off, the girls will put them back tomorrow.” He turned out the lights and opened the door for me.
“My mother’s not home.” I’m really an orphan, adopt me.
“Tcha, I am so absentminded. Mrs. Klein tells me your mother is a famous decorator. Of course she is out—decorating.”
He smiled, just slightly, and I laughed out loud. He’s on my side.
Almost every morning now, he gave me a ride to school. Without any negotiating that I remember, I knew that on Monday afternoons I would miss my bus and he would pick me up as I walked down Arrandale Avenue. I would keep him company while he did whatever he did in the back room and I tried on hats. After a few Mondays I eyed the coats.
“Of course,” he said. “When you’re grown up, you’ll tell your husband, ‘Get me a sable from Klein’s. It’s Klein’s or nothing.’ ” He waggled a finger sternly, showing me who I would be: a pretty young woman with a rich, indulgent husband. “Let me help you.”
Mr. Klein slipped an ash-blonde mink jacket over my sweatshirt and admired me aloud. Soon after, he stopped going into the workroom, and soon after that, I began taking off my clothes. The pleasure on Mr. Klein’s face made me forget everything I heard in the low tones of my parents’ conversation and everything I saw in my own mirror. I chose to believe Mr. Klein.
At home, to conjure up the feeling of Mr. Klein’s cool round fingertips on my shoulders, touching