Madeline

Dream on.

Madeline.beige hair woman wearing black jacket photo — Free Blonde Image on Unsplash (dogedoge.com)

Madeline deserves notice. She was a blond Puerto Rican, a rarity, a gem. She was maybe five feet tall and ninety pounds, with the most beautiful, delicate, pale face, so slender she looked frail as if touching her would break her, like a delicate glass figurine. Even stranger, amplifying this impression, she acted like she was made of glass. The way she took her seat each morning illustrated this perfectly. I’d often get to my office before her just to watch it. And no matter how many times I did, I wanted to watch it again.

She had a peculiar routine. She began by pulling the black, wheeled chair a few feet back, brushing it off, stooping over, examining it carefully, as if it might have gathered dust overnight. Then she would fuss with her pleated skirt, first the sides with both hands, with quick, downward strokes, then smooth the backside more discreetly, checking to see if anyone was looking. When she finished straightening the pleats, front and back, came the next step, the sitting down.

She would face the chair, place one hand on the opposite armrest, turn, then slowly lowers herself, twisting her head to see exactly how she positioned her fanny on the wide seat. Then she took hold of the edge of the desk with both hands and pulled her chair in, ready at her workstation for the rest of the day, with almost nothing to do. Another curiosity: besides all these strange preliminaries, she’d cross her legs in the most beautiful way just before she pulled herself in, though they were hidden under the table. Even the invisible had to be perfectly poised, for her composure.

She sat near the front window and the glass door, the entrance to our office. She was the receptionist and men would stop and stare at her through the window. Her hair was perfectly coiffed, her pink make-up, faint eyeliner, long eyelashes, and lipstick to match, and with such pale skin, she made a remarkable impression.

She must have spent an hour each morning at her vanity. She experimented too. I noticed many slight variations in her hair and face from day to day, a new hairpin, a thin silver chain around her neck, a white, short-sleeved, ruffled chemise, sometimes a new bracelet. But nothing outlandish. She was a model of female, office elegance. One other thing I noticed; she never wore a ring.

I often doted on these details from my desk just ten feet away, with my front office door always open. The other two rooms, Victor’s large office, and Paula’s room, full of filing cabinets, were in the back, behind the lobby, doors closed and out of sight.

Her careful, finicky rituals in the office each day were like an extension of her make-up, of the beauty she wished to emanate and create an aura, which it did. My eyes turned to her every half-hour as I worked away at my prints and cost breakdowns, drinking in the sight of her, a pleasant break from columns of numbers.

Each morning we’d exchange kind words and smiles. She always seemed to know when anyone was looking at her. She wanted to appear pretty and impress those she liked. And she always did. But she had vastly different looks and tones for the many assorted types of men who walked in our lobby. If Victor told her any especially important client was coming by, she was all smiles and charm. For the common workers who came in over some pay issue with Victor, she would coldly point to a seat along one wall of the lobby, ring Victor to inform him of their presence and they’d sit and wait, sometimes an hour, till Victor deigned to open his door and call them in. She had the same total disregard for anyone staring at her through the window.

With our other foremen, Mickey and Manny, and John, she had different styles. The first two were pure playboys, throwing their hands down on her desk, moving their heads close, telling her how beautiful she looked today. She’d look up, give them a brief, coy smile, but then down again, saying she had work to do, as she shuffled papers around, pretending she was busy. She was never rude to their advances and had the sweetest way of saying: “Go away, you annoy me”, or “you don’t stand a chance”. And they did. With John, being so polite and smart and fifteen years older, she was much more friendly, asked him how his day was going with sincerity, and they exchanged pleasantries.

She had fine discrimination in seeing men’s motives. She had Jaime wrapped around her little finger, never allowing the kiss but in such a kind, feminine way that he’d keep trying. He talked to me outside the office, saying what a tease she was, and what a beauty. But he was rarely in the office after the first few months and soon gone forever.

She was divorced with a small boy. He was three, she near thirty. She answered the phone with her most feminine charm. Sometimes she typed up a short letter to some client from a note Victor handed her. Then she’d fold the paper delicately and fit it in an envelope, address it with her pretty handwriting, and then lick the seal with her pointy, pink tongue. Then she’d set it on a corner of her desk for Paula to stamp and mail. Most hours she just sat, a beautiful presence, filing or painting her fingernails, examining her lovely hands. ‘Petite Madeleine’, as delicate as the pastry.

Just seeing her there was an invitation to any client to do business with us, a magnet. They were always males. Victor knew this and treated her like gold. His other secretary, Paula, an energetic, smart, overweight mother of three, who had the square build and confidence of a boxer in looks and gestures, he treated like shit, often yelling at her for paperwork or numbers to be immediately slapped on his desk. But she did all the secretarial work, the filings, and records, kept everything organized, knew a thousand facts and figures and phone numbers in her head, and ran the office to perfection, like a battleship. Yet Victor still screamed at her constantly. Then he’d walk over to Madeline’s desk in the front room and ask her politely if she wanted a coffee or a bun or anything, and then send Paula out to get it, quickly, as they had a business to run.

Madeline and I were akin in that office, and we had a special relationship. She liked my gentle personality, so unlike the other foremen and construction workers who streamed in and out, (except John) crude and swearing with complaints. She was sad at hearing of my breakup with Sanita (rumors fly in an office and no one has any secrets). She told me of her own long, painful divorce. She never told me any clear reason why it happened. Maybe she was just like me, her partner leaving for unknown reasons, creating an even closer bond between us. I certainly felt it, or imagined I did, in the warmth of the smiles she always beamed at me.

But she was too fragile for me. I never considered courting her. She was a face and a presence unforgettable, and even in the mildest perfume, overpowering. The thought of dating her didn’t cross my mind, or if it did, vanished in a second. I loved to sit and talk with her. But she was unearthly in her delicacy, almost like an invalid whom you’d have to nurse if she were in your care. She took this tragedy in her life, her divorce, (and being so beautiful and kind, almost unimaginable) like a car crash, an accident, with all the frailty that follows. I doubt she ever remarried. No man could handle her gently enough after what she’d gone through, only bruise her. And she seemed to know it. It was as if she’d given up on love at thirty, still resplendent, but her voice half-hearted, speaking softly as if she’d lost the desire for another mate, yet still seductive. Her only concern was her three-year-old boy. That focus kept her going. He was in a daycare just blocks away, dropped off on her way to work, and picked up going home. That was Madeline.

There’s a beauty in sadness (at least to me) greater than any other emotion because it brings out empathy, the realization that we are all in this together, our human condition. It even transcends our species because we feel it for animals almost as strongly, sometimes more so. Consider Ernest Dowson’s two famous poems, ‘The Days of Wine and Roses, and ‘Cynara’. They’re in every English anthology of poems, deservedly so. And he was dead at thirty-two, penniless, heartbroken. In each, he laments a loss, of youth and the one he loves, permanent, irreparable loss, a fate we all have to suffer, some of us several times over.

Madeline easily qualified as a woman I would dote upon, but she was unlike all others in my mind because she was so strange. In the first months, I’d pull up a chair and have long personal talks with her, she was so charming and alluring. I could do this as I had an odd, untitled, authority in that office, and my own room was right next to her’s. But at night, when I imagined the idea of hooking up with her, a divorcee just like me, and the two of us possible candidates to pair up, and her charms so fresh and potent on my mind, her intoxicating beauty, when I thought beyond them and what her apartment must be like, and her daily routines, the image turned dark, even scary, if I expanded on the clues.

If she were as fastidious and feminine at home as she was in the office, what would life be like with her? She might be wonderful in bed. But in the morning, after an hour at her make-up mirror, in her perfectly arranged apartment, would my clothes in a heap on some bedside chair, or a towel dropped on the floor by the shower, be cause for recrimination.

I could imagine her sitting down on her couch with a cup of tea after work, just as daintily as she sat down at her desk, a five-minute affair of gestures and preparations, the teacup with the saucer and coaster carefully arranged on the buffet, a few magazines re-arranged in perfect stacks to make room. The pillows then fluffed and set exactly right on the couch for her to finally sit down, a beautiful scene to watch but impossible to endure. I’d hang myself within a month in that very same living room at such repeated scenes. Maybe this was the cause of her divorce. She might have driven her husband mad.

Like I said at first, she was too feminine to touch, lovely to behold but impossible to hug, as some lipstick or mascara might smear, or her blouse wrinkle, and that would cause a tragedy. I wonder if there are many women like her, born so different from men that they’re impossible to physically deal with, an alien race. If such rarities exist, with such wide divergence from the opposite sex, she certainly seemed close, a Cinderella with a tiara on her hair, or that strange, spiked crown that adorns the statue of liberty, beautiful and yet dangerous looking, a warning to all men. Then again she wouldn’t need that. Everything about her displayed an untouchable majesty.