Eight Girls Taking Pictures by Whitney Otto

Author:Whitney Otto
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Charlotte Blum worked quickly. Three scenes: In the first window, a wife and mother cooks dinner in the kitchen. In the second window, a secretary sits at her typewriter, Dictaphone nearby as she transcribes a recording. In the third, a woman works in a factory.

“Do you find this job amusing? Do you think this is just for fun?”

Miss Schmidt was standing just outside one of Charlotte’s tableaux, refusing to enter while still able to see the passersby who stopped to stare at the mannequins. “Am I amusing?” said Miss Schmidt, insensible to the crowd that was attracted to the windows but stayed on for the obvious reprimand Charlotte was receiving.

An arm of the mannequin in the kitchen caught Miss Schmidt’s critical eye: On its rigid, skinny wrist was a beautiful watch. She stepped in and yanked the arm out of its pose to get a closer look, then shoved it into an opposite, awkward pose in disgust. “Is this what you think of . . . of . . . of all of us?” as she made a sweeping gesture with her own watch-adorned arm. “Our customers? They aren’t secretaries. They are to be treated with respect, not like some burlesque.”

“It wasn’t meant as ridicule—” Charlotte began.

“Stop!”

It seemed Miss Schmidt had more to say, then thought better of it as she turned and left Charlotte in the kitchen scene, unsure of what was expected of her.

When Charlotte had examined the display windows from outside the store as she smoked her cigarette, the idea of women daydreaming came to her in full. The sunglasses, of course, they represented a life of sunshine, vacations, paradise, and moonlight. If she were to make tableaux depicting an expensive lakeside resort, or a midsummer’s picnic in the heart of New York City, then where is the dream? Where is the unexpected? Where is the connection to the dreariness of life and the flight of fancy?

It was the juxtaposition of the two things that would draw the eye and stimulate the fantasy, then the desire to make it real, then the sale of the thing being sold, in this case, the sunglasses.

In the wake of Miss Schmidt’s departure (and presumed march up to the floor supervisor), Charlotte remained motionless near the stove. The mannequin mother, intent on cooking dinner, wore a silk dress, a shimmer of pale blue ice that seemed the weight of a butterfly’s wing. Delicate ropes of diamonds wound around her throat and wrists, with individual stones scattered in her upswept hair. A pair of black-framed sunglasses shielded her eyes from the harsh light of the display windows as she went about her task, her pose indicating that nothing was amiss in her hausfrau attire. Her children sat in the corner, constructing a tower from a metal Erector set. The message, Charlotte tried to explain to Miss Schmidt, was that her family may see her one way, but this glamorous costume was how she saw herself.

The secretary in the next window wore red-framed

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