53 pages • 1-hour read
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress
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Chapters 14-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary: “Belgrade Lakes, Maine, Saturday, September 13, 1930”
The NYPD offers a $5,000 reward for information leading to Crater’s whereabouts. Commissioner Mulrooney writes to Stella, letting her know that he’s sending a detective to interview her. He hints about the envelopes, but she can’t figure out how he’d learned of them. Stella believes that the newspapers are a diversion, and the police aren’t really looking for Joe but, rather, finding ways to capitalize on his disappearance.
Three years earlier, the Craters stayed in a suite adjoining that of Governor Smith and his wife, Catherine, at the Biltmore in New York City. The Smiths arranged the fundraiser, and Catherine paid particular attention to Stella. Joe worked the room while Catherine and Stella chatted with other wives. They tested Stella, offering backhanded compliments and asking where she shopped. Catherine explained that everything Joe said reflected on Stella and vice versa. Only later did Stella realize that Catherine’s attention was a signal to the other wives that Stella should be respected. Before bed, Joe wanted sex, and though Stella wasn’t remotely interested, she knew it was easier to capitulate than resist.
Jude interviews Stella, asking about the last time she saw Joe, what was on Joe’s mind, and why she didn’t report him missing earlier. He asks about Joe’s infidelity, and she explains that there are just certain things wives learn to live with. When he asks about Joe’s business dealings, Stella explains that Joe had two lives, and she was privy only to one of them.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Fifth Avenue, Friday, September 12, 1930”
As Maria dusts the Craters’ bookshelves, Lowenthall lets himself into the apartment. He has a search warrant, and his men enter quickly and ransack the place. Lowenthall traps Maria against a wall with a “carnal gaze” that turns her stomach. He says he heard she begged Crater for Jude’s promotion and says Jude is too ethical to have gotten it on his own. Lowenthall says he saw Maria hiding in the closet the day Jude hid the envelopes. He tells her to keep her mouth shut, and the men leave.
Interlude 2 Summary: “Club Abbey, Greenwich Village, August 6, 1969”
In 1969 at Club Abbey, Stella offers brief condolences to Jude regarding Maria’s death, revealing that Stella knew they were married. She tells him his promotion was Maria’s doing, that she asked them to help him, and he’s shocked.
Stella accuses him of planting the envelopes and says Maria helped herself to the money. Jude refuses to believe it, but Stella says Maria took $500, and she asks what Maria did with it. Jude has no idea, but he chooses cruelty, talking about what a “firecracker” Ritzi was. When Stella asks what Ritzi had to do with the money, Jude says Ritzi had to do with everything.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Broadway Theater, Monday, September 15, 1930”
The narrative shifts back to 1930. Ritzi is exhausted, rehearsing for one show during the day and performing in another at night. Jude interviews her backstage one day, and Ritzi realizes that he’s married to Maria. He asks about her relationship with Klein and the night of Joe’s disappearance. Ritzi is bothered by how close to the truth he gets with his questions, as well as the fact that his wife is the only person who knows she’s pregnant with Crater’s baby.
That night, Jude tells Maria that he interviewed Ritzi and Klein that day, and he asks if Maria ever saw or heard anything at the Craters’ that might be useful. She lies and says no.
Ritzi sits in the dressing room, alone. Shorty enters and says that Owney wants her at Club Abbey. She goes, and Owney asks her about what Jude said during their interview. She promises she didn’t tell Jude anything important, and Owney tells her to lose weight.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Belgrade Lakes, Maine, Tuesday, September 16, 1930”
Jude brings Stella a questionnaire with 29 questions about Joe, their relationship, and his disappearance. The questions anger her, and she answers some with a single word, some with lies, and some with wrath.
Chapter 18 Summary: “West Sixty-Fourth Street, Sunday, September 21, 1930”
When Ritzi keeps vomiting, her roommate Vivian guesses that she’s pregnant. Ritzi says Crater didn’t take the news well, and she’s hiding it from Owney. Vivian admits that she has a 12-year-old daughter, Rose, of whom she lost custody when Vivian went to prison. She has a plan to testify before Seabury’s commission in exchange for custody of Rose, and she vows never to return to this life after that. Vivian tells Ritzi that she’ll need a corset to hide her pregnancy, and she promises to help Ritzi escape New York in February, after she gets Rose back.
Three months earlier, Ritzi and Crater visited the Renaissance Casino and Ballroom. He was a terrible gambler and depended on her head for numbers. Crater kept forcing liquor on Ritzi, behavior that usually preceded a “raucous night” in some hotel. Finally, she told him she was pregnant, and he was disgusted. Crater disavowed her and the child, saying she’d better “get rid of it” or he’d tell Owney (186). He left, and she called George Hall that very night.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Belgrade Lakes, Maine, Monday, September 22, 1930”
Stella sees over a dozen boats on the lake, searching for a body. She goes outside and Irv says that police think she killed Joe. Frank Southard, the county attorney, asks to search the house, but Stella won’t let him without a warrant. Southard gives her a letter from the district attorney, Thomas Crain, that asks for her cooperation. Stella realizes how guilty she looks.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Fifth Avenue, Friday, September 26, 1930”
When Maria picks up the Craters’ mail, she sees a letter from Thomas Crain addressed to Amedia Christian. Maria’s contact with Stella has been minimal, and Maria only comes once a week now. Maria opens the letter in which Crain instructs “Amedia” to report to the US District Court on October 29 to give testimony. Ritzi gets a similar letter.
Stella meets with Rifkind and admits that she lied to the DA when she said she hadn’t received any money from Joe’s account. Simon tells her that the court has stopped issuing paychecks for Joe just as Crain’s letter about October 29 arrives.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Belgrade Lakes, Maine, Wednesday, October 15, 1930”
That night, the first snowfall arrives, and the cabin is freezing. Stella tells Fred she can’t pay him anymore and offers him the Cadillac to cover his wages. Finally, she asks him to drive her and Emma to Portland in the morning. She plans to “disappear” for a while.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Portland, Maine, Thursday, October 16, 1930”
In Portland, Emma asks how Stella will afford the hotel, and Stella says she can get money when she needs it. Stella instructs the concierge to allow calls only from family and close friends; everyone else should be “diverted.”
Chapters 14-22 Analysis
Female Solidarity as a Means of Empowerment and Survival emerges more significantly in this section of the text. The women are often compared to children, drawing attention to the way they are infantilized by men in 1930s New York. At Coney Island, Ritzi is forced to hide in a cabinet that is “hardly large enough for a child” (35). Further, she clutches that dirty sock “like a child who wouldn’t part with a filthy security blanket” (46). As for Maria, when she’s in the Craters’ apartment, doing her work, she is compelled to hide when Jude and Lowenthall enter; she has “the feeling of being a child, caught somewhere she didn’t belong” (42). When she goes to the obstetrician, she sits with her feet dangling off the table and “[feels] like a child” (64).
Isolated from one another by competition for men, money, and power, it is only by bridging these divides that women gain some of the power they usually lack. Catherine Smith, the governor’s wife, helps Stella as the Craters enter the world of New York politics. Her attention, Stella realizes, is meant to signal “to the other women that Stella was to be respected. And taken seriously” (146). Further, it is Vivian—a former sex worker and current madam—who offers Ritzi her best hope of escaping Owney’s orbit. After admitting the existence of her daughter, Rose, Vivian tells Ritzi, “If you can hold on until the end of February, I’ll help you get out of this hellhole” (183). Without this female solidarity and willingness to help other women escape or surmount difficult circumstances, it is unlikely that women could realistically have much hope for agency in their own lives.
It is especially important for women to support and aid one another due to The Corruption in Politicized Power Dynamics, such as the relationship between the police and the public, as well as by crooked politicians with ties to organized crime. Owney uses Ritzi to spy on Crater, just as Lowenthall asks Maria for information about Crater and her own husband; Jude even suggests that Maria will be in danger if he doesn’t take orders, and Crater spells out Stella’s “role” as a judge’s wife: essentially to be seen and not heard.
Women are often exploited and treated like pawns in a system that affords them little respect because the system itself grants them no power to wield. In 1969, Stella tells Jude, “No one got anywhere those days without help. Everyone owed favors. And there were always layers of corruption. Hell, the well-oiled machine of Tammany Hall ran on bribery” (160). Since the women can usually offer little by way of a bribe, they are rendered essentially powerless. They cannot effect change on a broad level and perhaps not even on a local one, as their influence with their own husbands is sometimes minimal. Joe, for example, urges Stella to know her place and to simply obey his orders.
Finally, the behavior of everyone from showgirl to judge highlights The Importance of Appearances Over Truth, primarily because of this rampant corruption. The characters’ near-constant attention to appearances makes it clear that how things look is much more important than how they are. When Ritzi gets the part in Cole Porter’s musical, she’s anything but pleased, but she “had enough composure […] to look the part” of grateful chorus girl (50). How she really feels is irrelevant, especially to Owney Madden. Meanwhile, Joe says that if he’s to become a judge, then he and Stella “must start acting the part [of judge and judge’s wife]” (96). It doesn’t matter if he’s honest or corrupt, as long as he and his wife shop at the right stores and make the right friends.
Even after Joe’s disappearance, Emma cautions Stella, saying, “You must maintain propriety. Appearances are important, you know” (140). Stella’s innocence is less important than the appearance of it, because people will judge her based on appearances, not truth. In a society such as this, optics are more vital than goodness or sincerity.
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