Lady in the Lake

“The things she had failed to do were twenty years behind her, when she had first known Wally—and her first love, the one her mother never suspected. She had sworn she would be—what, exactly? Someone creative and original, someone who cared not at all about public opinion. […] He had promised. He was going to take her away from stodgy Baltimore, they were going to live a passionate life devoted to art and adventure. She had kept him out of her mind for all these years. […] Maddie fell asleep paging through an imaginary calendar, trying to calculate the best time to leave her marriage.”

In this first chapter devoted to Maddie’s experience, Lippman depicts the catalyst for Maddie’s decision to leave her husband, Milton. The caution and hesitance with which Maddie manages interactions between herself and a former high school acquaintance betrays her keen awareness of Perspective’s Role in Shaping Reality; she has conscientiously and successfully used this awareness to curate others’ impressions of her, especially her husband’s, in the two decades she has been married. Wally’s presence, though, forces Maddie to make a comparison between the life she is leading and what she once imagined for herself, making her decision to leave her husband seem at once both sudden and matter of fact.

“[A]s if she were the undesirable one in this neighborhood of maids and laundresses, milkmen and streetcar conductors. […] Then, on what she wanted to believe was an impulse, she took her engagement ring and shoved it deep into the dirt of a potted African violet she kept on a rickety table near the patio door. […] Methodically, she created the appearance of chaos by opening drawers in the kitchen and bedroom, tossing her clothes onto the floor. She then took a deep breath and ran into the street, screaming for help.”

Maddie imagines herself to be progressive on the subjects of racial equality and civil rights, yet she often falls back on prejudicial, classist values when framing her view of her circumstances to justify acting in her own best interest. In this case, having not gotten the amount of money she wanted for selling her engagement ring, she takes advantage of the high crime reputation of her predominantly Black neighborhood to stage a crime scene. Maddie thereby defrauds her insurance company, achieving her goal while getting to keep her diamond.

“My main man was taking a risk when he gave me something. Are you really missing if almost nobody misses you? I was dead, but being a ghost comes with fewer privileges than you might expect. I couldn’t see my family, couldn’t linger in their rooms, much as I yearned to. Besides, if I had been given the right to haunt someone, I wouldn’t have chosen my family. They deserved better than my sad little ghost, hanging around, full of self-pity.”

Cleo displays what appears to be omniscience as she comments on the events unfolding before and after her disappearance. She doesn’t have access to what Maddie is thinking or feeling; much of her narrative is devoted to expressing how frustrating and perplexing she finds most of Maddie’s behaviors and decisions. However, Cleo possesses a kind of privileged access to information, the source of which is unknown to the reader. Lippman’s approach to constructing who Cleo is invites the reader to posit how Cleo comes to be speaking rhetorically to Maddie. The italicization of her chapters hint at a unique state of being, suggesting that Cleo is speaking from beyond the grave or in a kind of spiritual limbo; at the least, it suggests that Cleo is present in ways that few if any characters in the novel anticipate.

“She blushed with the memory of how quickly they had progressed. The first time he had grabbed her and kissed her, she had assumed it was because he knew. She was lying about the ring and this was the price she had to pay. She was a bad girl and he had this over her. But since that first encounter, she had come to realize that Ferdie had no idea that she was, in fact, a criminal. […] On her wedding night, she had remembered to mimic the pain she had experienced her first time. If Milton ever suspected his bride was not a virgin, he was polite enough—or disappointed enough—not to let on. That was an important first lesson in a young marriage. Let some lies lie.”

Though she does not often deliberately fabricate and falsify, Maddie is a habitual liar. She lies by omission, concealment, and deflection when confronted with the invitation to be forthcoming or the opportunity to voluntarily disclose. Prevalent throughout Lady in the Lake is the exploration of how manipulation of perception, including by way of playing on assumptions, biases, and prejudices, can shape reality. Maddie’s marriage to Milton and relationship with Ferdie both illustrate her dedication to concealing her true thoughts and feelings from her most intimate partners.

“Anyway, after I finish my one beer, it makes sense to go home by way of her apartment building, just because—I don’t know. I’m worried about her. That’s no place for a nice lady to live. When I get there, a patrol car is parked out front. […] Anyway, I’m about to cross the street and go upstairs when I see a uniform, alone, come out the building—and get into that patrol car. And there’s no way, just no way, that guy can be legit. Because he’s blacker than ink and the colored don’t get to use the cars.”

The self-righteous patrolman who paints himself as a wholesome, hopeful father is later characterized as insincere in the chapter devoted to the perspective of police reporter John Diller. The patrolman judges his partner for flirting with Judith, only to visit Maddie’s apartment in the middle of the night, telling himself that he is worried about her, despite the absence of any legitimate reason. When he notices Ferdie leaving Maddie’s apartment building, his attitude serves as a reflection of the racism pervasive throughout the police force in Baltimore in the 1960s. It’s also representative of the theme of Interconnectedness Versus Anonymity in City Life. Via examples like this one, Lippman consistently interweaves characters into one another’s lives, emphasizing the notion of Baltimore as geographically a “big city,” but essentially a “small town.”

“Maddie had done something important; Maddie was important. Even if no one knew it. And having been important, even if no one knew it, created a taste. She wanted to matter. She wanted the world to be different because she had been born. Being Seth’s mother wasn’t enough.”

Maddie refers here to her involvement in finding the body of Tessie Fine. However, Maddie’s logic in justifying her sense of importance is flawed, and where her grief or shock might be, there is instead a hunger to serve her ego. Maddie’s desire for acknowledgement and respect is a complex manifestation of The Intersectionality of Midcentury Prejudices. She has faced legitimate oppression within the patriarchal society she inhabits. As a white woman with a wealthy husband, though, she has also enjoyed substantial privilege. In passages like this one, her determination may be read as independence and grit as much as entitlement and hubris.

“Ambition comes off this one like heat. Where did you come from? I want to ask. Didn’t you have a husband, pretty as you are? Is Bob Bauer trying to get into your panties? You wouldn’t be the first, the way I hear it. Mr. Family Man, Professional Nice Guy. There are no nice guys in this business, but you’ll learn that soon enough. I make her start by bringing me my lunch.”

The various side characters who star in each first-person chapter are predominantly male. Though Maddie and Cleo are distinct in their demographic characteristics, they share the experiences of growing up and living in a patriarchal society. By writing these chapters in the first person, Lippman makes explicit the misogyny and boorishness that the women endure.

“She escorted me into the grocery. I got my candy and my money, which astonished me. Was that justice, was that the law? Did Milton owe me candy for free because he had tried to take something from me? When someone tried to hurt you, did they owe you more than you deserved? Who owes you, Maddie Schwartz, and who do you owe? At any rate, I promised myself at age six that the one thing nobody would take from me again was my dignity. […] And then I met a man, the king I always wanted, and that was the end of me.”

Cleo Sherwood remembers this pivotal afternoon when she was six years old not because Milton Schwartz was cruel to her, but because it was the moment she learned that she had the right to assert herself against those who tried to define her worthiness. The exchange revealed to Cleo that she was deserving of fair treatment and helped shape her approach to relationships. The determination with which she attempted to hold on to the only man she ever allowed to break through the barriers she constructed eventually made her the target of a far more formidable adversary than Milton Schwartz.

“How childish grown men could be, in a way women never were, not in Maddie’s experience. Sullen and grumpy, still playing by the sandlot rules, obsessed with fairness and stature. Of course women cared about stature, too, but they learned early to surrender any idea that life was a series of fair exchanges. A girl discovered almost in the cradle that things would never be fair.”

As Mrs. Milton Schwartz, Maddie rarely faced judgement or condescension thanks to the protection of her socioeconomic and racial status. The way her colleagues treat her, however, confirms many of her long-held theories about the nature of men; in this new context, she can see these theories in practice on a ubiquitous scale. Maddie fails to recognize that the arrogance with which she demanded a job, having no experience or college education, plays a large role in perpetuating the resentment toward her. Nonetheless, the chauvinistic attitudes on display indicate a larger culture that perpetuates male privilege.

“And now here comes this housewife, who has decided she can waltz into the Star and become a reporter, just like that. Certainly, many people on the staff have made similar journeys, rising from clerical jobs, even the switchboard, but they started young and humble. This one—she doesn’t burn to know things, I am sure of it. She wants the accessories of a newspaperwoman’s life—a byline, a chance to perch on a man’s desk and swing her pretty legs while bumming a smoke.”

Though she can empathize with the experience of being a woman in a male-dominated newsroom, Edna Sperry shares much of the resentment that her male colleagues feel toward Maddie. Most members of the Star’s staff are both amused and indignant at the audacity Maddie has shown in deeming herself worthy of a position customarily awarded to those who begin their careers as entry-level junior staff members. Edna sees Maddie as clout chasing and self-serving, a far more astute observation than the conclusions of their male colleagues, who attribute Maddie’s presumptive and often disruptive actions to a kind of feminine obliviousness that impedes Maddie’s ability to assimilate to the culture of the journalistic profession.

“‘She’s colored.’

‘So?’

He seemed to take the question seriously, if only because it was novel to him. ‘They’re not big stories, the colored dying. I mean, it happens all the time. It’s the opposite of news. […] Plus, you heard the ME. Probably drugs. She got high and decided she could swim in the fountain.

‘But her death was so public. And so mysterious.’

‘That’s why it got attention when she was found. But the Afro explored most of the avenues we might have gone down. She’s just a girl who went out on a date with a bad guy. There’s no story to that. She went out with a lot of guys, from what I hear.’”

Cleo’s identity as a Black woman is a definitive factor in the disinterested position that the mainstream Baltimore media, as well as the Baltimore police department, adopt toward her. The dismissal of her disappearance emerges from racial and gendered prejudices, and these prejudices are present among characters of all social categories. Maddie receives discouragement again and again from the white men in power as she pursues her hunch that there is malice at play; simultaneously, many characters of color blame Cleo’s disappearance and death on Cleo herself. Ferdie, Cleo’s father, and Mrs. Hazel Taylor all insinuate that Cleo should not have expected to live as she did without consequence or retaliation, evidence of the pervasiveness of victim blaming consistent with the historical context.

“‘She sure does like ‘em dark,’ he says. […] ‘You ever meet a patrol named Ferdie Platt? Northwest, blacker than ink. She knows him. […] ‘I’ve been looking into him. He’s cozy with Shell Gordon, who owns the Flamingo. I don’t think she’s trying to get a story out of Cleo Sherwood. I think she’s fishing to take information back to Platt. I think he told her some stuff about the Tessie Fine case, which is how Bob Bauer knew what he knew. If she’s chasing this story, even money Ferdie Platt put her up to it. […] I saw him coming and going from her place…’

‘And what were you doing there?’

The Pollack pulls on his beer, doesn’t comment. That’s the thing about this guy. He’s got the soul of a rat, he’s a tattletale who’s never grown up. He’s always keeping score.”

The reappearance of the patrolman via an alternative perspective is exemplary of a technique utilized by Lippman throughout the novel. In this case, John Diller’s point of view undermines the patrolman’s high opinion of his own moral standing earlier in the novel. The single chapters narrated by supporting characters often lend such insight and clarification. This approach emphasizes the pervasiveness of self-delusion or denial, deception, and manipulation. In short, the characters in this world are avid manipulators of perception, a mechanism by which they can craft realities preferable to their own.

“She was horrified by her lack of fear, overwhelmed by the thought, however fleeting, that she could lead this man out of the theater and do things to him, let him do things to her. She was becoming depraved, there was no other word for it. This was why she had married as quickly as possible. Because her first love had awakened this terrible lust in her and she knew she had to bottle it, tame it. Now it was out again, loose in the world.”

Maddie’s beliefs about her sexuality have been shaped by the parameters of the culture in which she exists. Coming of age in the 1940s, Maddie learned that “good” girls and women were demure, obliging, and resistant to premarital intercourse. She should be entirely uninterested in exploring and pushing the boundaries of what was considered conventional sex. That Maddie’s appetite for sex does not fit this prescribed norm led her to pursue a marriage that left her unfulfilled, and now, single once again, she finds herself anxious but eager to explore her desires.

“Maddie was going to find Cleo’s lover, this married man, demand answers. It would make up for her lack of nerve when she was seventeen and she failed, again and again, in her resolve to introduce herself to her lover’s wife. Of course, his wife already knew her, but only as her son’s classmate, the girl he had dated, asked to prom, and then dumped. The girl whose portrait her husband was painting in his studio. The resulting painting was stiff, absent of her vitality and charm. Absent all of the qualities he said he saw in her, when he put his paintbrushes down and made love to her, again and again and again, the summer she was seventeen.”

As Maddie’s sexual abuse is revealed in the aftermath of her decision to leave Milton, her character gains new complexity. She consistently demonstrates what translates as lack of empathy and consideration for others; however, the selfishness propelling her actions may well be an overcorrection for having deprioritized herself for nearly two decades. In deciding to confront Ezekiel Taylor’s wife, Maddie is using the death of an underprivileged young woman of color as a means to advance a career she embarked on as a whim and also as a cathartic, therapeutic vehicle through which to process her own regret. Maddie imagines herself to have much in common with Cleo. However, Maddie fails to appreciate that her identity as a white woman facilitates her ability to interfere in Cleo’s life with fewer consequences than she would face if roles were reversed.

“It wasn’t enough to touch that fur […] you had to know where it came from, who gave it to me. You had to pick, pick, pick, prod, prod, prod, never considering what you were kicking up. Was I even real to you? Was I ever real to you? […] You didn’t care about my life, only my death. They’re not the same things, you know.”

Throughout her chapters, Cleo expresses her continuous anger and frustration at Maddie. As Maddie delves deeper, she paints herself as someone who genuinely cares for the Sherwood family. In truth, Maddie’s decision to pursue the opportunistic versus compassionate approach every time that a potential advantage presents itself to her is consistent with how she behaves in every other realm of her life. Cleo accuses Maddie of only caring about her in death. This accusation carries the insinuation that Maddie is motivated less by the prospect of becoming a pioneer of egalitarian journalism and more by the opportunities afforded her by the indifference of others and Cleo’s inability to speak for herself.

“Mr. Gordon walked to the bar, took Maddie’s glass of vermouth.

‘On the house,’ he said, ‘If you leave now. If you stay, you won’t be able to afford it. You cannot afford to stay here.’

She knew he was a powerful man. But as a white woman, she believed she trumped him, even on his own turf. He wouldn’t hurt her. ‘And if I don’t leave?’”

Maddie considers her relationship with Ferdie evidence that she is progressive. Maddie is also righteous in her assertion that Cleo’s death is no less significant a news story because of Cleo’s reputation and her racial identity. Nonetheless, Maddie is willing to exploit opportunities to use her race as a protective shield when it suits her interests to do so. She views with disdain the predominantly white, male world that represents the Baltimore establishment upholding the system of racial injustice in the city. Even so, she does not possess the integrity required to behave consistently with her espoused views.

“[A]ll Mr. Gordon achieved was to drive them deeper into hiding, which made it more exciting. […] Cleo’s eyes glowed like emeralds. It was a contest and she was sure she was going to win. […] She talked about going to Mrs. Taylor, telling her everything. […] I miss her. I miss her every day. I might miss her more than anyone else in the world. I don’t mind that she didn’t love me. The other thing—well, I try not to think about the other thing.”

At the end of his chapter, it is revealed that Thomas Ludlow was in love with Cleo, and that the palpable intensity of the relationship between Ezekiel and Cleo had become impossible for them both to contain. Thomas Ludlow’s assessment is that Shell Gordon was upset not because Ezekiel was involved with a woman outside his marriage, but because Cleo was insistent on indiscreetly pursing the issue. Through Thomas’s hint at his culpability at the end of his chapter, Lippman employs ambiguity while also drawing closer to what truly happened on New Year’s Eve.

“That bold piece lingers on my doorstep for a minute or so, rings the bell a second time, as if her first conversation with me was a dress rehearsal. It was not. We are done. It’s not my fault that Cleo Sherwood was a careless young woman who couldn’t stay alive […] Whatever Cleo Sherwood was to my husband, she was not and never could be a lady. She was never going to be his wife, and I don’t care what she ran about blabbing to people. She was deluded. And now she’s dead.”

Mrs. Hazel Taylor has no emotional connection to what happened to Cleo Sherwood because she draws a clear line of delineation between women like Cleo and women like herself. Ironically, a woman like Hazel is exactly what Cleo hoped to be, but by Hazel’s interpretation, Cleo’s prior actions, and her behavior with Ezekiel, are qualities that disqualified Cleo from that status. Earlier in the novel, Maddie references the lengths to which men will go to protect one another’s privacy from women who might interfere with their autonomy; Hazel’s knowledge of her husband’s affair suggests how unsuccessful these attempts often are.

“No, darling, you were a woman before I met you. And I wanted you to enjoy, at least once in your life, what it would be like to use that body as it was meant to be used. A woman such as you should be a king’s mistress. For a summer, I could give you that experience. […] I know I’m a cad. I’m a terrible person. I tried to tell you that all along. You were beautiful, you wanted me, I was helpless. I’m sure it was some Freudian battle with Allan, a desire to displace him, to assert myself as the patriarch. But I won’t apologize for any of it. And you, in your heart of hearts, know you should be thankful.”

A middle-aged man hired to paint her portrait when she was 17, Allan Durst Sr. used his time alone with Maddie to embark on an unrestrained sexual relationship with the then-underaged girl. It is apparent in this encounter, three years later, that Allan Sr. has no regrets. He clearly embraces the antiquated, exploitative cultural viewpoints characterizing men as too weak in the face of sexual desire to resist, leaving women responsible for men’s actions. He is, if anything, proud of having manipulated and sexually abused a child his own son’s age, and he views his abuse as a kind of gift to her. His perception, however warped, defines his reality.

“Sixteen years later, sitting on a bench in downtown Baltimore, she still had no reason to doubt Seth’s paternity. Making love with Allan Durst Sr. had not been a mistake that time. She had broken his spell, and that was why she could finally conceive with Milton. Given how easily she had gotten pregnant the summer she was seventeen, she had expected it to be easy at twenty, too. But Seth was to be the first and last pregnancy she carried to term. […] She tried never to think about the ghost of a child left behind in the basement office of the doctor that Allan Sr. had found for her the summer she was seventeen.”

By this point in the novel, Maddie has proven herself willing to accept as fact that which might more rationally be viewed as ambiguous or worthy of further scrutiny. That Maddie and Milton never had any other children after Seth, that Maddie had become pregnant by Allan Durst Sr. before, and that she was able to become pregnant again suggests that any fertility issues may have been related to Milton. Yet Maddie, here, chooses to view sex as more symbolic than scientific, as this interpretation better serves her. Lippman never sheds any further light on Seth’s paternity, but this carefully orchestrated meeting indicates the lengths to which Maddie is willing to go to get what she wants.

“Ezekiel Taylor was a distant fourth. How silly she had been to think that any of this had anything to do with Cleo. Hindsight, they called it. Well, in hindsight, Maddie saw the world for what it was, where women belonged in it. Men were entitled to have their girls on the side, as long as they were discreet. Men, some men, felt entitled to kill the women who did not return their affections. Cleo Sherwood did not mater enough; she could not have swayed this election. She had never mattered at all.”

Maddie finally accepts, amid mounting evidence, that political ambition could not have been a sufficient reason for Shell Gordon to order the murder of one of his employees. A stronger motive is indicated, but Maddie is focused instead on having been mistaken: what everyone told her about the political irrelevancy of Ezekiel’s senate run had been true. Lippman uses Maddie’s decision to relinquish her theory to prepare the reader for the emergence of an alternate theory.

“Do you even see how much this means to me? I joined the department almost ten years ago. There’s no place for me to go, not really. […] It’s going to change, Maddie. It’s been dirty, a place where Negroes can’t advance. I know you know what it feels like to have a dream. I’d never do anything to get between you and yours. You cannot take this information out of this room.”

This moment in the novel constitutes a turning point in both Maddie’s career and in her relationship with Ferdie. Ferdie has just revealed the police’s suspicions about Angela Corwin. Maddie has known since she first met Ferdie nine months ago that, after 10 years of professional investment, his dream of being promoted to detective is within reach. Nonetheless, she is unmoved by the urgency and desperation he conveys in his entreaty. She doesn’t intend to hurt Ferdie, but she doesn’t care enough not to, trusting her proven inability to navigate the world of journalism over his decade of experience on the Baltimore police force.

“Most of all, she was sorry for herself. Because, like Ezekiel Taylor, she was so close to having a second chance at real love and she wasn’t brave enough to take it.”

In the paragraph preceding this statement, Maddie has listed all of the people hurt by her decision to prioritize her fervent, yet very recent, desire to become a reporter. In brief, Thomas Ludlow has confessed to murder; Cleo’s father has shot him and will now spend an indeterminate amount of time in prison; and Cleo’s mother is left impoverished, devastated, and alone to care for two grandsons. Yet in this moment, Maddie is upset because the man whose career she ended, who she lied to, fetishized, and objectified, no longer wants to be involved with her. At the beginning of the novel, she claims to have loved Milton and repeatedly refers to Allan Durst Sr. as her first love. If this were true, Ferdie would be the third chance, but she calls him the second. The implication is that Maddie only genuinely loved either Allan or Milton, but Lippman does not specify which.