1964

1964 is the year the novel's central transformation begins. It is the year Maddie Schwartz, then a married woman in her late twenties, first appears in the narrative as an object of another's memory, and the year she takes the first decisive, secret steps toward leaving her marriage. The year is marked by a clandestine affair with a Black police officer, a staged burglary designed to conceal her engagement ring, and the quiet, deliberate planning of her departure from Milton Schwartz. These events, though hidden at the time, set the stage for her eventual move to an apartment on Gist Avenue, her separation, and her subsequent career at The Baltimore Star. 1964 is thus not merely a date but the seedbed of the novel's entire plot, the year in which Maddie begins to dismantle her old life and reach toward a new one.

Maddie's Introduction and the Memory of 1964

The year 1964 is first established through the memory of an unnamed narrator, who recalls seeing Maddie in late fall of that year. The narrator remembers her wearing a plain black pillbox hat with no veil, a black coat with fur at the throat and cuffs, and standing beside Milton Schwartz. The narrator, then twenty-six, is struck by what a fine woman Milton had gotten for himself, and reflects that Milton, then almost forty, looked so much like his own father. This memory is tinged with the narrator's own sense of change and loss, as she notes that people change, but that no one will ever know the full story of her own transformation. The image of Maddie in 1964 is one of polish and apparent contentment, a stark contrast to the narrator's own worn coat and scuffed shoes, and it establishes Maddie as a figure of a certain social standing, even as her inner life is about to fracture.

The Affair with Ferdie Platt

In 1964, Maddie begins a passionate and secret affair with Ferdie Platt, a Black police officer. Their relationship is marked by a pattern of clandestine meetings: Ferdie would call before coming so Maddie could sneak down and leave the lower door unlocked, he would arrive after dark and disappear in the early morning hours, and he always wore his uniform. Maddie, who had not been loud before, wanted someone to hear, to know that she was having sex two or three times a night, even if it was just her motley assortment of neighbors. Ferdie would sometimes bend her over the sink in her bathroom, and while he kept his eyes tightly shut, she was mesmerized by their images in the mirror, noting that she had never looked so pale and tiny, and that before Ferdie, she had thought of herself as dark. Their intimacy was physical and intense, conducted over cold Chinese takeout or pizza and foamy Ballantine's Ale, which Maddie kept on hand for him even though she preferred wine or vermouth. The affair was a deliberate act of rebellion against her marriage and her former self, a way of claiming a sensuality she had not known she possessed.

The Staged Burglary and the Hidden Ring

In a pivotal act of 1964, Maddie stages a burglary in her apartment on Gist Avenue. Feeling strangely warm because the landlord had the radiators set too high, she opened the sliding door to the little patio off her bedroom. 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. She pulled the sliding door so only a faint wisp of winter air sneaked through, and methodically created the appearance of chaos by opening drawers in the kitchen and bedroom, tossing some of her clothes to the floor. She then took a deep breath and ran into the street, screaming for help. Within a block, a patrolman, a Negro, rushed toward her, and she told him, breathlessly, that she had been robbed. This false burglary was a calculated move to rid herself of the symbol of her marriage, to create a cover story for its absence, and to draw the attention of the police—an attention that would, in a sense, bring Ferdie Platt into her life more fully. The ring, hidden in the African violet, becomes a buried token of her old identity, a secret she keeps even from herself.

Planning the Departure

Later in 1964, Maddie's thoughts turn explicitly to leaving her marriage. She had kept her first love, Wally, out of her mind for years, but now he was back, like Elijah showing up for his Passover wine. She fell asleep paging through an imaginary calendar, trying to calculate the best time to leave. Her birthday was next month. December seemed wrong, not over the holidays, unimportant as Hanukah was. February seemed too late, January a cliché, a mockery of New Year's resolutions. She decided on November 30, twenty days after her thirty-seventh birthday. This precise planning reveals a methodical, almost clinical approach to a life-altering decision, a stark contrast to the impulsive passion of her affair with Ferdie. The date, November 30, becomes a private landmark, a fixed point toward which she moves through the remainder of the year.

The Schwartz Household and Its Secrets

The Schwartz household in this period is depicted as one with a veneer of middle-class respectability that conceals deeper tensions. They kept a kosher house, but it was their only concession to Judaism, and they spoke with a sense of superiority about the more religious Jews who lived along Park Heights Avenue. The narrator, a television personality known as Midday Fog, observes that there is no one more anti-Semitic than a middle-class Jew, a pointed commentary on the Schwartzes' social pretensions. The household's politics were also a matter of performance, with guests deferring to the narrator's opinions. This environment of surface conformity and hidden judgment is the world Maddie is preparing to leave, a world where her own secrets—the affair, the staged burglary, the buried ring—would be utterly unacceptable.

The Legacy of 1964

The events of 1964 cast a long shadow over the rest of the novel. Maddie's decision to leave, her affair, and her staged burglary are all part of the foundation upon which she builds her new life. The year is also a point of reference for other characters. Bob Bauer, a reporter, reflects on his own secrets in the context of Maddie's, noting that everyone has secrets, and that he has his own—a wife with MS, a daughter who died of leukemia. The year 1964 is thus a time of hidden lives and buried truths, a year that sets in motion the chain of events that will lead to Maddie's career, her investigation into the disappearance of Cleo Sherwood, and her eventual confrontation with the violence that surrounds her. It is the year the old Maddie begins to die, making way for the woman who will emerge, scarred but determined, in the years to come.