Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen

by Alix Shulman

  “Stay here,” said the driver, jumping out of the car. “You’re not allowed in the lobby.” He disappeared into the revolving door, nodding to a portly doorman on his way, then reappeared in another moment.

  “Come on, I’ll take you back to Fritz,” he said.

  The driveway’s flowered border turned to shrub as we turned onto a dirt road and headed for a low building in disrepair protruding from the elegant hotel like a tumor.

  “This is the way you go in,” said my driver pulling up beside the screen-door entrance to let me out. Fly-infested garbage cans surrounded the door. Just ask around for Fritz,” he yelled, already driving off. “He’s the maitre dee.”

  I looked around. Flies were everywhere and the garbage stank. I tried to peek through the screen but couldn’t see in for the sun behind me. I picked up my suitcase and opened the door.

  “Close that door! You can’t let flies in a first-class kitchen!” shouted an old man in a chef’s hat, peeling carrots.

  This first-class kitchen looked as though it deserved flies. It was dark and dilapidated with here and there a stainless steel fixture to contrast with the wood of the rest. It was much hotter inside than out. Pots simmered and boiled on iron stoves; ovens baked and roasted; and in almost every corner of the room, someone stood shouting at someone.

  “Fritz?” I inquired of the old man.

  At the mention of Fritz several other people in chef’s hats looked up at me warily from their peeling and pounding. The cooks were all men, but their looks didn’t soften when they saw me.

  “Fritz!” replied the old man. “Fritz doesn’t come in the kitchen! Fritz stays in the dining room!” He indicated two giant swinging doors marked IN and OUT at the opposite end of the room. “Try there. And don’t go out the IN door!”

  I moved as quickly as I could across the hostile room and pushed open the OUT door with my suitcase. It was like going through the looking glass. On the flip side of the door (miraculously changed from an OUT to an IN), the sinister darkness of the kitchen gave way to a shower of sunlight. Perhaps, I thought, on this side, with the light to help, I would be better appreciated.

  A sea of tables, laid with spotless white linen and sparkling stemware, glistened before me. The empty room stretched ahead to glass doors made up of little leaded panes, dressed on the inside with crisp curtains and on the outside with lilacs. How lovely it would be, I thought, to dine here.

  Two uniformed waitresses stood whispering together. “Can you tell me where I can find Fritz?” I asked them. We looked each other over, reserving judgment.

  “He’s there at his desk,” whispered the prettier of the two. “But he’s doing the menu. You’d better wait.” As I turned I imagined their eyes beginning at my heels and moving on up.

  A small trim man in a tuxedo sat writing at a tiny desk next to the dining room entrance. Fiftyish and immaculate, as elegant as the tableware, he wore a pince-nez on his nose and a golden corkscrew around his neck.

  “Fritz?” I asked.

  “Mister Fritz,” he said through clenched teeth without looking up. He went on writing. Through the archway beside him I saw the Belleview Palace lobby extravaganza, and again I thought I heard the bugles blare.

  At last Mister Fritz put down his pen, squinted his pince-nez off his nose, and looked up at me. “Well?” he said icily.

  I started right in with enthusiasm. “I’m Alicia Alexander. Richard Ross sent me. I’ve come to be a waitress. The person who drove me over from the station said—”

  Fritz closed his eyes and put the fingertips of one hand to his forehead. “Who,” he cut in, pained, “is this … ‘Richard Ross’?” He managed to make the name sound like a dirty word.

  “He was the tennis instructor last year,” I began.

  “Tennis instructor!” he said with contempt, and continued meditating. “Have you waited on tables before?”

  I searched desperately for some story to enable me to answer yes. “No,” I confessed.

  He considered. “How old are you?”

  This time I was prepared to lie. “Eighteen.”

  “Well, I’ll try you out for a week, but don’t expect to stay. I run a first-class continental dining room. Serving is more than simply hard work; it’s an art. You’ll have to learn to handle a heavy tray. I just lost one of my girls this week—otherwise I wouldn’t bother to train you now. You’re very lucky. You’ll start at a back station; then I’ll see.”

  “Thank you,” I murmured, half terrified, half ecstatic.

  “You get seven dollars a week plus tips. And room and board. All right?” he snapped.

  I nodded.

  “Do your work and you’ll learn I take good care of my girls. Angie!” he called to the prettier waitress. “Take this new girl here to the dorm and give her a rundown of the rules. Her name’s—what did you say your name was?” he asked turning to me.

  “Alicia Alexander,” I repeated. I liked the name; I was beginning to feel at home in it.

  “Her name’s Alice,” Fritz shouted, as though the measure of my worth were in syllables and he could diminish me by two. Then, dismissing me coldly by picking up his pen, he snapped his cuffs up into his jacket sleeves with a flick of each wrist, placed his lenses on his nose, and went back into his menu.

  There were eleven waitresses in the dining room, girls from all over, and I was at least as pretty as any of them. The trouble was, none of them seemed aware of it. Except for sprightly Angie, who after showing me the ropes went on to teach me the angles, no one eyed me oddly in the dormitory or tried to talk to me at mealtime. Like the men in the kitchen that first day, looking me over and passing me by, everyone went about her business as though I were no threat at all. After working through three exhausting meals a day—each time setting up, serving, clearing off, and setting up again—I would return to my Spartan room to read my Emerson, alone. Only the fat cello player in Martin Mercer’s quintet, an artist of sorts, seemed to see in me anything special. Hundreds of miles from home and many hours from sympathy, here I was totally unappreciated. It was unsettling. I began to wonder if the standards I had come to rely upon might not be simply an Ohio quirk. Were the natural arches of my eyebrows and the length of my lashes worth nothing in the Adirondacks? And then it struck me that what my father in his thoughtlessness had put his finger on (which had still not disappeared) might be something more than a pimple. Perhaps it was a hive, or a boil, or a mole, or a pock. There was no decent mirror in the dormitory, no adequate light to tell me if I was blotching. Perspiring in my nylon uniforms, maybe I smelled or was allergic. Hives at home could be accepted as a temporary aberration, but here no one would know what I was supposed to look like. No one here knew who, under normal conditions, I was. In fact—and the possibility suddenly, devastatingly, loomed like truth—in fact, if no one here found me beautiful, then perhaps I was not! After all, how can skin glow through a sunburn? Of what use is a gentile nose among gentiles?

  My service got better as the days passed—good enough for Fritz to enlarge my station—but my state of mind grew worse. I went from depressed to resigned. In the Sky Lounge, where I served drinks on Saturday night, the couples dancing to the music of Martin Mercer and his Martinets danced differently from the way we danced in Cleveland. Here in the Adirondacks they did no double step at all (which I had studied to perfection). While side-parted hair was de rigueur in Baybury Heights, the ladies of the Belleview Palace wore theirs in upsweeps, and some of the prettiest waitresses had bangs. It made me insecure. In the dining room I went unrecognized. The Bus Stop Game didn’t work on my gentlemen clients, who, catching me at it while they sipped their soup, were likelier to spill than respond. However stylishly I balanced my tray in the air striding to my station, I earned tips no larger than the next girl’s. The customers complained if I made mistakes, and Fritz threatened to fire me every other day. In the kitchen Bo, the dishwasher, made me scrape all my dishes; Jerry Jones, the vegetable chef, allowed me no substitut
es; Slim Hawley, the short-order chef, wouldn’t understand my orders; the head chef, Tony Rosetti, yelled at me for carelessness and for letting in the flies; and the meat chef, Jan Pulaski, threatened me several times with a butcher knife. In “The Zoo,” where all the help, excluding Fritz, ate together and carried on the insane battles between kitchen, dining room, and bell service, my allegiance was so seldom solicited that after a few days I began carrying a book in with me so I could pretend I didn’t care. At home I had sometimes worried about being loved for my nose instead of for myself; here the danger was not being loved at all. Looking down at the printed page while I ate stew or hamburger or hash, I knew my eyelashes were not one bit of use to me.

  By my third week away from home I decided I would rather be a shark in the Baybury Bay than whitebait in Lake Placid. It might take longer for me to get to the ocean from Ohio, but once out there I had a better chance of surviving. Sneaking into the forbidden lobby late that night I got stationery and stamps with which to write to Joey. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I needed Joey to be focusing on me.

  Dear Joey,

  Surprise! First, don’t tell anyone where I am except your brother since I used his name to get my job. All my parents know for sure is that I’m somewhere in New York. They probably also know by now that I’m a waitress (or else a maid or a nurse) since I charged a couple of uniforms to their Halle’s account before I left and they’ve probably received the bill already.

  You are most likely wondering why I left so suddenly. Well, as you may remember, the situation at home was getting intolerable, and the day I left it suddenly got worse. My father doesn’t seem to realize that I’m not a baby any more and I can take care of myself! Anyway, that’s the main reason I left, but also, I needed to be alone for a while to think things out—to find out what I really want and who I really am. I had to know for sure if I could manage by myself without anyone, not even you Joey.

  I’ve pretty nearly found out. I know this much, I’ve got to be free! And that’s why, though it may seem strange to you, I’ll probably be coming back before fall. I want to find out what I have to do about college, because after college I really want to go to law school. I’ve decided never to marry.

  Did I hurt you by leaving without saying goodbye? If so, I’m sorry. I knew you’d understand eventually. I just had to go without anyone’s permission, not even yours. As Emerson says in an unbelievable essay called “Self-Reliance,” “I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you or you.” Nothing personal, Joey. It’s just that I wouldn’t even know what self I was if there were anyone at all I had to say goodbye to.

  What did everyone say when I turned up missing? It must have been funny! I wish I could have heard them!

  As for this hotel—the work is exhausting but the mountains are unbelievably beautiful and I go for a long swim every afternoon. The people are generally nice. There’s a cellist in the band who’s giving me lessons. But the most interesting people are some of my customers. You wouldn’t believe some of the stories, but you’ll have to wait till I get home in September to hear them. (You’d love to see me marching around the dining room with a twenty pound tray balanced on one hand!)

  There are a lot of pretty waitresses here, but they’re all quite a bit older than me. One of them, named Angie, and I have a lot in common, even though she may be Catholic.

  Say hello to everyone for me and remember what they say. Please call up my mother to tell her I’m all right. (Actually, I have one of my terrible sunburns and I’m peeling for the second time, but don’t tell her that.)

  You can write to me care of the kitchen at the above address, and then burn this letter.

  I wrote S.W.A.K. across the envelope and pressed the stamp on upside down. But however much I needed Joey, I would not come out and write “I love you.”

  One night when we were all lined up at the meat counter shouting in our orders for roast beef au jus before dashing off to serve the soup, Jan Pulaski leaned over the stainless steel counter and with an obscene grin on his beefy face whispered to me, “I’d like to fuck you, baby!”

  I was beside myself. On the one hand, the remark terrified me: I had never heard that word used as a proper verb before. On the other hand, upon analysis, it was possibly flattering.

  Jan Pulaski was the terror of the kitchen. I found him repulsive, though he was the only youngish chef on the staff. He was mean and enormous like a rhinoceros. Everyone in the kitchen teased the waitresses, but only Jan tormented them. “Say please,” he would say before giving out the meat, and when the “please” came, he would brandish his carving knife and shout, “I thought I told you to say please!” I could not decide whether Jan Pulaski’s attentions were a little better than no one’s, or no one’s were a little better than Jan’s.

  I moved quickly on to the vegetable table. Blushing and shaken, I ladled out of the two giant soup containers three small bowls of clear and two of thick. Into each I dropped the appropriate tablespoon of vegetables and barley, of beef bits, rice, or split peas. (Even in a first-class hotel, all soups, when strained, boil down to two: thick and thin. Only the menu is a work of art.) Nervous still, I pushed out the OUT door to deliver my soup, then back in IN with my empty tray, straight to the meat to wait.

  “Number three, pick up, two rare one medium,” shouted Jan Pulaski and slid the plates down along the stainless steel counter. I was not number three; I was number seven. But if the meat chef would like to f—me, wouldn’t my number be coming up soon?

  All the beefs were roasted very rare, or, as we called it, “blue.” A “rare” order got washed in one spoonful of jus, a “medium” in two, a “well done” in three or four, and an “end cut” got run under the broiler. I looked on as Jan spooned jus, called out the orders, sharpened his knife, and carved again. No number seven.

  As I waited, I watched him with a fascinated horror. His apron hung from under his flabby beer belly (which he sometimes punched proudly, bragging “muscle! muscle!”), and a naked woman danced on his hairy forearm every time he slapped down a slice of meat. He had acquired her in the navy, where, as he told everyone, he had learned to cook and make love. A profusion of tiny black curls crawled down the back of his neck and crept up his chest out of his shirt. He sweated over the roast beef.

  At last, when some of the girls were already on their way back IN to put in their second and third orders, he placed my plate of beef on the stainless steel counter without releasing it and said, “meet me after work tonight.”

  “I can’t,” I said, reaching for the plate.

  “Suit yourself.” He took back my beef and began spooning jus over it.

  “Hey, don’t! I need it rare!” I cried.

  “Oh do you?” he asked, spooning away. “Then you better meet me.” His eyes narrowed craftily.

  I couldn’t believe he would really blackmail me. Trying to sound my sweetest, I said, “I’d really love to, Jan, but I can’t. I have another date.” I batted my eyes the tiniest bit, hoping to assuage his anger.

  “Tomorrow then.” He inched the plate toward me temptingly.

  “I have a date tomorrow too. Look Jan,” I said, annoyed enough to pull my leveling line on him, “I’m afraid I really can’t go out with you.”

  “No tickee no washee.” His eyes turned mean, and he withdrew my plate for good. “Number ten, pick up two well. Goddammit! Where the fuck is number ten?”

  On the nights roast beef was on the menu, almost no one ordered anything else. My customers had all long since finished their soup and were waiting impatiently for their main courses when I cornered Angie.

  “Better say yes,” said Angie when I told her what was going on.

  “But I’m afraid of him,” I said, close to tears.

  “You’ve got to be tough to be a waitress. He’s not as bad as he sounds. I know the girl he picked on last summer. If you don’t go out with him now you might as well quit.”

  “Maybe I should tell Fritz.
He wouldn’t let this happen to his first-class dining room.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, honey. If this was really a first-class place we wouldn’t even be working here. In a first-rate hotel they’ve got waiters, not us; the only females they hire are the chambermaids. You won’t get a better job than this one. You better go with him.” And off she went with her salads.

  I returned to the meat counter. “Well?” said Jan smiling over at me.

  “Day after tomorrow. Now give me my beef!” I hated him.

  “Number seven, pick up two rare and a blue,” he said smiling.

  Luckily it was a slow night in the dining room. At my five-table station of three “deuces” and two “squares,” which took fourteen diners at a time on a Saturday night, only five customers had shown up so far for dinner. Fritz, hissing “Hurry up!” through his clenched teeth when he saw my customers’ places empty, had told me to expect a party of four transients later on. At the moment, however, only two deuces and a single were waiting for their roast beef.

  I expected the deuces to be perturbed, but not the single, Mr. Winograd. He was a tiny, barely audible millionaire in his sixties, constantly oppressed by the entourage of doctors and nurses with whom he traveled. The day I arrived he had taken me into his confidence because, on a strict diet excluding fat, salt, and sugar, he needed my collaboration to cheat. I loved him for it. He took all the meals he could alone, out of sight of his nurses, except for Saturday night dinners and Sunday brunches when he would entertain friends from New York City. They were all Jewish refugees from Amsterdam like him; he would maintain our intimacy by talking to me in English and to them in Dutch or German. Though regular customers tipped by the week, Mr. Winograd always left a few extra dollars on the table for me on a Saturday night as well. When he ate alone he frequently ordered extra food for me to hide away under a napkin to eat in secret after the dining room closed. In exchange for a shrimp cocktail, or an eclair he’d order with his fruit compote, I’d help him to a teaspoon of sugar in his Sanka, or a side of hollandaise, or a bowl of vichyssoise.