“Is your father here?” I asked.
“He doesn’t come in too often these days. It’s hard for him now that he’s older.”
“Oh, I would have liked to meet him.”
“We do mostly men’s hats here, as you can imagine, in fact, Daddy used to do only men’s until I got involved, but these gents are working on my fall collection.” She walked us to the corner where the men were standing at the workbench.
“Max, here, is our top-hat maker,” Dolly said. “He’s made hats for the last seven Presidents, isn’t that right, Maxi?”
“That’s right, ma’am. Mrs. Dolly’s father and I personally delivered a midnight-blue silk style for President Roosevelt’s inauguration. Seven and three-eighths is the size of his head if I remember correctly. A good-shaped crown that man has, a good-shaped crown.”
Dolly and I smiled.
“How long have you been doing this?” I asked him.
“All my life, ma’am.”
“And Max’s nephew is learning the trade, too,” Dolly jumped in. “Daddy set up an apprentice program to train the next generation. I’m trying to get some girls in here, too, to help with my women’s line,” she said in a quieter tone as she led me away from the men, “but the men are so hungry for jobs they’ll do anything, work long hours, anything.”
The factory was fascinating; it was such a busy and different world from what I was used to. Though my mind kept jerking back to the previous evening, to Harry’s face and to that horrible dinner I had to sit through, being in the factory was a comforting distraction. Taking in so many details and sounds helped me fill the painful emptiness I felt inside, even if just for a few moments.
We walked around a corner into another room altogether, this one long and skinny with a window at the far end, filled from floor to ceiling with fabric and trims on one side, horsehair braid, crinoline, buckram, straw, wool felt and silk, Dolly pointed out. On the other wall were hundreds of small numbered wooden drawers, most with an inch-long piece of trim tacked to the outside, and a sliding ladder allowing one to reach the very top drawers.
“My mother’s doing,” Dolly said as I peeked inside a drawer labeled with a delicate green feather. “This is her room.” Under the window, a sewing machine sat next to a neat, organized table stacked with reels of thread in every imaginable color. “She still comes in once or twice a week, but we have some young ladies working in here mostly.”
“You must have learned a lot from her,” I said.
“Everything,” Dolly said, looking at the chair and the sewing machine. “So, your hat. Do you want safe, daring or middle of the road?”
“Probably middle of the road.”
Dolly nodded. I wanted to let her take the lead, since she clearly had the fashion sense and the expertise, but I was not one to wear anything outrageous.
“Okay,” she said, already holding several fabric swatches up to my face, then standing back and giving me either a crinkle of the nose or a squint of the eyes. She held up numerous wooden blocks while switching out brims of various widths to get a feel for which shape and style suited me most; then she ditched the brims altogether and settled on an oversized and slightly exaggerated netted pillbox, tall and two-tone in black and candy pink.
“I like the contrast of the masculine military shape against the hot-pink felt,” she said. “You’ll turn heads.”
That fall would be Dolly’s third season. She’d started with a small collection and she named it Dolores Ann, her full first and middle name. The response had been incredibly positive and, since she’d only had a small number of hats made, the demand was high. Over the spring and early summer her designs were often seen in the papers on Dolly’s friends and on celebrities. Bergdorf Goodman had picked up the entire collection and there was to be a fashion show in September for Dolly’s collection, paired with designs by a luxury fur coat maker, that I had promised to attend, and of course I would wear a Dolores Ann original.
I wondered what it must feel like to walk down the street and see someone wearing a design that you had created in your mind. What must it feel like to know that women, old and young, would walk into a store and fall in love with something that you had dreamed up, something that had started as just a whisper of an idea, developed in your mind, then actually created into a real thing?
“How did you know you could do it?” I asked.
“Do what?”
“This, working here in a hot factory alongside all these men? You look so happy here, but how did you know you would be?”
“Sweets,” she said. “I was never really interested in making my debut and then shuffling quietly into married life, never to be thought of again, except as someone’s wife. If that had been the case I never would have married.”
I nodded. So many women, me included, did just that. “It must be amazing,” I said, “to know that you’re creating things that are real and that are being worn and loved and cherished by complete strangers.”
Dolly looked at me and smiled.
“You know what,” she said, walking over to the window and forcing it open, then turning on a small electric fan. “It does feel magical; it really does. I look at things differently now; I look for ideas everywhere I go. Those intolerable luncheons and socials and ball games, I may look like I despise them, sitting on the outskirts watching it all unfold, but I actually enjoy them because I see things with different eyes. I see all those abominable events as an opportunity.”
I envied Dolly’s calm spirit, her confidence and her contentment with the world. Her ability to find positives in the driest of situations. I wanted to take the goggles off her head and wear them—actually see through her eyes and claim the world the way she did.
“One night Clark and I were at dinner at Minetta Tavern with one of his bosses and his duller than dull wife, Edith. All she wanted to talk about was the household chores and cleaning products and I just couldn’t understand her fascination with it all because it’s not like she’d ever picked up a cleaning rag in her whole life. She was probably a nice enough person deep down, but she just wouldn’t stop and she kept twirling her spaghetti on her fork, twirling and twirling and twirling, while she talked about vinegar versus lemon juice for tackling lime buildup in the bathtub, and then the whole thing would slip off her fork and she’d have to start twirling all over again. I just stared at her fork, the pasta forming these beautiful glistening piles on her plate each time the strands fell, every time a slightly different spiral formation. I was mesmerized.” Dolly stood up and slid the ladder to the corner of her mother’s trim room and climbed to the very top where there were rows of hatboxes. After pushing some to the back, pulling a few to the front and peeking inside, she climbed down with a box and set it on my lap.
“Open it,” she said, grinning.
Inside was a black wide-brimmed hat with a mass of velour strings organized into two piles of what could only be described as spaghetti. One in deep red, the other a slate grey. She took it from the box and held it to the left side of her head on a deep slant.
“It’s magnificent,” I said, and it truly was.
“Around the factory we call it the spaghetti hat, but when I sold it to Bergdorf’s I named it ‘Edith.’”
I thanked Dolly for showing me around and for the hat she was going to have made and told her I had to get back to catch the train. On the way out I saw a small stack of soft crocheted baby bonnets.
“Oh, how sweet, you do baby hats, too?”
“It’s just an idea I was playing with; these are just some experiments. I was considering expanding into a children’s line, you know, for girls and boys, not just babies, but I don’t really know enough about it, about them!” She laughed.
“They are ever so delicate and precious. You have a good thing here, Dolly, really; I would buy these as gifts for friends’ children. In fact, I would love to buy one for a friend now; are they for sale?”
“Oh, you flatter me. Beatrice, take one, p
lease.”
“Let me pay you,” I said.
“No, no. Take it. I need to get organized here and decide which hats I’m going to bring for the trunk show at the Manor. Say, will you work with me that day? I could use a helping hand and some moral support.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’m helping Jeanie set up the women’s fair first thing in the morning, but I’m sure working with you will be much more fun.”
Dolly rolled her eyes. “Why do you mix with her?”
“She’s not so bad when you get to know her.”
“I don’t know why you won’t stay one more day, head back to Montauk with me and Clark tomorrow. Maybe Harry will be on the same train and we can all sit together; it will be fun.”
“I can’t,” I lied. “And besides, Harry will be on the late train. He’s terribly busy with work.” I had no idea what was going on with Harry’s work or which train he’d be on. But I knew he’d be on one of the trains out to Montauk the next day and our life would go on as before, both of us pretending that nothing had happened.
“Oh my God,” she said, pulling my face in close to hers, “I almost forgot to ask.” She lowered her voice to an excited whisper. “How did it go last night?”
I paused briefly. Maybe it would feel better to tell just one person and not harbor such a huge, crushing secret.
“You were right.… Regine Brenner was exactly what we needed.”
* * *
When I stepped out onto the street the sun was hotter and the smells were stronger. I quickly walked to Sixth Avenue and flagged down a cab.
“Pennsylvania Station, please,” I said, checking the time. If we hurried I’d just barely catch the one o’clock train. The next one wouldn’t be until four and part of me wanted to get back to my room at the Manor, lock the door and shut out the rest of the world. But another part of me felt unsettled, jumpy and fired up. Seeing Dolly in the factory, excited, eager, grubby, sweaty and glowing all at the same time, something about that left me agitated. I seemed to be failing at much of my personal life and I yearned for Dolly’s sense of pride and accomplishment.
I tapped my feet on the floor of the taxi and looked out the window. Two women pushed baby carriages on the sidewalk. Among them, weaving in and out and up and down Sixth Avenue, were men dressed in suits, suspenders, fedoras and pocket squares, walking with purpose, all heading somewhere important, I imagined, to make something of themselves, to make a deal, to make money so they could earn their drink at the end of a long day. So they could order a second one and send a round to the group of secretaries gathering for a birthday celebration at the end of the bar.
I opened my handbag to make sure I had enough cash for the taxi driver; then I reached around in the small compartment in the lining where I had placed a business card a few weeks back at the yacht club.
Adam Rosen
Executive Editor
The New York City Reader
820 Eighth Avenue
We were already heading uptown, but something inside of me, some racing feeling in my chest and in my stomach, was telling me to stop.
I hadn’t heard anything from Mr. Rosen about the greasy pig article I sent in and it was just as well, because Harry would be furious if he knew I’d sent something to an editor, especially to a Jewish editor. He told me, firmly, when we first married that it wouldn’t be appropriate to earn a paycheck, that none of the women in his family worked after they wed, except in the home, and that it would send the wrong message. I had happily conceded, but now my home life was a shambles, a baby seemed an impossibility and I didn’t know where that left me. Maybe it would be smart to inquire about the piece I’d sent in, just make sure Mr. Rosen had received it.
“To hell with Harry,” I said.
“What’s that, ma’am?” the taxi driver said.
I leaned forward. “I said forget Pennsylvania Station. Take me to Times Square.”
* * *
I got out of the cab and stood at two enormous doors with the gold numbers 820 perched above them like a crown. The sun was in full force now and it reflected off the glass, forcing me to shield my eyes. Four women in almost identical uniforms of white blouses with patterned skirts, probably secretaries, exited the building in single file and turned to the left for their lunch break, I thought. I watched them and envied them. Then both doors swung open and a group of gentlemen walked out, tipping their hats against the sun, a sense of urgency in their stride. I quickly stepped out of the way.
This place was big and towering and intimidating and I hadn’t even stepped inside. I felt a trickle of sweat run down the side of my face. I couldn’t do this. Who was I to think I had any business being here? Maybe when I first moved to New York City, once I got used to working for Mr. Savage, I could have worked my way up to one of these big office buildings and this would have felt normal to me, but now it was as if I didn’t fit in anywhere, and certainly not here in the midst of the lunchtime rush hour.
I turned from the building, walked to the edge of the sidewalk and saw a taxi approach. As I lifted my hand to hail the cab a tall, heavyset man in a suit far too dark for the heat of the summer blasted past me.
“Taxi,” he blared out, and he knocked into me so hard that my handbag and all of its contents spilled onto the ground and into the gutter.
“Good God,” I said, scrambling to the ground to pick up my belongings.
Dolly’s lipstick, my purse, keys to the apartment, a key to the Manor, a swatch of fabric that Dolly had given me to remind me of the pillbox hat—I collected it all and stayed crouched, scanning the street and the sidewalk to see if there was anything left.
“Miss,” I heard behind me. “Is this yours?” I looked up, but the sun was shining right in my eyes. All I could see was the business card right in front of my face.
“Oh, thank you,” I said, and when I took it the man gave me his other hand and helped me to my feet.
“I hear he’s a real piece of work,” he said. He was wearing dark glasses and a narrow-brimmed fedora.
“Who is?”
“That guy, Adam Rosen.” He motioned to the card still in my hand.
I looked to the card and then to the man. He took off his glasses and I instantly recognized him.
“Oh, Mr. Rosen,” I said. “How nice to see you!” I brushed my hair back from my face, took the card and quickly shoved it back into my handbag. “What a coincidence. Is this where you work?”
“It is indeed. I received your article.”
“Oh.” I pulled my handbag into the crook of my elbow and straightened out my dress. “That … Oh my goodness, I don’t even know why I sent it.” I stopped. I was suddenly horrified that I’d actually mailed it to him.
“And here I was thinking you’d come by to bring me another article. I loved it—such a great angle, to talk about the local boys and put the spotlight on them instead of summer guests.” I couldn’t believe I was hearing him correctly. “It ran in yesterday’s paper; your check’s already in the mail. You really didn’t see it?”
“What? No, I…” It ran in the paper? A check was in the mail? I couldn’t believe it.
“Listen, I’m running to a meeting, but if you go to the front desk they have copies of yesterday’s paper.” He motioned inside. “I knew I’d found the right girl.” He put on his dark glasses and tipped his hat. “I do hope you’ll be sending me more like that. Good day to you, Mrs. Bordeaux. You know where to find me.”
* * *
On the train, as I left New York City behind I read the piece over and over and realized that Mr. Rosen hadn’t changed a word. There it was, the night of the greasy pig contest captured in words in print. Now it couldn’t be changed. I had seized a moment and made it permanent, indisputable. It was a strange and incredible feeling to see my words, my thoughts, on the page.
It might have been just a glimmer of hope that I felt on that train ride back to Montauk, a flash of confidence that I could do something if I really wanted
to, a kind of confidence that I hadn’t known I’d been missing until I felt it. Maybe Harry didn’t have to be my whole world, the way it was expected when I married. I was certainly not his everything. Maybe I could do something worthwhile, be something more, something small but significant. I don’t even know who I am, or who I’m trying to be, I thought as I watched the city zip by outside the windows. For years now I had been bumbling around, not even trying to figure out what was important and necessary. But seeing my recollection of the evening with the local boys in Montauk, my view of a moment in time when there was excitement, energy, competition and thirst for life, smelling the ink of my words, that felt good.
I laid my head back and closed my eyes. The events of the past two days played in my mind like a picture show—the train ride with Dolly, Regine Brenner, the dirty martini glasses, the hot cigarette, Harry’s face, the sickening shock, the hat factory and now this, my words in print. I felt a rage and a hot determination side by side and that was something. That alone gave me hope. Something was better than numbness. Something was better than not caring, not dreaming, not daring.
13
I could have simply called and had the bellboy pick up my laundry like everyone else, but for the past few weeks I’d adopted the habit of taking it down myself. After that first time, when I’d walked all the way to the fishing village with Elizabeth, she’d seemed reluctant for me to accompany her again, so I hadn’t. Maybe she thought she’d get into some kind of trouble with the Manor patrons for accepting my help, or maybe she’d been embarrassed about her house and neighborhood. One other time we’d walked down the hill and then parted ways before we reached the fishing village. I thought it was more dignified for her that way.
Some of the guests from the Manor were at the Beach Club, it was a beautiful summer’s day, but I just didn’t feel like going there. I sat under the oak tree and read the first paragraph of my book three times, getting to the end each time and realizing that I hadn’t been paying attention. I’d barely slept the night before; I couldn’t get my mind to stop thinking about Harry and what would happen next.
Montauk Page 10