by Gay Talese
The first female to win the Suit Club raffle did so a few weeks before Christmas in 1926. She was a cigarette-smoking woman in her late twenties or early thirties; she had short dark hair that she seemed to have dyed with a reddish tint, a confident manner and spectacles that suggested an almost professorial air, and a voluptuous body about which she was not in the least self-conscious. Her posture was very erect and her shoulders were held back as she stood for the first time at Joseph’s counter during the late summer, having brought in cocktail frocks to be cleaned and made ready for the Labor Day weekend; and although Joseph had no reason to believe she had seen him previously around town, she nonetheless assumed almost immediate familiarity with him, and by her second visit to his shop she was calling him Joe.
Her name was Elizabeth Townley. She had divorced her husband in Philadelphia and recently had taken a year-round residence in Ocean City, a bayside address near the yacht club. After she had bought three chances for the first week’s raffle in December, she smiled as she left the shop, saying, “I hope you’ve brought me luck, Joe.” When she received Joseph’s postcard announcing that she had won, Mrs. Townley returned to the shop gleefully and asked to be shown some green wool fabric that might be flattering on her. She removed her topcoat and tossed it across the counter, and stood in her tight-fitting skirt and silk blouse waiting in an unhurried and pleasant manner.
“Mrs. Townley,” Joseph asked awkwardly, “are you really planning to have a suit made for yourself?”
“Of course,” she said. “You can make a woman’s suit, can’t you?”
“Certainly,” he said. “I just thought you’d like a gift for your brother, or another man.”
“None of them are worth it,” she said. She leaned closer to the counter and pointed toward a bolt of green herringbone material stacked on the shelf behind him. “That’s rather nice, Joe,” she said. “Let’s have a look at that.” After he had placed it on the counter, Mrs. Townley began to stroke it softly, as if she were petting a cat; then she pinched it between her left index finger and thumb, and rubbed it briskly. “Yes, very nice,” she said. “This will be fine. But you’ll have to be quick about it, Joe, because I’ll want the suit before I go away for Christmas.”
Before he could respond, Mrs. Townley had walked toward the fitting room and stepped upon the pedestal. Joseph watched uncertainly as she stood waiting with her hands on her hips; the outline of her brassiere, supporting her prominent breasts, showed through her sheer silk blouse. Although she was fully clothed, she seemed more naked than the open-shirted Amazon lady Joseph had once seen working in the fields during the olive harvest. Blocking the memory from his mind, he took his tape measure and notebook and moved to a position behind Mrs. Townley, who, standing a foot above the floor, was dauntingly statuesque. Inhaling the fragrance of her perfume, and hearing her soft breath in this now very quiet room, he reached high with his left hand and placed the metal-tipped edge of the tape on the back of her neck. He held it there for a moment while the rest of the yellow tape, hastened by the lightly tapping fingers of his right hand, unfurled down her back and rested against her rump. He pinched the lower part of the tape at the point where he thought the bottom of the jacket should be, recorded this figure in his notebook, then paused before taking the next measurement. Had he been dealing with a man, Joseph would now have been standing in front of him, wrapping the tape around his chest and asking him to inhale and exhale. But Joseph had never taken such liberties with a woman—most of his previous experience with females had been in readjusting hemlines, sleeves, and the shoulders of their coats—and he had no idea about the rules of etiquette. But he certainly knew he could not face Mrs. Townley while looping the tape around her back and then pulling it forward to measure her bosom. So he remained behind her; and, in what he hoped was a professional tone of voice, he asked, “Mrs. Townley, would you mind raising your arms, please?”
She raised her arms over her head, reminding him of the drawbridge. He leaned forward and, trying not to bump his nose into her back, reached around her waist with his arms, then brought his hands together in front of her stomach momentarily while he secured the tape between his fingertips; and finally he raised the tape until he felt it grazing against her sturdy, silk-covered breasts. He arrived at what he thought was the farther point on both sides, and waited for Mrs. Townley to exhale, and then pulled back on the tape and placed the metal-tipped end he held in his left hand against the lowest number on the tape he held around her with his right hand. The tip practically touched the number 44. Despite his lack of experience in these matters, Joseph deduced that Mrs. Townley was enormous. Granting the physical differences between men and women in that area, Joseph was nonetheless aware that her chest size was nearly double his own. The tape slipped from his fingers and fell across her ankles. “Sorry,” Joseph said, bending to pick it up. Mrs. Townley said nothing, and did not move.
With slightly less tentativeness, Joseph now extended the tape to measure her waist (38); then her hips (42). But his hands were perspiring, and he felt slightly dizzy. He had never really been alone with an American woman. In fact he could not remember being alone with any woman except the Amazon lady, and that had been in an open field where there had been ample room for his escape after she had caught him looking at her. In the shop he felt trapped. Mrs. Townley’s body was definitely affecting him in a way he knew was sinful.
“May I lower my arms now?” she asked, softly.
“Of course, Mrs. Townley,” he said, having forgotten about her arms. “I’m sorry.”
“And how much longer will this be?” she asked, although she did not seem to be impatient.
“Just a few minutes,” he said, kneeling to measure the width of the skirt she wore, deciding to use the same dimensions for the skirt of her suit. He wrote slowly in his book, not yet ready to stand and take the measurements for the sleeves. The room was so quiet and still that he could hear a fly buzzing within the front windows. It was probably the last survivor from the summer. Then he heard the welcome sound of the doorbell jingling and, leaning his head beyond Mrs. Townley’s hips, he saw Harry Smith, the Ford dealer, standing in the doorway.
“I’ll come back later, when you’re not busy,” Smith said, tilting forward and balancing himself against the outer doorknob that he held in hand.
“Come in, come in,” Joseph said, relieved, “I’m just finishing.”
A heavy, red-faced man in his forties wearing a plain brown fedora and a thick wool mackinaw of matching color, Smith almost stumbled in and then tipped his hat to Mrs. Townley, who stood with her back to him, but whose profile he saw reflected in a mirror.
“I see you’re putting this young man to work,” Smith said, settling himself in the chair nearest to the pedestal, placing his hat on his knee.
“Yes,” she said flatly, not making eye contact.
“Is that your pretty Flint Six touring car I see parked in front?” he went on, watching closely as Joseph now stood alongside her, measuring an arm.
“No,” she said.
“I’m trying to get our friend here to buy a car,” Smith said with a grin. He pointed toward Joseph with his right hand shaped like a pistol, but his eyes remained on Elizabeth Townley.
“I told you, I need a license,” Joseph said, with the tape around one of her wrists.
“Yes, I’ll take care of that,” Smith said. “But I’m here to say I’ve found the perfect car for you.”
“You have?”
Joseph was actually interested. He had been thinking of buying a car for more than a year, but until Smith had come in a fortnight before, he had never discussed it. Smith had been in twice already this week. Each time he offered a car at a lower price. He was new in town, and very eager to make a sale.
“This is only five hundred,” Smith said. “It’s a handsome little Ford coupe. It’s only a year old, and not a thing wrong with it. The guy who owns it needs a bigger car. He’s leaving for Florida this week and w
ants to sell the coupe right away, and so I thought of you.”
Five hundred dollars was an amount Joseph could afford. He had deprived himself of most comforts since arriving on the island. He lived in a small room behind the shop in order to avoid the cost of an apartment; and the more money he had earned in recent years, the more he had sent home to Italy. By now he had paid off his debts to the Rocchino uncles in Ambler, and had made the final payment to the shop’s previous owner in Arizona. He had by now also taken so many trolley rides across the bay that he finally felt adequate to the challenge of steering himself through what was left of his hydrophobia.
Mrs. Townley stepped down from the pedestal, holding Joseph’s hand momentarily. Smith lit up a cigarette and watched as she moved across the room to the counter. She immediately picked up her coat and put it on.
“I’ll have the pattern cut for you by tomorrow night, Mrs. Townley,” Joseph said, taking his place behind the counter, lighting a cigarette, and completing his notations in his book. “You can come in Monday for a first fitting. Then another fitting by Thursday, and within two weeks from today you’ll have the suit.”
“I appreciate that, Joe,” she said, and with a smile she turned to leave. Joseph hurried around the counter to open the door, blocking Smith’s view of Mrs. Townley as she went down the steps, moved in front of the window, and hurriedly walked up the street.
“Good-looking woman,” Smith said.
Joseph ignored the comment as he closed the door.
“When can I see the car?” he asked.
“I can get it now,” Smith said, quickly rising. “I’ll be back in an hour. You can look it over and we can take a little ride. If you like it, we can go to the bank tomorrow. I’ll get the papers ready for you, and give you a few driving lessons on Sunday. By the next weekend, you should be driving on your own.”
Joseph said nothing, seeming hesitant, worried that things were moving too quickly.
“Look,” Smith said, with sudden urgency, “if you don’t take this car, somebody else will. You’ll never find a car like this for five hundred, believe me. It’s a fine car. The owner took care of it.”
“All right,” Joseph said. “Let me see it.”
It was a navy blue coupe that had obviously been well maintained. Its silver bumpers glistened in the sunlight of this clear wintry afternoon, and its tires were not mud-splattered like those of the other cars parked on the street. Harry Smith sat in the driver’s seat but leaned out the passenger-side window and he beckoned with a wave to Joseph watching from the store. As Joseph approached, Smith gunned the engine, honked the horn, and opened the door. Joseph already felt strangely possessive of the car that was his for the asking.
Five minutes after Smith had begun to drive him around in it, singing its praises while moving the gear stick like a baton, Joseph said, “All right, I’ll take it. But let’s get back to the shop.” In his excitement for the ride, Joseph realized, he had left his shop unlocked.
“Oh, you’re going to be happy with this car,” Smith reassured him, pulling up to the curb. “It’ll change your whole life.”
The next morning, Joseph gave Smith the five hundred dollars he had withdrawn from the bank; and after placing the ownership document and bill of sale proudly in the drawer of his counter, he stood watching as Smith drove the car back to the agency’s garage—where, three days hence, on Sunday after Mass, Joseph would appear for his first driving lesson.
Even before this much-anticipated event, Joseph sensed the truth in Smith’s comment—Joseph’s life had changed. Just owning a car opened up a world of possibilities, extending the dream that had driven him across the sea. Recently he had read that the Ford company in Detroit, which had produced as many as two hundred thousand vehicles in a month, had sold its ten millionth car, and that someone had driven it from New York to San Francisco. No less thrilling to Joseph would be his motorized maiden voyage two miles across the bay to Somers Point.
Joseph attended the ten-fifteen Mass the following Sunday. There were fewer than twenty people in the church, which was not unusual for the parish in wintertime; but the Christmas decorations around the altar, and the wood-carved Nativity scene, served as a happy reminder of the holiday ahead. It would mark the sixth anniversary of Joseph’s arrival at Ellis Island. He remembered how distressed he had been at not being met by his uncles, who had not been able to come; but he would surely not forget the kindness of the interpreter who had escorted him through the stations at Ellis Island, and had finally put him on the train that had carried him into Philadelphia. But all that and Ambler now seemed as far away as Maida.
After Mass, Joseph had been offered a ride uptown by a retired fireman whom he knew from church. But Joseph preferred to walk. It was a brisk, sunny day. He was wearing for the first time a brown tweed overcoat he had recently made. After many months of parading around town, a solitary figure in his private passeggiata, he saw ahead of himself the end of his dependency on shoe leather.
He walked more than a mile through the center of town toward the Ford garage at the north end of the island, passing rows of boarded-up houses and closed shops, including his own. East toward the ocean, on the corners of Central and Wesley avenues, where the Methodist and Presbyterian churches were located, he saw crowds gathered on the sidewalks and cars moving slowly in search of parking spaces. Four blocks beyond the grounds of the Tabernacle, on a residential street of white Victorian rooming houses and bungalows, stood a two-story tan brick building with a fan-shaped façade and a Ford emblem in the brickwork. Despite the Sabbath restrictions, the large sliding doors were wide open, and as Joseph entered, he saw a mechanic leaning under the open hood of a truck, and the feet of another man sticking out from beneath the bumper of a vehicle with its motor idling. The glassed-in office in the corner was unoccupied, and there was no sign of Harry Smith. But as Joseph paused and looked around, he thought he recognized his car parked among the models that were lined along the wall of the garage. In the rear he heard two male voices engaged in an argument; one man was dressed in gray overalls and a peaked cap, and the other wore a jacket and tie and was smoking a cigar. Joseph hesitated before approaching. But the cigar-smoking man stopped arguing as he noticed Joseph, and with a smile he came forward and asked: “And what can I do for you, young man?”
He had a jowly face with a pencil-thin moustache and black shiny hair combed straight back, and on the lapel of his jacket was pinned a card bearing his name in bold lettering: Jack Ward, Mgr.
“I’m here to meet Mr. Harry Smith,” Joseph said.
“He left,” said Ward.
“Left?” Joseph repeated with surprise and disappointment. “Well, when will he be back?”
“He won’t,” Ward said. “He left for good. Picked up his salary last night and quit. Said he was off to Florida.”
Stunned with disbelief, Joseph shook his head.
“But may I show you something?” Ward asked eagerly with raised eyebrows. “We’ve just received some terrific buys.”
“I already bought a car from you people!” Joseph cried out, pulling from his coat pocket his sales receipt and registration document, and handing them to the manager. Ward studied the papers momentarily, and looking back at Joseph he nodded and said, “Yes, indeed, you got yourself a terrific buy. You bought Harry’s old car.”
Joseph frowned.
“But I can’t drive it!” he said. “Harry Smith promised to teach me, and now he’s gone.”
“Yes,” said Ward, “and if that bastard ever returns, we won’t take him back. I can promise you that.”
“What do I care?” Joseph asked, becoming angrier. “I’m stuck with a car I can’t drive. Now what am I supposed to do?”
“That damned Harry Smith!” Ward exclaimed, wanting to be a commiserator, not a problem solver.
“Mr. Ward,” Joseph demanded, “you must help me.”
“But what can I do?”
“Help me drive it.”
“But you don’t have a license or permit,” Ward said. “You’ll need a driving instructor, and he’ll make the arrangements. I do know some instructors, and tomorrow I’ll give them a call and see what they can do.”
“I work tomorrow,” Joseph said. “I want to start today.”
“They don’t work on Sundays.”
Joseph felt the adrenaline rising in his body.
“Look,” Joseph said firmly, “this is my car, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” Ward said. “It’s fully paid for, and you’re the registered owner.”
“So why don’t you just start it for me, and I’ll learn by myself?”
“But you might kill yourself, and I can’t be responsible.”
“I’ll be responsible,” Joseph said. “You just start the car, and I’ll get in.”
“But if it’s on our property, I’ll still be responsible.”
“So drive it across the street, and leave it there. I saw how Harry Smith moved the gear stick and the pedals, and it didn’t look hard.”
“You know,” Ward said, reflecting in a wistful manner, “that’s how I learned to drive. Back in the boonies behind Somers Point, where nobody ever drove with a license—and still doesn’t—I took my brother-in-law’s tin lizzie one day when he was away, and I learned in a half-hour.”
“Fine,” Joseph said, “so let’s get going.”
Ward hesitated for a moment, then turned toward the mechanic with whom he had been arguing.
“Hey, Billy Bob,” he yelled. “Take that coupe parked there in number eight and leave it across the street for this young man.”
The mechanic glared at Jack Ward and muttered under his breath; but after taking a rag from a truck fender, and wiping his hands, Billy Bob slowly made his way toward Joseph’s coupe and did as he had been told. Joseph walked behind the car as Billy Bob drove it out, while Jack Ward, with a farewell wave, headed toward the rear of the garage, beyond view of what might happen in the street.