“I’m flying out tomorrow.”
“So soon? What about your grandmother?”
“She has a really good live-in nurse, thank god, who just came back from vacation. And my sister checks in all the time. But I’ll be here again soon enough. There’s a lot that needs taking care of, and no telling how long Grandma will, you know …”
I nodded. “I bet your daughter misses you.”
“That she does.”
As we approached Jane Kelly’s building, I wondered if he might try to kiss me good night. We stopped in front of the curved driveway and faced each other. I thanked him again for the eggs.
“You’re welcome. And I guess you’ll be in touch about those clothes.”
“Yes, the ones on consignment. Absolutely.” Suddenly, I was scared by the idea of him kissing me. Not that there was any reason to think he would.
“Well …” He leaned toward me ever so slightly. Was he going to? No, it was just a nod. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
We parted ways. Maybe the idea of a kiss scared him, too.
OLIVE
AFTER FEEDING A receipt into the tube, I looked up and nearly jumped out of my skin. Ralph Pierce, walking past, saw me the very moment I saw him. “Miss Westcott.”
“Mr. Pierce.”
His friendly smile faded as his eyebrows puckered with concern. “I heard about your father. I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, yes … thank you.”
“When my father told me what happened, I wanted to convey my sympathies. I contacted the Mansfield, but they said you’d moved and had no forwarding address.”
“I’m sorry. Circumstances changed and …” I trailed off with awkwardness.
“Please don’t apologize. I’m sure it’s been devastating. He was so young, and I could see the two of you were very close.”
“It has been hard.”
His eyes swept over the counter. “I see you’ve followed through on your career plans. I’m impressed.” His tone was kind, with a touch of amusement.
“I seem to remember you disapprove of this environment.”
“Still. Lots of women wouldn’t have the gumption to go to work.”
“I had no choice.”
“Yes. Well, I should probably let you get back to it.”
“Yes,” I agreed, though no customer waited for my attention.
“Miss Westcott …” He hesitated. “Perhaps you’d allow me to call on you in the next few days.”
I imagined him in the dusty, dingy parlor of my boardinghouse. He wouldn’t be so impressed with my gumption then. “I don’t think that would be possible.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m terribly busy.”
“How about Saturday evening? Could I persuade you to dine with me?”
“Thank you, that’s very kind, but I have an engagement this Saturday.” It happened to be true. The producers of a Broadway show had donated tickets to the store’s employee association; once again Angelina had worked her magic with the social secretary.
“Perhaps the next Saturday?”
He was persistent. I wondered why. I couldn’t have made a good impression that first time we met. Perhaps he felt sorry for me. “I wouldn’t want you to be asking out of obligation.”
“I think we got off on the wrong foot that evening we met. I would be grateful if you’d give it another go.” He hung his head for a few moments and then looked back up at me uneasily. “To be perfectly honest, I’m going through a rough time of it. Nothing like what you’ve been through, but you see, I was recently engaged to a very nice girl from an excellent family—I’ve known her for years—and just last week I had a change of heart and called it off.”
“Oh my …”
“A lot of people happen to think I’m worth less than dirt right now. So I’d be honored if you’d keep me company over a good meal. And,” he added, “I’d wager your father would be pleased for you to keep a connection with Woolworth’s, even if it is one step removed.”
My resistance melted, and I consented. When he asked my address, I almost suggested meeting somewhere else. Then I decided there was no point in deceiving him. If he couldn’t accept the truth of my situation, then why bother with him?
The moment after he left, Sadie appeared by my side. “Who was that handsome gent flirting with you?”
“He wasn’t flirting. Just someone I used to know. He’s taking me to dinner.”
“See, you’ll be married in no time, all your worries behind you.”
“To him? Never. We don’t even get along.”
Sadie laughed. “Wait till he pays for your supper—you’ll see how easy getting along can be.”
—
Saturday night, Sadie and I arrived at the Empire Theatre on Broadway with the secret satisfaction of knowing everyone else had paid for admission while our tickets were free. Angelina was already waiting for us in the lobby. She looked stunning, if a bit showy, in a cobalt-blue dress with black lace trim. The cut emphasized her hourglass figure. Was it a gift from her gentleman friend? She’d made her gorgeous hat, a black boater adorned with two gracefully drooping ostrich plumes on a wide floppy brim.
Sadie was all gussied up in a pink ready-made dress trimmed with yellow ruffles along the hem and a matching sailor hat that sported a fat pink bow. It broke my heart to think how she’d scrimped and saved to buy the ensemble from a cheap shop on Fourteenth Street.
I wore the finest dress saved from my old wardrobe. This day marked my first chance to make use of the tailor-made green satin with a contrasting purple sash wrapped around the empire waist. Purple rosettes circled the crown of my matching green Pamela hat. It had been such a long time since I’d felt pretty.
As we entered the auditorium, I observed how the theater had been designed, like the department stores, to flatter the middle-class patrons’ hunger for sumptuous upper-class surroundings. Plush velvet chairs and three tiers of boxes faced a vast stage. Carved golden cupids ornamented the ceiling, along with the largest chandelier I’d ever seen.
Our free admission included the privilege of sitting up in the second balcony. When Father used to take me to the theater, we always sat in the orchestra, preferably on the aisle, so he could stretch his long legs. Angelina took the seat between me and Sadie. I leaned forward to peer down at the orchestra section.
“Did you hear the latest?” Sadie said as we waited for the play to begin. “The Prince George Hotel threw Evelyn Nesbit out of her rooms. They said the other guests complained because she attracts too much attention.”
“Still?” I asked with amazement. It had been at least two months since the trial.
Angelina fanned her face with the program. “The judge is supposed to decide on her annulment suit next week.”
Sadie shook her head with disappointment. “I don’t see why she’d want to give up Harry Thaw, even if he is crazy. That family’s got a fortune.”
“Thaw’s mother probably forced her into it,” said Angelina.
“You think they still love each other?” Sadie asked.
No one had an answer to that. The play began, and I soon forgot where I sat. A woman secretary, played by the famous Eleanor Robson, marries her rich employer, played by a chubby middle-aged actor I’d never heard of. She moves into his Fifth Avenue mansion and promptly falls in love with the handsome chauffeur. The dashing young actor who played him made most of the women in the audience fall in love, too.
After the show, we went to a low-priced restaurant that catered to the theater crowds. A hidden orchestra churned out show tunes loud enough to fill an auditorium, but the patrons seemed happy enough to scream over the noise to converse. The maître d’ led us to a table in a back room for women only. The air was muggy with steam heat.
Angelina and Sadie swooned over the menu even more than the actor. My mouth watered at the idea of steak and potatoes, though I knew the modest prices meant mediocre food. After ordering, we didn’t waste a
moment before reaching into the bread basket.
“What did you think of the play?” I asked, spreading a thin layer of butter on my roll.
Angelina buttered her own piece of bread more generously. “The girl’s big mistake was getting married. Up until then she had everything she wanted.”
“Are you kidding?” Sadie tore her roll in half and dipped it directly in the butter pot. “If a rich man asks, I’ll marry ’im in a second. I’m tired of playing the game.”
I ate my roll slowly, savoring my first taste of real butter in weeks.
Angelina laughed. “You? Tired of good times? Going out?”
“I like having my boyfriends,” Sadie admitted, “but every year I get older, the odds get worse. I’m ready to be a one-man girl and raise babies. I even told my stockbroker friend to stop coming by.”
I finished swallowing before asking why.
She grinned. “I can’t stand kissing a man without a mustache.”
“Same here,” Angelina said. “Feels like kissing a baby’s bottom.”
Though I still didn’t know what a kiss on the lips felt like—with mustache or without—I smiled along in agreement.
“Men are animals,” Sadie said, scooping more butter from the pot. “He wanted me, but not to get married. I didn’t want him except to marry.”
I thought of my father. He hadn’t been an animal—or so I believed; it was entirely possible I carried around a childish, idealized memory of him. After all, he’d kept the collapse of our finances a secret. Who knew how many other secrets he’d hidden?
The waiter arrived with my ginger ale and their pitcher of beer. The three of us gulped down our cool beverages with relief.
“You ask me,” Sadie said, pausing to belch quietly and pat her chest, “whoever wrote that play has a screw loose. Let that secretary live like us a week and see if she looks twice at any chauffeur.”
“And show me any chauffeur half as handsome,” Angelina added.
“Or a rich man who’d marry his secretary,” I chimed in.
Angelina cupped her palms around her cold glass. “Marriage is always a bargain, and somebody’s gotta get the wrong end.”
“Fifth Avenue sounds like the right end to me.” Sadie eyed me with obvious envy. “If only I could be refined, like you, then I’d attract the right sort.”
“Does the right sort exist?” I asked. “It seems as if every man who comes to my counter buys perfume for some girl on the side. I hate to think I’m encouraging them to cheat on their wives.”
“Why should you care?” Angelina said. “That’ll happen whether you sell them perfume or not.”
“But it’s horrid being nice to those beasts.”
“Men got their needs.” Sadie wiped crumbs off the front of her dress. “Always have and always will.”
I couldn’t agree. “That wouldn’t excuse them from running around with some tramp. What if their poor wives knew?”
“Wives know what they wanna know,” Angelina replied before taking a long sip of beer.
“And if children are involved?” I asked. “Why must a child suffer because of the parents’ mistakes?”
Angelina set her glass down. “If those wives stopped sleeping in separate bedrooms, you can bet that perfume wouldn’t be going to those tramps.”
I widened my eyes in amazement. “You’re blaming the wife for the husband’s behavior?”
“Sure,” she said, giving me a sly look. “If she thinks she’s too good to do it with him.”
I turned red as Sadie laughed with complicity. “Why else you think they got so many bawdy houses up Seventh Avenue?”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Angelina agreed. They clinked glasses.
That was when it finally dawned on me: Angelina’s gentleman friend … he was married. That was why she defended cheating husbands—and the women I’d just called tramps.
“Angelina, if I said anything offensive, I’m truly sorry. I didn’t mean to, honestly.”
She arched her eyebrows with disdain and said nothing.
“I didn’t mean to insult you or say anything stupid.”
“Why would I be insulted?”
“Well,” I stumbled on, “I don’t know, perhaps your gentleman friend might happen to be married.”
“What if he is?”
Sadie flagged down the waiter as he was racing past. “Say, what’s takin’ our food so long?”
“The kitchen is backed up.”
She held out the empty bread basket. “Then fill this up, will you?”
“I’d have to charge.”
“Never mind,” she said, letting him go. “Charge for bread? He’s sure got nerve.”
“I was speaking in general,” I said, still trying to dig out of my hole. “I don’t want you to feel judged. I wasn’t thinking—”
“You weren’t thinking,” Angelina said.
“But you sure was judging,” Sadie cut in. “You people take every chance you get to turn up your nose at people like us. Well, you know what? I didn’t have no chance to go to any finishing school. I barely got a chance to begin school before my parents made me go in as a cash girl when I was ten years old.”
“I’m sorry,” I said inadequately.
Sadie turned to Angelina. “She don’t think us girls should have no fun.”
Angelina nodded. “Fun is only for rich folks, while we work ourselves to the bone.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant,” Angelina said, her cheeks flushed with indignation. “You think I’m wicked. Sunk low as a woman can. Spit in God’s eye and gone to the devil.”
“No! You’re getting me all wrong. I simply think there has to be another way.”
“And which way is that?” Angelina said with a sneer.
“We’re all ears,” Sadie added.
“I’m not saying it’s easy,” I began. “We’re intelligent women.” They stared at me with feigned curiosity. “We can’t spend all our energy on serving the needs of men. We need to work, and make money, and earn our independence.”
“We work, all right,” Angelina replied, unimpressed, “but how much can we earn?”
“Seven per,” Sadie said. “Eight if we’re lucky.”
“It’s possible to work your way up,” I persisted. “If you stick with it. I’m hoping to become a buyer one day. They make an excellent salary, sometimes as much as the men.”
“That’s nice for a refined girl like you,” Angelina said. “But girls like us don’t get chances like that.”
Wasn’t she the one who changed her mind about our hat shop? “There’s no guarantee I’ll get the chance, either.”
“Don’t be coy.” Angelina scowled at me. “Everyone knows you’re Miss Cohen’s pet.”
“She thinks you’re a peach,” Sadie added. “A real jewel.”
On that sour note, the waiter arrived with our plates. Angelina and Sadie attacked their food, exclaiming how everything tasted so delicious. I could barely swallow my gristly meat. While they continued to gorge and babble, I pretended to enjoy the wretched meal. It surprised me how much their hostility hurt. I never could’ve predicted the friendship of two shopgirls would mean so much. Even if I did put on airs, they were the ones barring me from the club.
—
After dinner we took the trolley downtown. All three of us looked out the windows in silence as if traveling alone. When the trolley reached Fourteenth Street, Sadie and I had to leap off, calling out hasty good-byes, so we could catch the cross-town. After hopping aboard, we grabbed our straps as the conductor clanged his bell and the motorman pulled out.
Sadie chattered on about how the theater wasn’t half as jolly as a dance hall. “The other night some vulture picked the wrong girl to dance, and her boyfriend pulled a knife!”
“Good gracious. Then what happened?” At least she’d stopped going on about how beastly I was.
“By the time the cops hauled ’em off,” she said
merrily, “two tables and a chair was broken, the floor was splattered with blood, and they had to close the place down.”
“Sounds ghastly.”
“Only because I had to go home early. No matter how much my feet hurt from standing all day, I swear I could twirl all night.”
I hadn’t a chance to change the subject until we got off the trolley. “I feel awful about Angelina.”
“You sure did put your foot in it.”
“I must seem like a naive idiot.”
“More like a swelled head. Wouldn’t hurt to come down off that perch.”
“And keep my mouth shut.” Still, I couldn’t resist trying to get more details. “I don’t suppose you know who the man is?”
“All I know is he’s loaded and just turned fifty-five.”
“Fifty-five?” That was ancient. Older than Father. How could she stand letting him have his way with her?
“You was imagining Prince Charming?”
“No.” Though I suppose I had been clinging to some such thought.
She returned to her favorite subject as we climbed the steps to the boardinghouse. “You ever been to a dance hall?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“You should come along next Saturday night. We’re havin’ a send-off for Joe. He’s leaving the next day for San Francisco.”
I followed her inside, wondering why Angelina hadn’t mentioned the party. “I don’t think so, but thanks for asking.”
She shrugged. “It’s your funeral.”
Sadie joined some girls playing cards in the parlor. I retreated to my room. In any case, my dinner with Ralph Pierce was next Saturday, so I couldn’t have joined them even if I’d wanted to.
May 23, 1908
Angelina hates me. I feel wretched.
A few days later I went to the dairy restaurant for lunch, hoping to make things right. When I sat down with my egg sandwich, Angelina gave me a nearly imperceptible nod. The news that Evelyn Nesbit decided to drop her annulment suit had everyone talking.
“Now she’ll go after his fortune,” Joe said.
“What d’ya mean?” asked a girl from the toy department. “She’s already got it.”
“She has to be appointed guardian,” Joe explained. “You think the Thaw family is gonna let that happen? She only married him for his money—”
Astor Place Vintage: A Novel Page 22