Astor Place Vintage: A Novel

by Stephanie Lehmann

  “No, thank you, I think cosmetics are hideous.”

  “I used to think so too, but they’re becoming quite popular. Perhaps another time. Shall I include the chamois? It’s only fifteen cents.”

  “Might as well.”

  All day women flocked to my counter. Many stopped short of buying the rouge and lip pencil, unsure if those had reached the showcase with God’s approval, but they spared no expense at the altar for face creams and powders. It seemed Madame du Jardin had answered their prayers for youth and beauty. Too bad she felt too old and ugly to enjoy her success.

  June 8, 1908

  Eight days have passed since Joe’s send-off. I haven’t seen Angelina all week. She must be involved in preparations for the next fashion show. I suppose I’m feeling lonely. I ought to try harder to be sociable with the other girls at the house. Nowadays my only friend seems to be Sadie, and I don’t like her so very much! I have some mending to do. Perhaps I’ll take it downstairs, where the light is better.

  I poked my head in the sitting room. A chorus girl who was out of a job pounded out a show tune on the piano while some other girls sang along, letting her brassy voice drown them out. In the sewing room, two machines droned away, as usual. The parlor was empty. I took a seat on the musty couch next to a kerosene lamp and set Father’s cigar box with my sewing supplies on the side table. I desperately needed to fix a rip in the silk lining of my muff. My journal kept getting caught on the satin and ripping it further. In the past I’d always given my mending to a tailor or Aunt Ida. Sewing was not one of my talents; I’d never met a needle that didn’t draw blood.

  By some miracle, it took only about ten minutes to thread the needle. I tried making neat and tidy stitches, but they insisted on coming out in different lengths. Aunt Ida’s voice echoed in my ears, telling me to slow down and be more careful.

  The front door slammed shut. I looked up as Sadie flounced in. “I need a change,” she said, plopping down next to me as I was about to stick the needle into the cloth. Instead, I pricked my finger, flinched with pain, and dropped the needle.

  “A change?” I asked, pulling a handkerchief from my pocket to blot a small bead of glistening blood.

  “I’m sick of the store. Maybe I’ll quit.”

  “What would you do instead?”

  “My father works at a shirtwaist factory. He can get me in the door there, with better pay than I’m pulling in now.”

  “Why don’t you ask for a raise before making a change like that? Factory work can be terribly hard.”

  “Who gives a fig? Long as I get my nights free. And with Angelina gone, it sure ain’t gonna be the same.”

  “Gone?”

  “Didn’t you hear? She quit.”

  “Why?”

  “Got something better.”

  “Where?”

  “I swore not to tell. Don’t want the entire store gossiping. I gotta do something,” she went on, “before I end up an old maid.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said, looking around for the needle. “You’re young and pretty, and if marriage is what you want, I’m sure you’ll find someone.”

  “Sounds dandy, but I won’t hold my breath.”

  The needle didn’t appear, and I couldn’t bear the idea of threading another, so I put my sewing things back in the cigar box. “Well, I must be getting to bed.”

  “So early?”

  “I’m beat.” I smiled warmly so she wouldn’t feel snubbed.

  “Maybe I will ask for that raise. Didn’t you get a promotion when I been there three years already?”

  “I’m sure you deserve one. And it never hurts to ask.” Rising from the sofa, I heard my needle hit the floor with a ping. Pretending not to notice, I wished Sadie a good night.

  June 15, 1908

  Two weeks and one day have passed. No letter from Joe. Not that it would’ve gotten here by now. Not that he said he’d write or is even the sort who would. Meanwhile, no one at the store seems to know where Angelina is working. I don’t know why I should care. She made it clear she doesn’t care about me.

  Trying to appear occupied, I wiped my counter even though it was already clean. Suddenly, a pair of elbows landed on the glass. “Wish me luck,” Sadie said.

  “Why?”

  “This morning I decided you were right, so I marched myself up to Miss Cohen’s office and popped the question.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I got this song and dance about how she couldn’t do nothing without Mr. Vogel’s approval, so I gave her my notice.”

  “You quit? Sadie, why don’t you wait for him to come back? It’s only a matter of a couple weeks.”

  “That’s what you think. He’ll be gone for two months, cooling his heels in Paris!”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Where’d you think? Miss Cohen told me, that’s who. Anyway, I’ve had enougha this place. I’ll be getting a dollar more to start at the factory. For the first time in my life, I’ll have spare change in my pocket. Before too long, my father says, I’ll make forewoman, and then I’ll be telling the others what to do.”

  “Well, if it turns out badly, I’m sure the store will welcome you back.”

  “You off your trolley? This place is a dead end.” She gave me a chilly look. “For some of us, that is.”

  She left me to continue wiping the counter in pointless loops. Business was slow and getting slower. Any New Yorker who had the means would be leaving the city to escape the heat. I had my own precious vacation coming in August and couldn’t wait. I planned to spend it by the ocean in New Jersey, where the store had vacation cottages for employees. Everyone said the place was perfectly lovely, and we could stay two weeks for free.

  How strange to think both Sadie and Angelina would be gone.

  Stranger still that Miss Cohen had told Sadie about Mr. Vogel’s extended vacation yet hadn’t mentioned it to me.

  I stopped wiping as something else came to mind: the memory of Angelina teasing me over my promotion. The only people who could’ve known were Miss Cohen and Mr. Vogel.

  Had Mr. Vogel told her? Could Mr. Vogel be her married man? That would explain her secrecy over his identity. She once told me her gentleman friend had begged her to go off to Paris. Perhaps she’d finally agreed and was there with him now. Maybe he’d left his wife for her and would never be coming back to the store. That could explain why she pushed me away. She thought I’d never forgive her for breaking up his marriage.

  I returned to wiping my counter. Most likely I was indulging in imaginings that had no basis in reality. Even so, they made perfect sense.

  June 26, 1908

  I desperately need my monthly to come. Never before have I anticipated its arrival so eagerly. I won’t truly have peace of mind until I see blood.

  AMANDA

  I’D BEEN GONE from Jeff’s maybe five minutes when my cell phone rang. His name flashed on my caller ID. I winced but didn’t pick up. A minute later, he texted. My fingers tingled to open the message, but I resisted. Instead, I focused my attention on Twenty-ninth Street and Madison and used all my mental powers to imagine the Mansfield. It stood right on this intersection.

  A redbrick beaux arts building dominated the southwest corner. A plaque by the main entrance said it used to be the Hotel Seville. Olive had mentioned that was kitty-corner to the Mansfield, which meant … I turned around. My eager eyes landed on a towering, bland eighties high-rise. Worse yet, I saw the name they’d given it on the awning: the Ascot. Yes, an ascot could suggest culture and refinement, but what an idiot name for an apartment house. It rose up thirty floors and was probably filled with characterless cookie-cutter apartments.

  One of the retail spaces on the Ascot’s ground floor was a coffee shop. Maybe it occupied the same space as the old Mansfield dining room. It was only a quarter past nine in the morning, but I felt like I’d been up for hours. I needed sustenance; eggs and potatoes sounded just right. I went inside.

 
The place was pretty empty, and I got a table by the window. After giving my order to the waiter and dumping four creamers into my coffee, I pulled out the journal. My eyes grew wide as I read Olive’s description of the tumultuous night that had led to making love in Joe’s apartment. Wow. I couldn’t believe she’d allowed it to happen. I felt proud of her, but it worried me that she had her facts about contraception all confused.

  As a matter of fact, Mrs. Kelly had said she was ninety-eight years old. And the night with Joe happened on May 30, 1908. I closed the journal and got out a pen. Scribbling on a napkin, I worked it out, remembering to include the nine months of pregnancy and factor in that a person doesn’t turn one until she’s been alive for a year. My tabulations indicated that I’d probably just read about Jane Kelly’s moment of creation.

  The waiter arrived with my plate of eggs. The twin yellow yolks seemed to stare back at me as I considered the fact that Joe Spinelli was Jane Kelly’s father. But he’d gone to live in San Francisco. Did Olive raise Jane all on her own? I preferred to think Joe came back and “made a decent woman out of her.”

  I stabbed a yolk with my fork; it bled out onto my plate. I did not want to dwell on the possibility that Olive hadn’t survived the birth. I scarfed down my breakfast without even reading anything while I ate. After paying my check, I continued walking downtown. There was an important place that I needed to see. At Twenty-third Street, I turned west and walked to Sixth Avenue, where I tried once again to imagine the tracks of an El train encroached on the street. Still, the image wouldn’t gel. A few blocks down, I arrived at my destination: the magnificent beaux arts building that once was Siegel-Cooper.

  Glorious as any monument from ancient Rome, the massive block-long building radiated magnificence despite the fact that Bed Bath & Beyond, T. J. Maxx, and Filene’s Basement now shared the rent. Wreaths, columns, balconies, and lion heads along the cornice adorned the facade. Bronze columns and lanterns flanked the front doors. Olive, Sadie, and Angelina had used the employee entrance on Eighteenth Street, but still. Here it stood. I had to remind myself that I didn’t actually know those women who worked there so many years ago.

  Something up near the roof made my jaw drop. A crest, like a coat of arms, engraved with the letters S and C. Siegel-Cooper! I saw more of the same crests evenly spaced along the top. I’d never noticed them even though I’d walked by a zillion times. I couldn’t help taking this discovery as a message to me personally. Who else in recent history had observed the inscription of the original owners up there? Who would care? I wanted to sit right down on the curb and sob. The past! Right here in our midst, and we were so utterly oblivious, going about our days worshiping the present, as if the generation of “now” was the only one that mattered.

  I walked through the revolving door with a thrill, as though I’d find Olive on the main floor, standing behind a counter. The lobby was a joke. So modernized, so stark, so bright, so white. So completely removed from the original design. To the left, people poured into the Bed Bath & Beyond. On the right, they wheeled out shopping carts filled with housewares. In the center a set of escalators—or should I say moving staircases—led down to Filene’s Basement. Some of the original support columns remained, and some gold trim lined the walls; otherwise, I saw no vestiges of the past. I had to leave. I didn’t want the sterile place to obliterate the lovely interior that existed in my mind.

  Back on the street, I resented the cacophony. A parked van vibrated with rap music; mustard from a hot dog cart spiced the air; street vendors hawked cheap socks and cell phone cases. The crowds submissively wore their regulation Gap clothing while hooked up to iPods and checking e-mail on BlackBerries. I yearned to replace it all with trolleys and carriages. The clip-clop of horseshoes on a cobblestone street. Women in skirt suits and picture hats. Men in bowlers and waistcoats.

  Except Olive’s era wasn’t exactly utopia. Could I honestly say I wanted to live back then? Deal with men like Ralph Pierce assuming a woman was damaged goods just because she lived with women who worked? Thank god for all the freedom I took for granted. Olive risked breaking rules that I never had to bother with. Her very life straddled the transition from Victorian to Modern. She’d certainly embraced her era. It was about time I embraced mine.

  Maybe I already was living my era. It would take someone looking back from the future to have the perspective to know. I might be the perfect example of a woman from the first decade of the new millennium: failing small business owner in a haze of nostalgia for a romanticized past while living in perpetual childless bachelorettehood in a society that encouraged people to replace human contacts with virtual ones.

  I stopped at a red light. My cell phone rang. Jeff again. Suffering. How could I abandon him? Was I being a coldhearted bitch? What if no man ever wanted me again? No. I had to be hopeful. Think positive thoughts. You never knew who might come into your life. A bicyclist zoomed past, inches from my face. Rob Kelly? He was flying back to Santa Monica later today. If only I had some excuse to call him.

  Maybe I did.

  I headed to Washington Square Park so I could have some relative peace and quiet to make the call. The morning was heating up, but it was pleasant enough to sit outside. I returned to the bench with a good view of the arch that I’d sat on before my session with Dr. Markoff. Was that only five days ago? It seemed like a year.

  Staring at my phone, I fought off the fear that Rob Kelly had no interest in seeing me, and I punched in Jane Kelly’s number. Why did life seem to involve one humiliation after another? When she answered, I asked for Rob without identifying myself. She put the phone down with a clunkity-clunk. I began to think I’d been forgotten and was just about to hang up, relieved to at least have my dignity intact, when he said hello.

  “Rob? Hi, it’s Amanda.”

  “Hi,” he said with surprise. “How ya doin’?”

  “Good,” I said, and then barreled ahead. “Remember you mentioned that storage bin in the basement you have to go through? I was thinking—I mean, maybe you’ve done it already, and I know you have to catch that plane—but if you haven’t, maybe you’d like some help, because I’d like to take a look because I’m almost done reading the journal and I feel like I practically know these people, so if you wouldn’t mind having some company going through that stuff …” I paused. Grimaced with exasperation. Could I have done a better job of sounding more convoluted?

  “No,” he said, “I haven’t done it yet. And yes, I would like the company. Can you get here around eleven-thirty?”

  “Yes. Sounds great.”

  “See you then.”

  I put away my phone and waited for my heart to stop racing. Then it dawned on me. Of course. Rob’s gorgeous Mediterranean skin, his dark curly hair. He got that from handsome hunk Joe Spinelli.

  I took out the journal but hesitated before opening it. I didn’t want Olive to be pregnant; except I did, so she could have Jane; except I didn’t want her to die; except if Jane didn’t live, Rob wouldn’t exist. I began to read. This time around, with any luck, no crying baby would arrive to share my bench.

  OLIVE

  “AS YOU KNOW,” Miss Cohen said when I took the chair in front of her desk, “our sales have been quite impressive.”

  When she’d called me in to her office, I had no idea why, though I dared to think it would be good news. The employee newsletter had named me one of the top salesgirls for the month of June. Lacking any real friends to speak of made it easy for me to put everything into my work.

  “The lip pencils,” she continued, “are selling better than expected, and while the rouge hasn’t caught on as much as we’d hoped, the face creams continue to perform splendidly.”

  “We’d sell even more Eternal Youth,” I added, “if it weren’t eternally running out of stock.”

  “I’ll speak with our suppliers again.” She nodded and wrote herself a note. “So.” She set the pencil down. “The reason for this meeting. I’ve finally convinced management to
move the dressmaking department upstairs. Cosmetics and toiletries will be taking its place.”

  “How exciting!”

  “This means we’ll be undergoing a major expansion and adding more merchandise. In addition to finding new brands of wrinkle creams, we’ll begin selling nail enamels, hair dyes, and tonics. The upshot is that I’ll be traveling to more trade shows, so I’ll need someone here I can count on to keep track of sales, inventory, and pricing.” She paused before getting to the point. “Would you be interested in a promotion to assistant buyer?”

  I told myself to remain calm. “I would.”

  “It will mean a lot more work and responsibility.”

  “I understand.”

  “And staying late on occasion.”

  “That won’t be a concern, Miss Cohen. I have no one to answer to but myself.” If I weren’t pregnant, that is. My monthly was due to come any day.

  “Excellent. Then you’ll now be on salary at five hundred dollars a year, but keep in mind, you shan’t be receiving commissions anymore, and there won’t be overtime.”

  I’d no longer have to punch a time clock anymore, either. “That sounds just fine.” With my excitement over the new job title, I couldn’t even think about trying to negotiate.

  “We’ll be hiring someone new to work behind the counter, so you’ll have more time to order stock and work with the advertising department and the window dressers. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to be able to rely on you, especially since Mr. Vogel insisted on taking such a long holiday. As you know, a great deal of his usual duties fell upon me.”

  “I’m sure that’s been frustrating. I hope nothing is wrong with his health to keep him away from work so long.”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that.” She hesitated. “I’m really not at liberty to discuss it.”

  “I heard …” I cleared my throat and spoke in a solemn tone. “There’s a rumor that he’s getting a divorce.” In truth, I’d heard no such thing, but I hoped to encourage her to admit the truth, or to set the record straight, as the case may be. I raised my eyebrows and silently willed her to confide.