Had she had her own way, Karen would have chosen one of the run-down walk-ups that passed for quaint right in the heart of the unique little community, but her parents had been adamant.
“It’s bad enough you want to live in the city at all,” her mother had said. “But as long as you do, we’re going to make sure that it’s someplace safe and respectable, and not some bohemian enclave overrun by weirdos and freaks.”
There was no way Karen could explain to her parents what it was like when she crossed Washington Square South. More than merely entering another part of the city, it was like entering another life, a life she felt she belonged in—among the weirdos and the freaks.
They settled on the formerly deluxe apartment house on West Twelfth Street, a block off Fifth Avenue. It was quiet and well-maintained and offered enough security to satisfy the elder Kerns, and it suited Arlene, who split her time between Bellevue Hospital and NYU, where she was earning her master’s degree in psychology.
Karen never went back to Cornell. Nor did she marry Peter Bauer. The two of them had spoken on the telephone several times after his return to Maine that dreadful spring, but their conversations were short and superficial. Peter spoke of the weather and told her about his job and his family, but he carefully avoided any mention of the future. Karen listened politely and didn’t press him. There wasn’t really any point. After a while, the phone calls stopped.
“What could you possibly have been thinking of, to tell him that ugly story?” her mother demanded once she had pried the circumstances of the picnic at Steppingstone Park out of her daughter.
“I couldn’t marry him under false pretenses,” Karen replied defensively. “I had to tell him the truth.”
“Truth, my dear girl, is what we want it to be,” Beverly retorted. “Were you trying to push him away?”
“I was trying to find out if he really loved me—or just some fantasy he had of me.”
“Why? What’s so wrong with fantasies?”
“Nothing,” Karen conceded. “I just didn’t want to build my marriage on one.”
“I daresay many a marriage has been,” Beverly declared. “You have to understand—it isn’t men who lead women down the garden path, but the other way around. It’s all part of the game we play to get what we want. And there’s no harm in it, because the men are getting what they want, too.”
“It just wouldn’t have been fair to him,” Karen insisted stubbornly.
“Fair?” Beverly exploded. “Has this whole awful thing been fair to any of us?”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Karen snapped, her head beginning to throb.
Beverly threw up her hands in exasperation. “Have it your way, then. Just remember that righteousness is a poor excuse for loneliness.”
Karen had hobbled away defiantly, but her mother’s words stayed with her. She learned to accept the sympathy she received as the innocent victim of a terrible automobile accident. She never again spoke of what had really happened to her, but pushed it all down into a dark place within her, where no light could shine.
She discarded the crutches. The stiffness in her left knee grew less and less noticeable. The doctors assured her that, in time, it would disappear altogether. She took to wearing long skirts and high collars to hide the scars on her body, and perfected an attitude of polite disinterest to hide the scars on her soul. It was two years before she could bring herself to leave Knightsbridge Road for something other than a brief ap- pointment. But when she did, in the summer of 1965, she left for good.
“Arlene Minniken wants me to share an apartment in the city with her,” Karen announced one evening at dinner. “She thinks it would be fun for us to room together again.”
“You want to live in Manhattan?” Beverly asked, unsure she had heard correctly. It was her opinion that nice young ladies stayed at home until they married.
“Yes,” Karen replied. “Lots of girls are doing it these days. Take Arlene, for example.”
“Arlene’s home is in Tallahassee,” her mother declared. “She couldn’t very well commute to New York City. But you have a perfectly good home right here. If you want to get away so badly, you can always go back to college.”
“I don’t want to go back to college,” Karen responded. “I just want to live on my own for a while.”
“How will you support yourself?” her father asked.
“I’ll get a job.”
“A job?” Beverly questioned. “What kind of job?”
Karen shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”
“You know that isn’t necessary,” her mother exclaimed. “There are other options.”
“Mother, please, let’s not start that again. I’m not going back to college, and I have no plans to marry.”
“I suppose we can help out with expenses”—Leo thought aloud—”at least until you get on your feet.”
Karen beamed at him. With one sentence, he had not only resolved her financial qualms, he had silenced her mother in mid-argument, and that was not a frequent occurrence.
“Thanks, Daddy,” she said. “That would be fantastic.”
“What with Laura starting at Mount Holyoke in the fall, and now you wanting to live in Manhattan,” Beverly pouted, “the house is going to be awfully empty.”
“I’ll come back to visit as often as you like,” Karen assured her.
It was the end of summer before she found work. There were not many jobs available to someone without a college degree, certainly not ones her mother considered appropriate, which meant in the right part of town, in an acceptable industry, among respectable people. She took a position as a receptionist at Marilyn’s Beauty Salon, where she was allowed to wear full skirts and high-collared blouses and oversized sweaters, and the patrons, mostly older women, patted her hand a lot. In addition to greeting customers and scheduling appointments, it was Karen’s job to close the shop at night, making sure that curling irons and blow dryers were turned off. Hardly demanding work, but the pay was steady.
After that, she became a salesgirl at Lord & Taylor’s. The department store stood solidly on Fifth Avenue, at what her father called the edge of the high-rent district. Everything about it was elegant—the architecture, the dramatic display windows, the merchandise, the personnel. After her training period, Karen was assigned to the lingerie department, where the senior saleswoman showed her how to recognize the buyers from the browsers and taught her how to clinch a sale to a wavering customer.
She soon discovered that it wasn’t only women who bought lingerie. Men, sometimes awkward and embarrassed, came looking for finery for their wives or their mothers or their sweethearts or their mistresses. It didn’t take Karen long to learn the difference.
One October afternoon, when she had been at Lord & Taylor’s for almost a year, a customer approached her, gray-haired, distinguished, and obviously wealthy, carrying a black satin negligee in his hands. It was the most expensive that the store offered and one of Karen’s personal favorites.
“Excuse me, miss,” he said. “I wonder if you can help me. I want to buy a birthday gift for my daughter, and I’m not at all sure what would be appropriate.”
Karen concealed a smile. She knew that men did not buy slinky black satin negligees for their daughters, but she had learned how to play the game.
“How old is she?” she asked politely.
“Well, I’d say she’s about your age.” He held up his selection. “Tell me, do you like this?”
“I like it very much,” Karen conceded. “What size does she wear?”
He frowned at that. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I think she’s about your size. Maybe if you’d hold it up, I could get an idea of how it would look on her.”
Karen took the negligee from him and held it awkwardly against her body, fussing with the folds to get them just right. “How’s that?” she inquired.
He shook his head. “I can’t really tell for sure. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to
try it on for me?”
The hair began to rise on the back of Karen’s neck. She had been trained to deal with difficult customers, but no one had told her what to do in this situation.
“I’m afraid not,” she murmured, thinking fast. “As you can see, I’m alone in the department, and I’m not allowed to leave the floor.”
“Well, that’s all right,” he said with an easy smile. “Why don’t I just take it anyway, and if my daughter doesn’t like it, she can bring it back and pick out something else.”
Karen wrote up the sale as quickly as she could, the plastic smile fastened to her face, and breathed an enormous sigh of relief when he took his package and left.
The store closed at six. It was six-thirty when Karen slipped out the side door and hurried across Fifth Avenue to catch the downtown bus, joining a small knot of people who were already waiting.
“I think this was meant for you,” a voice directly behind her said. “Even though you wouldn’t try it on.”
Karen was so startled that she fell against an elderly woman standing in front of her.
“I beg your pardon,” she mumbled, as she bent down to retrieve the woman’s fallen handbag. Straightening up, she glanced over her shoulder at the gray-haired man.
“I wanted to give it to you right there at the store, but I realized that might not be very appropriate, under the circumstances,” he said. “So I waited for you. I thought we’d go somewhere for a drink, perhaps have dinner. Get to know each other.”
“I think you’ve made a mistake,” Karen said, her heart pounding.
“Really?” he asked with a smile. “I thought you got my message very clearly. I certainly got yours.”
“What message?” she demanded. “I gave you no message.”
“You knew perfectly well I wasn’t buying a present for my daughter.” He chuckled. “I don’t even have a daughter.”
“I didn’t know who you were buying it for,” she replied truthfully, praying the bus would come.
“I was buying it for you, of course.”
“Thank you very much, but no, thank you,” she said as politely as she could because he might have been a good customer at Lord & Taylor’s and she couldn’t afford to offend him. “That particular item isn’t one I have any use for.”
“If you play your cards right,” he told her with a deep chuckle, “an opportunity might present itself.”
Up the street, Karen could see the bus inching its way toward them, and in anticipation the knot of people began to surge forward. The gray-haired man pressed against her.
“I’ve been watching you,” he breathed into her ear, his hands, shielded by the press of people, beginning to roam over her. “On the surface you’re cool and proper, but I can tell that underneath the high collars and baggy sweaters you’re hot.”
She pushed frantically against the people in front of her, trying to get away from him.
“Wait your turn,” someone snarled at her. “We all want to get home, you know.”
“You’d better leave me alone,” she cried to her pursuer.
“You don’t really mean that,” he cajoled.
“Yes, I do.”
“Your lips may be saying no,” he whispered, “but your body is saying yes.”
“If you don’t stop bothering me,” she shouted at the top of her voice, “I’ll call the police.”
The elderly woman whose purse she had retrieved turned around. “Is that man annoying you, dearie?” she asked.
“Yes,” Karen half-sobbed.
“You leave this girl alone,” the woman advised tartly. “She’s obviously not buying whatever you’re selling.” She shook her head. “A man your age—you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
The bus chose that moment to rumble up to the curb and open its doors. The elderly woman put her arm around Karen and guided her up the steps. The gray-haired man melted into the crowd.
After that, Karen stopped wearing makeup and added bulky coats to her shapeless clothing, regardless of the weather. The more unattractive she could make herself look, the safer she felt.
She quit her job at Lord & Taylor’s. She answered phones for a Madison Avenue advertising agency, typed bills for a Park Avenue dermatologist, stuffed envelopes for a mailorder house, and stacked books at the public library. But nothing seemed to suit her for long. If the work didn’t bore her, some man pursued her, pressing unwanted invitations on her until she sought other employment.
So it was that, in the winter of 1969, she came to the Washington Square Bookery, in answer to an ad for a clerk. The shop, housed in what the owner called a bunker, was long and narrow and crammed with shelves that boasted volumes on every obscure subject from the aalii shrub to zymurgy. In the back, tucked safely into barrister cases, was a treasure trove of first editions and out-of-print copies of works by such authors as Somerset Maugham, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, and Willa Cather.
The owner was a free-spirited woman in her forties with an ample figure, frizzy black hair that she wore in a thick braid down her back, and soft brown eyes that seemed to reflect the suffering of the whole word. The plight of Biafra was foremost in her mind when Karen first met her.
Her name was Doris Ulasewicz, from the Bronx, but there were very few who knew that. Everyone called her Demelza, after some obscure literary heroine she had unearthed.
“She was a woman with the soul of a saint and the heart of a prostitute,” Demelza explained. “Something about that always appealed to me.”
“I guess it wouldn’t have worked too well if it were the other way around,” Karen observed.
Demelza grinned appreciatively at the young woman. “I think I’m going to like you,” she said.
“Thank you,” Karen murmured, unaccountably pleased.
“Now to business,” Demelza declared. “I’m totally disorganized and brilliantly creative. I’m fine with anything under fifty dollars but absolutely frivolous with anything over that. I tend to fly off in too many directions at once, but I’m great at conceptualization. I’m insatiably curious but I never pry. I need someone to bring sanity to my life and work. Think you could put up with me?”
Karen looked around. The few customers that browsed in the aisles seemed harmless enough, the books seemed friendly and inviting, and the pungent smell of incense that tried valiantly to camouflage the basement’s mustiness was not unpleasant.
“I could try,” she replied.
“That’s all I can ask of anyone,” said Demelza. “But before you get excited, I’d better tell you that I can’t pay more than eighty dollars a week.”
That was ten dollars less than Karen had earned at the library, and she hesitated. With each job she had held, her salary had increased, if only slightly. Her goal was to be financially free of her parents as soon as possible. Yet here she was, actually contemplating taking a step in the opposite direction.
“Maybe I can give you a fancy title to make up for it,” Demelza offered, because she had already decided she liked this girl and had long ago learned to trust her instincts.
“What kind of title?” Karen asked, because she had a funny feeling about this no-nonsense woman with the bizarre name and the out-of-the-way little shop.
“Well, let’s see,” Demelza thought aloud. “Suppose we dub you—assistant manager?”
Karen laughed. “My mother will love it,” she said.
“Is it a deal?”
“It’s a deal.”
Karen practically skipped all the way back to West Twelfth Street, wondering why on earth she should be feeling so good about making less money.
“It wasn’t just that I liked Demelza so much,” she explained to Arlene. “It was something about the Bookery, too. I felt really comfortable there. This is going to sound crazy, I know, but it was almost as if the shop spoke to me and told me I’d be happy there.”
Arlene wasn’t a psychology student for nothing. “Then you made the right decision,�
�� she agreed. “As for the salary, well, as long as your parents don’t mind, why should you?”
In fact, the Kerns were delighted.
“Assistant manager?” her mother exclaimed. “That’s just wonderful, darling. I can’t tell you how proud we are.”
Which translated, Karen knew, into how impressed the neighbors were going to be once Beverly got through massaging the facts, and the two-woman operation had become a twenty-person staff on the scale of Barnes and Noble.
“And don’t you worry about the money,” her father added from the extension phone. “You’ll get a check from us every month for as long as you need it.”
No one mentioned that this was her seventh job in three and a half years. No one suggested that it would be nice if she would stay in one place for a while. But the words hung in the air as though they had been said.
The focus of Karen’s life had been on marriage and children. It never occurred to her that she would have to work for a living. The death of her dream left her aimless. The Bookery gave her purpose. She was not stepping into someone else’s shoes that were either too big to fill or pinched her toes—she was creating a totally new position and she found, to her surprise, that she liked it. By the end of a year, Demelza had increased her salary twice.
“I didn’t have any choice,” she freely admitted to her friends and customers. “The girl’s got me so well organized, I couldn’t exist without her.”
Karen had indeed straightened out the accounts and put Demelza on a budget, and never complained about working long hours. She even developed a plan for increasing business that would draw uptown customers to the out-of-the-way shop.
But, more than that, the two women became friends. The refugee from Great Neck found a lot in common with the expatriate from the Bronx.
“When you’re one of six kids and there’s not enough food to go around,” Demelza said once, after snatching the last doughnut of the coffee break, “you learn to be quick. Then, of course, you learn to get out.”
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