by Kitty Zeldis
Walking down Park Avenue, Eleanor had to step past a large puddle on the sidewalk; a doorman in a crimson jacket was hosing down the pavement, which, like everything else on this avenue, had a clean, assiduously attended look. Brass plates or sconces shone in the sun, awnings were taut, even the trees and flowers in the islands separating the north and southbound traffic had the manicured appearance that could only be maintained by constant care. Service entrances on the side streets or at some distance from the main entrances allowed the inner workings of the apartment houses—their garbage and their packages, their plumbers and their maids—to be kept discreetly out of sight.
Despite being only three blocks east of Park, Eleanor’s home on Second Avenue might as well have been in another borough. Lined with four- and five-story brick tenements, Second Avenue was always animated, always bustling. During the day the butchers, grocers, bakers, tailors, cobblers, newsstands, pharmacies, and shops drew a steady stream of pedestrian traffic; at night, there were bars and restaurants to entice prospective patrons. On Second, there were few awnings, no flowers, and a phalanx of metal garbage cans lined up along the curb on trash night. Sometimes rats scurried in and out between those cans; Eleanor had seen them. And even though the El was a full avenue away on Third, the sounds of the trains—wheezing as they stopped, clacking as they started—were always in the background.
Mrs. Bellamy lived in a twelve-story apartment building on the southwest corner of Eighty-Third and Park. Eleanor was more attentive today to the six limestone medallions, each depicting a wreath of fruit and flowers, the four massive Greek columns, two on either side of the door, as well as the black lanterns that were attached to the facade. With its limestone and brick exterior, the building projected a permanence, and even moral rectitude, that made the buildings in her own neighborhood seem almost provisional in contrast. Eleanor imagined that living here would feel safe; the reassuring solidity of these structures would provide insulation and protection against life’s daily abrasions.
“Mrs. Bellamy left something for me,” she said to the doorman, who wore a navy suit and matching cap trimmed with gold braid. “She said it would be here.”
“And your name is?” he asked.
She hesitated. “Eleanor,” she said finally. Something prevented her from saying Moskowitz.
“See Billy over there,” he said, so Eleanor repeated her request to the uniformed man seated at the desk inside the lobby.
“Just a moment,” he said, and disappeared behind a door. Eleanor looked around at the lobby while she waited; above was a six-armed brass chandelier; below, a black-and-white marble floor whose large squares had been positioned on the diagonal, so they read instead as diamonds. Beyond an open pair of double doors, the black-and-white marble continued, only in this adjoining space it was cushioned by a thick Persian rug. A sofa sat at the far corner and a few massive wing chairs dotted the perimeter; it was in one of these that Margaux Bellamy sat, walking stick propped on the arm of the chair.
“Hello there,” she called out. “How are you?”
Eleanor did not especially want to talk to Margaux but felt it would be rude to ignore the girl’s greeting. The doorman had not returned yet, so she walked over to where Margaux sat; the thick rug beneath her feet muffled the sound of her footsteps.
“What are you doing here?” Eleanor asked.
“My mother and I are going out, only she forgot something and had to go back upstairs.” Margaux tapped her fingers on the arms of the chair. “Did you come to see us again?”
“No,” said Eleanor. “I came for my umbrella.”
“Oh.” Margaux seemed disappointed. “I suppose you think I’m a very rude girl.” She was looking at Eleanor as if she expected, or wanted, to be contradicted.
“I think you’re ignorant more than rude,” Eleanor said.
“Ignorant?” Margaux repeated, clearly offended. “You mean—stupid?”
“Not at all,” said Eleanor. “I think you were repeating what you’d heard rather than what you honestly believed or felt.”
“That’s right!” Margaux said. “It’s not like I really meant those things. How could I? I hardly know any Jews.”
“Exactly,” Eleanor said.
Margaux stared at her lap, silent for a moment. Though the day was warm, she wore slacks, which Eleanor guessed was a choice made to cover her bad leg. “I wish you were coming to visit us,” she said, still not looking at Eleanor.
“Why is that?” asked Eleanor, unexpectedly touched. She sat on an upholstered chair and sank into its soft cushion.
“Because you’re different.” She looked up when she said that. “I like talking to you.”
“Thank you,” Eleanor said. “I like talking to you too.” And at that moment, it was true.
“Would you then?”
“Would I what?”
“Come to visit us?” Margaux said. “Come to visit me.” Eleanor was silent and Margaux pressed on. “My mother told me you’re a teacher.”
“Was,” Eleanor corrected. “I’m looking for a different sort of job now.”
“What sort of job?”
“I might work for a book or magazine publisher.”
“Is that what you want to do?” Margaux asked.
“Well, yes. I suppose it is.”
“More than teaching? Don’t you like teaching? You make it sound like the other job is second best. A consolation prize.”
“It’s too late for me to get another teaching job for the new school year.”
“So you’re going to take another job that maybe you won’t like as much,” said Margaux.
“I hadn’t thought of it exactly like that,” Eleanor admitted.
“What if you took a job as my tutor?”
“I thought you had a tutor.” And since when did children, even rich, privileged children, go around offering people jobs? Although Eleanor had taught the daughters of some very wealthy people at Brandon-Wythe, this was altogether new in her experience.
“Not anymore.”
“What happened to him?” asked Eleanor.
“I made him so unhappy that he quit,” Margaux said. “I tortured him. But I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Why not?” asked Eleanor. She was actually warming to this girl—her candor, her intensity, and yes, even her anger.
“I told you before: I like talking to you. I like you.” Before Eleanor could answer, the uniformed man reappeared holding her umbrella and, at the same moment, the elevator doors parted and Patricia Bellamy stepped out. She wore a dress of wine-colored silk whose skirt swished softly as she approached; her hands were raised to adjust the wide, white straw hat on her head. “Hello, Miss Moskowitz.”
“I was waiting here, just like you told me to,” Margaux said to her mother. “And I saw Miss Moskowitz at the front door. She was getting her umbrella. Mother, why can’t she be my tutor?”
Eleanor was silent. Did Margaux think that the simple articulation of a wish was all that was needed to fulfill it? She glanced at the girl and saw the hope so naked, so blatant in her expression. The look was so powerful that for a moment, Eleanor thought that she might actually take the job if it were offered. But only for a moment. Tutoring this girl was the last thing she wanted to do. Confined to an apartment, even one on Park Avenue, being at the beck and call of Patricia Bellamy, and, presumably, her husband—no, this was not for her.
As she listened to them talk, she again considered changing her name, the way Miss Burns had recommended. She would also hone her typing skills. If she could get her speed up to eighty or even eighty-five words a minute, it might not matter what her name was. Yet she did not wish to hurt Margaux, and so would humor her by pretending to consider the position. It was unlikely that Mrs. Bellamy would actually hire her.
“. . . well, I don’t know,” Mrs. Bellamy was saying. “We haven’t discussed it.”
“No, but we could discuss it now.” Eleanor finally spoke up. “The position at the M
arkham School was filled.”
“Holly Benson goes to the Markham School,” Margaux said eagerly.
Eleanor had to smile at her enthusiasm. “I’ve been pursuing other options. But I am an experienced teacher and I do have references.”
“You would be perfect, I know it!” Margaux burst out.
“Lower your voice please,” Mrs. Bellamy said. “Nothing’s been settled yet.” She beckoned to the doorman. When the umbrella was safely back in Eleanor’s hands, Mrs. Bellamy added, “I’d like to consider you for this position, Miss Moskowitz. Would you send me a copy of your résumé? And your references? At your convenience of course.”
“Certainly,” Eleanor said. “I can leave a packet with the doorman.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Bellamy said. “I’ll look forward to receiving it.” She turned to Margaux. “Time to get going.”
Despite what she’d just said, Eleanor had no intention of dropping her references off for Patricia Bellamy’s consideration. And when Patricia Bellamy did not receive them—well, who knew what she would think? It wouldn’t matter in any case. Eleanor would never see her again. She clutched her umbrella and waited while, with some effort, Margaux hoisted herself to her feet.
“Good-bye, Miss Moskowitz,” Margaux said. “I really hope Mother hires you and you come back.”
Eleanor was about to respond with some meaningless palaver, but when she looked at Margaux, the girl’s face was filled with such naked supplication that she could not look away. And in those few, charged seconds, Eleanor realized that to ignore Margaux’s blatant need, her unabashed appeal, would be not only wrong but cruel. It was a cruelty Eleanor could not bear to inflict. She would drop off the résumé and the letter, just as she had said she would. And in that moment, Eleanor decided that if Patricia Bellamy offered her the job, she was going to take it.
Four
The receiving line for Audrey Miles’s wedding reception snaked through the opulent interior of the Metropolitan Club as the guests, a mix of elegantly attired men in tuxes and women in gowns, waited patiently to congratulate the bride.
“Why did she invite so many people?” Wynn said to Patricia. “It’s a second marriage after all.”
“That’s no reason not to celebrate,” Patricia said. But she too was a bit surprised by the crowd, as many members of their set had pointedly snubbed Audrey when she left her first husband. Perhaps her new husband’s money had smoothed over the social awkwardness created by the divorce.
The wedding itself, held in a private chapel at St. Bart’s down on Fifty-First Street, had been small, attended only by members of the immediate families. But the bride had wanted—and gotten—this lavish reception at the Metropolitan. “And the line is moving.”
“No it’s not.” He checked his watch. “It’s a quarter past eight and we’ve been standing in the same spot for ten minutes.”
“The food here is supposed to be excellent. Everyone says so,” Patricia said in an effort to distract him.
“I still don’t like the place.”
“I don’t see why not.” Patricia fanned herself with a small hand fan she kept tucked in her evening purse. A night this hot was unusual for June.
“For one thing, it was founded by parvenus and thieves who couldn’t get into any of the better clubs.”
“Oh, like J. P. Morgan?”
“A bunch of pictures and old books don’t compensate for his nasty past.”
Patricia did not reply, but instead glanced around at the white marble walls, whose glossy sheen was delicately threaded with black, and above, at the ornately coffered ceiling. A grand double staircase, the converging lines of which formed a giant X, would not have been out of place at Versailles; a pair of multiglobed torchieres stood sentry at its landing. Lots of debs she knew had had their coming-out parties here; the bride had been one of them. “Anyway, I guess I should be glad the reception’s not being held at the Century,” Wynn was saying. “Because I can’t stand all those intellectual or would-be intellectual types.”
“Tom belongs to the Century,” Patricia reminded him. Even if Wynn disdained intellectuals as a rule, he was very fond of her brother.
“Is Tom going to be here?” Wynn brightened.
“No, darling,” she said patiently. “Tom doesn’t know Audrey. She’s an old friend from Smith, remember?”
“I remember that she’s got round heels, all right.”
“Because she got divorced? And is now getting married again?” His habit of typecasting or dismissing people could be so annoying.
“I’m just saying that she had a lot of company between husband number one and husband number two.” Wynn touched the bow tie constricting his thick neck. “And why black tie when it’s so damn hot, I’ll never know!” He stood glaring at her as if the dress code had been up to her. But before she could answer, she heard her name being called.
“Patricia! Patricia, over here!” She turned to see Johanna Gilchrist and Tori LePage, two friends from Smith, not far ahead of them in line.
“It’s so good to see you!” Patricia said, hugging them in turn.
“You’ll never guess who’s here,” Tori said.
“Who?” Patricia demanded eagerly.
“Should we tell?” Tori smiled at Johanna.
“I’m not sure,” said Johanna. Clearly they were enjoying drawing this out.
“It’s Madeleine Kendricks,” Tori announced.
“You’re joking. Where is she?” Patricia asked. Madeleine had been the brightest star of their little group. She had looks and brains, and the self-possession to deploy both to her ultimate advantage. Like Patricia, she had majored in art history. But unlike Patricia, she’d gone off to do graduate work at the Courtauld in London, then married an earl with whom she traveled the globe before settling down at his ancestral country estate and starting a family.
Patricia had been envious. Madeleine had been a year ahead of her, and Patricia considered her a role model. She’d even considered following in Madeleine’s footsteps. What if she too went off to London? Pursued an advanced degree, prepared for a career as a curator or a professor? She’d been one of the top students, both in her department and in her class; her seminar paper on the seventeenth-century French painter Georges de La Tour had received much praise. And her brother, Tom, had made friends with actual artists, moving in their circles, surrounding himself with their work. But in the end she was neither bold nor brave enough to buck convention; she had married Wynn at the age of twenty, only months after she graduated. Madeleine was already in London by then and they lost touch. The tiny flame of her nascent ambition had gone out, never to be reignited.
A discreet pressure on her elbow reminded her that Wynn had been standing there quietly all this time. “You remember my husband, don’t you?” she said to Tori. Yes, of course Tori did, and Johanna too. They all chatted for a few minutes, and then the line started moving more quickly.
When they reached Audrey, Patricia leaned in to hug her. “I’m so happy for you,” she said.
“Thanks, darling,” Audrey said softly. “This time I finally got it right.”
Patricia knew what she meant; it was rumored that Audrey’s first husband was a brute—drinking too much, spending her money on other women, and on at least one particularly awful occasion, hitting her. “I hope you’ll both be very happy.”
Then she heard Wynn’s tightly uttered, “Congratulations,” to the groom, who, in addition to being several years older than Audrey, was also balding and, it had to be said, a bit potbellied. But Audrey’s face was radiant when she looked at him. Patricia stepped out of the embrace and the bride turned to the next guest in the line. With Johanna on one side of her and Tori on the other, Patricia’s bad temper dissipated, her irritation with Wynn subsumed by the general air of gaiety. She had not yet found Madeleine, but she’d run into several other friends, all of whom had kissed her, hugged her, and cooed over her new Jacques Fath peach dress, with its self-shawl necklin
e and rather daring corset-style laced back.
The crowd at the bar was three deep and waiters wove through them bearing silver trays of hors d’oeuvres. Patricia sampled the prawns, Swedish meatballs, and stuffed mushrooms, and found them all quite good.
Better still, Wynn had happened upon an old Yale buddy, and, gin and tonics in hand, the two seemed to be having a fine time reconnecting. Patricia was relieved. Wynn’s mood, so easily soured, was especially important tonight because, after reviewing Eleanor Moskowitz’s impressive credentials, Patricia had hired her. Eleanor would be starting work on Monday but Patricia had not told Wynn yet. If all went well, she would tell him later on. She hadn’t made a plan about how to handle her daughter’s education if it didn’t.
While she chatted with her little knot of girlfriends, Patricia kept careful tabs on Wynn, and when she’d decided it was safe, went off in search of Madeleine Kendricks, whom she finally found in the powder room.
“Tricia!” she cried. “It’s been . . . decades.”
“Not decades,” Patricia said. “We’re not all that old.”
“Aren’t we?” Madeleine said. “I feel old. No, ancient.”
They hugged and Patricia said, “Well, you don’t look it.” She looked at Maddy’s dress, a simple but elegant blue thing whose collar was an explosion of white chiffon. “Can we go somewhere to talk?”
“Of course,” Maddy said, linking arms with Patricia. “Lead the way.”
After getting their drinks, they took the elevator up to the library, notable for its elaborately carved mantelpiece and long, polished table. Cherubs frolicked on the ceiling overhead, and the ornamental plasterwork just below it had been recently gilded. Patricia was relieved to find it empty, and once the two had settled into their green leather chairs, Maddy told Patricia about what it was like being the wife of an earl.
“It’s all very sporty,” she said. “Quaint. The rituals, you know. And satisfying in its way. I have my children, my horses. And Phillip, of course. He’s my rock. And now that the war is finally over, I feel like I can breathe again.”