Park Avenue Summer

by Renée Rosen

  “I’d love to see them.”

  She pumped a dollop of floral-scented lotion into her palm. “I meant to ask last time—how’s your father doing?”

  “Okay, I guess. He got remarried.”

  “To Faye?”

  “You know Faye?” That was a big surprise.

  “Well, let’s just say I know of her.”

  I wondered if she’d been in touch with my father recently, but for some reason I couldn’t formulate that into a question.

  Elaine worked in her hand lotion, smoothing it over her long, tapered fingers, her beautifully polished nails. “Your mother would be proud of you moving here. She always wanted to raise you in the city.” She replaced her rings and reached for her cigarette, rolling the ash to a fine point. “Vivian never belonged in Ohio. But what else could she do? Your father didn’t want to leave his home and she had nowhere else to go.”

  “What do you mean, ‘she had nowhere else to go’?”

  Elaine saw the puzzled look on my face and her own expression sagged. “I’m sorry.” She shook her head, taking a puff off her cigarette. “I shouldn’t go on like that. Forgive me.”

  “No, please. I don’t mind.” I was desperate to talk about my mother. I wanted to say tell me everything but I couldn’t get the words past the lump in my throat.

  Elaine was about to say something else when her eyes drifted beyond my shoulder and her expression brightened. “Oh, Christopher,” she said. “I’m sorry we had to drag you in here on a Saturday. Come in. I want you to meet someone.”

  A tall man stood in her doorway. He was probably in his mid-twenties and had long dark hair that reached his collar. I noticed he had a camera hanging by its strap, bobbing at his side.

  “Didn’t mean to interrupt,” he said.

  “No, no, it’s all right. This is Alice Weiss. The daughter of an old, old friend of mine. Alice, this is Christopher Mack.”

  We exchanged hellos and I stared at his camera, a new Nikon F model that put my mother’s old Leica to shame.

  “I just finished meeting with Letty,” he said. “We’re gonna do the new headshots and the promo shots Monday afternoon. We’ll do them down at my studio.”

  “You’re a lifesaver,” Elaine said. “Jackie hated everything we did.”

  “You should have hired me in the first place.” He cracked a smile that brought out his features: dark, intense eyes beneath a fringe of hair, nose and chin all sharp and well defined.

  He finished giving her the details of his meeting, and after a few parting pleasantries between us, Elaine excused herself and walked him out to the lobby, looping her arm through his. I finished my coffee, feeling the brandy taking hold.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Elaine said when she came back a few minutes later, slipping into place behind her desk.

  “He seems very nice,” I said.

  “He’s extremely talented. Young, sometimes temperamental, but talented. I wish he’d cut that hair of his, though. Believe it or not, there’s a very good-looking young man underneath that mop.”

  “Oh, I believe it.” I smiled. He was attractive, more sexy than handsome. I was going to ask about his photography when I noticed Elaine had reached for a stack of papers on her desk. I sensed her getting antsy, wanting to get back to work. “More coffee? Brandy?” she asked.

  “No. No, thank you. I’ve already taken up too much of your time. But I do feel better.”

  “Just remember, not a word about this to Helen. She’s a big girl. She knows how to handle them over there. Make no mistake, Helen Gurley Brown might look like a feather could knock her over but she’s tough as nails. An iron fist in a velvet glove.”

  I was reminded of how she’d broken that pencil in two.

  “Helen’s no stranger to adversaries. She’s had her share of knocks. I remember when we were working on her book, I begged her to tone it down. And don’t get me wrong—I’m all for women’s lib, but Helen still thinks sex appeal is a woman’s greatest asset. I used to say, ‘But, Helen, what about her brains?’” Elaine shook her head and laughed.

  “The thing about Helen is, she claims to be just a regular girl from the Ozarks,” Elaine said, “but she’s Pucci all the way and she knows it. She’s as clever as they come. Every time she speaks, she has an endgame in mind. That woman is always one step ahead of everyone else. Helen has her little-girl-from-the-sticks routine down. She has a way of making you think she’s just like you. That’s part of her genius, you know. Most people don’t figure out her trick until after she’s pulled out the tablecloth and put it away.” She laughed. “Oh, and she loves to hand out compliments.”

  I could vouch for that. Helen never missed an opportunity to tell me or others that she liked our shoes, our scarves, the way we’d styled our hair. She told Bridget she had good posture and asked Margot how she kept her teeth so white. She always found something to say that would stay with you throughout the day.

  “And she’s the first one to point out her own flaws,” Elaine said. “I think it’s her way of leveling the playing field. Putting her rivals at ease. You watch her, Alice—you’ll see what I’m talking about. She loves to confess that she’s wearing false eyelashes or a padded bra.”

  It was true. I’d seen Helen in action. She was calculatingly unapologetic about her enhancements. She depended on them like an artist depended on paint and brushes. They were essential in the making of her ultimate creation, which, of course, was the making of herself, Helen Gurley Brown. Millions of single girls would become her disciples, but there was only one Helen.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Bring a scarf and gloves,” Trudy said the next morning as she stood in my doorway, buttoning her coat to the top. “Sun’s out but it’s still chilly.”

  Trudy had offered to show me around the city, for which I was grateful since, really, I hadn’t seen much of New York beyond Midtown and the subway that went between the 59th Street and the 77th Street stops. I grabbed my camera and a wool scarf that smelled of Shalimar, looping them both about my neck as we headed out.

  Our first stop was the Lexington Candy Shop at 83rd and “Lex,” as Trudy called it. Aside from the racks of penny candy, chocolate coins, candy cigarettes and ropes of licorice by the register, it was more of a diner than a candy shop, and Trudy said they had the best breakfasts on the Upper East Side.

  We sat at the dingy Formica counter, scarred with knife wounds, coffee stains and scorch marks. Our red stools swiveled all the way around. We ordered two egg plates that came with hash browns, rye toast and a rasher of bacon for 35¢, along with two bottomless coffees, a nickel a cup. A powder blue radio on the back counter was playing “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” while the waitress topped off our coffees, her lips moving to the lyrics, her voice barely audible. Singing along to the radio reminded me of my mother. And of her accident.

  It took the child at the counter, squealing for Milk Duds, to get me past that dark thought. The child squealed again, louder this time, until his mother gave in and plucked a box from the rack and handed it to him. Oh, gone were the days when a box of candy could make everything all right.

  After the mother and son left, I told Trudy what had happened at dinner with Erik on Friday night and about my visit with Elaine yesterday. “You should have seen her. She knew exactly what I should do about the situation. I felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders by the time I left her office.” I nibbled on my toast wondering: Did Elaine Sloan ever second-guess herself? Did Helen? Helen was one of the most decisive people I’d ever known. She’d look at an article or a photograph and it was yes or no. Never an I don’t know. Elaine had been the same way when she looked at that book cover. Maybe certainty came with experience, with age? “I admire Elaine. She’s so confident. Wise and—”

  “And did you say she’s not married?” asked Trudy, miss
ing the point I was trying to make.

  “Yeah, she’s not.”

  “Has she ever been married?” Trudy sounded alarmed by the prospect of that.

  “I don’t think so. But I’m pretty sure that’s by choice. She’s beautiful and successful. Elegant and smart . . .”

  Trudy gave me a peculiar look and I went quiet, because it was sounding excessive, even to me. Like something bordering on hero worship or infatuation. But in truth, I was a bit in love with Elaine Sloan. And with Helen, too. And it didn’t take a genius to understand why. It all came back to my mother. “I just think Elaine Sloan’s a really impressive lady,” I said. “I’m sure she’s never had a problem getting men. She’s probably not married because she doesn’t need a husband.”

  “Doesn’t need a husband?” Trudy slumped forward as if I’d knocked some pillar of belief out from under her. Resting her elbows on the counter, she said, “I can’t imagine that. Can you?”

  “The Girl from Ipanema” came on the radio.

  “You do want to fall in love and get married,” she asked, “don’t you?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  She laughed until she realized I was serious. Or at least I’d made her believe I was.

  “I’ve been in love,” I told her, picturing Michael, his light brown hair, his boyish smile just the same as when I met him, back before his voice changed and he’d grown taller than his father. He wasn’t the boy next door, but the boy across the street. I remembered when he was ten and I was eight, he thought I had cooties and ran away from me on the playground. The following year when he decided it was safe to be friends, we played games together, making a tin can telephone, stretching the string from his front yard to mine. Years later, the game was Spin the Bottle in Esther’s basement. Michael was the first boy I ever kissed, and two years later when I went out with his friend, Marvin, Michael grew jealous and asked me on a date. We went together all through high school, and when he went to Ohio State, he gave me his ZBT pin first and, later, his grandmother’s ring.

  There were so many memories of Michael, but the one I held on to was the day he told me it was over, that guilty, sheepish look in his eyes, hands stuffed deep inside his pockets, shoulders hunched forward, the smell of bourbon on his breath. “Love is overrated,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Trust me, it is. You carry this other person in your heart all day long, every day, and sometimes it’s wonderful and other times it’s . . . it’s just plain heavy. Exhausting. He has a fight with his boss or maybe his brother, but you don’t know that, so you think it’s something you did. That it’s your fault he’s gone quiet and won’t talk about it. Another time he’s late coming to get you—he should have picked you up an hour ago. He stopped off for a few beers and forgot to call. It’s no big deal to him. But this love you carry in your heart makes you come unglued, and because your mother never came home, either, you’re convinced he’s been in an accident. And it’s those moments—when you’re worried sick over the possibility of losing him—that you realize how much you’ve come to depend on him. For the little things like carrying the groceries and changing the lightbulb in your closet or scratching that place between your shoulder blades that you can’t reach. Just when you can’t imagine your life without him, he tells you he’s not ready to get married. He doesn’t love you anymore. And one year later, when you think there’s still a chance he’ll come back to you, he gets engaged to someone else. No thank you, I don’t ever want to fall in love again.”

  “That happened to you?” She looked at me, horrified.

  I nodded, surprised that I’d just blurted that all out and afraid that if I said much more, I’d unravel. It still stung, and as much as I said I didn’t want a relationship, I knew I was lying to myself. Cynical as I was, I still wanted to love and be loved. Like every other girl I knew, I wanted the fairy tale, but I also wanted a guarantee that it would be forever. I wasn’t willing to risk another heartbreak. I set my napkin on my plate and pushed it away. I heard the cash register ding as the drawer sprung open. I was thinking of a way to change the subject when Trudy did it for me.

  “I wonder if Elaine Sloan shops at Bergdorf’s,” she asked. Trudy had worked in the shoe salon there ever since she’d moved from St. Louis two years ago.

  Elaine’s Gucci shoes flashed through my mind. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she does.”

  “I just had a depressing thought,” she said, lifting her coffee cup. “I touch women’s feet all day.”

  “Ah,” I said, “but you’re touching the richest, most pampered feet in all of Manhattan. They probably smell like French perfume.”

  She laughed and sipped her coffee.

  After breakfast, we left the Candy Shop and took the subway to Midtown. We headed down Fifth Avenue, a roar of thunder and whoosh of air rushing up when we walked over the subway grates. We turned left onto 42nd Street, where a policeman stood in the intersection, his whistle chirping as he directed traffic.

  Trudy pointed straight ahead. “There she is. Look at that.”

  I turned, my eyes landing on an art deco structure, regal and sparkling against the brisk blue sky.

  “The Chrysler Building,” she sighed with admiration. “Isn’t that something?”

  “It’s gorgeous.” My camera was already out, snapping away.

  “The Empire State Building might have her by a few stories, but to me, this right here is the jewel of Manhattan.”

  I was still taking photographs while Trudy told me about the construction with a docent’s expertise. “They built her in 1928 and she went up fast. The stainless steel came all the way from Germany. You’re looking at almost 4 million bricks and 400,000 rivets.”

  I lowered my camera and turned to her, astonished by these facts coming from this little freckly redhead who looked like she’d be more interested in American Bandstand than masonry and stainless-steel cladding.

  “How do you know so much about all this?” I asked, my camera paused at eye level while I studied her. Despite the cool temperature, I saw that new freckles had formed on her face in the short time we’d been out in the sun. “Seriously,” I asked, taking her picture, “how do you know about all this?”

  “Oh, I’ve always been fascinated by architecture,” she said, posing while I took another photo. She was standing in front of a shoe repair shop; the neon outline of a boot on the front window framed her profile perfectly. “I mean someone made that”—she gestured to the building—“out of nothing but their imagination. They saw it in their head and now there it is. Forever. It’s amazing. Have you read The Fountainhead?”

  I shook my head.

  “You should. I’ve read that book three times. Come”—she started off down the sidewalk—“I’ll show you the Empire State Building.”

  We moved down Fifth Avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets. Macy’s was just a short walk away. There was scaffolding up, the sounds of hammering and drilling going on behind a boarded-up storefront.

  Standing in the chilly spring air, Trudy pointed straight ahead. “William Lamb was the architect who designed the Empire State Building. Guess how long it took him to design the blueprints? Two weeks. Just two weeks.”

  “Impressive.” I raised my camera and snapped a few photographs as the smoky scent of hot dogs cooking on a nearby cart drifted our way. The vendor sat on a milk crate in a torn green overcoat, broken capillaries branching out across his nose and cheeks. He smoked a nonfilter cigarette, watching the people go by. I found that vendor more interesting than the Empire State Building. While Trudy rattled off more facts, I took a snapshot of him, hoping to capture his sad, watchful gaze. I advanced the film, adjusted the lens and took a few more of him before we left, jumped on another subway line and headed toward the Village.

  I’d never been below 14th Street before. It was a different world down there, a tang
le of narrow streets with no rhyme or reason as to where they stopped and started. The people were as different as the landscape. All the tailored suits and briefcases were replaced by denim jeans and guitars. There was an anything goes sort of energy down there. I was mesmerized by the steam rising up from the manholes, being carried away, wafting in the breeze. Garbage bags were piled up three feet high at the curb along with stacks of flattened-out boxes. I stopped and aimed my camera.

  “You’re taking a picture of that?” Trudy asked.

  “It tells a story.” I clicked the shutter. Like the hot dog vendor, my camera was drawn more and more to people and things unexpected.

  “Save your film,” she said, stuffing her hands inside her pockets. “We have more places to see.”

  The winds were picking up and the temperature was dropping; my toes were going numb. Trudy took me to a coffeehouse so we could warm up and rest our feet. Caffe Dell’Artista was old and quaint with dark-paneled walls inside. It smelled faintly of cedar and cigarettes. We ordered our coffees at the bar and went up to the second level, the stairs creaking beneath us. Upstairs a mishmash of different upholstered chairs was stationed about next to lots of little battered end tables and desks, some with antique drop handles, others with brass patina pulls. Old, yellowing maps were hanging on the walls. We took two aging leather club chairs by the window, looking down on Greenwich Avenue. French music was playing softly in the background.

  Trudy took out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one. I wasn’t big on smoking, but then again, I hadn’t been big on drinking, either, before I moved to New York. I took one from her pack, remembering not to inhale when she gave me a light.

  “I want to show you something really neat about this place. Open the drawer.” She pointed to the little desk at my side.

  It squeaked as I pulled it open and inside were all sorts of napkins and scraps of paper, matchbook covers and postcards, each with something scribbled down on it. She opened the drawer on another table next to her and there was more of the same.