Park Avenue Summer

by Renée Rosen

  * * *

  • • •

  I had just finished distributing Helen’s bosom memo when Bridget invited me to join her and some of the other girls to attend a lecture up at Barnard College. “Betty Friedan’s speaking there tonight,” she said, gazing into her compact mirror, applying a fresh coat of cherry red lipstick.

  Helen had left the office early that day so I accepted the invite. On our way to the lecture, Helen’s memo was all the girls wanted to talk about.

  “I thought it was a joke at first,” said Margot. “She’s our boss. How can she expect us to tell her about our sex lives?”

  “And what about how she makes it seem like it’s our duty to respond to her memo? Like it’s our responsibility to educate the men for all of womankind,” said Leslie.

  “I think it’s funny,” said Bridget. “I mean, c’mon, she’s talking about publishing an article about boobs. Boobs! No woman’s magazine has ever done that before.”

  “I’ll respond to the memo,” said Penny. “But I’m not signing my name.”

  I kept my mouth shut and took in the landscape. I’d never ventured that far on the Upper West Side. The Barnard campus was within spitting distance of Columbia University. It was lovely, with red brick and limestone buildings, meticulously manicured walkways and regal proud pillars.

  The speech was in the Julius S. Held Lecture Hall on the third floor, a spacious room of wooden floors, freshly polished and still smelling of beeswax. There were rows of squeaky wooden fold-down chairs and a blackboard that stretched the width of the room. The lecture hall was packed and we had arrived just in time to get six seats together, toward the back.

  When Betty Friedan was introduced, the audience, mostly young women, stood up, cheering and clapping. She moved to the podium, her hands to her sides, modestly trying to silence everyone, motioning them back down in their seats. I hadn’t read The Feminine Mystique. All I knew about Betty Friedan was what I’d read in newspapers and heard in passing comments by other women.

  In person, she was not what I’d been expecting. On sight alone, she was rather bland, even a bit homely, with a hooked nose and close-set, owl-like eyes. She was dressed smartly, though, in a simple A-line skirt and a beige sweater set. Her hair was short, her jewelry basic, and other than some lipstick, she wore little or possibly no makeup. In other words, she was the complete opposite of Helen Gurley Brown.

  Betty Friedan spoke for close to an hour. The women inched forward in their chairs while she talked about both single and married women, putting themselves second and third behind boyfriends, husbands and children. “We all know women who dropped out of college the moment they got married. They’re in the same boat as the housewife in the suburbs who worked to put her husband through college and quit as soon as he landed a job.”

  She spoke with great passion about young women with a world of choices before them who go through the motions of their days, feeling restless, bored and unfulfilled. “These bright, educated, capable women have been reduced to shells of their ideal selves. Society has told them that nothing will make them happier than having a clean house and a hot meal on the table.”

  And according to Mrs. Friedan, the solution was not to be found in sexual fulfillment, either. “Many of the women I surveyed reported having satisfying sexual relationships with their husbands. And yet”—she paused to punctuate the point—“that did nothing to ease the overwhelming doom of their day-to-day existence.”

  In the end, her talk was thought provoking and disturbing, as I was certain that we all saw bits and pieces of ourselves in the women she described.

  As we were leaving the lecture hall, inching our way toward the exit, someone called my name. I turned around and there was Elaine Sloan.

  “I thought that was you, Alice,” she said, pulling me in for an embrace. She was wearing a low-cut black linen dress, her silver hair beautifully pulled back off her face, makeup flawless. She was so slender I could see the outline of her sternum through her suntanned skin. I wondered if she’d recently come back from vacation. She looked like she’d stepped out of a magazine, an advertisement for the Breakers in Palm Beach.

  After I made a quick round of introductions, I saw the way Bridget and the others eyed Elaine’s Louis Vuitton pocketbook tucked beneath her arm, her silver bracelets and diamond earrings. Everything about Elaine Sloan said style, success and money.

  “I heard you went on a couple photo shoots with Christopher,” she said.

  I felt Bridget’s eyes on me. “He’s been helping me, giving me some pointers.”

  “You didn’t say anything about going on any photo shoots with him,” said Bridget, as if I’d been keeping a secret from her.

  “Elaine put him up to it,” I said for Bridget’s benefit. “She knows I’m interested in photography.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Elaine, “I finally found those photos of your mother that I’ve been wanting to show you. Come have dinner with me tomorrow night.”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Wonderful. Cocktails around six, dinner say seven-ish. I’m at the Dakota. Just give the doorman my name.”

  As I thanked her for the invitation, she embraced me again, kissed my cheek and made her exit as the others watched her disappear into the crowd.

  “Who is she?” Margot asked with a bit of wonderment, as if she’d never imagined that a small-town girl like me might know such a woman.

  “She’s an editor at Bernard Geis. She was a friend of my mother’s.” I waited, hoping they’d ask me to elaborate, but all I got was Bridget pulling me aside to ask if Elaine could get her a job in publishing.

  It was still early and a beautiful evening so the five of us sat outdoors at a coffee shop on 96th and Amsterdam near the subway stop. Crowded around a rickety table, with our hands clasped about our coffee mugs, we took turns dissecting Betty Friedan’s lecture.

  “Do you ever feel like we’re part of the problem?” asked Margot.

  “How are we part of the problem?” Penny looked perplexed, a deep line etched between her eyebrows.

  “Well, think about it. We work for a magazine that’s been spoon-feeding all this idealism to women. Every month they open their magazines and see the life they should aspire to and what they should be happy with.”

  “Ah,” I said, “but that’s exactly what’s so exciting about the direction Mrs. Brown wants to take Cosmo in.”

  “Oh, you can’t be serious.” Margot was incredulous, the mild breeze stirring the tips of her pixie. “She’s only perpetuating the problem.”

  “Exactly,” said Leslie. “Forget about that ridiculous bosom memo, don’t you see the difference between what she preached in Sex and the Single Girl and what Betty Friedan was talking about tonight?”

  “Of course they’re saying different things,” I said. “But the overall message is the same. Helen Gurley Brown is all for a woman having a career.”

  “Yes, so she’ll be more interesting to men,” said Leslie.

  “And she believes that a woman should be independent,” I countered. “She believes a woman should live on her own, have her own apartment.”

  “Yeah, so she’ll have a place to entertain men,” said Margot. “Don’t you see? Helen Gurley Brown is still telling us that we need a man to be fulfilled. Betty Friedan is telling us that we already have everything we need within ourselves.”

  I understood what Margot was saying, and while I didn’t agree with everything Helen said, she was my boss and the underdog and I had a soft spot for anyone trying to beat the odds. When people attacked what she stood for, my knee-jerk reaction was to defend her.

  Margot interrupted my thoughts. “Take that woman—your mother’s friend—you can’t tell me that she’s sitting around waiting for her husband to make her happy.”

  “She’s not married,” I said.

  “
She’s not?” Bridget looked shocked.

  “That just proves my point,” said Margot.

  “But,” I said, “I think that Helen Gurley Brown and Betty Friedan are both urging us to have full, happy, exciting lives with or without men. They just have different methods of getting there.”

  “I’m not sure what we’re all arguing about,” said Carole, a new secretary in the circulation department who had started a week after I did. “Can any of you honestly say that you don’t want to get married and have a family?”

  At first no one said anything. I stared at the traffic inching along Amsterdam as I shifted in my chair, thinking about Michael, the only man I ever thought I’d marry, the man I thought would be the father of my children.

  “Sure, I want a husband and a family,” said Penny eventually. “But not yet. Not now.”

  “Me neither,” said Margot.

  Leslie nodded. “I’m with them. There’s things I want to do first.”

  “Like what?” asked Carole.

  “I want to be a writer,” said Penny.

  “An editor,” said Bridget.

  “I want to be a photographer,” I said.

  “I’m going to be a fashion designer,” said Margot.

  We were all looking at Carole, her hands wrapped tightly around her coffee mug. “I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly, “but I’m not like the rest of you. I don’t have these big, glamorous goals. Sure, there’s things I’d like to do—I’d like to travel and maybe take a painting or sculpture class. I don’t want to just sit home and bake cookies. But at the end of the day, I’d be happy just to meet a nice man, get married and raise a family.”

  I expected the others to jump on her, but to my surprise, no one said a word. We grew quiet, the sounds of the city—the horns, people shouting, dogs barking—suddenly filtering in, but still our silence was impossible to ignore. It was as if Carole had just spoken some shameful truth that we were all harboring. Even me.

  * * *

  • • •

  The Dakota was an impressive address to call home. Between the sweeping courtyard, its gables and dormers, the ornate spandrel archways, it looked like a Gothic castle to me. When I approached the main entrance, I was greeted by the uniformed doorman, who telephoned Elaine, announced my arrival and showed me to the elevator, where another uniformed man delivered me to the fifth floor.

  Elaine answered the door before I rang the bell. Her silver hair was loose upon her shoulders and she was dressed in a flowing cream-colored tunic with black piping along the sleeves and collar. There was soft music playing on her hi-fi system, some sort of jazz.

  “You have a gorgeous home,” I said, stepping into a room enveloped by emerald green drapes, an elegant sofa and matching overstuffed chairs. The crystal chandelier, suspended in the foyer, shimmered down on the rich mahogany floor. I wasn’t a good judge of spatial calculations but I would have guessed her ceilings were twelve feet high.

  “I’m glad you like it. What can I get you to drink? A martini?” She walked over to a glass cart sporting brown and blue bottles of gin, bourbon, vodka and wine along with a sterling silver ice bucket just beginning to bead up with condensation, as if freshly filled.

  “A martini would be great.”

  Noting that I was careful to sidestep around the zebra skin area rug sprawled out on the living room floor, she laughed and said, “It’s okay. He won’t bite. You can walk on him.” She poured some gin and vermouth in a silver shaker. “I’m almost done decorating. At least for now. I suppose I’ll get bored again soon enough and redo it all.”

  “You did this? Yourself? Without a decorator?”

  She smiled as if it was no big deal and poured two martinis, leaving the perfect amount of room at the top for an olive. “It’s a hobby.” She handed me my drink and gave my glass a delicate clink with hers. “Now tell me,” she said, “how are things going at work?”

  “Much better, thanks to you.”

  “I hope that young man—what was his name again?”

  “Erik.”

  “Erik, right. I hope he’s been behaving himself.”

  “He won’t be bothering me again.” I took another sip of my martini. I hadn’t seen Erik since the party and that was fine by me. I was sad that it was over, but I was done with him and grateful that I hadn’t gotten myself in any deeper. I was safe now. My heart had moved, far outside his reach.

  We took our drinks into the living room, the two of us sitting on her overstuffed chairs. I was hoping she’d bring out the photos of my mother soon, but Elaine seemed in no hurry to get to those.

  “What did you think of the lecture last night?” she asked.

  “It was a lot to take in. Makes you think. We were talking afterward about how Betty Friedan says one thing and Helen Gurley Brown says another.”

  “They’re as different as night and day. Or so they’d like to think. Betty loathes Helen. She says Helen’s obscene and disgusting. Personally, I lean more toward Betty’s way of thinking, but Helen’s not all wrong. Oh, but enough of that,” said Elaine, shaking her head. “It was good to see you last night. Looks like you’re meeting people and making friends.”

  “Everyone at work’s been so nice and welcoming,” I said. “And again, I can’t thank you enough for helping me get the job and for asking Christopher to help me with my photography.”

  “No need to thank me. Christopher’s happy to help you out. Besides”—she paused and lit a cigarette—“he owes me a few favors.”

  I looked at her, my eyebrows rising, asking her to elaborate.

  “I’ve known Christopher since he was a little boy,” she explained. “His parents divorced when he was a baby, and I met his father, William, shortly after that. I was mad for William.” She smiled as if picturing him in her mind’s eye while she flicked her ashes. “I almost married that man.”

  “What happened?”

  She cocked her head toward the ceiling, as if the answer were waiting for her up there. “I guess, in the end, I didn’t love him enough. He expected me to give up my career and raise his son, which I practically ended up doing anyway. I was also mad for Christopher. I don’t talk to William anymore,” she said, a certain sadness passing over her face. “But Christopher will always be in my life. He’s like a son to me.”

  “What happened to Christopher’s mother?” I couldn’t resist asking. Now that I didn’t have my mother, I was either fascinated by or resentful and envious of other people’s relationships with theirs.

  “His mother . . .” Elaine’s voice trailed off for a moment, as if she was deciding how best to answer. “Christopher hasn’t seen her since he was a baby. You see, his mother didn’t just leave his father, she left him, too. After the divorce, she remarried. She and her husband have two children now. They live right here in the city, and she’s never once reached out to Christopher. Not even a phone call. A letter. Nothing.”

  I felt some vague kinship to him, only his mother had left him on purpose. Mine was taken away from me.

  “How she did that to him, I will never understand. Anyway”—Elaine wiped the thought away with her hand—“Christopher always wanted to be a photographer but his father didn’t approve. William’s a stockbroker and he wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, or at least work in finance. They had some terrible arguments over it. I was always playing referee. William thought Christopher would starve trying to make a living as a photographer. And believe me, Christopher’s done very well for himself. And he’s still so young. As you can see, I’m proud of him.” She smiled, satisfied, as she leaned back and rubbed the nape of her neck. “And I can always say I gave him his first photography job. That was when I was at Random House. I had a young author who needed a headshot.”

  I was still trying to picture Christopher as a young boy, remembering the conversation we’d had that day in the coffee shop
where he’d talked about being awkward around people, keeping to himself.

  “He’s a good kid,” Elaine was saying now. “And talented. Not to mention handsome. Underneath all that hair. And let me tell you, those good looks run in the family. You should have seen his father when he was younger.”

  I smiled and said, “Christopher’s girlfriend’s awfully pretty, too.”

  “Oh, Daphne.” She made a mocking pout. “That’s gone on longer than it should have. And you can’t tell me his mother leaving doesn’t have something to do with that.”

  “Don’t you like Daphne?” I was surprised.

  “No, she’s fine. Perfectly fine. I just don’t like her for Christopher.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “Not that he’d ever listen to me when it comes to Daphne. I hope you’re hungry,” she said, changing the subject, getting up and motioning for me to follow her into the kitchen, which was larger than my entire apartment.

  “Smells delicious,” I said, taking in the scent of garlic filling the air. Three copper pots were simmering on the stove, the gas flame lapping up the sides of them. More pots, of varying sizes, were hanging from a cast iron rack above a butcher block island. Fresh basil, oregano and bay leaves sat on the counter, waiting to be added to the sauce.

  “I can’t believe you know how to cook, too. Is there anything you can’t do?”

  “You’re very good for my ego.” She laughed and flung a strand of spaghetti at the wall. I remembered my mother used to do the same thing. I felt a pang, staring at the noodle clinging to the tile.

  “Done,” Elaine said triumphantly and proceeded to drain and toss the noodles into a savory sauce of olive oil and white wine, garlic, herbs and shrimp.

  We sat beneath another crystal chandelier at a dining room table that could have comfortably sat twelve. Elaine poured two glasses of chilled Chablis and raised her glass. “Cheers.”