Park Avenue Summer

by Renée Rosen

  Smith posed her against a white sweep, having her sit on a stool, hands in her lap, her long blond hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail, the expression on her face wholesome and innocent. I had to hand it to Helen—she knew what she was doing. After twenty minutes or so, the Hearst men stopped asking questions and stood back watching, the tension on their faces fading.

  While Smith pretended to photograph Renata, I looked over and noticed Erik had cozied up to one of the models, standing a good two inches taller than him in her high heels. Innocent flirting or was he going to get her phone number?

  I waited ten seconds, which was about all I could take, and walked over. “Hey, how’s it going?”

  He got the message, stuffed his hands in his pockets. “We were just talking,” he said when the model was out of earshot.

  “So,” I said, softening my tone, “I was thinking we could go hear some poetry tonight.”

  “Poetry?”

  “Yeah, there’s this great club down in the Village and we—”

  “The Village? Poetry?” He made a face. “I gotta work late tonight.”

  I don’t know why this bothered me. I knew he didn’t like the Village and he probably liked poetry even less. I turned away, desperate to change the subject. “Looks like they’re setting up lunch,” I said.

  They had a lavish buffet of sandwiches and salads, fruits and slabs of hand-carved roast beef. I fixed Helen a plate though I knew she wouldn’t touch it, just as she hadn’t eaten anything from the breakfast spread, either.

  After the Hearst folks had finished lunch and left the studio, Helen excused herself from the Hansons and walked over to the set. George marched up behind her, but she ignored him. Thanks to her advertising days, it was clear that she was in her element. With one arm wrapped about her waist, her opposite hand propped up beneath her chin, she stood there, studying Renata.

  After a moment she turned to Smith. “What can we do to make this juicier? More like one of your Esquire photos?”

  “Now Helen . . .” George was shaking his head. “You know we can’t do—”

  “Oh, don’t worry.” Helen gave him a patronizing, dismissive smile. “I’m just having a little fun is all. You should try it sometime.”

  George walked away, shaking his head even more emphatically.

  Smith stood back, thinking. “Renata, honey, stand up, will you please?”

  When she did, Helen pulled the stool out of the way and walked around the glorious creature, eyes sweeping the length of her body as indiscreetly as a leering man on a construction site. She turned Renata around; her gingham top was cut low in the back exposing her shoulder blades and the subtle nodes of her vertebrae.

  “Too bad we can’t shoot her from behind,” said Smith. “The back of that top’s sexier than the front.”

  Helen looked at Smith, her eyes twinkling. “Renata”—she held out her hand—“come with me, dear.”

  Helen went behind the changing curtain with Renata and a few minutes later reappeared with Renata’s blond hair tousled and wild and her gingham top now on backward so that it was plunging in the front, showing off her heaving cleavage and the round slopes of her breasts.

  George’s eyes about popped out of his head.

  “How’s that for juicy,” said Helen.

  * * *

  • • •

  The Jax photo shoot was still going on when Helen sent me back to the office to tend to other matters: letters and thank-you notes to be sent out, meetings to be scheduled, that sort of thing. I was inspired by what I’d seen at Smith’s studio, and after weeks of procrastinating, I was ready to enroll in a photography class. I’d been carrying the application around in my pocketbook and was about to fill it out when Bridget rushed over, asking about the shoot.

  “It was fascinating,” I said, tucking the form in my drawer, where I’d conveniently forget about it for several weeks. “Although the guys from Hearst showed up out of nowhere and almost ruined the whole thing.”

  “Did Erik go over there with them?” asked Margot, stopping by my desk, a stack of folders in her arms.

  “Oh, I’m sure he was there,” said Bridget. “Erik Masterson would never pass up an opportunity to be around a bunch of fashion models.”

  That stung. They continued talking while I shuffled through the mail for fear they’d see the hurt in my eyes. After Bridget and Margot had gone back to their desks, I focused on Helen’s mail and ended up reading a letter I shouldn’t have opened.

  Dear Helen,

  I hope this finds you well. I can’t remember the last time I spoke with you or received one of your letters. You used to write all the time but lately it seems like I have more contact with David than I have with you. I saw your picture in one of the magazines, either Time or Newsweek. I was at the doctor’s office with Mary. She had an appointment that day. The doctor wants to send I wished they’d used a better photograph. You look so tired and haggard. David tells me you’re always working. Even on the weekends. Be careful there. Don’t forget to tend to your marriage and your husband. You’ll wear yourself out working all the time and you don’t want to end up losing David over this job of yours. If you drive him away, don’t think it will be easy for you to find another man. Need I remind you that you’re no Grace Kelly or Jayne Mansfield. You’ve got your smarts but that will only carry you so far. And, my goodness, the things you said in that article. Helen, must everything that comes out of your mouth be so vulgar? I’m worried that you’re making a spectacle of yourself. In the future, I urge you to think before you speak or you’re likely to find yourself out of a job, out of a marriage and up to your eyeballs in debt. Speaking of which, I mentioned that I took Mary to the doctor’s recently. He wants to send her to Warm Springs but of course that costs money and I’ll never be able to afford it. Just wanted to let you know. Here’s some clovers from her yard. We need all the good luck we can get. Pray for your sister, will you please?

  Love,

  Mother

  By the time I reached the end, a dozen or so clovers had fallen out of the letter and landed on my desk, wilted and shriveled from their travels. A trace of green petal blood appeared where some of the leaves had been crushed. I picked up one, holding its limp stem between my fingers, and realized it was a four-leaf clover. I glanced at another clover. It also had four leaves. All of them did. I’d never seen a four-leaf clover before, let alone a whole collection of them.

  I folded the letter, tucked the clovers inside and stuffed it back in the envelope, wondering how it had gotten mixed in with Helen’s fan mail. It was an innocent mistake and I was sure she would understand, but still I shouldn’t have read the whole thing. I should have stopped as soon as I realized it was a personal letter, but I couldn’t help myself.

  When Helen returned from the photo shoot around six o’clock that evening, she wasn’t upset about my accidentally opening it.

  “Hmmm.” She looked at her mother’s handwriting on the envelope. “I wonder how much money she’s asking for this time,” she said, taking a seat behind her desk while reaching for a cigarette. “That’s the only reason she ever writes—to ask for money or to tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

  Helen was prescient; her mother had ticked off both boxes with a few swipes of her pen.

  “Oh, mothers,” she said, skimming the letter while holding up a clover. “Would you like one? They’re from my sister’s place. Mary’s backyard is covered with four-leaf clovers. Can you imagine?” She smiled at the wonder of it. “Every now and then I have my mother clip a bunch to send to me. I like to press them and give them to people who could use a little good luck. Although”—she frowned—“they never did poor Mary any good. Did I tell you she has polio?”

  “No. I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “It’s a shame. She’s a dear, dear girl and really quite pretty. Much prettier than m
e—just ask my mother, she’ll tell you.” Helen pursed her lips and leaned back. “Poor Mary’s in a wheelchair. I guess it’s no surprise that I should feel guilty for being the healthy one. I’m always sending her and my mother money but that doesn’t alleviate my guilt. My psychoanalyst says it’s my cross to bear. And you know my mother—not Mary—but my mother was the reason I went into analysis in the first place. I love her, I do, but I tell you, there’s not one session—not a single one—where I don’t end up talking about her.” Helen went into a luxurious yawn, stretching her arms overhead. “Are you close with your mother, Alice?”

  Her question was jarring. “Ah—ah, no. Not anymore. She died.” Even after all these years, I dreaded uttering those words.

  “Oh, pussycat. I’m sorry. That’s terrible.” She set the clover aside and gestured to the chair opposite her desk. “When did she die? How old were you?”

  “It happened a while ago,” I said, sitting down and pushing back on the lump in my throat. “I was thirteen.”

  Helen’s shoulders sank. “You poor thing. It’s dreadful to lose a parent and at such a young age. I know.” She smiled sweetly. “I was ten when my father died.” Her eyes instantly began misting over. “He was killed in an elevator accident.” She shook her head at the freak nature of it.

  “Oh no.” My hand went to my chest. “How tragic.”

  “Oh, it was awful. Such a shock. We were caught so off guard. It’s the sort of thing you just never expect to happen.”

  “That’s how it was for us, too,” I said with some awe. I never would have guessed that Helen Gurley Brown and I would have had anything in common, and here we had both experienced the same kind of sudden loss. “My mother died in a car accident. She was just going to the store. She said she’d be right back but she—”

  “I was terrified of elevators,” said Helen. “For years I took the stairs, no matter how many flights up.” She shook her head again.

  “I know what you mean,” I said, trying again to make her see this connection we shared. “I always avoided the intersection where she was hit. The other driver ran a red light. He walked away without a scratch. They said my mother was killed instantly.”

  “I used to have nightmares that I was in an elevator and falling story by story. I’d wake up just before it crashed.”

  I realized I’d mistaken Helen sharing her father’s accident for being empathetic about my loss, but the truth was, she wasn’t listening to me. And perhaps that was a good thing because I’d already said more than I had in years about my mother’s death. Still, I wanted Helen to hear me, and for once, I wanted to feel like I was more to her than just her secretary.

  “My father’s accident made front page news in our hometown papers,” she continued on. “Everyone came to pay their respects and I kept expecting him to come through the front door, thinking he’d be so pleased that everyone was there just for him. I was so young. I didn’t realize I would never see him again.” She plucked a tissue off her desk to catch the tears.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she dabbed her eyes. “It still chokes me up, even after all this time. But I’m sure you understand,” she sniffled. “Such a terrible thing to lose a parent. The pain never really goes away, does it?” She looked at me and I couldn’t tell if she wanted me to respond.

  I was about to say something when she shifted her focus and picked up her red pencil, glancing at a manuscript on her desk.

  Session over. Just as well. One more minute and I might have cried.

  “Well,” I said, getting up from my chair. “I’ll let you get back to work.”

  “Oh, and don’t forget to take your clover,” she said, returning to her bright, cheerful self. “They never helped Mary but I still believe in them. Besides, you’ll need all the luck you can get with that Don Juan of yours.” She gave me a knowing look, and I couldn’t tell if she was pleased that I’d followed her advice or if she thought I was just another foolish girl with a hard lesson to learn.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The next morning I was at my desk by half past seven. Helen was already in her office, and after I brought her a cup of coffee and a glass of Carnation Instant Breakfast, we went to the wall. No one else from the art department was in yet. I turned on the harsh overhead fluorescent lights, gleaming down on the floor. Instead of desks, people back there worked at slanted drafting tables with high-back swivel chairs. There were T-squares and rulers mounted all over the walls, a lightboard in the corner and a Xerox photocopier machine.

  As soon as we approached the wall, Helen saw that a cover had been added to the July flatplan. Tony must have pinned it up the night before. She stood back, eyeing the pretty brunette, smiling and holding a beach ball.

  Helen picked up a red marker and drew a big X over the model. “When Tony gets in, let him know we’re redoing the cover.”

  With her red marker in hand, she went page by page, X-ing out an article on Simple Summer Picnics and another one about How to Treat a Sunburn. I noticed a couple other new articles had appeared overnight, too, which all passed Helen’s inspection: How to Break into Advertising, The Non-Disastrous Affair, Judy Collins: Folksinger Profile.

  We were finishing up when Tony La Sala walked in, jacket slung over his shoulder, cigarette in his mouth and briefcase in hand. He smiled, about to say good morning when he looked at the wall and saw the red X over the cover.

  “What’s going on?” He dropped his briefcase with a heavy thud. “Helen, what are you doing? That cover has been planned for months.”

  “Oh, I know.” She frowned as if she shared his disappointment. “But we just can’t use that for the cover. I’m sorry, Tony, but it’s back to the drawing board.”

  He tossed his jacket onto his chair with too much force and it slid off the other side and onto the floor. He left it there and parked his hands on his hips. “Back to the drawing board with what? At least give me some direction. What’s not working for you? Is it the background color? The typeface? The drop shadows? The image? I have other shots of her. We could—”

  “It’s the girl, Tony. It’s the girl.” She went to his side and placed her hand gently on his arm. “We need to start from scratch. Think sexy, Tony. Sexy.”

  She turned and walked out, leaving Tony and me staring at his cover. “Hearst is not going to be happy about this,” he said, whistling through his teeth. “I hope she’s planning on telling Berlin she’s changing the cover because I’m sure as hell not going to.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Later that week I was asked to join Helen once again in the art department. We were standing at the wall, looking at some new ad pages, illustrations and TKs added to July as well as preliminary ideas for the August flatplan.

  I was taking notes while Helen reviewed three new options for the July cover that Tony had mocked up. Each one was beautifully mounted on easel backs and he had added in placeholder type for the copy lines. George and Harriet stood next to me, watching for Helen’s reaction while Tony made his presentation.

  “I think this one right here is terrific,” said George, pointing to the cover with a pretty brunette, sitting in a white wicker peacock chair, a bouquet of daffodils in her hands.

  “She might be a little too sweet,” said Harriet. “Even for me.”

  “Thank you,” Helen agreed as she paused before setting the comped-up cover facedown. She looked closely at the other two. “Nope. Uh-uh. Oh, darn, I’m afraid not.”

  “What are you talking about? That’s a beautiful chick,” said Tony, indicating the last one she’d rejected.

  “Beautiful isn’t the same as sexy,” said Helen. “Pretty isn’t the same as sexy. I want steamy. Sultry. Sexy. What happened to all the photography from the Jax shoot?”

  “Those aren’t cover shots,” said George.

  “Besides,” said Harriet, “Tony and I already looke
d through them. Trust me. There’s nothing that’ll work for the cover.”

  Helen turned out her bottom lip. “Oh, but are you absolutely sure, kittens?”

  “Positive,” said Tony.

  “Well, let me have a quick look. Just for fun. Just to satisfy my curiosity.”

  “Fine. Suit yourself.” Tony gave her a stack of contact sheets with twenty-five photos per page, each one no bigger than a postage stamp.

  “Here”—Harriet handed her a loupe—“use this.”

  Helen, in a bold pink Mary Quant shift and yellow shoes, leaned over the lightboard, loupe pressed to her eye, meticulously studying each image. No one said a word but I noted the looks the others exchanged behind Helen’s back.

  It was on the third contact page that she said, “Ah-ha! There she is! This is perfect!”

  I looked at the picture she was pointing to. It was a shot of Renata with her red and white gingham top on backward.

  Harriet looked over her shoulder. “Are you out of your mind?” She laughed, thinking Helen was pulling her leg.

  “This is exactly what we need for the July cover.”

  “You can’t use that,” said George.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” said Tony, as if it were obvious.

  “Your eye goes right to her breasts,” said Harriet. “That’s the only thing people are going to look at.”

  “Exactly,” said Helen, smiling. “She has a marvelous bosom. I don’t go for those flat-chested models. She looks like a woman. Of course, we still had to stuff her top with half a box of Kleenex, but just look at the results. She’s sexy and spirited. Now that’s a cover shot!”

  “Need I remind you,” said George, “we’re not selling this cover to men.”

  “You’re absolutely right. We’re selling it to women. Women who want men. And men want a sexy girl like Renata. And, George, all those women want to learn how to be sexy like her.”