Astor Place Vintage: A Novel (9 page)

AS THE HORSE
clip-clopped past Madison Square, I gawked like a tourist. The city seemed even more dazzling at night, with brilliant arc lights lining the avenue and crowds hunting for entertainment. Diners packed the Café Martin, Anna Held performed to sold-out crowds, and audiences lined up at Proctor’s to see moving pictures and vaudeville.

“I remember when this was a lovely, quiet residential neighborhood,” my father said.

“And dull as doornails, no doubt.”

“What’s exciting about stone towers replacing quaint old houses?”

“You’re the limit, Father. People come from all over to see the sights.”

“I heard they’re closing down the Fifth Avenue Hotel. It used to be one of the most fashionable addresses in the city. Now they can’t fill their rooms—too old-fashioned for you thrillseekers.”

“Well, I like having lots of people around me. Cold Spring is
too quiet. Everyone shuts themselves away in their houses.” Sometimes I used to imagine that everyone else on earth had died and left me alone.

“People can be lonely in the city, too,” Father said. “I’m glad we’re getting out tonight.”

“So am I.” The manager of the Woolworth’s on Fourteenth Street had invited us to meet for coffee and dessert at what he claimed was the best Italian café in the city. “It was terribly sweet of this man to think of us.”

“I think Mr. Pierce is in need of company, too. He lost his wife last year.”

I nodded, thinking that he and Father had something in common. I wished Mr. Pierce had a daughter for me. After a month in the city, I still didn’t have anyone I could call a friend. As for my employment search, I didn’t dare go to another interview without a reference, and I couldn’t bring myself to raise the unpleasant subject with my father.

Veering down Broadway, we passed the brightly lit store windows of Brooks Brothers, Lord & Taylor, and Arnold Constable’s. At Union Square we crossed Fourteenth Street, farther downtown than I’d been yet. “One day I’d like to go all the way down to the seaport,” I said.

“No need for you to go any farther than this, Olive.”

“The Jewish quarter, Little Italy, Chinatown . . . it all sounds so exotic, and I’m sure it’s perfectly safe in the daytime.”

“Decent young woman don’t wander around the slums.”

I pressed my lips together. He’d been poisoned by a stew of recent newspaper stories about white slavery. They’d have us believe that every woman who took a walk by herself ended up in a house of ill repute.

“There’s St. Mark’s,” Father said as we passed an old church. “Beautiful, isn’t it? A hundred years old. Now here it is, surrounded by all these blasted tenements. Did you know Peter
Stuyvesant’s farm once stood here? Can you imagine all this as green fields instead of concrete?”

“Why not go even further back, to the Indians? They must’ve been horrified to see men razing forests for their farms. And a hundred years from now, I wager New Yorkers will feel sentimental over the very tenements you’re complaining about.”

“Hard to imagine, but I suppose you might be right. The old always yields to the new—that’s life.” He patted my hand. “You’re too smart for your own good, young lady.”

I basked in his praise, such as it was, until we turned onto First Avenue, a wide shabby street, gritty from neglect, with El tracks running overhead. “I didn’t think the El ran down First Avenue.”

“This is the Second Avenue El. It only runs on First Avenue as far as Twenty-third Street; then it turns over to Second Avenue and goes clear up to the Bronx.”

The driver pulled over on Eleventh Street, and Father took out his wallet. The Bronx was yet another part of New York I couldn’t imagine. Stepping down from the carriage, I promised myself that one day I’d know all the ins and outs of the city.

Father took my arm as we walked down the street. Tenements lined both sides of the block, with the neighborhood shops on the ground floor and apartments above. An assortment of foreign-looking people passed by. A dark-skinned young man wore the oddest cone-shaped fur hat. A scrawny old woman wore wooden clogs and hunched under a yellow shawl. We reached a storefront with
CAFFE PUGLIESE
stenciled on the plate glass. A waif in a tattered sweater sat on the sidewalk by the door.

“Can you help me, ma’am, please?” She reached out with an open palm. “Just a penny for a piece of bread . . .”

Such sad eyes. Gaunt face. I buried my hands inside my muff, wishing I’d brought some coins. Father pretended not to notice her while opening the door. And then we entered yet another
world. This one was warm, cheerful, and brightly lit, with a wonderful scent in the air.

“Is that licorice?” I took in a deep breath to make it linger in my nose.

“Anise.”

A long wood counter displayed trays of pastries. Tarts piled with glistening fruit, cakes slathered with buttercream flowers, rows of rainbow-colored cookies . . . So much rich food for us, while that hungry waif would be grateful for just one bite. A dark-haired woman behind the counter welcomed us with a
buona sera,
took our coats, and directed us to the back, where the scent of anise faded to the less alluring odor of tobacco. Lots of men and very few women sat drinking coffee and reading the evening papers. Lively strains of Italian and English bounced off the tile walls.

“Someone appears to be with him,” Father said, leading me to a table.

I looked eagerly to see the fourth person; it wasn’t a daughter. Father introduced me to his manager friend Howard Pierce, who in turn introduced his son. “Ralph came by just before I was leaving, so I invited him along.”

“How do you do?” he said, bowing slightly.

As I returned the greeting, I wondered if this had been a matchmaking scheme set up by the two fathers.

Sitting across from Ralph Pierce, I supposed most women would find him attractive. He had a clean-shaven face, boyish features, and dark brown hair. A waiter wearing a white ankle-length apron came to the table, and the older Mr. Pierce ordered for all of us, using the Italian names. Then he took up my father’s current favorite subject. “Marble counters, porcelain syrup tanks, copper sink . . . Just keeping those soda fountains clean will be a nightmare.”

“Not to mention,” my father added, “the bother of keeping the syrups stocked and the water carbonated. Frank Woolworth can’t leave well enough alone.”

I sat up straight. “But he’s right.” All three men looked at me with surprise. “Men have their bars and saloons. Where can women sit by themselves for a quick refreshment without being conspicuous? A soda water fountain.”

“No one wants to deny women their ice cream soda,” my father said. “But let them get it somewhere else.”

“That’s right,” Howard Pierce chimed in. “We’re in the business of selling dry goods.”

“If the sodas draw in more customers,” I replied, “you’ll be selling more dry goods.”

Ralph Pierce chuckled. “I think she won that argument.”

“And she’s prettier than any of us,” his father added.

I refrained from rolling my eyes at the patronizing comment.

A waiter arrived with our drinks and called me a
bella donna
while pouring steamed milk into my coffee. It seemed to be my night for compliments, but after the waiter set down our desserts, I couldn’t compete. Rum baba cake, canoli, biscotti, and something called sfogliatelle, with crisp thin layers of buttery dough, sweet cheese filling, and chunks of candied orange. “I’ve never tasted anything so delicious,” I said after savoring my first bite.

My father took a bite of rum cake before asking Ralph Pierce if he was in retail.

“I haven’t time for all those nickels and dimes,” he answered. “My line is advertising.”

His father scowled while cutting the tube-shaped canoli into four pieces. “Advertising is a dead-end field. Woolworth doesn’t spend a dime on it, and business is better than ever.”

“How many men are in your company?” my father asked.

I feared Ralph Pierce would think Father was interviewing him as a potential son-in-law, so I tried to appear captivated by
my piece of cannoli, which wasn’t difficult. The deep-fried dough filled with cream, bits of chocolate, and candied cherries tasted scrumptious.

“Just four of us,” Ralph said. “The stenographer, the office boy, an account man who brings in the work, and then I’m on the creative side. We just opened a big account for a new brand of soap. I’m writing the copy for it now.”

“In hard times like this,” his father grumbled, “the first thing any firm cuts from its budget is advertising. That business with the copper stocks is going to drive the market down, don’t you think, Westcott?”

“The copper situation won’t matter,” my father said. “Something of that sort only affects the people directly involved.”

Howard Pierce shook his head. “I predict there’ll be a domino effect.”

“Nonsense,” Father said. “The market has found its bottom. We’re poised for a recovery, you’ll see.”

The older men continued to argue about the market, so I tried to hold up my end of the conversation with Ralph Pierce. “It sounds as if your father wishes you’d take a job with Woolworth.”

“You noticed,” he said with a grim smile. “He refuses to accept that I’m not interested in retail.”

“Tell me, how on earth does one think up anything interesting to say about soap?”

“That’s the challenge. Anyway, you can’t make something interest you that doesn’t.”

“I feel the same way about marriage,” I couldn’t resist saying.

He looked at me with surprise. “And why is that?”

“For one thing, I plan on having a career.” As the words tumbled out, I wondered why I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. At least Father was too involved in his conversation with Mr. Pierce to hear.

“Don’t tell me you want to be an actress.”

I laughed. “I’d pity the audience.”

“A teacher?”

“I’d pity the students.”

“I give up. Who wouldn’t you pity?”

“My customers. I want to be a buyer in a department store.”

He looked as though I’d announced plans to come down with a disease. “Why?”

“You don’t think a woman ought to work?” I asked coyly.

“If there’s a genuine need, they should be allowed. Certainly, teaching is an honorable profession. But the department stores are known to be a breeding ground of immorality. It would be a mistake to expose yourself to the lower-class women employed in those places.”

“My goodness. You make department stores sound positively evil.”

“I only know what I’ve read and heard. It’s one thing to shop in a store, Miss Westcott. Quite another to work in one.”

I wanted to tell him he was a pompous fool but took a sip of coffee instead.

“I wouldn’t allow my future wife to work in such a place,” he went on. “Not that it would be an issue. The woman I marry shall put family first.”

“Then I won’t be the woman you marry.” I smiled pleasantly, but Ralph Pierce was regarding me with alarm, as if he’d just proposed and I’d turned him down. I changed the subject. “Have I ever seen any of your advertisements, Mr. Pierce?”

“Probably, if you read the ladies’ magazines.”

“I try not to. They’re filled with such drivel, don’t you think?”

“I’m told some women find the articles useful.”

“If you want to know twenty ways to cook a chicken.”

By his expression, I guessed he would like to know.

Our fathers had moved on to speculating about a rumor that Woolworth planned to build an office building taller than the
Metropolitan Tower. I changed the subject once more, resolving to sound agreeable.

“We’ve only just moved to the city. I think it’s grand. The skyscrapers. All the people . . .” Now I sounded like a simpleton. “Did you have the good fortune to be born here?”

“As a matter of fact, I did, in a brownstone on Eighteenth Street.”

“Then I’m sure you must know all the most interesting places.”

He went on to hold forth on the city sights I must see. Meanwhile, I stuffed myself with pastry. When the waiter asked if we wanted anything else, everyone agreed we’d eaten more than enough. Thank goodness I wasn’t wearing a corset; if I had been, every hook surely would’ve burst open.

October 19, 1907

Why is it that when I try to be charming and clever with men, I end up being arrogant and insufferable? Perhaps because they always seem to think that they’re the whole show, and that makes me want to let them know they aren’t. I can’t seem to remember that I’m supposed to encourage them to feel superior. Will I ever meet a man whose arrogance doesn’t rouse me to take him down a peg or two?

SITTING DOWN WITH
a snack of whole wheat fig bars and green tea, I read about Olive’s horrible job interview. When she mentioned everyone’s obsession with Stanford White’s murder, I remembered it had something to do with a love triangle. I had a vague memory of reading about it in one of my books, with a big photograph of the beautiful woman at the center of the scandal.

I went to the bookshelf and scanned the spines.
Valentine’s Manual of Old New York
,
Crusades and Crinolines
,
King’s Views of New York
,
Manhattan Manners
,
The History of Macy’s.
Then I came across my old set of Time-Life books called
This Fabulous Century
and knew that was where I’d seen it. I got the complete series of eight books at a flea market when I was around ten years old, and they played a big part in launching my fascination with the past.
This Fabulous Century
only went up to the seventies, the decade it was published. In the first volume, 1870 to 1900 was covered. Each of the next seven decades got a full book to itself. I used to pore over every word and stare at the glossy photographs with
laser-like eyes, trying to take in every detail and see beyond the edges to find answers to questions I couldn’t quite put into words.