Spin

by Peter Zheutlin

  * * *

  It was about a thirty minute walk from Spring Street to the store on Washington. It wasn’t one of my usual workdays, so Grandpa wondered why I was dressed in my formal work attire. I had arranged the night before for the children to be with Baila for part of the day, telling her I had a date to have tea with a friend. I told Grandpa the same.

  “It’s rather early for tea,” he said in his heavily accented English.

  “Yes, I know, but Susie is feeling down and asked if I might come early to cheer her up,” I replied. My friend of many years, Susie Wyzanski, lived not far, on the periphery of Beacon Hill. “I’m taking the children downstairs for a few hours. I should be back around noon.”

  Grandpa nodded. He was perpetually circumspect. It was always hard to know what he was thinking.

  It was an unusually pleasant day for late March, clear and mild, with a slight southerly breeze. I even spotted little clusters of crocuses in the tiny gardens in front of the brownstones on Charles Street.

  I expected to be nervous. Not only was I growing more and more attached to the idea of the undertaking, but Colonel Pope had a reputation for being imperious. A man of his station did not suffer fools gladly. But my confidence was up, perhaps because I knew that was the impression I had to make: that I was a woman undaunted, that I was self-possessed, unafraid, and even cheeky. With each step I felt as though I were walking into a new, uncharted future, one I would embrace without fear. I would impress the great Colonel Pope as one of those “New Women” the newspapers were always writing about, ready to take on the world and make it my own.

  I knew I was getting ahead of myself, but it also crossed my mind that if I were the colonel’s “chosen one,” I might in the process just lift up a few other women who, like myself, were already world-weary at a young age. Mostly I wanted to change my own life, but I glimpsed the possibility that a journey such as this might inspire a few others, just as Nellie Bly’s had inspired me. And maybe, though I could not be the mother the children needed, I could be one of those women they, especially the girls, needed, to show that you can, with enough audacity, map your own path in this world.

  Well, at least that’s what I have told myself over the years to rationalize a harsh and selfish decision. But there is some truth to it, and this is certainly the truth: if I couldn’t provide emotionally for my family, at least I could provide materially, and I stood to profit handsomely if I could persuade the colonel that I was his girl.

  * * *

  When I arrived at the store a few minutes before ten, Alonzo was waiting for me in the showroom.

  “Are you ready, Mrs. Kopchovksy?” he asked. “The colonel is waiting. Be forewarned, he can be gruff and demanding. It’s how he’s become so successful.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” I said with a grin. Alonzo smiled. He was rooting for me.

  He walked me up the stairs to the colonel’s office and knocked lightly on the door.

  “Come in!” The voice was deep and resonant. Alonzo opened the door and announced my arrival.

  The colonel stood up behind his desk and nodded to Alonzo, who left and shut the door behind him. I glanced around quickly at the rich furnishings. The office was suited to the man.

  “Good day to you, Mrs. Kopchovsky,” said the colonel, as he walked around the desk and extended a large hand.

  I returned his firm handshake with one of my own. Most ladies of the day would have extended a limp hand to be gently placed in the palm of a gentleman.

  “That’s quite a grip you have, Mrs. Kopchovsky,” said the colonel. His tone was serious.

  “As is yours, Colonel,” I replied. He arched his eyebrows. I’d taken him a bit by surprise. No man, let alone one of his station in life, expected to be spoken to as an equal in those days, especially a man of advancing years by a woman in her early twenties.

  “Please. Have a seat,” said the colonel, gesturing to a leather chair in front of his desk. “Would you like a glass of water?”

  “I suppose it’s too early for whiskey, so yes, thank you,” I replied.

  Colonel Pope seemed startled momentarily; then a small grudging smile gradually worked its way across his face.

  “You are a woman of some humor, I see.”

  “And you are a man who seems to enjoy a woman with a sense of humor,” I answered without missing a beat.

  “Indeed, but it is rare, is it not, for a woman to be so forward?”

  “Women rarely feel they have permission to engage in humorous conversation. It is rare only in that sense,” I replied. “Among ourselves we often display great wit.”

  “I see,” said the colonel. His smile had dissipated. He poured me a glass of water.

  “Mrs. Kopchovsky, Mr. Peck has highly recommended you for the proposition, the details of which he has already informed you. But I will come straight to the point. Despite the hard times we are in, people continue to buy bicycles at a rapid rate. The market among women, for whom the wheel is still relatively new, has great potential. I want someone in whom every woman can see herself, for the purpose of the proposition is to sell bicycles. The women of this country are restless, but advancing their agitation for the right to vote, for equality, is not my interest. I am in the bicycle business, not the women’s rights business.”

  “I do understand, Colonel,” I said.

  “You certainly have enough cheek,” the colonel continued. “That you have already made clear. But you are a Jewess, are you not?”

  “I am, Colonel.”

  “And you have young children, or so Mr. Peck has informed me.”

  “Yes, Colonel. Three.”

  “And they are how old?” asked the colonel.

  “Five, three, and two,” I answered.

  “I will not pry into the reasons why you are prepared to abandon them for a time, but it is most unseemly, is it not?”

  “It would seem that way, yes. But I can make arrangements for them, and my husband will be here.”

  “And your husband? What does he think of this?”

  “I don’t honestly know, Colonel. I haven’t spoken of it to him. There’s been no reason. But I assure you I would not undertake such an adventure without his permission.”

  I knew this last bit to be false, but it was the only answer to give a man. Grandpa might be unhappy, but he would put up faint opposition if I made clear what I was about to do. He suffered his disappointments in silence.

  “Colonel,” I continued, “we are not a family of means. As Mr. Peck surely told you, I am a working woman. I solicit adverts from your business every week. This opportunity, should you see fit to give it to me, is a chance for me to provide for my family. I would be very determined to succeed and claim the prize money. It is enough to fix us for life.”

  The colonel nodded. I sensed he was impressed with my motivation, at least the part of it I described to him. I said nothing of my yearning to break free of the bondage of domestic life.

  “Kopchovksy. That is your married name, is it not?” asked the colonel.

  “It is.”

  “And your given name?”

  “Anna Cohen,” I replied.

  The colonel sighed. “It is even more of a Jewish name than Kopchovksy.”

  I nodded.

  “Tell me, Mrs. Kopchovksy, what experience do you have riding a wheel?”

  “I have never in my life ridden a wheel,” I said with a directness that startled even me. It seemed this would, in baseball parlance, be the third strike. “But I could learn it in a week.”

  “You have a healthy reservoir of self-confidence, haven’t you?” asked the colonel.

  “Indeed I do, and it is well warranted, I assure you,” I replied firmly. If I had any hope of earning the colonel’s favor it lay in convincing him that I possessed the qualities most needed to succeed in an endeavor sure to be dangerous and grueling. I was quite sure the colonel had never heard a woman speak as I spoke to him that day.

  “Well,” said the
colonel, as he started to stand up, signaling to me that our meeting was over. “You certainly have pluck, Mrs. Kopchovksy. You are most unconventional. I will need a few days to think it over. Mr. Peck will be in touch with you.”

  I rose from my chair.

  “May I have that glass of whiskey now?” I asked. My grin and my eyes conveyed that I was joking. At least I think they did, for the colonel made no move to pour me a glass of whiskey and he didn’t smile.

  “If nothing else, Mrs. Kopchovksy, you have made an impression,” the colonel said, though his meaning was ambiguous. “Thank you for an interesting conversation. Now, head home, I’m sure your children are waiting.”

  As the door shut behind me I took a deep breath and exhaled. There was no telling what impression I’d made, but I was relieved. I’d given it my best shot. What the colonel wanted was a heroine of the wheel, a woman hungry for fame and fortune, who would inspire women who had yet to be infected by the bicycle craze to flock to his stores. I doubt the colonel was even aware of it, but I knew to a certainty that what he was looking for was a woman in form and biology, but one with just enough of the masculine characteristics men of his station so prized in other men, but disdained in women—audacity, ingenuity, resourcefulness, fortitude, toughness, determination, combativeness, cunning, and even ruthlessness. If a woman were to have a plausible chance of accomplishing the formidable mission he had in mind, she would have to be all of those things. I’m not proud to say it now, but a woman willing to abandon her children for many months for a purpose such as this had to be ruthless in some measure. And a Jewish woman in a world rife with anti-Semitism willing to undertake such a journey had to be especially tough. Maybe those strikes against me would turn in my favor as the colonel weighed his decision.

  As I walked over Beacon Hill toward home and the husband and three children who demanded my never-ending attention, the gold dome of the statehouse glistened in the early spring sunshine. In that moment I knew I wanted this more than anything I’d ever wanted in my life.

  Three

  In the weeks that followed my meeting with the colonel, I heard not a word. Even when I made my regular weekly calls at Pope’s store on Washington Street and chatted with Alonzo, he said nothing and I didn’t want to ask. As long as there wasn’t a no, my hopes could remain alive. With each passing day my longing increased. Life at home was such drudgery; my only respite were the hours that I worked selling adverts. Grandpa wasn’t a bother, but he wasn’t much of a presence, either. I was only twenty-three. I wanted more. I needed more. The more I thought about escaping, the more desperate I was to escape. The desire fed on itself.

  I told no one of my meeting with Colonel Pope, not Grandpa certainly, and not even Susie, my beloved Susie, my calm in any storm, my confidante and, I will say it now, my lover. Does that surprise you? Such intimacy between women was far more common, even in those days, than people believe. On some of the days when I was out of the house working, I would meet her at her lovely town house near Beacon Hill for late-morning tea and talk. The intimacy that often followed was the only time in my days of almost nonstop work, selling for the papers or at home, that I felt truly alive. I hope this isn’t uncomfortable for you, but Susie was the only person with whom I had been intimate at that point in my life apart from Grandpa, which is to say it was practically my only experience. It was mostly unspoken, but many women of the time could find true understanding only in other women. Our lives were circumscribed in the same ways, our options similarly limited, our innermost thoughts and desires expected to remain unspoken and unrealized. That is why more women than anyone knew or suspected sought and treasured intimacy with each other. We joined with each other on even ground, something we rarely if ever experienced with men.

  Though many women were swept up in the suffrage movement, and the movement for women’s equality, it was mostly something for women of means with the time to attend meetings and conferences, write letters and polemics, and devote themselves fully to the cause. Though I was not at all active in this movement, I believed deeply in a woman’s right to self-determination and autonomy, and I wanted to fulfill my own destiny, not the one society had in mind for me. In time, I would don the mantle of the women’s movement, even become a symbol of it, but my reasons were more practical than political. I wanted to change my life, and the chance to win a considerable sum in the process, one that would secure the family’s financial future, also lured me. On the journey I did not yet know I was about to take, publicity would be the fuel that drove me. And what better way to focus the public eye than to be at the center of a high-stakes wager to settle one of the burning issues of the day—whether a woman could equal a man. But again, I am getting ahead of myself.

  * * *

  Nearly six weeks had passed since my meeting with the colonel, and I had called several times on Alonzo to collect his advertising orders for the week ahead. In late April we were about to wrap up our usual meeting when he asked me a question that caught me off guard.

  “Would you be willing to change your name, Mrs. Kopchovksy?”

  “Pardon? Change my name? Whatever for?”

  “And would you be willing to say as little as possible about your personal life, and perhaps, for certain purposes, become an unattached woman without a husband or children?”

  Then it struck me. These were questions Alonzo was putting to me on the colonel’s behalf. In the weeks since we’d met, my hopes had soared and then come back to earth. I wasn’t sure what to think now. I was uncharacteristically silent. Alonzo allowed himself a wry smile.

  “Here is the colonel’s proposition,” he said. “You impressed him with your wit and your cheek, but this is, after all, about business. The potential market for women’s bicycles is still largely untapped. He wants to make a big splash with this scheme. He is prepared to extend the opportunity to you, but with conditions. The first is that he would, for present purposes at least, insist that you adopt a name—forgive me for saying so—that does not sound Jewish. The colonel is adamant that the majority of women would never embrace a Jewess as a role model. You are free to suggest a name of your choosing, which the colonel would have to approve.”

  The suggestion did not offend me, even if it saddened me a bit. Kittie Knox was dismissed out of hand for her race, something that could not be hidden. Hiding one’s Jewishness, while difficult for some, was a more feasible proposition. Such was the reality of things. I didn’t have time to dwell on it—I was still trying to absorb the shock that the fantasy I had indulged in recent weeks was inching toward reality. I started to speak.

  “Alonzo,” I said, but he interrupted me.

  “There is a second condition you must consider,” he added. “It would be scandalous for a woman to abandon her husband and children for such an undertaking. The colonel understands it would be impossible to keep such a secret here in Boston where you are known to many people, especially since you are engaged in the newspaper business. But once you are some distance from home you can be whomever you wish to be. Your real identity would be easy to obscure and a new one easy to create. The less said about your husband and your children, the better.”

  In the weeks that I had fantasized about escaping Boston by bicycle it had never occurred to me that I might choose to become someone else entirely. A new name. A new past. A whole new life. A new woman. I could reinvent myself from top to bottom. It thrilled me from the moment the words escaped Alonzo’s lips. I didn’t need to think it over, and I didn’t need to discuss it with Grandpa. He would know that once I had put my mind to the task he would have little choice but to acquiesce. More difficult would be appealing to Bennett, for I would need him and Baila to agree to help Grandpa care for the children. My mind was racing, my heart, too, but I didn’t want to appear overeager. I’m not sure how long the silence lingered between us as my mind conjured images of far-off places, of the great steamships I would have to take across the oceans, and of the exotic people who would stare in di
sbelief as a woman wheeled by on a bicycle.

  I leveled my gaze and looked directly into Alonzo’s eyes.

  “When do I start?”

  Alonzo smiled broadly.

  “Shouldn’t you discuss this with your husband first? His permission is not assured, I would assume.”

  “His permission is not needed,” I replied. Alonzo looked quite startled. “His forgiveness, perhaps, but not his permission.”

  “Mrs. Kopchovksy,” he said, “you are a bold woman. I have no doubt you will make a big success of this. The colonel thinks the first days of summer are a propitious time to start. That will give you time to get your affairs in order and attend to the logistics, of which there will be many. For starters, the colonel will pay for you to take riding lessons at the cycling academy on Tremont Street. You are, I believe, unacquainted with the wheel.”

  “True, but I should master it before long.”

  “I am sure of that, Mrs. Kopchovksy,” Alonzo replied. “I am quite sure of that.”

  “There will be time to discuss the details further,” he continued, rising from his chair. “For now I suggest you attend to your affairs at home and prepare your family. I do admire your grit, Mrs. Kopchovksy, but I have to say, I am glad you are not my wife.” He smiled.

  “As am I,” I said, returning his smile. “As am I.”

  * * *

  Of all the countless tasks I would now have to attend to in order to prepare for my departure, telling Grandpa, Bennett, and, of course, my dear Susie would be the most difficult. It was the conversation to come with Susie I dreaded most. Not because she wouldn’t understand; no one in my life understood me and my deepest desires as well as Susie. I knew she would find our separation painful, as would I, but I also knew she would become my biggest booster. She wanted nothing more in life than my happiness, and I hers.

  As I walked home that evening after a full day of work, I pondered when would be the opportune time to have these difficult conversations with Grandpa and my brother, and I started to go over in my mind what I would say to each. The children were too young to understand. My departure from their life would be both sudden and inexplicable. Only Mollie, at five, would be able to grasp it at all, and to her I would only be able to say that Mother needs to be away for a while but Papa and Uncle and Auntie will be here to take care of you. It is with great guilt that I say this now, but the idea of being separated from the children caused me only minor discomfort. I cared about them, wanted the best for them, but the maternal love we expect to wash over us after the birth of a child never materialized for me. I have few regrets in life, but this is one, that I was unable to provide the maternal love every child deserves.