As Si took her on a tour of his still-unfinished store and she exclaimed over some of the architectural details that Si had preserved and at the quality of the new work that was being done, she told him a bit more about herself. She was twenty-eight years old, a graduate of Stanford, where she had majored in Art History, and was a recent widow. Her husband had been an Air Force captain who was killed on a training mission. “We’d been married less than a year,” she told him. “And we were stationed at Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento. His plane simply blew up in the sky over Arizona. The cause of the accident was never determined, or, if it was, it was never officially explained to me. All three men aboard the plane were lost. The Air Force shipped a coffin home to me, and when I asked that it be opened they did so with some reluctance. There was nothing inside but one of his uniforms, carefully pressed and folded, so that was what I buried. After that, I decided I didn’t want to live in California anymore, so I came here.” She told this sad story without bitterness, only with a certain sense of bewilderment and resignation.
He escorted her into the room that would be the couture salon. “Oh, what a beautiful fireplace!” she exclaimed. “And look—a Bösendorfer! That must have cost you a fortune!”
So she knew good merchandise when she saw it.
“Promise not to tell anyone, but it has a cracked sounding board,” he said.
She laughed. “I promise not to tell a living soul,” she said, and Si found himself also admiring her soft, lilting speaking voice and rich, throaty laugh. “Cracked sounding board or not, that piano is the perfect touch. This is going to be the most elegant store in New York, Mr. Tarkington.”
“That’s what I’m aiming for, Mrs. Markham,” he said, looking around him. “But there’s still an awful lot of work to be done.”
“Don’t worry. I can visualize it perfectly. I can see what it’s going to be like in my mind’s eye. I’d love to work in a store like this, Mr. Tarkington.”
“Please call me Si.”
“Then you must call me Alice,” she said. “If I worked here, I’d be Alice in Wonderland.”
“There’s only one problem,” he said. “Even if everything goes completely according to schedule, we can’t possibly be ready to open before early October. And I can’t put anyone on the payroll until then.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “I’ll gladly wait. To be honest with you, I really don’t need to work. My husband left me a very nice life insurance policy, and I have his Air Force pension. But I want to work. And I can’t think of any place I’d rather work than in this beautiful store, selling beautiful things to beautiful women.”
Alice Markham, he decided, was going to be nothing short of the perfect Tarkington’s saleswoman.
That night on the note pad by his bed he wrote, Find more Alice Markhams!!!! But that, it turned out, would not be an easy task.
He began telephoning her every week or so, to give her reports on the store’s progress. A strike of the electricians’ union had been threatened and had been called off, but there were other, almost daily problems. Labor disputes in France were delaying shipments from the Paris couturiers. Seventh Avenue designers were bickering over display space. Mollie Parnis would not have her garments displayed in any part of the store where they would be visible from Pauline Trigère’s collection. Cyril Marx, who had been hired to head the Display Department, was sick with the flu. The faux-porcelain mannequins that had been special-ordered from Goldfinch & Brewer in Chicago arrived, mysteriously, with only one leg apiece. “No arms, we could fake!” Cyril Marx screamed from his sickbed on Staten Island. “But we can’t have all our mannequins standing on just their left legs!” Then Cyril’s lover got on the phone and screamed some more. “Do you realize he has a temperature of a hundred and two, Mr. Tarkington?” he said. “What are you trying to do to him, Mr. Tarkington? Are you trying to kill him? What are you, some kind of fiend?”
All these problems came to Si Tarkington for him to try to settle and solve, and Alice Markham listened to them, and sometimes she even had useful suggestions. “What if you put Parnis at one end of the elevator bank and Trigère at the other?” she suggested. “The spaces are equal, the amount of traffic through them would be the same, and nobody could see one collection while looking at the other one.”
“Damn, why didn’t I think of that?” he said.
Mostly, he telephoned her because he didn’t want to lose her. He had begun to see her as irreplaceable. But also, he realized, he telephoned her because he liked listening to her soft, cultivated voice and hearing her ripply, throaty laugh.
“Tell me,” he said to her one day, “am I ever going to find any more people like you?”
There was the laugh again. “Well,” she said. “You just might. There’s my friend Beverly Hollister, a girl I play tennis with. Bev is green with envy that I’m going to have this job. She’s got great chic.”
“More chic than you?”
Once more, the laugh. “Want to see for yourself? Shall I have Bev call you?”
“Please do,” he said.
But when he put down the phone, he was certain that, whatever Beverly Hollister turned out to be like, there would never be another Alice Markham.
Do we dream in color, or do we dream in black and white? That question is often argued. That night Si Tarkington dreamed in color: red hair—and brown lipstick.
18
Silas Tarkington would never really know at what point, exactly, he became certain that his new store was going to be a hit. The certainty came gradually, and only seemed to increase the fury of his pace.
In the final weeks of preparation, he seemed to be everywhere at once, at all hours of the day and night, and those working under him began to believe that he never slept. They would encounter him on one of the selling floors adjusting a mannequin’s pose (the missing limbs had finally been delivered) or running a vacuum cleaner over a stretch of carpet. They would see him with Windex and a dust cloth, polishing a display case, or on a ladder in the sportswear department, arranging sweaters according to size and color. In the middle of the night he might be found in one of the Fifth Avenue windows—still curtained, with muslin, from public view—helping Cyril Marx mount a window display or pinning up the hem on a gown from Antonio Delfino’s couture collection. He seemed tireless in his quest for absolute perfection.
“Why has that door been left standing open?” he would suddenly bark. “That door should remain closed at all times!
“Where are the Porthault towels for the ladies’ rest room?
“Why is there no toilet paper in this stall?
“That ‘T’ in our letterhead looks more like a ‘P,’ and the word ‘Tarkington’s’ should have an apostrophe, for God’s sake.
“I want the lid on the piano down, not up, to show off the wood.
“The ficus tree is blocking the view from the entrance. Move it three feet back.
“What about self-covered buttons, Antonio? What do you think?
“Where is the rest of my shipment from Chanel? They’ve only sent us three pieces. We ordered twenty.”
There was some grumbling, naturally, about Si’s constant nitpicking among the members of his staff. But since he pitched right into the exhausting work along with them, they for the most part accepted it—though once, when an electrician angrily threw down his tools and threatened to walk off the job, Si had to chase the man out into the street to cajole him to come back. And as the number of weeks until opening day grew shorter, the tempo of everyone’s work grew faster to the point of frenzy.
“I ordered gold elevator buttons, not bronze!
“That sofa has a spot on it!
“That mirror is chipped!
“Where is the rest of my shipment from Chanel?”
Now Si hardly ever left the store.
He did, however, sleep. The top two floors of the mansion, which had contained the Van Degans’ servants’ rooms, were still unfinished, and in one of
these cubicles Si had tossed an old mattress. Here, between bouts of work, he retreated for ten-or fifteen-minute catnaps. One workman, finding his boss sprawled face downward and fully clothed on his mattress, thought for an awful moment that the king had died. That was what his staff had begun to call him, “the king,” though some people had already started to call him Mr. Si.
It had been Alice Markham’s suggestion that the store have two gala preview parties. The first would be for the fashion press. The second, also by invitation only, would be for people in New York society who might be expected to become Tarkington’s customers. The parties would take place on two succeeding Thursday nights. “Thursday’s the most fashionable night for entertaining in New York,” she said. “Don’t ask me why. If we get good press from the first party, people will turn out in droves for the second one. The press will make this the place to be on the night of the second party. We might get some society press for that party as well, if the right names show up.”
“How do we make sure they do?”
“New Yorkers will turn out for anything, if the food and liquor are free,” she said, “but here’s a start,” and she handed him a small black-and-red volume called The New York Social Register. In it she had checked off certain names, and as he leafed through the little book he was surprised to see her listed in it:
Markham, Mrs. Erickson B. (Alice L. Boynton) Jl.
“What does that mean, Jl?” he asked her.
She laughed her throaty laugh. “Junior League,” she said.
Si was impressed.
“It’s just a glorified telephone book,” she said. “But it might be useful for the sort of party you have in mind.”
Now, in addition to other things, Si worked on the guest list and invitations, which would read:
Tarkington’s
cordially invites you
to a special gala preview
of our new store
Thursday, October 9
Fifth Avenue & 59th Street
Six to nine p.m.
Cocktails and dancing R.s.v.p.
“Who should we get to do the printing,” he asked her, “Tiffany or Cartier?”
“Not printing, please,” she said, with that lovely laugh of hers, “engraving. By Cartier. It’s much more chic.”
He realized he was relying upon her more and more for advice, and yet somehow he didn’t mind. Everything about this girl impressed him.
In addition to attending to dozens of small problems that kept arising, Si spent the final two weeks before the first preview party putting his sales staff through the training program he had devised for them. His object was to impress upon them the kind of service-oriented establishment he intended Tarkington’s to be. He had finally assembled twenty-four sales men and women who seemed more or less satisfactory to him, and now he went from department to department, acting as though he were a customer and presenting them with as many selling problems as he could think of.
“I’d like to buy this for my wife,” he said to Beverly Hollister, Alice’s tennis-playing friend. He fingered the hem of a lime-green chiffon peignoir, its sleeves and neckline trimmed with white maribou, that she was holding up for him. “But I don’t know her size.”
“Is she about my size, sir?”
“No. Taller.”
“Then she’s probably an eight. But don’t forget Tarkington’s pickup and delivery service. If it’s the wrong size, we can send a messenger to pick it up and deliver another in her correct size at the same time. It’s pretty, isn’t it? I just wish I could afford it for myself.”
“But I live in California.”
“That’s perfectly all right, sir. We use a nationwide delivery service.”
“Well, I think maybe I’ll wait till I get home,” he said.
“Certainly, sir,” she said, carefully refolding the garment. “I’m sure you could find something similar out there. You won’t find the same garment, though. Tarkington’s has this design exclusively.”
“Hmm,” he said, scratching his chin. “It is pretty.”
“Tell me,” she said. “Is this a gift for a special occasion? Her birthday? An anniversary?”
“Our wedding anniversary, yes.”
“An important one?”
“Yes, our seventy-fifth.”
“Oh, how nice,” she said without batting an eyelash. “That will be your platinum anniversary, did you know that? Had you thought about a piece of jewelry? You might want to look in our Delafield and Du Bois boutique. They have some lovely things.”
“No, I wanted it to be lingerie.”
“Then let me show you just one more thing,” she said, and pulled open a drawer. “It’s a silver lamé bed jacket, which is the closest thing to platinum. And it just slips over the shoulders, like this, so it fits all sizes.”
“Very good, Beverly,” he said. “I liked what you said about wishing you could afford to buy it. The customer is flattered when you assume he’s rich. You’re going to make a good saleswoman.”
“I just hope I’m still around for your seventy-fifth wedding anniversary, Mr. Si.”
He patted her shoulder. “You’d also make a damned good actress,” he said.
But now, just days before the first of the two preview parties, an even more pressing problem arose. The full consignment of dresses he had ordered from Chanel in Paris had still not arrived, and Si was frantic. The Chanel boutique was finished, with its distinctive double-C logo over the door in gold, and he had no stock for it. “How can I open a Chanel boutique with only three pieces?” he moaned. Every morning—starting at 5 A.M. to take advantage of the six-hour time difference and catch them at the beginning of their business day—he was on the telephone to 31 rue Cambon, using his best French. All they could tell him was that the shipment had left Orly. “Ils sont parti d’Orly, monsieur,” he was told repeatedly. “C’est tout que je sais.”
“What am I going to do?” he wailed.
“Let me see what I can do,” Moe Minskoff said.
At four o’clock on the afternoon of the party, an unmarked panel truck pulled up to Tarkington’s shipping dock and three large crates were unloaded. As Si and Cyril Marx worked furiously to arrange the display in the boutique before the first guests started to arrive, Si saw immediately that these were not the dresses he had ordered. But they were by Chanel, and they would have to do.
“How did you get these, Moe?” Si asked him.
“Don’t ask questions,” Moe said. “You got your dresses, didn’t you?”
“How did you get them?”
“Just say I may not be well liked, but I got friends.”
“Moe, tell me where you got these dresses!”
“Let’s just say they fell off a conveyor belt at Idlewild,” Moe said.
It was five minutes of six, and there was no time for any further discussion of the matter.
Of course Si Tarkington did not realize it at the time, but just across the street, at Bergdorf-Goodman, a buyer was screaming into the telephone, “What do you mean my shipment from Chanel got lost?”
Alice Markham had suggested that, instead of standing at the Fifth Avenue entrance and greeting his guests as they arrived, Si should wait upstairs in his fifth-floor office until most of the guests were there and were enjoying the cocktails, the music, and the hors d’oeuvres that were being passed by waiters in pink-and-white mess jackets, the store’s colors. “Let them wander around and get the feel of the store,” she said. “As they say in the fashion business, let them get their ‘eye in.’ Then, when I see that all the important writers and editors are here and everybody’s having a good time, I’ll phone you and you can come down.”
And so, while the members of the fashion press milled around downstairs, asking, “Where is he? Where is this Mr. Tarkington?” Si sat alone upstairs, nervously chain-smoking mentholated cigarettes. Finally the telephone rang. He stubbed out his last cigarette in the overflowing ashtray, stood up, straightened his necktie, pu
t on his jacket, shot his shirt cuffs, ran a comb through his hair, brushed away any dandruff that might have settled on his shoulders, and headed for the elevator.
As he made his entrance, emerging from the elevator on the street floor, someone—could it have been the savvy Alice Markham?—cried, “Here he is!” And Silas Tarkington’s entrance was greeted with a burst of enthusiastic applause, while he beamed at his guests.
Now flashbulbs started to pop, and instinctively Si reached up and covered his face with his hands. “Please,” he begged, “don’t photograph me. Photograph the store … the store … the store.…”
Much later that night, Alice Boynton Markham raised herself on one elbow in her dark bedroom, and said, “I think I had too much to drink at the party tonight. I shouldn’t have let you seduce me.”
“I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” he whispered. “I’ve wanted to do this for a long, long time.”
From The New York Times, October 10, 1958:
NEW TARKINGTON’S STORE APPEARS TO BE A HIT
Tarkington’s, a new name on the fashion horizon, made its first bow to New York last night when fashion editors and writers were treated to a special preview of the new store’s resplendent delights. The store will officially open its doors to shoppers next Friday.
For months, Fifth Avenue merchants and other retailers have been gossiping and speculating about what was going on behind the McKim, Mead & White facade of the former Truxton Van Degan mansion at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, and eagerly awaiting a chance for a glimpse inside. The result seems to have been worth the wait. The mansion, which was slated for the wrecker’s ball two years ago, was saved in the nick of time by the young merchant Silas Tarkington and has been transformed into handsome retailing space that is in many ways unique.
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