Love of Finished Years
A Novel
Gregory Erich Phillips
Table of Contents
Title Page
Love of Finished Years
Chapter One An Old German Wedding
Chapter Two Ellis Island
Chapter Three A New Career
Chapter Four Shattered Hopes
Chapter Five Winter in New York
Chapter Six The Shirtwaist Strike
Chapter Seven Tragedy at the Triangle
Chapter Eight Lindenhurst
Chapter Nine Dafne Graham
Chapter Ten A Forbidden Adventure
Chapter Eleven Summer Days
Chapter Twelve Threat of War
Chapter Thirteen Lost in Manhattan
Chapter Fourteen Hal
Chapter Fifteen Time Speeds On
Chapter Sixteen Winds of Change
Chapter Seventeen Courage & Cowardice
Chapter Eighteen Epiphany
Chapter Nineteen The Face of Suffering
Chapter Twenty Buy a War Bond!
Chapter Twenty-One O Dream Too Bittersweet
Chapter Twenty-Two The Suffragists
Chapter Twenty-Three The Price of War
Chapter Twenty-Four Terror at Chemin des Dames
Chapter Twenty-Five Behind Enemy Lines
Chapter Twenty-Six Companionship
Chapter Twenty-Seven The War to End All Wars
Chapter Twenty-Eight Homecoming
Chapter Twenty-Nine On Moonlight Bay
Suggested Questions for Book Clubs and Discussion Groups
About the Author
Sillan Pace Brown Books
Portland, Oregon
Praise for
Love of Finished Years
"A wonderfully satisfying read."
—Chanticleer Reviews
“What a truly wonderful story! I’ve read it three times, and with each reading I find myself caring about the fabulous characters and their lives even more.”
—P.J. Alderman, New York Times Bestselling Author
“From the riveting opening that takes place in NYC’s Lower East Side’s sweatshops until its gripping conclusion, this enthralling novel vividly portrays the desperate times of German immigrants landing at Ellis Island in 1905 in search of a better life. A timely read ... it illuminates the issues that we are experiencing a century later...Phillips reminds us that love, light, and perseverance can help us find a way to overcome almost any obstacle."
—Chanticleer Reviews
“I do hope the author has a sequel in the works...a beautiful novel that is set in a fascinating time in our nation’s history.”—-Linda S., Boulder, Colorado
~~~~~
Grand Prize Winner of the
Chanticleer Book Awards
Sillan Pace Brown Publishing
An imprint of Sillan Pace Brown Group, Inc.
Portland, Oregon
www.SillanPaceBrown.com
First Edition, ISBN-13: 978-1-64058-011-4
ISBN-10: 1-64058-011-5
1. Historical Fiction 2. World War One - fiction
3. 20th Century NYC – fiction 4. Women’s Suffrage
5. German Immigrants – fiction
Published in the United States of America by
Sillan Pace Brown Publishing, a member of Sillan Pace Brown Group (USA), Inc., 2018
Copyright © 2017 by Gregory Erich Phillips
Sillan Pace Brown supports copyright. Copyright promotes and encourages creativity and vibrant discourse of ideas.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents either the product of the author’s imagination or used factiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Love of Finished Years
A Novel
Gregory Erich Phillips
Part I
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
—“Echo,” Christina Rossetti
Chapter One
An Old German Wedding
September, 1909
The tenement steps were still dark as the teenage girl descended from her fourth-floor apartment. She held on to the shaky banister, quickly measuring the uneven steps. In the last four years, she had climbed down them so many mornings that she could have done it with her eyes closed. She knew each sag, each crack.
Elsa tried to tell herself this morning was no different from all those others, but she couldn’t shake the knowledge that if she failed today, everything would change.
As she opened the front door, a faint gray light entered the dusty building. The crisp air of early autumn bathed her face. There were no electric street lamps here on 3rd Street, but she could see the glow from Second Avenue. She headed that way. Despite the darkness, the Lower East Side was quickly coming to life.
Physically exhausted but mentally alert, she pressed on into the city. She was accustomed to weariness—it had become her way of life.
At sixteen, Elsa knew most people took her for an adult. With her brown hair, fair face and broad shoulders, she blended easily into a crowd. Much as she might long for her sister Sonja’s slender frame and delicate face, she had begun to appreciate the strength that helped her cope through these times. It was good that Sonja’s factory days had come to an end.
The events of this week had pushed Elsa’s strength to its limit. These were supposed to be days of joy. Now it was up to her to save her family from another disaster.
The windows on Second Avenue began to show signs of life. Shadows moved around inside unlit apartments. Dawn still came early enough to prepare for the day by natural light. In another week or two, precious cents would need to be spent to dress by gaslight.
Elsa hurried down the sidewalks of the Bowery as the city awakened. The morning sun shot between the buildings to her left, casting a long shadow beneath the elevated railway.
Two boys pushed a cart loaded with lettuce and cabbage heads, as an eager dog danced between its wheels. Soon a second cart appeared, and before Elsa had walked another block, ten or more carts were in position for business along both sides of the street. Shop windows started opening below painted signs or embroidered banners in both English and Yiddish. Merchants in loose trousers and suspenders, most wearing yarmulkes on their heads, appeared in the shop doors. Young boys ran across the street in front of Elsa, their shoulders loaded with fabrics, bound for one of the many family-owned clothing factories that dotted the neighborhood. Soon the horseless carriages began to click-clack down the rough street, carrying the “swells” from uptown.
Elsa’s gaze was drawn from the street-front shops to the tenement windows above, where small clothiers would soon begin work in their apartments. She couldn’t help wondering whether those family operations would offer an easier life than the shirtwaist factory where she and her mother spent their days. But these smaller shops maintained tight ethnic distinctions. While many of the clothiers had emigrated from Germany, they all spoke Yiddish. A German-speaking girl like her was as foreign as a native-born American.
Even at her factory, Yiddish was the primary language of the workers. But the business was large enough—and diverse enough—to give her a chance to learn the language and culture of her new country. She spent her days among not only Jews but also Italian and Irish immigrants, a handful of black Americans and others. She and her mother were the only
Christian Germans. How could they have known they would emigrate just as the majority of the city’s Germans were leaving lower Manhattan?
Elsa arrived at the police headquarters on Centre Street just as it opened. The ornate building looked alarmingly out of place amid the humble shops and tenements. She wondered whether that was intentional—an attempt to intimidate outsiders like herself. She refused to be deterred. Her family depended on her. Everything she had worked for could crumble if she let timidity get the better of her now. She marched up the steps between two snarling stone lions and into the police station.
An hour later, she walked out with her mother.
“Was hast du zu ihnen gesagt?” her mother asked.
“I told them the truth,” Elsa replied in English. She knew her mother could understand her, even though she spoke little English herself. “I told them your daughter’s wedding is Sunday. They did not have the heart to keep you in. Then I told them something that probably is not true . . .” She looked pointedly at her mother.
“Ja?”
“I promised you would not do it again. Look at this!” Elsa held up the release form she had signed in the station. “Nina Schuller. Arrested for disturbing the peace.” She slapped the single page. ”You have a record now, mother.”
Nina threw up her hands. Elsa couldn’t help but laugh, even though she was still upset with her mother for landing in jail overnight. She folded up the page and stuffed it into her skirt pocket.
“Come.” Elsa urged her mother forward. ”We must take the train. After what happened yesterday we cannot be late.”
They paid uptown fair at the nearest elevated station. The factory was a mile northwest of their apartment. It was rare for them to take the train, even in the dead of winter—the daily fare would add up fast. But considering the temperaments at the factory, they were already at risk of losing a half-day’s wages.
“Could you not have waited a few more days”—Elsa scolded once they were seated on the train—“until after Sonja’s wedding? I was lucky to get you out. You would have been fired.”
“I might still get fired today. But everything we have worked for is at stake. You saw what happened yesterday. They beat poor Clara! Was I supposed to just stand there?” She grabbed Elsa’s arm.” There will be a strike soon—not only at our factory, but at all the garment factories. A women’s general strike.”
Elsa scowled. She admired her mother’s tenacity and her will to improve life for the women in the factories, but she herself hoped to escape this life another way.
“I am doing it all for you,” her mother added. “I am growing old. I do not care for myself. Sonja . . . I always knew she would marry. But you . . .”
Yes, once again, the reminder that she wasn’t as likely to marry as Sonja. Elsa felt the pang every time her mother alluded to it.
“You have prepared yourself for an opportunity in this country. You learned the language and the customs. I was angry at first, but you did what you had to.”
Elsa looked across at her mother sitting on the train bench beside her, and then glanced down to where her hands rested in her lap. The veins on the tops of her mother’s hands were pronounced; her fingertips sharply calloused from the precision of her work. Elsa’s own hands would look that way at a much younger age than her mother’s.
“You cannot do it alone,” her mother said. ”America is ready to give women a real chance, but we must fight for it.”
“After the wedding. Once Sonja is with her new family, you and I can fight together. If it comes to a strike, I will stand beside you. We have survived together before. We can do it again.”
Elsa wrapped her arm around her mother and smiled. After all they had endured in America thus far, a strike, even as winter approached, didn’t seem so daunting.
The train ground to a halt at Washington Square. The two disembarked and rushed to enter the factory. They took their places at their workstations: Elsa at the loom, Nina at the cutting table.
The end of the factory shift was only the beginning of that day’s work for Nina and Elsa. They had hours of wedding preparations to do and only two evenings to complete them. Nina’s arrest on Thursday had hindered their plans. Now it was Friday, and most of the merchants closed their shops at sundown for the Sabbath. They walked the long way home via Avenue B where a German grocer was still open.
The next day, after another full shift in the shirtwaist factory, they came home ready to begin cooking in earnest.
“How many people will be there?” asked Elsa as she began to chop asparagus.
“At least forty. Maybe every German in New York. There has not been a wedding in the community yet this year. No one wants to miss it.”
“Darf ich euch beide helfen?” asked Sonja.
”Nein,” insisted the mother.
“I will not have you working all night. You must look fresh and beautiful tomorrow. Try to sleep.”
Sonja withdrew, but Elsa could hear her sister bustling around in the second room of the apartment. Elsa knew her sister felt restless being made to sit idle as others worked. She would have felt the same way.
She watched as her mother’s eyes followed Sonja. Elsa understood Nina’s concerns for her older daughter. Sonja had suffered greatly here in America. Elsa had watched her spirit nearly break. Her life would be better now with her husband and his uncle at their uptown bakery. Sonja deserved a good man like Christof.
As the iron pot began to heat on the stove, the smell of asparagus soup permeated the apartment, bringing back nostalgic memories of northern Germany. This was the first time they had cooked asparagus soup in the traditional way here in America, using white asparagus. Christof’s uncle, Gerd, had procured it from a cousin’s farm, all the way from Pennsylvania. Elsa slowly stirred the broth to a boil, dropping in onions, sausage and kale. As the soup simmered, they prepared the batter for pfankuchen. Every large bowl they owned, plus a few borrowed from neighbors, was filled with batter, then covered and stacked. The German pancakes would be fried up on the churchyard stove tomorrow.
The gaslight burned past midnight in their apartment. Finally, everything was ready.
Early the next morning, Elsa went down to the street to hire a cart. After bartering with an Irish boy, she brought him upstairs to help her carry down the pot of soup and bowls of batter. Together they pushed it four blocks to St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. Gerd Steigenhöffer was already there, unloading baskets of bread from his bakery in Yorkville. The Irish boy asked Elsa for a cup of the soup. She refused at first, but finally gave him a ladle-full. He did look pretty hungry.
Nina had almost finished dressing Sonja when Elsa got home. She stood quietly in the doorway, watching as her mother carefully laced up the front of Sonja’s white dress, tying a bow at the top of the bodice, below her collarbones. The transparent sleeves draped softly down Sonja’s arms, gathering at the cuff. The dress was beautiful, traditional, and hadn’t come cheap. Nina turned her daughter around to face her.
”Oh, du bist so schön,” Nina murmured, reaching up to touch her daughter’s face, then arranging her brown curls over her shoulders.
”Danke, Mutti.”
Elsa smiled as she watched the tender moment. She was happy for her sister. But there was also sadness in hearing her mother’s words—she doubted she would ever hear her say “You are beautiful,” to her. Her mother was always honest, and Elsa liked her that way. And it was true—she wasn’t beautiful. She’d been a plain child, and even as the years had brought a woman’s shape to her body and more maturity to her face, she remained so. She didn’t expect some miracle to suddenly alter the plainness and strength that so contrasted with her sister’s beauty and grace.
Elsa forced her thoughts from herself. Today she wanted to take joy in her sister’s hopes. Sonja’s dreams would be fulfilled. Her own still had time to grow.
Soon a throng of guests poured into the rickety tenement to escort the bride to the church. The procession sang and shout
ed through the street, to the amusement of neighborhood onlookers, and to the suspicion of several policemen. They arrived at St. Mark’s just before the midmorning service. The pastor and all the German parishioners weren’t surprised by the boisterous crowd—they had been anticipating this day for weeks. Almost everyone stayed in the church for the wedding ceremony immediately following the usual Sunday service.
Only one of four parents was present at the wedding. In Germany that would have raised eyebrows. But not here. Separation and loss were a way of life for recent immigrants. Elsa knew her mother was grateful for the way Gerd Steigenhöffer took an active role in the ceremony, as if he had been the groom’s father.
The loss of Christof’s parents along with so many others in the General Slocum steamboat fire five years ago still stung the local German community and St. Mark’s parish in particular. Although Christof had remained in his family’s Lower East Side apartment after the disaster, he was eager to move uptown after the wedding to help run his uncle’s bakery.
After the ceremony, everyone went outside to the tables. Elsa did most of the serving herself. Spargel suppe, pfankuchen, and a roasted boar provided by the groom’s family made all who could remember nostalgic for their homeland.
Gerd’s cousin pulled out a violin and began to play. Another guest produced an accordion. As soon as everyone had finished eating, they pushed the tables aside and began to dance. Only the older people knew the folk dances from Germany, but everyone joined in on the polkas, even the children. Gerd and Nina had taught the bride and groom how to dance the Kleiner Schottisch, much to the delight of the older guests. When the song ended, they applauded the newlyweds. Then the musicians tore into another fast polka.
Elsa paused from clearing the dishes, watching as pairs of guests joined in the dance. Suddenly she saw Gerd coming toward her with outstretched hands. She held her stack of dishes protectively in front of her.
”Come, Elsa. Join the circle with me.”
“Oh, no. I do not know—”
“It is easy.” He gently took the dishes out of her hands and set them on the nearest table. “I will show you.”
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