“What in the world are you doing?” I screamed. I jumped up from the table and, throwing down my napkin, fled from the room and my father’s inexcusable indignity.
“Sensitive Suzy,” I heard him murmur behind me as he returned, I suppose, to butchering his meat. “It’s a stage she’s in. Next thing you know she’ll be crying.”
Upstairs in my room I boiled over. I was sixteen, no child. Furious, I hated my father for pointing. The presence of the ugly thing on my face seemed to me unquestionably his fault. He might produce another, and another. I had to get away.
Under my mother’s fluorescent lamp I wiped off the make-up with cold cream and squeezed and squeezed, to determine if my blemish were indeed a simple pimple. I was too red in the face to return to the dining room, even for dessert. I decided then and there to run away.
Joey’s older brother Richard had said I could get a waitress job at some fancy hotel in Lake Placid, New York, where he had been tennis instructor the year before, just by mentioning his name. Because I was that pretty. “With my pull and your looks …” he had said, trying as usual to get at Joey. But why not? Wasn’t I “that pretty”? I wouldn’t ask my parents’ permission.
Before my resolve could dissipate I got a suitcase from the back of my mother’s closet, the one I had used for my weekend at Ohio State with Cookie. Into it I stuffed all the nylon underwear I could find, plus a shift, shorts, sandals, a bathing suit, my Emerson’s Essays (“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string …”), and my fairy tales. Counting my money, I figured I had enough either to buy a train ticket or uniforms, but not both. Well, I would just have to charge the uniforms at Halle’s then, on my way to the station, and reimburse my father for them later, out of tips. I would be sure to keep a strict account. I absolutely refused to need anybody.
I dialed Joey’s number to tell him the news, then decided against it and hung up. Why tell anyone? Why not burst suddenly, dramatically, onto the scene, missing? Joey, Cookie Margolis, Alan Steiger—none of them were of any help to me now. I needed space, I needed to breathe and stretch. Had I spent those years developing my powers only to be thwarted and humiliated in the suburbs of Cleveland? Instead I dialed the railway station to check the schedule (I would be able to catch a sleeper the following afternoon), then settled down to compose a very righteous, very ironical farewell note to Daddy. If I mailed it from downtown, it would arrive in the following morning’s mail just before my mother started upstairs to wake me. Finding me missing from my bed, she would probably reach impulsively for the telephone to notify the police when, suddenly, by her hand she would notice my letter and, ripping it open, read it with vast relief. How glad she would be! Better not to ruin the effect, I decided, by mentioning just yet about charging the uniforms. Since it was only the beginning of June, Halle’s wouldn’t be sending out the bill for nearly a month.
I woke early to find the train hurtling madly along a mountainside just as though it weren’t clinging for dear life to a narrow ledge hewn in the side of a deep gorge. So close were we to grazing the rocks that if I had waggled my fingers out the window they would have been torn off at the knuckles. Out the window on the far side of the coach, deep-blue sky stretched as far down the precipice to the distant crags below as it stretched upward to the clouds. No flat cornfields here, among these colossal heights and depths! This was the world, this New York State. Here was no Ohio!
As the miles between me and Baybury Heights multiplied, I felt certain that if the train veered off the track, I could summon the Blue Fairy to come and carry us—engine, caboose, and all—on up into that endless blue.
I had been secretly grooming myself in my provincial court to confront this wide world for a long time. Taking brazen risks, I had developed my charms and cultivated my powers and finally claimed my rightful crown, all for this moment. “We must go alone,” says Emerson; and “I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you.” I was ready now to follow Candide across the seas, to climb like Rasselas over the mountain. Hereafter I would choose whom to love, how far to go, when to stop. Not this summer would I tremble at the sound of an approaching car, or worry over my reputation. I would neither submit to being dry-humped nor pretend to virginity. “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.” This summer, with Emerson to back me, love would be beautiful and I would be free.
The train passed Saranac Lake, moving from the mountain into ripe green hills, and approached the Lake Placid station. I had really escaped! As we slowed to a stop, I straddled my suitcase and studied my reflection in the window, frantically trying on pseudonyms. Emerging in a moment from the train’s cloud of smoke I could be whoever I decided.
Boys in bright livery patrolled the platform, announcing their hotels. Capturing clients, they strode down the platform, packing as many as five suitcases under their arms while the customers they had managed to snag followed along behind them unencumbered. I, Alicia Alexander, admired how skillfully they worked, though none of them solicited me.
“Anyone here for the Belleview Palace?” I finally heard and answered, “I am,” to a uniformed pimply-faced youth a year or two my senior.
He stopped and looked at me skeptically, without a glimmer of recognition. “Richard Ross sent me,” I explained. “I’ve come to be a waitress.”
“Oh,” he said with an echo of disappointment. He made no move to take my bag. “Get in the back then,” he said, steering me with a toss of his head to a waiting station wagon.
I climbed in and waited. If this kid were from Baybury he would have been happy to take my bag. In a few moments he was back empty-handed.
“There’s hardly ever anyone on this early train during the week. For me it’s a no-tip trip. But a first-class hotel like the Belleview Palace has to send a car down anyway. You’re lucky—other hotels, you’d have to take a taxi.” He started up the motor and off we drove straight into those luscious hills like nothing in Ohio.
As we rounded a bend and began climbing toward an imposing white structure rising out of the apex of one of the hills, bugles in my head played a fanfare. The Belleview Palace Hotel. Me. On a concrete gash through acres of lawn we drove to the stately entrance.
“Stay here,” said the driver, jumping out of the car. “You’re not allowed in the lobby.” He disappeared into the revolving door, nodding to a portly doorman on his way, then reappeared in another moment.
“Come on, I’ll take you back to Fritz,” he said.
The driveway’s flowered border turned to shrub as we turned onto a dirt road and headed for a low building in disrepair protruding from the elegant hotel like a tumor.
“This is the way you go in,” said my driver pulling up beside the screen-door entrance to let me out. Fly-infested garbage cans surrounded the door. Just ask around for Fritz," he yelled, already driving off. “He’s the maitre dee.”
I looked around. Flies were everywhere and the garbage stank. I tried to peek through the screen but couldn’t see in for the sun behind me. I picked up my suitcase and opened the door.
“Close that door! You can’t let flies in a first-class kitchen!” shouted an old man in a chef’s hat, peeling carrots.
This first-class kitchen looked as though it deserved flies. It was dark and dilapidated with here and there a stainless steel fixture to contrast with the wood of the rest. It was much hotter inside than out. Pots simmered and boiled on iron stoves; ovens baked and roasted; and in almost every corner of the room, someone stood shouting at someone.
“Fritz?” I inquired of the old man.
At the mention of Fritz several other people in chef’s hats looked up at me warily from their peeling and pounding. The cooks were all men, but their looks didn’t soften when they saw me.
“Fritz!” replied the old man. “Fritz doesn’t come in the kitchen! Fritz stays in the dining room!” He indicated two giant swinging doors marked in and out at the opposite end of the room. “Try there. And don’t go out the in door!”
I moved as quickly as I could across the hostile room and pushed open the out door with my suitcase. It was like going through the looking glass. On the flip side of the door (miraculously changed from an out to an in), the sinister darkness of the kitchen gave way to a shower of sunlight. Perhaps, I thought, on this side, with the light to help, I would be better appreciated.
A sea of tables, laid with spotless white linen and sparkling stemware, glistened before me. The empty room stretched ahead to glass doors made up of little leaded panes, dressed on the inside with crisp curtains and on the outside with lilacs. How lovely it would be, I thought, to dine here.
Two uniformed waitresses stood whispering together. “Can you tell me where I can find Fritz?” I asked them. We looked each other over, reserving judgment.
“He’s there at his desk,” whispered the prettier of the two. “But he’s doing the menu. You’d better wait.” As I turned I imagined their eyes beginning at my heels and moving on up.
A small trim man in a tuxedo sat writing at a tiny desk next to the dining room entrance. Fiftyish and immaculate, as elegant as the tableware, he wore a pince-nez on his nose and a golden corkscrew around his neck.
“Fritz?” I asked.
“Mister Fritz,” he said through clenched teeth without looking up. He went on writing. Through the archway beside him I saw the Belleview Palace lobby extravaganza, and again I thought I heard the bugles blare.
At last Mister Fritz put down his pen, squinted his pince-nez off his nose, and looked up at me. “Well?” he said icily.
I started right in with enthusiasm. “I’m Alicia Alexander. Richard Ross sent me. I’ve come to be a waitress. The person who drove me over from the station said—”
Fritz closed his eyes and put the fingertips of one hand to his forehead. “Who,” he cut in, pained, “is this … ‘Richard Ross’?” He managed to make the name sound like a dirty word.
“He was the tennis instructor last year,” I began.
“Tennis instructor!” he said with contempt, and continued meditating. “Have you waited on tables before?”
I searched desperately for some story to enable me to answer yes. “No,” I confessed.
He considered. “How old are you?”
This time I was prepared to lie. “Eighteen.”
“Well, I’ll try you out for a week, but don’t expect to stay. I run a first-class continental dining room. Serving is more than simply hard work; it’s an art. You’ll have to learn to handle a heavy tray. I just lost one of my girls this week—otherwise I wouldn’t bother to train you now. You’re very lucky. You’ll start at a back station; then I’ll see.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, half terrified, half ecstatic.
“You get seven dollars a week plus tips. And room and board. All right?” he snapped.
I nodded.
“Do your work and you’ll learn I take good care of my girls. Angie!” he called to the prettier waitress. “Take this new girl here to the dorm and give her a rundown of the rules. Her name’s—what did you say your name was?” he asked turning to me.
“Alicia Alexander,” I repeated. I liked the name; I was beginning to feel at home in it.
“Her name’s Alice,” Fritz shouted, as though the measure of my worth were in syllables and he could diminish me by two. Then, dismissing me coldly by picking up his pen, he snapped his cuffs up into his jacket sleeves with a flick of each wrist, placed his lenses on his nose, and went back into his menu.
There were eleven waitresses in the dining room, girls from all over, and I was at least as pretty as any of them. The trouble was, none of them seemed aware of it. Except for sprightly Angie, who after showing me the ropes went on to teach me the angles, no one eyed me oddly in the dormitory or tried to talk to me at mealtime. Like the men in the kitchen that first day, looking me over and passing me by, everyone went about her business as though I were no threat at all. After working through three exhausting meals a day—each time setting up, serving, clearing off, and setting up again—I would return to my Spartan room to read my Emerson, alone. Only the fat cello player in Martin Mercer’s quintet, an artist of sorts, seemed to see in me anything special. Hundreds of miles from home and many hours from sympathy, here I was totally unappreciated. It was unsettling. I began to wonder if the standards I had come to rely upon might not be simply an Ohio quirk. Were the natural arches of my eyebrows and the length of my lashes worth nothing in the Adirondacks? And then it struck me that what my father in his thoughtlessness had put his finger on (which had still not disappeared) might be something more than a pimple. Perhaps it was a hive, or a boil, or a mole, or a pock. There was no decent mirror in the dormitory, no adequate light to tell me if I was blotching. Perspiring in my nylon uniforms, maybe I smelled or was allergic. Hives at home could be accepted as a temporary aberration, but here no one would know what I was supposed to look like. No one here knew who, under normal conditions, I was. In fact—and the possibility suddenly, devastatingly, loomed like truth—in fact, if no one here found me beautiful, then perhaps I was not! After all, how can skin glow through a sunburn? Of what use is a gentile nose among gentiles?
My service got better as the days passed—good enough for Fritz to enlarge my station—but my state of mind grew worse. I went from depressed to resigned. In the Sky Lounge, where I served drinks on Saturday night, the couples dancing to the music of Martin Mercer and his Martinets danced differently from the way we danced in Cleveland. Here in the Adirondacks they did no double step at all (which I had studied to perfection). While side-parted hair was de rigueur in Baybury Heights, the ladies of the Belleview Palace wore theirs in upsweeps, and some of the prettiest waitresses had bangs. It made me insecure. In the dining room I went unrecognized. The Bus Stop Game didn’t work on my gentlemen clients, who, catching me at it while they sipped their soup, were likelier to spill than respond. However stylishly I balanced my tray in the air striding to my station, I earned tips no larger than the next girl’s. The customers complained if I made mistakes, and Fritz threatened to fire me every other day. In the kitchen Bo, the dishwasher, made me scrape all my dishes; Jerry Jones, the vegetable chef, allowed me no substitutes; Slim Hawley, the short-order chef, wouldn’t understand my orders; the head chef, Tony Rosetti, yelled at me for carelessness and for letting in the flies; and the meat chef, Jan Pulaski, threatened me several times with a butcher knife. In “The Zoo,” where all the help, excluding Fritz, ate together and carried on the insane battles between kitchen, dining room, and bell service, my allegiance was so seldom solicited that after a few days I began carrying a book in with me so I could pretend I didn’t care. At home I had sometimes worried about being loved for my nose instead of for myself; here the danger was not being loved at all. Looking down at the printed page while I ate stew or hamburger or hash, I knew my eyelashes were not one bit of use to me.
By my third week away from home I decided I would rather be a shark in the Baybury Bay than whitebait in Lake Placid. It might take longer for me to get to the ocean from Ohio, but once out there I had a better chance of surviving. Sneaking into the forbidden lobby late that night I got stationery and stamps with which to write to Joey. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I needed Joey to be focusing on me.
Dear Joey,
Surprise! First, don’t tell anyone where I am except your brother since I used his name to get my job. All my parents know for sure is that I’m somewhere in New York. They probably also know by now that I’m a waitress (or else a maid or a nurse) since I charged a couple of uniforms to their Halle’s account before I left and they’ve probably received the bill already.
You are most likely wondering why I left so suddenly. Well, as you may remember, the situation at home
was getting intolerable, and the day I left it suddenly got worse. My father doesn’t seem to realize that I’m not a baby any more and I can take care of myself! Anyway, that’s the main reason I left, but also, I needed to be alone for a while to think things out—to find out what I really want and who I really am. I had to know for sure if I could manage by myself without anyone, not even you Joey.
I’ve pretty nearly found out. I know this much, I’ve got to be free! And that’s why, though it may seem strange to you, I’ll probably be coming back before fall. I want to find out what I have to do about college, because after college I really want to go to law school. I’ve decided never to marry.
Did I hurt you by leaving without saying goodbye? If so, I’m sorry. I knew you’d understand eventually. I just had to go without anyone’s permission, not even yours. As Emerson says in an unbelievable essay called “Self-Reliance,” “I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you or you.” Nothing personal, Joey. It’s just that I wouldn’t even know what self I was if there were anyone at all I had to say goodbye to.
What did everyone say when I turned up missing? It must have been funny! I wish I could have heard them!
As for this hotel—the work is exhausting but the mountains are unbelievably beautiful and I go for a long swim every afternoon. The people are generally nice. There’s a cellist in the band who’s giving me lessons. But the most interesting people are some of my customers. You wouldn’t believe some of the stories, but you’ll have to wait till I get home in September to hear them. (You’d love to see me marching around the dining room with a twenty pound tray balanced on one hand!)
There are a lot of pretty waitresses here, but they’re all quite a bit older than me. One of them, named Angie, and I have a lot in common, even though she may be Catholic.
Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen Page 9
