Astor Place Vintage: A Novel

by Stephanie Lehmann

  “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?

  AMANDA

  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.

  It was such a revelation to see that before I was born, people looked different. Their hairstyles, makeup, and clothes kept changing. I learned about style and how to pinpoint which time period a piece of clothing came from. I never could decide which decade was my favorite: the slender, empire waist silks of the teens; the unstructured flapper dresses of the twenties; the movie star–inspired cuts of the thirties; the shoulder-padded forties; the busty, hip-flaunting fifties; the mod Jackie O sixties; the bright bell-bottomed seventies … And then there was Olive’s era, different from all the others because it was under the sway of the century that came before.

  I took her volume from the shelf and flipped through the thick glossy pages. Incredible how the images still occupied a place in my head. A crowd celebrating a transcontinental auto tour waved their straw hats. A futuristic drawing of Manhattan in 1999 was not too far off the mark. The actress Anna Held reclined awkwardly with a corseted eighteen-inch waist. God, I remembered being mesmerized by her freakish hourglass figure and wondering how she could breathe. Then there was Teddy Roosevelt, wearing a monocle and leather boots, sitting for a portrait with his wife and six kids.

  Women hid their legs under long dresses and wouldn’t dream of wearing pants. Cars began to edge out horses, electricity replaced gaslight, moving pictures killed vaudeville. At the center of it all was New York City—my city. On the Upper East Side, beaux arts mansions went up on dirt lots previously home to squatters and farms. Fifty blocks to the south, developers tore down old wood houses to cram immigrants into cheaply made tenements like mine.

  Finally, in a chapter
called “The Very Rich,” Evelyn Nesbit’s beautiful portrait occupied an entire page. Lush full lips. Dark languid eyes. Long hair piled up in a romantically demure Gibson Girl coiffure. Her expression struck me as impossible to read. Seductive? Belligerent? Passive?

  On the opposite page were small photos of the two wealthy men responsible for getting her into this chapter. Her husband, Harry Thaw, was clean-shaven and youthful, with deep-set eyes almost lost in the dark shadows of his brows. Her ex-lover, Stanford White, had an absurdly thick bushy mustache drooping over his mouth and appeared to have enjoyed too many big, fattening meals. A leading architect at the turn of the century, White worked on Fifth Avenue mansions for the Astors and the Vanderbilts, as well as the Washington Square Arch that I’d been sitting next to that morning. He was also known to be a womanizer.

  The book gave a recap of the scandal. Nesbit became White’s girlfriend back when she was a sixteen-year-old chorus girl in a Broadway show. That lasted a couple of years, and then he moved on to other girls. Nesbit began seeing the wealthy Harry Thaw, who was obsessively in love with her and desperate to marry, even after she confessed that White had taken her virginity.

  They married in 1905, when Nesbit was twenty, but Thaw became tortured over the fact that White had “ruined” his wife. Then Thaw perceived that White was still making advances toward Nesbit. Her honor needed to be defended.

  One summer night in 1906, Stanford White sat in the audience of a musical show on the roof garden of the Madison Square Garden. Thaw walked right up to him, pulled out a revolver, and shot him point-blank. The first trial ended with a hung jury. In 1907, all of New York City was anticipating the second trial.

  My Time-Life book didn’t mention the irony that Stanford White had designed the building where he died. Not the monstrously huge, round Madison Square Garden that now existed on top of Penn Station. It was then actually located on Madison Square, right up the block from where I’d be eating dinner tonight.

  I returned the book to the shelf. Then I took my black dress with me to the bathroom to steam out on a hanger during my shower. Welcoming the soothing warmth of water on my skin, I slathered apricot-scented soap all over. It was ridiculous how my skin stayed so white even after a summer’s worth of sun. At least Jeff didn’t care for tans. He said he loved the transparency of my skin, how the blue veins showed beneath the surface.

  After washing my hair, I ran the razor over every inch of both legs with the hope that he’d be taking a well-traveled journey of soft kisses that began at my toes and passed my calf and thigh before arriving at the ultimate destination. While giving myself a final rinse, I wondered, not for the first time, whether Jeff’s wife knew about me. I generally avoided asking about her; it helped make their marriage less real. But in one of our few conversations about their marriage, he claimed she had no idea about the affair. Of course, he could’ve been lying to me. After all, he was lying to her. Six years was a long time to keep such a big secret.

  What if she found out about me and flew into a jealous rage? Maybe she’d show up at the restaurant tonight and blow my brains out. Would Jeff’s handsome photograph get the full-page treatment while I was relegated to an unflattering cameo?

  The Stanford White scandal was obviously overstimulating my imagination. Time to get out of the shower and towel off. I checked my alarm clock, a rare old digital with a square yellow Bakelite frame: five-thirty P.M. I’d been trying not to nap in the daytime, but tonight I’d be staying up late with Jeff, so I had no need to deprive myself of a little snooze. I burrowed naked under my down quilt and shivered inside the cozy cocoon.

  Just as I turned onto my stomach, I heard someone humming a tune. It sounded like it was coming from a few feet away. I looked up and was startled to see a woman wearing an ankle-length navy blue dress with a matching short jacket. She stood in front of my bureau mirror, adjusting the tilt of a wide-brimmed hat.

  “Hello?” I whispered. I couldn’t see her face. “Olive?”

  She took no notice of me and walked out the door.

  “Wait!” I wanted to go, too. I threw off my covers, grabbed my hobo bag, and ran after her.

  The click of her heels echoed in the hall as she went down the stairs. “Olive!” I screamed, but she didn’t slow down, and I heard the front door slam shut. Rushing to catch up, I caught a glimpse of her turning the corner. How did she walk so fast? I ran down the street; a man leered at me and laughed. I looked down and realized I was naked. I’d forgotten to put on my clothes! Jesus, I’d never done that before.

  I took off like a sprinter in a race—I needed to get inside, somewhere, anywhere. Finally, I made it to Jeff’s building. I pulled on the door to the lobby, but it was locked. It was never locked! I peered through the glass and saw that it had been totally redone since the last time I was there. New Ethan Allen–type furniture, as if it were someone’s living room. Then I realized this was Jeff’s house up in Katonah. His wife was coming toward the door. She wore a green dress with ruffles around the collar, and here I was, naked. The door opened, and she aimed a gun straight at me! I tried to scream but could manage only a pitiful warbling sound that took so much effort …

  I woke up. I lay there staring at the ceiling. How bizarre. I checked the clock. Six-twenty? The dream seemed to last only a minute, but almost an hour had passed. I felt more exhausted than when I lay down.

  At least I’d gotten the day out of the way. I threw off the covers. No more worries allowed, no thinking about jealous wives or ending the affair. It was time to celebrate the birth of me.

  OLIVE

  “YOU’RE SURE YOU’LL be all right?” my father asked. We stood near the entrance to the train platform at the Grand Central Station.

  “I’ll be fine.” He was leaving for Cold Spring to fetch his motorcar and would be back the next day.

  “I’ve left some extra cash in the leather box on my bureau,” he said. “Just in case.”

  “I won’t need it, Father, but thank you.”

  “I don’t feel right leaving you unattended in the city.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m not a child anymore.”

  “Indeed. You’re becoming quite an independent young lady. I’m not ready for you to be all grown up. Pretty soon you’ll be the one taking care of me.”

  “Goodness, now I think you’ve aged me a bit too quickly.”

  We beamed at each other with affection. He gave me a kiss on the cheek and turned to walk away. A melancholy swept over me. At the last moment he turned to wave; I waved back as if perfectly cheerful. Leaving the station, I tried to shake off my gloom. Hadn’t I been looking forward to the novelty of being on my own?

  My plan was to see a fashion show at the Siegel-Cooper department store on Eighteenth Street. I boarded a trolley in front of the big new public library on Forty-second Street and forgot to be gloomy over Father while riding down Fifth Avenue, observing the many new places of business replacing the old mansions of the rich, who seemed to be constantly moving farther uptown. At Thirty-fourth Street, we passed Altman’s, an elegant department store that I found rather dull. Then came an enclave of exclusive shops that catered to wealthy shoppers from around the world. It was fine entertainment to observe the posh establishments and the fashionably dressed clientele who could afford the prices.

  When the trolley reached my stop on Eighteenth Street, I hopped off to walk over one block to the less exclusive realm of Sixth Avenue. Back in the eighties, this area was known as the Ladies’ Mile because of the profusion of grand emporiums that served the wealthy. But fine ladies no longer pulled up in victorias driven by white-breeched grooms or promenaded down the avenue in their elegant gowns. These days, if well-heeled New Yorkers braved Sixth Avenue, they had to contend with the multitudes who poured in from all the boroughs on trolleys, buses, and the El trains that rumbled overhead on monstrous steel tracks.

  The Siegel-Cooper department store occupied an entire square block. I’d explored it a few times but had o
nly begun to find my way around. The store went all out to make the bargain-hunting middle class feel, if only for the day, like aristocracy. In the atrium, customers relaxed on settees and chairs by a pool of water hedged with tropical flowers and ferns. At the pool’s center, a fountain with four arching sprays of water flanked a female statue holding a globe with an electric star lit up inside. A grand staircase led to the mezzanine, where specialty shops sold men’s furnishings and copies of the latest Paris fashions.

  Resisting the temptations of a soda water fountain, I pressed on to the main floor. The store bustled like a miniature city, luring people to shop between visits to a post office, a library, a tearoom, a beauty salon, and even an art gallery. I had ten minutes to spare, but nothing could sway me from the fashion show.

  The auditorium was crowded, and most of the female audience wore massive headgear. I made sure to find an empty seat with an unobstructed view and settled in, grateful to have a chance to relax. The orchestra played a dreamy waltz. I closed my eyes and imagined a man who resembled Ralph Pierce. He apologized for being so old-fashioned. Would I please forgive him and dance? I supposed I would. He put his arms around me. I felt his breath on my skin as he whispered in my ear that I was not merely pretty, I was beautiful, and marvelously clever, too. If only I hadn’t made such a fuss about wanting to work. I looked up into his eyes and pouted. Could he love a woman with a career? I had my answer when he leaned over and kissed me hard on the lips and—

  The music stopped. I opened my eyes. Thank goodness no one could read my ridiculous mind.

  A goateed man wearing a black suit accented with a red ascot stood behind a podium at the side of the stage. The curtain rose to reveal a backdrop with the painted silhouette of a cityscape. “New York, London, Paris … the vogue of the tailored suit has swept the major cities.” A procession of young women paraded across the stage.

  “Mannish in cut and material, our first suit features a semi-fitted coat of hip length. You’ll note the skirt has wide fold trimmings that add a touch of novelty.”

  I stared at the beautiful models, wondering how they dared welcome strangers to purposely stare at them.