Astor Place Vintage: A Novel

by Stephanie Lehmann

  I popped a chocolate into my mouth, sipped my tea, and read on. The next paragraph had a surprise. When women experienced sexual excitement, it caused a congestion of blood in the genital organs. When the congestion peaked, there was a reflex movement called “orgasm.” I’d never heard that word. It was equivalent, she said, to the male orgasm that occurred when men ejected the seed of the baby. In the woman this consists of a movement of the tubes and uterus, and it causes a suction that draws the spermatozoa up into its interior, resulting in pregnancy. I wasn’t sure I wanted to experience such a thing. It reminded me of bathwater being sucked down the drain. She went on to say that if the man and woman experienced the orgasm simultaneously, a baby was likely to be conceived.

  I paused to digest all this fascinating information while eating another chocolate and washing it down with some tea. I continued on, hoping for a description of what led up to that strange orgasm reflex.

  The doctor said that too frequent activity in the uterus could cause inflammation of the genitals, warts, tumors, and cancer. She suggested ways to curb sexual excitement: gymnastics, cold baths, and the avoidance of alcohol. If all else failed, she said, use sheer willpower. I didn’t drink alcohol, so that wasn’t a concern, but the only thing I hated more than gymnastics was a cold bath. My willpower would have to do.

  The chapter ended there. I turned the page.

  CHAPTER 9

  STERILITY

  The Prevention of Conception and the Limitation of Offspring;

  The Crime of Abortion; Infidelity in Women

  How had we arrived at sterility? I flipped ahead to the following chapter. Maternity? I didn’t need to read about that. I turned back to the chapter on sexual instinct and skimmed through it again with disbelief. Dr. Galbraith had devoted the bulk of her attention to ways of avoiding sex, yet offered so few details on what occurred during it! Could it be there wasn’t anything else to know? Perhaps the woman needed only to lie there while the man took care of his needs. If so, I wished she’d taken the trouble to explain that. I finished off my tea and closed the box of chocolates. I felt exhausted. Even my bed seemed too far away. I stretched out on the sofa, closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep …

  A knock on the door woke me up. I had no idea what time it was. Could it be the delivery of my suit from Siegel-Cooper? Probably Father, too lazy to fish out his latchkey.

  But it wasn’t Father or my suit. A messenger boy handed over a yellow envelope addressed to me. A telegram. I handed the boy a few coins with my thanks. Then I shut the door and ripped open the envelope.

  Your father is dead STOP Automobile accident STOP Please come home STOP I’m sorry STOP Aunt Ida

  The room tilted. I sank onto the sofa and tried, as if anyone were observing me, to appear calm.

  This couldn’t be.

  I looked at the yellow paper again. Your father is dead STOP Your father is dead STOP Your father is dead STOP Your father is dead

  No. Must not think, must not feel. Someone had made a dreadful mistake.

  Rising from the sofa, I walked in circles around the room. My body was going to burst through my skin.

  I read it again. Dead STOP Dead STOP Dead! I crumpled the paper in my fist and let it drop to the floor. Then I wiped my tears, went to my room, and sat on the edge of my bed. He’d arrive at any moment, hungry for dinner after so many hours on the road.

  I went to his bedroom as if I’d find him there. The maid had straightened up. His bed was made. His life was over. I lay down on the flat, neat cover and curled into a ball while moaning softly. Don’t let it be true. Don’t let him be gone … My father, the only person in the world who truly loved me. I couldn’t bear it. How did it happen? I had to know. Now.

  I went to the telephone and picked up the receiver. The ache in my heart cut off my breath. My lungs craved air, and I couldn’t speak. Setting the receiver back down, I forced myself to take in a few breaths. Then I asked the hotel operator to put me through and waited for Central to make the connection.

  Aunt Ida, never comfortable using the telephone, spoke loudly. “Who is this?”

  “Olive.” I gripped the cold metal handle as if it kept me tethered to the world.

  “I would’ve telephoned,” she said. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t bring myself to. I’ve been sitting here waiting. It didn’t seem right to speak of such a thing over the wires.”

  “It’s true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?” My throat choked up.

  “I’m sorry, dear. So sorry.”

  “How?” I held my breath as if about to go underwater.

  “That machine,” she said. “Brakes failed. Didn’t get more than five miles from the house. They say he went careening down a hill and was thrown. Landed on his head, and—” Her voice caught. “He died instantly.”

  I could only whimper.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated, “so sorry. I’m arranging everything, of course. The funeral. Don’t worry about that.”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “What is that? I can’t hear. You’re upset, of course. You must come home immediately.”

  “Now?”

  “You mustn’t be alone at a time like this.”

  “No.”

  “What? You’ll have to speak louder.”

  “Yes. The train. I’ll come.”

  We rang off. Everything had changed too quickly. Father was supposed to return from Cold Spring; now I was supposed to go there? Pack, change my pad, remember to bring extras, go to the station, where we’d just said good-bye without knowing it was forever. I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t move. I had no choice. The Four Epochs of Woman’s Life sat on the side table. I needed a good place to hide it. Then I remembered: It didn’t matter. I had no father to hide it from.

  AMANDA

  I LOCKED THE door to my apartment and secured the deadbolt. This had to be my worst birthday ever. The room was silent. Too silent, like a graveyard at midnight. I waited to see if a madman would leap out from the shadows wielding a butcher knife. No one leaped. The head vase, wearing the chakra bracelet, stared at me with a superior expression, as if she knew I’d been stood up by my married lover.

  Okay, I had to get out of this mood.

  First order of business: Open the wine and let it breathe. Then I changed into leggings and a T-shirt. After spooning some hummus into a bowl and getting out a bag of pita chips, I poured myself a glass of wine and nestled into the sofa to see what was happening with Olive. I was reading along happily, enjoying my little meal, when I read that her father was dead.

  Dead?

  Jesus. Usually, when you read someone’s diary—not that I made a habit of it—you start out hoping for all sorts of personal details and get shopping lists and train schedules instead. Not death. God, poor Olive, to suddenly find herself so alone in the world.

  I stared at the vintage travel poster on my wall of a glamorous couple riding in a carriage in Central Park. The idea of my parents’ death had always been unimaginable. I wanted to believe they’d never succumb to the laws of nature everyone else had to live by. Me, too, if possible. When either of them did die, I’d probably turn into a dysfunctional blubbering baby. I’d have no husband to anchor me, no kids to make me feel needed. I did have Molly, but she was married and starting her own family. There was my larger circle of friends, but really, people could be so flaky. I couldn’t be Jeff’s first priority, as this evening had made so painfully clear.

  Here I was, scared to give him up because I’d be more alone. But that would be only temporary, theoretically; in time I’d be open to bonding with someone else. So staying with him made it more likely that I’d end up alone.

  Maybe now was a good time to call him. Was it wrong to break up with a man when his wife was at the emergency room? What would Amy Vanderbilt say? I Googled “cut tendons” on my laptop to see how serious the injury was. A medical site explained how it would be sewn back up and the patient might have to wea
r a splint. That was bad, but not exactly life-threatening. Maybe Jeff was already home.

  Maybe I’d wait until tomorrow.

  I opened the journal but couldn’t read. Again I sensed that eerie quietness. The furniture seemed to be standing extra still, as if pretending not to have moved when I wasn’t looking.

  I turned on the TV to fill the room with noise and stared like an idiot at some dumb sitcom while sipping my wine. It was very strange to be so spooked in my apartment. I was not a superstitious person and didn’t believe in ghosts or any other affiliates of the supernatural world, so what was the deal? Maybe Dr. Markoff’s trance had taken control of my brain. Except didn’t he say I was the one in control?

  I decided to turn off the TV and do something productive, like get that stain out of Jane Kelly’s dress. Bringing clothing back to life had a way of bringing me back to life, too. Then I’d call Jeff and tell him this was it; I needed to move on. My birthday gift to myself: freedom.

  Leaning over the bathroom sink, I scrubbed the stain with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and Dawn. Gradually, the blotch began to fade. I’d give it a wash and see how it looked after drying. Then I’d give it another wash and attack it with a bleach pen if necessary. After wiping the sink clean, I filled it with cold water, added a smidgen of Ivory Snow, and swished it around. Submerging the dress, I pushed down on the bubbles of cloth and wondered for the zillionth time why it was so damn hard for me to move beyond Jeff. I liked Molly’s chemical imprint theory, since the scientific angle took some of the responsibility off me, but it was no excuse; I had to stop giving in to this urge to recapture the past. Even my business required a preoccupation with reviving history. Was my entire life ruled by nostalgia?

  I pulled out the stopper. Then I hung the dress over the tub and sprayed it with the shower attachment to rinse out the soap. Abbie Hoffman, the rebel from the sixties, once said that nostalgia is a mild form of depression. It did have the potential to bring me down and make me long for something that couldn’t be captured. But it could also make me feel a part of something bigger. The past doesn’t just go away; it lingers on. You can actually touch and see the remains, and to the extent that these souvenirs survive, the past is present. You can’t say that for the future. It’s not here in any form. It can’t be; it hasn’t arrived yet. Once it does arrive, it’s the present, but only fleetingly before it’s the past. You can never hold the future in your hands.

  I opened the bathroom window to get a breeze. Then I hung the dress to dry on the shower curtain rod and imagined it thanking me for bringing it back to life. The past continued on in our clothes, photographs, knickknacks, music, film, the written word—if we made sure to take care of it. The stuff, that is, not the people. I wasn’t into taking care of ghosts.

  Except it would seem I was having an affair with one: the ghost of Jeff’s past. Didn’t I deserve a real human being instead of lavishing my feelings on a phantom who existed more in my imagination than in my life?

  I reached for my cell phone. Time to break up with the ghost. I called his number and waited for him to pick up. This time I was gonna do it for real.

  His voice mail answered. After a moment’s hesitation, I hung up. No point in leaving a message. He’d see it was me and call back.

  I sat down on my sofa, took a deep breath, and let it out. Then I reached for my laptop and stared at the computer screen. I tried to think of where to go online, as though the solutions to my problems could be found in cyberspace if I just knew the right place to look.

  JDate?

  I had an account from past forays into online dating. I logged on and scrolled down a column of men. Romancer007. Live4today. ClinicallySane1. Needlenahaystack. TheComebackYid.

  Oy.

  The shrill ring of my cell phone made me jump. Jeff. “Hello?”

  “Did you call?” he asked.

  “Yes. How’s your wife?”

  “She’s out of surgery. They said it went fine.”

  “That must be a relief.” I clicked on the profile of a fairly attractive man with dark hair, gray sideburns, black T-shirt.

  “I’m just waiting for her to come out of the anesthesia,” he said. “Then I’ll take her home.”

  “Uh-huh.” He called himself NativeNewYawker. Claimed to be forty-two.

  “I still feel terrible about your birthday.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m a big girl.”

  “Maybe I could still see you tomorrow.”

  “You know …” I swallowed. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “The doctor said her thumb might be sore, that’s all.”

  “Still …” NativeNewYawker, unlike some of his competition, looked straight at the camera and smiled.

  “I’d already told her I’d be away on business,” he said, “so I could spend the night with you. She’s expecting me to go. We talked about it in the cab on the way to the hospital.”

  “No. You should be home with her.”

  “Amanda, you’re angry, I know, and you have a right to be, but please let me make it up to you. And I want to give you your birthday present.”

  I wanted to say his damn present wouldn’t make up for my stolen youth. Instead, I glared at the computer screen. NativeNewYawker’s face had small, even features. I read somewhere that people were attracted to symmetry.

  “Let’s meet for breakfast. We can spend the morning together.”

  Having sex? Forget it. “No.”

  “Name a time and a place and I’ll be there, I promise.”

  “Nowhere,” I said. “Never.”

  “Amanda, come on. Please don’t do this, please?”

  “It’s over, Jeff. I can’t do this anymore.” We both knew I’d said those exact words before. Why should he believe me now?

  “Listen, why don’t you get a good night’s sleep and we’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”

  “No. This is it. And if you care about me and my welfare, you’ll do me a favor: Don’t come to my apartment or my store. Don’t call, text, e-mail, or contact me in any form that technology has or will make possible in the future. Good-bye.”

  “I love you, Amanda.”

  I hung up. Closed JDate. Turned off my laptop and put it back on the desk. That’s when I noticed the unopened letter from the managing agent of my building. Might as well face the music. As expected, it was about the renewal of the lease for my retail space. Not as expected, the landlord had chosen not to renew, which meant that I had a month to close down the shop and vacate the premises.

  What the hell?

  This had to be a mistake. Typos. Sent to the wrong person. The managing agent, a smarmy guy named Chuck Grabowski, had definitely told me he’d be renewing at a 6 percent hike. I’d call in the morning and clear it up. All I could do now was go to bed and put this day behind me.

  OLIVE

  I WOKE UP confused. What was I doing back in my old bedroom?

  Then I remembered.

  At least today wasn’t yesterday. The funeral, the graveyard, dirt on the coffin. People in our house, childhood friends. Looks of pity bombarding me from every direction.

  “Olive?” Aunt Ida knocked on the door.

  “Yes?”

  She poked her head in. “Some of your friends have come to call.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost noon. I don’t know how you can sleep so late. I’ll tell them to wait—”

  “No, please. Ask them to come back in a few hours, will you?”

  “Fine, but you’d better get out of bed or you’ll never get to sleep tonight.”

  I fell back asleep. Later, the smell of apples and cinnamon woke me. I dressed and went down to the kitchen, where Margaret was rolling out dough for pies.

  “Like some apple cake?” she asked.

  “Please, it smells wonderful.” The day before, I thought my appetite would never return. Now my mouth was watering.

  “I was hoping it might tempt you out of bed,” she said, cutting me a
slice with her pink chubby hands. “Your apple trees were so generous this year. I’ve been trying out every recipe with apples that I can find.”

  “You’ve such a talent for baking.”

  “Oh, honey, it’s only a matter of scooping and stirring. If you like, I’ll teach you my recipes anytime.”

  My aunt entered the room with a bouquet of roses. “Good luck getting Olive anywhere closer to the stove than she is. Goodness, so many flowers, and I’ve nowhere to put them.”

  “Aren’t those beautiful,” Margaret said, wiping her hands on a towel. “I think I’ll go upstairs and freshen up.”

  I was sorry to be left alone with my aunt.

  “I thought the funeral was lovely,” she said, trying to fit the bulky bouquet inside a lemonade pitcher. Tall and thin, my aunt wore her light brown hair coiled like a crown—an unflattering hairstyle that never varied.

  “Thank you for arranging everything,” I said.

  “You don’t have to thank me for that.” She abruptly let go of the flowers and pulled a handkerchief from her pocket. “I still can’t believe my dear Charles is gone,” she said, pressing the cloth against her eyes.

  “It must be devastating to lose your big brother.” She’d always looked older than Father, even though she was a year younger. Now my aunt almost looked elderly. On her forehead were lines of wrinkles I’d never seen. Dark purple bags sagged under her blue eyes.

  “I’ll be fine.” She tucked the handkerchief back into her pocket. “At least we can take comfort knowing he’s in a better place. You’re the one I’m worried about, so close to him, and he did like to indulge you. At times like this, I feel grateful to have my faith to keep me strong. You have been going to church since moving to New York, I hope?”

  “There was a very nice one just up the block,” I said, evading the question and knowing full well I hadn’t fooled her.

  As a devout Christian, my aunt would’ve done more to enforce her beliefs in our household if Father had let her. He was the sort who’d pray if there was a pressing need; the rest of the time, he couldn’t be bothered. He liked to say it was up to an individual to behave morally rather than act a certain way to please God. I found this more reasonable than my aunt’s fanatic views.