Finally … “I’m your father, and you’ll do as I say.”
Charlotte took a breath and decided to adjust her approach. “I understand the predicament you’re in, and I’m sorry you’re dealing with all of this, but I’m twenty-one years old, and I don’t have to follow your rules anymore,” Charlotte said, feeling badly for disrespecting her father, but knowing she had to give this argument her best Joe Louis. Charlotte saw her father’s eyes soften for a moment. She’d never witnessed anyone standing up to him and was shocked at his response.
“So what do you propose?” he asked, drawing on his pipe.
Charlotte thought quickly. She stood and lifted her chin. “I propose that I finish school. I have two and a half months until I graduate. Perhaps you can save money by having Donald come in only on the busiest days of the week. I can work here on Saturdays so you can essentially cut his salary in half, which will save you on payroll. Between now and then, we’ll both try to think of ways to bring in more customers and cut costs. I also propose that you hear me out on my advertising ideas—”
“Absolutely not.”
“And what about the first half of my plan? About letting me finish school?”
“I’ll think about it and tell you tomorrow.”
Charlotte knew that was better than a no, and went around to her father’s side of the desk to give him a peace-treaty hug. “Thank you, Papa,” she said. He returned her embrace stiffly but not reluctantly. Perhaps that was a start.
CHAPTER 8
OLIVIA
TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2018
Olivia walked to work the next morning in a daze. She was thinking about Miss Subways, the historic MTA campaign she had come across the night before in her research. She was fascinated by the history. And by the women.
She kept wondering where these women were now. How had being Miss Subways affected their lives, if at all? Was it just a blip in time, an exciting but fleeting side excursion on their life’s journey? Or did it actually have an impact on them and inform their future lives? Did they display their posters in their homes as they got older? Was being Miss Subways a lasting part of their identities?
Still deep in thought as she approached her desk, she didn’t notice at first that Priya was sitting in one of the chairs in her office.
“Good morning,” Priya said. “I brought you a latte.”
“Thanks. That was so nice of you.”
“I have good news. I found something at the Transit Museum you might find interesting.” Priya started unfolding a piece of paper on her lap.
“I have a feeling I know what you’re going to show me,” Olivia said, taking a sip of her latte.
“You do? How?”
“I was searching around online last night and I found something I thought was interesting. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found the same thing. But please, go on.”
Priya finished unfolding the paper and held it up to Olivia. It was a photocopy of a Miss Subways poster from 1946.
“I knew it!” Olivia said, and clapped her hands.
“No way!”
“Yes, it’s a fascinating campaign, isn’t it?” Olivia leaned forward in her chair, anxious to hear exactly how Priya felt and how she thought they could utilize Miss Subways in their MTA pitch.
“Amazing,” Priya said. “I was blown away by these women’s stories. I couldn’t stop reading about them. The archivist at the Transit Museum just kept bringing me more and more.”
“I felt the same way. I loved reading about all the different jobs these women had. I always assumed they were all teachers or secretaries back then, or didn’t have any professional ambitions at all, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“When I meet women in their eighties and nineties, it’s easy to forget that they were living these vibrant lives when they were younger. It’s awful, but I admit that I underestimate older women. I don’t give them the credit they’re due. I mean, I realize they paved the way for us and all, but still, not enough credit. We could probably learn so much from them.” Priya’s eyes were lit up.
“I know what you’re saying,” Olivia said. “You just assume that the times they lived in were so different that they couldn’t possibly know what it’s like for us. But you know what, from reading those posters, and all the other articles, those women were going through the same shit we are. All the conflicts with work and personal lives—that is nothing new.”
“So what are you thinking?” Priya asked, taking a sip of her coffee.
“Well, a few things. First, if we found this, then there’s a chance that one of the other agencies—”
“Or TomAss,” Priya interrupted, raising her eyebrows.
“Or TomAss,” Olivia said, laughing, and continued, “could have found it too. So I think we need to put this on the list of possible concepts to use. There’s a lot of rich history here, but I’m not sure that means we should make this our top choice just yet.”
“Right,” Priya said, taking her pad and pen from the chair next to her so she could take notes. “A dissenting voice in my head can’t let go of the fact that the whole thing seems a little sexist. I mean, a beauty pageant on the subways? It’s only redeeming when you think about how ambitious these women were. And I can’t stop wondering where they are now—”
“Me too!”
“But how do we reconcile this campaign—developed by men more than seventy-five years ago, written by men, photographed by men—that essentially exploited women so that other men would look at subway ads?”
“All true. But we’re also looking at it from the lens of today. At the time, the sexism wasn’t interpreted that way.”
“But it was. You watched Mad Men.”
“I did. And I still do, over and over and over again.” Olivia laughed.
“Don’t tell me that Peggy and Joan and Betty and even poor Trudy didn’t realize that the boorish behavior of those men was keeping them in gender roles that they had to fight tooth and nail to escape from.”
“Or not,” Olivia said, tilting her head.
“Yes. Or not. And then that led to all kinds of other behaviors and solutions to their problems.”
“True,” Olivia said, glancing at the emails that were piling up on her computer. “So we can agree that there was a lot of sexism going on in Miss Subways. But these women did it willingly. From all that I read, it seemed like a huge honor. Some were lauded as local celebrities. In other instances, it propelled their careers. How’s that for the women playing the men at their own game? Playing by the men’s rules to actually get what they wanted all along. And thousands upon thousands of women tried to become Miss Subways. So it couldn’t have been all bad.”
Priya proceeded to tell Olivia about other historic campaigns, which were portals to a seemingly simpler zeitgeist, the campaigns themselves an almost quaint reflection of the ideas and ideals of travel, work, capitalism, and marketing from the century before.
Olivia looked out her window in thought.
“What are you thinking?” Priya asked.
“I’m feeling like the MTA killed those old campaigns for a reason. I wonder if we’re better off coming up with something new and fresh rather than trying to rehash history and then having that approach possibly backfire.”
“That makes sense,” Priya said.
After Priya left, Olivia returned calls and emails, but couldn’t get Miss Subways out of her mind. She typed “Wikipedia Miss Subways” into her browser and scrolled down the resulting page to the chart listing the Miss Subways title holders.
She loved the names. Mona Freeman, May 1941. Dorothea Mate, June 1942. Rosemary Gregory, August 1942. Enid Berkowitz, July 1946. Dorothy Nolan, March 1949. Saralee Singer, February 1950.
Those names sounded like music to her. Melodies of a different time floating through the air. Olivia had always felt sentimental about old movies. The voices those actresses had. Olivia knew it was unfair to ascribe entire personalities to women solely because th
eir voices sounded old-world and they wore dainty gloves to the supermarket. But it seemed deserved.
Olivia’s grandmothers had died before Olivia was born. And her mother wasn’t any kind of role model. Olivia longed for an older woman in her life. And the women from all those old movies she watched became her surrogate mothers and grandmothers. They comforted Olivia when, curled up in sweats with a glass of wine in her hand, she had only her television for company.
Her curiosity for the women suddenly overtaking her, Olivia started Googling them one by one, typing in their names followed by “Miss Subways.”
* * *
It was past seven. They had brainstormed with Pablo for a few hours and had several new ideas. But Pablo also loved the Miss Subways concept. To him there was an element of Casablanca mystique. He talked about the older women in his own life and how he had learned a great deal from them. That they had so much wisdom and that perhaps by finding some of these Miss Subways winners, they could get some nuggets of an idea to use for the new pitch.
That turned out to not be as simple as they had thought. For one thing, the majority of the posters used the women’s maiden names, as most weren’t yet married when their posters ran. Olivia found an archived Collier’s magazine photo spread showing some of the women on an outing to Jones Beach, and several gossip columns by a journalist named Walter Winchell that mentioned Miss Subways. But she was having trouble finding anything that led them to current phone numbers or email addresses. Unfortunately, she did find a number of obituaries. She was starting to get depressed when Priya came rushing in.
“I found one! July 1949!” Priya said.
“Nice work! How did you find her?” Olivia asked.
“She wrote a magazine article a while back about the path of her career and she mentioned Miss Subways, so it came up on Google. I did a Whitepages search and found a phone number for her. So, I called,” Priya said, smiling wide.
“And?”
“And—she didn’t answer,” Priya said. “But I got a machine and it sounds like an old lady voice, so chances are it’s her.”
“Did you leave a message?” Olivia asked.
“Of course. I told her I worked for an advertising agency and we were interested in talking to her about her experience with Miss Subways. I left my number and asked her to call.”
“You are absolutely worth those big bucks we’re probably not paying you, Priya.”
“Let’s land this business and then you can give me a monster raise,” Priya said, tilting her head.
“Done. Okay, go home. I know that cute boyfriend of yours is probably waiting for you. Hopefully our Miss Subways will call you back. Text me if she does, and tell me everything.”
* * *
“You again. Why do you keep following me?” Ben asked as Olivia got off the elevator on the eleventh floor. He was standing outside his grandma’s apartment.
“You caught me,” Olivia said, lifting her arms in surrender. When she did that, the plastic bag holding her Thai takeout spilled its contents all over the floor. At the same time, Ben’s grandma opened her door. “Shit!” Olivia said.
“What happened?” Ben’s grandma asked.
“Hi, Mrs. Glasser. I’m so embarrassed. I dropped my dinner,” Olivia said. “Sorry for the mess. Let me go and get some paper towels from my apartment.”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Glasser said. “I’ll grab some. Come. Come. Both of you, come in. Olivia, I haven’t seen you in so long. Please, you’ll have dinner with us.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” Olivia protested, looking at Ben as Mrs. Glasser was already walking into her apartment to grab the paper towels.
“She gets mean when people don’t do what she wants them to do,” Ben whispered, pointing at his grandma.
Olivia laughed.
“I made plenty of food. Salmon. We’re having salmon!” Mrs. Glasser shouted from the kitchen.
“She makes a killer salmon,” Ben said, nodding and putting his work bag on the floor.
Mrs. Glasser returned with the paper towels and handed them to Olivia. Ben took them out of her hands and told her he’d take care of it.
Olivia stood in Mrs. Glasser’s living room, looking around. She had never been inside the apartment. It was not what she had expected. All of the furniture was modern and sophisticated. Again, Olivia got mad at herself for assuming that all old ladies liked to live among chintz and aging Queen Anne dining room sets with needlepoint seat coverings.
Mrs. Glasser’s living room looked like a page out of a Restoration Hardware catalog, with really interesting and eclectic touches and accessories. The art on the walls was colorful and modern. Not an oil painting of Central Park in sight.
“Your apartment is beautiful,” Olivia said to Mrs. Glasser, who was setting another seat at the dining room table: white lacquer with white leather chairs.
“Thank you. Ben helped me fix it up when I moved here. We had some beautiful antique furniture in our old house, but he convinced me to get rid of it all. I think I like this look better. It makes me feel youthfull,” Mrs. Glasser said, smiling.
“I really hate to impose,” Olivia said.
“That’s silly, dear. I’m always happy to have young people enliven my dining room table.”
Ben walked back into the room, stuffing the soiled paper towels into the plastic bag that used to hold Olivia’s dinner.
“Mission accomplished,” he said.
“Thank you so much. That was so nice of you,” Olivia said, suddenly feeling both uncomfortable for intruding on some other family and close to tears with yearning, realizing how much she was missing in her life by not having dinners like this more often. Or ever.
“Is there anything I can do to help you, Mrs. Glasser?” Olivia called into the kitchen.
“Yes, dear. You can open this bottle of sparkling water and pour glasses for the two of us. Ben, the savage, insists on tap.”
“Again,” Ben whispered, “you have to do what she says or you might never get invited back.”
Olivia smiled at Ben, who was dressed in a suit. She still didn’t know what he did for a living. But she was curious.
“Do you mind showing me where the bathroom is so I can wash my hands?” Olivia asked.
“Down that hall, second door on your left.”
Olivia made her way down the hall, which was covered in framed photographs. She found a large frame filled with about ten smaller photos in different sizes. They were all of a little boy, around six years old, and a man and a woman. Olivia assumed it was Ben and his parents. She felt a pain in her heart. So unfair that a little boy who had parents who loved him, good parents, had to grow up without them. There were no family photos like this lining halls in her own home. Neither her mother nor her father had ever taken photos. It was like Olivia’s childhood never existed. All that remained were memories that clouded her thoughts like black smoke from a fire, aches buried so deeply within Olivia’s soul that it felt like they would never go away.
Olivia noticed a black-and-white wedding photo with an imprint of a photography studio name on the lower left corner. It must have been Mrs. Glasser and her husband. Mrs. Glasser was beautiful. She looked like the leading ladies in Olivia’s favorite movies: a cross between Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story, Grace Kelly in High Society, and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca.
Another photograph on the wall caught Olivia’s eye. She gasped and inadvertently took a step back as if she’d been punched in the stomach.
CHAPTER 9
CHARLOTTE
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 1949
Charlotte woke up early so she could catch her father before he left for the day. He was in the kitchen, ingesting that morning’s coffee and the prior night’s news.
“I wanted to finish our discussion. Have you thought more about what I said?” Charlotte asked as she entered the small kitchen.
“You’ll finish school and then work at the store once you’ve graduated.”
Ch
arlotte let out a sigh of relief and smiled tentatively at her father. At least this was a start.
“It was your mother’s idea,” Mr. Friedman said, waving her off dismissively.
* * *
“The good news is, he’s going to let me finish school.” Charlotte and JoJo were standing on the platform, waiting for the Fourth Avenue subway to take them, along with the patchwork masses, into Manhattan.
The train arrived and they boarded the packed car. They jostled their way into the back corner so they could hear each other over the babel, the newspapers, the humanity.
“And the bad news?”
“I have to work full-time at the store after graduation.”
“At least you can graduate.”
“It’s the last thing I expected, but somehow my mother convinced him, and I wasn’t going to ask questions.”
“Give yourself a little credit, Charlotte. Perhaps you convinced him too.”
“Doubtful. I have about as much influence on my father as the First Lady has on foreign policy.”
“I’m sorry, Charlotte.”
“Why should he have the right to make decisions about my life?”
“Because he’s your father and that’s what fathers do.”
“Says who?”
“Says fathers.”
“Oh, JoJo. It’s not fair.”
“Neither are broken heels and broken dates, but they both happen on a regular basis. To me, at least. It’s called life, Charlotte.”
“It doesn’t mean I have to accept it.”
“What if you say no?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“I guess, family obligation and all. But part of me thinks you’re giving up too easily.”
“What do you expect me to do?” Charlotte asked, the anger in her voice rising. “It’s not like I even have a job offer that I can throw in his face. I have no money to move out. And, let’s be honest, the chances of me becoming Miss Subways and then a famous model are pretty slim.”
“There’s got to be something you can do. I know. Let’s pretend your father’s store is our first advertising client. How are we going to help him drum up business?”
The Subway Girls_A Novel Page 7
