The Subway Girls

by Susie Orman Schnall

  Olivia

  Well, I am starving. Office-fridge yogurt had expired. I’ll be there in five.

  Olivia was about to press send when the elevator stopped at her floor. She pressed the lobby button and the doors began to close when she suddenly reconsidered. She quickly stuck her hand between the closing doors and stepped out onto her floor.

  After deleting her prior text, Olivia tapped out a different one.

  Olivia

  Already in my pj’s. Thanks anyway.

  She clicked send, felt relief course through her body, and realized that though she wasn’t living her life on the edge and pushing the envelope with respect to the relationship she would like to have with Matt, she was also preserving her self-respect and drawing a firm boundary between her professional and personal lives. Why then, she wondered, was she unconvinced that she had made the right decision?

  Olivia and Matt had a complicated relationship. It had started off entirely professional, when Olivia had first started at Y&R. After they’d worked together for four or five years, they developed an easy friendship. It was a bit flirty, but nothing blatant. Nothing that made Olivia cringe or feel uncomfortable or require forms to be filled out up in HR. Matt was nothing like Thomas or some of the other boneheads whose respect for and tolerance of women were as pathetic as the job society had done teaching them to be men.

  Olivia and Matt’s level-one friendship changed, though, when they left Y&R and were working long hours starting the new agency. One night, Olivia, Matt, and Pablo went to Barcanto’s after work. Ian was generous with the alcohol, as was his normal way, and Matt ended up walking Olivia home.

  They drunk-stumbled into her apartment, and Matt told Olivia he thought she was beautiful and had always imagined what it would be like to kiss her. She decided to let him find out.

  They slept together that night and things had existed in a tolerable limbo ever since. Matt continued his professional dating career and Olivia worked her ass off and sometimes had erotic thoughts about Matt. Only James, Jenna, and Ian knew that she was secretly in love with him. She could tell that sometimes he thought about her in that way too. But as long as they were working together, she was going to keep it strictly professional. Well, mostly.

  There had been other men throughout the years. Sweet men. Men who asked her out with sufficient notice on proper dates that required advance reservations. Men who walked her to her door and didn’t expect another drink or, worse, expect to gain intimate knowledge of her waxing predilections. Men whose next-day follow-up involved an actual phone call instead of just texted acronyms and emoji. But none of those men had ever had the ability to distract Olivia from her single-minded focus on her career. When Olivia imagined her life with all those predictable men, she couldn’t see past the stereotypical gender-roled, routine-sex, so-so married life she knew they’d have together.

  While most of her friends were married or dating the guys they would probably end up married to, and some were already on their second kid, Olivia was fine, at least most of the time, working hard and rebuilding her savings account. Chasing the dream, she would tell them when they asked. And in return, her friends would look at her with a sad smile as if they knew something she didn’t. Once in a while, at her weaker moments, Olivia thought maybe they did.

  CHAPTER 7

  CHARLOTTE

  MONDAY, MARCH 7, 1949

  “Over here, Charlotte,” JoJo said, waving from the back table where she and Sam were already drinking milk shakes.

  Sam stood up to kiss Charlotte and pull out her chair. “How did it go?”

  “I’ve never experienced anything like that in my entire life!” Charlotte said excitedly, and then told them the whole story, filling it with a million adjectives: about the process, the other finalists, the intolerable Bella London and the exciting and gorgeous Rose Grant, and how each girl raised her hand when Miss Fontaine asked who would be returning on Friday for the interview and photo shoot.

  “So you’re really gonna do this?” JoJo asked.

  “I am,” Charlotte said with a wide smile. “You know, I was ambivalent at first, but I had a lot of fun today, and I want to see this through. Who knows what doors it could open for me?”

  “But are those actual doors you’d be interested in walking through?” JoJo asked, doubt creeping into her voice.

  “Don’t give her a hard time, JoJo,” Sam said. “This is a good opportunity. Why wouldn’t she give it a try?”

  “Thank you for your support, Sam,” Charlotte said, sticking her tongue out at JoJo. “Plus, J. Walter Thompson is actually the advertising agency that created Miss Subways, so you never know who I might meet in this process.”

  “I support you, Charlotte. I just don’t want you to lose sight of what you really want to do.”

  “That would be impossible,” Charlotte said. “Participating in this Miss Subways process won’t stop me from pursuing advertising.”

  “Unless you win and get discovered and become a famous model,” JoJo said.

  “Well, yes, there’s that,” Charlotte said, raising her nose in the air. “But I’ll try to remember the two of you if that should happen.”

  “Please do,” Sam said, giving her a kiss.

  “If you’re off in Paris or London or wherever it is you high-fashion models roam like overpaid gazelles, don’t get all weepy and jealous if I claim Sam for my very own. He’s the last good one out there.”

  “As long as you return him unsullied.”

  “Of course!” JoJo said, and the two girls giggled. “But let me be serious for a moment. Sam and I just want for you what we know you want for yourself. And I wouldn’t want you to get distracted by something because it’s new and shiny. Remember what you told me the other night about the window closing on advertising opportunities?”

  “What window?” Sam asked.

  “Once the agencies have finished their hiring efforts for this season,” Charlotte explained, “it’ll be nearly impossible for me to get a job in the typing pool. I’m already way too old as it is. They just love those eighteen-year-old freshies with their crisp typing school certificates pinned to their Peter Pan collars and their minds unaroused by college. I was lucky to get the interviews I got, and those were all by personal connections through professors and through Martin. If I can’t convince JWT to hire me or if I can’t find an opening somewhere else before graduation, which at this late stage is agonizingly and highly likely, I may never get my foot in the door at an advertising agency.”

  “It sounds so grave, Charlotte.”

  “It’s the truth, JoJo, and you know it.”

  JoJo looked down at the table and took a sip of her milk shake.

  “Looks like the clock is ticking and you’ve got some work to do contacting all those other agencies,” Sam said.

  “That sounds dreadful and overwhelming,” Charlotte said, putting her hands over her face.

  “Sorry, darling. Just being realistic.”

  “I know. I’m just feeling discouraged. Here I have this fun opportunity to pursue Miss Subways. Best outcome, I think, is that I become Miss Subways and potentially have an opportunity to become a Powers Girl.”

  “My goodness. The confidence! What happened to my Charlotte?” JoJo asked, her mouth wide-open.

  “Snap it shut, JoJo. Let me dream here for a second. Worst outcome is that I just enjoy the lovely fuss and then move on with my life. The only question is, does pursuing Miss Subways distract me from finding another job in advertising? That’s what I need to figure out.”

  “I think you can do both. Keep looking for a job. And stay in the running for Miss Subways. No reason not to,” Sam said.

  “I agree,” JoJo said.

  “Well, in that case, I’ll go with counsel’s suggestion.”

  When Charlotte got home, all the lights were off, so she tiptoed upstairs so as not to wake her parents. Charlotte noticed the note on her bed as soon as she turned on her bedroom light. Come see me at t
he store in the morning. The note, in her father’s calculated scribble, revealed nothing more. He wasn’t the most communicative person, and Charlotte, though she didn’t know what he wanted to discuss with her, couldn’t imagine it was anything good.

  * * *

  Charlotte felt her stomach tighten as she approached Friedman’s Paint and Wallpaper, her father’s store on Third Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Est. 1932. The large plate-glass windows seemed grimier than usual. Charlotte had stood in front of this store a million times, she and Harry marking their growth by where their eyes lined up with the carefully etched letters spelling out the name of the store on the glass. The store suddenly looked worn-out, like an old man whose trousers sag as he shuffles, eyes cast downward to the public chess tables in the park.

  Preparing for bed the night before, Charlotte had tried to figure out what her father wanted to discuss with her. Perhaps he was finally ready to listen to her advertising ideas. She’d been trying to persuade him to place ads in circulars and do in-store promotions, to modernize his marketing plans to keep up with the times and bring in new customers.

  Each time she’d brought up her concepts, however, he’d shot her down. I’ve been doing it this way for years, and this is how I’ll keep doing it. She had tried to convince him that she was right and he was wrong—to be absolutely sure, she had never succeeded in that endeavor in the past—but she had failed.

  “Hello, Charlotte!”

  “Hi, Donald,” Charlotte said to the manager. “Is my father around?”

  “Upstairs in the office.”

  Charlotte approached the closed office door tentatively. Her father wasn’t mean, but he wasn’t the adoring type. Not like JoJo’s father, who took them fishing and told them hilarious stories about growing up with his four sisters. Charlotte was a little afraid of her father; since Harry had died, his moods were unpredictable.

  “Come in!” Mr. Friedman yelled when Charlotte knocked.

  Charlotte took a deep breath, smoothed her skirt, and opened the door. Her father was sitting behind his wooden desk, which was choking to death in piles of paper.

  Mr. Friedman sat back in his chair and took a draw from his pipe, the same one he had smoked Charlotte’s entire life. The earthy smell of the tobacco, the sounds of the throaty inhalation and exhalation, the feel of the rubbed wood. Those senses were rooted as deeply in her consciousness, in her profound and penetrating knowledge of him, as the sound of his voice. He stared at her.

  Charlotte sat down and then shifted in her seat uncomfortably. She thought about the Miss Subways letter in her purse and whether she should share the news with her father despite her mother’s belief that he wouldn’t allow her to participate. Considering now didn’t seem like the opportune time, she pulled her purse closer and concentrated on the family-of-four photograph, dated and dusty, on the corner of her father’s desk.

  “I’m not sure if you’re aware because I haven’t wanted to worry you and your mother, but the store hasn’t been doing well.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Well, I met with the bank yesterday, and things are worse than I thought.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that,” Charlotte said sincerely. “What are you going to do?”

  “It’s more like what are you going to do?” Mr. Friedman leaned back farther in his chair and paused.

  “Do you mean my advertising ideas?”

  “No, Charlotte. I mean that I need you to work at the store. I can’t make payroll, and I need to let Donald go.”

  “But I can’t,” Charlotte said, suddenly standing. As she rose, her purse dropped to her feet and she didn’t bother picking it up.

  “Nonsense,” Mr. Friedman said gruffly. “You’ll do as you’re told.”

  “Can’t you just work here by yourself?”

  “You’re fully aware that there are too many days when I have to be out of the store consulting with contractors and giving estimates at customers’ homes. I need someone here.”

  “But I have school. And I’m graduating. And then…”

  “And that will have to wait because I need you here, Charlotte. And that’s the end of it.”

  Charlotte grabbed her purse and ran out of her father’s office, down the stairs, and out onto the street. Donald, still unaware of the fate the tyrant upstairs had in store for him, called after her, but Charlotte didn’t turn around.

  With tears stinging her eyes, Charlotte walked the mile and a half home and tried to sort out the maelstrom, which had been borne whole in her brain the moment her father had dumped his plan on her shoulders.

  “How dare he!” Charlotte said. And though she hadn’t intended to say it aloud, the startled glance from a suit rushing by confirmed she had.

  It was perfectly clear to Charlotte why her father felt comfortable with her taking over Donald’s job. She’d worked at the store during the summers and on weekends since she was a little girl. First, as a child with her brother, sweeping the aisles, helping her father hang paintbrushes on the pegs, greeting the customers: Hello, Mr. Davenport. Welcome to Friedman’s Paint and Wallpaper, Mr. Cavanagh. Later, as a teenager advising the neighborhood ladies on the latest wallpaper styles for their dining rooms, delivering small parcels to construction sites, tending the till. And more recently, on weekends and when she could take a break from her studies, helping her father with the ordering and coming up with cleverly worded signs for the aisle endcaps.

  As she reached her house and decided to pretend she wasn’t feeling well so she didn’t have to discuss any of it with her mother, Charlotte scolded herself for running out of her father’s office. You should have stood up for yourself and dealt with it like a woman. At least, she knew that’s what JoJo would tell her. But Charlotte wasn’t JoJo. Charlotte had never been one to throw back her shoulders, stick her fist in the fight, and state her position with purpose and confidence. But she’d just done so with Mr. Hertford at JWT, hadn’t she? Charlotte realized she’d have to make this a regular thing and stand up to her father too, or she could kiss her dreams good-bye.

  Charlotte put her coat back on and retraced her steps to her father’s store. She couldn’t imagine giving up everything she’d worked so hard for at Hunter over the last four years and the opportunities in advertising that she wanted more than anything to discover.

  As she walked, she heard her brother’s voice in her ear. He was always so supportive, encouraging Charlotte to follow her dreams to go to college, to push beyond her father’s low expectations. She felt a spring in her step and knew she partly owed it to her brother to make something of herself, something outside of what her father had dictated for her. It wasn’t her fault her father’s store wasn’t doing well. She shouldn’t have to pay such a serious price. No, she would talk to her father and put her foot down. He would understand. He just had to.

  The courage that had been building as she walked east from her house on Seventy-Fourth Street and then north on Third Avenue slowly dissipated with every tread on the stairway to her father’s office door.

  “It’s all decided,” he said. He was surprised that she’d returned, but he seemed more resolute than he’d been before. “I even discussed it with your mother last night while you were out, and she agreed.”

  Charlotte sat, shocked, trying to come up with a way to convince her father to change his mind. But she was the girl in her nightmares: paralyzed and unable to say a word.

  “Charlotte, I realize working here isn’t what you had planned. But this is life. It should have been your brother. But it’s you.”

  “But I need to finish school. And I’m starting my career,” Charlotte said, throwing her fist in the fight.

  “Did you get a job?”

  “No,” Charlotte said firmly, challenging her father to say a word. “But I have several prospects and an offer is imminent.”

  “You’re just going to have to accept the reality and move on. When things turn around at the store, you can finish your degree
and find a job then.”

  “It doesn’t work like that!”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Charlotte,” he said with a dismissive wave. “You know how I felt about this college thing when you started. Stop being such a dreamer.”

  And there it was.

  Her father continued, “Advertising is no place for a young lady. You’ll start working here and that’s that. I’m planning on letting Donald go today.”

  “Don’t you have to give him some sort of notice?” Charlotte asked incredulously. Her father was nowhere near kind, but he wasn’t a tyrant.

  “Of course I’ll give him notice. You can stay in school for two more weeks, but then I’ll expect you here.”

  “I don’t know why you have to ruin my life like this,” Charlotte said, standing up.

  Mr. Friedman was silent. She matched his silence and waited for him to speak. Implored herself to not say another word until he did. She stared at the walls, covered haphazardly with tacked-up purchase orders and wallpaper swatches. She had spent hours in this office as a girl, watching her father. Thinking he was so powerful. Commanding the empire that was Friedman’s Paint and Wallpaper. Now she realized how small that empire was. And how sad its sovereign. Needing to disrupt her life because he couldn’t succeed at his own.

  Even when she was little, Charlotte tended to avoid her father when she could. He had no time for little girls and their attendant ribbons and dolls. He was tolerable to her when she was in the store, but he addressed her as he would any employee, not his darling daughter learning her father’s trade at his work boots. He put all he had, what little love and support, into Harry. Harry was, after all, what mattered. At least for the store. So she retreated into her studies, earning exemplary marks and securing a place at Hunter without any help—or encouragement—from either of her parents.

  Harry, who Charlotte felt was her only ally in the family, didn’t get along with their father at all. Harry, don’t waste your time with sports. Harry, you have a duty to take over my business. Harry, come straight to the store after school. Harry, did you hear me?