Park Avenue Summer
Page 1
PRAISE FOR
PARK AVENUE SUMMER
“A breezy, delightful novel that celebrates female friendship and ambition. With Park Avenue Summer, Renée Rosen brings legendary magazine editrix Helen Gurley Brown back to life and captures a beloved bygone era with acuity, wisdom and heart.”
—Jamie Brenner, USA Today bestselling author of The Forever Summer and The Husband Hour
“A smart and sexy homage to Helen Gurley Brown and her ‘girls’—a generation of women taking New York City by storm and inspiring those who came after them. Filled with wit, heart and verve, Rosen’s novel dazzles and empowers. Simply wonderful!”
—Chanel Cleeton, USA Today bestselling author of Next Year in Havana
“Renée Rosen’s delightfully clever novel is full of heart and hope with a perfect dash of sass. Through the wonderfully depicted Helen Gurley Brown, struggling in her appointment as editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, and Alice Weiss, Gurley Brown’s loyal secretary, Rosen delivers a cast of complex and ambitious female protagonists to truly root for. The Devil Wears Prada meets Mad Men, Park Avenue Summer is pure joy from cover to cover. I loved it.”
—Hazel Gaynor, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home
“Park Avenue Summer is both a breezy girl-takes-Manhattan fairy tale and a crackling account of how a brazen editor—against her bosses’ better judgment—invented iconic Cosmopolitan magazine. This novel perfectly captures the zeitgeist of 1965.”
—Sally Koslow, bestselling author of Another Side of Paradise and The Late, Lamented Molly Marx
“Renée Rosen combines meticulous research with a true affection for her characters to bring this heady time movingly to life.”
—Elizabeth Letts, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Eighty-Dollar Champion
“Renée Rosen is my go-to for whip-smart heroines who love their work. . . . Park Avenue Summer is a delightful summer cocktail of a read!”
—Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network
“Once again Renée Rosen works her magic, transporting us to the offices of Helen Gurley Brown’s Cosmopolitan in 1960s New York, and the result is a delight. . . . Rosen’s command of historical detail is masterful; so, too, is her ability to create fictional characters, among them her heroine Alice, who are as fully realized and compelling as the beguiling Brown herself.”
—Jennifer Robson, international bestselling author of Somewhere in France
“Part historical fiction, part coming-of-age story, this is a novel for our keeper shelves, to read and reread when we begin to doubt that there is still time to become the best version of ourselves. Lovely prose, a unique story line and a heroine who will stay with you for a long time make this a book I highly recommend.”
—Karen White, New York Times bestselling author of Dreams of Falling
ALSO BY RENÉE ROSEN
Windy City Blues
White Collar Girl
What the Lady Wants
Dollface
Every Crooked Pot
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
1745 Broadway, New York, New York 10019
Copyright © 2019 by Renée Rosen
Readers Guide copyright © 2019 by Renée Rosen
Excerpt from The Social Graces copyright © 2019 by Renée Rosen
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rosen, Renée, author.
Title: Park Avenue Summer / Renée Rosen.
Description: First edition. | New York: Berkley, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018029367 | ISBN 9781101991145 (trade pbk.) | ISBN 9781101991152 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3618.O83156 P37 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018029367
First Edition: April 2019
Cover art: Photo of Plaza Hotel by Granger; Frame by bomg/Shutterstock; Photo of Woman by Keystone-France / Gamma-Keystone / Getty Images
Interior art: frame corner element by bomg / Shutterstock.com
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters and all incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Version_1
To my girls:
Sara Gruen, Brenda Klem,
Mindy Mailman and Pam Rosen.
I love you all!
CONTENTS
Praise for Park Avenue Summer
Also by Renée Rosen
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Epilogue
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
Readers Guide
Excerpt from The Social Graces
About the Author
PROLOGUE
2012
The breeze blows through the open windows, curtains swaying slow and lazy. It’s August and already balmy first thing in the morning. As I sit at the kitchen table, a band of sunlight streaks across the newspaper and warms the backs of my hands even as my coffee turns cold. Suddenly it’s too much to cross the room for a fresh cup because all I can do is stare at the headline while something catches again and again inside my chest. There it is in the New York Times: Helen Gurley Brown, Cosmopolitan’s Iconic Editor, Dies at 90.
The obituary tries to paint her portrait, a tribute to the woman who gave single girls everywhere a license to join the sexual revolution, who resurrected a dying magazine and introduced the world to a new sensation, the Cosmo Girl. A few paragraphs down they mention other feminists like Betty Fried
an and Gloria Steinem and get into Helen Gurley Brown’s controversial role in the women’s movement. It’s all there, and this being the Times, I’m sure Margalit Fox got the facts right, but still, there’s more to Helen’s story. More than anyone but a select few will ever know.
I glance again at the obituary and one line jumps out at me: “Helen Gurley Brown was 90, though parts of her were considerably younger.” I can’t help but smile at that as I run my fingers over the accompanying photograph. It’s a black-and-white shot, taken in her office. The year was 1965, shortly after she started at Cosmopolitan. Helen, in a leopard print dress, is seated at her desk, pencil in hand, papers spread out before her. Standing to the side, bleeding off the page, I see a sliver of a young woman. Half of her has been cropped out of the image, left on the editing room floor. Still, I recognize the geometric pattern of her dress and a hint of her face: the eye, the nose and the corner of her mouth, the subtle wisps of hair brushing her collar. I know the dress well and the woman even better.
She is me, some forty-seven years ago.
CHAPTER ONE
NEW YORK CITY
1965
I had creased and folded my subway map so many times over the past few days that it was on the verge of tearing in two. Somehow I had boarded the wrong train. Again. I’d ended up at Times Square instead of 57th Street. Now what?
I exited the train, took a few tentative steps and froze on the platform, people weaving around me, bumping up against my portfolio, jostling the photographs inside. A young woman in a pink and gold sari called to a little boy running on ahead of her, past a man playing bongos. The Times Square station was a maze of tiled corridors and tunnels, stairwells that led from one frenzied level to another. A blur of signs pointed me in all directions: Uptown, Downtown, The Bronx, Brooklyn, 8th Avenue, 40th Street . . .
I didn’t have time to risk getting on the wrong train, so I folded my tattered map, tucked it inside my pocketbook and made my way to the 42nd Street exit where I was met with a blast of horns, a gust of exhaust. I stood at the curb feeling as bewildered as I’d been inside the station, and yet, it was exhilarating. I’d arrived in New York about a week ago, and like the city, I was alive, filled with possibility and adventure. Anything could happen now. My life was about to begin.
I’d never hailed a taxicab before and was momentarily paralyzed. All I could do was observe other people’s techniques, like the businessman who raised his hand ever so slightly, accomplishing the task with just two fingers. Another man with bags under his eyes, big and full as cheeks, yelled out a commanding “Taxi,” making a driver swerve across two lanes before bringing his cab to a screeching halt. Job done. The woman beside me waved her hand like a magic wand and a taxicab appeared. I mimicked her approach, my fingers flapping amateurishly. Two taxicabs barreled past me as if I wasn’t there before one pulled up alongside me. I gave the driver the address while he laid on his horn, inching forward, leaving barely a whisper of air between his bumper and the taxicab in front of us. We were one in a chain of yellow cabs going nowhere fast.
I checked the clock on the dashboard. “I have an appointment in twenty minutes,” I said to the driver through the cloudy Plexiglas window separating us. “Do you think we can make it in time?”
He shot me an impatient look through his rearview mirror. “You coulda walked it, lady,” he said in a thick Brooklyn accent.
I sat back, trying to relax, clutching my portfolio: a homemade case that protected my photographs, mounted to sheets of construction paper and held between two cardboard covers. I used a black ribbon to tie it shut.
It was a bright, unseasonably warm day, and the driver had all the windows rolled down. I drew a deep breath, unable to place the scent until I realized that it was everything I was not smelling: the absence of grass, trees and those easy, open-space breezes. The flow of air, obstructed by the buildings, seemed stagnant, almost stale, yet the city was in constant motion, all vigor and energy.
At the corner of 47th and Eighth Avenue, I spotted a man and a woman waiting for the light. They reminded me of couples I’d seen in the movies. He was in a dark suit, his fedora worn with a Sinatra tilt. She was impeccably dressed in a skirt and matching jacket, belted at the waist. He pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket, offering her one before he suavely lit them both. As puffs of smoke gathered above their heads, the streetlight changed and off they went. I watched until they disappeared into the throng of New Yorkers, wishing I had my camera with me. You didn’t see people like that back in Ohio.
My cab cleared the intersection and I grew giddy thinking that soon I’d be taking my place among the locals, walking with a purpose, each step bringing me closer to the very things I’d come here for. And with that, I couldn’t help but think about my mother. She was supposed to have been by my side when I came to New York, and I wasn’t one of those people comforted by the ethereal; she’s still with you, watching over you.
As we continued on, I craned my neck, not wanting to miss a thing. There was more to see here in just two blocks than in all of Youngstown. I leaned forward to get a better look at the giant Camel billboard of a man smoking a cigarette, blowing actual smoke rings. All of Times Square was flashing with Canadian Club, Coca-Cola, Chevrolet and a sign for Admiral Television Appliances. Even in the middle of the day, the theater marquees were lit and winking, some reputable while others advertised peep shows starring raw naked women. Again, I itched for my camera. Even when I didn’t have it with me, I was still taking pictures in my head.
I had moved to New York to become a photographer despite my father and everyone else, including the editor at the Youngstown Vindicator, telling me a woman couldn’t do that kind of work. Taking personal snapshots like my mother did was one thing, but professional photographs for newspapers and magazines? Never. Maybe not in a small town, but surely New York City would be different. And just knowing they said I couldn’t do it made me all the more determined to prove them wrong. Stubbornness, something I’d inherited from my mother.
My father and Faye, his new wife, said they weren’t financing my pipe dream, so after graduating from secretarial school and working as a typist in a steel foundry for three months, I’d saved $375. I knew that wouldn’t go very far, seeing as the taxicab meter had already hit 90 cents. My most immediate need was a job—any job. I’d already interviewed with an accounting firm, followed by a scaffolding manufacturer and an insurance agency. They were jobs I didn’t want and thankfully didn’t get.
That was why I finally pulled out the number I’d been carrying since I’d arrived but had been too shy or proud to use. I called Elaine Sloan. Elaine and my mother had been roommates in New York, living at the Barbizon Hotel, both of them aspiring models. My mother, beautiful as she was, had fallen short of the dream, becoming a Midwestern housewife. Elaine ended up as a book editor at Bernard Geis Associates. I’d met Elaine once, at my mother’s funeral, and had exchanged a few cards and letters with her since. She said to contact her if ever I needed anything. I thought maybe she could help me land a photography job, or at the very least, something in publishing.
When I arrived at Bernard Geis Associates on East 56th Street, I found myself on the forty-second floor, in a colorful lobby filled with pop art and Eero Aarnio pod chairs suitable for a moon landing. In the middle of it all was a pole you’d expect to see in a fire station. It extended all the way through a circular cutout in the ceiling of the floor above. While I gave the receptionist my name, a woman slid down that pole, her skirt bunched up, revealing her blue garter, before landing with a respectable dismount.
Moments later Elaine Sloan made a more dignified entrance through a side door. The first thing I—or probably anyone—noticed about Elaine was her hair. She was prematurely gray, each strand a luminous shade of silvery white that caught the light and accentuated her blue eyes. Eyes that looked as though they’d seen more than most women her age. I told myself sh
e resembled my mother, though they looked nothing alike. My mind was playing tricks on me and I knew why. Yes, I was a grown woman of twenty-one, but I still wanted my mother. Elaine Sloan—her most devoted and dearest friend—was the closest I could get to her now.
She greeted me with a warm smile and showed me into her office, which had a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline. “Tell me how I can help you,” she asked, gesturing for me to sit in the chair opposite her desk.
After sharing tidbits of my disheartening job search, I set my portfolio on her desk. “But what I’m really looking for is something in photography.”
“I see.” She leaned forward, reaching for my case. “May I?”
“Please . . .” I untied the ribbon for her and sat silently while she leafed through my photographs, pausing here and there but saying nothing. She closed the cover before she reached the end.
It was a blow, but I would not be ungrateful and let my disappointment show.
She smiled and sat back, inching my portfolio toward me with her fingertips. “You have an eye,” she said, just to be kind.
“Thank you.” I tied my portfolio shut and set it in my lap, thinking how much more competitive everything was here. Back home people appreciated my photographs, selecting them for the school newspaper and yearbook. But in New York my pictures were barely enough to hold anyone’s attention.
“Well, it’s not photography,” she said, “but I do have something in mind.” Elaine pressed the intercom on her desk and said, “Get David Brown on the line for me, will you?” She released the talk button and reached behind her for a book on her credenza. “Are you familiar with this?” She held up a copy of Sex and the Single Girl.
That blue cover instantly took me back to my senior year of high school, to a slumber party in Esther Feinberg’s basement. Four of us had stayed up half the night, taking turns reading aloud from Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl. I remembered certain passages made us squeal and roll onto our sides, pillows pressed to our faces to smother our giggles and shock. At the time, I didn’t think the book applied to me because I had Michael Segal. My future was set. At least it was until I gave him back his grandmother’s ring after he said he wasn’t ready to marry me. The next day I went out and bought my own copy of Sex and the Single Girl and read it cover to cover. More than once.