As I was getting on the train a lanky bumpkin dressed in overalls knocked my purse out of my hands while running from one car to the next; and as I bent to pick it up, my skirt tore a seam. So when I got off at my stop, I bought a pint of rye and a candle to stick on the cork.
Luckily, I drank half the bottle’s contents at my kitchen table before taking off my shoes and stockings, because when I stood to scramble an egg, I bumped the table and spilled the rest over a flawed finesse. Cursing Jesus the way my uncle Roscoe would have—in verse—I mopped up the mess and then plopped down in my father’s easy chair.
What was your favorite day of the year? That was one of the beside-the-point questions that we posed to each other at the 21 Club back in January. The snowiest, Tinker had said. Any day that wasn’t in Indiana, Eve had said. My answer? The summer solstice. June twenty-first. The longest day of the year.
It was a cute answer. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. But on cooler reflection, it struck me that when you’re asked your favorite day of the year, there’s a certain hubris in giving any day in June as your answer. It suggests that the particulars of your life are so terrific, and your command over your station so secure, that all you could possibly hope for is additional daylight in which to celebrate your lot. But as the Greeks teach us, there is only one remedy for that sort of hubris. They called it nemesis. We call it getting what you deserve, or a finger in the eye, or comeuppance for short. And it comes with an appropriate raise in pay, responsibilities, and professional status.
There was a knock at the door.
I didn’t even bother to ask who it was. I opened to find a Western Union kid bearing the first telegram of my life. It was posted from London:HAPPY BDAY SIS STOP SORRY COULDN’T BE THERE STOP TURN THE TOWN UPSIDE DOWN FOR THE BOTH OF US STOP SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS STOP
Two weeks? If the postcard from Palm Beach was any indication, I wouldn’t be seeing Tinker and Eve till Thanksgiving.
I lit a cigarette and reread the telegram. Given the context, some might wonder if by FOR THE BOTH OF US Eve meant her and Tinker, or her and me. Instinct told me it was the latter. And maybe she was on to something.
I got up and pulled Uncle Roscoe’s footlocker from under my bed. At the very bottom, buried under my birth certificate and a rabbit’s foot and the only surviving picture of my mother, was the envelope that Mr. Ross had given me. I spilled the remaining ten-dollar bills onto my bedcover. Turn the town upside down, the oracle had said, and the very next day that’s exactly what I intended to do.
On the fifth floor of Bendel’s there were more flowers than at a funeral.
I was standing in front of a rack of little black dresses. Cotton. Linen. Lace. Backless. Sleeveless. Black . . . black . . . black . . .
—Can I help you? someone asked for the fifth time since I’d entered the store.
I turned to find a woman in her midforties in a skirt suit and glasses standing at a respectful distance. She had lovely red hair tied back in a ponytail. It gave her the appearance of a starlet playing the part of a spinster.
—Do you have something a little more . . . colorful? I asked.
Mrs. O’Mara ushered me to a cushiony couch where she could ask me questions about my size, my coloring and my social schedule. Then she disappeared. When she returned she had two girls in tow, each with a selection of dresses flung over an arm. One by one Mrs. O’Mara introduced me to their virtues while I sipped coffee from a fine china cup. As I offered my impressions (too green, too long, too tepid) one of the girls took notes. It made me feel like I was an executive in the Bendel’s boardroom signing off on the spring collection. There wasn’t a hint in the air that money would soon be changing hands. Certainly not mine.
A professional saleswoman who knew her mark, Mrs. O’Mara saved the best for last: a white short-sleeved dress with baby blue polka dots and a matching hat.
—The dress is obviously fun, Mrs. O’Mara observed. But an educated, elegant fun.
—It’s not too country?
—On the contrary. This dress was designed as fresh air for the city. For Rome, Paris, Milan. It’s not for Connecticut. The country doesn’t need a dress like this. We do.
Tilting my head, I betrayed a gleam of interest.
—Let’s try it on, said Mrs. O’Mara.
It fit almost perfectly.
—Striking, she said.
—You think?
—I’m certain of it. And you don’t have shoes on. It’s one of the great tests of a dress. If it can look this elegant in bare feet, well then . . .
We were standing next to each other looking coolly in the mirror. I turned a little to one side lifting the heel of my right foot off the carpet. The hem shifted slightly around my knees. I tried to imagine myself barefoot on the Spanish Steps and almost succeeded.
—It’s terrific, I admitted. But I can’t help thinking how much better it would look on you, given the color of your hair.
—If I may be so bold, Miss Kontent, the color of my hair is available to you on the second floor.
Two hours later, with the red hair of the Irish, I took a taxi to the West Village to La Belle Époque. It was still a few years before French restaurants would be in vogue, but La Belle Époque had become a favorite among the expatriates whenever they repatriated. It was a small restaurant with upholstered banquettes and still lifes on the wall depicting objects from a country kitchen in the manner of Chardin.
After taking my name the maitre d’ asked if I would like a glass of champagne while I waited. It was only seven o’clock and less than half the tables were taken.
—Waiting for what? I asked.
—Are you not meeting someone?
—Not that I know of.
—Excusez-moi, Mademoiselle. Right this way.
He walked briskly into the dining room. At a table set for two he paused for a fraction of a second then continued to one of the banquettes with a view of the entire room. When he had me comfortable, he disappeared and returned with the promised champagne.
—To getting out of ruts, I toasted myself.
My new navy blue shoes were digging into my ankles. So under the veil of the tablecloth I kicked them off and exercised my toes. When I took a pack of cigarettes from my new blue clutch, a waiter leaned across the table with his stainless steel lighter and ignited a flame that was fully adequate to the task. I took my time sliding the cigarette out of its box while he remained as immobile as a statue. When I drew the first breath of smoke he stood up and closed the lighter with a satisfying snap.
—Would you like to see the menu while you wait? he asked.
—I’m not waiting for anyone, I said.
—Pardon, Mademoiselle.
He snapped a finger at a busboy who cleared the setting beside me. Then he presented the menu, cradling it in the crook of his arm so he could gesture to various dishes and remark on their virtues, much as Mrs. O’Mara had with the dresses. It all gave me confidence; if I intended to dig a hole in my savings, then at least I appeared to be on the right track.
The restaurant took its time coming to life. It filled a few tables. It served some cocktails and lit some cigarettes. It proceeded methodically and unrushed, secure in the knowledge that by nine o’clock it would feel like the center of the universe.
I took my time coming to life too. I sipped a second champagne and savored my canapés. I had another cigarette. When the waiter returned, I ordered a glass of white wine, asparagus gratin, and for the entrée, the specialty of the house: poussin stuffed with black truffle.
As the waiter sped away, I noticed for the second time that the old couple sitting in the opposite banquette was smiling at me. He was a stocky man with thinning hair dressed in a double-breasted suit and bow tie. He had milky eyes that seemed ready to tear at the slightest sentiment. A good three inches taller, she had on an elegant summer dress, curly hair and a genteel smile. She looked like the sort who at the turn of the century entertained the bishop for lunch a
nd then was off to lead the suffrage march. She winked and sort of waved; I winked and sort of waved back.
The asparagus arrived with a touch of fanfare, presented tableside in a small copper pan. The individual spears were arranged in perfect order—each identical in length, no two overlapping. On top had been delicately scattered a mixture of buttered bread crumbs and fontina cheese which had been broiled to a crunchy, bubbling brown. The captain served the asparagus with a silver fork and spoon. Then he grated a touch of lemon peel over the plate.
—Bon appétit.
Indeed.
If my father had made a million dollars, he wouldn’t have eaten at La Belle Époque. To him, restaurants were the ultimate expression of ungodly waste. For of all the luxuries that your money could buy, a restaurant left you the least to show for it. A fur coat could at least be worn in winter to fend off the cold, and a silver spoon could be melted down and sold to a jeweler. But a porterhouse steak? You chopped it, chewed it, swallowed it, wiped your lips and dropped your napkin on your plate. That was that. And asparagus? My father would sooner have carried a twenty-dollar bill to his grave than spent it on some glamorous weed coated in cheese.
But for me, dinner at a fine restaurant was the ultimate luxury. It was the very height of civilization. For what was civilization but the intellect’s ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)? So removed from daily life was the whole experience that when all was rotten to the core, a fine dinner could revive the spirits. If and when I had twenty dollars left to my name, I was going to invest it right here in an elegant hour that couldn’t be hocked.
When my waiter took away the asparagus plate, I realized that I shouldn’t have had that second glass of champagne. I decided to visit the ladies’ room and dampen my brow. I slipped my left foot into one of the navy blues, but as I felt around with my right foot I couldn’t find the other shoe. I did a quick disorderly search. My eyes shifted back and forth around the room. With my toes I began a more systematic investigation moving in concentric circles as far as they could reach without changing my position. When that failed, I began to slouch.
—May I?
The bow-tied gentleman from across the room was standing in front of my table.
Before I said anything he eased down on his haunches. Then he stood back up with the shoe balanced on his palms. He leaned forward at the waist with the formality of the king’s regent presenting the glass slipper and discreetly placed it behind the breadbasket. I whisked it off the table and dropped it on the floor.
—Thank you. That was rather inelegant of me.
—Not in the least.
He gestured back toward his table.
—Forgive my wife and I, if we were staring; but we think they’re splendid.
—I’m sorry, they?
—Your dots.
At that moment my entrée arrived and the teary-eyed gentleman retreated to his table. I began methodically cutting away at my fowl. But within a few bites, I knew I couldn’t finish it. The heady aroma of the truffles wafted off the plate and swirled my senses. If I took one more bite of that chicken, I was pretty sure that it was coming back up. When they took half of it away at my insistence, I was pretty sure it was coming up anyway.
I dumped an assortment of bills onto the tablecloth. In a rush to get fresh air I didn’t wait for the table to be pulled far enough back and I toppled the glass of red wine that I didn’t remember ordering. Out of the corner of my eye I could see soufflés being presented to the elderly couple. The suffragette gave a perplexed wave. At the door I made eye contact with a rabbit in one of the paintings. Like me, it was hanging by its feet from a hook.
Outside, I headed for the closest alley. I leaned against a brick wall and took a cautious breath. Even I could appreciate the poetic justice of it. If I got sick, from the heavens my father would be staring down at the pool of asparagus and truffle with glum satisfaction. There, he would say, is the ascendancy of your intellect.
Someone put a hand on my shoulder.
—Are you all right, dear?
It was the suffragette. From a polite distance her husband was watching through his teary eyes.
—I think I may have overdone it a little, I said.
—It’s that awful chicken. They’re so proud of it. But I find it positively repugnant. Do you think you need to be sick? You go right ahead, dear. I can hold your hat.
—I think I’m going to be okay now. Thank you.
—My name is Happy Doran; this is my husband, Bob.
—I’m Katherine Kontent.
—Kontent, said Mrs. Doran, as if she might recognize it.
Sensing that everything was going to be okay, Mr. Doran edged closer.
—Do you come to La Belle Époque often, he asked, as if we weren’t standing in an alley.
—This is my first time.
—When you arrived, we assumed you were waiting for someone, he said. If we had known you were dining alone, we would have invited you to join us.
—Robert! said Mrs. Doran.
She turned to me.
—It is inconceivable to my husband that a young woman would choose to dine alone.
—Well, not all young women, said Mr. Doran.
Mrs. Doran laughed and gave him a scandalized look.
—You’re terrible!
Then she turned back to me.
—The least you can let us do is take you home. We live on Eighty-fifth and Park. Where do you live?
At the end of the alley I saw something that looked very much like a Rolls-Royce slowing to a stop.
—Two eleven Central Park West, I said.
The Beresford.
A few minutes later, I was in the backseat of the Dorans’ Rolls-Royce being driven up Eighth Avenue. Mr. Doran insisted that I sit in the middle. He had my hat carefully propped on his knees. Mrs. Doran had the driver turn on the radio and the three of us had a gay old time.
When Pete the doorman opened the car door, he gave me a confused look, but the Dorans didn’t notice. There were kisses all around and promises to meet again. I waved as the Rolls pulled away from the curb. A little awkwardly, Pete cleared his throat.
—I’m sorry Miss Kontent, but I’m afraid that Mr. Grey and Miss Ross are in Europe.
—Yes, Pete. I know.
When I boarded the downtown train, it was crowded with faces of every color and clothes of every cut. Shuttling back and forth between Greenwich Village and Harlem with two stops in the theater district, the Broadway local on Saturday night was one of the city’s most democratic. The buttoned-down were tucked snugly among the zootsuited and the worse-for-wear.
At Columbus Circle, a lanky man in overalls boarded the train. With long arms and stubble on his chin, he looked like a past-his-prime pitcher from the farm leagues. It took me a moment to realize it was the same country type who had knocked the purse out of my hands the day before on the IRT. Rather than take an empty seat, he stood in the middle of the car.
The doors closed, the train got under way and he produced a little yellow book from his overall pocket. He opened it to a dog-eared page and began reading loudly in a voice that must have been uprooted from Appalachia. It took me a passage or two to realize that he was reading from the Sermon on the Mount.
—And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
To his credit, the preacher wasn’t holding on to a strap. As the car rocked back and forth, he was keeping steady by gripping the sides of his righteous little book. One got the sense that he could read the Gospels all the way to Bay Ridge and back without losing his footing.
—Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
The preacher
was doing an admirable job. He was speaking clearly and with feeling. He captured the poetry of the King James version and he punched every they like his life depended on it, in celebration of this central paradox of Christianity—that the weak and weary would be the ones who would walk away with it all.
But on the Broadway local on a Saturday night, all you had to do was look around you to see that this guy didn’t know what he was talking about.
Shortly after my father died, my uncle Roscoe took me to dinner at his favorite tavern near the seaport. A stevedore, he was a bighearted lumbering sort, the kind of man who would have been better off at sea—that world without women or children or social graces, with plenty of work and unspoken codes of camaraderie. It certainly didn’t come very naturally to him to take his newly orphaned nineteen-year-old niece for a meal; so I guess I’ll never forget it.
By then I already had a job and a room at Mrs. Martingale’s, so he didn’t have to worry about me. He just wanted to make sure I was okay and see if I needed anything. Then he was happy to carve up his pork chop in silence. But I wouldn’t let him.
I made him tell some of the tall tales from the old days like when he and my father stole the constable’s dog and stuck him on the train to Siberia; or when they set out to see the traveling tightrope walkers and were found twenty miles from town, headed in the wrong direction; or when they arrived in New York in 1895 and went straight to see the Brooklyn Bridge. I had heard these stories time and again, of course, which was sort of the point. But then he told me one that I had never heard before, which was also from their first days in America.
By that point, New York already had its fair share of Russians. There were Ukrainians and Georgians and Muscovites. Jews and Gentiles. So in a few neighborhoods, the shop signs were in Russian and the ruble was as widely accepted as the dollar. On Second Avenue, Uncle Roscoe recalled, you could buy vatrushka every bit as good as what you’d find on the Nevsky Prospekt. But a few days after they arrived, having paid a month’s rent, my father asked Roscoe for all the Russian currency he had left. He combined the bills with his own and then he burned them in a soup pot.