The Shoemaker's Wife(86)

When Puccini finished the aria, the crowd erupted in applause. Enza put her hands in the dumbwaiter and applauded as well.

“He can’t hear you,” Emma Fogarty said.

“But I have to honor him.” Enza turned and faced Laura and Emma.

“Send up the dumbwaiter,” Emma said.

Enza cranked the chain, and the tray rose to the upper floor.

“Wash and dry the crystal for the digestifs, and you girls can call it a night.” Emma checked her pocket watch. “Or morning, as it will be shortly. Once the guests leave, and I lock down the kitchen, I got a hot bath calling my name.”

“You have a bathtub?” Laura marveled.

“I live at the Katharine House in the Village. We have tubs. And a library. I like to read. And two meals a day. I like to eat.”

Enza and Laura looked at one another. “How did you get in?”

“Like everything else in this city. I got the lowdown on the crosstown bus.”

“Which line?” Enza asked.

“Any. Just look for girls our age. It’s a circuit.”

“We applied to the Katharine House, but no cigar,” Laura told her. “We’re at the Y.”

“You’ll get in somewhere. You’ll just have to wait for the vacancies every spring,” Emma told them. “Wedding fever hits, and the mighty fall. Come April the girls dump out of the boardinghouses like cold bathwater. Rooms galore. You’ll get your pick. What are you here to do?”

“To make a living,” Enza said.

“No, I mean your dream scheme. What do you really want to be?”

“We’re seamstresses.”

“Then you need an arty boardinghouse. I’d try for the Milbank. They take the playwrights, the dancers, the actresses, and the designers. You know, the crafty girls. You want me to put in a good word for you?”

“Really?” Laura said. “You can you help us get into the Milbank?”

“Sure. I’ll talk to the house mother.”

Emma paid them cash, a dollar each instead of the fifty cents they had been promised, which she dutifully recorded in the kitchen log. They were paid extra because they hadn’t broken any dishes and got the work done without annoying the butler. The girls couldn’t believe the windfall.

The scent of beeswax, fresh from the extinguished candles, filled the service entrance as Enza and Laura made their way to the street, buttoning their coats and pulling on their gloves. They ignored their aching necks, shoulders, and feet, floating home instead on the notion of their own dreams.

As they walked down Fifth Avenue, they said not a word. They walked for blocks and blocks in the quiet knowledge that something had shifted that evening; a scullery job had proved to be a turning point.

As the sun pulled up behind Fifth Avenue, the girls were warmed by the idea of it but not by its rays; the air around them was still freezing cold. Shimmering icicles clung to the barren trees that lined the avenue, looking like silver lamé evening gloves. The sidewalks, treacherous with ice, now looked as though they were sprinkled with diamond dust, and the plowed drifts of dingy gray snow took on a lavender tint in the early light.

“Automat?” Laura said as they reached Thirty-eighth Street.

“Pie?” Enza asked.

“Two slices this morning. We can afford it.”

“And we deserve it,” Enza agreed.





Chapter 17

A SEWING NEEDLE

Un Ago da Cucire

Trumpet vines cascaded down the drainpipe in shots of bold orange and soft green like fine silk tassels against the freshly pointed coral bricks. Purple hyacinths spilled out of antique white marble Roman urns on either side of the black-lacquered double entrance doors of the Milbank House at 11 West Tenth Street in Greenwich Village.

The floor-to-ceiling formal windows off the entrance stairs were appropriately festooned in layers of white silk sheers, the pale gold jacquard draperies drawn back to let in the soft light of the tree-lined street. There was not a card, a sign, a communal mail slot, or any other indication that the Milbank House was anything but an elegant brownstone owned by a single family of incredible wealth.

Tucked in the middle of a wide, tree-lined block of opulent homes, anchored by a lavish Episcopal church on the corner of Fifth Avenue and the charming Patchin Place houses across Sixth Avenue on the other, this block had character and whimsy, a rare combination in New York City at the turn of the progressive century.

The Milbank House was a double brownstone with twenty-six bedrooms, fourteen bathrooms, a formal library, a dining room, a deep garden, an enormous basement kitchen with dumbwaiter, and a beau parlor. It was owned and operated by the Ladies’ Christian Union, who provided young women without family or connections in New York City with room and board for a reasonable fee.

Emma Fogarty had stopped by and bragged to the house mother about her talented, hardworking friends, one an Italian immigrant, the other a feisty Irish girl, both of whom needed a proper address to pursue their dreams as seamstresses to the upper class, along the park on Fifth Avenue, and in the theatrical houses of Broadway.

Breakfast and dinner were included in the weekly rent, and there was a wringer washing machine as well as drying racks in the basement. But more important than all these lovely features of gracious living was the camaraderie of the young residents, who aspired to better lives on the wings of their talent and creativity. Finally, Laura and Enza were with like-minded peers, who understood their feelings and drive.