The Shoemaker's Wife(90)

The stage floor was lacquered black, with white lines indicating where scenery should be placed. A series of small X’s were painted strategically across the downstage lip, where solos were performed. From the highest tier of the theater, the follow spotlights were angled at these marks like cannons.

The ring of private viewing boxes, dubbed the “diamond horseshoe” by Cholly Knickerbocker and other society writers, was reserved for the wealthiest subscribers. These theatrical boxes were suspended over the orchestra seats, like delicate gold carriages, decorated with ornate medallions. Red damask draperies hung behind the seats, softening any sound from the stairways and grand aisles. Faceted glass sconces shaped like tiaras softly illuminated each level.

The girls walked down the vom and turned to look up into the upper mezzanine, empty seats that extended as high and far as the eye could see. The theater could hold 4,000 people, with 224 standing-room tickets sold for a lesser price, but never a lesser performance.

The grandeur of the opera house thrilled Laura too. It took thousands of employees to keep such a vast place running. There were hundreds of artists involved behind the scenes—stagehands, electricians, set builders, property masters, costumers, dressers, wigmakers, and milliners.

There is a beehive under every pot of honey on the island of Manhattan, thought Enza.

Where Laura was galvanized by the possibilities of working at the Met, Enza was nervous. Enza worried about her English, fretted about the skirt and blouse she’d chosen to wear. The Met was a long way from the traveling troupes that pitched tents in the fields of Schilpario or the vaudeville theaters that Laura remembered from her own childhood on the Jersey shore.

Serafina Ramunni stood with a fabric peddler on the bare stage. The head of the costume department was in her thirties, a handsome woman with strong features and a slim shape, accentuated by a belted-waist suit jacket and a long skirt with a kick pleat. She wore brown calfskin boots, and a black velvet hairband in her shiny brown hair. She chose fabrics from the bolts on display, marking the ones she would purchase with a stickpin. Angelic chiffons, sturdy velvets, and liquid satins were unfurled like flags for her perusal. She looked over at the girls, feeling their stares. “You are?”

“Laura Heery, and this is Enza Ravanelli.”

“You’re here for the seamstress jobs?”

They nodded in unison.

“I’m Miss Ramunni. Follow me to the workroom,” she said, walking upstage.

The girls looked up at her, unsure where to go.

“You can come onstage. The steps are over there.”

Enza followed Laura up the steps to the stage, feeling unworthy to step out onto it. It was like approaching a tabernacle in a cathedral. She peered down into the orchestra pit, lit by dim worklights. Black lacquer music stands were cluttered with white sheet music, like the open pages of a book.

Laura followed Miss Ramunni backstage and down the stairs to the basement, but Enza took a moment to turn centerstage and look out into the opera house before following. The upper levels of the theater looked like a massive field of poppies.

“Who wrote the letter?” Serafina asked.

“I did,” Enza said shyly.

“I passed it around the office.”

Laura looked at Enza and smiled. Good sign.

“We got a kick out of it. No one ever applied for a job here using listening to Caruso records as a skill.”

“I hope I didn’t do anything wrong,” Enza said.

“Your sewing samples saved you.” Serafina smiled, ushering the girls into a lift to the basement. “I don’t usually appreciate humor, intended or not, in query letters.”

The costume shop in the basement of the Met was a cavernous space that extended the full length of the building. From cutting tables, to a series of fitting rooms, through a hall of mirrors where the actor could see himself from every angle, past the machines, and through to finishing, where the costumes were steamed, pressed, and hung, it was a wonderland unlike anything either of the girls had ever seen. All weaves and textures of fabric—bolts of cream-colored duchesse satin, wheels of jewel-toned cotton, soft sheets of silver faille and shards of powder blue organza—lay neatly on worktables, stood upright in bolts, or were bundled in bins or jigsawed on the pattern table, waiting to be sewn.

Dress mannequins were staggered around the room, bearing garments in various states of construction. On the walls, a peek into the gallant characters of pending productions—watercolor sketches of Tristan, Leonora, Mandrake, and Romeo—hung like saints in the portrait gallery of the Vatican.

Twenty sleek, top-of-the-line black-lacquered Singer sewing machines outfitted with bright work lamps and attended by short-backed padded stools were lined up like tanks on the cusp of battle on the far side of the room. A three-way mirror and a circular platform for fittings were set off to the side with a rod and privacy curtain. Three long worktables, enough to accommodate fifty seamstresses, split the center of the room, with walking aisles in between.

A worker pressed muslin on the ironing board; another, at a sewing machine, did not lift her head from her task; still others, in the next room, operated the wringer washing machines, hanging voluminous petticoats on drying racks.

Laura and Enza took in all of it and fell instantly, immediately, and irrevocably in love. They wanted to work here more than they wished to live.

“You, over here.” Serafina pointed to Enza. “And you”—she pointed to Laura—“there.”