Enza paid for the pie and coffee, scooped up four nickels from the bin, and placed two in the glass slot outside the serving wall. The serving wall was filled with single portions of everything from macaroni and cheese to a single black-and-white-iced cookie. The customer chose his portion, dropped the nickels in, and took the serving out himself. She grabbed two forks, took them with the pie over to their table, and returned to pour the coffee. The white ceramic cups and saucers with their gay green borders always managed to lift her spirits. She balanced the cups on saucers, black for Laura, with cream in her own.
“We’re doing fine, Enza,” Laura said when Enza served her coffee. “We’ve got a room at the Y, and we’re working.”
Enza was worried that she wouldn’t be able to send money home if they didn’t get permanent jobs. “Any sewing jobs?”
“I have a feeling Marcia Guzzi is going to come through at Matera Tailoring.”
“And I put our names in at Samantha Gabriela Brown,” Enza said. “They make children’s clothes.”
“Yeah, but they don’t pay. We can’t do day shifts for fifty cents. And they don’t give piecework until you’ve been there six months.”
“Maybe we could talk to the desk manager at the Y and get the room fee down,” Enza said.
“I know the Y isn’t plush, but it’s better than the basement on Adams Street. Or my four-to-a-room bedroom in Jersey.”
“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” Enza said softly.
“We’re wait-listed at the good boardinghouses—something will come through. Let’s look at this as an adventure instead of a chore. All of it. Being poor, looking for work, being scared, and going hungry is all part of the adventure. We’ve never been scullery, and now we have the opportunity. This will be educational. We’ll turn hell into swell.” Laura laughed.
Enza and Laura left the Y in midtown, bundled in scarves, gloves, coats, and wool cloche hats pulled low, and headed up Fifth Avenue on foot.
The mansions on Fifth Avenue looked like a row of top hats, as the kerosene streetlamps lit by the doormen threw shadows on their facades. Enza and Laura walked in and out of the pools of light under the entrance awnings, feeling a blast of warmth from the small portable coal ovens positioned to keep the wealthy warm as they walked through the polished brass entrance doors and into the motorcars waiting to take them out on the town.
Enza and Laura observed the shift change in the mansions, as black maids left through the service entrance and the night staff entered, replacing them. Irish maids made their way east to the el train for their commute home. The wind was bitterly cold, whistling through the city blocks, creating errant gusts that hit Enza and Laura like the crack of a whip as they crossed the streets.
Enza and Laura found 7 East Ninety-first Street easily. Lit from within, the Italian Renaissance mansion dazzled as torches lit the street, throwing golden light on to the entrance. The elegant home had a particular Roman opulence, and yet, like most of the new buildings born of the latest architecture trends in the city, it seemed courant and fresh, or maybe it was the people who lived inside that imbued the homes with those qualities. Semicircular arched windows were embedded in the eggshell-colored limestone like jewels. Thick mahogany castle doors, arched and set with iron bindings, were thrown open, festooned with garlands of fresh cedar and bunches of cranberries and walnuts. Enza marveled that simple fruit and nuts, available for free everywhere on her mountain, became embellishments for the gentry of New York City. She would remember to write to her mother about the decorations.
“This is it. The James Burden mansion.” Laura scanned the notes she had made for them. “We are to enter from the carriage drop door in the back and ask for Helen Fay. She’s in charge of the house.”
“This is not a house. It’s a palazzo,” Enza said, taking it in.
“It’s a palazzo with a kitchen. Let’s go.”
Enza followed Laura through the service entrance. Laura asked the butler for directions, and he sent them through a small hallway. No sooner were they in the service hallway when the girls were forced to back against the wall to make room for a team of waiters, who passed by carrying enormous flower arrangements, Tuscan urns stuffed with fuchsia peonies, red roses, and green apples. Laura and Enza looked at one another in disbelief.
As the butler opened the doors to the rotunda, the girls looked inside. The opulent foyer, the granite floor, the limestone walls, and even the stairs were pearl white, set off by a grand staircase that resembled ivory keys on a piano. The wide Hauteville marble steps twirled in an S shape up to a landing with an ornate gold-leafed railing. The banister railing was lined with black velvet; Enza imagined it would be like holding a gloved hand for guests making their way to the party upstairs.
The urns were placed on pedestals throughout the atrium, vibrant shots of color against the pale marble. Crystal hurricane sleeves covered white pillar candles made of beeswax that threw warm, fractured light onto the marble, making the atrium glow.
“Where do they get peonies in winter?” Laura whispered as they proceeded to the kitchen.
The kitchen was as wide and deep as the main factory floor at Meta Walker. Long aluminum tables inset with wooden chopping blocks were situated down the center of the room like a racetrack. Sleek pots and pans hung overhead. The long wall was a series of smooth griddles attended by a staff in white, headed by a chef who wore a toque. Beyond the kitchen was an assembly room, where trays of fine china waited to be filled before serving. Off the assembly room, the work doors were propped open to reveal a courtyard, where a Negro attendant in a white apron and wool hat hand-cranked ice cream in an aged wooden barrel. His warm breath exhaled in the cold looked like puffs of smoke as he operated the crank.
The kitchen ran like the greased gears of a sewing machine, one operation leading to the next without a glitch. The workers spoke little, coordinating their work via a series of hand signals.
The first person Enza and Laura met was Emma Fogarty, a no-nonsense young woman around their age with light brown braids twisted up on her head, bright blue eyes, and a nondescript figure hidden behind a brown cotton smock, with wooden clogs on her feet and red woolen knee socks on her legs. She wrote on a blackboard visible throughout the kitchen.
“We’ve been sent from the Dandrow agency,” Laura said.
“Both of ye?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re slop and wash. I’ll show you.”
“We’re supposed to report to Helen Fay.”
“You’ll never lay eyes on Helen Fay. She’s upstairs, fanning the napkins.”
“I’m Laura Heery, and this is Enza Ravanelli.”
“Emma Fogarty. I’m the kitchen captain.”
Emma pointed to a coat closet, and the girls took off their outer clothes. She handed them each a smock like the one she wore, which they pulled on as they followed Emma through the catacombs of the kitchen. Along a long hallway, floor-to-ceiling closets with small windows revealed stacks of dishes, cups, tureens, bowls, and glassware.
Emma led the girls down a dark flight of wooden steps to a dimly lit room, in which a large wooden table was surrounded by stools. On the far wall, the mouth of a dumbwaiter sat open, stacked with empty trays. Under the dumbwaiter was a metal trough with a shaft leading into a hole in the floor for scraps. A series of deep sinks with movable nozzles attached to the faucets created an L shape beyond the trough. Wooden dowels, on which dishes could drain before they were dried, separated the sinks.
“This is a real affair tonight. Two hundred people. You gotta move fast, and you gotta be careful. We’re using the china from Russia, some czar sent it when the Burdens got hitched.” She held up her hand. “Don’t ask. It’s got gold leafing. Helen Fay will check for scratches, and she’ll do a count tomorrow when the shelves are refilled. So don’t break any. You two do the slopping—that’s cleaning the dishes before washing—then you’re gonna wash them—if you run out of hot water, you let me know; som
etimes we do—and then you let ’em dry and then buff with cotton rags, they’re on the shelf over there. Then you’re going to put them in chamois sleeves—never, ever stack the plates without the chamois, or they’ll throw me in the furnace. When the party’s over, we’ll run ’em up the dumbwaiter to the storage closets.”
Enza’s head swam. Emma spoke as fast as the click of typewriter keys. Enza barely understood anything she said.
“Got it?” Emma asked.
“Yes, absolutely,” said Laura.
“I’ll be up in the kitchen if you need me. It’s dead right now, but the action will start in about an hour, when cocktails are served. Just keep the dumbwaiter moving. Don’t hold it down here. The last dishwasher almost got shot by the butler, he got so mad when he couldn’t send glasses down. Backup is the enemy here, girls.” Emma went to the dumbwaiter and yanked the pulley. The gold trays ascended smoothly in the hand-operated elevator.
“Thank you,” Laura and Enza said.
“Don’t thank me. You’ll hate me with a divine fury when you see the dishes you have to do. But that’s what this is. The rich enjoy life, and we clean up after ’em. Just the luck of the draw, I guess.”
As the dirty dishes descended, Laura and Enza quickly created their own system to move things along. Just as they had in the factory, they figured out a way to make the most of their time. Laura cleared the food with one hand, giving the plate to Enza, who put it in soapy water, scrubbed, and then to another sink for rinse, then dry.
In between courses, they were able to keep up because of the time allotted the guests to eat. The trick, the girls learned, was to let the dishes stay on the drying racks until they could get to them. The time came when one course was served and the other was bussed down the dumbwaiter.
As hard as the work was, Enza and Laura did not complain. They had both seen worse, and there was something about working in a mansion that made the work seem more pleasant. Maybe it was just the opulence of the candlelit rotunda, the weightless beauty of hand-painted Russian china, or the idea of sharing a space with peonies in winter that elevated their moods. They couldn’t be sure. All they knew is that they were together; they could talk, scheme, and dream as they worked through the scullery chores.
Enza dried the dinner plates carefully, then slid them into their blue chamois sleeves and stacked them. She made a note of how many plates were in the stack. A tray cluttered with dessert plates was lowered in the dumbwaiter, and she reached in to remove the tray. She stopped when she heard singing, a rich tenor voice, with a full timbre. The notes sailed down the dumbwaiter as though they had been wrapped in velvet: the lyrics of Tosca in the language of her birth.
Amaro o sol per te m’erail morire
“That’s Mr. Puccini, playing for the singers,” Emma Fogarty said from behind her. Laura lifted the tray out of the dumbwaiter.
“He’s at the party?”
“You just washed his dish,” Emma said. “He’s playing on a Steinway baby grand in the music room. Alessia Frangela and Alfonso Mancuso are singing duets under the Bonanno mural. Maria Martucci is playing the harp. The guests are gathered around them like they’re singing around a campfire.”
“My old boss used to play Caruso singing Tosca.”
“I can’t send you up. You’re scullery,” Emma said. “But you know what? If you go upstairs to the dish closets, I’ll open the flaps on the dumbwaiter, and you’ll be right under the music.”
The girls loaded up trays with china and went up the small staircase. Emma led them to the dish closets. She put down the dishes and opened the latch on the wooden cubby.
“Go ahead, lean in. That’s how I eavesdrop on the Burdens.”
Enza put her head into the dumbwaiter, resting her hands on the trim. Puccini’s crystal clear notes sailed down. This time it was like being in the room; the volume was perfect.
Laura sorted the dishes on the shelves as Puccini and his singers serenaded the crowd. She watched as Enza listened. Her head bowed reverently, Enza took in the notes, the chords, the sweep of the music. It was as if the sound filled her up and her body floated overhead, as light as meringue.
Enza couldn’t wait to write to Mama and tell her of her stroke of luck.
This is my Italy, she thought. The power and beauty of the antiquities, the detailed frescoes, the imposing statuaries carved of milk white granite, Don Martinelli’s hammered gold chalice, the glorious tones of the music, the Italy of Puccini and Verdi, Caruso and Toscanini, not the Italy of the shattered spirits in Hoboken and the drunken, desperate Anna Buffa. This was the Italy that fed her soul, where hope was restored and broken hearts were mended in the hands of great artists.
For the first time since she had come to America, Enza felt at home. In that moment, she suddenly realized how to marry American ambition to Italian artistry. Both had nurtured her and helped her grow. That night, Puccini’s music stoked the fire of her ambition, and she felt her determination rise anew.
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 tho
ugh 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.