City of Promise (6 page)

“Greek!”

“Exactly. Mollie Popandropolos. It is a Greek name. I read it in a magazine.”

“But how—”

“For heaven’s sake, Mollie, people from every corner of the world arrive in New York to find their fortune. Why not a young Greek girl? One with a substantial dowry who is in need of a husband, but not about to settle for someone less than equal to her in quality.”

“Popandropolos.” Mollie tried out the strange word, then repeated it. “Popandropolos. I suppose I could be. But I still don’t see where I’m going to find a suitor of the sort—”

“You haven’t been listening to me, Mollie. I have found you a job in a place where everyone in New York turns up sooner or later. You are going to work at Macy’s.”

3

T
HANK GOD FOR
the ladies who shopped. They were the drivers of progress.

It was because of them the merchants who made their fortunes in retail took advantage of the latest marvels in construction and stretched their marble and cast-iron palaces wider than had been possible with buildings made of brick. Such advances allowed the aisles of their emporiums to be wide enough for feminine underskirts and overskirts, and all the silk and satin bustled behind. And to make room for all the choices the ladies demanded, the men piled floor on top of floor, these days as high as seven or eight stories; a thing made practical because of Mr. Otis and his steam-driven elevators. Still more important, it was the ladies who pulled the town up the island.

The women of New York were no longer content to live above their husband’s businesses in the pattern handed down from Dutch New Amsterdam two hundred years before. Their menfolk indulged them, since there was much to be gained by separating domestic life from commerce. Besides, good use could be made of the space available
once residential life moved uptown and enterprise took over the space left behind. Traders and bankers and manufacturers profited by having ready access to each other. Even Cornelius Vanderbilt, who made a hub for his four railroads in the impressive Grand Central Depot uptown on Forty-Second Street and Fourth Avenue, oversaw his empire from a downtown office.

By that peculiarly cold spring of 1871, six years after Lee surrendered at Appomattox, New York City was humming and thrumming its way to ever-greater profits, and the saloon and the spittoon ruled below Canal Street. The hitching post as well. The old streets on the southern tip of Manhattan were so narrow that carriages and horse-cars were almost always hopelessly snarled, and there wasn’t a hope of adding the streetcars of the horse railway that ran along metal rails embedded in the middle of the road. Given such a Babel of traffic, many of the men preferred horseback, since getting about quickly was an advantage in the making of money. Never mind that further uptown a car drawn by four horses could move thirty-five men, each paying a nickel fare, or that the ratio of one beast per man exponentially increased the amount of manure on the streets.

The ladies were not so forgiving. Surely Mr. Constable and Mr. Best and Messrs. Lord and Taylor understood that no woman wanted to drag her skirts and her dainty laced-up boots through all that when she went to shop.

Rowland H. Macy quickly spotted the trend. He moved north, from Eighth to Fourteenth Street on Sixth Avenue, and soon B. Altman’s, Best & Co., and Stern Brothers marched past him and established themselves between Union Square and Twenty-Third Street. The avenue—a broad thoroughfare well served by the streetcars threading the cobbles on their narrow tracks and the free-ranging horsecars either side—overtook Broadway as the spine of retail. It didn’t take long for the stretch to be known as the Ladies’ Mile. Macy did not object to company; he knew neighbors in the same line of business meant high traffic, and that meant more custom. It only mattered that the
ladies tried his store first for whatever they wanted. Furnishings, furs, household goods, kitchen utensils, books—all could be had at Macy’s. Departments, he called these separate areas of commerce within his always growing emporium. Other retailers developed different lines, but eventually they too were no longer dry goods stores but department stores. By the time that happened Macy was preparing to best them yet again.

It was common sense, Macy said, that a woman would prefer another women to attend her, particularly now that clothing bought off the rack was taking over the garment trade. All New York was aghast when he made his cousin Margaret Getchell general manager of his store, and instructed her to hire females for the selling floor. “What has happened to the morality of the ladies that they would consider taking from a man the means to support his family,” thundered an editorial in Mr. Godkin’s
Nation.
The women—who mostly had neither husband nor father to support them and must work or starve—paid him no mind.

Macy’s clerks wore a blue-gray uniform purchased from the store and paid for by a deduction from their twenty-two-dollar weekly wage (fifteen for women). They were forbidden to talk except to their customers, and they regularly worked a twelve-hour day, longer during sales or at Christmas when the store opened at nine and closed an hour before midnight. Employees were required to be at their posts by six a.m. to set out the stock, and remain on duty an hour after closing to put it away. Men who finished these eighteen-hour stints frequently stretched out on the counters to get a few hours sleep before the next day began. Propriety demanded that the women trudge home.

Nonetheless, Mrs. Getchell, who demanded refined speech and superior comportment, had ten female applicants for every opening. Working at Macy’s was a cut above being a domestic, the store was cleaner and pleasanter than a sweatshop, and above all, Macy’s was respectable. Eileen Brannigan always said it was because respectable
employment for a woman was so hard to come by that the city was so well-supplied with whores.

Mollie Popandropolos, as she was known at Macy’s, first saw Josh Turner when he was standing in the doorway of the small work space that was entirely her domain.

She was unused to visitors in the little room tucked into a corner of the third floor. Her hours were less draconian than those of the salesclerks—Mollie started at eight and finished at six—and in the normal way of things she went round the floors as soon as she arrived, picking up the bits of specially ordered embroidery and lacework and the like, then carried them back to her workshop. Finished things were neatly labeled and put in a basket by the door to be picked up by a stock boy, who came after hours when no customers were about. It was rare that anyone disturbed Mollie during the working day. And certainly not a man, his bulk all but filling the open door, hat under his arm so she could see his tousled red hair. “Hello, I take it you’re Mrs. Popandropolos. They told me I’d find you here, hidden deep within the Macy’s maze. I’m Josh Turner.”

“Oh yes, Mr. J. Turner.” She recognized the name and her glance went immediately to his right leg. You couldn’t see a thing different. At least while he was standing still as he was now. The trouser hung perfectly straight, despite covering a thin, strapped-on wooden peg rather than a full-muscled, flesh-and-blood leg.

Josh saw the direction of her stare. “Works perfectly,” he said. “Lining the leg with buckram does the job. I hated having the fabric flapping about as it did. I wanted to come and say thank you before this, but they never told me where you were. Until today when I finally got the gentleman who supplies my cravats to ’fess up. You’re Macy’s big secret, Mrs. Popandropolos. They must be afraid one of their rivals will entice you away.”

“It’s Miss Popandropolos,” Mollie said. “And I’m very pleased that
my solution works for you, Mr. Turner.” It had been simple enough once the tailor explained the problem. She was surprised he hadn’t thought of it himself. As it was he had not, and ever since each pair of trousers Mr. Turner purchased was sent to her to have buckram hand-sewn into the right leg below the knee. Four pairs these last two years. And she’d finished a fifth yesterday. It had taken longer than usual for her to get to the job because so many ladies were getting their finery together for the Easter Parade in a few weeks. “I’m sorry you had to wait for the gray gabardines, Mr. Turner. I finished them yesterday. They’re sure to be delivered today.”

It was a secure promise. Wagons blazoned with the name R. H. Macy’s and driven by men wearing the same blue-gray uniform as the salesclerks traversed the city every day but Sunday. “New Yorkers want everything in a flaming hurry,” Mr. Macy said. “And Macy’s never disappoints.”

Joshua waved aside the matter of his new trousers. “I didn’t come for that. Only to say thank you, as I said. You took some finding.” He nodded toward the sprawling selling floor behind him.

Mollie had a sudden vision of what he’d walked through to arrive at her little room: shelves and racks and counters full of ladies’ clothing. Just outside her door were a selection of ladies’ lace-trimmed pantaloons, and immediately beyond that row after row of crinolines and petticoats. Her cheeks colored simply by virtue of the mental image. She set her embroidery aside and went straight to him, boldly taking his left arm since he held a walking stick as well as his hat under his right. “Do let me show you the quickest way out, Mr. Turner. It is a bit of a maze, just as you said.”

“I believe, Miss Popandropolos,” Josh said, his grin widening, “you’re giving me what is known as the bum’s rush.”

“Never, Mr. Turner. Macy’s values your custom far too much for that. I only wish to be helpful.” They were past the crinolines by then, and while Mollie was aware of the stares of a few of the women, most were too busy with their shopping to notice.

Josh paid no attention whatever to the women around them. His attention was absorbed by the one who had attached herself to him in such a determined manner, and managed seemingly without effort to match her gait to his. The top of her dark head came somewhere below his earlobe, and she had a pleasant voice and an accent that seemed naturally cultured, not one of those exaggerated attempts to overlay an immigrant brogue or a shopgirl’s slur. He particularly liked that she turned her face up to his when she spoke, with no trace of practiced artifice in the gesture.

A delightful face he realized, amazed at himself he hadn’t more quickly noticed the large dark blue eyes, or the dimples on either side of her mouth when she smiled. She wasn’t the sort of beauty who knocked you over first thing, but a beauty nonetheless. “Listen,” he said, “it really is Miss Popandropolos, not Mrs.? That’s not some Macy type of tomfoolery for his lady clerks?”

“I am mistress of special sewing, Mr. Turner. Not a salesclerk. And yes, it really is Miss Popandropolos.” Now he knew she was a spinster. Well, so be it. The way things had turned out didn’t suit Auntie Eileen—Mollie living these last four years in a ladies’ boardinghouse and working for her living with still no husband in sight—but now that she’d accepted the fact that she was never to have children of her own, Mollie had found much to like in being independent. Of course it might not be as nice if she had to manage entirely on the seventeen dollars a week Macy’s paid her (the male tailors earned twenty-four), but Auntie Eileen still paid her thirty dollars a month to keep her books, a job Mollie did on Tuesday evenings. All together, things had turned out better than Mollie expected. Including the task of getting Mr. Joshua Turner through the ladies’ intimates department without causing an uproar. Perhaps it was because of the stick and his walk having a slight jerk to it that they were spared open stares. These days everyone assumed such a condition to indicate a soldier injured in the war and turned respectfully away.

In minutes they were at the bank of elevators in the third-floor
vestibule. “Here we are, Mr. Turner. Thank you for coming to see me. It was most gracious.”

“You hated it,” he said. “Will Mrs. Getchell give you the rough of her tongue because of me? She manages the store, doesn’t she? I’m told she’s a harridan.”

“Mrs. Getchell believes as we all do, Mr. Turner, that the customer is always correct. So if you wished to see me, Macy’s is happy to oblige.”

Those were the same words he quoted back to her three days after his first visit, on the Thursday afternoon when he again appeared at the door of her sewing room. “The customer’s always correct you said. So I’ve come to bring you these,” holding out a bunch of dark purple violets surrounded by hand-cut paper lace and tied with a pink ribbon, “and you must say, ‘Yes, of course, Joshua. I will be happy to go coaching with you Sunday afternoon.’ I’ve just purchased three new pairs of trousers, so I’m the customer and I insist.”

“Thank you for the posy. It’s charming. But I can’t . . .” It was not his improbable arrival that tied her tongue. It was the sight of Auntie Eileen’s best friend, Rosie O’Toole, looming over his shoulder. Mollie had no doubt that in a matter of hours Mrs. O’Toole and Eileen Brannigan would be sitting together over a cup of tea, and that Auntie Eileen would be aware that Mollie at last had a suitor. Then, when it didn’t work out as Mollie was quite sure it would not—why should the likes of Mr. J. Turner be seriously interested in a woman well past marrying age?—her aunt would be disappointed, and say Mollie had become too independent. “Thank you again,” she said. “The violets are lovely. But I’m afraid this Sunday is out of the question.” Behind him Rosie O’Toole’s face turned dark with disapproval.