My grandmother rarely invoked the help of God; my mother realized she was serious. Still, she did not give up easily. “What does Elka need it for? She speaks fine. We don’t have to show her off the way Yussie Feldman shows off Shirley, Miss No-Talent.”
“That’s right; Shirley Feld has no talent. But your daughter has. Speaking, it’s not. It’s acting. Boris Tomashevsky, Jacob Adler, Muni Wiesenfeld, now they call him Paul Muni, you think they didn’t take lessons?”
Bubby waited a moment. Then, without the slightest hint of threat, she went on, “You won’t have to call the teacher, my sister Bertha will call her. Bertha and I will take care of it.”
My mother promptly reached for the phone and called Miss Claire Sussman. The result was not what either my grandmother or mother anticipated.
“I’m sorry,” the drama teacher replied, “I’m not taking any new pupils. I hold auditions the first week after Labor Day. I can’t make any guarantees. Besides, what’s the rush? She can audition with everyone else in September.”
“All of us work,” Lil replied. “We have to settle this now. We can’t bring her for auditions in September, the beginning of our season. We want you to see her this week, before we leave for Connecticut.” Miss Sussman hesitated. Lil pressed her advantage with a Division Street tactic. “You’ll regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t come to see her this week.”
“When do you want to bring her to my studio?”
“I can’t. I’m at business all week. But you can come to see us.”
“And where do you live?”
“Canal Street.”
“Canal Street downtown?”
“Miss Sussman, James Feld, his mother lives in our building and he recommended you. If you teach someone like Shirley Feld who recites the same poem month after month, year after year, you can’t say no to my daughter because of our address.”
“You’ve worn me down. Friday afternoon, 3 P.M. What’s the address?”
“The entrance is on Orchard Street. Twelve Orchard Street, but the apartment faces Canal.”
Too exhausted to protest, Miss Sussman capitulated.
The house was a mess. In spite of the new paint and linoleum in the kitchen, in spite of the linen runner on the table instead of the old shawl, the house hadn’t been cleaned since the day that Mister Elkin drove away in his fancy car. One morning Clayton hauled fruit and sugar for Bubby as usual, and the next day he didn’t turn up. Nor a week later. In the old days it was easy to search for him, because Bubby paid his rent. Now he stayed with friends, lived in Harlem, God knows where. We didn’t lack for Negroes to clean the apartment— they showed up daily asking for food. But Clayton was part of our history. Bubby needed him, she loved him. She asked every Negro man who came to our door, “You know Clayton? He’s tall, he’s skinny, one of his eyes is a little funny?” No one replied.
“Maybe he’s out of town,” Jack suggested.
“Maybe he went to California. He always talked about Hollywood,” I offered.
“Without a good-bye? Without telling us? Never.” But time passed and he didn’t call or write.
My designated meeting with Miss Sussman immediately flew from my mother’s head. She had had little interest in my drama lessons to begin with and an unexpected phone call from her boss, Mr. L. from Palace Fashions, threw her into a tizzy. While buying coats on Seventh Avenue for the fall, he had met a buyer from Saks Fifth Avenue and she asked if he could recommend a saleswoman as an “extra” for their store.
“No offense,” the buyer added, “but we don’t want anyone who lives down where your store is.”
“I have just the girl for you.” Mr. L. laughed. “She works for me, yes, but she lives in Yonkers, has two children, and her husband is the manager of a retail store. She’s beautiful, well-spoken and would be a credit to Saks Fifth.”
Palace Fashions was known citywide, as was Mr. L. When my mother walked into his store he chucked her under the chin and laughed, “Are you interested, Lil?”
In fact, the thought terrified her. “Me, working at Saks Fifth Avenue?”
“You can do it, Lil. Definitely you can. Jack will help you, he’ll walk you through the interview. The first thing is to not look too flashy and the second is to call yourself Miss Lillian, not Lil. Give your aunt’s address in Yonkers, and on your application write that you finished high school. Don’t worry, they won’t check.
“You’ll need another reference about your work. Just tell them Missy Modes on Broadway. I’ll call my friend Phil Glasser and he’ll vouch for you. Also about your hair. Tone it down a few shades, not so blonde. Pale, not red lipstick and don’t forget white gloves.” He paused. “I forgot to mention a very small hat, straw, businesslike. And keep your hands in your lap when you’re talking.”
Lil was a wreck when she got home, her head spinning from all the instructions. Later, Jack called Mr. L. for the details. The only thing Lil had remembered was to tone down her hair.
Jack did not care for this turn of events. He preferred his mother in the house and felt a similar anxiety for his wife. Having her on Fifth Avenue once or twice a month upset the routine that was so necessary for him. He listed all the negatives, not with the venom that he reserved for Mister Elkin, but with reasoning that my mother could not refute.
First negative, the early morning rush hour subway ride to Forty-second Street and the local to Forty-ninth, an hour each way. Admittedly, the store hours, nine to six, improved on the late Division Street nights. But who would she talk to, kibbitz with? Whenever my mother had a free minute she dashed outside to wave to Jack or speak to him at Farber’s, across the street from Palace Fashions.
True, Sophie Gimbel owned Saks but they rarely hired Jewish sales help—ask anyone, they would tell you. And what about the no-pressure selling, standing around, saying as little as possible to the customer? Why the hell did she need a job carrying suits and coats into the dressing room, not to mention recoloring her hair, dressing like a librarian and talking like one? Jack had no difficulty falsifying Lil’s school record, but hadn’t Mr. L. warned her to say that a garment was lovely instead of stunning? Why bother? “What’s in it for you?” he demanded.
Jack’s arguments increased my mother’s hysteria. It had taken her years to learn how to sell on Division Street, let alone at Saks where she was too terrified to buy a lipstick. Yet, she couldn’t rid herself of one thought that she expressed without fear. “If I put in one day there I can always say I worked for Saks Fifth Avenue. From Division Street to Saks Fifth. That’s really something.”
“And don’t customers who shop at Saks come to Palace Fashions? It’s no big deal.”
My grandmother, who remained silent throughout this discussion, said quietly, “Trying is not the same as getting. If she wants to try, let her.”
“Ninety/ten she won’t be hired.”
“So what’s the tsimmis? A ride uptown in a nice dress isn’t hard. You’ll go with her. And all those questions she has to answer, you’ll write them out for her on a piece of paper, she’ll copy them. Then the two of you can walk down Fifth that afternoon, maybe meet Aunt Bertha for lunch. Whatever you want. It’s an honor Mr. L. thought of Lil.”
Temporarily placated, my father pondered for a minute. “The navy blue dress you bought last year for Atlantic City with the kick pleats. No jewelry on the dress, only your small gold earrings. Tell Pandy to part your hair in the middle and comb it into a French roll or a small bun. Something classy.”
That afternoon Lil was about to leave for Pandy’s to have her hair darkened when Miss Sussman knocked timidly at the door. We barely heard her. She stepped inside. “I’m Claire Sussman.” Short, dark of hair and face, neither striking nor attractive, she stood with an erect posture and pronounced each word as if giving a speech lesson. My mother made short shrift of her plain summer suit but admired her hat, white straw that covered only the front of her head and dipped down over her right ear.
“Your hat is stunning,” my mother said and corrected herself. “I mean it’s lovely.”
A few customers had eaten their meals, but Lil, too distracted by her hair appointment and her Monday interview, hadn’t bothered to clear the tables, and Jack, who ordinarily accompanied her to the beauty salon, had left for his odious appointment at the unemployment office. I was keenly aware of the dishes with half-eaten food on the table, the crumbs on the unswept carpet, Bubby with flour on her cheeks, and my mother in an old summer dress that she wore only to Pandy’s.
“Perhaps I have the wrong place?” Miss Sussman was what my father labeled a City College type. She reined in her aggressiveness by hard-won good manners. It turned out that she had been too short to appear in major Broadway productions, so she had opened her own successful studio for children.
“No, you’re in the right place, and here’s the elocution girl. Only, I have to run to the beauty parlor.”
“Mother!”
Miss Sussman widened her dark round eyes. I could tell she was impressed that I had addressed Lil as Mother. Bubby signaled my mother by raising her voice unnaturally: “Pandy isn’t running away.” Lil stepped back inside, tolerating the next few minutes with awkward impatience.
Miss Sussman claimed the one clean chair in the dining room. “Have you prepared anything for me?” she asked. “Is there a poem you can recite?” The word
poem
came in two syllables,
po-em,
not
pome,
the way we pronounced it.
“ ‘The Children’s Hour.’ May I begin now?” The “may I” was also a big hit.
It’s doubtful that Lil heard a single word I spoke. Bubby removed her apron and looked in my direction, providing so much assurance that I began without hesitation.
Between the dark and the daylight
When the night is beginning to lower
Comes a pause in the day’s occupation
That is known as the children’s hour.
Mrs. Thomas, my teacher at P.S. 12, had drilled us to pronounce
lower
to rhyme with hour. Miss Sussman nodded.
I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet
The sound of a door that is opened
And voices soft and sweet.
Miss Sussman held up her hand. “That’s enough. I’m impressed. The trip down here was dreadful. This tenement is dreadful. But your daughter is talented.”
She handed me a typed sheet of paper: “Sweet are the uses of adversity / which like the toad / ugly and venomous / wears yet a jeweled crown on its head.” I stumbled on
venomous
but sailed through
jewel-ed
.
“Very impressive,” said Miss Sussman.
Lil softened. “Look, Miss Sussman, I have an interview at Saks Fifth Avenue on Monday. Could you give me five minutes’ help? How should I sit? What should I do with my hands?”
A smile spread over Miss Sussman’s alert, homely face. She stood up, then carefully lowered herself into the chair, her back straight, her head leaning forward slightly. She crossed her feet at the ankles rather than at the knees as my mother did. Her hands rested demurely in her lap.
“There’s nothing to it. Just remember what I showed you.”
My mother was a quick study, and went through Miss Sussman’s motions, but out of habit she placed one knee over the other.
“You have beautiful legs but for an interview you must be modest about them,” Miss Sussman instructed her. “If you forget, keep both feet on the floor and your knees together. About your speech, don’t worry about your pronunciation. Be natural, be yourself, speak in a soft voice. Smile slightly to prove that you’re pleased to be there, and keep your eyes on the person who is interviewing you. It doesn’t make a good impression if you’re shifty-eyed or glance elsewhere.”
My mother asked me, “Did you get all of that? What she said?”
I nodded.
“How did you raise a daughter in this environment?”
“Don’t ask me, ask her grandmother, she brought her up. This is Manya, the famous chef. You must of heard of her.”
Miss Sussman said, “Must
have,
must
have
heard of her.”
“I love your hat,” Lil continued without noticing the correction. “Where did you buy it? It’s what I need for the interview.”
Miss Sussman removed the hat pins from her hat, and smiling, handed the wisp of woven straw to my mother. “You may borrow it. Here’s my card with the address of my studio. Return it to my studio after the interview. And good luck with it. About your daughter . . .”
My mother carefully placed the hat on the bureau. “Speak to Manya. My hairdresser will kill me, I’m late already, she has to do a new style for me.” She left, not bothering to thank Miss Sussman for coming, for the lesson in interview etiquette or for the use of the hat. And she got away with it. Her surface rudeness did not hide either her fragility or her vulnerability.
“I’ll expect to see your granddaughter in September. I can do a lot for her.”
Manya nodded. “Thank you,” she said.
There was no talk about money or the cost of the lessons. Miss Sussman studied me for a moment. “That typed page I gave you. Did you know it was Shakespeare?”
My reply was one of the few things I had learned from my mother. “I thought it might be.”
Miss Sussman sighed with delight. So did Bubby.
Jack accompanied Lil to Saks Fifth Avenue on Monday. Her honey-blonde hair, parted in the middle, was pushed forward in a wave at both cheeks and caught in an easy bun at the neck. The white straw hat rested lightly on her hair. Jack had been absolutely right about the navy blue dress. She carried a small navy blue purse, courtesy of Uncle Goodman’s factory, and white gloves. The heels of her pumps were possibly too high but not outrageously so. “You look stunning,” Jack said.
“Lovely,” Lil replied.
Jack put her through her paces on two questions only. “Why do you want this job?” Answer, “I’ve always admired Saks and it would be a privilege for me to work here.” The word
privilege
came with difficulty, so Jack changed it to
honor
. “It would be an honor for me to work here.” To help her, he added, “Just think of a judge. You address him as ‘your honor.’ So you say, ‘It would be an honor for me to work here.’ If she asks you where you buy your clothes, say ‘On sale at Palace Fashions and at specialty shops like Missy Modes.’ ”