Victory Garden

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

The following afternoon I walked home from the school where I taught first grade with a nickel in my pocket, searching the shops along the way for anything I might like to buy. Today a nickel is nothing, throwaway change, but in 1917 a nickel was a prized possession. Five cents could buy you a lukewarm glass of beer with a free lunch, a subway ride, or a Sunday newspaper with a comics section printed in color. A nickel could buy you a shave, a shoeshine, a sandwich, a pack of cigarettes, a ticket to the moving pictures, or a good cigar. A dinner with wine and music at an elegant restaurant cost one dollar. Macy’s department store sold a gallon of 100 proof Mount Vernon Rye for two dollars. Bloomingdale’s made a man’s suit to order for thirteen dollars. Five years earlier Carl Jung had broken away from Freud’s s****l interpretations of everything from women’s purses to train tunnels, and in 1917 he published Psychology of the Unconscious. Moving pictures, glimmers of sentimentalized lives, devoid of sound or color, began replacing vaudeville as the entertainment of the masses. “Covent Garden: Ragtime Waltz” by Marcella Henry and “Shave ‘em Dry” by Sam Wishnuff were popular tunes, Model-Ts the standard mode of transportation. But when we’re living our lives we don’t consider what we wear or what we do as the makings of posterity. Only later do we realize that we lived through extraordinary changes, and it’s only afterwards when we recognize that we’ve lost something in the translation from then to now—the ability to look around as if there were something new to discover each day.

I lived in New York City down a tree-lined neighborhood in a red-brown brownstone I shared with my father. I was a born New Yorker, a city girl in a time when American cities still felt new. I was at home among the electric lights, the skyscrapers, the crowds, the open-air automobiles that cranked and sputtered down the streets. In 1917, Manhattan played an unending vignette, color and drab, glamour and dilapidation, flamboyance and timidity, clutter and clatter. Model-Ts, Cadillacs, and Oldsmobiles, with their chugging, bulky masses, pushed their way through thin-winding roads, their drivers frustrated and flinching or bored and unconcerned as they missed colliding with other autos, low-flying birds, or the audacious pedestrians determined to make their way. Honking horns and loud voices, the thunder of the El trains pulled by locomotives that dropped sparks and cinders on the people lumbering beneath, screeching brakes, and laughing children were all set to the quick-time syncopation of ragtime music.

I was happiest inside the brownstone where there was the camaraderie that exists between people who are alone in the world and have pulled together to make it through. Where there was chaos out there, inside, where the floral-patterned over-stuffed furniture gave comfort, where birds chirped at the seeds and nuts left for them in dishes on the windowsill, where flowers grew in their small plot in the backyard, where the wind-up Victrola sent the joyous melodies of Mozart or the quick-time rhythms of Al Jolson into the air, there was rest for the weary. Whenever I walked into the brownstone again after even only an hour or two away, I exhaled in relief because it was good to be home. That afternoon, the nickel unspent and warm in my hand, I plopped onto the overstuffed armchair and closed my eyes. I needed some rest after a tiring day chasing after a roomful of seven-year-olds. Mrs. Harris, our housekeeper, her white frilly apron tied tightly around her ample waist, her graying hair tied into what she called a “hot cross bun,” clapped her hands as she did every time I came home, as she had every time she saw me for as long as she had been working for us—nearly 20 years by then.

“Don’t fall asleep now, Rose,” she said, shaking my shoulder. “Your father is bringing home a guest for dinner. They’ll be here any minute.”

I stood from the chair, shaking away my lethargy. “Who?” I asked.

Mrs. Harris winked as though the answer was her secret. Then she leaned close and whispered, “A young man.”

“Which young man?”

“I hardly know, Rose. Your father mentioned his name, but you know how I am about names.” She pointed to her ear and laughed. “In one and out the other.” She nudged me toward my bedroom. “Go spiffy yourself up, young lady. Take a bath and brush your hair. Put on that pretty lilac dress you wore to Mrs. Wilcox’s dinner party last month. You looked lovely in that, the way it brought out the light in your eyes.”

I glanced at myself in the gilded mirror on the wall. A few hairs had fallen from their upsweep, and the lines in my dress had flattened a bit during my busy day, but otherwise everything looked buttoned and fastened. “Do I look that bad?” I asked.

“You look a little wilted, Rose.”

“I’ve been teaching seven-year-olds all day. If you did what I did you’d look a little wilted too.”

“You don’t need to work, Rose. Your father makes enough money at the Times to support you comfortably. You can leave that teaching nonsense alone and focus on your real work.”

I smiled at Mrs. Harris. “Which is?”

Mrs. Harris slapped her hand in the air as though the answer were obvious. “What other job does a woman have? To find a husband! Which is why we need you to look your best tonight. It’s not every evening an eligible young man shows up in your home.”

“Did Dad say he was eligible?” I asked.

“He didn’t say so specifically, no, but I’m sure the young man must be eligible. Why else would your father bring him here?”

I nodded, allowing Mrs. Harris to believe there was no other possible reason my father might bring home an unmarried man other than to be introduced to me. I didn’t have it in me to remind her that she was the only one bothered by my unmarried status. I was all of 27 then, though in 1917 that was nearly, if not already, matronly. Still, I was one of the fortunate ones. I never felt pressure to do anything I didn’t want to do from my father. He never pushed me this way or that, the way others would have me go. He taught me to know my own mind though we lived in a time when women’s minds were thought too small, too frail for validation. He taught me to never settle for anything less than the rules of my own heart, and that it’s worth the fight to live my life on my own terms. And I wanted to live according to my own terms, even if I wasn’t yet sure what those terms might be. Then, like most women, I took it as my due that I must wait. Young women expected romanticized lives, Cinderella stories of passionate, soul-filled kisses and dewy, morning-filled eyes that flickered like the frames of the moving pictures that made the ordinary seem wonderful, perfect, too good to be true. And it was too good to be true, so I waited, content to wait, unlike Mrs. Harris, who was tired of my waiting.

As Mrs. Harris bustled back into the kitchen, rubbing her hands and laughing to herself as though she were plotting some cunning plan, I reached for the telephone and asked the operator for my aunt Cynthia’s line. She wasn’t only beautiful to look at, Cynthia, but she was socially elegant, a sought-after dinner guest by the elitist of the elite. She had the magic of small talk, which I did not, the ability to chat with anyone about anything. She would be my back-up. She would know what to do.

The young man in question was Montgomery Carter. Tall, dark-haired, muddy-eyed, at first glance he struck me as handsome if somewhat awkward in the way he held his neck long and his head high, as if the upper portion of his body were pulled upward by a rack, as if some thriving businessman were making a skyscraper out of him the way they were making skyscrapers out of every empty space in Manhattan. Mr. Carter arrived before my father, so it was Mr. Carter, Cynthia, and me while we waited. We sat on the overstuffed sofa in the sitting room while Mrs. Harris set out the dishes for dinner. Montgomery Carter was polite, if cold, when he had to respond to the harmless social niceties Cynthia posed to him as a way to draw him out of his shell.

“Martin said you’re one of his new aides,” she said.

“That’s correct,” answered the prim Mr. Carter.

“I know Martin is very happy to have you on board.”

Cynthia paused, waiting for Mr. Carter to respond in kind as one would normally do in a conversation. When he stayed silent, eyeing the polished wood floor instead of answering, she tried again.

“Are you from New York?”

Montgomery turned to Cynthia, his expression aghast. “I am Montgomery Carter of the Fifth Avenue Carters. Yes, I am from New York.”

The front door rattled and my father walked in—not a moment too soon, I thought. Cynthia was only too glad to give him her place next to Mr. Carter on the sofa. When her back was turned away from the men, she slapped her hand to her cheek and rolled her eyes. She followed me into the kitchen and together we burst out laughing very much at our guest’s expense. Away from prying eyes, Cynthia stood straight, her head at an abnormally high angle, her little finger held awkwardly in the air as though she were sipping tea with the King, and said, in her most hoity-toity manner, “I am Montgomery Carter of the Fifth Avenue Carters. Yes, I am from New York.”

I bowed toward her in my most genteel manner. “How do you do, Mr. Carter.”

“I do better than you, thank you.”

Mrs. Harris bustled in, checking the soup bubbling on the stove, pulling out the silverware from the drawer. She nudged me with her elbow as she stacked the silverware onto a platter.

“What do you think of him? He’s very handsome. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Very mysterious looking, don’t you think?”

“He’s Montgomery Carter of the Fifth Avenue Carters,” I said.

“Wealthy too? Rose, that’s wonderful!” She lit up bright and clapped her hands under her chin as though Montgomery Carter and I were already engaged.

My father came into the kitchen, peeking under the lid of the pot on the stove. “Is dinner ready? I’m famished.” He breathed in deeply. “Clam chowder, my favorite.” He took a spoon from the counter, heading toward the pot until Mrs. Harris slapped his hand away.

“You can have a seat at the table,” she said. “I’ll bring the soup right now. That’s a fine young man you brought here tonight, Mr. Scofield. Handsome and rich. Just the kind of man our Rose needs.”

My father was appalled. “I didn’t bring Montgomery here for Rose. I wouldn’t let her marry him if he were the last man on earth. I don’t care how much he stares at her picture on my desk.”

Cynthia shook her head. “Martin…”

“Don’t worry, Cynthia,” my father said. “He might think Rose is pretty, which she is—the prettiest girl in town, just like her mother was, just like you—but we’re not fancy enough for the Carters. I heard his mother has some toilet paper heiress set aside for him.”

“I’m all right with not being fancy enough for Montgomery Carter,” I said.

“Good girl,” said my father.

Mrs. Harris bustled away with the white china soup tureen in her hands. “I don’t know,” she said. “Handsome, rich, available. Sounds like a catch to me. And Rose isn’t getting any younger.” She disappeared from the kitchen, and I threw my arms around my father’s neck, kissing both of his cheeks.

“I love you for not bringing him here for me,” I said.

“I love you too, Rose, which is exactly why I didn’t bring him here for you.”

“Then why did you bring him?” Cynthia asked.

“Mitchell Carter, Montgomery’s father, is on the paper’s board of directors. His wife asked me to take Montgomery under my wing, train him to become an editor, teach him the newspaper business from the inside out. She said Montgomery was thirty years old and it’s time he found some direction in his life. He started working for me this week, and I invited him here as a courtesy to Mrs. Carter, that’s all.”