City of Promise (24 page)

Thursday, Mollie decided, was the best choice. Jane didn’t come on Thursdays, and it was Mrs. Hannity’s afternoon off.

“I shan’t need dinner today, Mrs. Hannity. And the leftover ham pie will do for tonight’s supper. You may leave now, if you wish.”

The cook went to visit her sister in Harlem Village on Thursdays. In the normal way of things Mrs. Hannity was out the door by one-thirty. It was barely eleven now. So even though Agnes Hannity had been recommended by Auntie Eileen’s Hatty Ellis, and Mollie expected the pair of them spent time discussing what went on in Mollie’s newly established household, on this occasion Mrs. Hannity was unlikely to ask too many questions, much less refuse an extra two and a half hours of freedom.

“Well, if you’re sure, missus.”

“Very sure, Mrs. Hannity. Go on. Off with you. It’s a long journey to Harlem, I know.

“It is that, missus. The horsecar and then the train, and then another horsecar to Bessie’s, ’cause her little cottage is right the way over on 125th Street and First Avenue. I keep saying she should move closer to town, but Bessie loves her garden. And of course you can’t grow cabbages in New York City. Still, like I always tell her, it’s a wonder she gets anything to grow with them winds blowing off the river and making—”

Moments later Mollie had closed the door behind Mrs. Hannity and climbed the stairs to her room. She chose a traveling suit made of dark red wool, with a snugly fitted jacket trimmed in black silk braid. Never mind that she had to hold her breath to button it over her thickening waist. And even though there wasn’t a speck of snow on the ground, she took care to bustle the skirt tightly so no fabric would trail behind her. That, after all, was the point of a fashion meant for going out on the streets, and the reason the jacket flared from the waist and had a fan of deep pleats in the back that expanded sufficiently to cover a substantial bustle. And, since it was so cold, she added a long black coat buttoned from neck to hem and trimmed with black beaver fur.

As a last touch, a gray felt bonnet with a shallow brim edged in black velvet and simply trimmed with black velvet ribbon and a few feathers, pinned in place with two pearl-tipped pins. Then she selected a small black beaver muff, and tucked some money and a comb and handkerchief into the muff’s inside pocket and left the house. Forty-five minutes later she was knocking on the door of Joshua’s double-fronted house on Bowling Green.

“So you see,” Mollie said, “the flats at the St. Nicholas are really entirely different from any rooming house. And they are not restricted to people who can afford grand Fifth Avenue mansions. They are meant for respectable ‘white collar’ families exactly like yours. The backbone of our city,” she added, in a tone of voice meant to convey the pride she took in the accomplishments of her listeners. This despite the fact that there were only women and children seated at the dining room table.

Mollie had quite deliberately timed her arrival to coincide with the midday meal. It was when the people she wished to see would be gathered together, a captive audience, as it were. According to Josh, at rooming houses catering to families the men seldom came home for lunch. Board was nonetheless part of the weekly rent and the men’s wives and offspring were fed at a preset time. By long-standing custom they dined together at a common table, and certainly no menu was presented as had become usual in the à la carte restaurants lately grown so popular in New York. The ladies and their children were expected to eat what was set in front of them, though judging from what had been left on a number of the plates, not everyone had found today’s offering to their liking. Mutton stew, Mollie thought, sniffing the air. And boiled cabbage.

“On Sixty-Third Street,” she said, “each flat has its own kitchen. You can feed your little ones when and what you judge best.”

One small girl was nodding off over her half-eaten meal, threatening to land her face in the cold and greasy remains. Her mother, who’d
been introduced as Mrs. Jackson, pulled the child into her lap. “All on one floor you said. No upstairs and no down?”

Having decided on her plan, Mollie had spent a considerable amount of time in Josh’s office, telling herself she was snooping in an excellent cause. His records were carefully kept, and made her think his idea was in some measure the same as hers. The most likely renters of his flats were families who boarded in so-called family residences; a term preferred to rooming houses, though there was really little difference.

Josh’s house on Bowling Green was a family residence, and he maintained a separate ledger dedicated to its occupants, and reserved a half page to each family. The husband’s name came first—he was the legal tenant and the one responsible for the debt—and beside it the man’s occupation. In some instances Josh had underlined that information in pencil, though the rest of the entries were in ink. Mollie believed the pencil marks indicated someone Josh thought able to afford to rent a flat. Her guess was he’d probably already broached the subject. A quiet word between gentlemen. Bit of a tip really, considering the building wasn’t yet finished. Spoken in his most earnest manner. Genuinely so, since Josh believed his flats to be a truly wonderful innovation.

Fortunately, whatever he thought about a woman’s right to be heard in the matter, he had nonetheless recorded beside each man’s name that of his wife, and the numbers of their children—divided, she had noted, by gender. (Causing her to spare a thought for whether when she told Josh she was expecting—she’d missed her monthlies in January and in February and planned to break her news as soon as the first flat was rented—he would express a preference for a girl or a boy.) The wives were critical. That’s what she’d tried to tell him the other evening. It was her justification for disobeying him and poking her nose where he clearly did not want it. And just now, sitting in the dining room of her husband’s Bowling Green family residence, it seemed worth the gamble. The women were paying rapt attention.

The one who’d asked about the single-floor arrangement of the flats was Margaret Jackson. She was married to Elva Jackson and they had two girls and a boy. If the records were in her keeping, Mollie thought, she would have noted as well the ages of the children. Josh hadn’t done so, but his books did say that Mr. Jackson was the senior accounting clerk at a clothing manufactory; and his name was underlined, so Josh must think him a prospect. There could be no doubt of the value of getting Margaret Jackson’s assistance in the matter of her husband moving his family to Josh’s new building. She could push, so to speak, while Josh pulled. “That’s correct, Mrs. Jackson,” Mollie said. “Each flat in the St. Nicholas is conveniently located on one level.”

“Och, that means you’re away to your bed with all the cooking smells trailing after you.” Margaret Jackson’s words betrayed a Scots burr, and her voice seemed to rise and fall with the rhythm of her swaying body as she cradled her child’s dark head close to her bosom, and rocked back and forth to keep the little girl asleep.

How fiercely would such a woman argue for the opportunity to put her children to bed in a home of her own? Like a tigress protecting her cubs, Mollie decided. “Not a bit of it,” she said. “Tasteful and practical, remember. There are windows providing cross ventilation in every flat. You can air the rooms quite thoroughly after meals. And,” she added, “there’s space for a rocking chair in any one of them.”

“But there’s something I don’t understand . . .” Ethyl Potter this time. Josh’s books said her husband was a newly minted attorney. “Since you’re under the same roof with a great many others, how is it a private residence?”

“French flats, that’s what they’re called, aren’t they, Mrs. Turner?” The speaker was Mrs. Francie Wildwood, the resident landlady. Josh paid her to run the house, collect the rents, and do the cooking. Auntie Eileen would describe her as
une femme d’un certain âge
, but she still boasted a voluptuous figure, and golden hair Mollie immediately recognized as being helped with a touch of peroxide. Auntie Eileen would never allow such vulgar artifice in her house.
A lady is always a
perfect match. As above, so below.
Just now Mollie cared little whether or not Mrs. Wildwood was a lady. She had let Mollie in and shown her into the dining room with something approaching enthusiasm. Now she was being helpful in the matter of the questions. Mollie was prepared to take her allies where she found them.

“Yes, Mrs. Wildwood, thank you. You’re correct. French flats. And each is entirely separate from the other. One has total independence in such a home.” Mollie let that sink in while her gaze swept the table. “You will have a key to your own front door.” It was well known that having to be let in by the landlady after any sort of outing was among the most loathed feature of family residences. “And when you close that door it is locked from the inside. The only rules are those your husband makes for you.”

Another blonde, this one natural as well as very young—no more than sixteen Mollie guessed—and obviously
enceinte,
sighed loudly. “The angel of the hearth,” she said. Then, seeing the other women turn to look at her, “That’s what a wife and mother’s supposed to be. The angel of the hearth.”

Amanda Jones, Mollie decided. Married to DuVal Jones. There had been a question mark beside his name in the column that listed the tenants’ occupations. And nothing in the one indicating children. So Mrs. Jones must be expecting her first. Mollie glanced at the other woman’s swollen belly and felt a great urge to pat her own. Barely three months was too soon for quickening, but she had been communing with the infant inside her since those first few weeks in December when her flow did not begin and she became more and more certain she was carrying. She wanted to hug Amanda Jones. Me too, she wanted to say. Me too.

“The angel of the hearth,” the young woman repeated in a soft but insistent voice, with her eyes rolling upward like a stage heroine in a matinee performance.

Well, maybe not hug her.

“There are no hearths, I warrant. Not in French flats.” Mrs. Buchwald
was a no-nonsense sort with graying hair pulled into a strict bun. She had already dismissed her four children, sending them up to the single room which Josh’s records indicated was let to the family of Frank Buchwald, post office clerk. “Steam heating, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Mollie said. “A furnace in the cellar and radiators in every room. So there’s no mess from any sort of fireplace.”

“You’re sure they’re not tenements?” Margaret Jackson again.

“Absolutely not. The plumbing is the most modern available, and there’s a bath and a water closet in each flat.” Tenements were notorious for providing no bathtubs, and one hall toilet to serve a floor that might house thirty or forty people, all of them crammed in like rats in a nest. “And,”—Mollie was convinced she had saved the best argument for last—“there is an elevator.”

Mrs. Jackson shook her head. “Och, I don’t trust elevators. Don’t see how you can be sure they won’t fall.”

“My husband has explained it to me,” Mollie said. Actually, she’d seen a demonstration three years before arranged for the workers at Macy’s. “The cables are protected by a series of knots. If one should break—an almost unheard of occasion, mind—the knots lock everything into place and the cab cannot fall. That’s why it’s called the safety elevator.”

“Almost unheard of,” Margaret Jackson said, “is not the same as never.”

There was nothing to be gained by this discussion Mollie realized. “As I was saying, the upper floors are as desirable as those below. Nonetheless, they are the most economical.” Josh was unwilling to go counter to the convention which priced the ground floor highest.

Mrs. Buchwald had produced a pencil and a slip of paper. “Number forty-two East Sixty-Third Street, is it?” And when Mollie nodded, “Are you going to tell us the price of one of these flats?”

The hard part. She had prepared herself for this, mentally rehearsing her speech about finances all during the long streetcar ride from Grand Street to Bowling Green. “Compared to what even the cheapest
brownstone would cost,” she said firmly and with a bright smile, “a great bargain. Just imagine, ladies, you get six hundred and fifty square feet divided into two bedrooms and a parlor cum dining room. As well as a kitchen already fitted with a stove and an icebox. And of course the bath and water closet, as I said.”