Band of Sisters (12 page)

“You can go, Mrs. Gordon.” He leaned back in his chair as the door closed. “You say the Wakefields sent you?”

“Yes, sir, for a sales position.”

He looked doubtful.

“The Wakefields of Morningside, sir.”

“A bit out of their line, I’d imagine.” He frowned, looking her up and down but resting his eyes in places that flustered Maureen.

“I’m a friend of the family,” she lied and felt the heat rise up her neck again. “Our fathers were friends.” That felt more natural.

“I see.” But clearly he didn’t. Still, he pulled a printed form from his desk drawer. “Fill out this application and bring it back tomorrow.”

“I could bring it back today,” Maureen offered quickly.

“Eager little thing, aren’t you?” He grinned. Maureen hated his grin.

“It’s just that I need to begin, sir, to establish my employment,” she stammered.

“Just off the boat?”

Maureen thought she’d best be clear, lest she lose her nerve and the opportunity to speak with someone in authority. “My sister has been detained at Ellis Island until I can provide proof of my ability to care for her.”
No need,
she thought,
to mention the chicken pox.

“I see.” He leaned farther back and swept his eyes over her again. “Is she, by any chance, as good a looker as you?”

Maureen shifted her purse to her other hand. “I’ll need a letter statin’ guarantee of employment and my wages. I’ll need to earn enough to live on and to support us both.”

His brows arched. “Bold, too.”

Maureen astonished herself with her boldness.

“Sales clerking’s not the highest-paying job.” He stood and walked clear around Maureen, eyeing her up and down, then leaned against the desk, bringing his height more in line with hers, his eyes close to her face. “There’re jobs that pay better. Some jobs pay much better.” He smiled and moved closer, pulling a tendril from her upswept hair to her neck.

Maureen stepped back, but he stepped forward again, until she pressed against the wall.

“I want to be a shopgirl. I’ve always wanted to work in a shop.” Her nerve was fading fast and her brogue thickening.

He leaned closer, almost smirking. “A shopgirl?”

She shoved her purse between them, pulling out the letter with Mrs. Melkford’s signature. “You see, Mrs. Melkford of the Missionary Aid Society knows I’ve come, and she’s written this letter of recommendation.”

He hesitated but took the letter, running his eyes over the page.

“And I’ll be seein’ the Wakefields this evening. They’ll be eager to know who carried out their wishes so quickly.”

He stopped smiling, seemed to reconsider, and stepped back. “Sit down.” He pointed to a chair against the wall. “Fill out the application. I’ll have one of the girls start you on the floor.”

“Do you have a pencil, please?” Maureen regained a measure of composure. “And my letter of employment. I’ll be needing that.”

“Stop by before you’re through for the night; I’ll have it then.”

She straightened.

“Never mind. I’ll send it to you on the floor.” He lit a cigarette, threw the saving, damning letter on a pile of correspondence, and went back to punching buttons on the machine.

Shaken, Maureen took up the pencil. She carefully completed her application, boldly printing the Wakefields’ address as her place of residence and Mrs. Melkford as her secondary character reference.

By midday, Maureen had been given a tour of the store and cloakroom by a junior clerk, a rundown on company rules and regulations as they affected salesgirls by the floor supervisor, and a station as something of an apprentice beneath a weary clerk named Alice in the department of ladies’ hats.

Maureen didn’t know if her placement was a random choice on the part of Darcy’s staff or because they’d noticed her smart, deep-blue hat on the way in. She hoped the latter. Regardless, she was determined to make a good showing—a hard worker and a personable, fashionable salesgirl.

“What do you mean you can’t read the prices?” Alice snapped when Maureen made her first sale. “Don’t you read and write?”

“Yes, surely!” Humiliated, Maureen dropped the sales pad and pencil and whispered as she retrieved them from the floor, “It’s just that I don’t know American money yet.” How had she not thought to ask Mrs. Melkford? “I’ll learn ever so quickly—I promise—if you could just explain it to me, please.”

“Well, I like that. Girls smart as a whip apply here six days a week, and you waltz in off the boat with not a brain in your head!” Alice muttered, whispering the price to Maureen. “You’re lucky clerks don’t make change! Pretend you know what you’re doing!”

The afternoon wore on with no breaks; Maureen was loathe to ask even about visiting the washroom.

“There’s no sitting down, you know,” Alice admonished when Maureen perched on the stool behind the counter during a slow period. “They’ll dock your pay for that—didn’t Old Blood and Thunder tell you?”

Maureen stood immediately. “Blood and Thunder?”

“That’s what we call Mrs. Gordon, the floor supervisor,” Alice whispered. “Suits her, don’t you think?”

Maureen watched from the corner of her eye as Mrs. Gordon severely reprimanded a quivering and shame-faced clerk for not clearing her counter of unwanted merchandise quickly enough after a sale. Maureen thought it a perfect name.

Before the end of the day, Maureen had learned to read a sales slip aloud to customers. But at closing she still did not completely understand the money and was thankful beyond words that all transactions were carried out on the floor below. Her too-small secondhand boots had rubbed blisters across her toes, and the backs of her heels bled until raw. Mrs. Melkford’s breakfast seemed but a dim and distant memory.

“You’d best bring a lunch with you tomorrow,” Alice advised. “You can eat in the cloakroom. If you’re here for the whole day, you’ll get a lunch break—but only half an hour. There’s hardly enough time to go out, and besides, bringing it along will save you.”

Maureen had not thought that far ahead. “I’m wonderin’ if you might know of a house of lodgin’ for ladies—something nearby that’s not too dear.”

“Why on earth do you want to know about lodging? I heard you’re living with some high-and-mighties.”

“Word travels quickly.” Maureen looked away and folded the cover of her sales book over. “It isn’t for me. No, it’s for my sister, you see. She’ll be comin’ to stay soon, and we thought we’d like a place of our own—eventually.”

“Well, I don’t blame you.” Alice sighed. “Sometimes I think I’d like to live up with the swells or over in Gramercy Park.” She looked pointedly at Maureen. “But then I wouldn’t want them telling me this and telling me that. We get enough lording it over in the store.”

“It’s nice to have a bit of privacy, isn’t it?” Maureen confided.

Alice nodded, the first hint of camaraderie between them. “Here.” She tore the bottom off a sales receipt and scribbled a name. “Mrs. Grieser owns a tenement on Orchard Street—ask anyone; it’s a couple buildings past the corner of Orchard and Delancey, down on the Lower East Side. You’ll have to watch out for the fellas in the Bowery, and it’s a bit of a hike in bad weather, but not so far you can’t manage. You can take a trolley if you must.” Alice passed her the slip of paper. “Tell her that Alice Draper sent you—she’ll give you a good rate and a safe room.” She hesitated. “Just use her side door. The front opens a few doors from a bar. Make no mistake.”

“Thank you!” Maureen nearly hugged her.

“You might not thank me—it’s not the Ritz, and it’s certainly not the Wakefields. But it will do for a place of your own to start. If your sister’s working too, you’ll do all right.”

The front doors were closed and locked; a bell rang through the store.

“That’s it for today!” Alice sang over her shoulder, already trotting toward the cloakroom. “See you tomorrow—soak those feet!”

Maureen smiled as she buttoned her very American secondhand cloak. Her feet ached, her stomach gnawed and growled, and she had blocks and blocks to walk to find Orchard Street in the hope of sleeping a few hours before starting it all again. But she was gainfully employed in a fine and respectable department store, she had the letter in her pocket that she needed to have Katie Rose released into her care, and she’d spent her first day dressed not as a lady’s maid, but as an American shopgirl.

Pinning her hat in place, she whispered to the mirror above the dressing room shelf, “Well, then, Maureen O’Reilly—shopgirl.” Maureen turned her head from side to side, smiled at the attractive young woman smiling back, then hurried down the stairs and toward the side door, behind the other chattering women.

She’d reached the door when a nervous, girlish laugh and a deep but vaguely familiar Irish brogue made her turn back toward the nearly deserted store. Beyond an aisle displaying scarves and handkerchiefs, a raven-haired girl no older than Katie Rose, in a simple woven dress and tattered shawl, blushed prettily as she stepped backward into the elevator. Pressed too close to her chest, one hand round her back and the other clutching a small knotted bundle, like those of the poorest immigrants just off the ship, stepped a too-eager and attentive Jaime Flynn.

“I’m sorry, dear. We’re full up. I won’t have another vacancy for a month, at least.” Mrs. Grieser shook her head. “Such a pity. You’ve come all this way, and it’s dark as pitch out there. I don’t know what to tell you.”

Maureen refused to cry. She’d been so certain the room would work out. “I understand, mum.” But she didn’t leave the step. “It’s just that I’ve only arrived, you see, and I’ve nowhere to go.”

“Dear me, I can’t think why Alice would send you all this way on such a night. She should have sent a note by day.”

Maureen couldn’t tell her that Alice had no idea she’d traipse more than three dozen blocks in the raw wind that very night. She’d considered weaving a story to satisfy Mrs. Melkford, to allow her to return to her home for another night. But after seeing Jaime Flynn with the young girl in the elevator, Maureen felt a greater urgency to establish herself legitimately and quickly.

“The only thing I can suggest is Mr. Crudgers’s tenement.” Mrs. Grieser stepped outside the door and pointed down the street. “You see the bar? It’s not a place to send a young lady, but he might have a vacancy above stairs. He lets out rooms and half flats.” She eyed Maureen uncertainly. “But I wouldn’t stay any longer than you have to, and keep your door bolted at night.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Grieser.”

The lady shook her head sadly but closed the door on Maureen.

Maureen wearily, warily hefted her bag and picked her way down the street. The November cold had more than seeped into her bones, and the cup of tea and ham sandwich she’d stopped for sat like a lump in her stomach.

“What have I done?” she whispered into the dark.
Oh, Mrs. Melkford, I wish . . .
But there was no point wishing and no one to call upon but herself. Maureen was sure of it.

“Twelve dollars a month—in advance.” The bartender and landlord pushed a half-smoked cigar in his mouth, lit up, and inhaled deeply. He ran his eyes over Maureen appreciatively.

“Twelve dollars,” Maureen repeated, trying to avoid his eyes. “That’s awfully dear.” Though she didn’t know if it was. “I’m only wantin’ the flat for a week. I’ll not be stayin’.”

The man shrugged. “Take it or leave it. There’s them that’ll take it for that—and more.” He pulled the cigar from his mouth and smiled—yellowed teeth with dark spaces between. “We could make another deal. Maybe you have somethin’ you’d like to barter, Red.”

Maureen shook her head, pulling bills from her purse, willing her fingers not to tremble. At least the bills had numbers on their faces. “Twelve dollars it is, then. One month.”

He stepped closer.

“My sister is joinin’ me—and perhaps another friend.”

He grunted. “Won’t matter to me. Toilet’s down the hall.” He pulled a suspender to his shoulder and stepped into the hallway. “Use the back stairs, unless you’ve a mind to join my customers.” He laughed down the hallway.

Maureen closed the door and braced her back against it, her heart beating its way to her throat. Never had she planned to live above a pub. Never had she so brazenly bluffed her way through an entire day. The weariness of it all came suddenly upon her.