Astor Place Vintage: A Novel (8 page)

By the second year, my reputation in the neighborhood had been established. I switched to new wholesalers who gave me a better deal buying bulk items; beefed up my website, AstorPlaceVintage.com; and began selling online through eBay. My accountant said I could give myself a small raise. Jeff insisted on continuing his support, and I didn’t object. It felt good to have some security, and I’d pay him back with interest eventually.

My third year in business, I started therapy, which my health insurance didn’t cover, so I continued to accept Jeff’s monthly check. The irony that I might not need therapy if I could extricate myself from my married lover was not lost on me.

The past year, business grew so much that my QuickBooks
spreadsheet told me I could get by without the expensive accountant I didn’t need now that I’d mastered QuickBooks. I still kept accepting Jeff’s monthly checks. It had become more about emotional security than financial. I liked the idea that he wanted to take care of me. I liked being taken care of. Even if he did have a wife.

Sometimes the arrangement did make me feel like a whore.

On the other hand, the sign hanging in front of my store made me swell with pride:
ASTOR PLACE VINTAGE
in white lettering set against a royal blue background. And I
would
go through with cutting myself off from Jeff—financially and emotionally. I was on the verge of taking action. Soon. I really was.

—

After unlocking the front door of my building, I opened my mailbox in the entrance hall and pulled out a few letters. Then I checked the table outside the super’s office in the rear, where the mailman left packages. Jackpot! Happy birthday to me. Three boxes: one from my mother, one from my father, and a seriously heavy one from Alabama that had to be my impulsive eBay buy from a few weeks back. I took two trips getting everything up the stairs and piled the packages on the hall floor to unlock the door.

As usual, my place was horribly cluttered. Too much secondhand furniture, flea market collectibles, sewing paraphernalia, bags of clothing waiting to be altered for the store. I turned on the air conditioner and wondered how people survived hot summers without one. To think that a hundred years ago, an entire family probably sweltered away in this little studio apartment. I’d read about immigrants at the turn of the century, visited the Tenement Museum on Orchard Street, and seen photographs of the Lower East Side by Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis. Fathers hunched over sewing machines, mothers and children making artificial flowers, boarders sleeping on the floor, more bodies huddled on the fire escape. I’d never even been on my fire escape; the window gates
were too hard to open, and it would probably collapse if anyone stood on it.

I plunked down on my green camelback sofa with my laptop and checked e-mail. A couple of eBay auctions I’d posted had ended with respectable bids. I really needed to step up my store’s online presence, but the impersonal online selling world was a drag. Plus, I hated the drudgery of photographing clothes, getting all the precise measurements, and coming up with pithy descriptions.

Karin and Patricia, two old friends I’d known since middle school, had both sent birthday wishes. Karin had suggested getting together for dinner on Saturday at the Greenwich Grill, a sushi place in Tribeca. Patricia had responded with another option, a new place on Fourteenth Street called Home Cooking. The fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits were supposed to be amazing, she said.

It sounded great, but to protest the audacity of calling a restaurant “home cooking,” I voted for sushi. Then I opened an e-mail from my mom.

Hi sweetheart, thinking of the moment I first looked at your darling face that beautiful day you came into this world. Did you get my present? I couldn’t resist. Love you, xo, Mom

My mom used to work in PR for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of those New York City jobs that offer an attractive setting and interesting coworkers in exchange for a salary that keeps you on the edge of financial ruin. Retired now, she lived up in Woodstock in a cottage my parents had bought when I was a baby, for escapes from the city. Like me, Mom wasn’t much of a country person. She felt comfortable there despite all the nature—partially because it was filled with disaffected ex–New Yorkers and had good restaurants, and also because of the plethora of yard sales and flea markets.

When I was a kid, we’d have the best time driving around to find bargains. She taught me to fearlessly ask sellers if that was their best price, pretend I had only a certain amount in my pocket, and assume a forlorn expression before asking: will that do? When we accumulated too much stuff, we’d hold our own yard sale.

My father loved Woodstock because the spiritually enlightened hippie town indulged his fascination with transcendental meditation, yoga, and adultery. An affair with the woman who taught his Reiki class broke up their marriage. After a few months of fighting with my mother, he moved to an ashram in Northern California with his girlfriend. When the official divorce came a couple of years later, Mom got the Woodstock house in the settlement.

Done with e-mails, I turned to my letters and noticed that something had come from the managing agent of my building—probably about my lease coming up for renewal. I set it aside; he’d already warned me about the 6 percent rent hike. No hurry to look at the numbers in black and white, especially with packages waiting to be opened.

Since I knew what was inside, I opened my eBay package first, ordaining the extravagant purchase as a birthday present to myself. Removing the bubble wrap, I admired my new set of Homer Laughlin Kitchen Kraft dishware from the forties. The pattern of red tulips and blue pansies sprouting from flowerpots was so cheerful and adorable! I shouldn’t have; the last thing I needed was dinnerware for eight. My Formica dinette seated four, and my sewing machine occupied half the surface. But maybe one day, if I ever married and moved to a larger apartment, I’d make use of it.

Next I unwrapped my mother’s present, another head vase, most likely. Over the years she’d given me half a dozen of these vases in the shape of a head with a hole on top for stems. Some people collected baby heads, clown heads, Madonna heads . . . They were popular in the forties and fifties. Mine were all heads
of attractive women wearing some variation of accoutrements, such as a faux pearl necklace, dangling earrings, a pillbox hat. My mother always wrote a pun on the card.
It’s good to get aHEAD
 . . .
Two HEADS are better than one . . .

I opened the box: a head vase. I smiled while shaking my head at my new head. She wore a powder-blue hat with a large yellow bow on the side of the floppy brim. Her chin rested on a white-gloved hand. The card said,
Have a happy birthday, but don’t lose your HEAD.

Time to open my father’s present. His Reiki instructor was ancient history; he now lived in a Costa Rican ecovillage community of about forty people. They grew their own food, bathed in waterfalls, and were devoted to taking care of the planet for future generations. Fine, but couldn’t he have been around a little more to take care of me, his own future generation? I opened the box to find a bracelet made with pink and green stones. I read the printed enclosure.

Wearing this jewelry clears the energy center to restore optimism, dissolve grudges, and revive hope. For best results, wear for ten days.

Ten days? I wouldn’t wear it for an hour. Did he really think that after all these years, he’d convert me into a Zen zombie? He’d written a note on a plain white card made from 100 percent post-consumer waste.

Dear Amanda,

The fourth chakra affirmation evokes clarity of the heart. The rose quartz heals emotional wounds. Jade is the stone of wisdom. The stones have been energized to increase their healing properties. FYI, it’s okay to take it off at night.

Why don’t you come down to visit? It’s beautiful and amazing here. You really should come. Have a beautiful birthday. I miss you, love, your dad.

Costa Rica probably was amazing, but I had no desire to fly to the other side of the equator and ride in some rented Jeep down unpaved roads to a tiny village between mountain ranges. If he truly missed me, he could come here.

I set the head vase on my maple bureau. Later I’d take her down to the store so she could sit with the others I kept behind the register. They made good conversation pieces. I put the chakra bracelet around the neck of the head vase. Maybe it could help her.

I’d just turned to clean up the wrappings from my presents when I heard something behind me; it sounded like a woman sobbing. I turned back—not that I expected to see anyone. The head vase stared at me with an eerie grin. Strange. Sometimes I got street noise, but the window was closed. Must’ve been a neighbor, or else I’d imagined it.

As I folded up the bubble wrap to use later, I thought of calling my mom to thank her, but she’d ask how I was celebrating, and I didn’t want to admit to spending my birthday with Jeff. Instead, I went to my laptop and replied to her e-mail:

Hi Mom,

Thanks so much for the vase. I love her floppy hat with the bow! I’m thinking of HEADing up there Sunday night for a visit. I really, really need to sit out in the garden and get some sun. Does that work for you? Let me know. Love and kisses, your daughter

Bolstered by that accomplishment, I decided to go ahead and e-mail my thanks to Molly, too.

Hey there, I had my session with Dr. Markoff and have now been officially hypnotized. It’s amazing, but after leaving his office, I had absolutely no temptation to smoke! Seriously, he was really great and I can’t wait to see if it helps me sleep. Thank you so much for setting that up! XOXO Amanda

Now that I was on a roll, I decided to e-mail my dad, too. Resisting the temptation to say I’d love to visit him down in Costa Rica if it didn’t Costa so Mucha, I wrote a nice, polite e-mail and hit “send” with relief.

Time to try on the hourglass dress. I opened my hobo bag, pulled out the stash from Mrs. Kelly, and held up the gorgeous blue dress. So Marilyn. Jeff would love how sexy I’d look. If it fit. It had to fit. Please fit.

It didn’t fit. Too damn tight, especially the bust . . . and my belly . . . and my hips. I struggled to pull it off, almost ripping a seam in the process. Jeez. I hoped this was just bloat. My period was late. At least a week, maybe two. I couldn’t be pregnant. Jeff and I always used a condom.

Though if I
was
pregnant, that would be kind of exciting. Inconvenient, but at my age . . . No. Had to be stress messing with my cycle, that’s all.

I opened my closet. What to wear, what to wear. Had to look great, preferably in something Jeff had never seen. My clothing was packed in there so tightly that it probably could’ve stayed suspended in midair without hangers. In the dark shadows to the rear of the closet, a place I considered synonymous to the back of my mind, hung a dress I’d been meaning to alter: a forties black taffeta with gold rickrack around the hem. The sweetheart neckline showed just the right amount of cleavage. The only problem was the waist was too loose. A couple darts would do the trick, and I’d been meaning to put them in. I had a few hours before I needed to leave for the restaurant. Today was the day.

After putting the dress on inside out, I pinned the darts. Then I pulled the dress back up over my head, careful not to stab myself with the pins.

My worries receded as I leaned over my reliable old Singer, cupped the metal wheel to position the needle, and pressed down on the foot pedal. It was my grandmother who taught me to sew. First a pillowcase, then an apron, then a dress using a Simplicity pattern we bought at my local Woolworth’s on Twenty-third Street—God rest its soul. I remembered the joy of shopping there for supplies. Choosing a pattern from one of the big catalogs; picking out a fabric; finding the exact color of thread and zipper to match. Then we’d go home, spread our supplies out in the living room, and get to work. I loved to whiz down seams like a race car driver gunning for the finish line. Transforming a flat piece of fabric into a three-dimensional finished outfit seemed like magic.

After finishing the second dart, I tried on the dress in front of my closet door mirror. Now it fit perfectly. It needed pressing, but ironing taffeta was not a good idea. I’d steam it out later while taking a shower. I was about to pull it off when inspiration hit: A diamond necklace Jeff bought me might be just the thing to go with it.

I took out a shoe box from behind my cleaning supplies on the top shelf of the cabinet over the sink. That was the safest hiding place I’d come up with for my half dozen or so pieces of upscale jewelry, all presents from Jeff over the past few years. I rarely had the opportunity to wear them, and a while back I’d asked him to stop giving me more. For one thing, I liked picking out my own jewelry. For another, it made me feel like a prototypically “bought and paid for” woman. But he said it made him happy, and he went right on doing it.

I selected the necklace I had in mind—a yellow-gold choker with clusters of diamonds set between each link—and checked myself out in the mirror. It looked brazenly expensive, but it did
go beautifully with the neckline of my dress. Just as I was undoing the clasp, I caught a glimpse of something in motion behind me: a dark blur. I spun around.

Nothing. Obviously, my brain was short-circuiting from lack of sleep. I put the necklace on my bureau and returned the shoe box to its hiding place above the sink.