The American Lady(11)

Marie looked at her new friend thoughtfully. Georgie knew exactly what she wanted from her journey. If only she could say the same.



Soon the voyage was almost over. “I will bet the whole of New York Harbor will be covered in fog,” Georgie had said on the evening before they docked, but in fact the morning of June 15 was as clear as if someone had polished the sky with a soft, clean cloth. They were already out on deck together before breakfast, each with a blanket around her shoulders against the morning chill. They were surprised to find a good number of passengers up there before them—everybody wanted to be first to catch sight of the big city.

Marie felt strange. All of a sudden she wished the crossing would last a little longer. When the first dark silhouettes began to show on the horizon, she was glad to have Georgie at her side, beaming as always.

“. . . just a woman out having fun.”

Could I do the same myself?



People stood shoulder-to-shoulder down on the steerage deck as well. The immigrants had been herded together like livestock down in the belly of the ship for twelve days—with no fresh air and not enough food—and their new country was coming closer, moment by moment. They were headed for a new beginning and for an ending as well. They would say farewell, and they would arrive. Anticipation thrummed in the cold morning air.

All of a sudden there was a stir in the crowd.

“There she is! There she is!”

“Look over to the left there, everybody!”

“Quick, come over here or you’ll miss her!”

They responded with excited cries and waving hands, fingers all pointing the same way, as though toward someone they all knew well, someone they wanted to greet. Inside of a minute they had all rushed over to the railing on the left side.

“It’s Lady Liberty! Look at her raising her golden torch to greet us!” Georgie dug her elbow into Marie’s ribs in excitement, never once taking her eyes off the most famous statue in the world. Her outline shone in the morning air, the spikes of her crown dark against the bright sky. Her own eyes were turned back to the Old World as she stood there with her torch of freedom raised to light the way to the New World.

When Marie didn’t react, Georgie turned to face her. “What is it? Why are you crying?”

Marie shook her head. She didn’t know whether she could speak if she tried.

“You stop that right now, you moping minnie! Or I’ll start as well,” Georgie threatened, only half in jest. She poked Marie in the ribs several times. “Enjoy this moment! We don’t get a greeting like this every day, you know!”

“Oh, I know,” Marie sniffed. “I feel I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life.”

Georgie put an arm around Marie’s shoulders. She grinned impishly. “Just you wait. This is only the beginning!”





3

Just a few steps from where New York made—and lost—its money was the Brooklyn Bar. The clientele was mostly bankers and brokers in their shirtsleeves. Sometimes one of them would invite his secretary to join him, but there were generally few female customers. The bar’s owner, Mickey Johnson, set great store by the fact. “Where can a man have a few drinks in peace and quiet these days? There’s nowhere safe from women, I’m tellin’ ya!” he often lamented. If he saw a woman come through the doors he usually gave her a frosty welcome indeed.

Whether they’d made money that day or lost it, in the evening the customers crowded about Mickey’s counter in such numbers that the beer pumps never rested for a moment. Full glasses were simply passed back through the crowd as the barmaid could never have kept up on her own. And whether it had been a good day or bad, Mickey’s bar was always astonishingly loud. Huge quantities of alcohol were consumed and the tobacco smoke was thicker than the morning mist on the Hudson River. A chance passerby, who was drawn in by the crowds and chose to drop in for a beer, would never have been able to guess what kind of day it had been on the New York Stock Exchange. Mickey himself boasted that he could tell just from the smell of the men’s sweat; good cheer and excitement smelled quite different from dogged determination, and different again from panic and fear.

Harold Stein had just taken his first sip of scotch when he saw Wanda come through the door. They had made it a habit to meet here every Wednesday after work, though most of the time he was there an hour before she was.

Her head held high, her eyes fixed dead ahead, she made her way through the press of wildly gesticulating men. The expression on her face was icier than an approaching storm, yet every man in the room looked at her in awe all the same—Mickey included. As soon as he spotted Wanda hurrying past his counter, he left the beer glasses unattended and reached up for the bottle of aniseed liqueur. He poured it into a tall, slim glass, which he handed to the nearest customer. “Pass it through! This one’s for the lady!” he barked, then watched keenly as the glass made its way through the crowd.