The American Lady(21)

Though Wanda was reserved toward her aunt and cheeky to her mother, she was charming and gracious with strangers. The salesgirls fought for the privilege of serving her, bringing dozens of garments, box after box of shoes, and all sorts of other wares for her approval. It seemed to Marie that Wanda wanted to prove something to Ruth and her: Just look how nice I can be when it suits me. She had the feeling that there was more to Wanda’s stubbornness than the younger generation’s typical love of making things difficult for their elders. But Ruth had packed their days so full that Marie had not yet found an opportunity to get Wanda alone and find out why her niece thought she always had to strike the first blow.

When they were not out shopping—which Marie found very hard work—Ruth showed Marie the town. She learned soon enough that in New York, the two activities went hand in hand: there were hundreds of shops all along Fifth Avenue; the theaters on Times Square stood one next to the other, each with their brightly lit billboards; and just a little to the south was the world’s largest department store, Macy’s. A couple of miles north was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They had gone past the impressive building a few times, and Ruth assured Marie that there would be plenty of time to visit it later.

While her sister always marched into the shops at top speed, Marie could have spent the whole day standing outside and gazing up at the skyscrapers that soared above.

“You know,” she confessed to Ruth one day, “I actually thought it was rather odd how you kept going on about the skyscrapers in the first few letters you wrote to us. I wondered what could be so special about a building, no matter how tall. But I understand now! These things are really incredible.” She waved her hand at the whole street. “Just imagine: there haven’t been buildings like this since the great age of the Gothic cathedral eight hundred years ago!”

As Marie gazed up into the heights, her eyes gleaming, Ruth told her that each skyscraper hid a whole town behind its soaring façade, with its own post office, lawyers, shops, shoemakers, and everything else one might need in life.

Of course they went into a Woolworth’s store as well—after all, the chain had been the first customer to bring Marie’s baubles to America. Marie wouldn’t rest until she had sat down at one of the famous lunch counters and eaten an ice-cream sundae while shoppers thronged all around her. Ruth, however, turned up her nose at this sort of entertainment—it was all much too low-class for her. Marie teasingly reminded her that she had only met her husband Steven through Woolworth himself, so there was nothing low-class about the man. Ruth agreed, laughing.

“Who knows—perhaps we’ll find another Steven here, for you!” she said, her eyes twinkling. Marie just waved the idea away. She had come all this way partly to be free of Magnus for a few weeks—she wasn’t going to let her sister start choosing men for her!

Ruth told her that at Christmas there were tables full of Lauscha glass all around the ground floor of the shop. Globes, angels, and Santa Claus figures were all set out neatly on red velvet, just waiting for customers to pick them up and take them home.

“Just imagine: they tell me that last year fistfights almost broke out at the tables over your silver angels! There were even reports in the newspapers. With photographs!” Ruth said, laughing at the memory. “They just didn’t have enough angels for everyone. Johanna had even made a point of telling Mr. Woolworth he needed to order more. Well, sometimes even a business genius like him can get his numbers wrong.”

Despite Ruth’s detailed descriptions, Marie had trouble imagining her Christmas baubles here; she couldn’t draw the connection between her daily work at the bench back home and the hustle and bustle around her.



Sometimes they met Steven for lunch in restaurants with melodious names—Delmonico’s and Mamma Leone’s. Marie had to get used to the idea of going out to eat in a restaurant even though they were just a few steps from home. And she had to get used to the food as well: crabs, lobster, poached chicken breast, and all sorts of strange fare that didn’t fill her up. She would much rather have stayed home and eaten a few eggs or a plate of potatoes with Ruth at the kitchen table—simple home cooking, the kind of thing that Lou-Ann made for herself and the two maids. They could have talked about old times as they ate. And about the new times too. But they only ever got to do that in the evenings when they returned to the apartment with all their packages and bags. Even then they didn’t sit down in the kitchen, where Ruth rarely went, but in the drawing room just as they had the first evening, drinking tea and nibbling at biscuits.