Page 13 of The Rebel of Seventh Avenue

1911

I stood in the near-empty studio, surrounded by the few possessions that were part of my new working life – my tailor’s dummy and sewing machine, a small sewing table, a bag of leftover fabric, my box of threads, a small wooden chair, and a new set of drawers – all dumped in a muddle, looking insignificant in that big, airy room. It needed to be filled with more tables, more tailor’s dummies, fabric and patterns, seamstresses and ideas, but I was finding it difficult to concentrate, overwhelmed by what I had committed to. I simply couldn’t decide what I should do first: arrange the little furniture I had, start work on my three new dress commissions, or measure up for new curtains in the soon-to-be salon. The only way I knew to make myself focus was to arrange my many spools of thread in their new home, the top of the new set of drawers, putting them into my obligatory rainbow pattern. I mouthed ‘Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain’ as I slotted each colour into its correct place. The order settled me, calmed, and grounded me, reminding me of my mother, the haberdasher’s shop, of the things that I grew up with, pushed away thoughts of Rosa, her children, what might have been.

My head clear, I sat at my sewing table and began to draw a layout for the room, putting tables in places where the work could be done as efficiently as possible, so that seamstresses didn’t trip over bolts of cloth, so that embroidery could be done using the best possible light. It was just after midday and the room was flooded with cheering sunlight, so welcome after the rain and dark misery of the last couple of weeks. The two octagonal glass roof lights were letting the sharp April light spill into every corner, but the room felt stark, the walls newly painted white and smelling so strong it made me a little dizzy. I was impatient to add some colour, the pale blandness oppressing. Maybe I could make something with my leftover swatches of fabric, perhaps create some sort of collage from an assortment of embellishments and hang it on the walls.

When I’d drawn up the plan for the studio, I walked into the large room at the front of the building, my shoes giving a pleasing click on the bare wooden floor. This would be the salon, a room for my customers, which was north facing and cold and would need to be dressed with thick and colourful curtains, warm rugs on the floor, comfortable chairs for taking tea, in winter the fire would need to be roaring. It would be my showroom, a dressing room and somewhere my customers could relax, a welcoming and vibrant place, so comfortable they’d want to stay. I paced the room and sketched.

So much furniture, fabric, so many things required. The list became longer and longer until panic began to catch at the back of my throat. I sat down on the floor, my back to the wall, and closed my eyes. How I wished Rosa was here; I needed her efficiency, her sensible head. I looked at my layouts, my lists and couldn’t see how I was going to pay for everything required – I had almost nothing left of the stolen money, it had been used for the four months’ upfront payment of rent. I sat on that cold wooden floor, my head in my hands with tears beginning to well up.

Running my hands through my hair, I kept my eyes closed and wished myself into one of Rosa’s hugs, the warmth of her cushiony body, her slightly sweet aroma, the softness of her shawl. In the nine months I’d known her she’d become my sister, my mother, my best friend. I’d come to rely on her more than I’d been aware of, the way she’d gently rein me in and be the voice of reason, always able to solve a problem. She would have known what to do. I felt the enormity of her absence as if I’d lost my mother all over again, but this time it seemed so much worse, as if I’d lost everything.

Slowly I became aware of the noise of footsteps coming up the stairs, penetrating through my fog of grief, followed by a tentative knock on my door. My first visitor. Who knew I was here? Perhaps it was the landlord, Mr Franke, checking up on me. I let out a heavy sigh before standing up, wiping the tears from my face, straightening my hair, my skirt, taking a deep breath and opening the door.

‘Mr Jackson. What are you doing here?’

He stood on the threshold with a small bunch of yellow daffodils, staring at me with a nervous blink.

Without answering my question, he walked in, handing me the bouquet. ‘I came to see the famous dress designer in her new studio, and, don’t you know, famous dress designers must always have flowers in their studio.’

I’d never received flowers before. Eight small, vibrant blooms, with their delicate petals, tied together with brown string. Mouth open and unable to speak, I gestured towards the studio.

Once in the room, he did a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin, surveying the space. ‘This is a grand wonder,’ he said, turning the words slowly as he began knocking on the walls, picking dried up bits of putty out of the window frame, tapping his shoe on the floor and finally inspecting the open drawer of threads.

Whilst he examined every detail of the room, I brought the bouquet up to my nose, the smell, the colour, the simple decadence beginning to fill the cavernous space that had opened inside me. But those flowers also reminded me of Rosa and her little tokens of friendship: the cake when I moved into my boarding house, my shawl, the ritual of Friday night dinner. My eyes began to prick dangerously. I needed to stop this emotional torrent, so I quickly busied myself, finding my old cup nestled in the bag of fabric, going to the tiny kitchen to fill it with water and putting the flowers in it.

Wiping my eyes again, I placed the bouquet in the middle of the sewing table. I stood back, enjoying the splash of colour.

‘What do you think of my studio?’ My voice was practically a whisper. My studio . Saying those words was exhilarating, but my stomach was churning, the excitement mixed up with nervousness, worry and anticipation, an almost overpowering feeling of sadness. I touched the necklace I had recently made myself, using that broken piece of tortoiseshell comb I’d found outside the factory on the night of the fire, tied onto a leather string, now sitting around my neck.

‘Well, I’d say you’re going to need a bit of work from a carpenter. Those windowpanes could do with a little attention and the floorboards are telling me they’d appreciate some love.’ His delicate hands stroked the wood grain as he spoke of work that I hadn’t even considered. ‘And as luck would have it, you find a carpenter standing right in front of you. But I’d say you’ve found yourself a small bit of workaday paradise.’ He spoke as if he had put serious thought into every single word he uttered.

‘Miss McIntyre, you’ve managed to find an unusual building. On the face of it, it’s a typical Greek Revival style building, you can tell from the wooden bracketed cornice on the front facade, the floor-length parlour windows and their prim stone lintels; it’s just like many of the homes built during the run-up to the Civil War. But do you know what makes this building so special?’ His eyes were sparkling as he spoke, his whole face alight. ‘It’s that cast-iron double porch. The lacey filigree isn’t seen in this part of town – maybe up in Gramercy Park – but not down here. And then, just look at those roof lanterns.’ He pointed to the glass domes in the ceiling. ‘I’ve not heard of those in this kind of building before, maybe in some grand hall, or some of those Quaker Meeting Rooms, but I’d sure like to know who built this house and what they intended this room for.’ He turned to look at me. ‘Do you think they somehow knew that the world-famous couturier Miss Maisie McIntyre was going to start her career in this very building? Did they know that some of the world’s most famous dresses were going to be made here?’

How I needed that enthusiasm, that belief in me. It felt as if he was injecting life directly into my veins. As he spoke the panic began to subside, and, little by little, that old single-minded confidence began to return. The blackness of the last couple of weeks – after the fire, the mass funeral, the Bassinos, the guilt – it was starting to fade, the hurt easing marginally.

Eventually, he stopped, almost out of breath. ‘Yes. It’s a great wonder, Miss McIntyre. That’s what it is.’ Then he shot me that smile, his eyes startlingly illuminated and his whole face a mix of joy and excitement, and I almost forgot every niggling problem.

But then, all at once, the smile faded, and he clicked his heels to attention. ‘Oh, Aunt Bettina!’ He smacked his forehead. ‘Look at me, getting all carried away. I almost forgot. You must come with me.’

‘I can’t, I’ve got things to do here, I really must get on.’

‘Oh no, they can wait. I promise you; you’ll want to see this.’ He grabbed my coat and hat from the chair, handed them to me and frantically gestured towards the stairs.

Out on the street, he said, ‘Follow me. It’s just a couple of blocks away.’ And at that, he turned on his heel and headed towards Sixth Avenue. I struggled to keep up with him, almost running, feeling more and more uneasy as we travelled.

‘Mr Jackson, please, stop,’ I said, catching my breath. ‘I need to know where we’re going.’ I grabbed his sleeve and pulled him towards the steps of a brownstone on Leroy Street. ‘Who are you? You’ve acted as my guide when you showed me the outside of St Patrick’s Cathedral, once you rescued me from exhaustion and lack of food, and now you just show up on my doorstep. I don’t know who you are. You could be taking me to some scandalous basement bar where I’m expected to drink bourbon and dance for my dinner, or maybe you’re taking me to an evening church service. How am I to know?’

He blinked that nervous blink, three, four times, before looking down at his feet. He seemed to be weighing up what he should say. Finally, he looked back up, the blinking gone, replaced by an amused tip of the head, his lips pursed.

‘Miss McIntyre… I am Jackson, eldest son of Mr and Mrs Gabriel Jackson, formerly of Brooklyn, sadly now presiding at Green-Wood Cemetery. I live with my sisters, Oti and Audrey, on San Juan Hill. We come from a respectable family: my mother was an elementary school teacher, my father taught junior high, Oti works in a haberdasher’s in Harlem and Audrey in the store just around the corner from our basement apartment. I am hoping, one day, to become an architect. When I’m not working, I’m studying architecture and working in my little workshop making furniture – hand-crafted, hand-designed by me. I don’t drink, my parents didn’t drink, I’ve attended church every Sunday since I can remember, and I say my prayers at night.

‘I am not taking you to any den of iniquity, Miss McIntyre, I am taking you somewhere to expand your mind. I am taking you to a library.’

He took me by the elbow and gently turned me around to face the opposite side of the street where there was a flat-roofed, two-storey, red-brick building. The large ground floor windows were arched, and the green front door had the words Hudson Park Branch Library painted above it.

‘Why?’ I blustered.

But he didn’t answer, simply said, ‘When you go in you ask at the desk if you can apply for a library card. They just need the address of your boarding house. Then you ask them to show you where the periodicals are.’

I stood looking at this man, dressed in a sober manner, his hair cut tightly, his shoes gleaming. I was confused and caught off guard, hesitating and powerless to move.

‘In you go,’ he said as he herded me across the street, as if I was a small child. ‘I’ll be there in a moment.’ And he gestured towards the inside of the building.

Pushing down the hysteria, I opened the door and walked across the floor cautiously, as if it was made of thin ice, in awe of the building I was going into. Ahead of me were rows and rows of dark wood bookcases, shelves filled with books. There were tables with a few people reading newspapers. There was silence. Just looking at all those books made me go cold and clammy, and I began to imagine that the people in there knew that books gave me a feeling of dread, made me shut down, worried that I was about to fail.

I’d never enjoyed reading; it had always been a chore, the letters would jump around on the page and land all jumbled up. I didn’t read for pleasure, no novel, no poem, rarely more than a newspaper headline – it was exhausting. But I’d always been able to draw. Instead of writing about that tale we’d learned from the Bible that day at school, I’d draw the whole story out. Instead of copying out the sum from the blackboard, I’d draw four apples plus six apples equalling ten meticulously sketched green apples. When these things were shown to me in pictures, I understood them immediately. When they were presented to me in words or numbers, I would always stumble.

But, out of deference to ’s enthusiasm, I did as I was told and was eventually shown into the main room of the library. sat at the other end of the room, nonchalantly reading a newspaper. Discreetly he pointed towards a table with a pile of magazines: Vogue , Harper’s Bazaar , The Woman’s Magazine and a few others I’d never seen before. Finally, I realised why had brought me. I could come here and look at the latest fashions for free, anytime I liked.

I sat at that table suddenly greedy for information. I became oblivious of everything or anyone else around me, staying until closing time, poring over pictures of the latest fashions from Paris and London, the most up-to-date patterns and photographs of New York’s most recent newlywed in her stylish wedding dress. I took out my pocket notebook and began to draw: a cream wrap-over tea gown with a twisting rope of greenery, intricately embroidered from shoulder to hem; a lavish opera coat made from bronze silk taffeta with panels that flared to a wide knee-length hem; a summer dress made from layers of baby-blue chiffon. My sketchbook quickly became full, each illustration annotated with the type of material to be used, the colour, the cut, the buttons. Every single detail.

All too soon it was closing time and the pinched-faced librarian made to usher us out. To me she was all politeness, but to , she spoke in a dismissive tone – I almost felt that she would have pushed him if she hadn’t been so worried about touching him – making my jaw clench and my lips flatten with indignation. What had he done to incur her disgust? Before I could protest, he put his finger to his lips and shook his head discreetly.

Outside it had turned dark, the temperature had dropped sharply, and I could see my breath in the shimmer of the streetlamps. As soon as my feet hit the paving I opened my mouth, angry words rising up at his quiet acceptance of such behaviour.

‘Ah, now, don’t you go getting all het up under the collar,’ he said, palms splayed upwards, shoulders shrugged. ‘She doesn’t know any better. It’s not her fault. She’s been brought up that way, that’s all.’ He walked on, putting his hands in his pockets.

Again, I found myself running after him.

‘But she had no right…’

‘I know that, and you know that, but she doesn’t know that. She’ll never listen to the likes of us. No point in getting ourselves into trouble. Come on.’ He beckoned for me to follow him down the street, walking me back to my studio.

And that was how we fell into a strange pattern, a routine of discovering the city that had become my home. On Sunday afternoons I’d leave my work, meet and find a new bit of Manhattan: the new Pennsylvania Railroad Station, one of the galleries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or he’d take me on an architectural tour of the grand Upper West Side, past the Dorilton, the Dakota and the Ansonia Hotel, and, of course, we walked every inch of Central Park. We even took a half day off the day after the New York Public Library opened to apply for library cards. But he always kept me at a respectable distance, as if he was my tour guide, making sure no unspoken line was crossed.

But I also had to work. I had rent to pay, and I needed to furnish my near-empty studio. My customers liked my new space and were happy that I was more available. Dress commissions were rolling in, but I’d had no time to find anyone to help me. Working late nights, early mornings and only ever taking a break on a Sunday afternoon meant I was hardly managing.

One Sunday, I was so caught up in my work that I forgot to meet , only remembering when I opened the door to him.

‘, I’m so sorry.’

‘Our theme today is the Astor family’s mighty hotels,’ he interrupted in his tour-guide’s voice, walking into the studio. ‘We’ll be taking in the architecture of the elaborate and immense Astor Hotel on Times Square, followed by the Knickerbocker, the St Regis, culminating in the world-famous Waldorf Astoria. We’ll be studying the Beaux Arts and German Renaissance design styles, plus I think you’ll find that there’ll be some fine people-watching, something I know you’re particularly partial to.’ He gave an elegant bow as he took his hat off.

‘No. I can’t. I have too much work,’ I snapped. ‘I have all this embroidery to do, four dresses in the next week and…’ My voice broke, caught by a lack of sleep and, yet again, that now too familiar feeling of rising panic, that feeling that I wasn’t in control. ‘And I’m just not getting it right.’

I’d never been that good at detailed embroidery, I didn’t have the patience for it, the attention to detail and the ability to sit still for long periods of time. But Rosa, she’d had the perfect temperament for it, the eye for the tiny detail – she could take each design apart and focus intently on every separate component, making sure the finished pieces fitted together perfectly. I could only see the overall design and was frustrated by the need to be slow and meticulous. As the weeks went by the finishing work was piling up. Every time I looked at it I saw Rosa, every time I tried to work on it I found myself wanting to ask her which stitch she would use, or what colour she thought would work best. Those times we’d sat embroidering, it was as if we were threaded together with friendship, our differing strands twisting together perfectly. But because of my selfishness, because of my ambition, I’d cut the companionable yarn that held us together. Whenever I thought of this my mind would go down in a spiral – I should have taken her place at work that day, I should have let her visit Matteo’s brother, then there would be no Bassino orphans, no wretched and rudderless husband…

‘Uh-oh.’ shook his head. ‘That’s not the Maisie I know. When did you last eat?’

‘What is it with you and the need to eat? Why do you care about when I last ate? It doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh yes, missy, it does. You can’t concentrate if you haven’t eaten. And when did you last sleep?’

I sighed. ‘I had a couple of hours yesterday evening.’

‘And food?’

Instinctively, I closed my hand around the needle I was holding and clenched my fist tight. The prick of the needle, the sharp pain giving some relief to the guilt that was clogging up my head, the frustration that was seeping in, letting me have a moment of clarity. I squeezed harder, the relief increasing, so I squeezed harder again.

‘Oh, now, just let me take that from you.’ quickly and effortlessly removed the dress from underneath my hands as a bubble of blood began to ooze down my fingers. ‘You do not want that dress ruined. Now, come over to the sink and I’ll clean you up.’

As ran my finger under the cold tap, found a spare scrap of calico and carefully wrapped it around the wound, he continued. ‘If you don’t take care of yourself, there won’t be any Maisie McIntyre designs, there’ll be no customers walking through that door.’

He tied off the bandage and, continuing to hold my hand, he ran his finger over my thumbnail, his soft skin contrasting against the roughness of the many pinprick scabs on the underside of my thumb. ‘Fine designers should have fine hands.’ As he said this he gently kissed those old wounds.

It felt like a firework had been set off in my chest as those soft lips touched my fingers, as if all my breath had been taken away, and suddenly all those unsurmountable problems were thrown aside. I studied his face, trying to calm my beating heart and noticed a small vertical scar cutting through his left eyebrow, like a chalk mark, and had to stop myself from running my finger over it.

‘You should meet my sister, Oti. She can embroider like an angel. Those dresses she makes for herself, the dresses she wears when she goes out dancing, they’re magical.’

‘She does?’ My voice was a little raspy.

‘Oh yes, those dresses can light up a room. Now I know she’s my sister, but you should see them, I think you’d mightily agree.’

The next morning I returned to my studio before dawn. I’d managed to finish the dress I’d being working on the day before but as the day progressed I struggled to complete the high collar of a fitted jacket that matched a grey silk evening gown I was working on: diamanté studs surrounded by embroidery in coloured and metallic threads. Yet again, the frustration was mounting as my inability to create what I had designed played out. Not only that, but the studio was a mess as I still hadn’t cleared up after myself. There was fabric scattered across the cutting tables, discarded paper patterns and thread, half-drunk cups of tea and empty porridge bowls, the bin overflowing with scraps of material. The mess was making me agitated, but I didn’t have time to do anything about it. The meal and a few hours’ sleep had made me a little more patient, but patience couldn’t hide my clumsy needlework.

‘Oh, dear Lord,’ came a voice from behind me. ‘You sure are in some trouble.’

I looked up to see a tall woman stride into the studio and put her large carpet bag on the floor. ‘ said you’d be in need of help, but I reckon you’re in need of a whole army of help.’ She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the room, taking in every detail: the mess, the dressed tailor’s dummies and the designs pinned to their sleeves, the half-open drawers, the ignored whistling kettle in the kitchenette, the bruises under my eyes.

‘First of all, you need someone to clear up around here,’ she said and began tidying.

I stood up and put a hand on her arm to stop her. ‘I don’t need a maid,’ I replied softly. ‘I need someone who can help me sew.’

She looked straight at me, bold eyes searching for sarcasm. Suddenly there was that smile. I was slightly dazed, my heart jumping a small loop – a feminine version of . She dropped the fabric she was holding and laughed.

‘I think we’re going to get on. I’m Otella, but everyone calls me Oti. Now, what do you need help with?’

I gave her the collar I’d been working on. ‘I can’t make this stand out, there’s something missing when I work on it. I know how I want it to look – here, see the pattern I’ve drawn – but I’m struggling to make it… well… zing. I feel that what I’ve done here would only bore people.’

We sat at the table, side by side, and examined the collar. Then she gave me another of those enormous smiles, her eyes now shining. ‘I’ve never met anyone who understands this. If I showed this to my friends, they’d all think it was just right. But you, you know it’s wrong.’ She touched me on the arm. ‘Yes, you and I are going to get along just fine.’ And with that, she carefully unpicked my stitching and re-worked it.

hadn’t exaggerated his sister’s ability. Her embroidery sang. The complexity of the stitching, the small changes in her use of colour, the addition of the occasional unexpected spangle or brilliant, all brought it to life. It gave the design a depth and character that I could only dream of when I embroidered. And whilst she worked, she’d hum, tongue between her teeth, seeming to disappear into another world, somewhere that cocooned her and gave her a magic power, the ability to turn an ordinary gown into something extraordinary. Her nose would twitch as she’d get something just right, her eyes narrow when she wasn’t happy with what she’d done. Once she’d finished the collar, she completed some tricky tasks on the sewing machine, giving me the confidence that she would be able to pick up anything I might ask her to do.

As we worked, we talked. Was this as much an interview by Oti about my suitability as it was for me?

‘If I’m working for you, those white women aren’t going to like it.’ She kept her eyes on her work as she spoke, her nose wrinkling. ‘You think they’ll take to me, looking as I do?’ Now, she looked up, mischief in her eyes.

I blinked.