Chapter Text
Ch. 1
It must have been nearly midnight, but the noise outside Hetty’s new apartment showed no sign of stopping: the clatter of carts being readied for the morning; the chatter of her neighbors, resting on mattresses they’d dragged to the fire escapes; and the trod of workingmen’s boots up and down the stairs. Possibly leaving a late shift at the factory; more likely, the barroom. Hetty was glad she’d given her son Thomas the interior room, in case any of these drunken brutes tried to dislodge the chair she’d jammed under the knob.
It was terribly hot. The smell from the city’s streets trickled into the room under the door and through the window: rotting vegetable garbage, manure, and urine, some of which might have been human. She’d tried to scrub the room as best she could, chapping and reddening her hands as she did, but the stench was inescapable.
This was what hell was like, Hetty was sure of it. Endless noise, endless stench, no hope of release.
Hetty clutched the key on the string around her neck. She was crying, she realized. Fortunately, she had plenty of experience in crying without making a sound.
#
Tevi Lefkowitz knew he should be asleep, but he couldn’t resist. He held up the candle to take one last look at his store. His store, not a rented cart on the sidewalk, or a stall in the market. Years of hard work had paid off. And now all his dreams were going to come true; his mother, finally able to retire, his brother, a college man.
There was a little twinge at that second thought, but Tevi ignored it.
All he had to do now was focus. No relationships, no marriage, not until he’d been able to take his business to the next level, and then the next, and then the next.
This little shop, nice as it was, was just the start. Someday, Lefkowitz’s was going to be as famous as Bloomingdale’s. Someday, there was going to be a glittering department store with his name over the door. And he was going to be able to take his family inside and give them anything they wanted, just for the asking.
He blew out the candle—why waste the wick—and found his way by touch into the back room, which was his apartment. He needed to sleep; tomorrow, everything was going to change.
#
If anything, the chaos outside Hetty’s apartment was louder in the morning. She wanted to just stay in bed. Maybe if she lay there, perfectly quietly, with her eyes closed for long enough, Mollie would appear with hot tea on a tray.
No such luck.
She could see through a gap in the curtain that Thomas was still, somehow, asleep. Quickly she washed and neatened herself as best she could with only a pitcher and basin to work with, realizing she’d have to fetch more water from the pump outside. Locking the door, she went down the filthy, stinking stairwell.
Outside the street was chaotic: horse-drawn carts threading their way through the narrow street, between the carts selling fruit, fish, old clothes, and all sorts of other trash. It was overwhelming, but as she turned slowly around, she realized at least she wouldn’t have to go far to buy the necessities. There was a little grocery shop on the first floor. She opened the door and went inside.
It was cleaner than she anticipated. Behind the counter, a handsome Russian Jew in his shirtsleeves was flirting outrageously with his customer. He was speaking some sort of foreign language, so she didn’t know exactly what he was saying, but she was sure it was something inappropriate—especially since, at a second glance, his customer was one of the oldest women she’d ever seen. She was teetering on two canes, and beaming flirtatiously back at the shopkeeper.
Neither of them were rushing. It was like they had all the time in the world for the shopkeeper to write down his customer’s order.
Hetty sighed and tapped her foot. Surely they must understand that some people had places to be. Or one place to be, at least.
Finally the elderly woman picked her way out of the store, possibly going even more slowly than necessary, just to aggravate Hetty’s poor nerves, and Hetty stepped towards the counter. But then the door slammed open, and before Hetty could say a word, another woman started talking from behind her.
“Listen, Tevi,” said the woman, in some sort of accented English. “I’m in a rush. Give me a pound of flour and a pound of sugar and a stick of—”
“Excuse me,” said Hetty. “I was here first.”
“Who cares?” said the woman. “And a stick of—”
“You ill-mannered harridan,” said Hetty. “I have been waiting patiently for our good shopkeeper to finish putting together an order for Methuselah’s wife, before she expired. How dare you attempt to cut in front of me? And, my good shopkeeper, I have recently taken the room above this shop and I will undoubtedly give you plenty of my custom in the weeks to come, presuming you do not permit this person to insult me with her pound of flour and pound of sugar and stick of Lord knows what!”
The woman scowled at Hetty. “Tevi, are you going to let her talk to me like this?”
He shrugged. “She was here first, Nance.”
“God!” blasphemed Nancy, and went out, slamming the door behind her.
Now a twinge of guilt troubled Hetty. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to lose you a customer.”
“She’ll be back,” said the shopkeeper. “Once she cools down. Trevor Lefkowitz.” He held out his hand for her to shake, as if she were a man. Or as if they were about to engage in business, which she guessed they were.
“Mrs. Elias Woodstone,” said Hetty, and shook his hand. No—she’d forgotten to introduce herself with her own name, as the widow she purported to be.
Well, surely Mr. Lefkowitz wouldn’t notice. You could tell by looking that Mr. Lefkowitz wasn’t a gentleman. His clothes, if anything, were a little too neat; the crease in his pants a little too crisp; the fabric of his waistcoat slightly too loud. And he was wearing a horrifyingly gaudy pinky ring.
On the other hand, he did smell very good. He was probably the only thing that smelled good in the entire Lower East Side.
“You speak beautiful English,” he said. His own English was strongly accented, but comprehensible.
“I ought to,” she said. “It’s my native tongue.”
He looked at her mouth as if he wanted to say something, but contented himself with an odd smile. “My own English is not so good.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” she said. One didn’t expect fluency from a man of his sort. An immigrant shopkeeper, with a small shop in a poor part of the city.
“I wish I had more practice. And more words, close to hand.”
“A broader vocabulary.”
“Exactly!” he said, smiling and resting his hands on the counter. “Would you like a job?”
“Excuse me?”
His hands began to wave wildly. “You work here, in this shop. You talk to me enough, and I will have that ‘broader vocabulary.’”
“Mr. Lefkowitz—”
“Pay is $1.50 a day.”
She gulped. Once that would have been nothing to her. Now, it was better than she would get in a factory, and probably more pleasant. She had the irrelevant thought that she would need to ask Elias for permission, but pushed that out of her mind.
“Mr. Lefkowitz,” she said. “I’m a widow, with a twelve-year-old son. I can’t leave him unsupervised all day.”
She could see Mr. Lefkowitz consider the word “unsupervised.” But before she could say, “that means, alone,” he beamed at her.
“Bring him too,” he said. “Boys love playing store. Maybe he could deliver Mrs. Methuselah’s order.”
Amused, she looked at the floor so he wouldn’t see her smile. “I’ll do it,” she said. “But I do have to run an errand this morning.”