The Lions of Fifth Avenue: A Novel

CHAPTER EIGHT

New York City, 1914

Greenwich Village was very different from Laura’s Fifth Avenue neighborhood, all narrow streets at odd angles, the buildings a mix of livery stables, tenements, cafés, and saloons. Recently, the low rents had attracted a new set of residents who called themselves bohemians and didn’t mind the fact that the apartments tended to be small and dingy. All part of the charm, Laura supposed. Even in winter, Village streets thrummed with energy, men and women spilling out of restaurants or animatedly chatting in front of a bakery, the windows slick with steam.

She turned down MacDougal Street and found the address for Polly Holladay’s restaurant. Inside, she paused, her nerves catching up with her. Men and women sat at long wooden trestle tables, drinking together. Her father would have had a fit if he knew his daughter was indulging in such scandalous behavior. Near the back, she caught sight of Amelia speaking with a woman with bobbed hair and wearing what looked like a meal sack and leather sandals. In February.

As Amelia greeted Laura, the woman was swept up the stairs by another group.

Laura couldn’t help herself. “What is she wearing?”

“That’s nothing. If you visit Henrietta at home, you’ll often find her in her birthday suit. A practicing feminist and nudist, our girl Henny.”

Laura memorized the phrase. What a quote. Since the new semester had begun, she’d been struggling to come up with an idea for her thesis assignment: nine thousand words on a single topic, with Professor Wakeman as her advisor. While Dr. Potter’s invitation had initially slipped her mind in the craziness of the holidays, the biweekly meetings of the Heterodoxy Club now seemed like a timely opportunity.

She followed Amelia upstairs to a large meeting room, where avant-garde artwork competed for attention with an assortment of sofas and chairs, all upholstered in bright citrus colors. They scrunched into a love seat near the front as a woman called for attention and recited the day’s agenda. Laura was just reaching into her satchel for her notebook when the woman’s words stopped her mid-reach.

“As we’ve said in the past, the comments and discussions that take place at the Heterodoxy Club are considered off the record, so members may speak their minds freely. Some of us have experienced firsthand how our words may be twisted by those who wish to demean and deride the causes we delve into over these three hours. This afternoon, you need not fear that.”

No note taking. She straightened up, curious to see what this was all about.

Margaret Sanger spoke first, about fighting the obscenity laws that prevented her from publishing and disseminating information regarding contraception to the women who most needed it. She used words that Laura had never heard spoken out loud, like “pessary” and “condom,” “coitus interruptus,” and talked of douching with carbolic acid or Lysol as a preventive measure. The room was brought to tears with her story of a young Jewish immigrant woman who begged her doctor for birth control, was refused, and then died in childbirth of septicemia. “In that moment, I resolved that women should have knowledge of contraception,” Sanger told them. “They have every right to know about their own bodies. I would scream from the housetops. I would tell the world what was going on in the lives of these poor women. I would be heard. No matter the cost, I would be heard.”

Amelia clapped with fervor. How brave, to be on the front lines of change, the way these women around Laura were. There was a sizzle of anger in the room but not in the way that the newspapers usually described, equating the New Woman with rabid, antiestablishment radicalism. The ideas being bandied about were radical, yes, but opposition arose with frequency and everyone got a say. When the talk turned to the suffrage movement, equal time was spent discussing whether gaining the right to vote in what was an inherently male, corrupt electoral system was even worth the effort, a perspective Laura hadn’t ever considered.

By the time the three hours were up, Laura had enough material to write ninety thousand words, never mind nine thousand. The Heterodoxy Club made a perfect subject for her thesis. It fulfilled Professor Wakeman’s requirement that she cover a “women’s topic,” but unlike most of his assignments, this one actually mattered, and Laura found herself intrigued by the ideas of the New Woman. She felt a twinge of guilt when she remembered that it was supposed to remain off the record before setting aside the mandate. Since the thesis was just practice and not for publication, she wouldn’t be breaking any rules. Maybe later, after she’d graduated and gotten to know these women better, she’d approach them for permission. But for now, she was just a student learning her craft.

The group broke up, and Laura joined Amelia and a few of the others downstairs in the restaurant. She wasn’t ready to leave, not yet.

Their table was made up of a lawyer, an actress, and a couple of authors. Not one woman spoke of her children, if they had any, nor their spouses. Laura realized with a shock that all had achieved financial independence.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the woman sitting across from her. “You’re not a monotonist, are you?”

“I’m sorry, a what?”

Amelia put her hand on Laura’s arm, a protective gesture that Laura appreciated. She wasn’t part of this group, really. The causes—women’s suffrage, birth control—she supported, of course, but she was only a student reporter, and didn’t want to get too caught up. Still, part of her wanted to impress Amelia, or at the very least not embarrass her. She had lost touch with the few women friends she’d made when she and Jack had lived in the country, and the isolation of residing in a library hadn’t helped matters. A thin, invisible thread stretched between her and Amelia, a result of their shared alma mater, and she didn’t want to see it dissolve because she was deemed to be too conservative for this downtown crowd.

“A monotonist is a woman who marries young, has children, and remains mated,” the woman explained.

“I suppose I am. For now.” Laura wasn’t sure why she tacked on the last two words. She had no intention of leaving Jack, but her life appeared so stodgy compared to the others. She lived in a marble mausoleum right on Fifth Avenue, for goodness’ sake, a far cry from a charming Village flat with flower boxes in the windows. “What’s the alternative?”

“A varietist. Exactly what the name implies.” The woman introduced herself as Florence. “Varietists try many different iterations of relationships. Men, women. All the combinations you can think of. Open marriage, for example. Why do you think we want to legalize birth control? So we can love freely, without fear.”

Amelia jumped in. “Don’t try to shock our new member, Flo.”

“I’m not shocked,” said Laura. “But you won’t sell your cause with such talk. The rest of society associates free love with prostitution, with the corruption of the family dynamic. It’s all wrapped up together.”

“The very phrase ‘the corruption of the family dynamic’ is another way of keeping women downtrodden,” said Amelia. “The family dynamic only works if there’s someone—the woman—who is tasked with the drudgery of child-rearing and housekeeping. If her mind and energy are freed up to take on more pressing concerns, the world will turn on its head.”

Even though she partly agreed, Laura couldn’t help but push back. “I object to the use of ‘drudgery’ in the same sentence as ‘child-rearing.’ My children are a delight, a wonder.” Their laundry, not so much, she thought to herself.

“We have many mothers in the club,” said Amelia. “The two ideas aren’t exclusive. We’re more concerned with making sure that mothers can dictate how many children they wish to have, and how far apart to give birth. A measure of control that frees up their economic power.”

The conversation veered off in a new direction, ideas and phrases bandied about in a whirl: social and moral repression, liberation, feminism.

Already, the thesis was practically writing itself in her head.

“If you’re interested in writing about public health, I have the perfect book for you,” said Amelia, digging through a desk piled high with letters and notebooks. “Here it is.”

At Amelia’s urging, Laura had walked back with her to her apartment on Patchin Place, an alley off Tenth Street. She knew she should head home and start making dinner, but part of her wanted to find out how Amelia lived her life, as it was so different from her own.

The rooms were small but comfortable, with a rocking chair near the fireplace, and filled with color, much like the meeting hall for the club had been.

Laura had tried to make her own apartment in the library cozy, but the strange layout—part public space, part private—had stymied her efforts, and compared to this charming flat, she’d failed dismally. Yet she couldn’t help but notice that Patchin Place had yet to be modernized, with the hand pump at the sink and metered gas flares providing heat and light. At least they had an indoor commode at the library. While Laura’s decorating skills could be improved upon, an outhouse certainly could not.

She took the book that Amelia gave her and tucked it under the notebook in her lap. She’d hinted that she was interested in covering Amelia’s work as part of her studies, which was true, even though she saw it more as a part of the thesis, an inside look at the ladies of the club.

“What made you decide to study medicine?” asked Laura.

Amelia sat beside her on the couch, her arm resting along the back. Her hair was naturally curly, the swirls beginning to release from the hold of the pomade in the dry heat of the room. She’d taken off the stiff collar she wore and loosened her necktie, much in the way that Jack did when he came home. Yet her obviously ample cleavage swelled under the shirtwaist like a Gibson Girl’s. A strange mix of feminine and masculine.

“I decided to become a doctor when my father and brother both died of typhoid within six months of each other,” said Amelia. “Not because I had some silly notion that I could have saved them—the only thing that could’ve saved them is if sewage hadn’t been dumped in the Hudson River—but I was left to take care of my mother, and I needed a profession that paid.”

“I’m so sorry. That must’ve been awful.” They sat in silence for a moment. “That day we met, in that tenement. Are most of your appointments like that?”

“Oh, that was nothing. I remember as an intern going to tend to a birth in a tenement in Hell’s Kitchen. The woman’s back was blistered, she was in terrible pain, because apparently her husband had come home drunk and thrown hot water at her. As soon as she told me that, he appeared, drunk off his rocker. He tried to come at me, but I sidestepped him out into the hallway, where I gave him a huge push. Down the stairs.”

Laura gasped. She waited, uncertain. “What happened?”

“I went back and delivered his child. On my way out, I kicked him in the leg and he swore at me, so it turns out I didn’t kill him. Not that it would’ve bothered me much.”

“Really?”

Amelia suddenly looked exhausted. “No. That’s not true. I would’ve been inconsolable if I’d killed him, to be honest. I’m a doctor, after all.”

The melancholy in Amelia’s voice made Laura want to offer what comfort she could. “You must see so much despair.”

“I can’t get sentimental about it. You see these mothers with their sick babies, and they have such fatalism in their eyes. They know they’ll probably lose that child, as well as the one after. When my nurses and I first show up, they’re suspicious of our motives, but as their babies remain healthy, gain weight, and grow, their trust in us grows as well. They become eager to please, happy to brag of their progress.”

“Can I ask why you dress the way you do? Is it so that the men in the tenements don’t bother you while you work?”

Amelia laughed. “No. It’s so the other doctors don’t bother me, and not in the way you’re inferring. If I show up wearing lace and ruffles, they’ll talk down to me, dismiss me and my ideas. So I dress as much like them as possible without being indecent. Just recently one of the doctors—a good fellow, this one—was complaining to me about the nurses for their vile feminine ways and I had to stop him and ask, ‘What kind of creature do you think I am?’ His eyes went wide and, I swear, it suddenly dawned on him that he had been speaking to me as one of his own gender. I couldn’t have been happier. Besides, it’s more comfortable.” She lifted her skirt and straightened out one leg. “If I could wear trousers, I’d do that.”

“Or a sack, like Henrietta.”

“That, too. But I imagine it’s itchy.”

“Probably.”

From outside came the faint cries of children playing in the alley, reminding Laura that she really should go home.

“What about you?” asked Amelia.

“What do I like to wear?” she couldn’t help joking.

“Very funny. What do you want to do with your degree?”

“Write about things like this. Your work, the changes the city is going through. The changes that women are going through.”

“This is the place, then. You won’t get a more progressive crowd than here in Greenwich Village. Although you’re already too late. I hear that someone’s started giving paid tours of an ‘artist’s garret’ off of Washington Square, aimed at attracting visitors to the city and the uptown crowd. He’s set up an artist’s studio in one room, an actress’s bedroom in another, and hired appropriately bohemian-looking people to pretend to paint or act. I suppose they each get a percentage of the take.”

“That would make a great article.”

“I can’t help get the feeling I’m being used, as an insider source,” said Amelia lightly. “Tell me about your family.”

Laura closed her notebook and tucked it back into the satchel, along with Amelia’s book. “I have a girl and a boy. My husband’s working on a manuscript but also works for the public library, where we live.” She quickly explained their situation, and was pleased to see Amelia’s face break out into a big grin.

“You live in that monstrous beast of a library? Simply marvelous. I’d love to see it someday.”

“Of course, any time.”

A noise arose from above, presumably the bedroom, followed by a clumping down the stairs, before a pretty but disheveled young woman appeared, wrapped in a blanket. She regarded Amelia with heavy-lidded eyes. “You’re back so late.”

Amelia nodded. “And you’ve been fast asleep the whole time.”

“What else am I supposed to do?” She drew close and planted a soft kiss on Amelia’s lips.

Laura had known that women loved other women, of course, and heard that the new bohemians were rife with such couples, including men who loved men. Back in college, there had been a couple of girls in her dormitory who were rumored to be lovers, and while the other students exclaimed revulsion at the very idea, Laura had found herself staring at the pair during her American literature class, wondering what it was like, to love a woman.

That kiss, though. The stays of Laura’s corset dug into her torso as she absorbed the encounter. She’d never kissed Jack in front of others, wouldn’t dream of it. Then again, not long ago she had allowed Jack to take her in the library, albeit after hours, where the thrill of being caught heightened their every touch. She was no prude, she reminded herself.

Yet these were two women, which made it both stranger and more familiar than she’d expected.

She jumped to her feet. “I really must be going.”

“Would you like a cup of tea before you go?” asked Amelia. “Jessie here will make it for you.”

Jessie’s pout indicated otherwise.

“No, I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Jessie, put on the kettle for me, please.”

Jessie straightened and left. Laura was out of her element downtown. She had to remember she was a reporter, not a participant.

“Are you shocked?” asked Amelia once Jessie had cleared the room.

“A little, I suppose.”

She rose and accompanied Laura to the door. “I do wish to have children one day, though. I admit, I envy you that. What are your children’s names?”

“The boy is Harry. He’s eleven. Pearl is seven. Jack’s manuscript of late has been more difficult than he expected, so he’s up so late working on it. Then he has to be up at six for work, it’s all too much.” She stammered on about nothing and everything, her mouth forming words before she could even consider the thought behind them. Amelia shot her a direct, knowing gaze.

Burning with embarrassment, Laura finally left.