The Secret of the Nightingale Palace (15 page)

Goldie didn't join Mayumi's protestations, though. The streetcar had left the center of the city and was moving up an avenue lined with Victorian homes. San Francisco architecture delighted her with its turrets and balconies, lacy woodwork, and bay windows, each individual home like a palace. Some days Goldie felt like a princess, too, but she had not yet moved far from her real-life troubles—her father's devotion to whiskey, her mother's death, Rochelle's constant demands, and her own poverty and loneliness. It took a huge amount of focus to imagine something better, and in recent weeks, Alan Stevenson had taken hold in her mind as possibly offering that relief. She deeply wanted to believe Mayumi, but she suspected that Henry understood the situation better. Alan Stevenson, handsome and debonair, with his shoe store fantasies and excellent clothes, might have other plans besides marrying Goldie. She thought about how, in those brief moments she had spent with him alone in the stockroom that afternoon, his hand had slid around her waist in a way that wasn't proper. Now, the memory unsettled her.

“Maybe it's because I'm Jewish,” she said. “Some men don't like Jewish girls.”

Mayumi shook her head. “Lots of men marry Jewish girls. They don't mind at all.”

Goldie continued staring at the city outside. Sometimes those beautiful homes looked so inviting; at other times they teased her. “I had never been on a date with a Christian before,” she said. Back in Memphis, Jewish parents would never allow a daughter to go out with, much less marry, a non-Jewish man. But Goldie had no parents to guide her here. Rochelle might get angry, but her emotions came from irritability, not concern.

Although Mayumi and Henry had read about Jews, they knew very little about them. “You're still white,” Mayumi reminded her.

“People don't like Jews,” Goldie said. “They think we're thieves and greedy.”

Henry looked at his sister. “It's really bad for the Jews in Europe.”

Goldie had no interest in the Jews of Europe. “It's bad for the Jews right here. Rich people don't marry Jews. Unless they're Jews themselves, and then they have no choice.”

Mayumi slapped her hands against her knees. “Then you have to find a rich Jew.”

Goldie said, “Exactly.” She looked at Henry and Mayumi. “You two can understand what it's like. You're Japanese.”

Henry shook his head. “It's not the same. You can hide being a Jew. Everyone knows we're Japanese, whether we like it or not.”

The streetcar lurched down the final hill. Many people had gotten off already, so Henry was able to squint down the aisle and see out the front windshield. Mayumi said, “I think he's going to ask you out again soon. He doesn't care if you're Jewish.”

“One more block,” Henry announced. He found their conniving interesting, but their perspective on men seemed completely naive. “Maybe he's just saving up his money for a grand night out,” he suggested. “He'll want you to think he's rich.”

The streetcar stopped in Japantown, and Goldie followed her friends onto the sidewalk. The neighborhood looked much like the area where Rochelle and Buddy lived, except that the signs on the windows and awnings of the little shops were printed in Japanese. Goldie stopped to take it in. The writing looked like messy little boxes, similar to what she had seen in Chinatown. She understood that those scrawling lines constituted a language, but the fact that they carried meaning didn't enter her head at that moment. “It's so charming!” she told them.

Henry and Mayumi looked at the writing—a list of shoe-shining and dry-cleaning services—and laughed. Although Goldie had odd and fairly casual interests (she never bothered to remember any facts that they shared with her), they couldn't doubt her intelligence, curiosity, and sincerity. She had told them that she dropped out of school at thirteen because her family had no money. With so little education, she had never developed the habits you would need to build a body of knowledge. Everything was interesting for its own sake at a singular moment. If Mayumi took her to a museum, the art might make her sigh with pleasure, just as the
Tale of Genji
prints had done, but the details of the works—artists' names, schools of painting, historic contexts—struck her as completely irrelevant. Still, despite her random way of learning, she had, over the past few months, come to a fairly keen appreciation of art in the world, and perhaps most importantly for her future, she had increasingly firm opinions about beauty.

For the next half hour or so, they wandered in and out of the various stores. Compared with what they saw in the fashionable establishments around Union Square, these shops were rustic and slightly bare, full of mysterious products. Henry would raise a lid on a bin or a bucket, allowing Goldie to peek in at vegetables pickling in brine, or mounds of tiny pink dried fish, the acrid smell of which made her wince.

“Let's go to our uncle Aki's,” Henry suggested, leading the girls across the road and up the block to a large store shaded by a red awning. Compared with the other shops, this one looked fairly modern, full of canned goods lining shelves, bags of candies, jewelry display cases, plates, and cups and saucers.

Uncle Aki, small and round with a missing front tooth and a wide grin, was delighted to see his nephew and niece, and even more delighted when he saw that they had brought a young white lady along with them. “She's never been to Japantown before,” Henry explained in Japanese.

“Where'd she come from?” From Aki's perspective behind the counter, Goldie, standing uncertainly in the middle of the floor, looked like a Hollywood starlet.

Henry gestured toward his sister. “They work together downtown.”

Aki watched her. He had opened his shop nearly thirty years earlier and felt proud of what he had accomplished. Not only did he own the biggest general merchandise shop in Japantown, but he also carried the largest selection of Japanese kimonos on the West Coast. Looking at the girl, with her slim and fashionable skirt, her smart pumps and well-coiffed hairstyle, he knew that she'd want to see the kimonos.

Henry, Mayumi, and Goldie followed Uncle Aki to a side room. Unlike the rest of the store, with its wood floor and simple cabinets, this space looked like a dress shop showroom, with thick green carpet, standing wooden mirrors, and lustrous fabrics hanging on racks along the walls. Goldie moved toward the fabrics like a bee toward a field of poppies. Mayumi followed. Henry and Aki stood in the doorway, observing.

“She's lovely,” Aki said in Japanese.

Henry had warmed to Goldie over the past few weeks, but watching her now, with his uncle, forced him to acknowledge something he hadn't allowed himself to consciously consider before: Goldie really was lovely. The thought unsettled him, which may explain why, when he did respond to Aki, he tried to sound completely objective on the subject. “She's only been in San Francisco for a few months, but she's already the leading salesgirl at Feld's. Mayumi says she could sell a fish to a fishmonger.”

“We should all be so lucky,” his uncle said.

Over by the racks of clothes, Goldie was fingering the massive satins and silks. Every single color was lush and rich, from pink pastels to deep reds to jewel-like greens and blues. Some of the fabrics were printed. Others had intricate embroidered designs, some as large and grand as sunbursts and peacocks, others tiny and fine, like butterflies and pea-sized flowers. Goldie felt as if Henry's woodblock prints had come to life. “How do they feel on your body?” she asked Mayumi.

“When I wear one I feel like an actor in a show.”

Goldie kept her eyes on the kimonos, but she put her hand on her friend's shoulder, drawing her closer. “That's how you need to feel in anything that's beautiful,” she told Mayumi. “My mother used to tell me that you don't wear an outfit, you perform in it. That's our art.”

Uncle Aki, hearing her, called across the room. “Let her try one, Mayumi. Let's see her perform.”

Goldie picked a silk in deep green with clusters of gold and purple dragonflies racing up one side, along the back of the shoulders, and down the arm. As Mayumi helped her slip the heavy fabric over her clothes, Goldie felt a sudden, inexplicable joy and with it a sense of her own hardiness. There was so much beauty in the world, she thought. Alan Stevenson could love a girl like her. And if he didn't, she thought of Marvin Feld, the son of the owners, a merchant marine over there in Europe. People said he'd be back in San Francisco any day. And Marvin Feld was rich
and
Jewish. Goldie closed her eyes while Mayumi finished the wrapping and secured the belt behind her back. Gently, Mayumi led her to the mirror. From behind her, Goldie heard the admiring voices of the men. “Open your eyes!” Henry called. Anything can happen, Goldie thought, and then she opened them.

8

Beyond Expectations

O
ne morning in June of 1941, Marvin Feld strolled into the store with his father, hands in the pockets of his navy trousers, jiggling change. The entire staff of Feld's watched, transfixed, as the young man moved through the showroom, shaking hands with the employees he knew from the past. More recently hired salespeople, like Goldie, had heard of Marvin, too. They knew that he had served as chief engineer on a merchant marine Liberty ship. Now, finally, he was appearing in their midst, the crown prince in an argyle sweater.

Goldie was impressed. She had no idea what a chief engineer would do, but the work must have been dangerous and important. From where she stood observing him, she decided that he had William Powell's sophistication combined with Clark Gable's good looks. A more objective observer might have quibbled with the comparison to Gable (Marvin was fair skinned and big boned rather than dark and lanky), but he did have a pencil-thin moustache, snappy clothes, and one of those grand smiles that movie star fan magazines called “ravishing.”

Goldie was selling women's scarves that morning. Her position near the front of the store offered a fine perspective for viewing the young man's movements. The anticipation of Marvin Feld's arrival had, in recent weeks, thrown Goldie into something of a tizzy. Her social life, which had continued at a frenetic pace, had worn her down. In one week, she had turned down two proposals of marriage, one from a man who was so shy he could barely speak (he had resorted to mumbling when he finally made his offer, forcing her to ask him to repeat what he'd just said) and another from a man who suffered from impossibly bad breath. Both of those men were kind, and good prospects, but the idea of spending her life with either one had done nothing but depress her. Alan Stevenson had also taken her out two more times, but neither of their dates had moved them any closer toward a proposal, and consequently Goldie had begun to feel more certain that he was toying with her until he found someone better.

Marvin Feld, though, was a Jew himself, and likely to marry one. Only one other woman on the staff was Jewish, and as Irma Manheim was nearly sixty, Goldie felt that she herself had little competition in the store. She was also confident of her own charms and felt that if she could get Marvin Feld to notice her, he would surely ask her out. Many of the other salesgirls, despite being Christian, had similar ideas. All through the store, women were ducking behind cabinets and hiding behind racks of clothes, reapplying lipstick and smoothing back their hair. Goldie slid her hands inside the waist of her skirt to straighten her blouse.

“And ladies scarves is looking robust, eh?”

Having kept her eye on the two men as they wandered through the store, Goldie turned away when she saw them heading her way. She stood on her toes, lifting a hanger full of scarves up beside another. Then, just as they approached, she turned and said, as if surprised, “Well, hello, Mr. Feld.”

The older Mr. Feld was a small, somewhat hesitant man who often wandered absently through the showroom. His own father, Meyer Feld, had founded the business fifty years earlier, and longtime employees suggested that Herbert Feld, who would have preferred architecture, was not so much a visionary himself as a placeholder between Meyer and his grandson. The reappearance of Marvin in San Francisco seemed to signal that the transition to the next generation had finally begun. “Hello, Miss—” Herbert looked at her questioningly.

“Goldie, sir,” she said, stretching out her Memphis drawl. “Goldie Rubin.” She had to hit the bull's-eye, so she emphasized both her Jewish name and her southern charms. She tucked her chin under and smiled up at Marvin.

“Ah, yes,” said his father. “Marvin, this is Miss Goldie Rubin. One of our newest, and most productive, salesgirls.”

“Oh, sir, you flatter me!” Goldie knew she didn't have the coloring for blushes, so she put a finger to her cheek instead.

Marvin Feld looked down at the new salesgirl standing in front of him. He had not looked forward to reappearing at the store, and just as he had expected, the staff had made an embarrassing fuss over welcoming him home. The attentions were kind and well meaning, he knew, but they only increased his uneasiness at being back at all. The truth was that Marvin had loved the thrills and independence he'd discovered in Europe, despite the fact that a war was taking place there. Perhaps more precisely, he had enjoyed the distance his year in the service had provided between himself and his parents, who had expectations for their only child that Marvin felt less and less capable of fulfilling as time went by. This young woman caught his attention, however. Miss Rubin had an accent that sounded familiar to him. Then he remembered how Hefferton, a muscular second mate, had drawled in much the same way, stretching out vowels and dropping consonants at the ends of words. “Where are you from, Miss Rubin?” he asked.

For the moment, his eyes focused on her. Goldie said, “Why, I'm from Memphis, Tennessee. Do you know Memphis?”

He shook his head. Hefferton, as he remembered, came from Mississippi. “It's an accent I recognize. I met a lot of southerners during my time overseas.”

While Marvin's eyes remained on Goldie, she thought quickly about what to do next. She had learned very early how to read the attentions of men. This man, to her immediate disappointment, looked at her with a complete lack of appreciation for her physical charms. On the other hand, he seemed curious enough to pause for a moment and hear what she had to say.

“Some people consider southerners to have our own distinctive culture,” she said. Goldie refrained from batting her eyelashes, because part of her skill lay in knowing where to draw the line. Anyway, he didn't seem to be the sort of man who would be moved by that technique. “I've heard so much about Europe,” she said, adding, “One day I'd like to visit there myself.”

“Hopefully, not while the war is going on,” he said with a laugh. “The cities are beautiful, though, of course, nothing compares to our beloved San Francisco.” Marvin's eyes swept the showroom as if, from inside the department store, he could look out across the hills toward the Golden Gate.

At this point, sensing that Herbert Feld was inclined to drift away, Goldie hurried forward with her plan. “Mr. Feld,” she said, addressing the father. “I'm wondering if I might take a moment to speak with you about an issue in our fragrance department?”

Herbert paused. Despite his disinterest in business, he liked to follow the latest trends, and all the magazines were talking about “employee input.”

“Why certainly, Miss—” He had forgotten her name again.

“Rubin.”

“Miss Rubin. What's on your mind?”

“Sir, I've noticed that we've been selling an awful lot of a new scent called Pioneer. Actually, we sold more Pioneer last week than all our other perfumes combined.”

“Is that so?”

“It's extremely popular.” Goldie left the scarves behind and led the two men over to fragrance. There, Hollis had decided to climb a footstool and buff the brass ornaments in the center of the display, no doubt hoping that the sight of her shapely body would catch the attention of Marvin Feld.

Goldie was all business, though. It was one thing to look good—Goldie noted that Hollis had readjusted the buttons on her blouse to reveal a few more inches of chest as well—but you had to show your smarts, too. In her thoughts, Goldie said to Hollis,
I'm Jewish. He won't be interested in you.
but in manner she ignored the girl completely. She pulled open a drawer and picked up a box of Pioneer. “Do you know this scent?” she asked, looking up at the father and son.

Marvin shook his head. He didn't even like cologne.

Herbert said, “It must have just arrived.”

“It's fairly new,” said Goldie. In truth, they'd been carrying the product for a month already, but she didn't want to embarrass the owner of the store. She handed them the box, the front of which featured an image of a farm girl who stood, hand on her hip, blowing a little horn toward the distant fields. “It's a reproduction of a lovely painting by Winslow Homer called ‘The Dinner Horn,' ” Goldie explained. She was sincere in her appreciation of the artwork, though its effect on her did not compare with her profound affection for Japanese prints. “It's an American scent, so they used an American picture.”

Marvin studied the box. “And you say it's providing some competition for the European brands?” he asked.

“Oh, immensely,” said Goldie, who had figured that given Marvin Feld's military experience, he'd feel loyal to his country. Personally, Goldie found Pioneer too cloying. She liked a more complex scent and believed that the French, with their experience, made a better product. In fact, the week Pioneer had first appeared on the shelves, she and Mayumi had gotten into an argument about the new perfume, and taste in general. Though neither girl liked Pioneer, they had different explanations for its popularity. “People around here like a sweet perfume,” Mayumi had said. “You can't choose what you love.”

“Sure you can,” Goldie had replied. On this point, she felt certain. The two had been standing behind the perfume counter, comparing Pioneer with their own favorites. Up to now, Goldie had taken only French scents seriously, and she felt that the appeal of Pioneer had more to do with patriotism than anything else. “I made a conscious decision,” she said. “I decided to love Madeleine Vionnet and to hate Schiaparelli,” she said.

“No, you like feminine things, so you like Vionnet.”

“But why do I like feminine things?” asked Goldie. “Because I
decided
that I would be a feminine lady. Your style is more Schiaparelli, and you made that choice, too.”

Mayumi looked up at her. She seemed equally positive about what she was saying. “I did not,” she said.

“You did.”

Now, though, Goldie was ready to gush over Pioneer. She looked up at Marvin Feld. “Would you like to try the scent?” she asked. She never suggested that someone “smell” a perfume. She asked them to “try” it.

“Why not?” Marvin said.

The son was intrigued, but the father seemed ready to wander off. Now, Goldie threw out her hint in an offhand way. “It's too bad we don't have a more prominent display for this fragrance. It's such an American scent.” She turned her gaze to the elder Mr. Feld. “I wish there were some occasion that we could use to promote it.”

Though Herbert Feld cared nothing for the products themselves, Goldie knew from past experience that he had a passion for presentation. At Easter he had turned the display stand behind cosmetics into an arrangement of painted cardboard eggs and bunnies, which was so trite and offensive to Mayumi's aesthetic sensibility that she had told Mr. Blankenship she was tempted to quit. “What did you have in mind?” Mr. Feld asked, focusing more intently.

Goldie picked up the sample bottle. She held it in her hand for a moment, feigning contemplation. “It's the scent, they say, of ‘lazy afternoons, prairie grass, and wild rose.' It's so nice. Is there some occasion that we could tie it to this summer?”

The elder Feld's eyes widened. “The Fourth of July!”

Goldie thought,
Bingo!
She said, “Mr. Feld, that's an excellent idea.”

The father hurried off to find Mr. Blankenship. The son remained, waiting to sample the fragrance. Goldie sensed Hollis only a foot or two away, glaring at her, but she ignored the girl. “Let's see what you think,” she said. She pumped the perfume a couple of times onto the inside of her wrist, then waved her hand through the air for a moment to let it dry. Marvin Feld watched her, thinking how pleased his parents would be if he ever became so enthused about a brand of perfume. Finally Goldie lifted her hand to his nose. He touched two fingers to the back of her wrist and inhaled.

It took three more weeks—until just before the Fourth of July—for Goldie to finally go out with Marvin Feld, and even that was not a “date.” Up until that point, Goldie had tried to put herself in his presence at every opportunity without appearing to be chasing him. Conveniently, the Pioneer perfume Fourth of July promotion presented regular opportunities. Goldie and Marvin were both assigned to the team that produced it, Goldie through assisting Mayumi on the Independence Day windows and Marvin in his new position as vice president for marketing.

Marvin threw himself into the project with determination, if not with relish. Less than a month had passed since he had been wandering the streets of London. His parents seemed to have assumed that by returning to San Francisco, packing up his uniform, and changing into civilian clothes, Marvin had become once more the son they had known before he joined the service. His father, fondly mussing the young man's hair, had said, “Glad to have you back, my boy. Now we can get on with things,” while his mother had surprised him with a furnished apartment on Vallejo Street, only a mile or so from his parents' house. Herbert and Madeleine Feld seemed to expect their son to slip right back into his former life, with mornings in marketing meetings at the store downtown, then afternoons at the golf club at Lake Merced. Saturdays, they would sail, and on Sunday nights they would dine at the Tadich Grill. Marvin had been gone a year, however, and he had returned from duty feeling profoundly changed. He had traveled widely, experienced moments of great fear and exhilaration, and become, he felt, a man at last. His parents didn't seem to see that. Perhaps, he thought, the success of the Pioneer perfume campaign would force them to recognize that he had grown up.

Throughout the second half of June, life for everyone involved in the promotion became a hectic jumble of activities. July Fourth fell on a Friday that year, so they would unveil their windows on the Tuesday before. Mayumi had designed three windows for the event, each one meant to evoke a sublime moment of summer. The first, based on the painting by Homer, featured a pastoral scene of green grass, wildflowers, and a blond mannequin in a simple cotton dress, holding up her little trumpet. In the second window, three male mannequins in seersucker suits rowed a pretty young woman across an expanse—the girls had bunched shimmering taffeta into rippling waves—of deep blue water. The third window, Goldie's favorite, offered a pair of lovers. The girl sat on a swing, her head thrown back in delight, while the boy stood behind, gently pushing her into the air.