Read an Excerpt
1
New York City, 1938
Iwould never forget the first words Estée Lauder said to me: "That's the wrong shade of lipstick for your coloring."
She'd crossed the room and was standing beside me, her advice unsolicited and, frankly, unwanted. I was getting my hair cut and dyed at Darlene's Palace of Beauty on 75th and Broadway. I'd gone there on an impulse as soon as they opened. I was their first customer that day, seeking refuge after the Hermitage Hotel for Men ousted me. I was twenty-one and no better equipped to face adulthood than a newborn left outside a firehouse, a baby bird fallen from the nest.
Darlene, the owner, picked up her scissors for some last-minute snips. She was a stout, gruff redhead with three pin curls across her forehead and a constellation of acne scars along her left cheek. While exhaling cigarette smoke from the corner of her mouth, she pumped the hydraulic foot pedal on the base of the chair. She bumped me up, up, up until I was eye level with a petite blonde who introduced herself as Estée-which came out sounding like Est-Stay-Lauder. She had luminous skin, not one pore visible on her face. She was pretty, but not extraordinarily so. You wouldn't have looked twice at her until you got to know her and then, well, then, you couldn't take your eyes off her. She had what I called creeping charisma, in that it snuck up on you. Despite sometimes being pushy, her charms were cumulative. She was not short on opinions, but still, she had the ability to draw people to her and could get away with saying and doing things that no one else dared. If someone had told me then that Estée and I would have become the closest of friends, I never would have believed them.
I assumed we were about the same age but later on learned that she was seven years my senior. Later still, I'd discovered that she was actually nine years older. For someone trying to portray herself as nearly a decade younger than she was, she certainly didn't dress the part. The woman standing before me wore a boxy beige town suit with the jacket buttoned to her throat. The tiny little beige hat, tilted just so, seemed affixed to her blonde marcelled hair. Even my mother wouldn't have worn such an outfit. Yes, the quality was good, and I knew how to spot finely made clothes, but the style was that of a middle-aged woman trying to hide figure flaws.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't catch your name." She spoke like a blue blood, with the affected speech pattern of someone who spent her summers on Martha's Vineyard.
"Gloria. Gloria Downing." The name still sounded foreign to me. It even tasted funny on my tongue. I'd taken it from a box of matches still in my pocketbook: Downing Brothers Safety Match Co. Estée didn't notice the strange hitch in my voice because she was too busy looking at my dress. I'd been wearing the same one for three days now. It was wrinkled and smelled faintly of the gin I'd spilled on it the night before.
That dress was one of only a handful I'd held on to. The rest of my extensive and rather expensive wardrobe had been auctioned off, along with just about everything else inside our Fifth Avenue penthouse, including the penthouse itself. Even my Cord 812 and the other family automobiles had all been sold, the proceeds going to pay my father's legal fees, fines and restitution. Not that I would have worn those dresses or driven that car ever again. They were as good as stolen. Before we were forced out of our home, I'd stuffed what was left of my life into a single suitcase that was now stowed behind the front desk at Darlene's Palace of Beauty.
For the past six weeks, I'd been secretly living at a bachelor's hotel near Times Square. For obvious reasons, I knew that was never going to be a long-term solution. In fact, that very morning, my breasts and I had been escorted off the property. So now, on top of everything else, I had no place to live.
"And can I just say one more thing?" Estée was asking. There was something distinctly feminine and delicate about her. Frilly was the word that came to mind. She had a way of holding her hands just so, pinkies out, like she was having tea with the queen. "May I?" she asked again.
I turned my eyes to an article about Carole Lombard and Clark Gable in a back issue of Photoplay. Estée got the message and retreated. When she was gone, I looked at myself in the mirror. Of course she was right about the lipstick. It didn't work with my new hair color at all.
I had just gone from being a platinum blonde to a brunette-and I was a natural blonde, mind you. My hair had always been my trademark. The shade I picked from Darlene's puny selection was Dark Brown #1. It was not a particularly flattering choice. My skin tone was much too cool for a brunette. I'm not even sure a different shade would have helped. The style-Darlene had lopped off eight inches, leaving me with a chin-length cut and a thick row of bangs-was not exactly becoming, either.
Basically, I'd made a mess of my appearance, which seemed apropos, seeing as my father had made a mess of my life. And the lives of so many other people: longtime family friends, relatives, government officials-no one was spared. Not Tommy or his family, either. Not even our housekeeper or the doorman who had entrusted their entire life savings to my father. So, in the grand scheme of things, ruining my looks didn't matter. Actually, that had been the reason for my impromptu visit to Darlene's Palace of Beauty. It was all part of my disguise, my attempt to put my past behind me.
I had assumed that would have been the last I'd see of Darlene and Estée, but I could not have been more wrong. As I was about to retrieve my suitcase and pay the bill, Darlene fired her one and only shampoo girl, who had apparently been tying up the telephone line all day.
"I'm trying to run a business here . . ." Darlene said, with a cigarette parked in her mouth. "I can't have you yapping on the phone when you should be doing shampoos . . ."
I listened to her berate the girl before ordering her out of the shop. With the doorbell chimes still ringing, Darlene shoved the cash register drawer shut with her hip and lit a new cigarette off the one she was about to grind out.
While she muttered about needing to hire a new shampoo girl, I heard my brother's voice sounding off inside my head: Get yourself a job, Gloria. What little money I had left was dwindling fast, and I'd just dropped $5.50 on my hair. Glenn was still chattering in my ear, reminding me that I was no longer a rich girl, that I had to find a way to support myself.
"I-I can do it. I can shampoo hair." The words escaped like a sneeze I hadn't felt coming on.
"You?" Darlene's eyebrows tickled her pin curls. "After what you just did to your own hair?" She released a sharp, curt laugh.
"Listen," I said, "you need help and I need work. Just give me a chance."
And that's how I got a job. My first job. Ever. I was a shampoo girl and an occasional sweeper of floors. Not that either task-shampooing or sweeping-sounded difficult, but keep in mind that the only hair I'd ever shampooed was my own and the only floor I'd ever swept would have been none. We had a housekeeper for that. Until we didn't.
Immediately after hiring me-an act of desperation on both our parts-Darlene handed me a pink smock that drooped down my shoulders and hung on me like a sack.
"I'll need this in a smaller size," I said, tugging on the sleeve.
She glared at me. "What do you think this is, Bergdorf's?"
I wanted to quit on the spot.
Ten minutes after that, I wanted to quit again. While waiting for my first shampoo to arrive, I stopped halfheartedly pushing a broom around and made the grave mistake of taking a bathroom break without asking permission.
Darlene was waiting for me outside the restroom. Drawing on her cigarette, which was approaching an inch-long ash, she said, "If you need to go and you can't hold it till your break, you need to ask me first."
Well, everything inside me bristled at this. I hadn't asked if I could go to the bathroom since grammar school. I was unaccustomed to being told what to do, when and how to do it. But catching a glimpse of my suitcase, containing all my worldly possessions, triggered alarms inside me. I had no home, no place to rest my head. I needed this job. I needed the money.
After choking out as sincere an apology as I could muster for my bathroom blunder, I set out to shampoo my first head, quickly realizing that I had underestimated the task at hand.
"That water's ice-cold," the woman said, scowling up at me. I cranked the knob the other way and she shrieked, loud enough to capture everyone's attention. "Good God, now it's scalding." Before I got the temperature to her liking, I'd accidently shot a stream of water down her back. Needless to say, she didn't bother tipping me.
I'd barely gotten rid of her when another head appeared in my bowl. Bored and sinking fast, I escaped into the jaunty rhythm of "It's De-Lovely" coming over the radio. At the first refrain, a hair dryer kicked on and drowned out the music. Thankfully Bernice, the manicurist, rolled across the room on her stool and turned up the radio at the front desk. I noticed that Bernice never walked anywhere. With a push off her heels, she rolled to answer the phone, schedule appointments, fetch a magazine for a customer.
With the music back, I began humming along, tapping my foot. I could never resist the urge to dance. At parties, I was the first one on the dance floor and loved pulling people-especially the wallflowers-out there with me. I had a soft spot in my heart for the shyer girls. I could hardly enjoy myself knowing they were off to the side, sullen and self-conscious. So I'd get them on their feet and make sure they were having a swell time.
"It's De-Lovely" had me momentarily forgetting about my troubles as well as the woman's head in the bowl. It wasn't until she cried out that I saw I'd gotten shampoo in her eyes.
Thirty minutes and four customers later, I had unintentionally sprayed another young lady in the face and made a middle-aged woman moan so loudly I thought I was hurting her. When I apologized, she grabbed my wrist, panting, "Don't. Don't stop. Please don't stop."
I watched the wall clock inch from twelve to one with no break in the action. I ended up working through lunch, thinking I needed the tip money more than food. I was about to shampoo an elderly woman when Estée waltzed over. All morning I'd been trying to figure out exactly what she did at Darlene's. She wasn't a beautician, she wasn't a manicurist or even the receptionist. What's more, she wore a wedding ring, and where I came from, married women didn't work. Turned out that she was renting a small corner of the shop where she set up a little concession stand to sell cold creams and lotions she made in the kitchen of her Upper West Side apartment. She made the stuff and she hawked it. Oh boy, did she ever.
Estée came up and leaned over the woman I was shampooing. "I have something that would look perfect on you, madam," she said. "May I show you how to apply it? It will only take five minutes and I promise when I'm done, your skin will glow."
I highly doubted this was possible. The woman's face reminded me of a speckled egg, peppered with liver spots. But damn if Estée didn't end up selling her a jar anyway.
Estée swooped in on my next customer, too, using her same spiel: "I have something that would look perfect on you . . ."
"Oh no, thank you," said the woman. She had tiny red bumps along her rosy cheeks. "My skin's too sensitive."
But Estée had already uncapped a jar and reached for the woman's hand. And once Estée had hold of her, there was no retreat. She rubbed circles around and over all protests while doling out beauty advice: Sleeping in mascara will destroy your lashes. Wash your face twice a day just like you'd brush your teeth. Never pick at blemishes and don't sleep on your stomach or side unless you want wrinkles. As one who often slept both in my mascara and on my stomach, I was tempted to douse her with the water nozzle.
By three o'clock, things had slowed a bit and my hands were red and raw from shampooing. I grabbed an emery board off Bernice's cart, plopped down in a chair and began filing my nails until Darlene came over and thrust a broom at me. I got the hint and went about sweeping the floor, collecting clumps of hair blowing across the pink and black tiles like tumbleweed. Every few strokes I paused and ran my palms down the front of my smock before cradling my chapped fingers.
Estée came up to me with one of her jars, untwisting the cap. "I have something that would-"
"Spare me the sales pitch," I said, leaning in on the tip of my boom handle.
"But I have a wonderful cream for your hands. I promise they'll feel soft and supple."
"No, thank you." My hands were throbbing and stinging, hurting the way hands that have never been asked to do a day's work would hurt. She was trying to help but I didn't want her touching me, rubbing her miracle cream into my skin and expecting me to buy a jar.
We were in a standoff, or at least I was, trying to look as mean and scary as possible. She wasn't biting. Instead, Estée smiled in an easy, amused sort of way, like she found my ire entertaining, which I found infuriating.
"Hey, Gloria," Darlene called over, pointing toward the shampoo bowl with her chin. "Customer." It came out in three syllables: Cus-to-mer.
