CHAPTER ONE

New York

1921

The Brooklyn Bridge remains a torturous nightmare and Eloise would do anything to stay away from it. It has been six years since she left her hometown and moved to the big city. A city that she had heard so much about but still, she has yet to allow herself make sense of how the bridge could be standing. The first that she had heard of New York was from the eldest Wheatley son, Philip, who had gone to college there. She remembers how she listened to him talk about tall buildings, cigars and women in elaborate hats with such keen interest. She remembers how she and Mary Lou had spent the next few days pretending to be women in New York, fanciful and rich. However, when she got into the city, none of it was as she had imagined it would be. 

At sixteen, Eloise was ill-prepared to live on her own so far away from home, but she had made her decision and could not afford to look back. Her first home and first disillusionment of what life in the city ought to be was a tenement on the lower east side of Manhattan which she paid for with money that her father gave her when she told him of her decision to move away. She shared the dingy small room with Sheila, a Mexican immigrant who sewed all day and never let her enjoy a wink of sleep. The bathroom was shared with five other rooms, each one housing at least two other girls. There was no electricity and whenever it got dark, Eloise always had to will herself to sleep. Sometimes when it rained heavily, the sewage would overflow down the street and Eloise would have to walk in it to get to wherever she was going. 

For a while, this abysmal living condition was good enough for her. After all, all that she needed was just a place to rest and keep her clothes until she could land on her two feet. However, when cholera began to spread from building to building, Eloise knew that she had to leave. At this time, Eloise had gotten a job as a second assistant for Thomas Wilson, the middle-aged editor of a big-time magazine on the Upper East Side. Why anybody would need two assistants; Eloise did not know, but she was glad to have a job to pay for food and get better housing. Besides, the first assistant, Fay, did more editorial work and sometimes wrote for Mr. Thomas Wilson. All that Eloise did was fetch the man’s coffee and make sure he never ran out of pencils and ink. It was when she complained to Fay, about her living condition that Eloise got the chance to move out.

“You know, one of my roommates just moved out and we have a spare room,” Fay said. “You could come look at it.”

Before she even looked at it, Eloise already knew that she was going to take it. Anything would be better than where she was living. After work that day, she followed Fay and together they got on a tram headed for Brooklyn. 

“You live in Brooklyn?” Eloise asked Fay as the tram began to move.

“Yes, I do,” Fay said with a smile, oblivious to the internal turmoil that was going on inside Eloise.

Eloise suddenly felt her chest tighten and her throat begin to close in on itself. In the nine months that she had been in New York, she had not crossed the Brooklyn Bridge because it terrified her. Not once in Blue Creek had she ever had to cross such a large body of water on what looked suspiciously like a death trap. Once, while she was still job searching, one of the girls in the tenement, Andrea, had found a job for Eloise but she had refused to go because it was in Brooklyn. Now, here she was heading straight for what she feared. Eloise wanted to protest, get the tram to stop and run as fast as she could back to her tenement on the lower east side but when she weighed her options, she kept still. It was either crossing the bridge or dying of cholera. Eloise closed her eyes and pretended to sleep until the tram reached the other side. 

By all indications, Eloise felt her life get easier and better when she moved in with Fay and Eliza. First, she had her own room. It was small but it was her own. Also, three months after that, Fay got a job as a typist at another magazine and Eloise was promoted to the position of the first assistant. There, she was trained by both Fay and Thomas Wilson on the magazine’s style of writing and editing. She stayed at this job for three more years until one day, Thomas Wilson called her into his office.

“Hello, Eloise,” he said, barely paying her any attention. He had a bunch of papers in front of him and a pencil in his hand that he was using to underline sentences and words in the papers. He had left his moustache to grow so much that it covered his mouth like a roof and she could barely see his lips move as he talked. “I trust you must be confused as to why I called you in here.”

“Yes, I am, sir,” Eloise said with as much politeness as she could muster. She was terrified.

“You will no longer be my assistant,” Thomas Wilson said simply.

Back in Blue Creek, there is a church just a stone throw from Eloise’s father’s house. The church has a very loud bell whose sound has somehow ingrained itself into Eloise’s subconscious. In the silence that followed, Thomas Wilson’s declaration, all that she could hear was that bell.

“We are going through some reshuffles,” he continued. “That means promotions or some people are let go. In the time that you have been my assistant, you have shown great passion and you have learnt about the style of writing in this magazine very fast. That is why I am promoting you to a writing position. Congratulations.”

By the time Thomas Wilson finished talking, Eloise felt like she had just been spun round twenty times and asked to touch her nose with the tip of her finger. Thomas was smiling at her and expecting a reaction but she was too stunned to speak. It was just too good to be true. 

“What do you say?” Thomas was grinning at her.

“Yes!” she shouted then restrained herself. “Yes, sir. This is a dream come true.”

That day as she crossed the bridge, she forgot how scared she was and just basked in the glory of what was looking out to become the beginning of her success story. She had left her hometown with almost nothing and moved to a strange new city. She had lived and shared bathrooms with strangers and ran from a deadly disease. Now, here she was, ready to resume work the following morning as a typist. 

The summer of 1918 brought with it a flower pot hat craze. It was as though every woman in the city was in a competition to see whose hat could hold the most flowers. For a long time, Eloise stayed out of this apparent competition. She could not afford to buy elaborate hats because all the money that she made went into feeding and rent. So, she just watched all the women strutting around with style as though she was on the sidelines. When she received her first pay as a typist, almost twice what she received the previous month when she was a secretary, the first thing that she bought was the hat. 

When Eloise walked into her apartment, Fay screamed so loud that she jumped back in panic. The big smile on Fay’s face was in such contrast to the scary loud noise that she just made, Eloise’s fear turned into worry.

“Are you alright?” she asked Fay.

“No!” Fay screamed at her and hugged her at the door. “You just got this new hat!”

Eliza chuckled from behind Fay and rolled her eyes. “Fay is a hat fanatic; you must know that by now.”

“I know,” Eloise could not help but blush. “She’s the one who poisoned my mind with the idea of this hat.”

Fay scoffed. “You’re welcome. You look marvelous.”

Eloise did not want to seem conceited but she had seen herself in the mirror at the hat shop and she did look marvelous. She just smiled sheepishly while the other girls sang praises of her hat and newly acquired fashion sense.

“You know what?” Fay said suddenly. “Now that you have received your first paycheck as a typist, we should celebrate.”

“How?” Eloise asked.

“The family that owns the magazine that I work for is throwing a party this weekend and my boss invited me. You two should come with me. It’s in their home in Long Island.”

When Fay talked about celebrating, Eloise had hoped for something slightly different like cooking something fancy and finding a way to smoke cigars in the comfort of their own home like the men did publicly without shame. 

“I don’t know, Fay,” Eloise’s disinterest was evident in the tone of her voice. “I am not sure that I am up for a party with such a prim and proper bunch.”

“Oh! My dear, you just bought this hat. You are proper enough to enter any party,” Fay said mockingly and they all laughed. Just like that, Eloise was convinced and she found herself getting dressed for a Long Island party. 

All that Eloise knew about the Bradshaws, she knew against her will. Fay always seemed to be talking about them and what they were doing. ‘Mr. James Bradshaw had just acquired another business; what a mogul’ ‘Mrs. Phyllis Bradshaw was seen wearing a red tulle dress; what a fashion icon’ ‘and the Bradshaw son? So hot?” Eloise stood in the middle of the enormous living room of the Bradshaw mansion staring at the portrait of the family that was nothing less than seven feet by seven feet in size. With the exception of the teenage girl sitting on the son’s right, Eloise felt like she already knew them with all of Fay’s descriptions.

“I promise I look better in real life.” The voice, silky smooth and deep as a well, came from behind Eloise so she turned around. Right in front of her was the man from the picture, the son, in a suit slightly different and more fitted than the one in the portrait. Even though his head was covered by a hat, his hair was shorter than the one in the picture. Only a foot away from Eloise, she could see the sharpness of his jaw and the blue of his eyes. He walks towards Eloise and stops right beside her looking at the portrait of himself and his family. Eloise watches him. “I feel like you must know that this portrait was taken when I was younger. I had just arrived from my tour of Europe and that mule was all the rave in Spain.”

Eloise fought back a chuckle. “It’s not so bad.”

He gave her a sideways glance. “That’s a lie. Tell me what you actually think of it. I won’t get offended.”

Eloise swallowed and took in a deep breath before she spoke. “It looks like a horse’s tail.”

“IT LOOKS LIKE A HORSE’S TAIL!” He repeated with more intensity causing Eloise to laugh. “What was I thinking?”

“You know,” she said with a smile. “I would like to think that this could work in your favor.”

“Really?” He turned to face her so that they were looking at each other. “How is that?”

“This could be one of those things that throw people off when they see at first and then their mind gets blown when they see you and realize how attractive you are.”

He had a smile on his face that was growing wider by the second. “You think I’m attractive.”

The embarrassment started with the realization of what she had just said and manifested in her face turning beet-red. She could not believe that she just openly called this man attractive. Sure, it was not a lie at all but still, it was very unlike her or any respectable young woman to do so. Eloise began to apologize but it only came out as incoherent stutter. He waved her off with a laugh and she turned her attention to the painting, looking anywhere but at him and ready to take the first chance of escape.

“You don’t look like one of my father’s employees,” he said after what felt like a year of silence. “I have never seen you at any of these things before.”

“No, I’m not,” Eloise said simply, afraid to say too much and embarrass herself again.

“I’m Stanley.”

“Eloise.”

“Tell me, Eloise,” he began with a serious tone. “Where did you see the most impressive horse’s hair? Besides mine in this portrait of course.” That caused Eloise to let go of all that she had been holding in and she let out a good laugh. 

Eloise attended every party that The Bradshaws threw after that, to Fay’s excitement. By the time Stanley asked that he see Eloise once in the city, outside of the party, Fay had begun to plan their wedding. Thus, began a friendship which soon blossomed into something more in two wonderful years. 

Up until that point Eloise had yet to fully grasp the trajectory that her life had taken in the time that she moved away from her hometown. Even now as Stanley’s car drives down the Brooklyn Bridge, Eloise has not gotten over her fear of the bridge but she has gotten used to it. He has just picked her up from work to go to her apartment to change her outfit. Fay had promised to help pick out her outfit as she left the apartment in the morning. She is meeting his parents properly for the first time that afternoon and she could not be more nervous. Stanley squeezes her hand gently and smiled at her. She looks at him, his jawline sharp as ever.

“Don’t be nervous,” he says. “They’ll love you.”

“I hope they do.”

For some reason, Eloise feels like they may not. Nothing has gone horribly wrong in a long while, maybe this is it.