That was how I ended up working at a department store in San Jose during the Christmas season. Joe had been right; as soon as I’d been “French,” my reception had proved very different. It was safer, though, to be “French” a bit farther from home, even if it meant traveling on the train.
I was hired in the Housewares department, where I was meant to show gift-shopping husbands the delights of modern appliances, as they were apparently the gifts most desired by women—The Ladies’ Home Journalcertainly said so—and cost a great deal, too. My supervisor, Mr. Norris, said, “Be sure to smile at them and tell them how much their wives will love them for it.” And I’d thought, as I had so often,How hard can it be?
The first day, I found out.
At 10:30, I caught the edge of a tablecloth while demonstrating the Hoover vacuum cleaner. This was unfortunate, for there were four place settings of Spode Christmas china on the table, as well as a soup tureen and much crystal glassware. The china was rather silly, featuring a decorated Christmas tree on each piece; who would want such a childishthing rather than a beautiful pattern with gilt edges that one could use at every holiday?
But when I suggested to Mr. Norris that we should display a truly elegant holiday table when we set it again, he was quite unsympathetic, even though I’d collected all the bits and pieces of china most diligently. The husband in question had laughed uproariously and bought the vacuum cleaner, but even when I described his delight, the purchase didn’t appease Mr. Norris as much as I’d hoped. I tried to explain how powerful the vacuum cleaner was, that it had nearly run away with me, which is how I’d caught the tablecloth in its jaws, and that I could now emphasize this feature, but he merely sighed in a most martyred way.
At 11:45, I attached the broiler to the Westinghouse Roaster Griller—which would take up half one’s kitchen; perhaps this was for people who didn’t have an oven?—and added four hot dogs in their buns. (A hot dog was a very inferior sausage and was always, for some reason, eaten with the same spongy bread I’d encountered before.) Unfortunately, the buns burst into flames, which caused me to shriek and the husband in question to slam the lid on the device in great haste. I was telling him how clever he was, and what a quick thinker, too, and asking if he’d been in the military—he had!—and he was beginning to tell me about it when Mr. Norris hurried over and said, “A word, Mrs. Stark?”
“But this gentleman is just telling me a most interesting story,” I said, “about how the Australians grill their sausages outdoors.”
“Yeah,” the man said. “Buzz off, buddy. I’m talking to the lady.”
Mr. Norris said, “Mrs. Fenwick? Can you come here and describe the features of this model for the gentleman, please?”
“Nope,” the customer said. “I want to hear it from her.” Hejerked his thumb at me. “Do you want to sell this thing or not? I’ve got the dough, and I want to spend it.”
He was so like many of the more sympathetic Americans I’d met in Germany, rough in manner but rather kind underneath, and comical, too. I said, on impulse, “I think you were perhaps a sergeant?”
“Got it in one,” the man said.
“But I like sergeants very much,” I said with delight. “My husband was one as well.”
“Yeah?” he said. “He was a smart guy, then.Reallysmart, I guess, because he came home with you.” Mr. Norris was still hovering anxiously, fanning at the remaining smoke, and the man told him, “Look, I’m buying the thing, OK? Keep your hair on.”
At 3:40, when I was nearly finished with my shift, I demonstrated how to use a Liquidizer. I’d read the instructions very carefully, and this time, I was sure I had it right. I put in three plums from a bowl beside the machine—it was a most attractive display, with the purple plums in a bright-yellow bowl with a lovely serving board and pearl-handled knife beside them; how much food Americans had, that one could waste it just to demonstrate an appliance!—and told the customer, “We’re making baby food here, you see, although one can also mix cocktails in it, as well as many other things. But the store doesn’t wish us to demonstrate alcoholic drinks, and anyway, one can simply shake them, I believe.”
“It could crush ice, maybe,” the man said. “That could be pretty useful.”
“Oh, youareclever,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, I’m sure that would work, for the blades and the motor are very strong, you know. I’ll find some ice, and we’ll see.” Which I did, and I remembered to put the lid on the machine and hold it down, too, before pressing the button.
There was the most terrible noise. A sort of rattling grinding,but terrifically loud, and the machine was trying to leap across the table. I fumbled for the button to turn it off, forgetting to hold the top on in my haste, and the customer and I were both instantly enveloped in a purple spray.
He solved the problem by pulling the electric plug from its socket. The terrible noise ended, and he grinned at me from behind a purple mask and said, “I think you’re probably supposed to take the pits out of the plums first.”
“Oh, yes,” I said breathlessly, grabbing two embroidered tea towels from a nearby display and handing him one while using the other on myself, “I’m sure you’re right. Oh, dear, I’m afraid your suit is badly stained.”
“The storewillpay for cleaning, right?” the man said.
“Oh. Yes, I’m sure. Oh, here’s Mr. Norris. He can assist you with that.”
I was reassigned the next day to the perfume department.
Ididsell a great deal of perfume—as with the housewares, the male customers were most kind—and didn’t break a single thing. I was even asked to stay on after the holiday season, with reduced hours. This was acceptable to me, for Joe had been right: we needed only alittlemore money, and this would give me more time to practice my cooking. As with the bakery, I enjoyed talking to people and learning about them, and being surrounded all day by wonderful scents was no terrible thing. Perfume is very nice, isn’t it?
All was going well, in fact. Until it wasn’t.
18
NOT A WHITE CHRISTMAS
One Saturday in mid-January, I was rearranging the perfume bottles in the display case—how lovely they were, particularly the L’Air du Temps flagon with its stopper of two crystal doves! I knew the Chanel No. 5 bottle was more elegant, but the doves were very beautiful, and I was, after all, from Dresden, and had a Rococo heart.
I was also thinking that it was a bit sad that my cozy winter holiday with Joe had come to an end, for he was back in class again. And yet I’d come home earlier this week, after a long and difficult workday—it was the bleeding again; so tedious—to find that Joe had used not only the carpet-sweeper, broom, and feather-duster, but also the special Ajax powder, with which he’d cleaned the toilet and bath! I truly had the most wonderful of husbands, and when I’d told Rosemary, my colleague at the perfume counter, she’d been most satisfactorily astonished and envious. “Even though heisa Jew,” she’d added.
I never knew what to say to such things, other than to say again, “Yes, he’s the very best of husbands.” Such comments made me wish thatIwas a Jew, so I could stand with him as aunited front. That was perhaps not a correct way to see religion, or was it? What was the example Mrs. Stark had offered, with Ruth and Naomi, if not a demonstration of giving up the religion of one’s fathers for the beloved?
