We climbed the three flights of narrow stairs to our apartment, which was on the top floor. It was basically four rooms: a small double sitting room facing the street, which together functioned as living room/library/sort of dining room/guest space and study, and two bedrooms in back facing the rear windows of the Barbizon Hotel for Women. My bedroom was done up in red and white candy stripes, and one of the double-ended mahogany twin beds that had been in my room in Boston had made it to New York City. At the other end of the short hallway, closed off by two sets of doors, was my mother’s room. A sky-lit kitchen, breakfast area, and sky-lit bathroom were in the middle.
It was cozy. I liked it. But the deafening rumblings of the Third Avenue El, less than a block away, terrified me, as did the shabby stores that lined Third Avenue’s lightless sidewalks below the imposing structure of the El overhead. Some were pawn shops. Others displayed arrays of hernia belts, artificial limbs, and other prosthetic devices in their grimy windows. Drunks staggered in and out of the dingy Irish bars lining both sides of the avenue.
Bloomingdale’s was two blocks to the south. But Annette declared it a store for working-class people and not for us.
Annette hired another stocky, middle-aged woman, Anna Peterson, to look after me. Anna was gentle and kind. She took me to and collected me from the school bus, accompanied me to doctor appointments, and occasionally took me to Central Park. For the first month or two of our new life in New York, Annette was very much in evidence. She spent her days looking for work. Despite being third in her class at Columbia Law School and her legal experience in Boston, the only positions open to her were secretarial, which she declined. On weekends she and MR took me around to show me the city. To my dismay MR sported the same spats and cane that I’d seen in Boston, even on walks in Central Park!
I asked Annette incessantly when Rex would be making his first visit to see me. No answer.
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