The Saturday Evening Girls Club Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Jane Healey

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503943278

  ISBN-10: 1503943275

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  Cover photography by Laura Klynstra

  For Ellie and Madeleine, my very own Saturday evening girls

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  ABOUT THE RESEARCH

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  Saturday, September 26, 1908

  Boston, Massachusetts

  Every morning, as long as the weather was fair, I would come up to the rooftop of our building with my coffee cup and stand among my mother’s tomato plants. I would sip my coffee and look across the vastness of Boston Harbor. I never tired of the view. There was always something new to see.

  Today the most striking thing about the harbor, more than the schooners and merchant ships traveling to and from imagined destinations, or the hodgepodge of buildings fighting for space on the waterfront, was the fog. The clouds of mist danced on the surface of the water, and the morning sunlight gave them a glistening, ethereal glow that was so stunning it almost hypnotized me.

  Was this the type of glorious autumn morning that had greeted my parents when they came here from Italy twenty-four years ago? Had they woken up on that crowded, rancid-smelling ship and seen this type of daybreak over Boston? And if they had, were they then filled with the kind of hope that filled my heart now?

  My parents had come to America dreaming of a better life than they had in their peasant village back in Sicily. When I stood on our rooftop on mornings like this, I dreamed of a distinctly American life, better than what my parents had today.

  My quiet reverie was interrupted by a screechy-voiced woman hollering out of one of the top-floor windows to her husband on the street below, and I realized that it was time to catch the streetcar to go to work. I took one more glance at the fog on the harbor’s surface before I hurried toward the stairs.

  I stopped at the fifth floor and ran down the hall to drop my coffee mug at home before I left. I heard the Castellano baby crying; Mrs. Mineo yelling out the window to her son, Luigi; and five-year-old Anita Pirandello’s horrible coughing. This was life on the fifth floor of 53 Charter Street. Doors were always open. Everyone helped each other. And everyone knew everyone else’s business.

  “I’m going to my club meeting right after work, so I won’t be home for dinner,” I said to my mother as I entered our family’s tiny kitchen. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of clothing from my father’s tailor shop next to her. She was stitching the hem of a pair of navy-blue pants.

  “Oh, Caprice, I thought you left with Fabbia and Vita,” she said to me in Italian as she looked up. “Here, this is an onion sandwich you can have for lunch.”

  She picked up a brown sack on the table and handed it to me.

  “Grazie,” I said, thanking her. I kissed her on both cheeks, looking at her crinkly, espresso-brown eyes and the deep creases marking her round, pink cheeks. It was like looking in a mirror years from now. I was okay with this. My mother was a pretty woman. I only wished I had been born with her shiny black hair instead of my own odd-colored auburn. I’d always felt God picked the wrong color hair for me.

  I was about to shut the door when I heard her call out, “Oh, Caprice?”

  “Yes?” I answered, peeking back inside.

  “Your father has invited over Enrico Zummo for dessert tomorrow night,” she said. “He’s the son of Joey, the shoemaker.”

  “Mama, no. No! Why does Papa continue to do this? You know I—” My mother held up her hand to stop me, and I clenched my jaw and felt the warmth of anger creep up my cheeks.

  “Caprice, please be patient with your father,” she answered in Italian. This was our language tarantella—we danced back and forth between my English and her Italian. “Please. He’s only trying to do what he thinks is best for his oldest daughter.”

  I sighed and realized that I didn’t have time to argue or I would risk being late for work. That was probably why she had decided to warn me about the shoemaker’s son today; she just wanted me to know ahead of time, to try to keep the peace in our house.

  “I will try to be patient,” I said. “I’ve got to go.”

  “And you never know, you may like this Enrico, no?” she said, giving me a tiny shrug, her eyebrows raised.

  “Yes, you never know, Mama,” I replied. I was a twenty-year-old woman. I would rather die than have my parents arrange a marriage to a Sicilian stranger. Not that my mother would ever understand. She had married my father at sixteen after meeting him once.

  I left our building and hurried down to Hanover Street to catch the streetcar to Madame DuPont’s Millinery, my place of employment since I had graduated high school three years ago. It was 7:30 a.m., but the streets of the North End already hummed. Shopkeepers washed windows and rearranged their wares on the sidewalks. I saw several pounds of macaroni drying in the Caroli family’s pasta shop. Headless yellow chickens and enormous cuts of blood-red beef were hanging in the windows of the shop owned by Mr. Tomei, the butcher.

  This morning, the unsavory smells of the North End streets—of horse manure and rotting trash—were muted by the smell of strong Italian coffee wafting from many of the windows and the slight salty breeze coming off the harbor.

  I broke into a run and jumped onto the streetcar just as the doors were about to close. I sank into an open seat in the back and breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God, I would not be late for work. Madame DuPont didn’t need another reason to berate me. My being Italian appeared to be all the reason she needed.

  As usual, the ride to Washington Street seemed far too short. I felt my stomach tighten as I waved good-bye to the streetcar driver and walked down the clean, quiet street toward Madame DuPont’s. I glanced into the gleaming shop windows that displayed exquisite leather shoes and the latest dresses in taffeta and silk shantung. A woman strolled by me wearing large diamond earrings and a gorgeous deep-green cashmere cloak. Feeling self-conscious of the frayed cuffs and missing button I had yet to replace, I pulled my own coat a little tighter around me. These were things that I never thought about in the North End.

  The women who visited Madame DuPont’s shop would never set foot in the North End. Why would they, when they could shop and live in this pristine part of Boston? The Washington Street
shops catered to the society ladies of the city. Women who would happily pay thirteen dollars for a new fall hat knew nothing about what it was like to live in a place where you shared a bathroom with several families. I had not spent thirteen dollars combined on clothing in the past year, much less on one hat.

  I opened the door to Madame DuPont’s and smelled the familiar sweet-and-sour scent of new fabric. The walls were painted a soothing cream color, and the ceiling was covered in shiny copper. On either side of the shop were chocolate-brown built-in wooden shelves. All of our latest creations adorned them—turban-style hats made of chiffon and velvet in gray or black, Milan straw hats with velvet trim and silk rosebuds.

  Madame was sitting at her desk going over the books and didn’t even acknowledge my arrival. My Irish coworkers from South Boston glanced up briefly, only to return to their work when they realized it was just me.

  I walked over and sat at my lonely little table at the back of the shop and started to organize the supplies I needed for the day. I didn’t like working for Madame DuPont very much, but I did love my job as the shop’s sole trimmer. I had been promoted to the position last year. Once the shop’s makers shaped the hats, it was my task to make them beautiful by adorning them with unique combinations of flowers, ribbons, feathers, and lace.

  We worked in silence for about an hour. When it was quiet like this, I often imagined that I was sitting at my own shop in the North End, selling gorgeous, affordable hats to the women of my neighborhood. I envisioned an impeccable little storefront on Hanover Street. The ivory-colored paint trim would be spotless, and the windows would always gleam. My finest creations would be displayed in the front glass window.

  My own hat shop: Caprice’s Millinery. It was what I wanted more than anything in the world. And tomorrow I would finally have a discussion with my parents about paying board so I would no longer have to hand over every penny I earned to them. I needed to save my own money and finally do something about opening my hat shop instead of just dreaming about it.

  Suddenly Madame DuPont bolted out of her seat, walked to the middle of the room, and announced in her haughty French accent, “We will have a short meeting at noon today after I distribute your pay envelopes for the week.”

  All of us looked around, although no one met my glance. We had never had a meeting in all of the time I had worked for Madame. I had no idea why we would start now.

  Madame ignored our reactions and walked over to Bridget, one of the makers, while taking her silver reading glasses off her long pale nose. “Bridget!” she said in that jarring tone that cut right through you. “That hat looks terrible.” She clucked her tongue and shook her head. “Your work is still so sloppy. Sometimes I wonder if you’ve learned anything from me. Here, hand it to me; I will fix it.”

  Bridget’s face turned crimson, and she stared at the floor while Madame DuPont tried to fix the mess of a hat. Madame was right; Bridget’s work was terrible. I stroked the fluffy ostrich feather I was holding and tried to concentrate on the work in front of me, but my body was so tense that I couldn’t focus. Whenever Madame yelled at one of the girls, it was just a reminder that sooner or later it would be my turn again.

  There was a time when I had walked to the streetcar with the South Boston girls at the end of the workday. We would joke about who had endured the worst of Madame’s harassment and would take turns imitating her French accent. It had made working for Madame a little more tolerable.

  All of that ended when the shop’s former trimmer had left to have a baby a year ago. When Madame DuPont had chosen me to train as her replacement, the South Boston girls stopped talking to me. They had all worked for Madame at least a year longer than I had, and they had resented my promotion.

  By the end of each week, I could barely stand it anymore. After six days working in that icy atmosphere, I couldn’t wait for the comfort of my weekly Saturday Evening Girls meeting.

  I had been a part of the Saturday Evening Girls club, or the S.E.G. as we all called it, since I was thirteen. We were not young girls anymore, but the club’s name remained the same. At the S.E.G., we had educational speakers and discussed literature and listened to music. But what I loved most about our weekly meetings was sitting in the back of the room with Thea, Maria, and Ada, my best friends, talking to each other about whatever was on our minds that week. The S.E.G. meeting was not only the best part of my week—it was the best part of vita mia, my life.

  A couple of women visited the shop in the course of the morning, and each time Madame DuPont transformed into the vivacious French shop owner. Her small blue eyes glistened and her faux smile warmed as she told a short, stout woman named Mrs. Cabot how wonderful she looked in a gray turban. The hat was all wrong for her. It made her look like a jar of olives about to explode.

  Getting lost in the art of making hats was the only thing that got me through the days—that and the pay, of course.

  At noon, I was anxious to hear Madame’s news, thinking that it must be something quite important to call a meeting for the first time. She quickly passed out our pay envelopes and stood at the front of the shop, facing all of us at our worktables.

  “As of next week, I am closing the shop and moving to New York. My husband has been offered a new job at a bank in New York City, so I am bringing my business there. Boston is second class to New York when it comes to fashion, anyway.” She said this to us in an icy, stiff voice, staring above our heads so she didn’t have to look any of us in the eye. Smoothing her skirt, she informed us, as casually as if she were talking about the weather, “This is your last day of employment at the shop.”

  We all sat in stunned silence. A hot, queasy feeling washed over me, and I was afraid I might have to run out to the street to be sick.

  My dream started to evaporate into the air around me. I couldn’t believe this was happening. No job. No pay. My family couldn’t afford to have me living at home and not working, not while Fabbia and Vita were still in school. I would be forced to get a horrible factory job like my friend Thea. And my father would be more determined than ever to marry me off.

  “So, that’s it then?” I heard someone say in an Irish brogue, anger and tears choking the voice. “You’re just turning us out onto the street? Just like that?”

  Madame DuPont looked down her nose. Her eyes revealed no sign of sympathy. “Well, yes, I suppose I am,” she said, adding with a wave of her hand, “but I have trained you all well. This is one of the most well-regarded shops in Boston. You should—well, most of you should—be able to find other jobs.”

  With this, one of the girls grabbed her things and stormed out of the shop. A few others followed her. I gathered up my coat and hat in a daze, the sick feeling getting worse as I stood up. Bridget exited without saying good-bye; I heard her sniffling as she slammed the shop’s door behind her. I was anxious to leave too, especially now that I was alone with Madame.

  “Caprice,” she said as I was about to run for the door. I looked up at her, wanting to scream at her for the way she had dismissed us all with no recourse, for all of the harsh comments and treatment over the past three years. But instead, I just met her gaze, my eyes as cold as hers. I would not let her see me cry.

  “You are a very talented trimmer, Caprice,” she said, squeezing her hands together. “Very talented. Perhaps one of the best I have ever had work for me. Still . . . good luck. You’ll need it.”

  For a brief moment, I couldn’t move. I was taken aback by her words. On my last day of employment, Madame DuPont had given me genuine praise. Something I had been waiting to hear since I had started working for her three years ago. But she had to ruin it by wishing me luck. “You’ll need it.” Why? Because I’m Italian? That was what she didn’t say.

  There was an awkward pause as I stood there, blinking back tears. I took a deep breath and answered in a harsh whisper, “Good-bye, Madame.”

  I bowed my head and rushed toward the door, not daring to look back for fear she’d see me weepin
g.

  CHAPTER 2

  A shared trouble is half joy.

  —Italian proverb

  It was still drizzling when I arrived at the headquarters of the Saturday Evening Girls on Hull Street in the North End. I realized I must look like a fright, but I didn’t care. I had spent the afternoon wandering the streets of Boston, not wanting to go home to face my family but not having anywhere to go until the S.E.G. meeting started.

  I entered Hull House through the basement, which was now the storefront of the newly opened pottery shop, the business that supported the club’s activities. I walked through the shop and up the basement stairs, then climbed one flight past the first-floor pottery workroom and one of the meeting rooms, up to the second-floor assembly room. It was a large, welcoming space with an enormous marble fireplace. The fire was blazing and the room was warm, the smell of wood smoke mingling with the dry, toasty scent of the pottery kilns two floors below.

  I saw Ada, Thea, and Maria sitting on our usual seats in the far back of the room. Ada had a book on her lap as always, her petite hands flying as she told Thea and Maria a story. Maria’s enormous blue eyes widened, and she burst out giggling at whatever Ada was saying. Thea was facing away from me so all I could see was her haphazard chignon of honey-brown hair, but her laughter was so loud it echoed against the assembly room walls.

  I walked over to where they were sitting, nodding and saying hi to some of the other club members as I passed by them.

  “Hello, ladies,” I said as I came up behind Thea’s chair.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Caprice, what happened to you?” Maria asked, jumping up to pull over a seat for me. “Sit down; you look awful.”

  “Oh, Caprice, you’re soaked to the bone,” said Thea, taking my coat and hat from me as I removed them.

  “Are you okay?” Ada said, grabbing my hand.

  “I’m so glad to finally see you all,” I said, sinking into the chair Maria had brought over. “It’s been a horrible day.”

  I told them what had transpired at Madame DuPont’s that morning. They sat around me in a circle, and despite my troubles, the familiar happiness I felt when the four of us were together washed over me. How many times and in how many places had we sat like this, trying to find answers to the problems in our lives? Too many to count.