Walkers in the City

LA COUTURIERE

There is a certain way some ladies have in New York of talking to each other that is really the city itself talking. If you look, you’ll see it in the streets every day. Sometimes I’ve been lucky and had my camera at just the right moment. The ladies are always at a little distance so I have never known what any of them were talking about, but it doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t matter what neighborhood it is, or how much money they have or what they look like. They are all alike, and they are telling a story that ladies have been telling on the streets of New York forever.

I was pushing my dog around the neighborhood in her sedan chair not long ago when an old lady stopped me on 9th Avenue to tell me that when she was a kid she saw a lady pushing a goat in a baby carriage past Radio City Music Hall. I was happy to know that. “The things you see on the streets of New York,” she said. She reminded me a little of Susan, a lady I met three summers ago already, on the corner of 7th Avenue and 15th Street. I was out with Pilar then, too. I had taken her to buy a bottle of Woodsy Woof shampoo in a little shop on that block. Woodsy Woof smelled so good that I sometimes used it myself. It had eucalyptus oil and spruce tips in it. The shop came to a sad end that winter after the girl who worked in it was attacked behind the counter, right in the middle of the day. I was there a few days before it happened, looking at rubber dog boots to protect against snow salt, and she was sitting at the counter reading a Jane Austin book. She said, “You can bring your dog in to try them on, if you like.” I felt terrible for her when I read about what happened in the Post. After the shop closed I couldn’t find Woodsy Woof anywhere else, but on the day that I bought that last bottle, I waited for the light to change at 15th Street standing next to Susan.
She was wearing a leopard-print caftan, and she looked down at Pilar and said, “What’s it all about?” She had long white hair swept back to her shoulders, the way my friend Loren MacIver used to wear her hair. She wore bright red lipstick and she had a little hunchback. I told her that I thought she was the most stylish person on the street, and that seemed to make her very happy. She told me that she bought the caftan many years before in Acapulco from a lady on the beach who made them, who everyone called La Couturiere. She asked me my name and told me hers. She must have been about 85 years old and she had the kind of nice old Jewish New York accent that always comes with a certain wit and chutzpah. We let a few lights change and chatted. She told me that she had worked for years as a designer of paper clothes for paper dolls. Every day she went to an office in Midtown and came up with fabulous paper outfits. She said that her mother, who had died 60 years before, was brilliant in every way and she had her to thank for everything. “They don’t make people like her anymore,” she said. “The next time I see you, I’ll tell you all about her.” She said, “How is that we can live right in the same neighborhood for years and not know it?” And then she said, “Romy, Ga’ bless you, you made my evening.”
In the years since I met Susan on the street, I’ve seen more than a few old ladies with shopping carts who made my heart leap with recognition, but each time they turned out to be somebody else. In December 2006 I put this in my diary:
Yesterday in the library I thought I recognized the old lady named Susan I met on 7th Avenue and 15th Street but it wasn’t the same lady. This one said, “You mean there’s someone else as glamorous as me?” Apparently there are lots, because I asked another one who wasn’t Susan either. I told the one in the library about that, and she said that I can ask her if she’s Susan as much as I want to.
Five or six times in the past few months I’ve recognized a certain old lady pushing a cart around the neighborhood who resembles Susan, but she’s always been across the street or just disappearing around a corner so I haven’t been able to ask her. Yesterday as I was passing the deli across the street, I noticed a pretty little dog parked in front and suddenly there she was, the old lady, right beside me. She was going my way, so I said, “They should let him in.” And she said, “Who?” “That little dog,” I said. And she shrugged. “OK, so why not?” She wasn’t particularly friendly, but she was sizing me up. She said, “And what’s he gonna pay with? You’re gonna pay for him?” She looked to be about 90, and she had the right accent but she wasn’t Susan. She said, “Do you know him?” I said, “No, that’s the first time I’ve seen him. But I think he’s real cute.” I wanted to tell her that I thought she was cute, too, but I didn’t. “So go have lunch with him,” she said. “That’s how you’ll know him.” She said it as if she felt completely put upon having to deal with me. I said, “Maybe I will. Do you want to come?” She looked right into my face and I thought she was going to say, “What’s with you, lady?” But she smiled. And she said, “Sorry. I got an appointment.”

–RA, July 18th, 2008 © Goodie Publications, all rights reserved