A Crack in the Mirror

1921

She unbuttoned her coat and removed her gloves about the fourth-floor stairway. This morning when she left for work the air had a bitter chill with a few snowflakes falling around her as she walked the four blocks to her job as a sales lady at Franklin Simon’s Department store on Fifth Avenue. This afternoon as she walked home the winter air had lifted a little and the sunshine had made it way through all the buildings and gave the sidewalks just a little warmth for a few short hours.  She still caught herself looking up at those tall buildings and wondering what people were doing and were they looking down on her as she walked by or was, she just invisible blending in with the concrete and people along the way. Each day as she walks back and forth from work, she was still amazed how lucky she was to find such a good apartment so close to work, that was affordable. She was also amazed that she even got the sales job At Simons as all the flapper girls called it. Moving to Manhattan with her Mother, and little Sister six months ago from Long Island, she still longed for Long Island as her Mom and Sister and her called it. None of them ever thought about leaving Long Island and their life there they had all know, but life as they had known it changed quickly over the past few years and nothing was the same anymore.

She made it to apartment number 515, placed her key in the lock, and opened her door to her new normal. Her baby sister sits by the big window with her schoolwork book in her lap, but her eyes were looking out the window. Mazie was still amazed by all the traffic and the views of the city. She spent hours of her time just watching the world go by and ignoring her chores and her schoolwork, but it was hard to fuss at Mazie too much. She was just trying to adjust as best she could to all the change that had occurred in her world over the last few years. Cora spoke to her baby sister and ask about her day. She got the same response every time, “it was ok”. Cora took her shoes off at the door and rubbed her tired feet. She loved her job and she was starting to make a few friends along the way, but some days were easier than others. Today was not one of those days, the store was very busy and they were understaffed, so they moved Cora around to cover lunches. She was feeling comfortable in the women’s fashion and design department and even was become friendly with many of the ladies who frequently shopped at the store. She practically enjoyed helping them pick out handkerchiefs to match their outfits.

She walked down the short miniature version of a hallway to the bedroom that she shared with her Mom and Sister and sat down on her bed. She took off her earring and laid them on the small nightstand by her bed and looked around the tiny Manhattan apartment and took a deep long breathe and took it all in. When they first moved into the small apartment on a busy main street, not too far from Firth Avenue and all the bright lights of the big town. The apartment consisted of a living room, a kitchen, a back door with a tiny fire escape just big enough for one person to sit on at a time. On the other side of the apartment was a bathroom and two small bedrooms. They had thought about Ruth taking one of bedrooms, and Mazie and Cora sharing a room, but in the end, they determined that the second bedroom would be more useful as a storage and work room for their sewing, mending, and ironing services they provide.  It also allowed them to keep that room closed off majority of the time, to save the warmth for the living room and the bedroom they slept in. Fitting three beds in this one bedroom took up majority of space, but they made it work. They had one dresser they all shared, two nightstands, and one lamp in the bedroom and that was all. She laid back on the bed and listened to the sounds of the city below, the horns, the traffic, the rubble of the train a few feet below the earth, that is something she still was having a hard time adjusting to hearing. It woke her up many nights, when it came through, she would wake up from a dead sleep and laid there with her eyes open until the train passed. Then she would turn over and look out the bedroom window and watch the city lights go on and off until they helped her drift back to sleep. She drifted to sleep for just a moment when she heard the door open and her Mothers cheerful voice yelling, “hey my girls I am home”.

Cora woke up and quickly got up from the bed, she was rubbing her eyes as she wondered over to the bathroom and looked at her tired face. She still looked young, she knew that, but she wondered how long that would last, she just as many people over the past few years, their lives have been so hard, so eventually that would begin to show up right? The mirror had a crack in the left side, giving her reflection a slight wrinkle looks just under her eye. she often thought in the back of her mind it wasn’t just a crack in the mirror, it was actually on her face, especially on those mornings when her body felt like it was 55 instead if the young 16 years that she physically was. She took a few pins out of her hair and washed her hands and walked out of the tiny bathroom and listen to the floor squeak below her feet has she left the bathroom and entered the living room to meet her Mother, Ruth was in the kitchen putting up this week’s groceries. As Cora stepped in she saw Mazie holding a bag of peaches, and a smile on her face. Mazie said “look Cora we finally get some fresh fruit, here we are living in the big city and we rarely get to enjoy these things”. It made Cora smile to see Mazie smile, it wasn’t something that happen every day. Ruth put up the usual staples of flour, milk, some oats, some bacon, and of course some beans, she looked over at Cora and placed the strand of hair falling on her face back behind her ear. She looked at her daughter and said to her, “see honey I told you eventually it would start to be OK again”.  

Later that evening after they had cleaned up from their dinner, the girls sit on the small couch with some blankets on their laps, a few lamps on along with the radio playing in the corner of the room. The radio was one of the first things Cora purchases from the department store once she started earring her full wages. The girls needed something in the home with them to drown out the sounds of the city. Tomorrow was Cora’s day off and it just happen to fall on the same day as Mazie’s school being closed for some repairs, so the girls stayed up as late as they want just doing some sewing and some chatting. Their chatting as it always did lead them back to thinking of their life on Long Island.

They had once lived in the community of Hempstead on Long Island, Everyone knew everyone else, and everyone looked out for each other. They were not rich, but they also were not poor, they were more on the upper scale of society thanks to Cora’s hard working Dad George. He was a short in statue man but had the heart of goal and the most determined man that most people in Hempstead had ever seen. George had came over from Northern Ireland with his mind of farming in some valley of what he had heard was called the Smokey Mountains. He was dreaming of those mountains when he first saw her walking on the boardwalk when he was waiting in line to board a train headed for Tennessee. As she walked by and made eye contact with him, he handed his ticket for Tennessee to another man in line, who had been short the train fare and followed Ruth down the boardwalk. He followed her all the way though the streets, and then followed her by horse and buggy all the way by trading his pocket watch for the ticket price all the way to Long Island. By the end of that week after first seeing Ruth, George had talked her into marrying him. They rented a tiny one room off the back of a lawyer’s home. Ruth cooked for the lawyer and his wife, and George took care of the horses. As time went on George and Ruth had children, three boys and two girls and George built a very successfully stable business for horses and grew to have a very successful business.

Life was good for George and Ruth and the family. The family all participated and worked hard at the family business, but they also had fun. They enjoyed listing to their Father sing songs from his far away home of Ireland, they had fun with their Mother telling stories about playing at the river’s edge with the children from the Shinnecock Tribe that lived side by side with them on the island. And they had fun with each other playing hide-and-seek out on the farm. Life was good until the War.

At first the war took Cora’s oldest brother David by volunteer, he signed up one Tuesday, and was gone to basic training three Tuesdays later. He went to Europe about four months later, about the time Harry signed up, he was gone to basic training by the following Tuesday. Last to follow, but not by volunteering was Sean. He left for basic training on a Wednesday, he had only been gone three days when they received the letter about David. He had been shot during the Battle of Somme, 1916, he died on his 22^nd birthday. Harry and Sean were in Europe at the same time, but neither knew where the other knew that, and neither one made it home. Sean was killed on a Friday outside of France in 1917. Harry made it through his four years of service but died on a boat coming back home in the spring of 1918, to what they now know was the Spanish Flu.

With all three sons’ gone and his stable business losing money, as no one had extra money for horses, George tried other avenues of making money. He finally got to see the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee as he become involved with some bootlegging of alcohol from that area of the country. He had become friends with some business owners from bars in Manhattan and they needed liquor but could not get it. George and his friend Barker would take monthly runs to Tennessee and the Carolina’s to pickup the moonshine and deliver it into the city. During one of their runs, he was thinking about moving him and the girls down to this portion of the country, it was so beautiful, and it reminds him of the hills of Ireland, but that dream never happen. Baker lost control of the car and both men died as the car drove off one of the mountains winding roads.

As George’s girls stood in front of their home, watching it be auctioned off, Cora decided they were going to move away to Manhattan. She rode into the city with her friend Gina she walked into Franklin Simons Department store and did not really request a job, more like demanded a job. She sits outside the hiring mangers office for four hours until he finally said yes they had a opening and she could start next Monday. By Thursday Cora had found the firth floor apartment that had once been part of a six-bedroom apartment but had been chopped up into tiny little apartments for all the newcomers into the city. Ruth cried a little and Cora smiled a little and the landlord said they could move in over the weekend. ON this snowy winter night in apartment 515 George’s girls told stores of him and laughed and worked together making small steps toward their future together.

2021

Amelia cursed under her breathe as she dropped her stupid mask onto the steps at the top of floor number four. She was trying to carry everything all in one hand so she could finish her text with the other, but that didn’t work out quit like she had planned. Now she was going to have to wash the stupid mask once again this week, she was so tired of wearing that thing, but it was part of her life now. She stuck her key into the lock of apartment 515 but the chain was still attached, so the door knocked her backwards as she tried to enter her new home. “Cameron will you please let me in”, she yelled through the tiny hole in the doorway. “crap I’m sorry” Cameron said as she unlocked the door for her big sister, “I totally lost track of time and forgot you would be home now”. Amelia was a little annoyed, but she couldn’t say anything. She wanted Cameron to be safe and having the chain on was a safe bet, so she instead threw her an apple she had picked up at the market on the way home. Cameron smiled and started helping Amelia with the groceries. It wasn’t much, some milk, some apples, some chicken to cook up later, and a few bags of microwave popcorn to eat during the movies they would watch a little later on in the week. Just as they were trying to decide what takeout they were going to get this afternoon, their Mom Virginia strolled into the room. She had been out walking central park again, the only activity she felt safe doing, so she did it every day when the sun was out. Funny thing is Virginia wasn’t her real name, she was from Virginia, but her real name was Emma, and she hated that name. So when she moved to New York about twenty five years ago she changed her name to Virginia, and that is what everyone in the state of New York that had ever know her only knew her as Virginia.

That night as they ate their Chinese takeout Amelia ask Cameron about her day at school. “once again Ame I am NOT at school its virtual, and it was just like yesterday boring and stupid”. Virginia pretended not hear the complaining or the smart tone, she just opened her fortune cookie and read it out loud. “Tomorrow will be your day”, “see tomorrow is going to be our days girls, its all going to be ok”. Cameron rolled her eyes and Amelia took her glasses off and smiled at her Mom, she was trying they all were trying. A year ago they all packed up and moved from the safety of their Connecticut neighborhood and said goodbye to everyone they had ever know and set out on an adventure together. There use to be four of them but their Dad, Virginia’s husband no longer was around. Oh, he was alive but he had decided he didn’t need or want to be apart of their family anymore. He came in one Thursday afternoon after Virginia’s yoga class ended and told her that he was leaving, and he was taking all the money in the bank account. Once Virginia figured out how much was actually there, she kinda laughed, he had been gambling their money away for years now, and the day he left he left with $450 and a blonde that was 25 years younger than him. She said good luck and God Bless and began to figure out how to save the house. As it turned out there was no saving the house, but there was a way to save the family.

Amelia had a talent for design, and she had decided one night about 3am that she was going to work for Macy’s. So, she took the train into Manhattan the next day and sit outside the office of the hiring manger, after six hours he finally took her meeting. She got the job and started the next Monday. In-between that time Virginia and Cameron had came into the city and they were on a search for an apartment. They girls just happen to see a moving truck sitting outside a building off 5^th avenue, so they decided to see what was going on. They climbed the five floors and saw the door was open to apartment 515, so they entered. The place was small, but it was cute and all the needed. Amelia entered the bathroom and looked in them mirror, she looked tired, but she also looked determined not to let the world stop her. She saw a wrinkle on the left side of her face, right below her eye and gasp as she thought it was a wrinkle, but it turned out to be a crack in the mirror. For some strange reason at that moment Amelia felt and knew she was home. The landlord walked in on the girls already measuring for the TV and sofa and smiled. They worked out a deal and the girls moved into their new home and new journey of life on a Friday.