The Speakeasy
At the tender age of sixteen, Virginia Brackman fell hopelessly in love with the boy next door. The object of her affections, Grant Van Nuys, two years her senior, worked at his father's butcher shop, hoping to learn the skills necessary to one day take over the family business. The handsome young man felt the same way as she did and spent every Sunday afternoon and evening courting her. The two were attending a harvest dance held at the local church in the fall of 1916 when the normally shy Grant found the courage to speak of the future.
"The shop has been exceptionally busy lately," he said as the couple stopped dancing long enough to enjoy a slice of apple pie and cup of cider.
"Your father must be pleased."
"He is. He's also happy with my performance. In fact, he's increased my wages."
"That's wonderful!"
"If business continues like it has, I'll be able to put aside a nice little nest egg."
Virginia blushed, anticipating what he was about to say.
"I'll be turning nineteen come March," he continued.
"And I'll be seventeen in December."
"I was thinking ... maybe next spring ... we ought to get married."
"Is that a proposal?"
"Yes."
"Funny. It didn't sound like a question."
"Will you marry me?"
"I'll think about it," she teased. Five minutes later she announced, "Okay. I've thought about it. My answer is yes."
The date was set for the last Sunday in June, and Virginia and her mother began making preparations once the holiday season was behind them.
"I can alter my wedding dress to fit you," Mrs. Brackman offered. "All I'll need to do is take it in a little around the waist. I can also add more lace to the sleeves and some seed pearls to the bodice."
"That's a wonderful idea! I've always admired that dress."
When the alterations and decorative additions were completed, the bride-to-be stood in front of a full-length mirror, wearing her wedding gown and admiring her mother's handiwork.
"I love it!" she exclaimed with joy.
That day, the second of April 1917, began much like any other. However, when Grant paid an unexpected call to her home that Monday evening, Virginia's life changed forever.
"Have you heard what happened?" her fiancé asked excitedly when she answered the door.
"No. Come inside and tell me what has got you so riled up."
"President Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany."
"I'm not surprised," Mr. Brackman said. "I've been expecting this since the Lusitania was torpedoed. I'm only surprised it's taken Wilson as long as it has. I suppose an act will be passed authorizing the federal government to conscript men into the armed forces."
"I've decided not to wait until I'm called. I'm going to enlist."
Seventeen-year-old girls of her day normally did not voice their opinions on political matters, a topic of conversation usually reserved for men. In this case, however, since the man she was to marry was planning on going off to war before their wedding day, Virginia felt she was justified in objecting.
"You must be joking!" she cried. "We're supposed to get married in a little over two months."
"We'll just have to postpone the ceremony until the fighting is over."
"But why must you enlist? Why not wait and see what happens? You might not even be selected. Besides, Mother and I have already planned everything out, and the dress is finished."
The girl's objections fell on deaf ears. Like millions of young men before him, Grant viewed going off to war as a glorious adventure.
"We're both young yet. We have plenty of time to get married. And I'm sure the dress will still fit you when I return."
Two and a half years later, on November 11, 1918, the Great War, later called World War I, came to an end. As Grant Van Nuys had predicted, her mother's altered wedding dress still fit Virginia. There was to be no wedding, however, since her fiancé was killed three months earlier during the Battle of Amiens at the start of the Hundred Days Offensive.
* * *
In December 1921, Virginia Brackman celebrated her twenty-first birthday. It was a milestone year. She crossed the threshold into adulthood and, thanks to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, was even allowed to vote.
For all the resistance to women's suffrage in America and the predictions that it would lead to the ruination of family life, it was the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment that was to have a devastating effect on the nation. Prohibition was intended to prevent the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States. As the temperance advocates were to discover, however, dry laws were difficult to enforce.
In the spring of 1922, Virginia left her small Pennsylvania hometown and moved to New York to stay with a cousin whose husband worked for Macy's department store. Her parents hoped the change of scenery would help take the girl's mind off Grant's tragic death. Shortly after relocating to the city, the still grieving young woman took a job working as a coat check girl in the New Amsterdam Theater on West 42nd Street. That year the theater hosted the Ziegfeld Follies of 1922 starring Will Rogers, shimmy dancer Gilda Gray and the comedy teams of Gallagher and Shean, Nervo and Knox, and Olsen and Johnson. Given the number of comedians on the bill, it was no surprise her spirits soon picked up.
Virginia had been working in the coat room for three months when Zane Reisner, an assistant stage manager, asked her out on a date. Since Grant had been dead for close to four years, she decided it was time to put the past behind her and move on with her life. Accordingly, she accepted the invitation.
The following Monday evening, a day when neither of them worked, Zane took Virginia to a nearby restaurant. Over dinner, he told her about his aspirations of becoming an actor.
"I originally wanted to go on the stage. I even had a few bit parts, but my career never amounted to much," he admitted.
"So, you decided to become a stage manager instead?"
"The job is temporary. I'm only working there to put aside some money. Once I've got enough, I'm going to head west to Hollywood."
"You want to act in pictures?"
"That's what I'm hoping to do."
Given the stage manager's good looks, he ought to do well as a leading man. The thought immediately made Virginia feel disloyal to her dead fiancé, who was not nearly as good looking as her date.
After finishing dessert, she assumed he would take her back to her cousin's house. Instead, he asked her if she wanted to go out and get a drink.
"A drink?" she echoed with surprise. "But I thought Prohibition made drinking illegal."
"Technically, it is only illegal to make and sell alcohol, not to drink it. Still, most of the posh places in Manhattan secretly serve alcohol to their clientele. But it's not cheap. One of the chorus girls in the Follies told me about a speakeasy just across the river in Jersey, one where even a poor guy like me can afford to go. And she assures me there's no danger of its being raided."
Virginia was hesitant.
"I've never had a drink," she admitted.
"You're kidding! Well, we have to go then."
They left Manhattan, crossed the Hudson River and drove to a small town in Bergen County, New Jersey, very similar to the quiet Pennsylvania town where Virginia was born.
"There's a speakeasy here?" she asked with disbelief.
"That's what I was told. It ought to be around ... ah! There it is up ahead."
The sign on the lawn in front of the large Victorian mansion read PULASKI'S FUNERAL HOME.
"This can't be it!" Virginia exclaimed when they entered the front door and found themselves in the midst of a crowd of mourners.
"The speakeasy is downstairs," Zane explained as he took his date's arm and led her past one of the funeral parlor's three viewing rooms.
Virginia caught her breath when she peeked inside. Black-clad friends and relatives sat in chairs facing an open casket containing a middle-aged man with a full head of red hair and a bushy red mustache.
"What's wrong?" Zane asked.
"I've never seen a dead body before," she whispered.
The only person she had ever lost was Grant Van Nuys, and his body had been buried in France.
"I think we go this way," he said, making his way toward a rear door next to the mortician's office.
As they walked down the long flight of stairs, they heard muffled jazz music that had been drowned out by the funeral dirges played on the organ on the first floor. The door at the bottom of the stairs was locked, so Zane knocked.
"Yeah?" a voice called out.
The Ziegfeld chorus girl had told him the appropriate password to use.
"I was a close friend of the departed."
The door opened onto what appeared to be a glamorous nightclub one would expect to find in an upscale Manhattan neighborhood.
"Welcome to Pulaski's," a waiter said and showed the couple to a table for two near the stage where a sultry lounge singer named Mystique belted out Fanny Brice's signature song, "My Man."
"What will you have, young lady?" the waiter asked.
"What have you got?" Virginia countered.
"You name it. Tarantula juice, panther sweat, coffin varnish, hooch."
Unfamiliar with Prohibition slang, she looked up at him as though he were speaking Greek.
"I'm only joking, honey. There's no bathtub gin or rotgut whiskey here. Pulaski's serves only the finest liquor brought in by hearse from Atlantic City. We have whiskey from Canada, rum from the Caribbean, champagne from France, wine from Italy and gin from Great Britain."
"I don't know. I ...."
Grant saved his date further embarrassment by saying, "We'll take two glasses of red wine."
"Very good, sir."
As they sipped their wine, they watched a number of flappers dancing the Lindy Hop and the Charleston. The fringe on their short dresses whirled as they gyrated to the music, and their long strands of pearls bounced on their chests. Everyone seemed to be having a good deal of fun, but Virginia could not take her mind off the redheaded corpse with the bushy mustache that was lying in a coffin on the floor above them.
"Don't you like your wine?" Zane asked. "You've barely touched it."
"I'm sorry. My mind was wandering."
"This is quite a place. Isn't it?"
"It certainly is," she replied, her monotonous tone expressing neither appreciation nor disapproval.
"Like I said before, there's no chance of its being raided."
"Why is that?"
"The mortician's brother is the local chief of police."
"I suppose having family in law enforcement has its advantages."
Zane finished the last of his wine and asked his date to dance. Virginia had not been on a dance floor since attending a church social back in March of 1917.
"I'm not familiar with these new dances, but I'll give it a try," she answered. "Just don't get mad at me if I accidentally step on your feet."
Having watched the flappers dancing, she was able to quickly mimic their steps.
"You're a natural!" her partner exclaimed.
Virginia fought down the twinge of guilt that gripped her. It was foolish of her to believe that her having fun was disloyal to Grant's memory. She was a young woman, after all. She could not be expected to continue mourning for the remainder of her life.
"I'm glad you're having a good time," Zane said as she twirled, laughing, around the dance floor.
"So am I! I haven't had this much fun in ...."
As she caught sight of the piano player in the corner of the room, her feet stopped and she lapsed into silence. The redheaded man with a bushy mustache, sitting at the Steinway upright, was the spitting image of the corpse that was lying in a coffin in the upstairs viewing room.
"Are you all right?" Zane asked when he saw the sickly pallor of his date's face.
A moment later Virginia fainted. Thankfully, the assistant stage manager caught her before she hit the ground.
On the way home to New York, Zane managed to convince the distraught woman that she had been mistaken about the piano player.
"It was so dark down there that you could hardly get a good look at the man," he insisted.
"But I clearly saw the red hair and mustache ...."
"Do you know how many Irishmen live in this area? And lots of them have red hair and mustaches."
"I suppose you're right," Virginia agreed. "I mean I only caught a glimpse of the body as we passed the viewing room, and his eyes were closed."
"Also," Zane added, "you aren't used to drinking. That glass of wine ...."
"That must be it!" she said excitedly, only too happy to blame the bizarre experience on her consumption of alcohol. "That drink must have gone right to my head!"
"I hope that doesn't mean you won't go out with me again."
"Don't be silly! Of course, I will. I had a good time."
"Want to do it again, then? Say, next Monday?"
"It's a date."
* * *
On Friday of that week, the cast and crew of the 1922 Follies were shaken by the loss of chorus girl Cookie Dumont. A platinum blonde years before Jean Harlow popularized the hair color, the Ziegfeld beauty took her own life after her millionaire boyfriend left her for another woman. Although Virginia did not have the opportunity to get to know the young woman, she nevertheless was saddened by the dancer's senseless death.
"Why did she kill herself?" she asked Zane. "She had everything to live for."
"She obviously couldn't handle the loss of the man she loved."
Virginia was painfully reminded of Grant's death. As much as she grieved for him, thoughts of suicide had never entered her mind, believing life was far too precious to be thrown away.
Three days later she dressed to go out on her second date with the assistant stage manager. At the conclusion of an afternoon of boating on the lake in Central Park, Zane suggested they return to Pulaski's Funeral Home speakeasy. Despite the unpleasant experience she had during their first visit, she readily agreed to go—more to prove her courage than to have an enjoyable evening.
When they entered the front door of the funeral parlor, Virginia kept her head down and her eyes firmly on the carpeted floor. All three viewing rooms were filled with mourners, and she did not want to catch an unintentional glimpse of another corpse. She was relieved when the somber organ music gave way to jazz in the stairwell.
Again, at the bottom of the stairs, Zane gave the secret password: "I was a close friend of the departed."
Upon entering the speakeasy, Virginia looked for the piano player. Thankfully, a brown-haired man with a clean-shaven face was tinkling the ivories.
Not long after the couple sat down at a table, the same waiter that had served them the previous week greeted them.
"What will you have, young lady?" he asked.
"I'd like the red wine. Thank you."
After two glasses of wine and four dances, Virginia began to relax and enjoy herself. As the singer performed a slow ballad, the coat check girl laid her head on her date's shoulder and reflected on how different her life was in New York than back home in Pennsylvania. Here she sipped wine in a speakeasy; there she used to drink apple cider at church dances. She wondered if the dreams of marriage and motherhood she shared with Grant Van Nuys were destined to come true with Zane Reisner. Given his desire to go to Hollywood and become an actor, she doubted it.
"Another glass of wine?" Zane asked when the dance came to an end.
"No, thank you. Two is enough for me."
"How about another dance then?"
"All right, but then I think we ought to head back to New York. It's getting late."
The song was a another slow one, and Virginia seemed to melt in her date's arms. She closed her eyes as she moved in time to the rhythm of the music.
"Has the wine made you sleepy?"
Her eyes popped open at the sound of Zane's voice.
"No. I was just ...."
Her features suddenly froze in a look of terror.
"Ginny, what is it?"
Silently, she pointed her finger at one of the dancing flappers, one with platinum blond hair.
"She looks a lot like Cookie Dumont," the assistant stage manager said. "Surely, you don't think she ...."
"It's her! Just like that redheaded piano player was the dead man I saw in the coffin upstairs."
"Please don't start that again!"
Virginia pulled away from him and went back to the table to collect her wrap from the back of her chair.
"I have to get out of here!" she cried as she headed toward the staircase.
"Wait for me," Zane called. "Or do you intend to walk back to the city?"
He caught up with her in the funeral parlor's parking lot.
"I thought we went through all this last time we were here? That was no ghost! It was just a girl who looked like Cookie."
"No, it wasn't."
The argument continued when the couple got into the car and Zane drove away.
"Calm down. You're becoming hysterical."
His well-meant advice had the opposite effect on Virginia.
"What do you expect?" she screamed. "I'm not in the habit of seeing ghosts."
"Aren't you? Maybe it's not the alcohol. Maybe it's something else."
"Like what?"
"Maybe you need to see a doctor."
A combination of fear and anger made the distressed young woman lash out and strike her date. Zane, who had been driving at an unsafe speed for such a winding road, suddenly swerved and crashed his roadster into tree.
* * *
Virginia, who had suffered an injury to her head, was confused when she regained consciousness.
"Where am I?" she mumbled and winced with pain when she turned her head toward her companion. "Zane? Are you all right?"
There was no response from the bloodied driver. She took his arm and felt his wrist. He had a pulse, but it was a weak one.
"I've got to go get help."
Despite the darkness of the moonless night, she found her way back to Pulaski's Funeral Home. Although it was closed, a single light burned above the front door that, thankfully, was not locked.
She stepped inside and called, "Hello. Is anyone here?"
No one answered, but she heard the faint sound of music coming from the floor below. Despite the lateness of the hour, the speakeasy was still open.
"No! I can't go back down there," she cried.
However, she knew Zane would need medical care if he was to survive. Fighting her fears, she walked past the darkened viewing rooms and found her way to the rear staircase.
"Please help me," she said when she reached the locked door at the bottom. "My friend and I were in a car accident. We need to call a doctor."
There was no response. Finally, she tried giving the password.
"I was a close friend of the departed."
The door opened. The speakeasy was crowded, and the band was still playing as people continued to drink and dance.
"Someone help me," she shouted. "There's been a car accident, and my friend's life is at stake."
No one turned in her direction. It was as though she were invisible.
She trembled with fear upon seeing Cookie, the deceased platinum blond chorus girl, dancing to the music of the redheaded piano player with the bushy red mustache. When a waiter walked past her, carrying a tray of drinks, she tapped him on the back of the shoulder.
"Please. I need help."
"Would you like a drink, miss?" he asked, turning to face her.
Virginia recognized Zane Reisner and screamed. She knew beyond all doubt that the assistant stage manager, like everyone else in the speakeasy, was dead. Her only thought was to escape from the horror that surrounded her. Running, she tried taking the steps two at a time. Near the top of the staircase, she turned her ankle and fell backward. Tumbling down the stairs, she landed on her back at the entrance to the speakeasy.
"I think she's hurt," Zane announced to the crowd of dead people who had gathered around the woman. "Quick. Someone go get the bartender. He'll know what to do."
"No," Virginia moaned, terrified but feeling no physical pain.
"Hush," the waiter said, trying to calm her. "Here he comes. Everybody clear the way."
"It's all right," the bartender said, without bothering to examine her injuries. "You're going to be fine."
Virginia looked into the face she thought she would never see again, and all sense of fear disappeared.
"Grant!"
"Yes, it's me, darling," he said and reached out his hand to help her up. "I've been waiting for you."
When the two hands met, the speakeasy and all those who were inside of it vanished. The two lovers found themselves back in their small Pennsylvania hometown—or, rather, an idealized version of it that would remain unchanged throughout eternity.
The following day, two Bergen County police officers found a 1921 roadster crashed into a tree not far from Pulaski's Funeral Home. Upon examination, they discovered two dead bodies in the front seat.
I recently read that there actually was a speakeasy located in a funeral home during Prohibition.
During the Twenties, Salem and his friends often imbibed catnip cocktails.
