Leonard's

Hey! Sorry for all the Debbie Downer stuff, but it's been one heck of a couple of weeks with all this job loss and death and sickness stuff. I promise the funny will come back. I PROMISE!

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"Hell-ooo?"

I linger on the silkiness of my Grandma's voice.

The faux aristocrat.

As though every time the phone rings, she's expecting it to be the President.

I wait a beat.

Trying to make sure that what I'm about to say doesn't explode out into a puddle of words and tears.

That ain't gonna happen.

"Mom told me about Gabrielle. I'm so sorry, Grandma." It all blurts out in one push of air.

"It's so-"

My Grandma begins to talk and her voice cracks on the next word and that word only.

That's all my Grandma will allow herself to cry.

Once. For a millisecond.

"-sad. It wasn't even the cancer that killed her. She had an infection, Lauren."

"I know, Mom told me."

We both are silent. A thousand little images of our past playing like a Lifetime movie montage through our heads.

"Her funeral is on Tuesday. Her daughter is having an open casket Gabrielle didn't want an open casket! I always remember her saying in the store, "Nan, when I die, I don't want an open casket. She cared about her appearance, you know?"

I try to picture Gabrielle lying there and I realize that my image of her was from twenty years ago. I had never seen the white-haired woman with the oxygen mask and placid skin. Gabrielle will always stay pristinely wrapped in my seven year-old heart.

I try hard, but honestly can't remember the last time I saw her.

It may have been the day we closed the store forever.

I get off the phone with my Grandma and can't move.

They're all gone, I think. Gabrielle, Monique, Isabel, Mamie. All these women who made up my childhood are dead. All these women who we saw every day and who worked for my Grandma for 30 years are just gone. Disappeared.

And the only people left of Leonard's is my Grandmother, my Mother, and I.

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My Grandmother the Shopgirl

"I came back to Central New York and married your Grandfather," my Grandma told me once when I attempted to write a post like this months ago. "I was 20 and all my girlfriends were calling me an old maid."

My grandmother married a dashing WWII soldier/friend of the family's who was 13 years her senior. Love was never a word mentioned in their relationship, but looking at pictures of them early on painted a different picture.

"So after I married your Grandfather, we moved to Cortland, New York for his work. I hated it there! It was a bunch of country folk who acted like they were too good for everyone. But after I started working at Leonard's, I got to know people."

Leonard's was the only women's clothing store in Cortland. It was owned by a childless couple called The Leonard's. All I know about them is that Mr. Leonard was mean and he had one leg.

Leonard's existed during a time when clothing matter. When well-tailored outfits and accessories meant something. Grandma was their number one salesgirl for eighteen years, putting in all the time and energy that her generation was taught to do. When the Leonard's were getting ready to retire, my Grandmother marched down to the local bank, acquired a $20,000 loan, and offered it to the Leonard's.

In 1965, Leonard's became my Grandmother's.

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The Melting Pot

My Grandmother had worldly tastes for being such a small town girl. She loved to dress elegantly. She loved to dance. She loved to meet interesting people. She fancied herself European and so she hired the only two French women in our 19,000 person town. Throw in a seamstress and bookkeeper older than dirt and a teenage daughter and you got yourself one heck of a business.

Here were the players:

Nan- Owner. Professional and classy. Ran her store with an iron fist, but was doting with her customers. She came from a time where you put everyone before you. The most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

Gabrielle- Sales Associate. Sassy, short-haired fire cracker from France. Had a very gravely, fast tempered French accent and chain-smoked like there was no tomorrow. Was told she had a husband once in France that was killed by the mob. She enabled all of my three year-old whims.

Monique- Sales Associate. Not sassy, but just as French. Also a chain smoker. She was married to Bob and lived on the other side of town. How do I know so little about a women I saw every day of my life?

Isabel- Bookeeper. Very mousy women who sat alone on the second level of Leonard's. She kept everything documented in hand-written ledgers. I would build cardboard box houses around her desk and we barely exchanged two words.

Mamie- Seamstress. Also sassy, but not at all French. She was old school. She kept red, square anise candies in her pocket book and I would always rummage for them. She would let me stick shoulder pads in my shirt and laugh as I paraded around pretending that I had boobies at five.

Brenda- Merchandiser/Daughter of Owner. Would spend hours decorating the front window and store. She worked hard and did everything for her mother. And me.

In the 60's and 70's, Leonard's was known all over New York State. My mother and grandmother would go on buying trips to the City. They loved their job and they were good at it. The sparkling mother-daughter duo with their back-up crew- The Golden Girls.

Then I came into the story. My Dad left and my Mom had no place to put me other than at Leonard's. I grew up there. Playing dress up, crawling through shipment boxes, talking with customers, reading, writing alone on the back stairs all day, every day. Leonard's was my safe haven and my sister. She was the place where my imagination could go wild and my Mom, Grandma, and I could be a family.

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All Things Must Past

For years, my grandmother reserved every drop of blood and sweat for that store. So much so that she exhausted her life savings trying to keep her afloat. With the progression of Wal-Marts and malls and Old Navys, Leonard's no longer served a purpose. She was old Main Street. An idea that rarely exists anymore and the only people who could appreciate her were also dying off.

I videotaped the day we shut the doors on Leonard's in 1998. To this day we still have yet to watch it.

The tape has probably corroded away at this point and I'm not quite sure what has prevented my Mother or I from taking it to get converted to DVD. At this point, the pain of losing the business should have dissipated, but it hasn't. Not for my Grandmother who owned the store, not for my Mother who spent her entire adult life working in the store, or for me, whose childhood centered around it.

Losing Leonard's was the first great loss in my life. It had been a part of my life since I was born. Before I was born. It shaped three generations of my family.

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And I'm realizing this is becoming extremely difficult to write.
I'm not writing about Gabrielle. The women who died and triggered me to reexamine this post.
I don't even know much about her.
I don't know anything about these women who made up such an important time in my life.
They became ghosts before they even died.

Gabrielle, I wish I was able to talk to you as an adult. I'm sure we'd have a lot of interesting stories to talk about.