a party girl’s learning curve

Can a New York socialite who lives to flirt and party grow a conscience? If you’re shaking your head “no” because you’re gauging your answer on the Real Housewives, I offer a better point of reference.

“Kitty Tessler,” the heroine in Amber Brock’s latest historical novel “Lady Be Good” (Crown Publishing, June 26) is the daughter of a hotel magnate who lives in a glamorous world of penthouses and nightclubs, which have her dancing ‘til dawn from New York to Miami to Havana.

Her story unfolds during the holiday season of 1953 and ends in the beginning of 1954. These three life-changing months, can be attributed to this Manhattan party girl’s introduction to a down-to-earth Jewish trumpet player named Max.

Because of him, Kitty learns of a New York that can’t be known from towering suites, only by boots (in her case high heels) on the ground. From Washington Square to Harlem, Chinatown to Arthur Avenue, via subway, bus and taxi, as opposed to her father’s car and driver, “She walked the streets and watched. She met people and really listened to them. She would feel lost one moment and found the next.”

As her view of the city expands, Kitty begins to see what Max has always known: injustices small and large, certain groups prohibited from entering certain establishments, a loaded word tossed off carelessly to a particular type of person.

“She took bits of her experiences with her and they began to reshape the map of her home in her mind. She was newly arrived in a different world.”

Even though the story is set sixty-five years in the past, there is something oddly contemporary about people who have access to the world yet keep their orbit very small.

I know those who live on the Upper East Side who think life begins on 57th Street and ends on 96th; ones who live in the Village and insist that there’s no life above 23rd Street; and Upper West Siders who bristle at the idea of crossing to the other side of the park. They all act as though this is a good thing, as if stepping outside the boundaries of their area is a sign of disloyalty.

I, on the other hand, always prided myself on the fact that unlike my acquaintances, I took advantage of what all Manhattan’s neighborhoods had to offer.

The first thing one learns though, is that not all sections of NYC are created equal, and even within a tony area such as the Upper East Side, not every block mirrors the manicured Park Avenue.

Although everyone might know that intellectually, as Kitty discovers, seeing it up close helps the fact sink in emotionally.

She knew she couldn’t change the whole world, so Kitty focused on her corner of it, making it clear, after witnessing discrimination against Max and a fellow musician of Cuban decent, that that behavior would never be tolerated in one of her family’s hotels.

This scenario is apropos of a recent news event, when a now-apologetic midtown lawyer, Aaron Schlossberg, yelled racist comments at Spanish-speaking restaurant workers at Fresh Kitchen on Madison Avenue. After the video of the incident went viral, fellow attorneys at a Queens court kept their distance, politicians asked that his law license be reviewed, and Schlossberg’s office space evicted him.

What happened here is easy to get behind because it’s so public. But how about when the inappropriate comments are made in private by a colleague, friend or family member, you know, people we’re more apt to make excuses for when they behave badly? Taking umbrage with intimates is a lot harder than objecting to the rants of a stranger on YouTube, but voicing offense with them is actually how to arrive, as Kitty did, in a different world.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl is the author of the novel “Back to Work She Goes,” about a SAHM trying to re-enter the workforce.