The Paris Orphan

by Natasha Lester

  “The New Yorker telephoned for you this morning,” Emile said.

  Jess wished she could ask him at another time, when he was less drunk and more merciful, but she had to know. “What did they say?”

  “They said your idea didn’t interest them.” Emile’s eyes roamed the room, settling on Gene Tierney, which was lucky; he wouldn’t see the sting of his words made manifest in the clench of her jaw.

  Being rejected at a go-see had never bothered her as much as a rejection by The New Yorker. She’d hoped her pitch might be a way to build on the handful of articles she’d written and photographed for Vogue, about the female artists from Parsons School of Design who were now painting camouflage on airplanes and designing propaganda posters instead of creating their own artworks. This time, Jess had wanted to write about what might happen to all those women when the war ended and the men returned and reclaimed their old jobs. What would the women do with all their new skills? Would there still be jobs for them?

  Jess had wanted to stand up high on a ladder and take photographs in the factories, pictures that showed how many women there were; not just one or two but an entire generation. She knew nobody could dismiss a photograph the same way they might consider words to be exaggerated. And she’d wanted to feel as if she was doing something that mattered; instead of screaming her outrage about fascism into the wind at the Place de la Concorde as she’d done when she was younger, she could show that war reverberated in ways beyond bullets, that the ramifications could be found in the hands of a woman who’d once sculpted bronze and who now fashioned aircraft propellers.

  “They liked my idea,” Emile went on, leaning back and lighting a cigarette.

  “Your idea?”

  “I told them I’d write a piece about the jobs women aren’t doing as well as the men who used to do them. I’d photograph the mistakes, expose the money it costs to make do with labor that isn’t suited to the job. You Americans have been asked to believe a story about how well everyone is getting on with the new way of things but perhaps it’s not true.”

  “You didn’t really.” She stared at him, expecting he would laugh and tell her she was mad; as if he’d write a story like that.

  But he just stared back. “I did.”

  Her legs pushed her upright and the words came to her easily now that she no longer cared about kindness. “You know this is over. We’re holding on to something that happened a long time ago when I was young and didn’t know any better and when you were…” How to finish that sentence? “A better man than you are now. And I’m not referring to your fingers.”

  “Nobody ever refers to my fingers,” he retorted. “But everyone thinks about them. About poor Emile who used to have the models falling at his feet.”

  “That’s what you miss?” she asked sadly. “I’m sure if you’re still able to stand by the end of the night, you’ll be able to get someone to fall at your feet. I’ll stay elsewhere for the next few days while you move your things out of the apartment.”

  “How will I find somewhere to live on such short notice?” His voice was petulant, like a child’s.

  “I’ll get the bank to transfer you enough money to pay your rent for a month. After that, your articles,” she couldn’t quite keep the anger from her voice, “will surely support you.” Then she left before either of them could say any more hurtful things.

  * * *

  The only thing to do after that was to go to a party. She arrived at midnight, which was late, but not impolitely so—the party never started at Condé Nast’s Park Avenue apartment until ten at the earliest. Condé kissed Jess’s cheeks and apologized for the stance he’d had to take with the Kotex ad.

  He’d been the one to discover her, not long after she’d arrived back in New York City. She’d taken a different ship home than her parents because Emile hadn’t been ready to leave on the SS Athenia—she couldn’t even remember now why he’d prevaricated. Which was, everyone said, lucky for her because the Athenia had sunk and her parents had died. But how was that lucky?

  A month after she’d arrived in Manhattan, when she’d at last made herself stop crying, she walked into Parsons School of Design to enroll in photography classes. Condé Nast had been at Parsons delivering a lecture to the fashion students and he’d seen her, as poignant as any Madonna, he would say later when he told the fantastical story, her brown eyes wet with tears from a month of weeping. The rest, as they say, was Jess’s history.

  Now, Condé released her from his embrace, told her that she was still his favorite model and commanded her to enjoy herself.

  Which was not going to be difficult, she supposed, when the bar was fully stocked with impossible-to-get French champagne—a man like Condé probably had a cellar big enough to outlast the war—when everyone around them was attired in expensive gowns, when the air smelled heavy with French perfume. The orchestra played Cole Porter, George Gershwin sat at a table chatting to a group of admirers, overladen buffets were set up, as usual, on the terrace under the forgivingly warm fall sky, and the dancers took up most of the space in the room. Dancers, Jess noted, who included Emile, almost lip to lip with a girl she knew, another model, four years younger than Jess, barely eighteen. She waited for jealousy to swirl through her but she felt, if anything, relieved. She sat at a table, lit a cigarette and heard a woman say her name.

  “Martha Gellhorn,” Jess replied with a grin.

  “I see my fame goes before me,” Martha said with a wry smile, sitting beside Jess and lighting a cigarette too. “Which you must also be used to.”

  “Perhaps not as much as Ernest Hemingway’s wife,” Jess said. “Does it make your blood boil every time they call you that?”

  Martha laughed. “I’ve considered wearing a label that lists my other achievements but few seem interested.”

  Jess shook her head; she knew that although Martha was one of the few women—perhaps the only woman—reporting on the war from Europe, her single biggest claim to fame in most people’s eyes was as Ernest Hemingway’s other half.

  “I’ve read all of your pieces,” Jess said. “I can’t say that I enjoyed them because nobody could enjoy stories of war and death, but I appreciated them.”

  “I’ve read yours too.” Martha eyed Jess appraisingly. “And seen your photographs. The one you took of the artist’s canvas sitting beside the propaganda posters she now paints was better than any newspaper report. I like the way you blurred one image into the other—”

  “Solarization,” Jess explained. “I wanted to make it look like one painting was literally bleeding into the other.”

  Martha nodded. “I thought that might have been it. It was the subtlest commentary; you didn’t need words to explain the conundrum: the wish to appear selfless and donate one’s talents to one’s country at the same time as mourning the loss of true art.”

  “Thank you.” Jess felt herself blush, which was something she hadn’t done in a very long time.

  “What are you working on now?” Martha asked, sipping whiskey rather than champagne.

  “That’s a very good question. Besides asking my paramour to move out,” Jess nodded at Emile, “not much.”

  “I heard about his hand,” Martha said without sympathy. “I also heard that if it hadn’t been for his hand—”

  “I’d probably have asked him to move out a long time ago.” Jess finished the sentence for her.

  “So why don’t you look happier? I believe you used to be quite something of a couple—like Hem and I—but wasn’t that a while ago?”

  “Jessica May and Emile Robard. Model and photographer. Bohemian artistes,” Jess mused.

  “You’re selling yourself a little short by calling yourself a model. From what I’ve seen, you’re as good a photographer as he is. You’ve had work published.”

  “It’s what everyone thinks. See.” Jess reached out and opened the newspaper on the sideboard to the social pages, pointing to a picture from a party two nights ago. Celebrated photographer
Emile Robard with Jessica May, model. “Apparently I’m not even celebrated,” she said with a sardonic smile. “The thing is, only this morning I was thinking that I didn’t know how much longer I could parade around in dresses and smile at cameras. You’re doing something useful,” she said to Martha. “What am I doing?”

  “Keeping up morale?” Martha said teasingly. “I bet there’s a soldier or two who has a picture of you posted above his bed in his training camp.”

  Jess rolled her eyes. “Just what I want to be remembered for.”

  “There you are.” Bel joined them, kissing both Jess’s and Martha’s cheeks.

  “You look as frowny as I feel,” Jess noted as Belinda sat down.

  “You never look frowny, Jessica May,” Bel said. “You two look as if you’re having the most interesting conversation at this party.”

  “Cheers to that,” Martha said, raising her glass.

  “Maybe we can wipe your frown away,” Jess said to Bel. “A problem shared and all that.”

  Bel took a sip of champagne. “I spent the afternoon foxtrotting with the government. The price of paper has gone sky high since the war started, and they’re talking about paper rationing. I need to stay on the good side of the politicians if I want to keep Vogue alive during the war. But during today’s meeting, I was asked if I could do more to contribute to the war effort than it’s felt we’re currently doing.”

  “I take it by ‘asked’ you mean ‘blackmailed’?” Jess said.

  “Exactly. I told the government that women are a valuable part of the propaganda machine and that Vogue can and should help with that. The government wants women here to let their men go and fight, to shrug off rationing as their moral duty, to work in order to keep the economy going. And Vogue’s market is the women the government wants on their side. But I need pictures, not just words; Vogue is visual. I don’t suppose you’d quit Collier’s and come work for me?” Bel said pleadingly to Martha.

  As Bel spoke, an idea at once so outrageous and so perfect began to form in Jess’s mind. Four years ago in Paris, when she’d joined the anti-fascism demonstrations, she would never have imagined that, in the near future, while fascism claimed life after life and country after country, she would be sitting at a party in a Park Avenue penthouse drinking champagne. Back then she had marched and she had protested and, most of all, she had cared deeply about what was happening in the world. She still cared, but in a helpless and hopeless way. Writing and photographing those pieces for Bel had re-inflamed that care and given her a sense that she could do something more, like Martha did. Jess couldn’t shoot or fly or fight but she could write and she could photograph.

  Martha leaned back in her chair, pointed her cigarette in Jess’s direction and said exactly what Jess was thinking. “You don’t need me,” Martha said. “You’ve got Jess.”

  “Yes. Send me,” Jess said, turning to Bel as her restlessness fell away, replaced by an animation she hadn’t felt for a long time.

  Bel laughed. “I appreciate you trying to cheer me up but—”

  “I’m serious.” Jess put down her glass and eyeballed Bel. “I can be Vogue’s correspondent.”

  “I’m not sending you into a war zone. It’s ridiculous.” Bel took a large sip of champagne, then said, “Brilliant, but ridiculous.”

  Jess felt the chink in Bel’s Mainbocher armor. “It is brilliant. And I’m asking to go into a war zone; you’re not sending me. There are other women over there.”

  Bel arched her eyebrows. “About two of them.”

  “So with me, there’ll be three. Lucky number three.”

  “Actually, you’re about right,” Martha said. “Margaret Bourke-White’s the only female photojournalist I know of in the Mediterranean. There are a couple of other correspondents like me. But that’s all.”

  This time, Bel’s eyebrows performed such a feat of acrobatics that Jess had to stifle a laugh. “I was joking when I said two!” Bel protested.

  “I want to do this.” Jess kept her voice level. “I need to do this. Please.”

  Bel gesticulated at the waiter for more champagne. “How on earth am I going to get you accredited? Former model, Emile’s lover—or are you? I can see he’s finding comfort in another girl’s lips just over there—unconventional as all get-out. I’ve heard the woman at the passport office is as easy to get past as Hitler. She’s never going to let a model, who I’m sure she imagines will sleep only on silk sheets at the finest hotels, go to a war zone.”

  “You’re selling me short,” Jess said. “You know what my childhood was like, that I’ve lived in tents, slept under the stars, roughed it in a way that probably most of the men going to war couldn’t even imagine.”

  “When I landed in Spain in ’37 to report the war over there, I’d never slept in a tent,” Martha added. “Or seen a man shot. I survived. Best way to learn is to throw yourself into the thick of it, bombs and all.”

  Bel inhaled smoke, breathed it out, inhaled again. “If only you weren’t so damn right,” she said to Jess. “You would be perfect. And I’ve always known you wouldn’t be a model forever.” She reached out and squeezed Jess’s hand. “Martha, you’ve been over there. Shouldn’t I try harder to dissuade her?”

  “On the contrary,” Martha replied. “If you do, we’ll only hear stories of men, told by men. Given I’m married to the biggest chauvinist in the country, I have a vested interest in opening up the discourse.”

  “You’re the only person in the world who would make me feel like I was doing her a favor if I said yes to sending her into a war zone,” Bel said to Jess.

  “Let’s try,” Jess said. “We can only fail spectacularly.”

  Two

  We can only fail spectacularly. The words rang in Jess’s mind as she sat, in early 1943—bureaucracy was unfamiliar with the concept of speed—at the State Department offices for one of the meetings that would decide her future. Remove all objections, she told herself as she stared at the ticking clock, more nervous than she’d ever been at any go-see.

  At a go-see, she knew there was nothing she could do that hadn’t already been done. Her portfolio had been shot, she had the face and body that she’d been blessed with—dark brown eyes that every photographer she’d ever worked with said they could never do justice to, naturally waving blonde hair that sat a couple of inches above her shoulders, and a figure that had curves in all the right places. But, with this interview at the State Department, everything depended on what she said, not on the way she looked. Perhaps on the way she smiled too—how much would be too much in the eyes of a woman holding all the power to grant Jess a passport to Europe?

  Stop it, she told herself, studying the demure and practical Stella Designs black crepe tuxedo trousers and the prim and subdued white cotton shirt she’d paired them with—Stella too, because only Stella shirts came with the white peony over the left breast, which made the outfit more like herself than the person she was pretending to be.

  “Miss Jessica May,” a voice called out.

  Jessica stood, straightened her back and then realized she was striding down the hall like a model on a catwalk. She tried to correct herself but then couldn’t remember how to walk normally so, in the end, she marched on, hoping to God they’d think she had military precision rather than modelistic pretensions.

  “You may sit.” A tall woman—tall enough to have been a damn good model—gestured to a chair.

  Jess sat down, and arranged her face in a way that she hoped indicated strength, hardiness and determination.

  “I thought I should explain myself,” she began. “I know I must seem an unusual candidate for a passport to Europe to work as a photojournalist. But I possess many advantages that I’m sure some of the men currently over there reporting the war do not. My parents were paleobotanists, you see, and I led a somewhat peripatetic childhood. We followed plant fossils around the world; I lived in or visited South America, the northern territories of Australia, Tahiti, and then we made ou
r way to Europe after my parents’ work began to receive recognition. I lived in France for ten years; I speak the language fluently.” She felt her voice relax as she spoke, confident of her bona fides.

  She went on. “As soon as I was old enough, I became my parents’ photographer every summer and often during term time; if they thought they were on the trail of a discovery, my parents would simply take me along, put the Rolleiflex in my hand and ask me to capture whatever they’d found. Since then, I’ve studied at Parsons and received more training in photography from Emile Robard.”

  As she spoke, images appeared and disappeared in her mind like a shutter opening and closing: fern fossils fronding delicately over rock, cotyledons puncturing the surface of a stone, the barest tracing of Zamites leaves carved into limestone. And then pictures of herself, very few, taken on the rare occasions her mother picked up the camera, showing a Jessica yet to grow into her gangly limbs and too-large smile, her blonde hair a ferocious tangle down her back, skin tanned to a then-unfashionable brownness, nose freckled by the sun.

  More snapshots: Jess playing in mud, scrambling over rocks until her kneecaps were bereft of skin, swimming in the lakes and rivers even though her parents were warned about parasites and crocodiles. Her mother wearing a floppy hat, stained by mud and dust, grinning at Jess. Happy, always so happy to have her hands in the dirt, to prize away stories of a time long past, to clatter out papers and findings on the old typewriter. And her father, the quieter of the two, not quite of this world, his head always in the past, dreaming, perhaps imagining Ginkgoales into being.

  It was an unorthodox childhood of intermittent schooling, of having to grasp German, Italian and French; she had to either learn the language or be excluded from playing with the other children during the short spells she had at various schools. Her education was propped up by as much reading as her parents were able to obtain books to supply. And so Jess’s life had formed from two seemingly opposite sources: the mysteries of what the ground held and the stories recorded in books. Which meant she’d always done well at English, History and Science but had never had any interest in or flair for Mathematics.