Anio Szado

by Studio Saint-Ex

  Audience members had approached me, too, to compliment my work. A publicist had given me a card. “I’m organizing something different for this summer—an extravaganza to introduce the press to all-American design. Everyone who ever reports on fashion will be there. Ring me tomorrow. Tell my secretary I invited you to show at Press Week.”

  I had been grateful and excited but demurring for the moment; this was Antoine’s night. And look: there was warmth in his eyes. There was excitement in his voice.

  The death of the Little Prince had returned Antoine to life.

  63

  Though the clamor outside the Alliance had been promising, Consuelo was not yet convinced. To impress that audience was something—but the real test would unfold at Le Pavillon, where every seat was reserved for the truly wealthy, the very rich, the moneyed elite, and those who were all three.

  Arriving with the restaurant’s owner was a delightful start; no other guests tonight would have had the privilege of bypassing the hoity maître d’. And even before Yannick escorted Consuelo’s party to a table in the coveted center aisle, several patrons who had been in the audience turned in their seats to nod at Tonio with appreciative smiles. From here and there came delicate applause.

  Yannick excused himself after seating Consuelo next to Tonio and across from Mignonne, who was sitting quietly next to Bernard.

  Champagne appeared, and soon champagne appeared again. A number of bottles were uncorked; a good number of toasts went around. A toast for each patron who stopped by the table. A toast for each congratulation. A toast each time a glowing starlet or an aging socialite fawned over Consuelo’s dress.

  And Consuelo’s silent private toasts, bubbly prayers of thanks for the much-proffered gift of that cherished word: “So nice to meet your wife” … “You and your wife” … “Your lovely wife” … “And of course this is your wife.”

  Tonio beamed, and drank, and beamed, even as his admirers came with tremulous concerns: “Please tell me … did the Little Prince make it back to his rose?” Each time, Tonio gave a charming, noncommittal shrug.

  Charming had its charms, but tonight the truth would be unmasked. Consuelo spoke with confidence. “The prince has returned to his rose, for evermore.”

  Tonio said only, “To the prince’s rose,” and drank. But when Consuelo lifted her fingers to her husband’s face, he took them. In full view at the center of Le Pavillon, he kissed the back of her hand.

  64

  Afterward, Bernard left on foot and two taxis were called: one for Antoine and Consuelo, and one for me.

  “Wait a moment, if you might,” Antoine said to me. He went ahead to open the car door for Consuelo, then bustled back to say good night.

  “I must thank you,” he said, leaning into my cab.

  “If you’re happy, that’s all the thanks I need.”

  “Very happy, and all because of you.” He took my hand in his. “I have to tell you: my papers finally came in. But I couldn’t sign them, Mignonne. You convinced me I should wait to decide until after the show. The more I waited, the more I thought about all the things you had said, the more anxious I became at the prospect of leaving—not knowing how things would be for you here, and for Consuelo, and for the Alliance Française. I starting thinking that I was needed here and not only overseas.”

  “Oh, Antoine, thank God you waited! And the production went well in the end.”

  “You were right: I didn’t realize what the story of The Little Prince could do. I tell you, Mignonne, a weight has been lifted from me.”

  I felt a trickle of contentment. “And now you’ll stay.”

  He peered into my face as though I were a curiosity. “You think I would stay? Of course I will not. Now I can go.”

  “Go?”

  “You showed me with my own story that my worries were over trivial things—not the one conviction that drives my heart.”

  Go—such a small, surprising word, yet I could hardly contain the immensity of its meaning in my mind.

  V’la l’bon vent. Good wind, go.

  “And you showed me, also, that here all will be fine. I can see you will do well with your fashion business. Consuelo, I think, will find ways to get the attention she needs. My publishers believe they have something they can sell. The expat dance will go on without me; there is no need for me to stay here.

  “I will sign the papers with my conscience untroubled. You always make everything so simple and clear and light.” Antoine kissed my cheek. “Consuelo is waiting. Good night.”

  “Where to?” asked my driver.

  Ahead, Antoine’s cab left the curb.

  “Where can I take you, miss?”

  “I don’t know. Just go.”

  Who knew a single spoken word could be heavier than a stolen box of ten thousand words? Its force on me was crushing. I was pinned beneath its weight.

  65

  In the morning, I walked into the kitchen and found Leo on the couch, his eyes bloodshot. “I messed up,” he said hoarsely. “I’m sorry, Mig.”

  What could I say to my brother? He had allowed himself to be used by Consuelo, but I too had succumbed to her seductions as though I were helpless or hexed. And it was I who had let Leo go on imagining our future with Antoine—believing what I still wanted with my whole being to believe.

  I wished my brother and Antoine had never met. The admiration of man for man was a confusing mystery. I knew nothing of how men might break or mend each other’s hearts.

  How could I be angry? By abdicating the narrator’s role last night, Leo had almost put a stop to everything. It would have changed the course of my life if at the last minute we had canceled the show. If I had not found a way to make the curtain rise, Antoine might not now be planning to go.

  I made coffee and brought Leo a cup. “Antoine is leaving.”

  “Leaving where?”

  “Going overseas with the U.S. Air Force to try to join up with his old squadron over there.”

  “You’ve been saying for ages that that was his plan.”

  “I thought I could stop it. I thought that if things were better for him in New York, he’d quit obsessing about going back to the war.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Leo swung his legs off the couch, groaning with the effort. “I pegged you for smarter than that, Miggy. You should have read The Little Prince a bit closer.”

  A chill passed through me despite the hot mug in my hands.

  Leo said, “You were all swooning over it like it’s a love story. Open your eyes, people. It isn’t a love story, it’s a war story. The prince goes back to his rose at the end. That’s his country. He signs up to die for his prickly, pretty France.” He took a long swig of coffee. “I might be an ass, but at least I’m not a dupe.”

  When I went up to Consuelo’s later that day, I could hear her laughter and the mid-tenor of Antoine’s voice coming from his apartment. I let myself into the parlor and commenced righting the chaos that had been created in meeting our deadline.

  The phone rang. I stared at it a while; I’d never answered Consuelo’s phone before. Maybe she would hear it and come over to answer it herself. But when I opened the door and listened, I heard no sounds from across the hall.

  In a while, the phone rang again. This time, I picked it up. “Studio Saint-Ex; Mignonne Lachapelle speaking.”

  It was a reporter looking for an interview.

  “With the Countess de Saint-Exupéry?”

  “With the primary fashion designer of the Little Prince collection. Is that you?”

  “It is. You’re doing an article on the show?”

  “It’s about fashion—for the business section, if you can believe it. Apparently it’s the start of a new era. Maybe you can explain it to me. What the heck do hem lengths and ladies’ shoulder pads have to do with the economy of the state?”

  A few days later, at home, I recognized Antoine’s knock. He had never visited me at Leo’s before. I opened the door, my hand lifting
anxiously to my throat.

  “Good evening,” said Antoine, grinning. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

  “Come in.”

  His gait was light. “You have heard? American troops have landed in North Africa. The push for France has begun!”

  I smiled weakly. “I heard.”

  “I should ship out in a month or two. It could be sooner; one can’t know. I am getting my affairs in order.” He fished a rectangular item from his satchel. “I want to leave you with a couple of things. This is my watercolor set. It’s what I used to paint the pictures in The Little Prince.” He contemplated it, turning it over in his hands, opening and closing it. “It has been used by Lamotte, too, as he coached me at his studio.” He handed it to me.

  “Thank you.” Even my voice felt numb.

  “I don’t know if you will want to use it. But there is also this.” He removed the thick bracelet from his wrist and released it into my palm, its bulk growing weightier with each stacking silver link.

  The chain held a plaque engraved with an inscription. In capital letters, his name was followed by Consuelo’s, and on the next line, the name of his publishers: all the things he had worried about, all the worries I had helped him let go of and leave behind.

  I said, “You can’t give away your identity bracelet.” I refastened it around his wrist. “I can’t let you be anonymous in the sky.”

  “Then you will have to remember me from my old paint kit alone. You know, Lamotte is quite a good mentor. If you ever need help with your sketches, you can always call on him.”

  As if the love of one man was exchangeable with another. Tears welled in my eyes.

  Antoine said, “Please, you must be glad for me. I can finally do what my heart has always told me I must do.”

  “Damn your heart.”

  He laughed. “What? When it has always been so fond of you?”

  Fond? I felt as though I were becoming unanchored from the floor. Fond was not love. It was a word for a companion, an amusement. A pet. Fond was affection, not passion, not a woman he would never leave. “You were ‘fond’ of me?”

  “Oh, Mignonne. Come here. You are my treasure. Do you not know this? You are my heart.”

  The heart that was cold and too dry for tears? Or the one that was so quick to push my heart aside to follow its own dreams? I said, “You told me you wanted to love life. You don’t. If you did, you would have made a life with me.”

  He held me. “I have never hidden my intentions. You have always known I would not make my life here.”

  “We could have gone anywhere. We would have found a way.”

  He had been rubbing my back; now his movements stilled. “You pretend to yourself that you would have given up your fashion career.”

  Would I have?

  Would Antoine have given up his dream and his duty for me?

  “If we had a family,” I said. “If one day we had a baby …” The thought hung unfinished in the air. Even I was unsure how it should end.

  Antoine spoke softly into my hair. “Butterfly, there are some things that even you cannot fix.”

  I puzzled over that, thinking back. His insistence that I was too innocent and too young; his respectful, terrible restraint; his desire giving way to fevers or the deftness of hands and tongue. He and Consuelo had never had children. I had always assumed Consuelo refused to share him with a child.

  He released me and fussed with straightening his bracelet and his cuffs. He would not meet my eye. “We are moving to a townhouse on the East River.”

  He and Consuelo. So in this, too, she had succeeded in bettering me. “Good for you. One last chance to make everything look lovely and normal to the outside world before you go off to show how brave you are.”

  His expression blackened.

  I wanted his wrath. I wanted him to respond to me as he had so often to his wife, with impassioned words that brought their bodies close and her lips to his. But as he turned and stalked toward the door, I thought, What good would it do to stop him now? What would I get for my harsh words or my kiss or my pleas? Who would he be if he decided to stay? The only Antoine I had ever known was this man who lived to leave.

  I felt I was suddenly old. I felt heavy, bereft of the buoyancy of my most hopeful, most childish dream.

  In a way, it was a relief to give up and give in, to finally sink into this long-feared day.

  He was almost at the door when something made him stop. From what already seemed a great distance, he said, “Things are much less complicated than you make them out to be.”

  He spoke as though I were a young girl. “You see, Mignonne, the work of the Allies requires a plane and the plane requires a man. I am going overseas to watch altimeters and tachometers. I will monitor pressure gauges and fuel gauges. Don’t worry, I won’t be very brave. Courage in war isn’t always what you think it is. Sometimes it is chance in the midst of routine; sometimes it is anger and vanity.”

  He leaned against the wall and studied me. Without looking at the picture that hung beside him, he reached over to tap on its glass. “I am not courageous in the way this is.”

  Bernard’s ink sketch?

  “Of course we are all brave,” said Antoine. “It takes courage to continue on, day to day—the farmer who pits his will against the weather, the mother who dares wager her child’s love against the need to discipline, the girl who has the temerity to put her fashions on display. But I’ll tell you something: I’m glad I was born a writer and a pilot, and not an artist. Imagine the courage it takes to create a painting or an ink drawing. Every stroke is irrevocable; it obliterates what one did before. You and I, we are able to move forward without being forced to destroy.”

  I nodded mutely. He could keep every draft when he rewrote. He could take photographs of his homeland and not crater it with bombs.

  And I? I could choose to recut a pattern or to make alterations in a new one. I could rebuild as I had rebuilt the white dress. I could reimagine my career, my life without Antoine. My grownup life.

  “I had best go. I have a full day of visits ahead of me.” He came over to kiss my forehead and retrieve his satchel before returning to the door. “You should visit us at our new home. Come for dinner—I will also ask Lamotte. I will have Consuelo contact you and choose a date. If it happens that I am gone by then, then I am gone.”

  Taking his heart and his secret away.

  66

  Consuelo checked the effect of her ensemble in the mirrors that lined the wall as the housekeeper answered the doorbell. The rose wearing a butterfly—magical! The ornate details sparkled in the light of the crystal chandelier.

  Mignonne came in. Her eyes went straight to the jacket. “Where did you get that?” she blurted. Then, begging Consuelo’s pardon, “Thank you for having me.”

  “Having you has always been a pleasure. How do I look?” Holding her arms out to show off her wings, Consuelo spun in place. The dark skirt twirled with her, wrapping softly and sensually around her legs as she stopped, then releasing reluctantly, falling sensuously back into place. “The jacket was hand-delivered this week by the designer herself. A gift to honor the success of our Little Prince show. Or consolation for the imminent departure of my husband. Or possibly a brilliant little reminder that I could still commission something or other from Atelier Fiche.”

  She led Mignonne up the staircase to a dark green library room. “See how my husband works like a king! I bought him this gorgeous table. It’s a Spanish antique.”

  Tonio shook his head. “A complete waste of money. I told her I don’t care what I write on, as long as it is stable. I have something much better to show you.” He opened a drawer and riffled a stack of paper. “Print proofs of the text for The Little Prince.”

  Mignonne clasped her hands together. “It will be published in time for Christmas after all!”

  “It is far too late for that, but the important thing is …” He flipped to the last few panels. “Reynal & Hitchcock approved
my original ending without changing a word.”

  67

  Consuelo bustled us into the sitting room for drinks and appetizers. The talk was small. No, Bernard had not been able to make it tonight. No, Leo hadn’t been called up for duty yet. Yes, Antoine was all set; but no, he still didn’t have a firm date.

  “Get dressed for dinner,” Consuelo told him, and he got up from his seat.

  I shared the news from Montreal: my mother was engaged to be married this spring.

  Antoine paused at the stairs. “You will come right back afterward?”

  “It depends if history repeats itself. My mother wants me to stay in Montreal.”

  “But your fashion career,” he said.

  “Oh, Tonio! Not everyone has what it takes to make it in New York these days.”

  I set my glass down sharply.

  “Consuelo …” Antoine began.

  She assumed an offended look. “What? Did you think I meant you, Mignonne? I was thinking of your old mentor, Véra Fiche. The poor thing is going back to teaching in the new year.”

  I felt the hair rise at the nape of my neck. “No one should hire that woman. She steals her students’ designs.”

  “Oh, that’s right—Véra told me about your inane accusation.”

  “And my proof?” For Leo had recently retrieved it from one of his lady friends: the much worn and slightly torn, quite humbled butterfly dress. “It’s not too late for me to take it to the administration at NYFS.”

  “Don’t you realize they’re not interested in your proof? Their illustrious professor has brought acclaim to the school with the provision of a showcase piece to the Countess de Saint-Exupéry—and at a time when all of New York has its eyes on me. We’re going out for dinner; I’ve given the cook the night off. Tomorrow, everyone will be talking about the Atelier Fiche jacket I wore.” She speared an olive. “You see, darling? Start making accusations and your own alma mater will laugh you onto the street. Véra and I shared a giggle about it ourselves.”