Yet. There was something about this Lily that made you wonder where she’d been, and where she was going. What she’d seen—and what she’d forgotten. Her eyes were constantly darting to and fro, searching, appraising. Blanche had the uneasy feeling that she knew exactly where all the exits were in a room, where all the windows were, where she might hide if she had to.
“Why you so sad to return, Blanche?” Lily poked her with an elbow. “Don’t you want to go home?”
Blanche looked at her sharply. In the forty-eight hours they’d known each other, after Lily sat next to Blanche in the ship’s bar and asked her why she was wearing that particular dress, as the color was not at all becoming to Blanche but would suit her perfectly, the two of them had: spent a cocktail hour with two smarmy French Foreign Legion soldiers and drunk them both under the table; played shuffleboard using their feet instead of their hands; devised a game wherein whoever went the farthest in a conversation with a total stranger about his or her preferred sexual position won a bottle of champagne (Lily was the victor); won a loving cup in a rhumba contest (Blanche led, Lily followed); and held an impromptu party in one of the lifeboats, inviting only men who wore monocles (of which there were a surprising number).
And during these forty-eight hours, Blanche had laughed more than she had in years. Since the good days, with Pearl. So why did Lily Kharmanyoff ask her why she was sad?
“I’m not sad.”
“Sure you are. Every time you look at the sea, your face changes—it slides. Down. Like this.” Lily made a sad face. “You’d no be good as spy, Blanche. Or at poker.”
“I’ve been told that before.”
“So. Tell me.”
And damned if Blanche didn’t. As they stood at the boat’s railing, sea spray coating their hair and faces, Blanche realized she hadn’t had a close friend other than Pearl in a very long time. And Pearl, sad Pearl, was dying, no longer able to think or speak coherently. Pearl was dying despite Blanche’s best efforts to save her, perhaps dying because of those efforts, to spare Blanche years of despair. And Blanche had never been close to her sisters who, at any rate, were an ocean away.
Claude, she supposed, was her closest friend and the irony was not lost on her. Because he was the reason she hadn’t had women friends in so long. Because every woman she met, now, she couldn’t help but wonder: Is it her? Is this perfectly nice woman who sat down next to her in the Ritz tearoom, chatting about the high cost of gloves these days, asking Blanche what kind of perfume she is wearing, actually Claude’s mistress? Every woman with her own teeth and under the age of fifty was a suspect; Claude had made it impossible for Blanche to trust any female she met.
As far as all her pals at the Ritz—well. Blanche had acquaintances galore, drinking buddies, too. Famous people, idolized people—Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Porter and Picasso and movie stars. But they weren’t her friends; she couldn’t unload her romantic woes on them the way they did on her, because she didn’t expect them to have any sympathy—because they were men. They’d surely side with Claude. And they probably only thought about Blanche when they were inside the fabulously papered walls of the Ritz where she was a fixture, just as constant and decorative, nothing more, as the huge mural of a hunting scene behind the bar. Outside of this enchanted palace, Blanche did not exist for them—and sometimes, she wondered if that was true for her, too.
She missed a woman’s friendship, Blanche realized as she turned to this stranger with the big, eager eyes (hungry, almost, Blanche thought); someone to try on clothes with, to lie about your figure, your face, your ability to stave off the ravages of time. Someone you could count on to be on your side regardless, someone who would listen and sympathize, not try to reason. Someone who had experienced the same shitty treatment at the hands of a man.
So Blanche heard herself blurting out to this Lily Kharmanyoff why she was, indeed, so sad.
“It’s just that—my husband and I—we, our marriage, it’s complicated. For one thing, we’re childless.” Blanche held her breath, waiting for Lily’s response; it was such an enormous confidence. Not something she could talk about, really—especially not with Claude. Oh, it was always there, in the air, hovering over every conversation Blanche and Claude had, even if they were merely chatting over breakfast about the most mundane, married-couple things like “Do we have enough milk?” or “I think I’ll buy new towels today.”
That the absence of someone—or someones; tiny, helpless creatures at that—could add such terrible heft to everything she did or said, puzzled her greatly.
“Ah,” Lily said, nodding sagely. As if complete strangers told her this every day.
“Also, the bastard cheats on me, and I drink too much, especially lately. And we seem to—we disappoint each other, I guess. Too easily. Too often. We’re not who we thought we were, back when—well, you know how it is. We’re just not who we thought we were. Do you have kids?” Blanche had asked whether or not Lily was married the night before, but Lily had been vague about her personal life, as if she was used to not revealing too many details when questioned. As if she was quite used to being questioned, as a matter of fact. Blanche had simply assumed she was married, too; currently teaching her husband some vague, misguided “lesson.”
Like Blanche was.
“Oh, no, no.” Lily shook her head passionately. “No, the kind of life I lead—is not for children.”
“What kind of life do you lead?”
“I’ll tell you, Blanche, I’ll tell you all about. But only after we talk about you.”
Blanche grinned; it had almost worked, her turning the tables. With any of her other acquaintances—socialites, artists, and drunks, all equally prone to flattery and misdirection—it would have.
“Fine. We can’t have children, I guess. I’ve been to doctors, it’s something about my plumbing. Claude doesn’t know about that.”
“Claude is your man?”
“Yes. My husband—I told you, last night. Maybe something’s wrong with his plumbing, too—I have no idea if he’s had kids with his other women. I can’t bring myself to ask.” This fear, above all others, made her unable to discuss this with Claude. But if he had a child by one of his mistresses, Blanche could not have borne it; she could not keep coming back to him, hoping, always, that he would change—Christ, she was so naïve at times. “I don’t really know if he wants children. And to tell the truth I’m not sure I do, either, except that it seems as if there is something missing between us. Like—this was what he expected of me, a family to remind him that he’s a virile man. While I never, not once, gave him any indication that was what I wanted, because I didn’t know what I wanted. Oh, we have a grand life—you should come visit us at the Ritz—but it’s a different life than most married couples have. But then, we are different, we started out believing that we were so, so—”
“Special?”
“Yes, that’s exactly it—we had a grand, fiery beginning that just fizzled into—this. Whatever this is.” Blanche gazed at the horizon, as if the placid, reflective sea could explain to her what “this” was. “I’m lonely and angry, disappointed in him, as he is in me. And I can’t, for the life of me, figure out how to fix it. Maybe it’s something we can’t fix. Yet I feel stuck with the guy, because I don’t have anywhere else I can go. I love Paris. I could never go back home.”
“Where is home?”
“America. I haven’t been to see my family in ages.” Blanche had returned a couple of years after her marriage, one of her frequent escapes intended to punish Claude. She’d stayed at the Ritz in Manhattan, naturally, and treated her entire family to fine dinners there, a behind-the-scenes tour, even put them up in a suite for a night, proud to show them what she was used to back in Paris. But Blanche’s family—particularly her parents—were uncomfortable and disapproving that Blanche had traveled alone, without her husband. It was not a succ
essful visit; the only thing Blanche had in common with her family, she’d realized with a new, heavy sadness that temporarily made her forget about her marriage, was the past. And the past was the reason she’d left New York in the first place.
“So what do you and your man talk about, if not children?”
“His work, mainly. The Ritz. The people there—they’ve become our family. Or, they take up the space that children would occupy, I guess. The space between us—something that pushes us apart but when you look at it, there’s really nothing there. Does that make sense?” Blanche glanced at her new friend, who was nodding enthusiastically at everything she said—although Blanche had her doubts as to whether Lily comprehended it, given her mangling of the English language.
But it didn’t matter; Blanche needed to spill her guts to someone not Claude.
To a woman.
“Yes, yes. I understand. You need a cause, you and your man. Do you have one? Something that you have to fight for, together?”
“What?”
“I don’t think it’s important to have children, myself. Not now, especially. There is danger, Blanche, everywhere. Bad people. But you and your man, you must have something else to fight for, as you would a child’s life, a child’s well-being. So, what is your reason to live, Blanche?”
“I—I don’t know.” Blanche gripped the slick handrail. This creature had taken the wind right out of her sails. No one had ever asked her this before, and she’d certainly never asked herself.
“Pleasure, I think?” Those dark brown eyes were probing hers, searching, seeing—everything. “Fun—is that your cause? Drinks and laughter and dance?”
“Well, yes—but don’t you enjoy those things?—last night, the way you were arm-wrestling that torch singer—”
“Ah.” Lily turned away and spat over the railing, and Blanche had never seen a woman do this; she found the spectacle rather impressive, to tell the truth. “That. That was fun, sure.” Again, that mysterious, pan-European shrug. “But it’s not a reason for living, Blanche. There has to be more in a life than fun, don’t you think?”
“Lily, I was brought up to believe in God and family and tradition above everything else. Propriety. Modesty. Following all the rules. But none of it ever took with me, and so I ran away, was rescued by a little hotel manager who didn’t know what to do with me after he won me—as I had no idea what to do after I was won—and so I’ve spent the last decade or so having as much goddamn fun as I could. All the fun I was never allowed as a child.”
“Maybe is time for you to grow up, Blanche? You think? Maybe is not my place.” Lily gazed down at her funny shoes, and her forehead creased; she looked, for the first time in their short acquaintance, as if she was afraid of offending.
Blanche exhaled, gripped the railing tighter. Gazing ahead at the shimmering water, the bleached blue skies of the Mediterranean—no land in sight; no tempting harbors full of casinos, no moneyed yachts anchored, playgrounds waiting to be explored; only the water, the horizon, the clouds, and this odd little creature by her side—she was forced to acknowledge that yes, maybe it was time.
Time for her to grow up. But how? And did growing up mean leaving Claude for good? Standing on her own two feet, for the first time in her life not kept by a man?
Or did growing up mean forcing Claude to reckon with her as a woman, not an idea?
“What are you going to do, Lily, once you’re in France? Do you have someone waiting for you?”
Again, that shrug. “Maybe it’s a place to hang my bag.” She looked at Blanche quizzically, and Blanche laughed.
“Hang my hat. That’s the expression.”
Lily laughed—little peals of delight—and clapped her hands. “That’s it—hang my hat. I like it.”
“Hang your hat? So it’s not permanent—you think you’ll be going on to somewhere else?”
“I will wait for Robert. He is my man, like Claude is yours. And then, we’ll make plans. I think there’s going to be war. The damned Fascists, Blanche. They must be stopped! Spain is very bad right now, very bad.”
“So, you’re from Spain?”
“Nah.”
“Why should you care? And you’re a woman, you can’t fight. What would you do?”
“Really?” Lily peered up at her, a little cloud of disappointment dulling her eyes. “You think that women can’t make a difference in this world?”
“No, but—well, war, Lily! What can women do about that?”
“Maybe nothing, in your Ritz world. But in my world, plenty. There is war coming, not just in Spain, and women will be part of it. Children, too.”
“I suppose…but really, I can’t think of what I personally can do about that.”
“Your France will be caught up in it, too. This war that is coming.”
“Lily, there’s already been one world war, and France suffered the most. My Claude fought in it. It won’t happen there again, trust me.”
“If you say.” Lily shrugged, fiddled with the hem of her skirt; Blanche saw that it was coming undone, and she made a mental note to send it to the ship’s seamstress. “I wouldn’t make a bet on it, though.”
“Then why go there to hang your hat?”
“Because I have to get some money before we go to Spain, to fight for the Loyalists, like I told you. We need food, we need arms—maybe you help me, eh, Blanche? Are you rich?”
“Lily!” Blanche had to gasp at her new friend’s audacity. “People don’t ask other people that!”
Lily wrinkled her nose. “I ask. Is the easiest way to find out.”
“I suppose so.”
“And there are people in France we know who will go with us, to Spain. Hey, why not you, Blanche? You say you don’t know what to do—so go with me to Spain! That will teach your man his lesson!”
“Lily!” Blanche laughed at the absurdity of what she was proposing—she, Blanche Auzello, the Mistress of the Ritz, throwing hand grenades and crawling on her belly under fire! Who on earth—what on earth—was this strange creature, to propose such a thing? “I believe I’ll have to pass on that.”
“OK. You can still help me get money. Say, I like you, Blanche. I like you a lot. And not just for the money, although that is nice, too. But for yourself. You OK by me, Blanche. I think you need me.” And Lily looked startled by this; she shook her head, rubbed her forehead above her left eye with her thumb, as if she had a headache. Then she did something remarkable.
She laughed, stood up on tiptoe, turned Blanche’s face toward hers, and kissed her on the lips.
With a soft, satisfied sigh, Lily pulled away, rocking back on her heels. Cocking her head, she gazed up at Blanche, testing her, Blanche thought, as her hand flew to her cheek in astonishment. Her skin was blazing hot and she knew her face must be scarlet. There was a quivering in her stomach, as if a gusty wind was blowing right through her. She’d never been kissed by a woman before.
“Lily! I—why did you—”
“I felt like it.” She shrugged in that way of hers. “You look so pretty, Blanche. So sad. I thought maybe I cheer you up.”
“But Lily, I’m—I’m not like that….” Blanche knew there were women who loved women, of course—she had been in the movies, no matter how briefly. Hell, she lived in Paris! There were clubs devoted to them. Chanel was rumored to “be like that” when the mood suited her, and so was Josephine Baker. Not to mention Cole Porter representing the male version of “like that” despite his marriage to Linda. Blanche was no prude, but nothing in her life had prepared her for this moment.
“Like what?”
“Like—well, I’m married, Lily.”
“So? I have a man, too, I told you. Robert. I’ll show him to you.”
“And I, well, I’ve never—”
“Blanche, Blanche.” Lily started laughing, quietly
, but Blanche didn’t feel as if she were being made fun of—and for that, she was grateful. “Blanche, not to worry. I just felt like it. I like men, too. I like you. I like many things, many people. A kiss—what is it? A normal thing between two people who like each other.”
It was Blanche’s turn to laugh; Lily sounded a lot like Claude and the way he described his regular Thursday nights.
“OK, then. I like you, too, Lily. A lot.” But not like that.
Lily nodded, and, after a moment in which she appeared to be deciding something, slipped her little hand into Blanche’s, holding her breath as if she were afraid Blanche would pull away. And with that hesitant, shy little gesture, this ferocious, startlingly sexual creature—whom only a few moments before Blanche was picturing holding a machine gun with flair, entirely capable of mowing down a regiment of Fascists—became a waif. A child, in need of protection.
“You are my friend, Blanche.”
Blanche didn’t know what to say, she didn’t know how to react at all; Lily had provoked so many uncomfortable emotions within the span of thirty seconds, she was utterly speechless. And wouldn’t Claude be amused by that?
“Thank you,” Blanche whispered, and wasn’t sure Lily could hear her over the rush of the water, the conversation and laughter surrounding them. “You’re my friend, too.” But Lily squeezed her hand again, and Blanche knew she had.
“You need me, Blanche,” Lily announced in that lilting, vaguely Eastern European accent of hers. “You need me to teach you about the world we live in—the world outside the Ritz. You’re like a balloon.”
“What?”
“A balloon. Up in the sky, you see? You could float away—like this!” Lily waved her hands wildly, making crazy windmills in the air, and she began to dance, too, her tiny little feet in those absurd shoes stomping around on the slick deck. She wiggled her hips, laughing and capering about.
“I keep you here, on earth,” she called over her shoulder. “You keep me from doing too many crazy things. We help each other!”
Mistress of the Ritz Page 8