by Nicole Kelby
Next to it was another copy, made in a tweed of emerald green set against a deep pearl gray. This suit, which was made for Miss Nona, would be perfect with Kate’s gray Lilly Daché hat, her shoes, and the matching kid leather gloves. And, unlike the suit she had worn to work that day, it would not stink of rotting mulberry and raw silk.
Kate slipped on the jacket and looked in the three-way mirror. The color suited her very well. The gray brought out the pink in her cheeks and the deep auburn of her hair. She had finished the suit herself but never thought that she’d be the one wearing it. The entire time Kate was working on it, she imagined Miss Nona in Paris, sitting at a sidewalk café along the Champs-Élysées, madly sketching the floppy bows, swooping hats, and leopard prints that she’d committed to memory at the Yves Saint Laurent show. The suit lent itself to the elegant practice of fashionable hoodwinking. It was perfect for Kate’s visit to The Carlyle.
The back-room girls had their own powder room, but Kate used the one in the showroom. Just this once, she thought. Its counters looked like the cosmetics department at Bonwit Teller. There were lipsticks and powders in nearly every shade—and so many French perfumes. Kate wanted a splash of Chanel No. 5 to cover the scent of raw silk that clung to her, but there was none. So she dotted a little Je Reviens behind each ear and in the crook of her elbows. Then she frosted her lips pink, just because. I look lovely, she thought. And that made her blush.
The two-story penthouse at The Carlyle was a holdover from the President’s bachelor days. Kate knew that from the movie magazines that some of the girls brought in to read with lunch. Marilyn Monroe had been seen there recently—that was the talk, but Kate would hear none of it.
The hotel wasn’t far, just a short walk down to Fifth Avenue. She went through the revolving doors, and that was confusing to Kate. She expected the doors to open out into a lobby, but there was a bar and a café and a restaurant with white tablecloths, and no front desk. Kate couldn’t even find an elevator. Finally, a doorman discovered her wandering around—“This will not do,” he said—and took her by the arm and led her to the front desk. A call was made to the manager.
“Chez Ninon,” she told him. “I’m expected.”
“For?”
Kate took a deep breath. “A fitting.”
The manager phoned the penthouse. “She said a fitting. Yes.” He covered the phone with his hand. “You are not here for an interview?” he asked Kate.
“Tell them the Ladies sent me,” she said.
“She said she is a representative of some women.” The manager listened for a moment, then said, “Yes. As you wish.” He hung up the phone. “They’ll sort it out upstairs,” he said to the bellman, and didn’t address Kate at all. The sour-faced man then escorted her onto the elevator. He was not willing to let her out of his sight. He reminded her of a toy soldier, with his uniform and wooden air of authority. On the way up, Kate tried to be pleasant. “Must be like living in a movie, with room service and all the rest,” she said.
The man looked at her and then through her. “Tradespeople normally ride the freight. Keep that in mind for your next appearance.”
Kate felt sorry for the joyless people of the world.
The elevator doors opened, and the bellman walked Kate all the way to the apartment, holding her arm tightly, as if she were going to run away. He knocked on the door and waited for it to open before he turned to her and said, “The freight elevator is on your left.”
Kate longed to smell the scent of silk on her skin again.
A tall man had opened the door. Blond. Nondescript. Secret Service, clearly.
“I’m Kate. From Chez Ninon.”
The man wrote her name down and told her to wait in the entryway. It was a room by accident, a marble alcove surrounded by a series of white French doors that led into the penthouse. With the doors closed around her, it was like standing in a small white box. There was no place to sit. The air was stale and smelled of old cigarettes. The perfume Kate had taken from the Ladies’ powder room quickly became cloying. It reminded her of a funeral home—that stale air of old lilies, starched dresses, and face powder—but she waited. She held Chanel’s box in front of her like a Christmas gift.
Every now and then Kate could hear muffled voices behind the door, and she’d think about the reams of impossible silk waiting for her back at the shop. No one had even bothered to take her hat or coat. Kate pulled off her kidskin gloves; they were still a little stiff from the other day, when she was caught in the rain, but they felt as though they’d stretch back into shape eventually. She was wearing a beautiful suit, and that was all that mattered.
Kate looked at her watch again. It was now nearly five p.m., but still she had to wait. Just wait—that was what she was told. They knew she was there. She couldn’t just leave, despite the fact that there were 426 silk feathers waiting to be made. She tried to imagine how long that would take, how many feathers an hour she could create without getting sloppy.
And then there was Patrick Harris. Standing there waiting, with nothing to do, made it difficult not to think about him, too. It was awful that they’d parted so badly. She could hardly believe that it had been an entire week since she’d seem him, since they’d had dinner at Mrs. Brown’s pub. Kate had been so embarrassed. She even went to church late on Sunday. She stood in the back, by the marble of St. Patrick himself, a very popular spot with the old-timers, just to avoid being seen.
Kate told herself she didn’t really miss him—We’re just friends—nor did she miss Mrs. Brown’s kindness, nor the quiet of the secret pub, nor the onions in the vinegar and the way the fish was fried so that it was crisp, golden, and still moist.
All these thoughts piled up one on top of the other, and her heart began to race. “I need to leave,” she said, which surprised her. Her knees were aching. Her shins again, too. Her hands were swollen. She wanted to just sit somewhere, anywhere. Kate felt a crushing panic, and so she did the one thing she knew she shouldn’t do. She knocked.
“Anyone there?”
The man was back again.
“They’ll be with you shortly.”
“May I sit? Maybe just move a chair out here?”
He acted as if he didn’t hear her. He turned to close the door, but Kate caught his arm. “My knees feel older than God. You must know how that feels. Don’t you?”
He frowned and removed her hand. Another joyless man, Kate thought, but he led her into another white room, and this one, thankfully, had chairs. She could sit.
“Don’t touch anything,” he said. “Don’t get anything dirty.”
“Surely not,” she said, and sat on the edge of a soft chair with her hands on her knees, Chanel’s cardboard box perched on her lap. Although the room was quite large, it felt cramped. There were boxes from all sorts of stores piled along all the walls. They were from all the best places—Bergdorf’s, primarily. Kate tried not to count them. They can’t all belong to the Wife.
The room reeked of cigarettes; the ashtrays were overflowing. They could be anybody’s cigarettes, she told herself. Although she knew that probably wasn’t true.
The room was dramatic. The windows were two stories high and overlooked the city. In sheer contrast to the piles of boxes and overflowing ashtrays, the decor was a designer’s attempt at pristine elegance. The pale-yellow walls were trimmed in white. The furniture was all white. Even the carpet was white. It was not the kind of room you could live a life in. It made Kate feel hollow.
She looked over her shoulder and out the windows. All of Manhattan seemed to be moving toward the end of its day. Cranky yellow cabs, sleek black sedans—from that height, the city seemed to whisper below her.
Suddenly Kate could hear the voices in the next room. And then she heard that laugh, so like a little girl’s. The Wife.
“In fifth grade, ‘Behave or Else’ was my middle name,” she said.
The reporter was a man. “I don’t believe it,” he said.
“It�
��s true.”
They must have stepped away from the door for a moment. She could hear them talking, but not clearly. And then Kate heard, “Thoroughbred—that’s what they called me. I was brought up to be like a racehorse, but I was too wild and good for nothing.”
A few minutes passed and the door opened. It was the Secret Service agent again.
“You’re no longer needed,” he said.
Kate scanned the horizon. As the sun slipped behind the graying buildings of New York, the edges of them seemed to catch fire. Kate had waited all that time. Again. And was stood up. Again.
What about the Chanel?
“Miss, I have to ask you to leave.”
“Yes. Of course.” The room was very quiet. “Please tell her that Chez Ninon can start the fittings tomorrow. For the Chanel suit.”
“Tell the secretary on your way out.”
“Of course,” Kate said, but there was no secretary to tell.
She found the freight elevator without a problem.
Chapter Seven
“Fashion anticipates . . . elegance is a state of mind.”
—Oleg Cassini
On the way home, Kate couldn’t stop thinking about it. Thoroughbred? The thought of people raising children to think of themselves as beasts infuriated her. She couldn’t imagine saying something like that to Little Mike. What good did all that racehorse training do? That willful girl may have grown up to become the most famous woman in the world, but she sounded so sad and lonely.
Unfortunately, Kate didn’t finish Mrs. Astor’s gown that night. She would later say that she wasn’t exactly sure why. She’d run all the way back to Chez Ninon from The Carlyle with every intention of working for as long as it took to make up for her absence. But when she arrived, she looked up and could see that the shop was dark. The entire second floor of Chez Ninon was deserted. There wasn’t even a light on in the back room. Kate looked at her watch. It was half past nine. Everyone’s home, she thought, except me.
For a while, Kate stood outside, looking at the building. It seemed to be just another building on another street crowded with offices and shops. It didn’t seem to be a place where dreams were sewn one stitch at a time or small miracles could be made with lace on lace. She couldn’t bear to leave the Chanel behind in those darkened rooms, and so she didn’t. Kate began to walk.
The clouds that she’d seen roll in cut the city off at its knees. The a cappella music of night, the insistence of sirens and sorrow—the push, push, push of it all—seemed closer and louder, like a heartbeat in her head. Street by street, corner by corner—Kate wasn’t above it. She was part of it. The texture of the city, the warp and weft of it, was hers. The turned-up collars of couples rushing to the subway, the worn cotton shirt of the grocer rolling down the heavy metal gate as he closed for the night, the girls on the way to Times Square—coatless, without gloves or a hat, their dresses so tight they could barely move. This was Kate’s world now, all of it. Her home was no longer Cobh. Nor was it the New York of those who stood before the mirrors at Chez Ninon, impatient and squirming, eyeing themselves three times over and thinking about the next beautiful gown and then the next. Kate’s world was that of the hot dog vendors, with their torn peacoats, the carriage drivers, in their fraying top hats, and the police, in their rough wool and scuffed shoes.
Life under the clouds. It was tattered and dirty—and yet, somehow beautiful. It was her world, with all its pulse and pain. Tomorrow she’d have to explain what had happened at The Carlyle. What had happened was simple—Kate sat down. For the first time since she’d left Cobh, she’d sat down like a lady, not like a back-room girl. And when Kate sat down at The Carlyle, everything changed. Miss Nona would not understand at all. Miss Sophie would think that Kate had truly lost her mind.
She didn’t mean to sit. She was on her way out. Kate had taken the freight elevator, as she was told to. But the room the elevator opened onto was so elegant, with a large, gilded mirror and a crystal chandelier. It felt like a small parlor in a great country manor, like the Fota House, back on the Island, with its botanical gardens, exotic zoo, and tales of its city of ghosts. She wanted to sit for a moment in a beautiful place in her beautiful borrowed suit. The chairs were soft leather. The logs in the fireplace burned without smoke. There were fresh red roses in Chinese vases on small, dark wood tables.
Kate had sat in beautiful rooms in Cobh, even in Dublin, and no one had ever denied her entrance. She certainly didn’t intend to spend the entire evening there. She just wanted to collect herself. The room was warm. She slid off her coat. She placed her Lilly Daché hat, so very French, and her kidskin gloves on the table next to her. They looked so grand there—like they belonged. She kept Chanel’s box on her lap—it wouldn’t do to lose it.
“Tea?”
The young man wore a handsome tuxedo, European cut, with thin satin lapels. He served her tea from a silver pot and poured it into real china cups with saucers. There was a silver pitcher of cream and perfect cubes of sugar on the tray as well.
“Cake?”
Of course, cake.
“And sherry?”
Kate thought of sherry as something that went into a trifle along with Bird’s custard mix, but she was certainly willing to try it. She moved Chanel’s box from her lap and placed it behind her like a pillow. She draped her coat over it.
“May I take this?” he asked.
“No. But thank you for asking.”
“Very well.”
The waiter went back into the dining room and returned with a small white linen tablecloth, which he placed over the back of the chair, covering her coat and the package from Chanel.
“This will be our secret,” he said.
The tea was lovely: a smoky, solid black. There was plate after plate of so many delights: tiny jam tarts with butter-cookie crusts, small chocolate cups filled with some sort of raspberry brandy, and exquisite white cakes covered with pink almond paste and topped with the most delicate sugared violets. Kate had never seen anything like it before. And the sherry was very smooth.
A woman in a beautiful suit can go anywhere, Kate thought.
She knew she should leave. She still had so much work to do. But just one more. One more cup of tea. One more small cake. One more splash of sherry. One more moment. It wasn’t so much the food and drink but the world of that room that kept Kate firmly in her chair. Fabric, line, color—the very spark of life swirled around her. Men. Women. Children. Some seemed to have tumbled out of a fashion magazine; they had a liquid grace about them. Some skittered across the room in heels so high that every step pitched them forward, closer to the ground.
He who seeks beauty will find it. Schwinn said that. He could see beauty where no one else could. To him, age didn’t matter. Looks didn’t matter. It was line, color, and movement that mattered. Fabric and texture that was stylish or interesting captured his heart. It didn’t matter who wore it or why; all that mattered was beauty and grace. Clothes are the only armor the body has.
The girls called his sayings “Schwinnisms.” Most laughed at him, but not Kate. She understood. Beauty was everywhere—especially in this room in The Carlyle. It was in a chinchilla wrap with red leather gloves, and in a full-length black sable with black velvet pumps. She could see the hours that went into each gown and dress and jacket, all that close work, all that puzzling over one thing or another, all that skillful stitching and well-thought-out design. Kate had never seen so many lovely pieces in one place. So many hours went into each piece, so many lifetimes.
“Mademoiselle, will there be anything else? Will you be joining us for dinner?”
On the silver tray, the young man was carrying a single glass, a coupe—although it wasn’t filled with champagne. Kate wasn’t sure what it was, but it was such a beautiful color. Rose? Peach? It was difficult to decide what shade it was. She wasn’t even sure what kind of drink it was.
“It’s a Pink Squirrel,” he said.
�
�And that is?”
“Apricot. Cream, mostly. Would you like one?”
Kate could think of nothing more lovely. She took the glass from his tray. Took a sip. The man looked alarmed. Kate reassured him.
“It’s just wonderful. I’ve never had anything this wonderful before. Please thank everyone.”
She patted his hand, and the man stiffened.
“What room, mademoiselle?”
Room?
He wanted to put her charges on a room. Kate was mortified. At Chez Ninon, everything was given to the Ladies. Cakes and champagne—it was all a gift. Kate had $2.03 in her purse.
“The room, mademoiselle?”
“Penthouse.”
The young man looked uneasy. Kate fled. She grabbed her coat and Chanel’s box and ran out of The Carlyle, into the city. She couldn’t bear to go back to work, and so when she finally found herself sitting on the A train, her heart was racing. She didn’t know what to do.
Last stop. In spite of the kiss, or maybe because of it, Kate needed to see Patrick. The Carlyle, the Wife—the whole evening had been so confusing; she felt lost. She just wanted to hear his voice; it always calmed her. But as soon as Kate opened the door to Mrs. Brown’s pub, she knew she’d made a mistake. The pub was a completely different place than it had been the week before. It was smoky as a dream and reeked of stout. There were so many people. Couples everywhere. The sign that read NO LADIES ALLOWED had been replaced with another—SESSIONS NIGHT.