by Nicole Kelby
“Lovely,” Kate said.
“Fair warning, that’s all,” he said.
As soon as he closed the door, Patrick took out his reading glasses and picked up the newspaper. “Would you like some?”
Outside the office, a floorboard creaked. Kate wondered if Father John was standing behind the closed door, listening. Plotting his strategy. He was always a fine strategist on the field; it was not such a stretch of the imagination to think that he’d be eavesdropping. After all, there’s no commandment against that, Kate thought.
“Would you like the women’s section?” Patrick asked.
“I’m fine,” she said.
He leaned over and kissed her cheek, shyly. Somewhere between the sky and the sea—that was the color of his eyes at that moment. He clearly wanted an answer from Kate, too. But he wouldn’t push.
“If you want, we can sneak out before he gets back,” he said.
“That would add another rosary to the penance pile.”
“True.”
Patrick became engrossed in the sports section, and so Kate took out her father’s letter. The envelope was from the Commodore Hotel in Cobh. The hotel had been majestic in its day. The last passengers to board the Titanic slept there before their voyage. Maybe the Lees, the Wife’s people, slept there, too. Her father had nicked the envelope. He was always stealing stationery from fancy hotels. An open door was all the invitation he needed. Still incorrigible, Kate thought, and opened the envelope. There was a letter, yes. But something else, too.
“Rose petals.” Kate had forgotten about them completely.
Patrick looked up from the newspaper. She took a few from the envelope to show him. Brown and withered, from her father’s garden, they’d obviously been pressed into a book the day she’d left. They crumbled in her hands.
I’ve heard about your pending change of status and have put your baby Jesus in the churchyard, he wrote. Let me know when He can come in again. He’s looking bedraggled.
Jesus of Prague. It had been so long since Kate had even thought of that statue. If a girl was lucky enough to have one of her very own, it sat on the windowsill, as Kate’s did. She loved making satin gowns to dress it up on holy days. It had a paste jewel crown and held a tiny ceramic world in one hand. It was quite regal, and good luck, too. If you dressed it up and prayed to it, you’d eventually find a suitable husband. Then you could pass the statue on to your own little girl. That was the way it was done in Cobh. The Prague child was put outside on the morning of your wedding to ensure a sunny day and a sunny life.
Apparently, Kate’s own baby Jesus was now a lawn ornament until her father heard otherwise. Word travels fast, she thought.
“Everything all right with the Old Man?” Patrick asked. His reading glasses made him look quite scholarly.
“He knows.”
“Maggie?”
“Who else?”
“And his verdict? Am I to be skinned alive or the son he never had?”
Kate scanned the letter. It’s somewhat acceptable that the boy is an Over-the-Bridger, her father wrote, only because he’s Peg’s boy, and your mam would have liked that. But he didn’t even write me and ask for your hand, and that’s rude. Those who live over the bridge are a different breed. It’ll be a trial for you.
“You’ll be a trial,” she said.
“That’s a given. Anything else?”
Kate read ahead quickly. P.S., her father wrote, I did, indeed, nick the stationery as a commemorative gesture for your upcoming nuptials. Marriage is a lot like being on the Titanic—it’s all fancy dress and good eats until you drown.
“You don’t want to know,” Kate said.
She put the letter back in her pocketbook. The only thing she knew for sure was that her Prague child would catch his death in the churchyard, waiting.
“Should we call him?” Patrick asked.
“It’s two a.m. there.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
After half an hour and no sign of Father John, Patrick began reading the sports section aloud to Kate: Yankees, again. Home-field advantage against the Baltimore Orioles.
Roger Maris versus Mantle to break Ruth’s record of sixty home runs in a season.
Maris hit his sixty. Mantle won’t make it. Maybe his last game ever. He’s an old man.
Patrick looked up from the paper. “You know, Ruth was once a minor leaguer for the Baltimore Orioles.” Patrick had told her the story about Ruth slamming the ball out of the Dyckman Oval. He was always telling her interesting things.
“Do you really want to marry me?” Kate asked.
Patrick put the newspaper down. The poet butcher who named his car in honor of the President’s mother, who played guitar for the prize of a fine-crumbed cake on any given Sunday after mass, this man who was usually so buoyant that he was unafraid to be sentimental or joyous or sing if there was a song that needed to be sung—this man seemed suddenly fragile.
“Will you have me?”
The door opened.
“Ready?” Father John asked.
Another very good question, indeed.
“Not yet,” Kate said.
This time, Patrick and Kate turned on every light in her tiny apartment. Maggie’s coffins were still stacked waist high in chronological order on Kate’s kitchen floor. The zippers and rickrack and buttons and lace were bright as fireflies caught in a jar. Bolts of silk in twenty shades of moonlight stood upright like ghosts.
“This looks like the remnant room at Chez Ninon,” Patrick said.
“Nearly.”
“Is that why we’re here?”
“If I must understand the fine art of Irish butchering to be your wife, then you can’t be a back-room girl’s husband with knowing why she loves it so.”
“But Mam—”
“Didn’t love it.”
“She enjoyed it.”
“That’s different.”
It was. Patrick had never realized that before; he had never understood that Kate was not like his Peg. “I’m sorry,” he said, in a way that told her that he meant no harm. He was just a boy who loved a girl.
“Forgotten already.”
The pink bouclé that she had liberated from Chez Ninon was still wrapped in muslin. Kate brought the lamp from her bedside table and plugged it in, turned it on, and shone it on the fabric. She put on her white cotton gloves and unwrapped the pink gently and held it out for Patrick.
“It’s not just wool or sheep’s hair—as you said. It has life,” Kate said, and began to turn the bouclé to catch the light, as if it were a prism. “Every fabric has a voice. When you rub your hand quickly along it, you can hear its music. But it’s not just the threads that sing; it’s the life behind them. It’s the song of those who tend the sheep and those who shear them, of those who dream in shades of cherry blossoms and shooting stars, and through alchemy and mathematics weave grace. It’s the song of those who warp and weave and darn; it’s the song of their lives, too. Because part of their lives, part of all their lives, was spent making something of such audacious beauty that it can nearly make the heart stop.”
Kate was on the verge of tears.
“If pink could be thunder,” Patrick said, “it would look like this.”
“Exactly.”
When the grand Mrs. Tackaberry McAdoo and her tiny black-and-white fluffy dog Fred arrived at Chez Ninon the next afternoon, there was champagne. The Chanel had been accepted by Maison Blanche. “The pink suit was beloved!” Mrs. Tackaberry McAdoo told the Ladies. And when Miss Sophie repeated this to Kate, she squealed to replicate the exact sound that Mrs. Tackaberry McAdoo had made. The noise sounded like someone had accidentally sat on Fred the dog, but since Kate had never actually spoken to Mrs. Tackaberry McAdoo, she could neither confirm nor deny the veracity of the impersonation. She had to take Miss Sophie’s word for it.
“Did the Wife want the skirt redone?” Kate asked.
“Of course not! Perfect as i
s!”
But it isn’t right, Kate thought. “Didn’t she notice it was run off on the machines? Mr. Cassini said we needed to—”
Miss Sophie threw her head back and laughed. “Mr. Cassini says a great many things that no one listens to, Kate. I sent the skirt over to Jack at Oscar de la Renta. He’s a little quicker than you are and a little cheaper, too.”
Jack was Chez Ninon’s “Overflow Man,” as Mr. Charles had often called him. Jankiel Horowicz was old-fashioned and serious—Kate liked that about him. He’d been a tailor for the Polish army before the war, before the concentration camp, before his world fell apart. A quiet man, he did beautiful work. He didn’t talk about his past, but Kate knew the stories and could see the sorrow in his eyes. She was glad that he was the finisher. He was a good man, and there was comfort in that.
So many hands and so many hearts, she thought. Just to make one simple suit.
Two weeks later, the story made headlines all over America: GALS WILL RULE ON CAMP DAVID. It was exactly as the Ladies had said. If the Wife and the daughter liked the mountain camp, then the family would abandon their leased country estate, Glen Ora, in Virginia. If not, Camp David would gather dust. Much to Kate’s relief, the Wife was radiant in the pink suit. Even though the photos were in black-and-white, the suit still seemed incandescent. The Wife did seem reborn in it, as Schwinn would have said. No hat. No pearls. Gloves, though. The First Lady seemed to be wearing a different blouse with the suit, not one of the ones that Kate had designed. But it was difficult to tell for sure. She and the President were coming out of St. Stephen’s Catholic Church on their way to Camp David, and it was windy. They looked happy.
Two days later, on November 14, the Wife wore the suit again. This time it was during what the newspapers called a “Korean gift ceremony,” held at Maison Blanche, in the yellow Oval Room. The photo made Kate laugh out loud. On the far left, General Chung Hee Pak looked like a G-man. He was wearing dark tinted glasses, a shiny suit, and an ironic smile. On the far right, the Wife, who had just been presented with a chest of handmade clothes sent by female students in Korea, had a look of stoic horror.
Even in black-and-white, the chest of clothes looked absolutely dreadful. Kate couldn’t even imagine what color they were, but they were shiny, with thick stripes and fat polka dots, and were to be paired with a hideous striped beret, which, although exotic, would probably never even be worn by someone as eccentric as Mrs. Vreeland. Standing next to the Wife was the President, smirking. He had a look on his face that made Kate think he might just announce that Her Elegance was going to duck into the loo to try everything on. Maybe even give a little fashion show. He looked like a man on the verge of a practical joke, and Kate liked that. She showed the newspaper clippings to Maggie Quinn at supper that night.
“It’s a nice suit. It’s okay,” she said. Maggie seemed more interested in the articles themselves. “Did you notice that their little girl is Little Mike’s age?”
Kate had not.
“And this is funny. The Wife is about your age. I wonder how you’d look in a pink suit like this.”
Kate didn’t even hesitate. “Reborn,” she said, and that was when she knew that she would make this pink suit for herself.
Chapter Eighteen
“Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman who is wearing it.”
—Yves Saint Laurent
The Chez Ninon telephone never stopped ringing. The questions from the press were endless. “Will the First Lady continue to buy from Norman Norell? Or are you copying his designs, too?”
“Favored colors are Gauguin pink, black, turquoise, gray, and white. Deny or confirm?”
With Mr. Charles gone, it was left to Miss Sophie to release Chez Ninon’s most recent corporate position on whether or not there had been a shopping spree at the shop or if a new evening gown was one of theirs or had indeed been bought in Paris and flown back on Air Force One. Dealing with the press was not a task she particularly enjoyed.
That day, the reporters were even more insistent than usual. Chez Ninon appeared on the list of the designers for India, and by the time the Associated Press arrived at their door with a mimeographed questionnaire about the wardrobe, including cut, color, style, and “inspiration”—which was a polite way of asking the Ladies whose design they’d stolen—Miss Sophie had decided to delegate and handed the form to Kate.
“Fill in your part,” she said. Underneath the heading Travel Clothes, someone had typed in Pink Suit, Chez Ninon. Kate nearly cheered. The Wife planned to wear the suit to India. It was amazing news. Maybe she and Patrick would celebrate. Maybe even have champagne. They’d planned dinner that night: it would be the first time since mid-October that they would have a chance to spend some time together. Thanksgiving was the next week. The back room was mad with dresses and suits for assorted family gatherings.
Patrick was deluged with orders, too. Without his father and mother to help, he spent nearly every waking hour brining and smoking and grinding and seasoning. He smelled like a rasher of bacon. It was not just turkeys that everyone wanted. Some wanted pork crowns, just to be contrary. And everyone needed both white and black puddings for a proper Irish fry-up for the holiday-morning breakfast. And there was nearly a trawler’s worth of fish that had to be smoked to keep families happy before the turkey was brought, brown and glorious, to the table. There were so many orders for sausage that Patrick had been seasoning, grinding, and freezing for weeks.
“I can’t even imagine what Christmas will be like,” he said.
Awful, Kate thought, but was quietly glad that Patrick was so busy, because it gave her time to work on her pink suit without interruption. She wanted to finish it for Christmas to surprise him. She was going to wear it to church that morning, just to see that wonderful look of pride on his face.
They’d agreed to meet at 8:30 p.m. at the pub that night, although Patrick had warned her that he would reek of pork fat and probably be a little late. “Mrs. Brown knows you’re coming, so she’ll watch over you until I arrive.”
Kate was so looking forward to their date. After work, she ran down to Bergdorf Goodman’s to finally buy the Chanel No. 5 she’d had her eye on. She took the express train home. She had a hot bath and fixed her hair. She picked out a simple black dress, an LBD of her own design, which she knew went well with her skin color and set off the red in her hair.
If pink could be thunder. It was such a lovely thing that Patrick had said. It still took her breath away. She wanted the night to be special.
Unfortunately, Kate lost track of time.
She was not intoxicated by lilacs, as Mr. Charles and his clients were. But it did begin with the Chanel No. 5. Two dabs behind each ear, and a little in the crook of each arm, made her think of the Wife, India, and the suit. Their pink suit—although Kate’s was still lying half-finished on her workroom table.
When she pulled her slip over her head, there was a rush of heat and sandalwood, and in that moment she decided that that horrible girdle and those nylons could wait. She put on her bathrobe instead. Out on the street, she could hear the laughter of couples going somewhere on a Friday night, but she still had time. She just wanted to take a minute to adjust a seam before she went. She’d been thinking about it all day. Then she’d finish dressing and run down to meet Patrick. Kate knew if she didn’t fix the seam, she’d be thinking about it all night. And that would ruin everything.
Kate was clearly obsessed with the pink suit—and she knew it. Chanel’s improbable architectural demands were addictive, like one puzzle after another, meant for Kate to solve. Adjusting the toile to fit her wasn’t as difficult as Kate had thought. Quilting the silk to the wool was painstaking but not impossible. Even though she did sew it by hand, the skirt came together fairly quickly. Deep in its hem, Kate had placed a scapular of St. Jude, the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes, just as her mother always had done with her best skirts, the ones she reserved for special occas
ions. “A little bit of the rebel county,” she would say. It was a way to be proudly Catholic, no matter what. It was also convenient. If you need to beseech St. Jude to intervene for you in one hopeless cause or another, this was a better solution than taking an ad out in the newspaper or burying his statue in Isham Park. It would be comforting to have him hovering about.
The real challenge for Kate had been the jacket. Piecing the front to the back was a serious conundrum because some of the tweed was slightly irregular, too loosely woven, which gave it that beautiful look of being handmade, but also made it difficult to work with. And it would not stop shedding. That night, it took several tries, but Kate was finally able to fix the seam so that it matched and lay flat.
Unfortunately, she’d completely lost track of time until a knock at the door startled her. It was Patrick. And it was midnight.
“I’m mortified,” she said.
It was obvious that Patrick had planned to be quite upset with her. He’d probably crafted a poetic and yet furious speech while he waited for Kate at the pub. Probably had one pint and then another and then whiskey for courage. But as soon as Kate opened the door, he’d forgotten it. She was standing there in her slip and bathrobe, covered in tufts of pink wool. There was the scent of sandalwood in the air. She was so pale and beautiful, even without moonlight, that he kissed her. Then kissed her again.
He kissed her neck, and she turned off the lights. He slipped his hand along the edge of her robe. She let it fall onto the floor. When he kissed the length of her arms, he was on his knees before her, as if in worship. She took off his coat, slowly. And then his tie.
One by one they shed the things of their lives until there was nothing left except that moment, not faith or country or history. They were adrift in a sea of pink.
After—their entire lives would now be measured by that word.
After they made love—slowly, painfully, but deliberately—Kate was surprised. It was not what she’d expected. It was like being caught in a swift current with storm clouds in your heart.