“Thank you for staying close, even though I didn’t know it. And for the dress, Charlie.”
“So I don’t eat for weeks and can’t afford books next semester. Think nothing of it. Schiaparelli did give us an awfully good discount, though. Ania has that effect on people.” A cab pulled up, and we climbed in.
“Schiaparelli’s daughter was a student at the school,” I said.
“That explains the hat she gave you.” He gave the driver my hotel address.
In the taxi, he put his arm around my shoulder again. “You’ve had a tough time of it,” he said. “I’m glad you came. Let’s see if we can get you smiling again. I’ve really missed you, Lily. Life has missed you. You disappeared. Come back. It’s time.”
* * *
• • •
My room was the cheapest the hotel had, with a cot-sized bed, a straight-backed chair, a three-drawer dresser, and a torn silk screen with a washing basin behind it. It was on the fourth floor under the eaves, and I could barely stand up straight in it. But the window faced east. I would see the sun rising over the red rooftops of the Left Bank.
I unpacked, hanging up the few clothes I had brought, placing my hairbrush on the washstand and Allen’s photo on the little table next to the bed.
On the rue des Beaux Arts, below me, women swept their stoops, the Latin Quarter students rushed by, and children in their blue school uniforms bounced balls, played tag. If I leaned out the window, I could see Notre Dame and its stained-glass rose window sparkling with all the colors of the saints.
There was so much color. The red striped awning of the patisserie, the window boxes of pink geraniums and green ferns, the pinks and yellows of women’s summer frocks, the dusty charcoal of men’s berets. I fell asleep to the rusty rhythm of the creaking bedsprings, drifting in and out of all the colors like a bee sipping nectar.
I woke up once, startled by a clattering in the street, the sound of a screaming child, a mother shushing him. Only half-awake, I thought I was in the hospital again, screaming for Allen, that the scream had been my own; I imagined I felt the plaster cast on my broken leg, the bandages on my burnt left hand.
The environment of illness, those austere white rooms, is like a colorless desert, barren and overheated, a place where people tiptoe through the drying concrete of guilt and grief, where voices are never raised. In the hospital, to negate all that whiteness, I dreamed in vivid colors, all the shades of blue and red and yellow, swirling in and out and around one another, turning into every other color and then separating again.
Blue. The color of sickness, of doom, the color of both air and water, day and night. When I was bed-bound, if I concentrated hard enough, I could stare at the white nurses’ uniforms, and they would turn blue and I would feel alive with that simple act of creation and then memory would turn everything white once again. I would force myself to remember the secret of the primary colors, that they cannot be obtained by admixtures.
Blue, red, and yellow cannot be faked or forced. They are for themselves, of themselves. Variable, like moods, yet always themselves. Perfect. Allen had been the human equivalent of a primary color.
* * *
• • •
When I woke up hours later in my hotel room I reached across the bed, to Allen, my hand seeking the familiar comfort of his shoulder, his back. Panic seized me when I remembered where I was and that I was alone. Death is a fact that is only slowly assimilated. There were still three or four moments of every day when I forgot, and therefore had to realize all over again, that Allen was dead. Waking up was one of them.
A moment later there was a knocking at the door and the porter called through the keyhole.
“Box for you, Madame.”
Schiaparelli had kept her word. I opened the box reluctantly and folded back layers of tissue. Even in the box, the dress looked beautiful. What a waste. I’d probably wear it only once. I splashed water from the basin on my face and hands, dropped the gown over my head, and combed back my hair, all without glancing in the cracked mirror over the washstand.
Then I turned and looked at myself. The dress fit perfectly, the white chiffon hem fluttering around my calves, the red printed roses enclosing my shoulders and throat like a picture frame. The roses on the white chiffon gave a hint of pink to my olive skin. The neckline showed off my shoulders, my throat. I wished Allen were there, to see me.
“Swell,” Charlie said when I met him later in the hotel lobby.
“I thought it needed to be magnificent,” I teased him.
“Close enough.
“How long are you staying, by the way? I may have to go into training to fight off the wolves.” Charlie put up his fists and made a jab at an invisible opponent.
“Not funny,” I said. “I’m not interested in wolves, or even nice men.”
“Eventually, Lily, you have to let yourself recover. You have to start again.”
“I’m staying a week.”
“Is that all? I’ll be here till the end of the month. I was hoping you might stay longer. I would like you to stay longer. Please?”
“I get it. You want me to pose as a chaperone for you and your girl.”
“It would help. We could spend more time together and there’d be less talk. And I’d like you to get to know her. Think about it. I mean, what are you going back to?”
Charlie pulled my arm through his and out we went, into the pale June twilight. He was dressed in le smoking, all black and white with a red carnation in his buttonhole, his top hat tilted at a stylish angle, and passersby stared at him, that beautiful young man in evening dress.
“You look like you need time away from that school,” he said. “I’ll never understand why you decided to stay there after Allen’s death, rather than going back to New York.”
“I’m closer to Allen there.” How could I leave the place where I had been so happy with Allen, where every table, every room and garden path, reminded me of him?
Charlie read my thoughts. “He isn’t there, Lily. He’s gone. I know your heart broke, I know you loved him. But this is a kind of emotional suttee, and I won’t allow it. Be heartbroken, but live. Don’t lock out anything and anyone that might bring some happiness. And in all honesty, the future isn’t looking that great in Europe right now. France may end up at war, and if France does, England probably will, too. Who knows where Hitler will stop, and when.”
“Now you’re being alarmist. No one really believes that, certainly not Gerald.” The few conversations I’d had with Allen’s brother in the last two years had been as impersonal as a newspaper.
“Yes, well, I wonder if Gerald might be a little admiring of Hitler and his law and order and trains on time. Quite a few in England, including the Duke of Windsor and his wife, seem frankly sympathetic. But you, Lily. You’re too thin, your hair needs a good styling. I bet you’ve even stopped painting.”
“I try. Once in a while.”
We paused at the river, Charlie leaning on the balustrade, me leaning on Charlie. There was a washing barge somewhere beneath us in the darkness, and we could hear the women chattering at each other, smell the bleach from the day’s work. There was a clank and clatter, and a bottle was thrown into the river.
“I think they are relaxing with a little wine. Could use some myself,” Charlie said. “Lily, it saddens me to see you so sad.”
“You are the only thing I love in this world, little brother. And right now, I’m more than a little worried about you.”
We turned away from the river and continued our walk to the Place Vendôme, both of us a little shy for having confessed that mutual adoration. Love can be an easy thing to take for granted, but when it’s voiced it fills you, the street, the city; it becomes its own destination, something always followed by small talk because the most important thing has already been said.
“How come we had to walk,
Charlie? Where’s the automobile?”
“Spoken for, at this hour.”
So is Ania, I didn’t say.
“Chin up. You look great,” Charlie said when we were in front of the Ritz. The Place Vendôme was already lit with dozens of streetlamps, round circles of light dancing through the darkening evening. There had been a gentle rain in the afternoon, and the pavement shimmered. The floodlight directed at the statue of Napoleon, standing on his tall column, was turned on and made a streak of white through the night, as if a fallen star had left a permanent record of its descent.
The huge hotel, with its façade of columns and arched windows, was large enough to house an entire village. You couldn’t see it all in one glance; you had to turn your head, left and right, to see it from end to end. Ania later told me that five hundred people worked there.
I looked up at one of the second-floor balconies and saw a woman standing there, twirling a strand of pearls and leaning lightly on the railing. She was alone, and I don’t simply mean there was no one standing beside her; she was alone in every sense of the word. Solitude could be seen in her posture, in the way she stared into the distance. That was my first glimpse of Coco Chanel, that solitary woman who seemed as alone as I was.
She must have sensed my looking at her. She looked down at me, then, with a shrug, disappeared indoors.
“Ready?” Charlie danced a quick little shuffle and cocked his arm for me to put mine through.
Arm in arm, we climbed the steps of the Ritz. The future is always just two or three steps ahead of us. We stepped into the future, with its joy, its danger, its crowding memories. I felt Allen there with us, the light pressure of his hand on my neck, rubbing where it got stiff after a day of painting. Two years since you’ve been gone, I told him. Two minutes, two seconds. All the same.
SCHIAP
It was already evening when Elsa Schiaparelli kicked off her heels, rubbed her pinched toes, and put her feet up on her cluttered desk. She should be dressed by now, but she wanted to savor the victory of the afternoon.
A coup. That was what the afternoon with Madame Bouchard had been. Nothing less. One of Chanel’s most famous, most admired clients had just ordered a season of Schiaparelli outfits. One of the last holdouts in Paris had crossed the couture border, and tonight she would be wearing one that hadn’t needed to be altered because Madame Bouchard was a perfect model’s size, as perfect in shape as that American goddess, Bettina Ballard, for whom the gown had originally been cut. Bettina hadn’t grumbled much about having her bespoke gown sold out from under her, not when she learned who had bought it.
“And she’s wearing it tonight,” Schiap had told her.
“This will drive Chanel insane! Her best customer, now wearing Schiaparelli!” She and Bettina had danced around the room a bit, and then Bettina had gone off to meet her husband for dinner.
In the narrow hall outside her studio, Schiap—that was how she referred to herself, that was how she instructed her friends to call her—could hear the grisettes bustling back and forth with bolts of fabric, putting away the afternoon’s working materials, getting ready for the evening, for the various cafés and dance halls and beds in which they would end their long day.
She paid them as well as she could; there was a solid foundation for the rumors of her Bolshevik tendencies. But there was a tradition in Parisian sewing rooms that the grisettes added to their income with paying evening customers, and who was to judge? Coco had started out as a grisette; she’d probably had paying customers after her long hours in the sewing room.
Schiap, she had married. And what a disaster that had been, in every way except one: it had given her Gogo, the daughter she loved above all things.
She had worked compulsively, to acquire wealth for her daughter. She had courted some of the most famous, most important people of Europe to make the right connections for her daughter. And now she would make certain that no matter what happened, she would be able to get Gogo out of Europe before disaster struck.
The sun slipped low behind the roofs and steeples of the city, making the dark studio even darker. There were larger, brighter rooms at 21 Place Vendôme, but Schiap preferred this one, where she could see and hear everything that went on in the square outside.
A few hours before, the handsome American boy and his sister had stood there with Madame Bouchard, waiting for Madame’s driver to appear. “Beautiful!” Madame Bouchard had said of her new dresses. “Why hadn’t I come here before? I’ll buy the whole collection!” Schiap had heard every word. Heard, and rejoiced.
* * *
• • •
She knew, though, why Madame Bouchard hadn’t come in before: her lover . . . not that American boy, the other one, the German . . . didn’t approve of Schiaparelli. Schiaparelli, who during the General Strike two years ago had negotiated with her workers rather than try to throw them into the street, the way Chanel had. Well, better Bolshevism than fascism. That was how the world, how France, was dividing: fascist or communist. At some point, everyone would have to choose a side. And she had made hers clear. Thumbs down to the fascists and Nazis.
That will show them, she thought. Madame Bouchard will be wearing Schiaparelli tonight at Elsie’s party. Let Mussolini put that in his pipe and smoke it. Mussolini, who thought he could frighten her by sending his thugs and spies around to her mother’s apartments in Rome.
The American woman, the schoolteacher, had brought in Madame Bouchard, so she would have to do something nice for her. A favor repaid, when she could, something more than a reduced price on a gown. There were a few women she dressed for free because they went everywhere and looked so good in her clothes. You couldn’t really say that about the American girl. She carried sadness with her like Atlas balancing the world on his shoulders, and sadness is not attractive.
Schiap stood, stretched, lit a cigarette, and danced a little jig of delight around the studio. She rang a bell. Her assistant came in, already dressed in her street clothes, a red skirt and jacket, and threw up her hands in alarm.
“Madame! Really!” Schiap’s pagan dance had ended in the middle of her studio in a pile of discarded ideas and experiments, a tidal wave of color and texture—red satin, woven gold braid, brown flannel, orange twill silk, things that had looked right on paper but wouldn’t fold or hang or pleat the way she wanted once attempted in fabric. The huge pile of discarded fabrics made her look even smaller than usual, like a misbehaving child, an illusion strengthened by the mischievous grin on her face.
The assistant wagged her finger and took away Schiap’s cigarette, moving slowly so that the ash wouldn’t fall before she found an ashtray.
“What should I wear tonight?” Schiap asked the walls, knowing her assistant would never answer such a complicated question. “It must be something special and eye-catching but not too outré. You know how conservative these people can be.” Schiap knew. She knew that many people found her garments to be more appropriate for costume parties than sensible wardrobes, that they were often described as bizarre. Surreal. And so? Fashion is art, not just craft. Why not surreal? It worked for Dalí, Man Ray, and Magritte. Of course, they were men and therefore artists. Because she was a woman, she was merely a dressmaker, not an artist? No and no!
“Something waterproof, in case it rains tonight,” her assistant said.
“You think my dresses are jokes?”
“The world always needs a good laugh, doesn’t it?”
Schiap picked up a book from the table near her and made as if to throw it at her. The assistant, knowing better, didn’t duck or put up her arms. “Put it down, or I won’t have your coffee ready for you tomorrow morning.”
“Tonight,” Schiap said, dropping the book. “Tonight, once and for all and forever, I will show the world who is the number one designer. Tonight, there will be more women wearing Schiaparelli than Chanel. Oh, if only Gogo were here.�
��
“Where is Gogo?” The assistant pulled the curtain shut, getting ready to lock up for the evening.
“London, I think.” Schiap tilted her hat over one eye, glaring at herself in the mirror. “Or maybe that was last week. Cannes? You know Gogo. Doesn’t like to stay in one place too long.” That was how she’d gotten her nickname as a baby; even before she could walk she was always on the move, scuttling over floors, clambering on chairs and sofas.
And then, when it had been time to walk, then, when Schiap, visiting her toddler, who had been sent to a country nurse, outside noisy, unhealthy New York, then Schiap had seen that her daughter wasn’t walking or even crawling as well as she should have been.
Polio. Her husband had broken her heart when he abandoned her, but it had been nothing like this. The guilt, the fear, the despair. Oh, the despair.
Her daughter’s illness didn’t break her, not the way foolish love for a man can. Instead, it turned her core to steel, to a determinism that bordered on the miraculous in her belief that she would make Gogo well again. And she had. At a price. The doctors, the surgeries, the therapies, the special schools, more surgeries. There had been a time, in her childhood, when she saw her daughter’s face cloud over with fear when she saw her mother approaching, because it meant some new therapy, a new doctor, a new exercise, maybe even another surgery.
That was the mother’s price she had paid, the cost of the love she had given.
“Well?” Schiap straightened her jacket. “I’ll wear the new mustard-yellow dress tonight. You don’t think it makes me look too olive, a little on the green side?”
“No. It is a good color for dark brunettes. You will glow, like a candle, like fire.”
Elsa pretended to spit three times. Ptu, ptu, ptu. “Don’t mention fire when you’re wearing red. Bad luck. Go call a cab. And if Gogo calls . . .”
The Last Collection Page 5