“You must think I’m crazy,” he said. “The truth is, I desperately need my bit of refuge. The Alliance is not what it once was for me. Its members misunderstand me. The things they say—your father would be outraged. The community has turned on one another with the worst sort of gossip and lies.”
“So stop going to the Alliance.” Immediately, I regretted the words. God willing, Papa wasn’t listening.
“I could not; not simply on account of being maligned.”
I nodded. The club needed its members.
“But there is one thing that would change my mind. May your father forgive me, but I will cancel my membership if I am forced to see Consuelo there.”
A man had been passing by, pulling a cart stacked with newspapers that were weighted down with a rocking brick. He had clunked and rattled along the uneven sidewalk. Surely I had not heard right. “You don’t want to see your wife?”
A playbill somersaulted toward us and pressed itself against Antoine’s ankle. The sidewalk beside it sprouted droplets like small dark mouths.
Antoine said, “I have forbidden Philippe to grant Consuelo membership status. Please, Mignonne, you must not let her come with you as a guest.” He removed his hat and put it on my head. “I would like to see you at the Alliance, very much so; only not with Consuelo.”
Is that what this was about? A rendezvous place for us? Or maybe there were others in his life now, girlfriends he hoped to entertain.
I brushed a drop from the end of my nose and retreated into the shelter of the doorway. “Believe it or not, I’d like nothing better than to have never seen or heard of your wife. But you’re the one who wanted her here. You can’t have it both ways. Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to turn down a prospective client. Where would you prefer I meet with her, if not at the Alliance Française?”
Antoine worked the muscles of his jaw. He said, “Anywhere else. Your salon.”
“That was a fable Madame pulled out of nowhere. We have no salon.”
“Then your studio. It is the perfect place.”
“Unless you’re a discerning client.”
He huffed. “Where do you generally see clients, then?”
“If they’re the sort we want, Madame goes to them.”
“All right. Fine. Come to the apartment. But come alone; do not bring Madame Fiche.”
Drivers were starting to turn on their windshield wipers. A metal handrail just beyond the overhang was growing goose bumps. I ran my fingers along it, displacing water down its sides.
Come to his apartment. Let Consuelo see me mooning over Antoine in their own home. Let Antoine see me humiliated again by my desire.
“You prefer not to?” he asked.
“What do you think?”
“I am sorry if it is uncomfortable to have to make arrangements that exclude Madame Fiche. Only, I hardly know anymore whom I can trust with the details of my life. Every week there is a new scandal at the Alliance or in the newspapers over something innocuous I have said or done. There are some who would be happy to see me disgraced. There are also those who would rather I do not disappoint them.”
“Not everyone is caught up in creating make-believe about you. Some of us just go about our daily lives, thinking about our own troubles.”
“I don’t say everyone or anyone should think about me. I wish people would not. And yet there are articles, and open letters published. Both Vichy and de Gaulle claim positions in my name; they ask the world to judge me as though I were a calf in a fair. I want only to attend to my work and my duties. And to be with my friends. Are you telling me you no longer count yourself among them?”
“All I’m saying is, not everyone is a scandal-monger. Some of us are capable of seeing you as simply a man doing what he thinks is best.”
He took a deep breath. “Thank you. It has been far too long since I’ve heard someone come to my defense, and with such a noble statement. I knew you would understand.” He held my hand. “I wish to tell you something that I would prefer not become widely known: Consuelo and I do not live together as man and wife.”
Could this be true? “She said you were happily reunited.”
“You see how she torments me? Since her arrival here, she has been relentless in her machinations to either discredit or ensnare me, even as she flounces around New York on the arms of other men. I beg her to be discreet. Yet she thinks nothing of showing up at the Alliance with her boyfriend!”
He eased into the doorway and pulled out his notebook. “I don’t demand that you do not see her, Mignonne. I understand that you need clients, and I realize that Consuelo desperately needs friends. But please, come to the apartment. I have let two units. Consuelo’s is on the same floor, but entirely separate from mine.” He scribbled down the address and telephone number, tore the paper from the spine, and handed it to me. Last year, he’d been ensconced in the Ritz-Carlton, now he and Consuelo were on Central Park South. “It’s funny, you have just returned, and I myself must go to Montreal for a few days. I have to give a few lectures up there. In fact, I would be pleased if you would spend time with Consuelo in my absence. You will visit her in her apartment, won’t you?”
Business with one Saint-Exupéry need not have any bearing on friendship with another. Their past was in the past—hadn’t Antoine told me that long ago? And see: they didn’t even live together. He wasn’t really her husband; she wasn’t really his wife. Besides, he was a writer, an artist; he was treating me as an artist, too. Artists were supposed to be open-minded, not stuck in traditional expectations. Only an artist could ask without a shadow of hesitation that a girl strike up a friendship with her lover’s wife.
Then, too, Antoine wasn’t even my lover. Not really, not yet. All that was between us was an understanding: he would abide by my wish to make Consuelo a client if I would ply my trade somewhere other than at the Alliance Française. It seemed reasonable when I thought of it that way. Antoine had a knack for making the oddest things seem quite reasonable.
I said, “Yes, I will. I’ll try.”
“Please do. Someone needs to keep an eye on her. She tends to imagine the worst when she is left alone.”
Madame was still standing in the middle of the studio when I returned. “Well?”
“I walked him out. It’s raining.”
“You could have told me you are an intimate of the Saint-Exupérys. The Saint-Exupérys, of all people! How could you keep this from me?”
“I tutored him for a few months last year. That’s all.”
“And the wife? No one seems to know anything about her—except that her closet is said to overflow with Parisian couture. Who is dressing the countess in New York?”
“I know she wears Valentina.”
Madame looked as though she had just tasted something putrid. “Valentina Schlee is not a real designer.”
Who was, if not Valentina? Her clients were few, but they were as wealthy and as loyal as they come.
“If our main competition is Valentina, we should have little difficulty. We will make it our number one goal to dress the countess. Everyone is abuzz about her fashion sense. If she champions Atelier Fiche, I guarantee that others will follow.” She rubbed a long-nailed finger below her lip. “Le Comte de Saint-Exupéry is the only one of the lot who has made a strict point of neutrality. All sides are furious that he won’t give his name to their flank.”
“And that will be a problem for us?”
“It couldn’t be better for us. I myself think he is secretly for Vichy—he is an intelligent man—but I have heard rumors that he is a Gaullist, a royalist, a Nazi spy … everything but a Bolshevik, and it wouldn’t surprise me to hear even that.”
“A Bolshevik!”
“The point is, it doesn’t matter what they hate him for; all that matters is that he and his wife remain publicly neutral. I assume that is likely?”
“Antoine’s very steadfast.”
“It’s ‘Antoine,’ is it?” Madame indulged in a sm
ug, sly laugh. “We will make the wife of Antoine our showpiece, and no one will have a reason not to emulate her: neither Vichyites nor de Gaullists. I will be the only designer whose clientele is on both sides of the line.”
“But people know which side you’re on.”
“As of today, I am neutral—and so are you. Make sure to mention it when you are next at the Alliance Française.”
“But Madame—”
“Why do you fight me? You have access to the richest soil in Manhattan. The expats should be clamoring for Atelier Fiche.”
I started closing windows. “What is this salon you mentioned earlier? You said we see our clients there, all the society ladies.”
Madame muttered as she pulled fabric from a flat bolt. It thumped onto the table with every rotation.
“What did you say, Madame?”
“I said, ‘Laissez-moi tranquille!’ Leave me be! How am I to pay for a salon as well as a place to work and a place to sleep, when you cannot even bring in a sale? Do want me also to buy a membership to your father’s social club so I can do your work for you?” The bolt smacked down onto the table. “What is the point of having a bilingual protégé? You don’t use your connections or your French to help me.”
“My French!” Napoleon Bonaparte himself couldn’t force the elegant ladies of the Alliance into the godforsaken stairwell of this building, not unless Coco Chanel was waiting upstairs and holding a fire sale.
“I heard about your recent visit to the Alliance Française. Oh yes, Mignonne; everything gets around. People talk. It is your job to make sure they talk about Atelier Fiche. I made that perfectly clear from the beginning. But did you tell the ladies at the Alliance of your new position? Did you make the rounds of the dining room and encourage the socialites to visit the studio or commission a gown? I heard that you sat at the bar with your drunk of a brother and showed no interest in even one woman in that room. Where is your drive? Where are your connections? Have you or have you not le sang de Lachapelle?”
My face was burning. Of course I had my father’s blood. That didn’t mean I could ever hope to live up to his name.
Madame continued: “Did you see how I entertained le Comte de Saint-Exupéry? With just a wise word or two, I had him agreeing to send his wife to visit us. That is how one brings in commissions. When the most celebrated and privileged of wealthy New York intellectuals happens to drop by, one must give him an irresistible reason to return with his high-fashion wife in tow.”
“He came because Consuelo and I talked about Atelier Fiche. I was with her at the Alliance before my brother arrived. She said she loved the Butterfly Collection.”
“I did not hear that la comtesse was with you. If she knows about the atelier, all the more shameful that you have not yet brought her here.” Madame smoothed her hair tight to her scalp. “I should be the countess’s designer of record. She should be relying on me, confiding her desires to me—not throwing away her money on that pompous Russian fake.”
“She loves Valentina’s work.”
“She also loves Fiche’s work; you just told me so yourself. I am not asking the world of you, Mignonne. I don’t expect you to bring me all of America or even Manhattan, only the crème de la crème of a small niche. Frenchwomen who are starving for real fashion. Women who admired your father, or whose husbands did. You should be able to do that with your eyes closed. Your father knew everyone who was worth knowing in this town; this is the legacy he left for you. It is why he created the Alliance Française: to position himself and his children at the center of the wealthiest, most influential French population outside of Europe.”
“You’re wrong. He did it for the sake of the community.”
“This is what you prefer to believe? Let me ask you, then: how long did it take for your father to make his dream a reality?”
“Twelve or thirteen years.”
“A dozen years of nights and weekends working on his project in addition to his architectural practice, instead of spending that time with his children, as a loving father would.”
Didn’t every father fill his evenings and weekends with work or a pet project of some sort? It had almost been the definition of fatherhood at our home. But as Madame spoke, an uneasiness seeped into my memories. It was true that Papa hadn’t always been tied up with the Alliance. There had been a time when he had taken us, his little ones, to the park or to the pretzel man, a time when we’d sat down for meals together every day. What was so important that he let our closeness slip away?
Madame said, “You do not believe he acted in pursuit of profit. You say he followed the dictates of his heart. If so, it’s quite clear: a group of rich, elite countrymen were more important to your father than his own flesh and blood.”
She placed her hands flat on the fabric and straightened it on the table. Then she picked up her shears, snipped the fabric once at the edge, and, in a swift, resounding motion, tore it into two along its weft.
12
A few days into May, with Antoine expected back at any time, I still hadn’t ratcheted up my courage and contacted Consuelo. But at least I’d completed an outfit to wear on my visit. A new outfit could be such a confidence builder. This one had better be.
When Madame left to see a client in the afternoon, I went downstairs and knocked on the landlord’s door. In a minute, he opened up and gave me a head-to-toe glare. Deep lines creased his cheeks and his fat earlobes. He held a cigar and a worn fedora in the same hand. “Yeah?”
“I’m from 428, Madame Fiche’s studio.”
“So?”
“I was just wondering if I could borrow your telephone.”
He grunted. “Make it snappy.”
I dialed Consuelo’s number and kept our conversation brief before pressing the cradle to end the call.
Though I had spoken in English, the landlord asked, “You’re French?”
“I was born here, but yes, my father is from France.” I started for the door with the landlord on my heels.
“You know it’s on account of you people that we’re going to war.” He pointed his cigar. “Frenchies put their tails between their legs and ran. Now Hitler and his Japs think everyone’s a pushover. You seen what happened. Boys died at Pearl Harbor because of you people. Good American boys.” He opened the door. “Tell your madame if she doesn’t get me the back rent fast, she’s out of here.”
I hurried from the claustrophobic apartment and was glad for once to step into the dirty elevator. Back upstairs, I changed from my smock into the outfit I had designed and sewn precisely with Consuelo in mind. I headed for the subway, a butcher paper–wrapped parcel under my arm, an umbrella overhead. Folded within the paper was a genuine silk scarf cut from yardage I had found at the studio, the edges of which I had carefully rolled and hand-sewn, a half-dozen stitches to the inch.
At Mrs. Brossard’s apartment, I gave the parcel to the concierge, saying, “This is for Mrs. Brossard’s housekeeper. Not for the lady herself. Only for Celeste.”
He took it, and a tip for himself.
I walked to Central Park and followed a meandering path through it, humming nervously in the rain, half wishing to get lost and be forced to abandon my mission. But the path gave way onto Central Park South, and I found the Saint-Exupérys’ apartment just a few steps from Columbus Circle.
A doorman was smoking on the sidewalk. He watched me approach. When I turned in to the walkway that bisected the small garden fronting the building, he jumped into action, opening the door just before I could reach it with my outstretched hand.
The concierge looked up from his desk. “What can I do for you, miss?”
13
On the twenty-third floor, Consuelo listened to the concierge mangle Mignonne’s name. “It’s pronounced ‘La-sha-pell,’ ” she told him, “not ‘Lash-pill.’ ” And people complained about her French!
In the bedroom, she threw off her house robe and pulled on a blue ski outfit and leopard-print boots. Designers these
days were too inclined to produce pap for the masses; all the more so since the government had stuck their fingers into the business. Let the girl get a taste of a true, instinctual, untamed fashion sense. Besides, the ski pants hugged Consuelo’s shapely derrière like nothing else could.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said when Consuelo finally answered her knock. “You’re about to go out?”
“Not at all. Join us for coffee.” Consuelo opened the door to reveal her sitting room. The apartment had come furnished, unfortunately, by some stodgy and sincere secretaries—or some such thing—of Tonio’s American publisher, women whose selections had been so tiresome and mundane that Consuelo’s eyes had bled dry. It had taken her weeks to purge the worst of the furniture and take delivery of a few good pieces, the sort that made a room: furniture worth spending money on.
She gave Mignonne time to take it all in: the expensive modern sofa and chairs, the carefully chosen antiques that she was still in the process of arranging to best advantage, the long clear coffee table bearing a silver carafe on a tray, a couple of half-full cups, the remains of that morning’s croissant on a plate, and Binty’s open notebook. He sat on the sofa in his double-breasted pinstriped suit and his small round glasses, writing, his knees spread, his elbows on his thighs.
“Remember Mignonne?” Consuelo asked him. “We met her in the lobby of the Alliance. She had just returned from Montreal to conquer haute couture.”
Binty glanced up and went back to his notebook. “Great. If there’s one thing this city needs, it’s another model.”
“She was Tonio’s teacher.”
“Oh, right. The tutor.”
Mignonne said, “Actually, I’m a fashion designer. Or I will be.”
Consuelo joined her lover on the sofa and linked her arm through his, leaving Mignonne standing. “Remember that name, Binty: Mignonne Lachapelle.”
Binty extricated himself. “Minion? As in slave?”
Anio Szado Page 8
