The Beautiful American

by Jeanne Mackin

  “I’m worried about Jamie,” I said. “That visit from Julien really depressed him.”

  Lee fidgeted with the sample bottles, turning them this way and that to see if she could make them catch any light. “It takes time,” she murmured.

  “How much time? We left Poughkeepsie five years ago, and Jamie hasn’t had a single show. Anywhere. I think he’s giving up.”

  “I’ll talk to him. Do you have a small size of this?” She held up the sample of Nubian Amber. “It reminds me of Aziz.”

  “That’s because it’s Nimet’s fragrance.”

  Lee dropped the bottle back on the counter and stared at it as if it had suddenly become dangerous. Monsieur Boulet, sitting in his mezzanine office, heard the loud clank and peered out his window, made an exaggerated Gallic shrug, and returned to his newspaper.

  “How do you know her perfume?” Lee looked at me with suspicion.

  “Because she came in here once. Trying to get information about you. I told you.”

  “Did you? I must not have been paying attention.”

  “Always a possibility.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “Lee, you do know that Man is carrying a pistol?”

  “Of course I know. So what? You think he would actually use it?” She laughed. She put her hand up, straight-armed, and made a gun barrel of her forefinger, as children do. “Bang,” she said. “Maybe I’ll shoot him.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “No. It’s not. But it is ever so slightly boring. Such a cliché.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Over that long, hot summer our lives returned to a kind of normalcy. Jamie worked for Man, I sold perfumes at Boulet’s, Lee either posed for Vogue modeling shoots or wandered the city with her folding Kodak, taking photographs of shadows, anything menacing that caught her eye. We became a foursome again, meeting at cafés in the evening, making small talk that passed the hours. Lee, perhaps out of pity for Man, spent more time with him and less time “adventuring,” as she called it in our whispered conversations.

  The summer heat eviscerated us till we were no more than working, sweating, drinking shells who sometimes couldn’t even be roused to go to the Dôme for a plate of potato salad and cold sausage.

  Jamie and I grew closer than ever. He was so tender in bed he sometimes reduced me to tears. Before Julien came to the studio and thumbed so listlessly through Jamie’s work, our lovemaking had grown routine and infrequent. Now, after Julien, it was as if Jamie couldn’t get enough of me. Nor I of him. We clung together, shipwreck survivors sharing the same plank, only I hadn’t noticed yet that there had been a shipwreck. I was happy, and nothing in the world can make you oblivious to your surroundings like happiness.

  That morning, the morning of the day when I had to look, and look hard, Jamie woke me by gently poking his elbow into my ribs. “Listen,” he whispered. “They are going at it again.”

  Unwillingly, I opened my eyes to the new day, squinting and yawning, then rolled even closer to Jamie so that our bodies met at chest, hips, thighs, and knees. From next door, through the thin walls of our apartment, I could hear Madame Blancard screeching at her husband, who had apparently just come home from a very long evening out. It was six thirty in the morning and the sky was streaked with lavender and coral over the red tile roofs of Paris.

  Jamie and I, clinging to each other, giggled like schoolchildren as the missus called her husband every name in the book: louse, worm, maggot, mule—this was how we had learned our zoology terms in our chosen language. Then, the sins: fornicator, philanderer, liar, deceiver.

  “What was that last one?” I whispered, catching a word I did not know.

  “I think she just called him a eunuch.”

  “Ah. Then the quarrel will end soon and we can go back to sleep.” We had been at the Jockey until midnight, and then spent another three hours in Lee’s studio, drinking. Fatigue pressed me heavily into the mattress and I wanted only to sleep longer.

  Next door, Monsieur Blancard exploded with rage. There was the sound of flesh violently meeting flesh. Weeping. A change in atmosphere, perceivable even through the walls. Sounds of cooing, then the creak, creak of bedsprings. It was how all their arguments were settled, with insults, a blow or two, then lovemaking.

  “Let’s quarrel,” Jamie said. “Then we can make up.”

  “Let’s make up without quarreling. And then let me sleep.”

  When I awoke the second time, Jamie had already left for Man’s studio. Man himself wouldn’t be there till later in the morning, but Jamie was expected to show up early, tidying, sorting, labeling, setting up the chemical baths in the developing room, so that when Man arrived, he could start immediately to work.

  On our little table, Jamie had set a place for me with bread and jam, milk and coffee. Jamie was thoughtful that way. There had been only brothers in his family, no sisters, and he still seemed a bit in awe of women in general and of me in particular. I liked it that way. When he looked at me, I felt bathed in a golden light, the way saints are on holy cards.

  He had become even more attentive that summer and I could feel something building up, an electricity in the air. I was certain he was going to say we should get married. Married, and then that return trip to New York, because as much as I loved Paris, I knew it was temporary, knew a moment would come when we would both feel we had overstayed our welcome and it was time to go home. Departure was in the air, a smell of smoke and grit and baker’s yeast, the damp smell of leaves before they drop in the autumn.

  I took my bread and coffee and sat by the open window, filled with the sense of being loved by Jamie

  “Hey! Daydreamer! Throw me the key!”

  Lee was down in the street, shouting up at me. She still wore her dress of the night before, a short sheath printed with tiger stripes. Her blond hair stood around her head like a mane and her ruined mascara made dark circles around her eyes. She hadn’t been home yet.

  “Key?” she shouted again. Lee was hard to take, first thing in the morning. She brought a turbulence that seemed to set everything about her in motion.

  I preferred my mornings calm. We lived hard, dancing and drinking late into the night, rising early, busy all day, trying to earn money, to make contacts, to see everything that was to be seen, and of course to be seen. There was a frenzy to life that Lee exacerbated, though it never really went away . . . except for my moments enfolded in Jamie’s arms.

  Those first few minutes of the day, when Jamie had left for the studio and I did not yet have to leave for my job, I could sit in the stillness that allowed the senses to expand and explore, to really notice the world, and how it smelled and how the floor, when you crossed it with your bare feet, was gritty with the sand the little cleaning girl used to scrub it. All the colors, the red carnations on the table, the green and yellow pâtisserie sign across the street, the blue uniforms of the schoolchildren, seemed so much brighter than they had before, and when I thought of Jamie, the colors grew even brighter.

  For several weeks my senses had been sharpening, my tongue picking up on flavors I hadn’t noticed before till I could barely eat; everything tasted so strongly. And the smells. The world had become all fragrance, amber and lily and dog shit in the street mixing with Monsieur Boulet’s aftershave and our landlady’s lunches of fried fish and boiled cabbage, an alchemy that made me want to sit still, barely breathing, my hand on my belly rising and falling with shallow breaths.

  That morning, I wanted to sit, quiet and alone, wrapped in wonder, but I reached for the door key hanging on its nail and threw it down to Lee.

  A moment later she banged up the stairs, shoeless. “My feet are killing me.” She threw her expensive heels into the corner and took the chair opposite me, the only upholstered, somewhat comfortable chair in our room. Jamie’s chair.

  “You didn’t
go home last night,” I said. Her expensive dress and silk jacket were as pleated with wrinkles as a lampshade, and stained with red wine.

  “No. After you and Jamie left the café, Man went back to the studio and I went to a party. Aziz wouldn’t mind. He wouldn’t want me to be sad and lonely.”

  “I’m pretty certain Man doesn’t feel that way about it.”

  “Man.” She laughed, not happily. “Don’t worry. He’s not the shooting type. Any coffee and bread for a hungry friend?” Several times, Lee had made jokes about Man’s pistol. She refused to take it seriously.

  “Is there a type?” I gave her my second cup of coffee and the bread I had saved for my lunch.

  “If I wanted someone keeping track of me, I’d have stayed home in Poughkeepsie,” Lee muttered, biting angrily into the roll, leaving red lipstick marks on the bitten edge. “Come to think of it, Papa was more freethinking than Man and less of a nag.”

  Bells started to ring, calling the neighborhood to prayer. It wasn’t Sunday, so there was either a funeral or a wedding and I thought how strange it was that we marked both events with such similar fashion: bells, flowers, a gathering, a liturgy.

  “Can’t stand that racket,” Lee said, forcing the last bit of roll into her mouth and covering her eyes.

  “I like them. . . .”

  “You were going to say they remind you of home, I bet.” She grinned wickedly, brushing hair out of her eyes. She had let her bobbed hair grow a little longer and curled it. Perhaps Aziz hadn’t liked it as short as she normally wore it.

  “No, I wasn’t. I was going to say that they sound the way pine needles smell.”

  Lee raised one eyebrow. “You mean like Christmas morning. Too bad you bobbed your hair. If it were long, you could sell it and buy a present for Jamie. You know, ‘Gift of the Magi.’ You probably adore O. Henry. So sentimental.”

  “I wonder what Man will buy you for your birthday,” I countered. “Maybe a chastity belt.”

  “He won’t get the chance.” Lee finished her coffee and put the cup down.

  There was a smear of red lipstick on her cheek. I considered wiping it off for her, but decided against it.

  “He must be wondering where you are. Jamie left for the studio half an hour ago and they will have begun work by now.”

  “Let Man wonder. I don’t have any jobs today and I feel like being lazy.” Lee rose and paced around the room, touching the books on our single shelf, the lamp next to the still-rumpled bed, the tattered muslin curtain of the privacy screen closing off our washing and dressing area. She had been there several times, including that disastrous night she had brought Julien, but that morning she seemed to be seeing it for the first time. “Do you get homesick?” Lee asked, turning back to me.

  “You mean, do I miss American plumbing? Oh, yes.”

  “No. I mean home.” Lee sat on the bed twisting the ring on her finger. It was an emerald, a good one. From Aziz, I assumed, since Man couldn’t have afforded such a thing.

  “Home is people, isn’t it?” I said, not wanting to answer her question directly. I was still filled with that glowing sense of Jamie, and a question and promise of forever, and not in a mood to share that knowledge with Lee.

  “People. Yes. Did you have a lover back in Poughkeepsie? You did. I can see it in your face. Do tell.”

  “Don’t have to. He’s with me here, in Paris.”

  “But no one loves you like your own father,” Lee mused, talking more to herself than to me. “God, sometimes I really miss my father. Do you?”

  “My father died years ago.”

  Lee, never a hypocrite, cut to the chase and didn’t waste words on false sympathy.

  “Did he leave you any money?” she asked.

  “Only enough for a single boat ticket.”

  “You poor kid. My father. Well.” She leaned back, clasped her hands around her knees, and smiled wickedly. “Plenty of moola. Big house, servants. But Daddy has good principles. Made us play with the workers’ children so that we wouldn’t think we were better than they were.”

  Shame is the most corrosive emotion. I could have told Lee then that we shared a certain childhood memory. I was one of those workers’ children.

  But I didn’t tell her. In the expat community class was vague, even nonexistent. It was one of the things we all loved about being expats: identity became a form of self-creation when there was no family, no shared past, no definition forced on us by anything other than our own skills and needs. The past was all tucked in, asleep.

  What would have happened if I had reminded Lee of those days we shared, the tire swing in her yard, chasing the chickens, that day she had stood on the porch in her white dress? Would it have changed anything?

  The silence was a charm protecting both of us, Lee from the memory of rape and its aftermath, me from the memory of class stigma, and I did not want to lose the protection.

  “It’s raining. That will break the heat.” Lee opened the window and extended her hand, letting the heavy drops splatter into her palm. “Can’t stand reminiscing. I came to ask you to a party. Tonight. My studio, not Man’s. Can you come? You and Jamie? Both of you. It’s important.”

  “Of course both of us,” I said. After the party, I thought, I would tell Jamie. He would be twenty-five in a few months. The promise to his family not to marry young ended on this birthday. Just in time.

  • • •

  Lee’s party was the largest one of the season, all arranged at the last minute and perfect down to the last detail, despite the lack of agonized planning. She had a knack for that sort of thing, knew how to find the perfect caterer, the best wine sold at discount by the crate, flowers out of season from florists no one else had ever heard of. She must have spent a small fortune on orchids and shrimp canapés . . . and mirrors, because that was how she had decorated the studio, with mirrors all over the place, on the walls, freestanding on the floor, propped onto easels.

  “You did all this in one day?” I asked when Jamie and I arrived promptly at nine. A girl hired for the evening took my coat. A waiter arrived from nowhere with a tray of champagne flutes.

  I turned and saw my reflection, dozens of reflections, back-and-forth and into-infinity reflections, illuminated by flickering, disorienting candlelight.

  The studio was already packed. No one ever missed one of Lee’s parties—or Man’s, for that matter—but that evening Lee seemed to have invited everyone she knew, and they had all come. Lady so-and-so and Maharani this and Lord that . . . all of Lee’s sitters, all her artist friends, all the society people. It was like a who’s who of Lee Miller’s life in Paris: the poet Breton, the surrealist filmmaker Jean Cocteau, the Russian director Dimitri Buchowetski, his star actress Margot Grahame, the failed pianist turned decorator Zizi Svirsky, the publisher Donald Friede . . . all present and accounted for.

  Pablo elbowed through the crowd to say hello. He looked unhappy because he did not like parties, and he hadn’t brought either his wife or his mistress. But he gave me a friendly hug in greeting, then stepped back and looked hard at me, running his eyes up and down my figure. His large black eyes grew even larger and I knew he saw what no one else had yet seen.

  Man was stewing in a corner, drinking whiskey rather than champagne, and his gaze never left Lee but darted around the room, following her every movement. I wondered what the hell was going on and wished I hadn’t come except how could I have not come? If you saw a car careen out of control and head toward a cliff, would you really be able to look away?

  It was so crowded we could barely move, much less dance, yet various couples clung together in one area of the studio, two-stepping to a soft ballad coming from the gramophone, filling the air with a scratchy sweetness. The dancers were reflected in a circle of mirrors, doubling and tripling their numbers, and I realized that evening was Lee’s salute to surrealism, the way th
e mirrors doubled us, or cut us off at the legs or reflected some torsos as headless, depending on how the mirrors had been hung. It was a fun house for grown-ups, for artists.

  Jamie disappeared a few minutes after we arrived, probably looking for the corner where a hash pipe was being passed around. The sweet exotic odor of it, stronger even than the thick smoke of French cigarettes, had greeted us at the door and already clung to my clothes and hair.

  “What do you think?” Lee found me in a corner where I had retreated to wait and watch.

  “Gorgeous. And a little frightening. Seven years of bad luck if one of these gets broken.”

  “No more bad luck for me, kiddo. To hell with that.” Without looking at Man, she raised her glass in his direction. She knew he was watching, glaring, unblinking, from his own corner. “He was good to me, in his way. But that’s not the same as love, is it?” She shouldered a path into the crowd and danced, by herself, eyes closed, face all dreamy and soft. I couldn’t bear to look at Man, to see what he thought of this little performance.

  Jamie appeared at my side. “Hey, Nora, why the wallflower? Walls will stand up by themselves, you know.” He was drunk, high, carefree as he rarely was those days in sobriety. “Have a drink.” He offered a bottle.

  “No.” The very thought of whiskey, or even champagne, made me want to gag. Soon, very soon, I would have to tell Jamie what I had suspected for several weeks.

  “Spoilsport.” Ah. One of Lee’s terms. Over the course of the year, he had picked up quite a few of Lee’s turns of phrase.

  “Do you ever get tired of this?” I asked Jamie, putting my arm around his waist.

  “Tired of what? Champagne I can’t afford? The pickpockets at the Eiffel Tower? Snotty waiters? Man’s treating me like a lackey? How could I get tired of all that? Here, have a drink.”

  “No!” I pushed the bottle so hard its contents sloshed over both of us.