The Paris Seamstress

by Natasha Lester

  Rebecca hesitated, then put her hand on Fabienne’s arm. “She told me to put fresh flowers in the vases every week. To make sure it was always welcoming. She said, one day, you’d claim it. When you were ready.”

  At the house in Gramercy Park, the mess was exactly where Fabienne had left it. She sighed and sank onto the couch, box on her lap, opening the lid and pulling out a stack of papers.

  “Oh,” she gasped as she realized what they were. Sketches, dozens of sketches, sketches Fabienne had drawn on scrap pieces of paper while lying on the floor of her grandmother’s office, or sitting at her grandfather’s desk, every summer in New York from the time she was old enough to hold a pencil until the time she stopped drawing. Estella had kept them all.

  Looking over them now was like falling down a shaft and into the past, fashions and trends rushing past her: early noughties boot-cut trousers, baby-doll dresses, and colored denim; nineties khaki, slip dresses, velvet, faux fur. Some of them made her laugh at her sheer outrageousness at age six, others made her shake her head at her timidity, and in others she could see the lineage of her grandmother but also something more, a slight curve in the road that took her grandmother’s sense of style to a place it had not yet ventured.

  She sighed and put the sketches on the couch beside her, reached into the box again and pulled out a CD, which made her smile. When was the last time she’d seen a CD? She inserted it into the player.

  A song, bluesy and sad and pining filled the room. Norah Jones, “The Nearness of You,” Fabienne read in her grandmother’s hand on the CD case. She picked up a handful of glasses then stopped as she caught the words of the song, a hymn to the breath-stealing charm of stepping into the arms of the person you loved.

  The doorbell rang through the music and Fabienne glanced at the video screen, meaning to ignore it but it was Will. She opened the door.

  “Hi,” he said. “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to speak to you before.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “There were too many people. Come in.”

  He followed her into the living room, where Fabienne suddenly remembered the aftermath of the funeral still despoiled every surface.

  “I gave Estella’s housekeeper the week off,” she said by way of explaining the plates and glasses and napkins and crumbs. “She was upset. I didn’t really think through the mess that would be left after a wake.”

  “I’ll give you a hand.” Will gathered up a stack of plates.

  “You don’t have to do that. I was just about to start.”

  “It’ll be quicker if I help.” He smiled at her.

  “Thanks,” she said, feeling the hint of a smile curve her lips. She went into the kitchen to fill the sink with suds and water.

  Will came in and out, ferrying plates and glasses and rubbish and the only conversation was her telling him where to put everything and him asking mundanities like: Where’s the bin? And that was fine, the wash of water over crystal, the appearance of something clean out of the soap, the steady diminishment of dirty dishes was a problem easy to solve with a little hard work, the immediate satisfaction of their efforts apparent in the gleaming pile that now lay to her right and which Will began to put into cupboards.

  “The housekeeper is going to kill me when she gets back and finds everything in the wrong place,” he said.

  “She won’t mind,” Fabienne said, aware of how dull she sounded, discussing dishes with a man like Will, Head of Design at Tiffany, used to beautiful things. “You don’t need to do any more. I’m almost finished.”

  “There’s some stuff on the sofa in there.” He indicated the living room. “Do you want me to put it back in the box?”

  Fabienne shook her head. “Those are things my grandmother saved for me. It’s funny how much a piece of paper or a song can mean. I still remember what she was wearing when I sketched those pictures, or what she said when I gave it to her: The color is very good, and I like the length of the skirt, but the sleeves are too short.” Fabienne mimicked her grandmother’s voice.

  “Show me?” Will asked.

  Fabienne put down the dishcloth and led the way into the living room where the streetlights stippled the night time blackness of the park, visible through the windows, with gold, the greenery almost absent, hiding until the morning sun reappeared. Her grandmother’s favorite Frida Kahlo painting, two women joined by a skein of blood, hung over the fireplace as it always had. The women seemed more tranquil now, Fabienne thought, as if their joined hands were gripped a little tighter, as if the bond implied by the vein that connected their two separate hearts had finally been achieved. She sighed. She needed sleep. She was imagining changes in a static painting.

  She pressed play on the CD and the words—“The Nearness of You”—spilled back out into the room like the tears she suddenly found on her cheeks.

  “Oh God!” she said as she slid down the wall and sat on the floor, wishing she could just stop crying, wishing she wasn’t behaving like such a mess in front of a man who meant so much to her.

  Will sat on the floor beside her, reached into his pocket and passed her a clean, white, perfectly pressed handkerchief.

  “My grandmother would have loved you,” Fabienne sniffed.

  “I’d rather her granddaughter did,” he said quietly.

  Her head snapped to the right. “What did you say?” she asked, sure she hadn’t heard him correctly.

  “I said I’d rather her granddaughter did.” Will reached out and touched her chin lightly. “I’m in love with you, Fabienne. Which is why I’m going home now. Because I want to kiss you—want to do more than kiss you—but not like this. Not when you’re so sad.”

  Fabienne leaned her forehead in, pressing it against his, so aware of his lips not far from hers, of the quickness of his breath, of the nearness of Will Ogilvie. If he kissed her then she knew exactly where they would end up and she also knew that he was right; it would be an act of forgetting when what she wanted to have with Will was an act worth remembering.

  He kissed her forehead gently and stood up. “I’m prescribing you a glass of whiskey and bed,” he said, cheeks flushed like hers.

  Fabienne did what he’d recommended, swallowing down the whiskey and climbing into bed, Will’s words—I’m in love with you, Fabienne—accompanying her into sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Either cleaning was cathartic or Will’s prescription had worked wonders because Fabienne slept for the first time in days, not waking until almost noon. She dressed, finished tidying and then stood in the house not knowing what to do. The box still sat on the sofa and she knew she could investigate its contents further but she also knew that it would be nice not to cry for at least a few hours.

  So she picked up her sunglasses and stepped outside, crossing over to Fifth and walking along, dodging the tourists who all wanted to look up, as if Manhattan was a city of the sky, not of the ground. She passed a window full of her grandmother’s clothes at Saks Fifth Avenue, and then found herself outside Tiffany & Co. At the same time, a cab pulled into the curb and a very handsome man wearing a suit stepped out, with a smile all for her.

  “Fabienne,” Will said. “That was good timing.”

  “I needed some air.” She smiled. “I’m not entirely sure how I ended up outside Tiffany but diamonds do exert a certain lure, I suppose.”

  He laughed. “Since you’re here, why don’t you come in?”

  “You’re not too busy?”

  “Not for you.”

  She followed him inside and across the shop floor to an elevator. He led the way to his office, stopping to say hello to a woman she assumed must be his secretary and asking her to hold his calls.

  Then she stepped into a room that looked familiar from their telephone calls: one wall painted Tiffany Blue, his desk an absolute mess, covered with drawings, but everything else about the room neat and tidy.

  “I see your creativity thrives in chaos,” she said, indicating the desk.

  �
�The running joke around here is that I don’t actually need to design a collection every year. I just need to dig deep into the piles on my desk and I’ll find enough drawings there for a season,” he said.

  “Does that mean you’ve found your idea for the new collection?”

  “I have, thanks to you.”

  “To me?” She looked at him quizzically.

  “Turns out ideas put forward by beautiful women in hospital cafeterias are the best kind.” He smiled at her and she both blushed and beamed.

  “Really? So you’re using people you know as your inspiration,” she said.

  It was his turn to flush a little. “I am.”

  “Can I have a look?”

  “Sure. Do you want a coffee?”

  “That’d be great.”

  Will put his head out the door and asked, politely, she noted, for two coffees while Fabienne studied the drawings on his desk, not touching or moving anything in case its placement was somehow critical.

  “This one is beautiful,” she said. “I mean they’re all beautiful. I just really like this one though.” She pointed to a pendant, two joined pendants actually, one of milky white streaked with blue, like the sky in reverse, offset by a cabochon of black, dotted with stars.

  He came over to see, standing so close that she could smell his aftershave, that same blend of citrus and amber she remembered from Paris.

  “That’s azurite,” he said, pointing to the blue and white pendant. “And the other—that’s fossilized dinosaur bone.”

  “Really?”

  “Here.” He rifled through a box of jewelry, extracting a piece she could see was the replica of the sketch. “Spin around.”

  She did, lifting her hair off her neck and felt the pendant slide over her collarbones, felt his fingers securing the clasp at the back of her neck, felt his hands resting on her shoulders, realized the back of her body was only a centimeter from the front of his, that he must be able to hear the sound of her heart throbbing in her chest.

  “It needs to be just a centimeter shorter,” she said, turning to face him. “Necklines will be higher next season. This isn’t a pendant you want hiding beneath your dress.”

  “No,” he murmured, eyes fixed on hers. “It isn’t.”

  The buzz of his phone made Fabienne almost jump to the ceiling.

  “Sorry,” he said, taking his hands off her shoulders, reaching down to press a button on the phone.

  “Will, Emma Watson and her stylist are here to choose pieces for her film premiere. They’ve asked for you.” A voice came over the speaker.

  “Emma Watson?” Fabienne mouthed.

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “Sure. Send them up.” He hung up the phone.

  “As in the gorgeous actress?”

  He had the grace to blush a little. “Yes. It’s my least favorite part of the job. Being nice to actresses because they show off our jewelry.”

  “Oh yes, it sounds terrible,” said Fabienne mock-sarcastically. “And I can see why you’re suddenly so inspired by people,” she added teasingly. “I’d better go. I’m no match for Emma.”

  Will caught her hand. “You’re more than a match for Emma. Can I see you tonight?”

  “I’m flying out tonight. I’m going to see your sister, then I’m on a plane.”

  “Already?”

  “I have to get back to work. I can’t stay any longer or I won’t have a job.”

  “So this is good-bye?”

  Fabienne nodded.

  “I’ve hardly spoken to you. What are you going to do about Stella Designs?”

  The phone buzzed again and Will sighed. “Sorry.”

  “I’ll let you do some work. I’ll call you tomorrow, or whenever I’m back in Sydney.” She picked up her purse. “Thanks for last night,” she said, wanting to say more but his secretary’s voice crackled into the room and she lost her chance.

  The nurse let Fabienne in to the Ogilvies’ apartment and showed her up to Melissa’s room, which looked out over Central Park, the green splendor as rich as a bolt of silk unfurled before them.

  “Fabienne!” Melissa said, delighted. “Come and sit down.” She patted the bed and Fabienne tried to keep her face still, to not betray the fact that Melissa looked so much worse than the last time she’d seen her in Paris.

  “I look awful, I know,” Melissa said and Fabienne knew she’d failed. Melissa hesitated, then said, “Will didn’t want to tell you; he knew you had so much to deal with already. But the doctors have said…” Her voice trailed off in a decidedly un-Melissa-like fashion, then she seemed to recover her resolve and her next words came out with typical candor. “All they can offer is palliative care.”

  Palliative care. A euphemism, Fabienne’s mother had always said, for the last stepping-stone on the path to death.

  Fabienne opened her mouth to speak but Melissa shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. Talking about it won’t make me better. Tell me how you are instead,” Melissa said, voice firm and Fabienne knew she meant what she’d said.

  So Fabienne forced herself to swallow the words she’d wanted to say to Melissa. “I’m sad,” she admitted truthfully, knowing there was no point lying to Melissa. “Lost. A little afraid. It’s hard to imagine a world without Estella in it. I know I only saw her once a year but I spoke to her every couple of days. She’s always been in my life and I feel as if my feet have been cut off and I don’t even know how to walk anymore.”

  Melissa took Fabienne’s hand in hers and Fabienne winced when she saw that Melissa’s eyes were damp with tears.

  “I’m so sorry,” Fabienne said. “I’m an awful friend. The last thing you need is my misery.”

  Melissa shook her head and wiped her eyes. “No, you’re not an awful friend. It’s just that, when you said that, I realized how Will might feel when…”

  When I’m gone. She didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Did you see Will last night?” Melissa asked instead. “I was asleep when he left this morning and didn’t have a chance to ask.”

  Fabienne nodded. “I did. And he…” She paused. How to describe what last night had meant to her? “He helped me clean up. He gave me a hanky when I cried. He sat on the floor with me when that was the only thing I could do. It probably sounds silly but he did all the things that I needed on the night of my grandmother’s funeral.”

  “Are you in love with my brother?”

  God. If she could get through even one day without crying it would be a miracle. Fabienne felt the familiar ache in her throat and blinked, hard. “How could I not be?” she whispered.

  “Come here.” Melissa opened her arms and Fabienne hugged her, neither of them capable of saying anything coherent.

  “It’s the only thing I regret,” Melissa whispered into Fabienne’s shoulder. “That I never loved anyone. Not like that. Of course I love Will and I love you and I love my friends but…I’ve never fallen in love with anyone. I’ve been sick since I was twenty. The last five years haven’t given me enough time off from feeling like shit so that I could fall in love.”

  Fabienne’s tears only flowed all the faster and her heart, already scarred from the last week, seemed to break open again. She remembered Estella’s words: loving can hurt spectacularly, but it can also heal. Maybe if Melissa had been able to find someone to love her…Fabienne let the thought die. Love didn’t cure cancer. Whatever healing it had given Estella was of the soul or the spirit, not of the body.

  “I’m so lucky,” Fabienne said. “To have met you, to have met Will. But I live in Australia. I’m a mess right now. I feel like I should slink off and let him find someone else.”

  “I will never speak to you again if you do that.” Melissa’s voice was firm. “Take the chance that I can’t have, that I won’t ever have. You’re made for each other. The way he looks at you…”

  The way he looks at you. The words played over in Fabienne’s head in the taxi on the way to Gramercy Park, played over again as she packed
her suitcase, and as she called another cab to take her to the airport. When the driver arrived, she asked him to make a stop on the way and then, when she was just a couple of blocks away she texted Will: Can you meet me on the street for just a minute?

  Sure, he texted back. I’m on my way down.

  He was waiting with a quizzical expression on his face when the cab pulled in to the curb and Fabienne jumped out. She took his hand in hers and kissed him, softly at first but she knew she didn’t want softly; her senses were even more acute these last few days and anything that lacked intensity felt like dust motes and feathers. She kissed him harder, her arms sliding up his back, his drawing her in. Someone wolf-whistled as they walked past and Fabienne stepped back, running a finger over Will’s lips.

  “Now you’re wearing lipstick,” she said.

  “I don’t mind at all,” he said, forehead resting on hers, bodies touching, both of them breathing hard. “Why are we always doing this with a cab waiting and you on the way to the airport?”

  “I know,” Fabienne said. “But I couldn’t go without telling you that I know it’s crazy and impossible but I love you anyway and I wanted you to know.”

  “I thought I scared you away last night.”

  “Not at all.”

  “All I want is for us to be in the same city for a few days with no sadness and no taxis and no planes. And we’ll make that happen, Fabienne. I promise.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that.” She drew back reluctantly. “I should go.”

  He waited as she climbed into the cab, waited as the cab pulled away, waited on the sidewalk until she could no longer see him. As soon as he was out of sight, her phone buzzed. You were right about the necklace. I shortened it and Emma Watson loved it. You have a good eye. Never doubt that. I love you. Will x

  The jet lag woke Fabienne up at two in the morning again. She lay in bed for half an hour then decided to get up and do something to tire herself out. She needed sleep if she hoped to function in any useful way at work. She finished unpacking her suitcase, which she’d been too exhausted to bother with when she arrived home, and stood with her grandmother’s box in her hand, wondering if that was the right thing to do or whether it would only send her brain spinning.