The Paris Seamstress

by Natasha Lester

  “She’s bored. And lonely. This week will be good for her. Thanks for asking us to come up.” Sam smiled at her. “I hope we’re not interrupting.”

  “Never,” Estella said, moving across to him and squeezing his hand. “Besides, who else is going to cut the way you do? I can’t trust my designs to any pair of scissors. And I’ve missed my friend,” she added, so that he knew she didn’t think of him as just a pair of scissors.

  He kissed her cheek. “I look forward to having you boss me around again tomorrow. Goodnight,” he said, and nodded at Alex who said goodnight also.

  With that they were alone on the verandah, the velvet night air cool but soft and gentle around them, and it was only seconds before they were in each other’s arms, kissing as if they’d never before kissed, his hands stealing up beneath her top to unhook her bra, to run his palms over her breasts, her nipples, her hands searching beneath his shirt for the muscled skin of his back, feeling how fast his heart was beating, loving that she could do that to him, that she could make his breath ragged, his body tense with desire.

  “We need to go upstairs,” she whispered.

  “I’m going to miss you tomorrow,” he said, then added, “Will you marry me?”

  “Pardon?”

  “I asked you to marry me,” he said, looking down at her, his face no longer inscrutable, his eyes no longer empty, the hands that couldn’t stop touching her telling her that he wanted her, the heart beating strong and fast in his chest telling her that they were meant for one another, his soul telling her that he loved her beyond anything.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’ll marry you. And we’ll live happily…”

  “And lustily…” He grinned.

  “Ever after.”

  * * *

  When Alex arrived home the next night, it was to find Janie draped in an impossibly beautiful gown, Sam brandishing his scissors and threatening to cut off Janie’s toes if she didn’t stand still and Estella, his fiancée—God, how was it possible to believe that?—laughing, which was one of the best sounds in the world. He stood in the doorway for a moment, seeing her in a different light, in her element, working with her friends and he suddenly understood that she needed them, needed her designs, as much as she needed him; that without her work she wasn’t Estella.

  She turned, as if sensing him, and the smile on her face was a wonderful thing. She walked over and kissed him and he couldn’t let it be just a brush of the lips because he hadn’t seen her all day and it went on for so long that Janie said she’d get Sam’s scissors and cut them apart if they didn’t stop.

  He reluctantly drew away. “I missed you,” he whispered.

  “I missed you too,” she said.

  “How was your day?” he asked.

  “We have a plan,” Estella said, her eyes sparkling. “Don’t we?” she said to Sam and Janie who chorused in unison, “Sure do.”

  He laughed, so infectious was her enthusiasm. “Which is?”

  “I’m not doing another show for society ladies,” she said emphatically. “I’ve thought of a better way. The Barbizon is full of the kind of women I want to buy my clothes—drama students, musicians, secretaries, models, artists; they’re women who value good design, who can’t afford couture and who need clothes they can work in. So I’m going to do a showing there, just for the Barbizon girls. They can place their orders before anyone else and they’ll feel special because they’ll have something nobody else has. Of course my plan is that they wear the clothes to work or college and other women will ask about them and want the clothes too. I telephoned Babe Paley at Vogue and she’s going to come to the Barbizon with a photographer and write another piece. I hope that’ll get the orders flowing from the stores. And I called Forsyths and arranged to see them when the collection is ready.” She finally ran out of breath. “What do you think?”

  “It’s brilliant,” Sam said.

  Alex nodded. “It is,” he said. “Perhaps I should go off to work more often if this is what happens when I’m not here.”

  “None of this would have happened without you,” she said and it was another one of those moments of absolute communication, moments he knew must be strange to witness so he broke off eye contact with her as Sam cleared his throat.

  “Now to get enough pieces made in the next month,” Sam said.

  “We’ll do it,” Estella said.

  “Sounds like you’ll be busy,” Alex said.

  “Do you mind?” she asked.

  “Not if it makes you look so happy.” He heard Janie sigh and saw her turn away.

  “How about champagne?” he suggested to make Janie feel better. “And food.”

  “And an early night,” Estella said wickedly and he laughed, knowing exactly what she meant.

  Estella went back down to the city one night and invited out as many of the girls from the Barbizon as were available. She talked to them about what they did at work all day, found out how they moved, what they did after work, how their clothes let them down. She learned that she’d been too bold in her first showing, that just because she loathed the ubiquitous shoulder-padded victory suits, other women clung to their familiarity. That women still, above all, preferred dresses. That it was still forbidden to wear trousers in the public areas of the hotel. So she would include less of the trousers and blouses, a fresh spin on the victory suit, and lots of dresses, done her way, not the Parisian knock-off way.

  The next day she returned to the Hudson Valley and sat down at her desk with pictures of her sky dresses. Then she re-sketched each picture, transforming them from something to look at but never to touch into something that demanded to be touched and worn, with enough flair to attract any set of eyes. Dresses that were not just fine but adroit too.

  Each day Estella gave Sam her sketches and he cut them in the most economical way, talking with her about what adjustments she might need to make so they could be produced more cheaply. Each day she fitted the models onto Janie, and then Sam re-cut, narrowing seams to reduce the difference in lengths between the edge of the fabric and the seamline so that the bias cuts, which allowed for stretch and comfort, would sit well against a body, using all the tricks that Estella, whose talents had always lain more with sewing and sketching, hadn’t yet figured out.

  “You know,” she said to Sam, “I feel as if I owe you far more than I’m ever going to be able to give you. Even giving you full charge of a thriving workroom, if—no, when—,” she corrected herself, “we get Stella Designs up and running seems a poor reward.”

  “Working with you is reward enough,” he said cheerfully.

  Janie nodded emphatically. “This is the best fun I’ve had in ages. The worst thing is,” she added, suddenly pensive, “I don’t even miss Nate.”

  “Why don’t you start dating again?” Estella asked suddenly.

  Janie stared at Estella’s reflection in the mirror as if she’d just gone mad. She wore a dress that matched with a demure little jacket for work and which, when the jacket was taken off, transformed into a flirty number with a peephole cut from the back—a first-date dress when you wanted to get to second base, Janie had declared on seeing it.

  “I’m married, remember,” Janie said.

  “I mean dating your husband,” Estella said, sitting back on her heels, removing the pins from her mouth and sticking them into the cushion on her wrist. “Fall in love with him. Make him fall in love with you. Go out. Seduce one another. Learn everything there is to know.”

  The clearing of a throat in the doorway made them turn. “There’s someone here to see you, dearie,” Mrs. Gilbert said. “I’ve put him in the front parlor. I couldn’t get his name from him. He’s a little…” Mrs. Gilbert paused. “Unusual.”

  Estella stood up. “I’m not expecting anyone. I should only be a minute,” she said to Janie and Sam before she followed Mrs. Gilbert to the front parlor.

  Waiting for her there was Harry Thaw. Estella felt the same chill pass over her that she’d felt the
first time she’d met him at Lena’s house but she didn’t let it show, just fixed her eyes on him, knowing he couldn’t hurt her now. All the hurts he’d inflicted were in the past. Done. Buried. Forgotten.

  “You’ve taken Lena’s leftovers, have you?” he asked with that awful smile. “Her house, her lover…”

  “Mr. Thaw,” Estella said sharply, “I didn’t invite you here. I have no interest in seeing you. And I certainly don’t wish to talk to you about Lena. You’ve wasted your time coming.”

  “I don’t think I have,” he said, sitting down in a chair, crossing his legs, smoothing out his trousers. “A brandy would be just the ticket.”

  “I’m not getting you a brandy.”

  He laughed, a wolfish sound. “It’s not for me, my dear. It’s for you. But if you’d rather hear my news unfortified by drink, then so be it. I thought the time had come to fill you in on the details of your parentage. Yours and Lena’s.”

  Estella didn’t reply. She didn’t enter the room, but stood in the doorway. She didn’t drop her eyes away from Harry Thaw’s face even though the effort of holding them there made her head throb.

  “Here you are,” he said, holding out a piece of paper. “Your birth certificate. The only mistake your mother made was recording your existence. I suppose she wanted you to have the option of American papers. But it also means that the truth she tried to hide from you is incontrovertibly recorded in ink on paper. Say hello to your father.” Harry’s smile hadn’t left his mouth throughout his terrible speech. In fact it had grown larger, rapacious, a lunatic gleam brightening his eyes. “Say hello to Daddy.”

  If she made sure she never looked at the piece of paper Harry proffered her, then it wouldn’t be true. “That’s impossible,” she said, keeping her head as high as she could, wishing her voice had come out more loudly.

  “I’ll read it to you, shall I? Let’s see. City of New York. Certificate and Record of Birth. Name of Child: Estella Bissette. Sex: Female. Color: White. Father’s Name: Harry Kendall Thaw. Mother’s Name: Jeanne Bissette.”

  “It’s a forgery.”

  Now he laughed. That same awful laugh she remembered from the encounter in Gramercy Park. “Perhaps if I explain how it’s possible. You might be aware that Evelyn Nesbit published a memoir in 1916. When I heard it was forthcoming, I asked the publisher if I might see the manuscript; money can buy anything, you know.”

  “Not the things that matter,” Estella interrupted. “Not respect, not decency, not courage.”

  “You’re as impertinent as your sister Lena. You have that in common at least.”

  She knew he was goading her, daring to speak Lena’s name in her presence, but she couldn’t stop the involuntary stiffening of her back and could tell by his laugh that he’d noticed.

  He continued to speak, standing up, gesticulating as if he was giving a fine performance. “There were a couple of pages in the manuscript that I didn’t think anyone needed to read. Pages in which she prattled on about John, their Parisian love nest and a precious gift he’d given her, one that she’d had to leave behind in the Convent of Our Lady in Paris. She was a drunk and a morphine addict by then so who knew if it was true? But I’d never believed in her ‘appendectomies.’ So I asked the publisher to remove those pages and I went to Paris. I wrote the Mother Superior a check to repair the chapel and she confirmed that she’d presided over Evelyn’s lying-in and had taken the child, who was still at the convent. Which was very lucky for me.”

  Estella’s legs began to tremble, then her arms, her hands, her whole body. She wanted to sit but she couldn’t. She had to make herself stand and listen.

  He walked closer to her as he spoke. “I should have known all along that Evelyn was the kind of woman who would dare to have a child in secret. She was never duly grateful for everything I’d done for her and I did everything.”

  The emphasis on that one word made Estella shudder. She knew he was referring to the murder of Stanford White, which, in the newspaper article Alex had shown her, Thaw had claimed was prompted by jealousy over Evelyn and White. “You can stop now,” she insisted, but of course he didn’t.

  “So I thought it would be fun to take out my revenge on Evelyn’s child. And what a lovely child she was, your mother. She thought I was so charming. Shall I go on?”

  “You may leave,” Estella said while she could still speak. If only she’d never seen that photograph of her mother smiling beside Harry. Then she could believe that the certificate was a forgery and he was telling her a fanciful story. “I think you’ve done what you came here to do.”

  “I certainly have, daughter.”

  Nausea rose in her throat, a nausea so overwhelming she didn’t know how she was going to stop herself from being sick right in front of Harry Thaw. She cringed as he swept past her, almost retched as he leaned in to kiss her cheek, then ran, hand over mouth, to the nearest bathroom where she heaved over and over into the basin.

  A spasm of self-disgust and loathing gripped her and she knew then, that no matter how sick she was, the shame of Harry’s words would never leave her.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Listen to this!” Janie’s face was white too when Estella groped her way back to the parlor.

  A voice on the radio spoke words that Estella could hardly take in: “At 7:48 a.m. today, Hawaiian time, the Japanese air force and navy attacked Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, and other United States possessions in the Pacific. It is expected that the United States of America will make a formal declaration of a state of war very soon.”

  “We need to pack,” Estella said hoarsely, her throat raw from the attempt to purge Harry Thaw. “We’re going back to the city.”

  “Are you okay?” Janie asked as she took in Estella’s face.

  “Sit down,” Sam said. “It’ll be all right. Maybe it’s a good thing for France if America joins the war.”

  “It won’t ever be all right,” Estella said dully.

  “Who was your visitor?” Sam asked as if he’d suddenly realized there was more to Estella’s current state than the news of America readying for war.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Ever,” she added as Sam started to speak.

  She threw armfuls of clothes into her suitcase, gathered up needles and pins and ribbons and fabric and wished she’d never been born. How could her mother have slept with a man like Harry Thaw? The worst kind of man, demonic, a man to whom the word evil truly applied because he showed no remorse, continued to hurt people and took great pleasure in doing so. He’d raped his own daughter for God’s sake. What did that make Estella, daughter of the devil himself?

  Her body shook as she packed. She couldn’t unthink the awful knowledge that if Alex had thought his own father was bad, then he would think Estella’s diabolical. My father was the world’s worst man, he’d said. One day you’ll look at me and you’ll wish I hadn’t let you kiss me. That’s why I should stop now and walk away.

  Oh God! She tried to swallow the sob but she felt Sam’s and Janie’s eyes on her and knew she hadn’t succeeded. Her whole body ached, as if her soul had been ripped away. If Alex knew the truth, there was no possible way he’d want to marry her. His father might have been awful but he’d never raped or murdered or been committed to a lunatic asylum. Harry was the world’s worst man. And insane to boot. Which is why she had to walk away. It’s what Alex would do if he discovered Harry was his father.

  And then there was the shame. The horrible engulfing shame that her mother was the kind of woman who would fall for Harry, and then, knowing what he was like, would leave Lena with him. The blood in Estella’s veins was beyond tainted; it was putrid. She couldn’t look at Alex and not feel that shame ruin everything they had.

  She felt Janie and Sam watching her as they loaded the car. Felt their concern, their dismay; knew they assumed something had happened between her and Alex and she let them think that because then she wouldn’t have to explain.

  At last they were ready to go. A
lex would be home soon. Estella asked Janie and Sam to stay outside, said that she’d join them as soon as she’d spoken to Alex. And then she waited to tell him she could never see him again.

  He knew something was wrong the instant he arrived. “Why are Janie and Sam in the car?” he asked, walking over to kiss her. He stopped when he saw her face. “My God, what’s wrong? You look so ill. Is it Pearl Harbor? I have to go back to Europe but…”

  Estella stood up. Even holding her hands clasped in front of her couldn’t stop them from trembling. Her voice was high-pitched, strangled; she didn’t even sound like herself but then wasn’t that reasonable, given she was no longer the Estella he’d fallen in love with, the Estella he’d wanted to marry.

  “I can’t marry you,” she said. “I’m sorry.” Don’t cry, she told herself. Please don’t cry. Make him believe you don’t want him, make him believe anything so that you don’t have to tell him about Harry. So that you don’t have to see the look on his face when he finds out who your father is.

  “What did I do?” he asked, desperate. “I know I promised you a month and I’m sorry I have to go back but I can’t stay, not now.”

  Estella wanted to cry. “It’s not you,” she said. “It’s not the war. It’s me. I…” How could she say it? How could she lie and not have him know it? But she had to, for Alex’s sake. If Harry was insane, then mightn’t she be too one day? Or her children? For God’s sake, her mother was the kind of person who would give Harry a baby. That was insane. Everything about Estella was born out of disgrace. And to have to admit that to Alex, to witness the love leach from his eyes the minute he learned of her sordid parentage was more than she could bear. She could never say those words aloud: Harry Thaw is my father. But nor would it be honest to let things continue with him all the while keeping her deplorable secret.

  So she forced herself to say it. “I made a mistake. I don’t…” She couldn’t make herself say, I don’t love you. “I don’t want to be with you,” she finished. “Not anymore.”