Well, here she was, not liking it, to meet her mother and the Aunties to select a dress for Cilla Pettibone's debut dance, just a fortnight away. Claire had been in the background of enough of these black-tie rites of passage to know that they were little more than chic cattle auctions where the sons of the wealthy could choose from among the daughters of the rich. With their imported, out-of-season orchids and papier-mâché stars, these evenings had in fact little to do with love and romance and everything to do with mergers and acquisitions. Claire sighed, squared her shoulders, and resolved not to deny the ladies their pleasure. Yet she worried sometimes over the weight of expectations they placed on her as if she, daughter of the hired help, with one quick spin around the dance floor would find true love, a husband, and financial security (in that order), just because she had on a pretty dress. Claire had no illusions. Having nothing to merge, she was not worth acquiring. The best she could hope for was a passing hors d'oeuvre, a waltz before supper with a nice boy who didn't mind twirling a nobody, and a quick smooch in the bushes. Auntie Slim had unwittingly shown her as much.
“Hi, Mother.” Claire smiled and leaned down to kiss Violet's powdered cheek and give her a warm squeeze.
“You work too hard, Mother. It's Sunday. I thought success meant you got to work less.”
“Success can only be measured by busy hands,” quoted Miss Wren, rushing up to Claire and offering her a Frango mint from a crystal candy dish usually reserved for the customers. “But don't eat too many, dear, we've picked out the loveliest dresses for you and then your mother is taking us all for Sunday supper at the Blackstone.” Miss Wren started to return the candy dish to its proper place but kept getting confused, between all the mirrors hanging as big as doorways around the salon.
“Wren, put those bonbons away!” Slim was directing this production. A strong-smelling French cigarette dangled from her fire-engine-red lips. Somehow the last couple of roller-coaster years had only made her more beguiling. “We're redoing Claire for the ball, girls, not fattening her up like an Armour hog for the slaughter!” She turned so quickly that a glimpse of a well-shaped thigh was exposed.
“Oh, that reminds me.” Violet was all business. “Where is the white velvet we have on hold for Bitsy Armour?”
Slim reappeared from behind a plaster Corinthian column with an armful of gowns that had been especially ordered for the gala debutante parties. A dozen girls were due in tomorrow for their fittings. As a buyer for the shop, Slim spent as much time in New York as in Chicago. Of course, before Hitler's invasion of France, she had spent a great deal of time in Paris, too, either buying or “copying” designs for her customers. These excursions quietly coincided with Cyrus Pettibone's overseas business trips.
Slim's travels had allowed her to befriend the great European couturiers, her favorite of whom was Coco Chanel. Chanel had closed up her design house when the Germans marched into France the year before, but Slim had her ways. She had coaxed the last two Chanels out of Paris via London. One was currently being steamed free of wrinkles by Madame Celine for Claire in the back room and the other, far more elaborate and costly, was sailing on the USS Coolidge for New York in Priscilla Pettibone's precise measurements, or at least the most recent measurements, for the youngest Pettibone had chronic weight fluctuations.
“Bring out the Dress. Our little Orphan Annie is here ready to be done over.” Slim called back to Celine, rolling up her sleeves. “Hurry up, Claire. Give me that coat. Your auntie Slim had to use every pull in her pouch to get Coco's seamstresses to whip up this masterpiece. It's straight from her sketches.” Slim smiled excitedly.
“Isn't Chanel fraternizing with the Nazis?” Wren worried, following at Slim's heels to the most grand of the fitting rooms.
“C'est la guerre. A woman has to do what a woman has to do to keep her head afloat. Besides, I'm sure she doesn't really like them.” Slim picked up a lank strand of Claire's hair.
“What is your hair saying, Claire?” She frowned, dropping the strand, which fell in all directions full of static in the dry radiator heat of the store.
“Your hair is making no statement whatsoever. Not saying a thing.” She shook her own short, sassy, pitch-black hair.
“And just what, Aunt Slim, would you like it to say?” Claire laughed.
“Who you are, dear, who you're going to be. Men are very responsive to a woman's hair.” When her lips stopped moving, her smile was quite pretty.
“No, it's the legs. Everyone knows that” Wren pushed the fitting stool directly beneath the chandelier. Since she was top heavy, her thin legs were her best feature.
“Nonsense, you two,” Violet corrected. “It's brains and stability that a man wants in a woman. And that message can be conveyed by what she chooses to wear. Goodness knows I've dressed enough women held in high regard to know a thing or two here.”
Slim interrupted. “High regard? Well, all the men I've known would rather hold a woman in their arms!” She blew out her cigarette smoke, encasing her words in a puff of parentheses.
Violet soothingly adjusted the light in the fitting room to simulate the low evening light of a debutante party. “Now then, let's all get in the right mood.”
“Precision.”
“Right mood?” Claire rolled her eyes. She couldn't believe that one fussy old maid, a virgin for sure, one head-over-high-heels-in-love-with-love kept woman, and her mother, who hadn't been touched by a man that way in seventeen years, were now going to advise her on how to be alluring.
“Celine, aren't you done with that Chanel yet?”
“No, Madame Slim.”
“Well, in the meantime, let's see this deb dress. This one is simply to die. So chic.” Slim shook a Valentina at her niece. “Valentina dressed Garbo.” Wren helped Claire step into the folds of duchess satin.
“What's this dress saying?” Slim put her fist to her chin like Rodin's The Thinker.
“It's saying I'm flat chested.”
“Yes, dear, we can hear it.”
‘Take it off me.” Claire struggled with the silk-covered buttons.
“To thine own self be true,” Wren comforted.
“Yes, but do we have to emphasize my faults? Don't I have enough of them as it is?” Claire groaned. “Poverty, social obscurity, breasts as small as our bank account.”
“Oh dear, we can fix that bust nicely with a little stuffing like I do all my ladies,” Violet said kindly, while tucking some tissue into the bodice and rebuttoning the back.
“Eleanor Roosevelt says, if you have to compromise, compromise up.” Wren pushed her hands up under her own full bosom. She hadn't completed a single day without an Eleanor quote since the day she sold her the knitting needles back in 1932. She read Eleanor's daily column, “My Day,” aloud every morning over coffee in the employees’ lounge.
The Aunties all took a step back, like fussy fairy godmothers, to assess their work so far.
“Well, the bosom looks fuller now.” Slim straightened the padding in the watersilk bateau neckline, adding curves to the poker-straight bodice.
“And the full skirt hides the fact you have no hips.”
“Well, you ladies have certainly camouflaged me.”
“We're just getting started.”
“Sure, but how do I get in the door? Sideways?” Claire turned counterclockwise on her pedestal to view her billowy silhouette.
“At last. The Chanel!” Slim exclaimed as Madame Celine finally appeared. A piece of couture designed by Chanel in her last season, 1939, the dress was embroidered, embellished, and hand-sewn by the couturiere's seamstresses, as a favor to Slim. The pale silk baby rosebuds at the bodice looked as if they had just been plucked from a secret garden.
In unison, the Aunties and Celine gasped in awe.
“A work of art.”
“A fairy-tale dress.”
“A dress that will shower you in magic.”
“And confidence.” Violet unfastened the velvet sash and silk buttons of t
he Valentina, gently pulling off the suddenly very second-rate gown.
“Fit for a princess.” Celine stood back, entwining her fingers together into a steeple, before returning to the back room to prepare for the next day's onslaught.
Claire eyed the delicate eggshell-colored masterpiece appreciatively. She just knew its beauty would shield her from snubs and whirl her into an enchanted evening. Even if it was for just one enchanted evening.
As the Aunties slipped the party dress over her head, piled up her hair, and hung a string of costume pearls around her neck, Claire slipped into the mood. She only hoped she could live up to the exquisite dress's expectations.
“Ah Paris, Paris. Just a rustle of satin and I am transported back to the Avenue George the Fifth. Paris, the city of romance.” Slim heaved a sudden sob, arching her small shoulders so high they brushed her golden dangle earrings, sending them twirling and spinning crazily like little Ferris wheels.
Wren handed Slim her handkerchief in anticipation of the tears that would be flowing from the woman still in the throes of back-street love and the fall of Paris.
“Take it” Wren pushed the wadded-up hanky into Slim's hands.
“No, no.” Slim waved the hanky away. “Let these tears flow. These are tears of joy. Pure joy. You see, Cyrus has proposed. He is finally going to marry me.”
Wren spilled all the straight pins from Celine's box onto the floor.
“Oh, no, here we go again,” she wailed, wringing her hands as she knelt down to pick up the pins.
“C'est vrai. It's true.” Real tears flowed down Slim's white, powdery cheeks. “He's leaving that old dragon right after Cilla's debut. We'll be man and wife by Valentine's Day.”
Wren looked at her woefully, shaking her head in doubt.
“No, really. Why would I lie?” Slim's eyes shone in all sincerity beneath her straight bangs.
Suddenly, three pairs of widened pupils were riveted on Slim, who was draped elegantly across the satin chaise and dabbing theatrically at her moist eyes. She looked vulnerable and fragile in the pink dressing-room light, real tears streaking mascara down her heart-shaped face.
“It's true.” An astonished Wren sank to her knees. They rushed to Slim's side.
Wren took Slim's hand as much in comfort as feeling around for a diamond ring.
“Oh girls, mes soeurs, come close.” She motioned them toward her. “I've been dying to tell you but I wanted to wait until we were all together.” She exhaled weeks of secrecy and gazed victoriously at their dumbfounded faces, stopping to pull Claire's palm softly to her cheek.
“And it's so right that it should be here at Field's, in this place”—her eyes rolled up to where the Tiffany dome would be—“where we first became a family.”
“But how did it happen? Why is this happening now?” Claire hoped she was being delicate.
“Cyrus has always told me that it was his intention to stay with Millicent only until his last daughter was launched.” She swung her arm as if she were launching a cruise ship with a champagne bottle. “Cyrus is a man of his word. I never reminded him of his promise nor expected him to keep it. You know, it's not in my nature to be demanding. I was resigned to live for a moment here, an evening there. Just a little romance. But two weeks ago he asked me if I would still have him. If I would be his wife.” The width of her grin could have landed her in Ripley's Believe It or Not.
There was a moment of silence as they all sniffed into their perfumed handkerchiefs. No one spoke until Violet cleared her throat.
“Oh, we're thrilled for you, dear. It's just that it comes as such a surprise.”
“Oh, Auntie Slim. I'm so happy for you.” Claire extended her long arms around Slim's petite shoulders. “And here I am hogging the limelight and standing in what is definitely a wedding dress. Cream lace, satin, pearls, and all.” She planted a kiss on both of Slim's cheeks, in the French way, just as she had been taught “You should have this gown.”
“No, dear.” Slim brightened, her eyes sparkling. “I have a little Mainbocher evening suit tucked away in the back.”
“Just like the duchess of Windsor.” Miss Wren clapped her happy hands together. “That other American girl who married up. Well, everything's starting to look up around here for our little clan, isn't it?”
Violet, her composure returned, suddenly moved into action. “Here, let's have some music to celebrate Slim's good fortune.” She reached behind her to snap on the radio. “And Wren, run up to Gourmet and bring back some bubbly.”
Added to the reassuring music of infectious laughter came the strains of Artie Shaw's band in an upbeat melody.
“Oh, it's Artie Shaw himself. Lana Turner's new husband.”
The swing music wafted across the satin-tufted dressing room, and Claire, still dressed in the elegantly understated Chanel, gleefully danced Auntie Slim around the floor as Auntie Wren passed a silver tray of fluted champagne glasses from the eighth floor filled to the brim with Moët & Chandon. Even Violet got into the festive mode, removing her silken violet corsage and placing it in Slim's hands like a bridal bouquet.
Suddenly the middle-aged women appeared as young and full of hope as they had that very day seventeen years ago when Claire entered the world on Five.
“Just think, finally, a wedding in the family.”
“Our first.”
“But not our last.” Slim raised her glass, glowing.
“To Slim.” They raised their glasses.
“To love.” Slim crooned as the band played. “Toujours l'amour.” The music was suddenly interrupted as the urgent voice of an announcer broke in.
“Japanese bombers have just attacked the U.S. naval forces at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Heavy casualties have been sustained. The attack planes may be on their way to the mainland. We will stay tuned for a message from President Roosevelt. A declaration of war is expected. Repeat: The U.S. has been attacked. We are at war, Mr. and Mrs. America,”
One by one the shocked ladies solemnly set their celebration glasses back onto the silver tray. Each of them tried to make sense of what she had just heard.
Slim worried that she might be a war widow again. Surely Cyrus would be asked to lead a battalion.
Wren said a heartfelt prayer for Mrs. Roosevelt and her four sons, all of military age.
Violet moved immediately to embrace her daughter and hold her next to her heart.
For Claire, the world was at war and all its social snobberies and rules were suddenly shelved, crumbling topsyturvy, opening up unheard-of opportunities for the shop girls’ daughter. Claire was about to be thrust into circles inaccessible even to the daughters of social privilege who snubbed her. The world would never be the same. Nor would Claire.
Chapter Six
The War Bride
Last year, time was no object … to Dine, to Dance, to Meet, to Marry. This year, time is of the essence. A soldier's Leave is reckoned in Days, Hours, Minutes. Dates are timed to the split second and girls no longer keep boys waiting. Are you free next Wednesday from 4:30 to 8 P.M.? I've special Leave. Can you lunch today? I'm being shipped overseas. Can you marry me tomorrow?
—Vogue, 1941
There were two stupendous news flashes that filtered through the Pettibone manse on Lake Forest's Green Bay Road, setting off a flurry of telexes, cables, telephone calls, and a good measure of tears and hand-wringing. One was the December 8, 1941, radio address to Congress by President Franklin Roosevelt condemning the “unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan” that had now plunged the American nation into war. Cyrus spent the frenetic morning cloistered in his walnut-paneled study talking to his business associates, Board of Trade economists, and after a lengthy private but revelatory conversation with his friend William Harrison IV, he put his personal plans, sex life, and Slim on the back burner in a vigorous surge of patriotism.
The other bitter piece of news coursing through the sacheted upstairs parlors and bedrooms and sending the maids and daughters into a swoon wa
s the sinking of Cilla's party dress. The USS Coolidge had been torpedoed one hundred and twenty-five nautical miles off the coast of Newfoundland, sending the seed-pearled and lace-embroidered gown slowly sinking past the surprised sole, salmon, and roughy to settle at the bottom of the icy North Atlantic. The sinking of the Chanel by a German torpedo caused as much havoc in the floral carpeted corridors and upstairs boudoirs of the household as the sinking of the Pacific Fleet was stirring up at the Pentagon.
“Those selfish Nazis,” Cilla wailed. “What am I going to wear now? It's my coming-out party and I can't wear just anything.”
“Oh, good gracious, first Pearl Harbor and now this!” Millicent was beside herself. “Why, Town and Country is covering my baby's ball. What to do? What to do?” Frownies hung from Millicent's face in disarray, making her look like a heavily bandaged war casualty. The antiwrinkling sleeping adhesives had come unstuck and were swinging precariously as she frowned herself into a frenzy. All the movie stars used these press-on overnight patches to stave off crow's-feet and facial lines, or so the Field's salesgirl had promised her. In Millicent's case, she was also trying to stave off an aggressive mistress. If only Field's sold something for that.
“Oh, where is Violet? She'll know what to do.” She clasped her hands to her bosom. “Somebody find Violet. I'm having a nervous collapse.” She pushed her pink satin eye-shades over her head like a headache band with both bright-pink manicured fists. “I can actually feel myself aging, I'm so upset. And where is your father at a terrible time like this? Jean Marie, take these Frownies off my face!”
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