by Phoebe Stone
“You hated it,” I say. “Like Mom and Ava.”
“I did not hate it at all, ma chérie. Pas du tout!!! It’s just that it reminded me of …” says Collette. “Oh, never mind, child. Never mind. Bon courage! Have courage, as we say here. I would like to offer you the use of my sewing machine. I can show you how to use the treadle. You push up and down with your feet. No electricity is needed.”
“Oh, Madame!” I say.
“Collette!” she says.
“Oh, Collette! Merci! Merci!” I say, jumping up and down.
“Sit!” She pats my chair. She pours me a glass of water. “Drink!” she says. She pauses. She looks down and then she begins.
“You know, long ago the preparations for the important World’s Fair in Chicago were very elaborate. All the couturiers in Paris who worked for the Jumeau doll company were designing and planning the most fabulous doll dresses, hoping their dress would be chosen. Of course Ernestine Jumeau herself was constantly working on the costumes for the dolls. Delphine’s mama too planned a magnificent dress and she had begun to cut out the pieces of satin on the worktable at home. All the while, Delphine sewed buttons on the slips and bloomers.
“But every time her mama went out to the pâtisserie to buy a tarte aux pommes for their little breakfast, Delphine would set out her fabrics and the pattern she had made while no one was watching. She would remove the size eight Jumeau doll from the cabinet loaned to her mama for sizing dresses. She would try a sleeve or part of the blouse on the doll, to test the size. She worked with tiny stitches in secret because her maman, of course, would not allow her to break the rules at the Jumeau doll company.”
“Children were not allowed to sew the fancy dresses?” I say.
“Oui, that is correct,” says Collette. “Oui. Oui. Oui. And so Delphine worked on that little dress when no one was at home. In secret. She used both hand stitching and, in some parts, the sewing machine.
“But she was indeed a child. And children must play from time to time. On Sundays in the hot summer Delphine would go to swim in the Seine river. Like any child, like you, ma petite. There she often saw her dear stepsister, Sylvie. Delphine was very close to Sylvie. After all, they had grown up together. Delphine did not see her much now that her maman had separated from Sylvie’s papa. Sylvie and her papa lived on the other side of Paris. But Delphine and her sister were able to swim together on Sundays. And even though they were both twelve years old, they always brought their little rag dolls with them.
“Today no one is allowed to swim in the Seine but back then they used to have sand for a beach and families would come to picnic and swim right there in the river. Look. I have a photograph here of Delphine and her dear sister wearing wool bathing suits, swimming in the Seine. To me, these bathing suits look like wool dresses! But it was a different time, was it not? This was the style.”
Collette hands me the photograph, pointing out the rag doll in each of the girls’ arms, and I look at the river behind them as she talks.
“Most of the time Delphine did not see her dear sister and she missed her. They mailed each other letters and waved to each other when they passed in halls at the Jumeau company. They were working children, you see.
“Sunday was the only day for play, the only day that Delphine did not work secretly on her doll dress. Every other day, every chance she got, she opened up her sewing basket and began to stitch and hem the tiny dress.
“When the little doll dress was nearly finished, Delphine looked at it and realized that it was very, very beautiful. She knew it was probably the most beautiful doll dress anyone had made in Paris that season.”
“Do you know what color the dress was?” I ask.
Collette looks over at me. Her eyes have turned a distant bluish violet, like the perfume fields of Provence I have seen in a picture on her wall, dusky and far reaching under the French sunlight. “Yes, I know the colors,” she says. “Yes, the little dress was made of orange silk and dark red velvet with the tiniest stitches made by a young girl’s tiny hands.”
“Did it look like this?” I say. I reach into my backpack and pull out the tissue and I set the little dress before her.
“Oh mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” Collette cries out. “My grandmother made it! I haven’t seen this dress since I was ten years old!” And she takes the dress in her hands and begins to cry. “I knew it. I knew it! My grandmother sent you. You have brought back the precious little dress, the dress that started everything. This dress too changed the course of my life,” Collette says and then she cries quietly. I reach out and touch her arm.
Finally she is still. She dries her eyes. She sits up straight. “It is just exactly as I remember it,” she says, putting the doll dress on the table. “I need to be alone now, ma chérie. Oui. I must. Leave this dress here. I will loan you another doll dress from the workshops of Ernestine Jumeau. I do not know who made this dress.” Collette opens a cupboard and hands me another little doll dress. “This one is made of pink striped cotton with red trim and two pockets in the front and a sash across the waist. It’s another little doll dress under the label of Jumeau. Perhaps it will inspire you to sew another dress for yourself. Here, take it and then, oui, I must be alone. Alone.”
When I leave Collette’s apartment she asks me to shut her door tightly and I do. And then I go out of the building to the front steps. I sit on the top one, thinking about Delphine’s little doll dress, letting the sun warm me. There is an archway there before our building, and climbing over the arch is a lanky, thick wisteria vine, which has just bloomed. Pale purple flowers hang as if heavy with sleep and dreams and too much sun. Birds flutter in and out among its branches and leaves.
Suddenly, just under the wisteria, I see Logan. His face is in leafy shadows. I startle and call out to him, but he turns and walks quickly away as if he doesn’t hear me. As if he is caught up in something else, something far away. I go out onto the sidewalk and watch him almost sprinting like a running shadow down the street. As soon as he gets to the corner, he disappears. He didn’t recognize me. It was as if he didn’t know me at all. “Logan?” I call out along the street. Nothing answers but the wind.
I go back into the darkness of the hallway. The tiles on the floor are chilly and I think about how old they must be. I wonder if Delphine Rouette and her sister, Sylvie, walked on these very tiles.
I stop by the table to pick up Le Monde newspaper, which gets delivered for the Barbour apartment every day. Dad loves Le Monde and reads it in the evening, leaving Mom to sit near him and ask, “Anything about home in there? Just anything at all about America?”
I pick up the newspaper and tuck it under my arm along with the doll dress Collette loaned me. Then I see something. Something. There it is. Crisp and bright and white. An envelope. A letter addressed to Ava. Ginger leans forward in my mind. Her blond curls fall over the blue crystal ball before her. The envelope lies in its murkiness. Clouds form around it. Ginger waves her hands. No, she says. No!
I look again at the envelope on the table. Its brightness shines like a terrible beacon right through me. It slices like a laser beam. It is hand lettered. Hand delivered. To Ava Beanly. It’s a letter from Logan. He brought it here and then slipped away through the wisteria. Michael the angel lifting over Paris, vanishing at the end of the rue Michel-Ange.
I grab the letter. I grab it, knowing it is wrong. Ava is sleeping unaware upstairs, lost in a golden older-sister nap, sure that all is well in her kingdom. I put the letter in my backpack. And I ride the elevator up to our apartment because my heart feels so heavy I could never pull it up all those stairs.
I go immediately into the salle de bain, the yellow room with the long, deep bathtub in it. I turn on the hot water. It steams and sneezes and snuffles, as if to say, “Mais pourquoi vous me dérangez maintenant?” Why are you bothering me now? It snorts and complains and then it begins to putter along cheerfully, like everything in Paris.
Finally steam starts to rise from the tub a
nd I hold Logan’s envelope over it, loosening the glue carefully. Ginger, please tell my planets I am sorry. Tell them to forgive me! Please ask the stars in the sky, the ones that are in alignment with me, please ask them to be gentle, to shine kindly on me with forgiveness. It is not easy to be a younger sister, to be partially unwanted when you arrive by the other small person in your world. It is not easy to feel your very existence crowds this other older child. Forgive my heart line and my head line. Forgive the moons of Saturn in my fourth house. Forgive whatever galaxies have spun into my arc of despair. But I have to know. I have to see what Logan has written to my older sister.
Dear Ava,
I haven’t slept for a few days. I can’t stop thinking about you. If this comes as a total shock just throw this letter away and forget about it. But maybe you feel something too????? I really need to know. I’ll stay away until I hear from you.
Logan
Oh no. No. No. No. This can’t be. I can’t let this happen. Ava doesn’t deserve Logan. She has been so awful to me. What about my ruined blue silk dress? What about my Eiffel Tower drawing?
And then an idea suddenly pinches me on the elbow. It crosses my mind that I might write a letter back, pretending to be Ava. After all, she has been so mean! It’s only fair! And I can copy Ava’s handwriting. Younger sisters often can do that sort of thing. I have written Ava Beanly hundreds of times in my notebooks, practicing for just such an occasion. And wanting my handwriting to be perfect and even like Ava’s, instead of messy and all over the place, like mine.
Dear Logan,
Actually no, I have NO feelings for you at all. I am beautiful but vacant. I don’t even appreciate my wonderful sister, Pet.
Yours cordially,
Ava Beanly
Oh, but I can’t even believe an idea like that crossed my mind! I could never send a letter like that to Logan. I am not to blame for these thoughts! Originally it didn’t come naturally to me, any of this. Younger sisters arrive in the world loving all things, admiring our older sisters. Younger sisters come into the world willing to share and be dazzled and charmed by our older sisters’ constant abilities! They can walk and talk while we cannot, which is very impressive. We lie there in our cage-like cribs unable to speak or walk and then after struggling for months, we figure out how to drag ourselves across the floor, while our older sisters dance on their toes around us.
Soon we begin to discover that they seem already to have nailed down the parents as theirs, like the furniture in the house, most of the toys, and much of the clothing (the things we wear are hand-me-downs originally given to them from dear friends of theirs). Everything belongs to them. And they walk around claiming and keeping track of their possessions. We arrive on the scene as uninvited guests who are allowed to merely borrow the parents and darling toys!
I look down at Logan’s letter. I did not choose such underhanded tactics. They chose me out of necessity and survival!
I take the letter upstairs and I put it in a drawer in my room under a pile of silk scraps and I shut the drawer tightly. Now that letter from Logan will never see the light of day again.
I sit alone with my huge dark armoire, a kind of shadowy friend, my only friend in Paris. In the cracks inside I often find pieces of ribbon and snippets of lace, old leftovers from past dazzling lives of romance and love. Something I must accept will never be mine.
And then, being upset, I get out my sewing basket, my threads and needles and scissors and the little Jumeau dress Collette loaned me. I begin making sketches in my notebook, ideas for a dress, a taffeta dress so beautiful you could lose every care in the world while sewing it.
Page fifty-eight: Younger sisters tend to make many more mistakes than the older sisters when it comes to love. This is simply due to a condition called Second-Born Doormat Syndrome, and to determine whether or not you have this, check to see if you have been stepped on lately.
Yes, after Valentine’s Day and what happened, Ginger was getting worried. She offered to help me find Windel’s lost coat. She texted everybody she knew: A stray overcoat was sent home by mistake from Armand Kent Elementary please check closets. And it was Ginger who finally located the thing. David Franklin’s father had taken it home by mistake that night, even though David never wears anything but down parkas. We decided Mr. Franklin must be secretly from Planet X. And Ginger was kind enough to go and pick up the coat from the Franklins.
But then she got it in her head that I should return it directly to Windel.
“Me? Directly?” I said, cringing.
She suggested I put on Windel’s big baggy overcoat and go to his house. She wanted me to ring the bell and stand there on the porch smiling and waving my big tweedy grandpa arms.
“No way, Ginger,” I said.
I knew I couldn’t handle such a bold and risky move. I just didn’t have that kind of self-confidence. That is a firstborn, older-sister kind of maneuver, outside the realm of a younger-sister’s capabilities. I plan to go into detail about that when I write the book How to Be a Younger Sister.
“Look,” Ginger said. “You lost the coat. You gotta return it. Why not do it in a cute way?”
“Cute?” I said.
“Cute,” she said. And so finally, after much balking, I agreed. I put on Windel’s big woolen coat over several sweaters and two pairs of jeans so I would have something to keep me warm on the way home and I walked to his house. I stood there trembling on the porch and rang the bell. Ginger had said, “Be sure to smile and say ‘Surprise!’ when he opens the door.”
Unfortunately, unlike Ava, neighborhood dogs have never liked me. As soon as I rang the bell, one of them came roaring and barking around the corner. It rushed at me with big teeth and wild ears flapping. And yes, I screamed. I dashed and jumped and sprinted. But I also tried to shout “Surprise!” as I scrambled and bolted down the steps. Sadly when Windel opened the door all he saw was this weird girl wearing his lost overcoat running off down the street. I mean, how much more could Windel endure? And I wouldn’t blame him!
But on the positive side, Windel did finally get his coat back. Ginger mailed it to him with a note in the pocket that simply said Sorry.
Logan’s letter practically burns a hole in my head now. I keep sketching and sketching ideas for my new dress. And then I go out for a walk and circle the neighborhood streets. It is an Auteuil Market day and I buy a piece of striped silk. It is a tiny blue stripe, not pink like the little dress Collette loaned me.
Back in the building, I find Collette’s door is still closed. And I stand for a minute leaning against it, as if putting my head on her shoulder.
When I get back to my room, I am sure someone has been in here again. I had tried to memorize the way I left the fabrics, the papers, even my scissors. Everything has been moved slightly. Was it the wind? I close the window. Then I start pinning the new silk onto the pattern I drew and I begin to cut the dress out.
I work all day on the dress until the Paris sky darkens and the lights of the city come on. The Eiffel Tower glows against the skyline. The young woman living across the street and opposite me becomes once again visible in her lit-up apartment. Perhaps she is just out of university and living alone for the first time. She has a large birdcage behind her full of small white birds. Finches maybe. I have never seen her in real life on the street below in the daytime. And yet there she is as soon as darkness falls.
Tonight as I work, the letter from Logan to Ava simmers in me like a pot of sorrowful soup. It bubbles and burns. Wretched Ava! No boy has ever returned my love! Not once!
On the other hand there is a part of me that is excited for Ava. A real boy is in love with her! Not some passing flirtation in a flower shop but a real boy in love! Part of me wants to rush to Ava and give her the letter and jump up and down for joy and excitement for her. But the nighttime, darker, hurt, and angry part of me holds on. Let the soup boil. Let it burn.
Sew. Sew. If I must be so awful, so dreadful in my heart, then I will
make something beautiful to counteract it. To make up for the darkness, I will make pure light! A floaty pale blue, striped taffeta dress with pockets and an attached sash.
Dad went to London this afternoon to study something at the British Museum. He took the Chunnel. Mom was freaked about him going under the ocean. But then Mom is freaked about a lot of things. She didn’t want to be alone in Paris without Dad. She can’t sleep tonight. She’s been walking up and down the hall. And Ava comes out of her room at around ten and asks if Logan has called.
“No,” I say, “the phone hasn’t rung at all.” And then yards of guilt drop over me, a loosened bolt of the darkest, blackest silk. The letter in my drawer burns and cries and pulls and twists and tugs in me. And I keep sewing.
At ten thirty the phone rings. Mom rushes toward it from her bedroom, flying past my room like an angel in white. She lifts the receiver. It’s heavy and old-fashioned. “Hello? Yes.” Long silence. “What?” Another stretch of silence. “You are calling too often.” Pause. “I see.” Then she covers the receiver with her hand and whispers, “Pet, go in your room and close the door. This doesn’t concern you.” More silence, another long pause. “Well, I don’t know how she’ll feel. I think it’s rather late tonight. But I will talk to her. Pet, close your door. Go back into your room.”
Whenever Dad’s away the house always feels darker. The Louis the Sixteenth furniture looks narrow and unkind and uncomfortable. The sky is a dark, foreign purple. The night closes in around us, turning everything into patterned moving shadows. The traffic hisses and water hisses through the pipes to someone else’s sink in the apartment above us.
That was Ava’s father calling again. The rain splashes and tears at the building. I saw Ava’s birth certificate when we were applying for passports last year. One part she covered up with her hand but I saw it. Her last name wasn’t Beanly. It said Ava Preston. Ava doesn’t have Dad’s last name. She has some other name. Is her biological father’s name William Preston? The trees blow against the windows. The rain hits the glass and pours over it, blurring everything.
