The Unfortunates

by Laurie Graham

  I did sit with my aunt one evening though. She had invited me to select a small keepsake of my uncle.

  I said, ‘I should like his top hat. And perhaps his silk scarf, if it smells of his cigars.’

  ‘That’s two things, Poppy,’ she said. But she let me have them.

  ‘You may as well,’ she said. ‘They’re no use to me. Just silly reminders.’

  I said, ‘But you will keep some things? You won’t let the Misses Stone take everything?’

  ‘I have my memories,’ she said. ‘So many happy memories.’

  It was the nicest thing I ever heard her say.

  I said, ‘What’s the best one?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, folding his silk scarf and wrapping it in tissue paper, ‘the first time I saw him. He was everything I’d dreamed of.’

  I said, ‘That’s how I feel about Gil.’

  ‘Indeed?’ she said. ‘But you have a very long way to go. Twenty-seven years, we had. Twenty-seven happy years.’

  This made me feel a good deal better about our little problems. My recollection was that my aunt and uncle had never agreed on anything. If that counted as twenty-seven happy years, clearly Gil and I had nothing to worry about.

  Nevertheless, I soon made two unpleasant discoveries. One was that Gil was running through money a deal faster than I expected him to, having sunk funds into a radical pamphlet called Zero and settled a regular allowance on Mr Casella the painter. The other was that one of my uncle’s final and mischievous acts had been to place my fortune in the trust of two comparative strangers: my stepfather, Judah Jacoby, and Simeon, a mere employee and pusher of invalid carriages. It was insufferable, and I had to endure it until I was thirty years of age.

  ‘We could go to law,’ Gil suggested. ‘Get it overturned. Prove the old guy was deranged.’

  Honey said, ‘I fail to see why it matters, as long as your money is safeguarded. Harry takes care of mine and I’m sure I prefer it that way.’

  Gil and I booked a spring passage to Cherbourg on a Cunarder called the Aquitania, sister ship to the Berengaria, and we whiled away the weeks till our departure buying traveling clothes and finding new places to hell around. Some were just addresses we had from Harry, ordinary brownstones where you had to know the special word before you were allowed inside to the party. Some were miles away on Lenox, almost out of town, full of darkies playing wild music. We were getting the reputation of being real adventurers.

  Honey said, ‘You will be careful, won’t you? Be sure always to sleep in your life-vest. And when you get to Paris, you must let it be known you are Americans. That way you’ll be treated with greater respect. They may think twice before murdering you in your beds.’

  ‘Honey!’ Ma cried. ‘Don’t give into such terrible thoughts. We must think of gay, pleasant subjects.’

  ‘Yes,’ said my aunt. ‘We must decide who will do the flowers for Poppy’s stateroom and who should cater the farewell. It may be the last palatable meal she’ll taste for a very long time.’

  Honey said, ‘I wonder why dangerous things always fascinated you so? You always were a terror for seeing how close to the fire you could put your hand.’

  I said, ‘Paris is only a little dangerous. Don’t forget, I did war work. I’m accustomed to dealing with the French, and it is the place to be, you know? Everyone in Paris is interesting.’

  ‘Are they?’ she said. ‘How very tiring that must be.’

  She took me to one side.

  ‘I do admire your pluck, Poppy,’ she said. ‘I shall miss you dreadfully. But when you come home, perhaps you’ll have had your fill of danger and stimulation. Perhaps you’ll have a baby? Then we can be real sisters again and have heaps to talk about.’

  I explained that we used prophylactics to prevent the inconvenience of babies.

  ‘But a baby isn’t an inconvenience!’ she said. ‘A baby is a dear, smiling angel.’

  A picture of Sherman Ulysses’ angry red face flashed across my mind.

  ‘How I should love to have another baby,’ she said. ‘A little girl baby, with big green eyes.’

  Gil and I had left open the date of our return passage. I was looking forward to being in a place where no one knew me or remembered my youthful gaffes. I was genuinely unsure whether I would ever want to go back. But I didn’t articulate this. I kept things light and vague, to spare the feelings of people like Honey, and Murray.

  I took Murray to Hegeman’s for a final egg cream.

  ‘I wish I could go to Paris, France,’ he sighed. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go to Bethel.’

  It had been decided that Oscar was better suited to the Catskills than he was to city life, and once a month Murray traveled to Bethel to spend the weekend with him. Oscar was teaching himself to repair furniture. He apparently had a great liking for woodland and lakes and silence, so it was just as well we had never married.

  I said, ‘I expect you have adventures up there, in the forests?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I get rashes and sneezing fits. What shall you do in Paris?’

  ‘Go to parties,’ I said. ‘Meet artists and writers and stay out all night.’

  He whistled. ‘Won’t you get pretty tired?’ he said.

  I taught him a new toast I had invented, based on the name of one of my favorite dancing clubs and we drank each other’s good health.

  ‘Tinkety Tonk,’ I said.

  ‘Tonkety Tink,’ he replied. He had a line of soda on his top lip and the faintest beginnings of a mustache. My stepbrother was growing up.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  We arrived in Paris, France, on the last day of April 1921. I was wearing a suit of flamingo pink jersey, made to one of my own designs, and two-tone spectators and a Milan straw toque with a russet cockade. The sun flickered through the lime trees as we rode away from the railroad station, and I liked the smell of our driver’s cigarette so much, I begged one from him for myself. I was feeling most contented.

  I said, ‘Maybe we’ll never go back. Maybe we’ll just stay here and be interesting Parisians. That would teach them all a lesson.’

  Every sea mile the Aquitania had put between me and my interfering family had raised my spirits. But Gil was subdued. I didn’t work out till later he was anxious about not speaking French, which didn’t matter in the least, of course, because he had me by his side to take charge of things, and, anyhow, I have found wherever you travel in the world, bellhops and others of that type understand the American language.

  We took a suite at the Crillon, but it wasn’t the place to meet amusing and modern people. It was full of old folk who talked in whispers. I soon realized we’d have to make other arrangements.

  After three days of clinging to my side and breaking a looking-glass in a fit of cabin fever, Gil finally got up the nerve to search out a bar recommended by Frederick the anarchist as a place to meet advanced and amusing people. It was way across the river in a neighborhood called Montparnasse, right by the place the boat-train had deposited us, and somehow, I don’t know how for I don’t believe Frederick had ever been to Paris himself, he was right. Every seat in the Café Dingo was occupied by somebody droll or outrageous or just plain brilliant.

  Pretty soon we had the makings of our very own set.

  I rented us a furnished house in the rue Vavin and the day we moved out of the Crillon, I gave the manager an overdue reminder of his place. In the running of a hotel there is sure to be wear and tear, and a departing guest should not be troubled with inventories and housekeeping details and insolent remarks. I’m sure I have always settled my accounts.

  I had decided we would live simply in the rue Vavin, with just one maid and an outdoors man to bring in ice and wood and coal and to keep our motor polished. I had purchased a new Citroën in the hope Gil would be persuaded to learn how to drive, but he showed no such inclination. As for myself, I found the irregularities of Parisian streets most inconvenient and often I preferred to hire a taxicab. In those days you were pretty
much guaranteed to get an interesting chauffeur. A Galician duke or some such, who had fallen on unfortunate times. It was quite the vogue to go to Paris after you had been ruined, like Stassy, who was my business assistant, until she turned on the hand that had fed her.

  Stassy was practically a princess, but she was living in just one room with cardboard walls and a kettle until I saved her from destitution. I was introduced to her by Nancy Lord, who lunched with me one day wearing the most extraordinary mohair garment that consisted of one sleeve and two long scarf-like drapeable flaps.

  Nancy said, ‘Isn’t it fun? A little Russian woman made it for me. Shall I put you on to her?’

  Unlike my mother, I had never shrunk from mingling with the poor and sometimes I pretended to be poor myself, restricting myself to ten dollars a day and dining on nothing but potato salad. Stassy was very poor indeed. The Bolsheviks had taken everything she owned and she had run away from them through Persia and Greece and all kinds of places before she came to Paris.

  I put her at her ease by telling her I adored travel myself. Then she admired the origination I was wearing and asked to see how it was assembled. I purchased two of her knitted neckties for Gil and before we knew it we were chattering away like old friends. I had the feeling Nancy was a tiny bit piqued.

  I said to Stassy, ‘Let’s go into business. You make fabulous things. I make fabulous things. Let’s sell them.’

  ‘I already tried,’ she said. ‘The shops won’t take them. Only crazy people buy my things.’

  ‘Then we’ll open our own shop,’ I said. ‘For crazy people.’

  I’m sure Stassy didn’t believe it was possible.

  I said, ‘Trust me. All things are possible.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘I know all things are possible. But still. A shop?’

  The winter of 1921 we worked all hours. While Gil was busy establishing himself with a damned smart bunch of intellectuals at the Dingo, I was creating two- and three-piece layered ensembles in soft jersey lined with silk, and Stassy was knitting. She was some knitter.

  I rented a small shop in St Sulpice and had it painted a delicate shade of eau-de-Nil. I named it Coquelicot, which is the French way of saying Poppy, and by the end of the first month word had gotten around. All we had left were a few of Stassy’s ties, plus four girls, two knitting and two sewing, as fast as we could show them how.

  By the summer anyone who was anyone was wearing Coquelicot and I was becoming quite bored with it. I didn’t even have time to play tennis. Stassy, though, wanted to do nothing but work. She was excited, I suppose, at the prospect of being rich again, although she never used the money she was making to buy amusing things. All she did was count it. I have often observed how tiresomely obsessed paupers are with hoarding money.

  She wore her own designs, which saved her from being thin and plain, and the bones of her face shone through in a rather enviable way. All she ever drank was black tea, and if I sent out for pastries, she could never be tempted. Gil called her the Skull and Crossbones.

  He’d say, ‘What is it with you two, playing at shop? Is there something going on? She one of these sapphics?’

  There were any number of unusual living arrangements going on in Paris at that time, but not involving Stassy. The only person I ever saw her kiss was the picture of Jesus she had on her wall. And she’d never come to our parties, no matter how fabulous they promised to be.

  In that first year we saw a good deal of people like Felix Swain and Jack Barty, as well as the Dingo crowd, and Nancy and Orville Lord. If Orville and Gil hadn’t fallen out over those silly allegations of money owed I dare say Nancy and I would have remained friends. It was too ridiculous. Why would Gil have needed to borrow money? But, as I explained to Stassy, we had all drunk enormous quantities of Taittinger that night, and that always made Orville rather fast on the draw.

  She said, ‘You were supposed to be here this morning. You were supposed to show the girl how you wanted the cloth cut.’

  Stassy could be terribly priggish about champagne.

  I said, ‘Well I’m here now, though I could hardly lift my head off the pillow. But if you’re going to be disagreeable I may just turn around and go away again.’

  ‘Go away then,’ she said. ‘How much for you to go away?’

  And that was what she said each time we quarreled. She nagged me about keeping regular hours. She nagged me about keeping regular accounts. And she tortured me for new designs.

  ‘They are bored with your tubes now,’ she said. ‘They want to see something new.’

  She quite failed to understand how busy I was. My flying lessons alone devoured whole days.

  Meanwhile, letters kept arriving, inquiring as to the date of our return to New York.

  ‘You must certainly be tired of honeymooning by now …’ Ma wrote.

  ‘Aunt Fish is bearing up, but will greatly benefit from your return …’ my sister hinted. ‘She has always taken such an interest in you and feels your absence greatly.’

  ‘I don’t believe I shall ever see you again …’ mourned my stepbrother, Murray. ‘I grew you a hyacinth in a dark cupboard but you weren’t back in time to see it.’

  As I explained in a letter to be circulated to all of them, we had no reason for a hasty return. Contrary to Stassy’s opinions, le tout Paris was still enchanted by my tubes, and Gil was preparing to write an important novel. What I could never have explained to them was how much lighter and easier I was in myself, knowing there were no aunts or mothers or Schwabs or Lessers awaiting my downfall.

  From my earliest recollection, from Honey’s ninth birthday party which I had not been allowed to attend because of the certainty of my wetting my drawers or eating too much cake, I had managed to be simultaneously excluded and yet still occupy center stage. As long as I was tangled in the threads laid down by Ma and Aunt Fish, I was too big, too clumsy, too unusual either to ignore or to approve. Paris had ended this confusion. There it was impossible to be too anything.

  I had met a number of amusing English pansies, including Humphrey Choate, with whom I played tennis. I had acquired an adorable bulldog called Beluga. And Gil and I were becoming famed for our smashes. We’d start late, with plenty of good champagne, and serve scrambled eggs for breakfast, with truffles as often as not. People could always depend on something of interest occurring. Tiny Kaminski often accessorized with animals. Once she brought along a pig, in a diaper. Then she had acquired a cheetah, but she had to give it to a circus when it became too boisterous, and the next time she came to us she simply brought along Jack Barty on a leash. It was so amusing.

  It was also chez nous that Ava Hornblower abandoned Moo Greenaway and seduced Jane Speke. Feelings ran very high and so did Moo, who went up into the mansarde, and threatened to throw herself from our maid’s window. And whatever Nancy Lord may claim, it was we who erected a boxing ring in our salon so that Chip Angus and Desmond McGrath could settle their differences in accordance with Queensberry Rules, and it was in my house that Badgirl Duprée first wore her transparent gown.

  And my family expected me to return to dreary old New York!

  It was rumored that my Cousin Addie had also declined to return to the United States after peace broke out and had stayed on in Paris. I welcomed this information. Cousin Addie promised to be the type of kin who would add to my standing as an interesting person. She had been a trailblazer, after all.

  I made inquiries and discovered her next door to an abattoir in the shadow of the Salpêtrière hospital. She was wearing a sack suit and smoking black cigarettes and wasn’t pretty at all.

  I said, ‘I’m Abe Minkel’s girl. We’re cousins. Just fancy we both come to be living in Paris, France.’

  ‘Just fancy,’ she said.

  I told her how Gil and I were creating a salon where wild and shocking events might occur and invited her to attend our next costume party.

  ‘Cousin Poppy,’ she said, ‘I’m here to work. I’ve already seen a
lifetime’s worth of wild and shocking.’

  I believe she was acting superior with me on account of being older and having gone to war.

  I said, ‘I know about the ambulances you bought. I wanted to do the very same myself, but I hadn’t come into my money and my uncle wouldn’t permit it. I was needed at home, too. My Ma was a delicate widow. But I did roll bandages and avert a crisis with my French interpreting.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘Well, the work goes on.’

  She had a lecturing tone about her that reminded me of Yetta Landau.

  I told her about Coquelicot, lest she think I didn’t understand the meaning of work.

  I said, ‘And what line are you in now?’

  She took me through her malodorous little house to a workroom, and there I saw a sight that made me jump out of my skin. Men’s faces lined up on a shelf, ghostly gray. They were made out of plaster. Two women were at work. One was molding thin sheet copper to a plaster form, making a metal mask in its likeness. The other was painting a mask with oils, turning it the very color of a person’s skin.

  I said, ‘Are these for bals masqués?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘These are for life.’

  Then she showed me photographs of the men they were being made for. Soldier boys who had lost their faces. No jaw. No nose. A mouth that gaped open right up to the ear. I believe she was trying to shock me. I believe she was testing what kind of stuff I was made of. To tell the truth, I was disappointed in Cousin Addie. She wasn’t at all friendly. She hadn’t even offered me a chair, or a glass of wine.

  I said, ‘Do you need a donation?’

  ‘If you want to,’ she said, ‘but I wasn’t soliciting funds. I’d be happier if I knew I’d given you something to think about. And pass the thought along to your salon. What happens to a man when you take away his face? It’s an excellent subject for discussion.’

  I didn’t care for her tone or her suggestion that our friends didn’t talk about the aftermath of war. They talked about it often. It was the reason Gil had decided to reject rationalism, as he announced to me only the day before.