Luncheon of the Boating Party

by Susan Vreeland

  Madame shook her head. “I hope you’re not dreaming of ever becoming a first hand in a good fashion house on the place Vendôme. It’s as unrealistic for you as becoming a prima ballerina at the Opéra.”

  “I’m not hoping for anything like that. I’m just hoping to finish this dress.”

  “This must be very important for you. This posing, this man.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “Just don’t get it into your head to become a model. I don’t want to have to go looking for a replacement.”

  “No, madame.”

  “You’ve sewn the side seams on the skirt before sewing the polonaise into them. You’ll have to rip them out.”

  She felt like screaming. Silently she cursed her ignorance, and bent her head to hide her tears.

  “Take today for your dress. You can make up the half-day next Saturday.”

  “Merci, madame.” She choked on the words and started ripping. By eleven she’d reassembled the side seams. Madame gave her a bodice fitting before she shut down the shop for half-day. “Leave by six,” Madame said.

  She nodded and blubbered through her thanks.

  If she had no blue dress, she couldn’t model. Auguste was depending on her. If she failed, how could she ever face him in the crémerie? She eyed the sewing machine. With a machine, she could do the bodice seams and sleeve seams and maybe even attach bodice to skirt before six o’clock. It could save her. She studied the way the thread went through the loops. She could do it. She’d watched Clarisse. But then Madame would see machine stitching and chastise her. She might even lose her job. A worse disaster.

  She threaded her needle and went to work by hand. At six she took the pieces to Géraldine.

  “Whatever made me think I could make a dress like fine ladies wear for boating in four nights?”

  “Do you want an honest answer?” Géraldine asked.

  “No.”

  Géraldine reached for a sleeve and began putting in the seam. “You like him. More than like him. That’s why. I can tell by your eyes whenever he comes in the crémerie.”

  “That skinny, fidgety, brittle-looking man twice my age? He could have any model in Montmartre he wanted. I have no dreams. He could never care about me. He only needed someone quick to plug a hole. I could tell he was desperate by the way his cheek twitched under his eye.”

  “Then why are you breaking your neck to make this dress?”

  She shrugged. “I’m just doing a favor for someone. To be nice.”

  Géraldine wagged her head and hummed a popular romantic song, her smile a tease. Aline didn’t look at her, but burst out laughing anyway.

  She went home just after ten. The dress was unfinished, but she still had the morning. She’d get up at three. She’d go with it pinned if she had to.

  “I was at Géraldine’s. We were fitting her dress,” she explained. Only one word was a lie.

  Her mother put a bowl of cabbage soup on the table. “Why didn’t she come here for a proper fitting? I know a far sight more than you do.”

  She was caught short for an answer, and kept her nose down to the bowl.

  “Aline. Do you know what it feels like to be lied to?”

  She raised her head. The grooves that ran from her mother’s nostrils to the corners of her mouth seemed deeper than she remembered them.

  “It makes a person feel no better than a mangy dog in the street.”

  Her eyes stung.

  “The first night when you said you were with Géraldine, she came here.”

  “Why didn’t you say so then?” she wailed.

  “I wanted to see just how deceptive my daughter could be. It wasn’t a happy lesson. First my husband, the biggest deceiver of all, and now my daughter. A small lie, granted, but lies grow. They require bigger deceptions.”

  Aline dove onto her mother’s lap, and Jacques Valentin skittered away. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Maman let her stay there but didn’t offer a comforting touch.

  “Can you tell me what you’re doing?” Her voice softened. “Is it a man?”

  She felt her mother stroke her hair. “No. It’s a dress. It’s for me, not Géraldine. I’m in an awful fix. I have to finish it by tomorrow noon.”

  “And you keep it a secret from your mother, a dressmaker?”

  “I had to,” she said into her mother’s robe d’intérieur.

  “What kind of a dress is it?”

  “A boating dress with a polonaise. I had trouble because I couldn’t read the instructions. I’ve made mistakes. I didn’t want Madame Carnot to know I can barely read.” She cried into her mother’s lap. “I’m so stupid. When other girls were going to lycée in their pleated jumpers carrying their books on a strap, where was I? Bending over a washtub scalding my arms.”

  “Do you really think that’s what I wanted for you? We do what we have to, the two of us. And if we let our twosome break apart, we’ll have nothing.”

  “I know.”

  “And so you want a rowing dress like a proper bourgeoise to go promenading along the river. It’s either with a man or to attract a man. Which is it? And where? At La Grenouillère where all the hussies go?”

  “No.”

  “Why by tomorrow?

  She backed away. “It’s to pose in a painting at Chatou.”

  “Eh, là! After all I’ve said about painters, warning you.” Maman shot up and began to pace. “They use one girl after another. It starts by painting her in a pretty dress, and before long she’s posing nude, and then she’s in a family way and the genius painter has dropped her because he doesn’t want to paint her when she’s lost her figure, and he can’t support her, so he’s gone on to another. One after another, a string of broken, used-up women behind him.” She flung her arm backward. “Abandoned.”

  “Any man can abandon a woman, not just a painter. Even a man with roots in the soil of France.” Maman froze. “A man with centuries-old grapevines.”

  Maman’s hand covered her heart. “She’s not only a liar. She’s cruel too,” she said to the wall, then turned back. “You might as well have slapped me in the face.”

  “A man with a daughter.”

  Her mother’s eyes filled even as her own were filling. She was not going to be the first to look away. Their shared pain rose up like a great lumbering beast awakening from a cave, and she wept for the thoughts Maman would have to battle tonight.

  “Who is this man?” All the anger had drained out of her voice.

  “Auguste Renoir,” she murmured. “He eats at the crémerie.”

  “I’ve seen him. He wears overalls.”

  “He promised to pay ten francs a sitting. It would take me a week to earn that. And there’ll be three sittings. Maybe more.”

  “Respectability is more important than money.”

  “Money can buy respectability.”

  Maman slumped on a chair and took out her hairpins.

  “Show me the dress.”

  Aline unfolded the paper wrapping and showed her the skirt still separate from the bodice, the bodice without sleeves or buttonholes, the sleeves and skirt unhemmed.

  “Ten hours, at least, if you can stitch as fast as I can.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Then you’d better keep working. Attach the sleeves before you stitch the waistline seam. I’ll show you how to make buttonholes in the morning.”

  Maman hadn’t offered to help, but she would have said no if Maman had.

  She watched her mother braid her hair for bed. She watched her chest rise as she sighed. She watched her carry the oil lamp into her bedroom and close the door. She heard her pour water into her washing bowl. In a few moments, the thin rod of light under the door went out with a fitz.

  Maman’s dazed look, the single braid down her back with sadness plaited in, the slowness of her steps, like a sleepwalker, defeated—she wished she hadn’t seen her that way.

  Around two o’clock she began to indulge herself by le
tting her eyes close as she pulled the thread, and wrenching them open again to take another stitch. It was hopeless. She would never make it. She turned the metal knob on the gas lamp and lay on the sofa and closed her eyes. She still saw the needle go down and up through the blue fabric, like the progress of a narrow silver boat over the waves and across an ocean—to America, where somewhere in that big land Papa lived, where Maman’s thoughts would be forced to wander tonight, because of what she’d said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Au Jardin Mabille

  Angèle was scrubbed, dressed, perfumed, ready for business, and heading toward place Pigalle. The week had run past her, had rocked her footing with some sad news, and now there was only Saturday night to harvest the wheat she wanted to slap into Auguste’s hand in the morning. She hadn’t had to rub a bon-bon on a boulevard for years and didn’t relish going back to her hardscrabble days, but she had the know-how now to enjoy doing this for Auguste and not get roughed up, body or soul. She had a better notion than the boulevards—the Jardin Mabille, where she could dance a fair jig and might not have to get down to commerce at all.

  In place Pigalle, couples, prostitutes, children, and old men and women all vied to get a sitting spot on the edge of the large round fountain to cool off on this hot night and watch a gypsy dancing for coins to accordion music. Angèle caught an omnibus circling there and climbed the steps to the imperial even though the roof level was off limits to ladies. Dearie me, ladies might show some skin on the way up, carelessly or otherwise. What of it? If she was paying five centimes, she’d get the best view, right down through café windows on boulevard des Capucines. The chandeliers poured diamond light onto the dandies and princesses eating and drinking. Even though she couldn’t afford a scrap there, nobody could keep her from looking. She’d been looking all her life. She felt the heart of Paris beat, and hers was keeping up the rhythm.

  At Rond Point on the Champs-Élysées she got out and walked. All sorts of conveyances clogged the street in front of Jardin Mabille. The cream of the demi-monde who made their living off the haves of society arrived in their victorias and landaus with their clipped poodles and Afghan hounds. Wealthy men on the prowl came in their phaetons, and foreigners in their hired fiacres.

  At the arched entrance, statues of some Greek specimens of manhood put her in the mood to squeeze. A piper was playing a nasal melody on a musette bag. Urchins who slept on the hay barges had climbed trees to peer over the wall at the gaiety and listen to songs they longed to memorize. She knew. When she was their size, she had done the same.

  She hurried up to the ticket window ahead of three silly chits smothered in frippery, too gay for this hour, and was ushered in as lady number twenty-three. The first twenty-five didn’t have to pay. That meant three francs saved for Auguste.

  A young man wearing a boater beckoned to her and acted put out when she didn’t recognize him. His friends guffawed and she saw it was a joke. He begged pardon, and in a few moments he repeated the trick with another girlie entering the gate. They would cut some fine capers, this group, but men in boaters didn’t have any loose coin to drop.

  In the pleasure garden she strolled among irises and fleurs-de-lis, hydrangea blooms the size of cabbages, and jasmine fragrant enough to make a weaker woman swoon. Curving paths lined with camellias led to secluded bowers, straight paths to the billiard tables, the ring toss, and bowling games. Lit with a hundred electric lights in the shape of fleurs-de-lis, Mabille was pure fantasy with rules of politesse all its own.

  Edging the round wooden dance floor with the musicians’ pavilion in the center, two semicircular promenoirs funneled each line of promenaders in opposite directions. The first birdlike notes of the flute announced Offenbach’s Barcarole and the start of the promenade. She stepped into the outer promenoir. Two chanteuses sang the moony melody, “Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour.” She swished her skirt to the measured rhythm, her slow steps accented by the ping of the triangle. Gliding along at the speed of a gondola was just right for coy greetings and comey-you-here looks.

  She eyed the competition, the cost of the silk, the braid, the lace. Flounces, bustles, polonaises, bows, frills, here a glint of diamond or glass, there some roses nestled in tulle. This girlie ahead of her with the pushed-up titties wasn’t a first-timer. That one hadn’t sold her butter. The skin of another was plastered like an old cathedral. As for the men, shining top hats, waxed mustaches, pomades, and stickpins—a fashion parade with a purpose.

  She had to be wary and not waste time on any cropper in borrowed clothes. No one in the peaked cap and sideburns of a pimp or the derby of a shopkeeper selling fabric or buttons without coin enough to buy Auguste a single tube. Top hats were the thing. In the pockets under them, the color of their money was gold.

  The soft light of Chinese lanterns turned her rose linen dress into silk, her dress that some ragpicker hooked from a mound of refuse in one of the better quarters, sold to a stall holder in the maze of used clothing aisles of the Marché du Temple, who sold it to her last fall. It could have gone to the races at Longchamp or to the Kiosque de l’Empereur in the Bois de Boulogne on a Sunday afternoon. It could have heard Emélie Bécat sing at the Ambassadeurs. And it could carry her to some coin tonight, very like.

  She had heard tales of princely bounties paid to clever women at Jardin Mabille, had seen it happen often enough when she was an orange girl here. Men coming by themselves to be entertained by pretty girls, a bit of strolling, a little talk, some dancing, some finger paddling under the arbors. Women pouring out tales of woe, and when the men get to squirming, they slip them a handful of napoléons, bow like courtiers, and bid them adieu. Tribute money, it was called in the society journals, but she suspected it was conscience money—paying a woman a man didn’t use to square things right with God for the string of women he had used. Not so different from those pardons priests used to sell. And society was no worse for the exchange, just a mite more even.

  That little maidie in pink ahead of her in the promenoir was trying too hard, laughing too loud. She’d be the first to get desperate and do the chahut too early and be branded a tart. Give it time, she felt like telling her. It’s easy, really. Enjoy it.

  The three teasers at the gate approached in the opposite promenoir. She mimicked the ruse, turning it back on them, and they doubled over laughing.

  An older man’s face coming toward her gave her a start. Père l’Epingle. It couldn’t be, but the old chap had the same hook of a nose, the same kind gray eyes like stones plugging the mouths of caves under his forehead. She reeled and had to steady herself. Père l’Epingle. Impossible.

  A top-hatted man with a gardenia in his buttonhole smiled as they passed in opposite directions. Not a flirtatious smile. Almost a forced one, as though it took effort. His jacket had a fine cut. Definitely a man of the beau monde. Too serious, but she could remedy that.

  “Bonsoir, mademoiselle,” he said.

  “Bonsoir à vous,” she said, waved her fan, and glided onward.

  She gave a nod to everyone, a frolicsome eye to those who priced out. She imagined a few as lovers. No doubt the men were doing the same. Under the lights, the air was ashimmer with desire. People sucked it in, breathed it out. She wanted to pinch the women’s cheeks, nibble the men’s ears, press their heads to her bosom, all of them, the bright, lively people of Paris.

  In case some duffer-wits didn’t get the notion of the place, a chanteuse sang “Amanda,” a ballad about a girl who tosses away her maidenhood in a dance hall.

  On the next round, she took a closer look. No, of course it wasn’t Père l’Epingle. She shook it off.

  When the promenoirs were filled and going too slowly, the musicians began a waltz. She stepped out of the promenade and stood near the sprawling café under the trees. That fancy-ass Hyménée had staked out the prime spot. Angèle waved her fan in time to the one-two-three, one-two-three of the waltz. The violins, the clink of glasses, the chatter, the antics, her dress, he
r hair in a chignon with a cascade of curls at the back—this would surely be a grand night, for Auguste’s sake, for the sake of the painting, maybe even for her. If a body expected good, then good was more likely to find you, was her notion.

  She’d have to order something to show she was alone, but the drinks cost more at the outer tables where she would be noticed. It takes some to make some, she thought and sat down. The waiters made a practice of looking right through any woman sitting alone. They knew she would order something more expensive if a man joined her. There were no secrets about this place.

  She beckoned to a waiter. “Un petit vin d’Alsace.”

  He gave her a hard stare. “Is that all, mademoiselle?”

  “For now.”

  She let the waltz take her places in her mind. A little orange-seller came up to her and offered an orange in her grimy hand. Years flew backward.

  “You have a sweet face,” she said. “Squeeze every pleasure out of life, minette. Even from the rind.”

  “Monsieur told me to bring this to you.” She thrust it at her.

  “Who?”

  “Le monsieur à la fleur.”

  She looked from the knobby shine on the orange, to the grease on the girl’s nose, to a silk top hat gleaming under the lamplight. The man with the gardenia leaned against a lamppost. He gave her a half smile, one side only, Auguste Renoir style. Now, wasn’t that a sign! She swept her open fan at her throat, as though the mere sight of him made her flush with heat. He wasn’t in a hurry. She liked that. He took pleasure in watching from a distance.

  She leaned toward the girl. “Did he pay you decent?”

  “Bien sûr, mademoiselle! I can go home with the rest of the oranges.”

  “Good. He was an easy one, but others won’t be. Nobody needs to buy an orange or a flower. Use your eyes to sell when the bloke doesn’t know he wants to buy. You send him away happy, but always hold one back for yourself, because you’re not a throwaway. Remember that when you’re older and selling more than oranges.”