Of Irish Blood (23 page)

I am diligent all that winter. Working, the Bridgeport cure for everything. Still not able to interest Madame in my designs but
c’est la vie
.

One afternoon in the Louvre I heard a woman lecturing a group near a Vermeer painting. Americans. She was easily in her sixties. Is that me in thirty years? I thought. Hope not. “He paints with light,” she said. Haven’t dared pass myself off as an art expert on my tours. We mostly stroll by the famous paintings.

My guard friend asked if I wanted to meet my countrywoman.

“Sure,” I said.

Well, who was it? Only Madame Clemenceau. Wife of the fellow put France in bed with England. “I was Mary Elizabeth Plummer,” she told me, “from Wisconsin originally.”

“I’m Nora Kelly from Chicago. A neighbor,” I said.

“My grandmother was Susan Kelly,” she said.

A romantic story, with a sad ending, the guard told me later. Clemenceau had to leave France as a young man. Taught at a girls’ school in Connecticut. Fell in love with Mary Elizabeth his student, who was only seventeen. Married her. Brought her to France. Clemenceau had many mistresses, the guard had said. But when his wife was rumored to be having an affair, he divorced her, took the three children, and refused to support her. She earned her living giving tours. “Terrible,” I said. Just the kind of fellow who’d cozy up to John Bull, I thought.

Now it’s the first of April, “Poissons d’Avril,” a kind of French April Fools, celebrated with fish-shaped candy. And I’ve splurged on two pounds of chocolate fish at Lilac’s to give to Madame, Georgette, and all the seamstresses. Madame Simone can’t explain the custom to me, but she accepts the gift.

“A business expense,” she says. I enter the five francs in the red leather account book she’s given me. Madame Simone has me write down every franc I make, every sous I spend. A businesswoman. Me, who always just turned half my pay over to Henrietta and never thought about the cost of food or rent. Left those concerns first to Mam and then to her. Spent the rest on clothes and treats. And now I’m supporting myself.

Not much left in savings, but Madame says I must buy a new ensemble for the spring season. Important to be well dressed. I’ll purchase it from her, of course, at a discount. Pay her when I can.

“Thank you,” I say. Lucky to have made such a friend. Though I am tempted to buy one of Gabrielle Chanel’s spring suits. Black skirt and jacket with a white blouse. Very like my school uniform at St. Xavier’s. But wearing Chanel would be a knife in Madame Simone’s heart. So, I’ll dress in robin’s-egg blue and be grateful. Never seen Chanel or Capel at Mass again. Must ask Father Kevin.

Madame Simone, the seamstresses, and I are just about to sample the chocolate fish when a dog—a little yapping thing—comes racing into Madame Simone’s studio, runs around in circles, and then jumps up at a dressmaking form.

“Georgette,” Madame Simone says, “take him out.”

“Now, Simone, you love Basket!” The voice comes from a tall, heavyset woman who enters the studio, sandals flapping on the wooden floor.

“Where are my new ensembles?” she says. “I must have them by this Saturday. A special guest is coming to the salon; a friend of Pablo’s from Spain.”

She brushes the front of a garment which looks exactly like the habit the Carmelite priests at Mount Carmel High School wear. Except it’s browner and more billowy.

“This thing has lost its shape,” she says. Then notices me.

“Bonjour,”
she says,
“je m’appelle Gertrude Stein. Qui êtes vous?”

“Me? I’m Nora Kelly,” I say.

Another woman enters. She’s dressed like a gypsy. Long skirt, dangling earrings.

“Hello,” she says. “I’m Alice. Alice B. Toklas, if we’re being formal.”

“Are we?” I ask.

Alice Toklas eases her way between Gertrude Stein and me.

“You’re American?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m from Chicago.”

“Pity,” she says. “We’re from Baltimore. I’m always hoping to meet someone from home.”

“We are home,” Gertrude Stein says. “America may be our country but Paris is our hometown.” Then to me: “You’re touring Europe?”

“Well, no. I’m working here in Paris.” Why not, say it? “Studying at the Irish College.”

But she doesn’t take that in. Instead she says, “Working for Simone? An American secretary,” she says to Madame Simone. “How clever of you.”

“I’m not her secretary,” I start.

But Gertrude Stein has moved away from us and is looking at herself in Madame’s full-length mirror. She lifts her skirt and lets it fall.

“See how it droops?” she says to Madame Simone.

“Perhaps your laundress wasn’t careful,” Madame says. “Maybe she used the wrong soap.” All this said in a French I can follow.

“Certainly not,” Miss Toklas answers in English. “Her other costumes are perfectly fine and I washed them the same way.”

“Be that as it may,” Gertrude Stein says. “I have to have my ensembles now. Are they ready?”

“They are,” Madame says. “I sent you a note inviting you to come in for a fitting.”

“A note? We received a note, Alice?” Gertrude Stein is not pleased.

“I told you we did, dear. That’s why we’re here.”

“I thought we were just walking Basket,” Gertrude Stein says.

“No, Gertrude. I quite deliberately led us this way.”

“You should have told me, Alice.”

“I did,” she says.

Madame Simone clears her throat. “You are here now and if you’d like to step into to the dressing room, Gertrude, I will bring you your garment.”

“I design them myself,” Gertrude says to me. “Comfortable and elegant. Madame Simone executes my design.”

“I see,” I say.

Georgette leads her away.

Alice glides over to one of the small gilded chairs and sits down.

“Chicago,” she says. “I don’t believe I know anyone in Chicago but I think some of the Hopkinses went to the university there. You have a university, don’t you?”

“We have a few,” I say. “But I don’t suppose you mean Loyola or De Paul.”

She shakes her head. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“University of Chicago?” I say.

“That’s it,” she says.

Gertrude Stein returns, followed by Georgette. Madame Simone helps her onto the wooden platform in front of the mirror.

“See, Simone, I told you corduroy would work,” Gertrude Stein says. “It’s light and yet sturdy. Better than that jersey Gabrielle Chanel tried to pass off on me—too clingy. Corduroy stands away from the body.”

“Slimming,” Alice says.

“I’m not a sylph and wouldn’t want to be,” Gertrude Stein says. “No one ever criticizes a portly man, but let a woman have a bit of heft … Renoir’s subjects were nicely padded and look at Rubens.”

“Gertrude collects paintings,” Madame Simone says to me.

“She’s a great art connoisseur,” Alice says. “A
‘patrone’
like the Medici. Perhaps you’ve read about Gertrude in the newspaper,” she says to me. “That writer, Harry McBride, called the Stein collection ‘a museum in miniature.’”

“Not a museum, Alice,” Gertrude Stein says. “That sounds far too stodgy. We support the new. Cézanne, Matisse, Juan Gris, and, of course, the greatest … Picasso.”

“Pas cher, les nouveaux,”
Madame Simone says to me.

Gertrude Stein hears her.

“Well, Simone, the paintings Leo and I bought years ago are now worth over ten times what we paid for them,” she says.

Georgette has finished pinning the hem. Gertrude Stein turns from side to side. “Don’t cover my sandals. They’re my signature.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Madame Simone says. “Now, tea. We’ll have your garments ready in an hour.”

“An hour?” Alice says. “We can’t wait an hour. I’m making a cassoulet for dinner and I can’t spare an hour.”

Madame Simone looks at her. “Perhaps you could go ahead while Gertrude waits.”

But Alice shakes her head, stands up. “Really Gertrude, we must go.”

“Simone, perhaps your secretary can deliver my gown,” Gertrude Stein says.

“She’s not my…” Madame Simone starts.

But I interrupt. “An excellent idea,” I say.

So that’s why an hour later I stand at the tall door of 27 rue de Fleurus, not far from the Jardin du Luxembourg. I can see the Panthéon brooding over the neighborhood. I go through a courtyard to the apartment building. Some kind of garden shed seems to be attached on ground level.

Alice Toklas opens the door. We stand in a small entrance. I can smell her cassoulet so I sniff and say, “Wonderful!”

“A bit of an experiment,” she says. “I’m writing a cookbook. Of course, Gertrude is the real writer, but so many have urged me to collect my recipes.”

“What does Mademoiselle Stein write?” I ask.

“Surely, you’ve heard of Gertrude’s work,” she says.

“Well, I’ve just come to Paris and…”

“But she’s famous!”

“I am from Chicago, remember?” I say.

“Oh, yes,” she says. “I forgot. Well, I’ll take the package,” and she reaches for it.

“Madame Simone has a few things she wanted Miss Stein to check. I thought I’d wait until…”

“You want to see the pictures, I suppose.”

“I do.”

Madame Simone had told me to be sure to get into the atelier that adjoins the apartment.

“Everyone wants to see the pictures,” Alice says. “But Leo and Gertrude have strict rules about who can see them. I mean they’re really valuable. Chicago, after all is a place where…” She stops.

“I’m not casing the joint for a heist, Alice,” I say. “Don’t worry.”

“What’s this?” a voice says, and a man comes into the hallway. The brother Madame Simone told me about. He wears sandals too and a brown Carmelite-looking outfit. But his is made from rough wool. Scratchy, I think. He’s tall with a long red beard.

“I’m Nora Kelly,” I say, “bringing a package for Mademoiselle Stein.”

“American,” he says.

“Chicago,” I say. “I don’t know anyone from Baltimore.”

“Baltimore?”

“Where you’re from,” I answer.

“Actually, the Steins are a Pittsburgh family. Allegheny, really, but it has become part of the city now.”

Pittsburgh, I think. I’m not about to be intimidated by somebody from Pittsburgh. Chicago has it all over Pittsburgh.

Leo’s going on. “My father was in the railroad business; traveled often to Chicago.”

“He would have to,” I say.

“Well, come in, come in. I suppose you want to see the pictures.”

“I told her she couldn’t,” Alice says.

“Not really your decision, Alice.” He sniffs. “I think you’re burning dinner again.”

“Oh my!” She hurries away.

“Well, now,” he says. “Gertrude may still be writing but like all writers she welcomes interruptions.”

“Are you a writer?” I ask.

“No, I’m a painter,” he says. “I’m studying with Henri Matisse. You know his work?”

“I don’t, but I’ve been visiting the Louvre. So maybe I’ll come across his paintings.”

He laughs. “You won’t find Henri in the Louvre, my dear.”

He leads me into what I thought was the shed—really a two-storied room, the atelier.

Almost sunset and a kind of rosy light pours through the windows of the small space we step into.

Suddenly I’m surrounded by paintings hanging from floor to ceiling. The frames fit so tightly against each other that the walls seem to jump with color. Hard to separate one picture from the next or to see what they depict. Wait—aren’t those apples?

“I like this one,” I say.

“Cézanne,” Leo says. “My favorite. You’ve good taste, Miss Kelly.”

“And this,” I say, walking over to a painting of a woman playing the piano.

“Renoir,” Leo tells me.

“I thought so. Some of his work was shown at the World’s Fair,” I say.

I go closer to a portrait of a woman in a hat. Her face is green. Odd. Yet she seems so alive. A woman I’d like to meet. I turn to Leo.

“The one’s … well, it’s…” I stop.

He laughs. “Yes, it is,” he says. “So what do you think of our collection?”

“I can’t find the words,” I start. I hadn’t noticed Gertrude sitting in the corner at a wide table, a pile of papers around her. She’s heard the exchange.

“You’re right, there. No words for them,” she says. “That’s why I’m reinventing language. My writing is like their art. I take words apart and rearrange them in ways never known before.”

She starts to explain to me how she had studied the workings of the mind as a medical student at John Hopkins and now is capturing the randomness of thought. Hard to listen to her with so much to look at. The green-faced woman draws me to her. I walk closer.

“Is it somebody?” I ask.

“Henri’s wife,” Leo says. “She’s a very nice woman, good friend of my brother Mike and his wife, Sally. We all collect Matisse.”

“Matisse,” I repeat as Leo points out other paintings. All bright colors and odd shapes.

“Are you overwhelmed?” Leo asks.

“I am.”

“Good. Though one of his masterpieces isn’t there, we sent the
Blue Nude
to the Armory Show in New York. Created quite a sensation.” He chuckles. Sharing a joke with me. I nod and smile.

What is he talking about?

“You probably know the Irishman who helped put it together—John Quinn,” he says.

“I do,” I say, which isn’t a lie since I know dozens of John Quinns. I gather from what Leo says that this John Quinn has his finger in every pie going. Lives in New York but from some small town in Ohio. A big-shot lawyer and a power in the Democratic Party, Leo tells me.

Now Gertrude comes over to us.

“All the pictures are wonderful, of course, but here are true works of genius,” she says, and turns me toward the back wall full of distorted images.

“Pablo Picasso,” she says to me. “Surely you’ve heard of
him
.”

“Sorry, I haven’t.”

“She’s from Chicago, Gertrude,” he says.

“Some day all the world will know his name,” Gertrude Stein says. “Even Chicago!”

“Well, if he gets famous enough we’ll have something of his in Chicago,” I say.

Alice comes in and crosses over to a large canvas. “That’s Pablo’s portrait of Gertrude,” she says.