The Pink Suit: A Novel (17 page)

Two days later, on November 14, the Wife wore the suit again. This time it was during what the newspapers called a “Korean gift ceremony,” held at Maison Blanche, in the yellow Oval Room. The photo made Kate laugh out loud. On the far left, General Chung Hee Pak looked like a G-man. He was wearing dark tinted glasses, a shiny suit, and an ironic smile. On the far right, the Wife, who had just been presented with a chest of handmade clothes sent by female students in Korea, had a look of stoic horror.

Even in black-and-white, the chest of clothes looked absolutely dreadful. Kate couldn't even imagine what color they were, but they were shiny, with thick stripes and fat polka dots, and were to be paired with a hideous striped beret, which, although exotic, would probably never even be worn by someone as eccentric as Mrs. Vreeland. Standing next to the Wife was the President, smirking. He had a look on his face that made Kate think he might just announce that Her Elegance was going to duck into the loo to try everything on. Maybe even give a little fashion show. He looked like a man on the verge of a practical joke, and Kate liked that. She showed the newspaper clippings to Maggie Quinn at supper that night.

“It's a nice suit. It's okay,” she said. Maggie seemed more interested in the articles themselves. “Did you notice that their little girl is Little Mike's age?”

Kate had not.

“And this is funny. The Wife is about your age. I wonder how you'd look in a pink suit like this.”

Kate didn't even hesitate. “Reborn,” she said, and that was when she knew that she would make this pink suit for herself.

T
he Chez Ninon telephone never stopped ringing. The questions from the press were endless. “Will the First Lady continue to buy from Norman Norell? Or are you copying his designs, too?”

“Favored colors are Gauguin pink, black, turquoise, gray, and white. Deny or confirm?”

With Mr. Charles gone, it was left to Miss Sophie to release Chez Ninon's most recent corporate position on whether or not there had been a shopping spree at the shop or if a new evening gown was one of theirs or had indeed been bought in Paris and flown back on Air Force One. Dealing with the press was not a task she particularly enjoyed.

That day, the reporters were even more insistent than usual. Chez Ninon appeared on the list of the designers for India, and by the time the Associated Press arrived at their door with a mimeographed questionnaire about the wardrobe, including cut, color, style, and “inspiration”—which was a polite way of asking the Ladies whose design they'd stolen—Miss Sophie had decided to delegate and handed the form to Kate.

“Fill in your part,” she said. Underneath the heading
Travel Clothes,
someone had typed in
Pink Suit, Chez Ninon
. Kate nearly cheered. The Wife planned to wear the suit to India. It was amazing news. Maybe she and Patrick would celebrate. Maybe even have champagne. They'd planned dinner that night: it would be the first time since mid-October that they would have a chance to spend some time together. Thanksgiving was the next week. The back room was mad with dresses and suits for assorted family gatherings.

Patrick was deluged with orders, too. Without his father and mother to help, he spent nearly every waking hour brining and smoking and grinding and seasoning. He smelled like a rasher of bacon. It was not just turkeys that everyone wanted. Some wanted pork crowns, just to be contrary. And everyone needed both white and black puddings for a proper Irish fry-up for the holiday-morning breakfast. And there was nearly a trawler's worth of fish that had to be smoked to keep families happy before the turkey was brought, brown and glorious, to the table. There were so many orders for sausage that Patrick had been seasoning, grinding, and freezing for weeks.

“I can't even imagine what Christmas will be like,” he said.

Awful,
Kate thought, but was quietly glad that Patrick was so busy, because it gave her time to work on her pink suit without interruption. She wanted to finish it for Christmas to surprise him. She was going to wear it to church that morning, just to see that wonderful look of pride on his face.

They'd agreed to meet at 8:30 p.m. at the pub that night, although Patrick had warned her that he would reek of pork fat and probably be a little late. “Mrs. Brown knows you're coming, so she'll watch over you until I arrive.”

Kate was so looking forward to their date. After work, she ran down to Bergdorf Goodman's to finally buy the Chanel No. 5 she'd had her eye on. She took the express train home. She had a hot bath and fixed her hair. She picked out a simple black dress, an LBD of her own design, which she knew went well with her skin color and set off the red in her hair.

If pink could be thunder.
It was such a lovely thing that Patrick had said. It still took her breath away. She wanted the night to be special.

Unfortunately, Kate lost track of time.

She was not intoxicated by lilacs, as Mr. Charles and his clients were. But it did begin with the Chanel No. 5. Two dabs behind each ear, and a little in the crook of each arm, made her think of the Wife, India, and the suit. Their pink suit—although Kate's was still lying half-finished on her workroom table.

When she pulled her slip over her head, there was a rush of heat and sandalwood, and in that moment she decided that that horrible girdle and those nylons could wait. She put on her bathrobe instead. Out on the street, she could hear the laughter of couples going somewhere on a Friday night, but she still had time. She just wanted to take a minute to adjust a seam before she went. She'd been thinking about it all day. Then she'd finish dressing and run down to meet Patrick. Kate knew if she didn't fix the seam, she'd be thinking about it all night. And that would ruin everything.

Kate was clearly obsessed with the pink suit—and she knew it. Chanel's improbable architectural demands were addictive, like one puzzle after another, meant for Kate to solve. Adjusting the toile to fit her wasn't as difficult as Kate had thought. Quilting the silk to the wool was painstaking but not impossible. Even though she did sew it by hand, the skirt came together fairly quickly. Deep in its hem, Kate had placed a scapular of St. Jude, the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes, just as her mother always had done with her best skirts, the ones she reserved for special occasions. “A little bit of the rebel county,” she would say. It was a way to be proudly Catholic, no matter what. It was also convenient. If you need to beseech St. Jude to intervene for you in one hopeless cause or another, this was a better solution than taking an ad out in the newspaper or burying his statue in Isham Park. It would be comforting to have him hovering about.

The real challenge for Kate had been the jacket. Piecing the front to the back was a serious conundrum because some of the tweed was slightly irregular, too loosely woven, which gave it that beautiful look of being handmade, but also made it difficult to work with. And it would not stop shedding. That night, it took several tries, but Kate was finally able to fix the seam so that it matched and lay flat.

Unfortunately, she'd completely lost track of time until a knock at the door startled her. It was Patrick. And it was midnight.

“I'm mortified,” she said.

It was obvious that Patrick had planned to be quite upset with her. He'd probably crafted a poetic and yet furious speech while he waited for Kate at the pub. Probably had one pint and then another and then whiskey for courage. But as soon as Kate opened the door, he'd forgotten it. She was standing there in her slip and bathrobe, covered in tufts of pink wool. There was the scent of sandalwood in the air. She was so pale and beautiful, even without moonlight, that he kissed her. Then kissed her again.

He kissed her neck, and she turned off the lights. He slipped his hand along the edge of her robe. She let it fall onto the floor. When he kissed the length of her arms, he was on his knees before her, as if in worship. She took off his coat, slowly. And then his tie.

One by one they shed the things of their lives until there was nothing left except that moment, not faith or country or history. They were adrift in a sea of pink.

After
—their entire lives would now be measured by that word.

After they made love—slowly, painfully, but deliberately—Kate was surprised. It was not what she'd expected. It was like being caught in a swift current with storm clouds in your heart.

After, he lay with her in her small bed and kissed the salt from her forehead, until just before dawn. “I need to meet the delivery soon,” he said. Kate, of course, had work.

She knew she would miss him that day.

“After mass, on Sunday,” she said. “I'll give you a hand at the shop, if you like.”

After.

Patrick was surprised but pleased. “Will you wear the suit to church?”

“It won't be done for a quite a while.”

“Good. Save it for our wedding, then. We have to save something for the wedding, don't you think? Father John is going to be blessedly angry at us.”

“Should I wear the hat, though? Just for fun?”

Patrick pulled her back into his arms again. Apparently, she should.

The raspberry-pink hat looked slightly odd with her navy-blue polka-dot dress, but Kate did wear it to church on Sunday anyway. It made Patrick laugh when he saw it. “That looks like an exclamation point on your head.”

It did. She didn't care. Just wearing the hat made her incredibly happy.

The Sunday nine a.m. was not their usual mass. Nine a.m. felt like lunchtime to Kate, but they were taking Little Mike with them. “He keeps asking where his auntie Kate is,” Maggie said. Organizing a small child into proper clothing took more time than Kate and Patrick ever imagined. When they finally wrestled him into his blue tweed suit with the tiny bow tie that never seemed to clip on straight, the three of them walked hand in hand down Broadway, to church. The air was crisp and not too cold yet. Christmas was still a month away. Little Mike had an endless stream of questions about Santa Claus and his reindeer.

“Does the baby Jesus ride in the sleigh, too?”

“No amount of Yeats can prepare you for the theological musing of a four-year-old,” Patrick said.

The boy dawdled; Kate and Patrick did too. When they finally arrived at the Good Shepherd, Father John was making a pre-mass announcement. It was all about Rome: what Rome wanted, what Rome hoped for.
Who cares about Rome? This is Inwood,
Kate thought.
Just swing a little incense about and get on with it.

The Good Father was wearing his gold brocade and white silk vestments. The embroidery on the back was so Schiaparelli, so intricate with bejeweled lilies, that Kate found it all, even the announcements, uplifting. But she couldn't eat it.

Fasting was difficult enough, and the longer Father John talked, the longer it would be before they had their promised breakfast of pancakes at the Capitol Restaurant. Little Mike was a bit whingey. Soon, the boy would be bouncing off the ceiling. Kate picked him up and stood him on the pew, between herself and Patrick. It was rude, of course, but it calmed the boy.

“Who looks smart?” Kate whispered in Little Mike's ear. “Who is the most stylish?”

He pointed at Father John. The boy had a good eye.

Kate could hear Patrick's stomach growling. Little Mike was sucking his tiny fist, but Father John went on talking about various ideas to “modernize” the Church.

“Tambourines, perhaps. They're very popular.”

“He's going to turn us all into Protestants,” Patrick whispered.

After mass, at breakfast, Kate and Patrick sat at the counter of the Capitol instead of in a booth so that Little Mike could spin around on a stool. They ate their fill of pancakes until they smelled like maple syrup, and drank glasses of milk with paper straws. Patrick showed Little Mike how to balance a spoon on the tip of his nose. And then they all did it—all three of them—smiling at the waitress, who was not amused. They left the diner laughing, each holding one of Little Mike's hands. They slowly walked him home, stopping at shopwindows along Broadway to show the child things like steel snow shovels and tins of fruitcakes stacked in the shape of a pyramid—any excuse to hold his small hand in theirs for just a little while longer.

When Patrick and Kate arrived at Harris Meats after dropping Little Mike at home, the butcher shop was stone-cold. The heat had been off all day. Patrick tasted like maple syrup when he kissed her. But it was just one kiss. “You need to change your clothes,” he said. “Pork has a stench to it, and you'll never get the smell out. After, you'll have to bathe, too. Rinse your hair with lemon juice.”

Kate could only hope that her pink pillbox hat would be saved from the stench. She took it off and, along with her good wool coat, laid it on Peg's chair, upstairs in the apartment, just to keep it safe.

Patrick put on his white coat and opened the walk-in refrigerator. “Once you change, you can do the sausage. I'll do the black pudding, unless you don't mind the sight of blood; then you can do the pudding.”

Kate did, indeed, mind the sight of blood. She must have turned pale. “It does take some getting used to,” he said.

As soon as Kate changed into Peg's “butcher's uniform,” as Patrick called it, she knew it was a mistake to offer to help. The dress was cheap nylon and two sizes too large. Kate tied a length of butcher's twine around her waist. None of it fit her—not the dress or the stench of pig or the buckets of blood. It didn't feel like a world that Kate could ever get used to.

The walk-in was even colder than the shop. It was dimly lit by the red exit sign over the door, which made it look like a sideshow barker's vision of hell. The earthy smell of blood and rot made Kate feel ill. She pulled the cord above her head and turned on the light for Patrick with a click. “How can you see without light?”

“I know where I put things. There's light enough with the sign. No need to waste electricity.”

The bare bulb swung. It was too bright, and it blinded her for a moment. When her eyes adjusted, Kate saw the poor half cow was still strung up on a hook. The long metal shelves were filled neatly with dozens of pale plucked turkeys, headless, two rows deep, and organized according to size. Patrick handed her a bucket. “This is back fat. You'll need that,” he said. The fat was ground like hamburger and pure white. “It's cold enough to work in the shop, so we'll work there.” He turned off the light. “It's brighter, too. No need for lamps.”

Kate looked out the front window of the shop. It was just half past two, but Broadway was deserted. Telephone operators worked on Sundays, but perhaps they were between shifts. There was no one around at all. The massive building looked like an abandoned hive.

“Ready?” Patrick asked.

She was not. Everything in the butcher shop had a place except for Kate. She didn't even know where to stand.

“Wash your hands first, then put your gloves on,” Patrick said. “Very hot water and then very cold. If your hands are warm, they will taint the meat.”

Kate had no idea that making sausage was such an intricate process. On the long table, Patrick placed gallon buckets of pork cubes, back fat, and several small bowls of spices. Kate recognized the sage, but that was all. The rest was a mystery.