The Pink Suit: A Novel (6 page)

“I haven't been a girl for a very long time, Patrick Harris.”

“In Inwood, you'll always be that green girl fresh off the boat. Drink up. It's good for you.”

Kate took a sip. The beer was dark.

“Like Murphy's back home,” he said. “Do you remember it?”

Kate took another sip. It was. Murphy's was a point of pride for her father—a Catholic-owned brewery. It was the beer of the working class. If a pub didn't brew their own, they always had Murphy's. The beer had a thick creaminess with a bit of a sweet edge.

“Makes me homesick,” Patrick said. “That's why I love it.”

The food felt like it took an eternity. Ten minutes turned to twenty. They talked at length about the football finals at Croke Park—Offaly's chances versus Down's.

“My money's on Down,” Kate said. “Two goals in three minutes from James McCartan and Paddy Doherty against Kerry last time out—and Kerry was undefeated.”

“Paddy's a fine man. A fine captain. But Offaly—”

“Has no chance.”

Mr. Brown, the bartender, brought them each another beer. When the talk turned to committee work for Good Shepherd's Harvest Festival and Dinner Dance, the fish-and-chips finally arrived. It was nearly midnight by then. Mrs. Brown brought the meal out herself, as if the delivery of food were a command performance at the Gaiety. Her makeup was bright. Her hair was whipped into a fresh bouffant with a bow at the crown. There was an air of Evening in Paris and Niagara Starch about her. Kate could not believe that she'd freshened up, as the Ladies would say, to deliver fish.

“Here we go!”

The woman was beaming, cheery—at midnight. That was a feat that was worthy of a standing ovation. Kate could barely keep her eyes open.

The fish was the classic “one and one,” one cod loin and one serving of chips, served on top of brown paper bags. A mason jar of onion vinegar was placed between them; a handful of pickled pearl onions floated to the top. Just like at home.

Once she had served them, Mrs. Brown didn't leave. She stood for a moment, smiling. She seemed to be waiting for something.

“Thank you,” Kate said. “Looks absolutely delicious.”

“So, how is Her Elegance these days? Taking to the mantle well, is she?”

Kate was used to people asking her about the Wife. “She's lovely. Quite well. Busy, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Mrs. Brown looked so very pleased, as if she had been given an unexpected gift. “Well. Eat up, then,” she said, and left them to their dinner.

Patrick shook his head at Kate. “She nearly died of joy, chatting you up about the First Lady. You shouldn't have on with people like that. She's quite dear.”

“It made her happy.”

“And you, too. You're positively glowing.”

Kate had already put a chip in her mouth and burned the roof of it. She didn't care. The chip was fried perfectly—crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. She took another sip of beer and broke the fish apart with her hands. The cod was sweet and fresh; the batter was golden and crisp. The vinegar provided the right sharp note of acid.

“You eat like you've been in prison,” he said.

“Let us just say that our dear Maggie Quinn cannot be accused of being a good cook.”

“And you?”

“Runs in the family, I'm afraid.”

Mr. Brown delivered yet another round of beer. Patrick leaned back in the booth and smiled at Kate. “It's nice to eat together again. I miss those Sundays when Mam would have you come around.”

“I miss the cake.” Kate looked at her watch. “Almighty. I have to go to work in four hours. Saturday is always busy.”

“Finish your beer.”

“I may be drunk.”

“That will be two of us.”

“What would Father John say?”

“He'd order me a whiskey for courage.”

The words made Kate's hands sweat. Patrick took a long pull of his beer and then put it down. “We should do this more often,” he said. “On a regular basis. I've been thinking about it.”

“And why?”

“Why?”

“Yes. Why have you been thinking of it? You're between telephone operators, aren't you? Another tossed you aside?”

“Kate, you're not making this easy.”

“Patrick, you're making no sense. We see each other nearly every day. That's pretty regular.”

“This is why I should have ordered the whiskey,” he said. “Look. Yesterday, Maggie Quinn stopped by for a dice of pork and told me that your Mr. Charles wants you to start a shop with him. A mom-and-pop sort of thing, she said. The kind of thing married people do.”

“Married?”

He raised his hand to silence her. “And when I heard that, I suddenly thought, I've lost her.”

“Maggie Quinn has a very big mouth.”

“Have I lost you, Kate?”

“Am I yours to lose?”

“I thought we should figure that out.”

“You did? So it's decided, then? Just like that? We suddenly need to figure this out?”

“I thought you'd be pleased.”

“And why exactly is that?”

“Well. You know. You have nobody. I have nobody. We're not getting any younger.”

Kate felt embarrassed and angry—not prideful—that was what she told herself later. This was not about her vanity or her pride.

“So you feel sorry for me?”

“No—”

“Did you ever think that maybe I like the way my life is? I don't have to answer to a husband. I have a perfectly wonderful life, you know. Extraordinary, even.”

Later, Kate blamed the beer. She wasn't used to drinking. But it really didn't matter what her reasons were.

“The Wife,” she said. “Maison Blanche. Her Elegance.” That's how the story began. Kate's lie was brilliant with imagined detail. “We're just like a couple of girls together. Chatting away.” She didn't recognize the sound of her own voice. “I've known her for years, you know. Made her clothes forever. ”

When she finished, Patrick Harris said quietly, “I'll take you home.”

“Probably best,” Kate said.

He knew, of course. There was no mixing—the Ladies were quite firm on that. Peg would have told him. It was a stupid lie.

Yet the Ladies got away with such grand stories—totally unbelievable and usually about their Blue Book friends—and no one seemed to care at all if a story was true or not. Why should Kate be any different?
No harm done,
she wanted to say.

But downtown was clearly not Inwood.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

A stray lock of gray hair had fallen across Patrick's eyes, shading them. She couldn't tell what he was thinking, but Kate felt his disappointment as if it were her own.

It was after one a.m. when they left the pub. Patrick put his arm around Kate as they walked down the street. He was shaking. She hoped it was just the cold.

They stopped at his shop. “I need to get my coat.”

Kate was surprised that she followed him inside and then up the stairs. She told herself that she didn't want to stand in the dark, waiting, on the street. Something could happen. People might see her. People would talk. People always talked. But she knew that wasn't the reason she followed. And so did he.

They walked up the dark stairs together in silence. The scent of bleach and blood was now faint. Kate held the rail to steady herself, even though she no longer felt drunk. When he opened the door to his apartment, the stairs were flooded with soft light. He stopped on the landing and turned to her, and held out his hand for her to take.

Kate stood on the landing. Peg had been gone for two months, but the apartment looked as if she'd just gone round to the shops. Her white sweater was folded on the back of her easy chair. Her button accordion was nearby. Kate had never seen so lonely a place.

Patrick kissed her with passion.

She kissed him back: embarrassed and chaste.

It was very awkward. They stood there for a moment, half in the light and half in darkness, unsure of what to do next.

“We are like fallen angels, you and I,” he said. “That's what the poet would say. Not wise enough to be saved and not wise enough to be wicked and banished forever.”

Patrick leaned in to kiss her again, but Kate turned away, just slightly.

Everything was moving too fast.
We're just friends,
she told herself, but knew that wasn't exactly true—probably never was true. More than anything, Kate wanted to lean in again, she wanted him to kiss her one more time—just so she could be sure that what she felt was not friendship but heat—but the moment had passed. He straightened his tie and stepped back.

“Well. Tomorrow, then,” he said.

“Tomorrow.”

As Kate walked down the stairs, Patrick Harris began to softly sing.
God save our gracious Queen. Long live our noble Queen.

He sounded more sad than cruel, but the song was such an odd choice for this moment. The Queen lorded over everyone. Poor Ireland. Poor us.

Kate should have been angry. “Free Ireland,” her father would have said.

She stopped at the bottom of the stairs with her hand on the door. She could still feel the warmth of his kiss. She hesitated and looked up at him, standing on the landing, singing. He was watching her. Light flooded over him, a store-bought sun, softening the lines in his face.

God Save the Queen,
he sang, and his voice cracked, just a little. It took her breath away.

Patrick went into the apartment and gently closed the door behind him. She could hear him walk across the floorboards and then stop. Kate imagined him standing over Peg's chair, with its small, white sweater, a sleeping ghost.

Kate walked out into the cold night of Inwood alone, longing for the heady scent of peat smoke, the soft stars, and the damp air of a homeland that seemed now to be just a dream.

I
t was Friday again. An entire week had passed, and Kate had not seen Patrick. Another day at Chez Ninon was nearly over. The scent of raw silk—the particular stench of dried mulberries and sea air, of heat and rot—clung to Kate's hands and hair. She'd spent the day making “feathers” from rare wild silk for Mrs. Astor's new gown.

“It must be completely covered,” Mr. Charles said. “Miss Nona insists.”

The project's impossible architecture was overwhelming, and Kate was happy for that. She hardly thought of Patrick at all that day. The silk was as iridescent as pearls; it didn't even seem to be real. Kate took a match to a thread just to make sure. True silk burns slowly. And this had. Then she had checked the bolt for its voice, the silk voice. Real silk sings in a very particular manner when the pieces are rubbed together. And it sang. It sang with the softness of wings. The silk was real—and daunting.

Raw silk stains easily and absorbs any bit of water, even humidity. The requirements of the project were completely absurd. Each “feather” must look absolutely real. It must be soft as down, which meant it had to be sheared and scissored into life by hand. Each feather needed to be so small that it would appear to have fallen from a chick. And there was very little silk on the bolt, so there could be no staining or waste.

Kate had worked since early morning, and there were still about 426 feathers left to make. When she was finished, the feathers had to be sewn onto chiffon with stitches so fine, they would be invisible. Mrs. Astor was coming by for a final fitting the next morning—and Mrs. Astor could not be denied.

Neither, though, could the Ladies. Miss Nona and Miss Sophie apologized profusely as they pulled Kate away from the project.

“We need to see you in the office.”

“It's urgent,” Miss Sophie said.

Kate never liked the word
urgent
. It always had an ominous ring to it.

The day was cloudy. The blue office had a murky cast. Kate sat gingerly on the edge of the pale settee. She had silk dust all over her. The light from the crystal chandelier overhead covered her in rainbows, but she was clearly in need of a bath.

Miss Sophie and Miss Nona were both dressed in Chanel suits—real Chanels. Miss Sophie's was black bouclé with a mandarin collar trimmed in gold braid. Miss Nona's was white and gold tweed, and a gold chain hung around her tiny waist. Gilded, as always, the two sat side by side at the faux Louis XIV desk and volleyed the conversation back and forth.

“We need you to tidy yourself up—”

“Yes. Please. Tidy up—”

“And then run to The Carlyle—”

“But you'll have to tidy up first—”

“The First Lady is at the hotel, waiting with a reporter. They're waiting for us—”

“They'll be very disappointed it's not us, so go into the sample room and choose something nice to wear. Something that says, ‘Please don't be furious—'”

Kate had no idea what they were going on about. “What are you saying?”

“We trust you,” Miss Sophie said.

When it came to the Ladies,
trust
was the only word that was more ominous than
urgent
. Miss Nona smiled and patted Kate's hand gently. “We trust you implicitly, but do find a nice outfit to wear in the sample room. Make sure it's something smart. And fix your face. You need to charm them.”

“You want me to be interviewed?”

“No!” They nearly screamed the word.

“Heavens, no,” Miss Sophie said. “We just want you to say you were sent to do the fittings.”

“We'll call later and tell them we misunderstood.”

Kate did not like the sound of this at all. “Couldn't you just tell them no?” The Ladies both laughed. Apparently, they could not. They also could not honor the request for a feature story about the Ladies themselves: “A personal look into the lives of the women behind the Woman.”

The Ladies explained that they had led colorful lives—too colorful for some of their Blue Book society clients. Kate suspected that for once the Ladies were not exaggerating. They were not.

In 1928, Nona Hazelhurst McAdoo De Mohrenschildt Cowles Taylor Park and her partner, Sophie Meldrim Coy Shonnard, opened Chez Ninon because they were between husbands—and broke. A dress shop was the only solution. Both loved fashion, especially French fashion. Both had lived in Paris. Both were Blue Book. They knew everyone and knew what they wanted—but their collective pasts were dicey, at best.

Miss Sophie was the first wife of Ted Coy, one of the greatest football players to ever play the game and a literary model for F. Scott Fitzgerald. After a whirlwind romance—they met while skiing—Miss Sophie and Mr. Ted eloped. That act prompted Miss Sophie's father, Civil War veteran General Peter W. Meldrim, a self-proclaimed Southerner of the old school, to announce that theirs was a family not keen on eloping. Sophie was forced to promise her father she would not make that mistake again—and she did not.

In 1925, Miss Sophie became engaged to the elderly publisher Frank Munsey. Unfortunately, she was still married to Mr. Ted when she decided to give marriage another try. In a stroke of exceptionally bad luck, days before her divorce was final, the pending groom died, leaving Sophie relatively penniless while the bulk of his fifty-million-dollar fortune went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Soon after, Miss Sophie married Munsey's equally elderly stockbroker, Horatio S. Shonnard. It was a church wedding. “I promised my family,” Miss Sophie told the press. Her father was not amused.

Miss Nona, on the other hand, was the second daughter of William Gibbs McAdoo, the Ku Klux Klan–endorsed California senator, Teapot Dome scandal participant, and forty-sixth secretary of the treasury, who saw World War I on the horizon and closed the U.S. stock exchange for four months, saving America from financial ruin. He'd had three wives, one of whom was President Wilson's daughter Eleanor Randolph Wilson.

Miss Nona married her first husband, a Russian diplomat, in 1917 at St. John's Church in Lafayette Square, in Washington, D.C. The
New York Times
reported that the bride's gown, which she designed herself, was “handsome enough for a presentation at court with a round skirt covered in tulle falling in billows from the waist to the floor.” The church overflowed with lilacs and dogwood. Most of D.C. society was in attendance, including the President and the second Mrs. Wilson, as well as Vice President and Mrs. Marshall. The
Times
pointed out that Mrs. Wilson, who had just lost her mother, “lightened her deep mourning” for the occasion and wore a small black straw hat trimmed with the wings of dead magpies.

Not surprisingly, a hat made with the wings of dead, black birds, no matter how small the wings, is not easily overlooked at a wedding. Newspapers also reported that the tiny flower girl, Miss Sally McAdoo, dressed in a sweet gown of “frilled white organdy,” wept continuously, copiously, disconcertingly, and violently throughout the ceremony. The groom died two years later.

Miss Nona's next husband was the faith healer Dr. Edward S. Cowles, psychiatrist and founder of the Body and Soul Clinic at St. Mark's-in-the-Bouwerie. While they were married, Cowles was tried for murder and arrested for operating a medical clinic and foundation without all the proper licenses but at a tidy profit of five hundred thousand dollars a year.

The rest of her husbands were unremarkable—but, given the combined backgrounds of Miss Sophie and Miss Nona, it was understandable that the request for an interview would be met with alarm.

“Isn't she usually at the Plaza?” Kate said.

“She should be in Washington,” Miss Nona said.

Miss Sophie picked up a small, thin box covered with red stickers:
PAR AVION
—
BY AIR MAIL.
It was the Chanel. Finally. Kate wondered when it had arrived.

“Take pins. Remember, you came to do the fitting for the pink suit. If she asks, say we thought that she was kidding about the interview. We are uninteresting. We are boring. Do you understand?”

The address on the box had that particular handwriting of all Europeans. All those loops, always the same exact size, fascinated Kate. The perfect line through the sevens. French. Belgian. Italian. There was nothing to distinguish the personality of the sender. The penmanship was precise and uniform—like stitch after stitch. Chanel herself could have written that address.

“Kate?”

“Understood.”

Kate had never worn anything from the sample room before. In fact, she wasn't sure if any of the back-room girls in the history of Chez Ninon ever had. The sample room was a walk-in closet nearly the same size as the showroom. It was stuffed with sample clothes from each season. There were plenty of choices for Kate, ranging from Charity Lunch dresses to Dinner with the In-Laws suits. Nothing, of course, said Lying to the First Lady While Looking Smart day dress. There was, however, an entire section marked
MAISON BLANCHE
. The samples were knockoffs of the Wife's knockoffs. That seemed like a good place to start. There was the salt-and-pepper wool tweed after Spring–Summer model number 3270 by Hubert de Givenchy, with its fringed neckline, three-quarter-length-sleeve jacket, and pencil-thin skirt. Then there was the navy-blue silk shantung with the three-button jacket—Mr. Charles designed that one. Very nice, indeed. But stuffed between the rest was Kate's favorite of them all—a vibrant blue-and-black checked tweed suit. The blue was so deep that it was nearly purple, and when set against the black, it was impossibly bright. The Wife had worn one just like it for a tour of a porcelain factory in Vienna that summer. The electric colors stood out in the Viennese factory that was filled with the pale pink and green porcelain that the country is known for.

Next to it was another copy, made in a tweed of emerald green set against a deep pearl gray. This suit, which was made for Miss Nona, would be perfect with Kate's gray Lilly Daché hat, her shoes, and the matching kid leather gloves. And, unlike the suit she had worn to work that day, it would not stink of rotting mulberry and raw silk.

Kate slipped on the jacket and looked in the three-way mirror. The color suited her very well. The gray brought out the pink in her cheeks and the deep auburn of her hair. She had finished the suit herself but never thought that she'd be the one wearing it. The entire time Kate was working on it, she imagined Miss Nona in Paris, sitting at a sidewalk café along the Champs-Élysées, madly sketching the floppy bows, swooping hats, and leopard prints that she'd committed to memory at the Yves Saint Laurent show. The suit lent itself to the elegant practice of fashionable hoodwinking. It was perfect for Kate's visit to The Carlyle.

The back-room girls had their own powder room, but Kate used the one in the showroom.
Just this once,
she thought. Its counters looked like the cosmetics department at Bonwit Teller. There were lipsticks and powders in nearly every shade—and so many French perfumes. Kate wanted a splash of Chanel No. 5 to cover the scent of raw silk that clung to her, but there was none. So she dotted a little Je Reviens behind each ear and in the crook of her elbows. Then she frosted her lips pink, just because.
I look lovely,
she thought. And that made her blush.

The two-story penthouse at The Carlyle was a holdover from the President's bachelor days. Kate knew that from the movie magazines that some of the girls brought in to read with lunch. Marilyn Monroe had been seen there recently—that was the talk, but Kate would hear none of it.

The hotel wasn't far, just a short walk down to Fifth Avenue. She went through the revolving doors, and that was confusing to Kate. She expected the doors to open out into a lobby, but there was a bar and a café and a restaurant with white tablecloths, and no front desk. Kate couldn't even find an elevator. Finally, a doorman discovered her wandering around—“This will not do,” he said—and took her by the arm and led her to the front desk. A call was made to the manager.

“Chez Ninon,” she told him. “I'm expected.”

“For?”

Kate took a deep breath. “A fitting.”

The manager phoned the penthouse. “She said a fitting. Yes.” He covered the phone with his hand. “You are not here for an interview?” he asked Kate.

“Tell them the Ladies sent me,” she said.

“She said she is a representative of some women.” The manager listened for a moment, then said, “Yes. As you wish.” He hung up the phone. “They'll sort it out upstairs,” he said to the bellman, and didn't address Kate at all. The sour-faced man then escorted her onto the elevator. He was not willing to let her out of his sight. He reminded her of a toy soldier, with his uniform and wooden air of authority. On the way up, Kate tried to be pleasant. “Must be like living in a movie, with room service and all the rest,” she said.

The man looked at her and then through her. “Tradespeople normally ride the freight. Keep that in mind for your next appearance.”

Kate felt sorry for the joyless people of the world.

The elevator doors opened, and the bellman walked Kate all the way to the apartment, holding her arm tightly, as if she were going to run away. He knocked on the door and waited for it to open before he turned to her and said, “The freight elevator is on your left.”

Kate longed to smell the scent of silk on her skin again.

A tall man had opened the door. Blond. Nondescript. Secret Service, clearly.

“I'm Kate. From Chez Ninon.”

The man wrote her name down and told her to wait in the entryway. It was a room by accident, a marble alcove surrounded by a series of white French doors that led into the penthouse. With the doors closed around her, it was like standing in a small white box. There was no place to sit. The air was stale and smelled of old cigarettes. The perfume Kate had taken from the Ladies' powder room quickly became cloying. It reminded her of a funeral home—that stale air of old lilies, starched dresses, and face powder—but she waited. She held Chanel's box in front of her like a Christmas gift.