Anio Szado (9 page)

Mignonne said, “He’s been here for a while.”

A long-limbed young man was flirting with a table of young ladies near the entrance. Something tough about him. Interesting. The Lachapelles had a savage in their lineage after all, one whose swagger was disturbingly, deliciously, at odds with the manners of the father’s club.

Consuelo said, “Jot down your telephone number. I need a new look. We must meet here again so you can tell me more about your work.”

In an instant, the girl’s expression transformed from dejected to keen.

So that’s how it is, thought Consuelo. Fine then—a kindred spirit. Consuelo had ambitions, too. It was always the women who ached with hunger. Especially the wives.

The next morning, I walked with Madame Fiche to the subway, the reflections in shop windows of her unbending silhouette making me appear gangly and ungainly.

Taking the subway instead of taxis, Madame had proclaimed, was her newest personal wartime sacrifice. “Rubber rationing,” she said, though I suspected it had more to do with cost. “We don’t have dog sleds as you do up north, Mignonne. On the other hand, we have culture—such as it is.”

Weighted down with two bags filled with fabric shears, thread snips, a tobacco tin of straight pins, a measuring tape, and other sundry tools, as well as the two muslins I had made to the client’s measurements as dictated by her former designer, I pointed out the way to the right train.

Our destination turned out to be an old, sturdy apartment with a square black awning that arched over the sidewalk. The haughty concierge had us wait while he checked with Mrs. Brossard, then he sent us to the elevator, where the operator was equally dismissive.

At the client’s door, it was another story altogether. A uniformed girl answered with a shy and respectful smile, taking Madame Fiche’s coat, offering coffee—which Madame declined on my behalf—and seeing to it that we were settled comfortably in the parlor. Before announcing our presence, the maid scuttled closer. “Madame Fiche,” she said, “you are the designer of the Butterfly Collection?”

“Indeed I am.”

“I heard it was magnificent, Madame. Excuse my boldness, but if I may tell you … I made this myself.” She held out the skirt of her simple uniform.

I braced myself for Madame’s cruel response. But she took the skirt in her hands and considered it, her seriousness a gift to the girl.

“Very good,” said Madame. “Carry on.”

The maid beamed and tripped away with a smile broadening her shapely lips.

A moment later, a rotund woman entered, a small white poodle squirming in her arms. “Good morning, Madame Fiche.” She bent to release the dog onto the carpet, wheezing softly at the effort, but upon touching the ground the poodle stood on its rear feet, its front paws stretching toward its mistress’s sturdy calves. “Tsk. He has no respect for stockings, and no idea how precious they are.” She scooped up the dog and nuzzled its nose with her own.

She had inadvertently lifted the front of her dress with the dog; her dimpled knees winked at us.

“It is lovely to meet you in person,” said Madame, no hint of amusement in her voice. “I have brought with me my assistant—”

In that moment, I realized that this was Mrs. Brossard, the woman whom I had to fit into the muslin. Even with the generous seam allowances in the larger of the two sizes, there was no possible way.

“—and we have prepared a preliminary garment for the fitting.”

“Monsieur Vaudoit gave you the sizes?”

“Indeed he did, thank you. The measurements he provided were …” With a glance I saw that she was reaching the same conclusion as my own. “Most generous of him to share. And Atelier Fiche is honored to be chosen as your—”

“Vaudoit is a moron,” said Mrs. Brossard. “You tell me,
Madame Fiche, why would a designer show a dress that can’t be made? Why put something on a runway and then refuse to make it for your client?”

“I trust you are not speaking of the coat I am making for you.”

“I’m talking about a dress, a pretty summer dress! Why do you think I fired Vaudoit? He’ll make the dress for Mrs. Mitchell; he told her he would. But I asked first, and he refused to make it for me. See if I ever wear a Vaudoit again!”

Madame Fiche looked shocked. “I have never heard of such a thing.”

I began, “Maybe the style wouldn’t suit,” but the two women glared at me, and Madame’s expression was chilling.

“The style,” Madame Fiche said pointedly, “would be perfectly delightful on Mrs. Brossard. As would any. However, as we have heard, Monsieur Vaudoit is a … moron.”

I asked, “Should I proceed with the fitting, Madame?”

The client was shaking the dog’s face into her own. “Proceed,” she sang out from behind the white fur.

But how to proceed? Both muslins were sized for a woman with a waist. I swallowed my reluctance and pulled them out of the bag. “The size,” I began.

“Is based strictly on Vaudoit’s measurements,” said Madame Fiche.

The client said, “Everything he ever made for me has fit like a glove.”

The coat muslin, however, was bound to fit more like a sausage casing. What could I do? I found the larger of the two cotton garments, shook out its folds, and held it up. It looked miniscule in relation to its target.

Now even Madame Fiche blanched. All was silent at first, then a mechanical whirling sound came from the mantelpiece, and a click. A clock struck once with a deep, reverberating gong. The dog in the client’s arms squirmed and yipped.

Mrs. Brossard laughed. Madame Fiche forced out a laugh and gestured for me to do the same.

“Ha-ha,” I said thinly.

“Ha-ha!” Madame Fiche answered brightly. “Such a lively household! It pains me to have to leave so soon to attend to some dreadful business. However, my assistant will stay on to complete the fitting. I will check on her progress at the studio later this afternoon.”

Madame was leaving? The garment would not fit, and it would be all my fault.

The client brushed her hand through the air as if to say, “Yes, yes, off with you,” and called her girl—“Celeste!”—to fetch Madame’s coat.

As Celeste scurried past to catch up to Madame, I pulled out the measuring tape.

“Put that away!” Mrs. Brossard cried. “My God, how many times must a figure be measured? You designers are all the same! Give me that muslin.”

I held it out.

“Oh, forget it,” the client said as the dog once again refused to be released. “You put it on. Go ahead: let me see it on you. It’ll give me the general idea.”

I slipped into the smaller of the two muslins, adjusted the collar, pinned the waist closed, and smoothed the front panels with my palms. Though large, the piece hung elegantly enough from my shoulders, which were overly strong and wide thanks to my father’s genes and my year of waitressing in Montreal.

“Good,” said Mrs. Brossard. “That’s it, exactly!” She squeezed the dog to her ample bosom. “That’s what I want. Take it back and make it. Madame Fiche has the fabric already; you have the measurements. You understand I need it right away. Oh, it will be excellent. I have a good eye, I tell you.”

Again she called her maid. Then, ruffling the dog’s curly ears, she wandered away.

Celeste appeared, a bundle in her arms. “Don’t forget your coat, miss.”

I was bending over my bag, shoving in the useless muslins. “Thank you, Celeste, but I didn’t bring a coat.”

The girl glanced back at the doorway through which Mrs. Brossard had passed. “It’s yours,” she said quickly. “Keep it.” She pushed the bundle into my bag and hurried me out of the apartment.

I walked stunned to the subway. Once aboard, I peered into the bag: Celeste had given me a garment of blue artificial silk. A present for Madame Fiche? A simple mix-up? I couldn’t comprehend it.

Clutching the bag, I rode to the studio and climbed the endless stairs.

The day had been an exhausting disaster. At this rate, I would never prove my worth. I was unlikely to keep my job at all, never mind collect any pay. I would never make partner.

All I’d managed, so far, was to clean the studio, waste cotton, and lose Madame’s newest client. I could cry. Instead, I let myself into the studio and curled up at one end of the sofa, pulling onto my lap a length of herringbone wool that had been draped across the arm. Leo was right: I ought to look for a real job, a way to be useful. I would wait for Madame’s return to the studio, and tell her what had happened. Let Madame fire me as Mrs. Brossard had fired Vaudoit. I’d work in a factory: hard but mindless, logical work. It would be a relief.

The afternoon grew old as I waited. The sunlight that had streamed in so clear and bright this morning had dissipated to a haze. In its midst, a blade of white light, reflecting off the panes of some nearby building, quivered on the floor. I watched it tremble, my eyes tired.

It seemed just brief minutes later that an insistent pounding pulled me to consciousness. Madame was crossing the floor, each step as sharp as a hammer fall.

“What are you doing? Get up! Get off the sofa!”

My heart raced in my chest. The sky above the neighboring rooftops held a tinge of pink. “Is it morning?”

“It is night.”

“Night?”

“Thursday evening! The day you measured Brossard. I have come to check your progress and I find—nothing! You should have cut the coat by now.”

Right: the coat. Madame had left me there, left me to take the fall. Pain gripped the base of my skull. “I didn’t measure her.”

Madame swore. “Are you stupid? The measurements from Vaudoit were completely wrong!”

“She wouldn’t let me. She hates being measured.”

“
Merde
! That bastard!”

“I’m sure it was just a mistake on his part.”

“Stupid and naïve! He would have known well her resistance to the tape.
Il est un serpent
. He sabotaged me.”

Even in my tired state, I knew she was being ridiculous. “Vaudoit has no reason to do anything like that. Clients change designers. It’s not personal.”

“Oh, it is. Everything is personal. You have not seen what the French here are capable of; you were too long under the shelter of your father’s wing. He could have told you, at least, that not one among us succeeds unless the others want him to do so. It is all to do with one’s politics: all personal.” She perched stiffly on the edge of the sofa. “You see what Vaudoit did to me today. He relishes the chance to break me.”

“It’s a competitive industry.”

“Don’t embarrass yourself. I am not speaking of fashion, but of country. Do you know nothing of what is happening under the German Occupation? The French government in Vichy has been working with great delicacy to ensure that France does not entirely disappear. But those who support General de Gaulle against Vichy are blind to the realities of diplomacy and survival; they mewl about collaboration with the Nazis. The Gaullists
would lead a fresh invasion of France, spilling more French blood, destroying everything we have retained.”

“I know what’s happening there. I just don’t see how it has anything to do with Mrs. Brossard’s measurements.”

“Vaudoit must be a Gaullist. It is this, above all, that sets him against me. As a point of honor, he must ensure my failure. I should have seen it. It is my own fault.”

Madame bent forward in her chair as though she were in pain—or perhaps her script was written on her low-heeled, black shoes. “And your fault, Mignonne, even more so. You compound the failure, and I must carry it on my shoulders. Tomorrow, I tell Mrs. Brossard that due to your ineptitude, I have been unable to complete her coat on time. I will lose yet another client. You will have taken me, in four months, from
Women’s Wear Daily
to a new level of defeat.”

My mind was finally coming awake. “No.” Fault or not, I would not let Madame think I had failed. “I’ll make a new muslin tonight.”

She gave me a baleful look. “And waste yet more fabric?”

“It will fit, I promise you. You can judge tomorrow if it’s worth going forward with the coat. Go home now, Madame. In the morning, we’ll cut the client’s fabric. In the afternoon, we’ll sew.”

When she had left, I found the bag I had carried from Mrs. Brossard’s apartment. I laid the muslin and the mysterious blue garment side by side on a table. The cotton muslin coat I had made was crudely sewn but sleekly shaped, its lines elegantly cinched, while the blue dress, though evidently designed for a body-hugging fit, was almost bulbous.

I turned the dress inside out. At the nape was an embroidered satin tag: “Atelier Vaudoit, Paris France, New York USA.” Stitched into a side seam was a short loop of soft cotton ribbon. Handwritten on it were a code number, a date (03/42—the dress had been created just one month earlier), and a name: Brossard.

I considered working from the intact garment, manipulating
the dress this way and that way on gridded paper to create pattern pieces from its various sections. I had done this sort of thing dozens of times—enough times to know it required a mind sharper and more focused than mine tonight. The alternative was tiresome, but I felt incapable of doing the job any other way. I would separate the garment into its segments, tackling one simple piece at a time.