Empty Mansions (39 page)

The home is still a comfortable spot, with a reading room and a sun parlor. And one can still see, in the upstairs dormitory, the charming bathrooms with little sinks all in a row at a child’s height, twenty for boys and twenty for girls, with numbered cubbies for their toiletries and beautiful rows of lockers made of oak.

Huguette received similar letters over the next few years from the YWCA of Los Angeles, where the $25,000 left by W.A. for a women’s home was not enough for its upkeep. This home was a memorial to her grandmother, Mary Andrews Clark. Huguette again asked questions but sent nothing.

• • •

On May 18, 1993,
Huguette was a bidder at a Sotheby’s auction for
two antique French dolls. The first, in Lot 219, was a Jumeau triste pressed bisque doll, circa 1875, with a dimple in the chin, fixed brown glass paperweight eyes, pierced ears, blond mohair wig, in cream lacy overdress with Eau-de-Nil silk below and cream lacy and silk bonnet. The estimate was $12,000 to $15,000. She authorized her attorney to bid up to $45,000, but got it for $14,933.

The second, in Lot 244, was a Thuillier pressed bisque doll, circa 1885, with fixed blue glass paperweight eyes, pierced ears, blond mohair wig, in pink silk dress with cream lacy overdress and matching straw
bonnet. The estimate was higher, $18,000 to $27,000, and she craved this one even more, authorizing a bid up to $90,000. She won it at $14,054.

On that day, not so different from many other days, Huguette spent $29,000 on two dolls, but she had been a lucky bidder. She had authorized her attorney to bid up to $135,000, twice the annual budget of the Paul Clark Home.

WANDA
 

A
FTER
H
UGUETTE
was no longer taking painting lessons from Tadé Styka and he had moved on to his own marriage during World War II, she kept up a lively correspondence with Tadé and his new wife, Doris. When the Stykas had their only child, a daughter born in 1943, Huguette became godmother to the girl, Wanda Magdaleine Styka. Like her mother, Huguette kept the thread of relationships alive from generation to generation.

Wanda always called Huguette by the French word for godmother, Marraine. “
She really is adorable,” Huguette wrote to Doris. “I find her more so each time I see her.”

Sometimes Huguette offered to babysit when Wanda’s parents went to the movies, and the families exchanged gifts and talked on the phone. But even with these dear friends, her visits were few. “Mrs. Clark,” Doris wrote in July 1948, “
it has been so very long since we have seen you. We do hope to be given the pleasure of a visit from you soon. But if you find it difficult to venture out in this steaming weather—may Wanda and I now or soon accept the invitation you so sweetly offered, so long ago, to visit you one afternoon—for just a little while?”

Huguette sent Wanda a baby carriage, her first bicycle, and a cashmere cardigan in ecru. She paid for air-conditioning so the Stykas wouldn’t have to suffer from the heat. And later she sent checks, $50,000 and $60,000 at a time. Huguette and Anna sent Doris and Wanda a new television in August 1948, just in time to watch Milton Berle take over as the regular host of the
Texaco Star Theater
on Monday nights. That same month, Huguette did arrange a visit, giving Wanda a new doll and a proper wardrobe for it. “
As we think of what you have done and are doing for Wanda,” Doris wrote, “with no thought of glory for your dear self, the overwhelming sense of gratitude we feel is really too deep for words.”

After Tadé died in 1954, Huguette’s generosity filled the breach, supporting Doris and Wanda and paying for Wanda’s continued education
at an elite Catholic high school for girls. The Stykas became an oddly reclusive pair themselves, living in a hideaway 1837 farmhouse in a river valley between the Berkshire Hills and the Taconic Range in southwestern Massachusetts. Wanda had no siblings and never married. It was just mother and daughter alone together in the mountains, just like Anna and Huguette alone together on Fifth Avenue.

Like Huguette, Wanda lost her father when she was young. She lived with her mother until Doris’s death. She lived alone thereafter. She had very little contact with any of her relatives.

Wanda, too, showed an artist’s sensibility, combined with a meticulous nature. Working as an
art curator and archivist, she wrote regularly to Huguette, describing her work in a striking and imaginative handwriting that Huguette showed off to her doctors at the hospital. It was an artist’s handwriting, carrying earnest messages of her love for Huguette, along with news of the holidays and the passing seasons. Wanda often included photos of herself, at Huguette’s insistence. These photos show a short woman with her hair pulled back and parted in the middle, a bundle of positive energy posing dramatically among the peonies or the yellow roses flanking the stone steps to the Styka home. Wanda was living the quiet life, like her godmother, but in a beautiful place.

Huguette told her staff that she
loved
Wanda, a word she didn’t use with many people.

Chris Sattler suggested that Huguette invite Wanda to the hospital, but she said she didn’t want Wanda to see her that way or that she couldn’t entertain properly there.

In fact, though they talked often on the phone, Wanda said she never knew Huguette was in a hospital. She had figured out, however, that Huguette was no longer at 907 Fifth Avenue. After her mother died in September 2003,
Wanda tried to call Huguette at the BUtterfield 8 numbers at the apartments. When she didn’t get an answer, she called Madame Pierre, asking her to tell Huguette of her mother’s death. Huguette returned the call to offer her condolences.

Then Huguette called again, with urgent advice for Wanda. Huguette insisted that Wanda not live alone. With her mother gone, Huguette told Wanda that she wasn’t safe by herself in her retreat in the woods. She insisted that Wanda send her a map of the property showing the proximity of neighbors.

Wanda never found out where Huguette was living. Madame Pierre told Wanda that she could reveal Huguette’s location, but at the same time she said she was afraid to tell, because Huguette might not like it. Wanda later said that she had replied, “
Well, then don’t.” She said she didn’t need to know. “My godmother was very private, and I always respected that.”

Wanda traveled to Manhattan from time to time and would tell Huguette all about her trips, but she didn’t press for an invitation to visit. She said she just didn’t want to impose on Huguette.

Wanda said she must have seen Huguette for the last time at her father’s studio just after he died in 1954. Huguette was forty-eight, and Wanda was eleven. Wanda still kept in touch with her godmother for more than half a century. “
If there ever was anybody in the world who ever loved Mrs. Clark just for her love,” Chris Sattler said, “it was that lady.”

IT JUST SNOWBALLED
 

H
UGUETTE
’
S GIFTS
to her nurse Hadassah began almost immediately after she moved into Doctors Hospital.

The first large one came in September 1993, after there was a flood in the basement of the Peris’ building. Hadassah mentioned to Huguette that all three of her children had asthma. The next day, Hadassah recalled, Huguette suggested they move. The Peris found a house nearby, on Shore Boulevard, and bought it, with Huguette giving Hadassah $450,000. They kept the previous apartment, too.

That year, her accountant, Irving Kamsler, expressed concern to her attorney Don Wallace that Huguette was “
vulnerable to the influence of people around her evidenced by her
extraordinary gifts to her nurses and their families.” Any sob story would have her reaching for her checkbook.

Huguette started giving the Peris gifts at Christmas, $40,000 for Hadassah and $40,000 for her husband. Hadassah said she would say, “
Madame, you have given us so much.” Huguette was generous to other employees as well, but the gifts to Hadassah accelerated. She paid for twenty years of schooling for the three Peri children, from preschool through high school at the Yeshivah of Flatbush, then through college and graduate school. She paid for their medical bills, piano lessons, violin lessons, and Hebrew lessons, their basketball and summer camps in upstate New York. When the Peris had some trouble with back taxes, she paid for that.

Huguette wrote more than three hundred checks to Hadassah over the twenty years she was in the hospital. Some of these checks, Hadassah said, were not for her but for other staff members. Huguette would make the gifts through Hadassah to protect her privacy. For instance, Huguette gave $25,000 to Ruth Gray, the hospital kitchen worker who brought her meals. Sometimes she’d give Hadassah two checks a day—$45,000 in the morning, $10,000 in the afternoon.

“
Sometimes I would say, you gave me a check already today. She
would say, ‘You have a lot of expense, you can use it.’ I accepted the check because we have a lot of bills. Madame is very generous, and we don’t force her to give us—we don’t ask for it. That’s how she is, very generous, not only me, thousands of people, a lot of people.”

• • •

Huguette also kept buying homes for the Peris.

In August 1999: $149,589 for a second apartment in their old building in Brooklyn, the one with the flood. The Peris’ older son, Abraham (or Avi), moved in there.

In 2000: $775,000 for a house in Brooklyn, so Hadassah’s brother and his family would have a place to stay when they visited. It’s worth about $1.7 million today. But the brother moved to California, and the house has remained vacant ever since she bought it.