Of Irish Blood (14 page)

Madame looks at me.
“Comment?”
What’s the woman asking for now?

I try to explain, pointing to Mary Zander and then to myself.

“Le Louvre,”
I say.
“Le place de la Concorde, Eiffel Tower.”

“Tour Eiffel,”
Madame Simone corrects me. She understands. “Georgette,” she says to the maid, and makes show-them-out gestures.

“Va,”
Madame says to us.
“Va! Va!”

Mary Zander changes into a navy blue serge dress with sailor collar and we
va
. The blind leading the blind I think. But so what? Back we go to the rue de Rivoli.

“May I present the Louvre,” I say to Mary Zander.

“Marvelous,” she says. She doesn’t even need to go in. Happy to walk through the Tuileries.

“Nice day,” I say. “Indian summer.”

Mary smiles. “Yes. Do you think there is any way to say
that
in French?”

We walk up the Champs-Élysées and nod at the Arc de Triomphe. I find a taxi stand and we head for her hotel, the Ritz on the place Vend
Ô
me.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Mary says to me as we get out and look at the façades on the place Vendôme.

“Wow,” I say.

We lunch or
déjeuner
at the Ritz. Mary has learned to say
steak et pommes frites
, “the only thing without all those sauces.” I get the same. Delicious.

The Zanders are from Buffalo, she tells me. Her husband is if not
the
grain king at least a well-placed grain prince. She finds interacting with the French an ordeal. She needs not just a guide but a go-between, a friend. But most importantly she wants to share the naked wonder of Paris with someone who won’t react with cool French amusement to her enthusiasm. I am happy to fill the bill.

After lunch we go to the Eiffel Tower. That’s easy to spot. “Isn’t it great?” I say to Mary. “All these sights we’ve seen only in pictures and now here’s the real thing.”

Mary smiles and nods.

The maid, Georgette, is waiting at the Ritz with Mary’s gown when we return. I notice the box has
THE HOUSE OF CHARLES WORTH
embossed on it. Georgette sees Mary give me ten francs. We wave at Mary as she goes up the marble and gilt staircase, the bellman following her with the box. Georgette looks at me, says
“Madame Simone, demain,”
and rubs her fingers together. So I guess I pay Madame a share.

But I’ve two more dollars now, and a full stomach. Not too bad for my first day. I sleep through the night.

The next morning I go back to Madame Simone’s studio. Cold today and raining. Madame greets me with an outstretched hand. No words needed. I put a franc on her palm. She just looks at it until I add four more. She walks over to a table, pushes fabric aside, sits down. Takes a black leather box from a drawer and puts the money away.

Dolly’s letter is open in front of her. I look down, see that it’s written in French, thank God. Madame Simone points to a rack of gowns.

“Pour Dolly,”
she says.

I walk over and look at the four. Very fancy. Sequins and feathers on each. Beautifully made. I lift the hem. Tiny even stitches.

“C’est bon,”
I say.

“Bon?”
Madame says.
“Bon? Non. Magnifique.”

“Oui, oui,”
I say. “That too.”

Georgette brings out a big box, takes a gown down, and begins to carefully wrap it in tissue paper. Getting the shipment ready?
“Aujourd’hui,”
she says. Going out today, I guess.

“Merci, mademoiselle,”
Madame Simone says to me.
“Au revoir.”

Good-bye? No. Didn’t Dolly tell her I need a job? I point to the letter.

“Travaillez pour vous s’il vous plaît?”
I say.

“Comment?”
Madame says. Doesn’t understand me. The train station all over again.

I take the folded sketches of my designs from my bag and set them next to Dolly’s letter on the table. Madame Simone puts a finger on one and pushes it toward me.

“Vous,”
I say. “Sew-ez,” making imaginary stitches in the air.
“Le
dresses
de moi.”

“Comment?”
she says again.

I repeat the charade and now Georgette is watching.

“Ahh,” she says, and rattles away in French to Madame Simone.

“Vous,”
Madame Simone says, pointing at me.
“Une couturière?”
She starts laughing and the maid joins in. Very amused. What’s so funny? I want to tell them that Montgomery Ward’s sold lots of my dress patterns in the catalog. But of course I don’t. How can I find the words?

Madame Simone picks up a sketch.
“Vous?”
She mimes drawing.

“Oui oui,”
I say. And I sketch a design in the air. Then another and another. Silence from Madame though Georgette laughs.
“Peut-être,”
Madame says.

That means perhaps. A chance.
“Peut-être?”

“Moi?”
I say.
“Traivaillez pour vous?”

Madame Simone nods.

“I’ve got the job, I’m a designer?” I say, which Madame doesn’t understand at all. It’s the maid, Georgette, who sets me straight. Very good at pantomime is Georgette.

I find out that Madame Simone copies the designs of big names like Charles Worth and Paul Poiret then makes up the gowns in very good fabrics. Nothing chintzy about Madame Simone’s creations, Georgette lets me know. She has me touch the velvet skirt of a dress. But Madame Simone’s versions cost half what the original would. Madame has a few French customers, but she specializes in tourists. The concierges at the best hotels drop hints about a fine dressmaker,
“pas cher,”
and well … Madame makes good money.

Except no couturier allows Madame or anyone known to be on her staff to attend their shows or enter the sacred ground of their fashion houses. So she has to wait until the finished dresses appear in the illustrated magazines like
Le Bon Temps
or
Art et Décoration
.

Now I am to pretend to be a rich American on the couturier circuit. The concierge at the Ritz will arrange the appointments. I’ll ask to make some notes, quickly sketch the gowns, and voilà.

Dishonest, right? Bad enough Madame Simone laughs at my designs but now she wants me to become a crook. Because it is stealing to copy someone else’s work, isn’t it? But try to get that concept across in high school French and charades. Though I think Madame Simone understands. In fact she says to me in surprising English, “I not steal, I adapt.
Les couturiers
give me inspiration.”

So do I say “no” or
“non”
and storm out? Well, I want to but then she says she’ll pay me five francs a dress, a dollar. What do I do? I put my hands on my head and move them back and forth trying to show I’m thinking.
“Demain,”
I say. “Can I let you know tomorrow?”

Georgette sees me out. At the downstairs door she points to me and then to herself.
“Aidez Madame,”
she says.
“Et moi et les autres.”
Which I guess means she and the seamstresses need the jobs that come from Madame Simone’s business. Maybe Madame’s “inspiration” has been running dry because Georgette takes my hand and says,
“S’il vous plaît.”

I really don’t know what to do. I mean, I’m not exactly a virtuous woman. Not after eight years of sneaking off to see Tim McShane. But I guess I’ve made kind of a bargain with God. If I’m good in other aspects of my life, then He’ll forgive me for my sins of the flesh. After all, Tim McShane almost murdered me. If there’s a category of saint “martyr neither virgin,” that could have been me. Surely facing death grants some kind of absolution. But will I start this new life as a thief? I wander back to the hotel, walking along the rue de Rivoli but seeing nothing.

That night I ask Stefan for a good place for dinner. That morning’s petit déjeuner has disappeared after twelve hours. Stefan suggests a nearby restaurant around the corner called L’Impasse because it’s located on an impasse, a dead end. It allows “
les femmes,
women,” he says. I guess Paris is the same as Chicago. Lone women can’t just go anywhere to eat. I find the restaurant on impasse Guéménée.

Stefan told me the restaurant is owned by the Collard family. Their busiest time is lunch, he said, when they serve the merchants from the local market and sell animal fodder, which somehow makes them more open-minded.

The restaurant is empty when I arrive at seven. Early, but
“Je suis une Americaine,”
I say to Madame Collard, a heavyset woman in a black skirt and blouse who sits behind a desk on a high stool just inside the door. I pat my stomach, which confuses her because she smiles, says “aahh,” and pretends to rock a baby. She’s fifty maybe but has one of those full faces that don’t wrinkle.

“You think I’m pregnant,” I say in English. Then
“Non, non”
while rocking the baby myself.

“Faim,”
I say, “hungry.”

“Henri,” she calls out.
“Mon fils Henri parle anglais.”

Well, sort of English.

“Hello. Hello,” the young fellow says. Henri leads me to a table. Early twenties, handsome in a skinny kind of way. No beard or mustache.

I don’t even pretend to read the menu. But say to Henri,
“S’il vous plaît.”

“Bon,”
Henri says. A few seconds later he’s pulling a cork from a bottle of wine.
“Pommard,”
he says. “Burgundy.” He pours a little in my glass. I take a sip. Indian summer, it tastes like Indian summer. Those last warm days, sunlight on orange leaves, the sky that bright blue.

“Wow,” I say, and he fills my glass to the top. Who knew I loved wine? Not me.

“Merci,”
I say.
“Merci.”

I’d be happy to just drink the wine and eat the crusty bread but then he brings out the soup. Creamy, first of all, not watery. Delicious. What is it?

“Choufleur,”
Henri tells me, and searches for the English word. Finally he brings me a head of cauliflower from the kitchen. This from that? I don’t even like cauliflower but I’d ask for more, except he takes the bowl away.

“Coq au vin,”
Henri says, setting down a plate. Chicken I guess, but no Chicago chicken ever got this treatment. Covered in mushrooms with roast potatoes on the side and the sauce …

“Trés, trés bon,”
I tell Henri.

Dessert’s cream puffs stuffed with ice cream, covered with hot fudge.

“Profiteroles,”
Henri says.

I repeat the word three times. I want
“profiteroles”
in my French vocabulary.

Monsieur Collard, the chef, comes out. Roly-poly I’d call him. Red-faced from the kitchen in a white chef’s hat and apron. He kisses my hand. Dear God, Paris. Hurrah.

Henri gives me the bill. Five francs—a whole dollar. Yikes! The most expensive dinner at the Berghoff is only fifty cents. But then I’ve never eaten like this at the Berghoff.

More customers are arriving as I leave. Henri puts the half-full bottle of Pommard on the shelf and says
“Pour vous au revoir,”
mine for the next time, I guess.

Stefan wants to know did I enjoy my dinner.

“Oui,”
I say. “But
cher.
”

“How much?”

“Five francs,” I say.

“Very reasonable for Paris,” he tells me, sniffing.

I calculate. Including the five francs from Mary Zander I have enough money for twenty dinners. What do I do? Eat twice a week? And I do want to eat. I want more coq au vin and profiteroles and a glass of wine from my own bottle of Burgundy waiting around the corner. Now I understand the dreamy tone in Aunt Máire’s voice when she talked about New Orleans, the port where she and Granny Honora landed, when they came from Ireland. “Beignets at Café du Monde,” she’d say. She’d wanted to stay there. “I would have done anything to stay,” she told me once, and I knew
anything
involved the red silk fringed shawl. Now I understand. I’m considering becoming a thief to pay for profiteroles.

I don’t sleep much that night and I’m up early. Mary Zander leaves today. I want to catch her. Get her opinion on abetting Madame Simone and her fiddle.

Breakfast at the Ritz is not petite at all. Funny how the rich get so much for free. Mary tells the waiter to give me anything I want. So I order
“une omelette avec jambon.”

“Ham,” he says in English.

I choose the words for my dilemma carefully. After all, Mary Zander went to Maxim’s in an imitation Charles Worth gown. I stumble around until she stops me.

“Madame Simone provides a service,” she says. “My husband would never allow me to buy a
real
Worth. He says becoming rich hasn’t made him stupid. Value for money is his motto, and if people in Buffalo think my gown’s authentic, so what? In a way I’m advertising Worth, getting new customers for him.”

“So you don’t tell your friends about Madame Simone?”

Mary Zander laughs. “Only very, very close friends. Oh, Nora, you have a very delicate conscience for a woman making her way alone in Paris.”

She has a point, I think. By five o’clock the omelette’s only a memory. I’m hungry. No L’Impasse tonight. I pick up a hunk of
fromage
for one franc, the cheapest of the huge selection at the shop called a fromagerie on the nearby rue Saint-Antoine. Loads of food stores each displaying a specialty—fruit, vegetables, meat, fish. On the corner there’s a glass and marble bakery with cases full of pastries shining with cream and chocolate. All very
cher
. I keep my eyes on the floor as I buy a baguette for fifty centimes. Cheap enough. Riots in Paris if the bread costs too much. Wasn’t that what got Marie Antoinette in trouble? “No bread? Let them eat cake.” Not at these prices.

Stefan notices my baguette and package of cheese as I walk through the lobby.