Chasing Sylvia Beach (25 page)

Sylvia gave Lily a look that Lily interpreted as “You’ll get a raise for this.” Lily still hadn’t asked Sylvia about her wage details. She’d bring that up. After this coup, Sylvia would surely pay her more.

The foursome moved into the store and one of the women inquired about something in the window. Sylvia leaned in and with difficulty pulled out the Wharton book. Lily chatted with Carlotta, discovering that the two women were going to a concert the next night. Lily hoped to be invited but didn’t say anything. She puttered around the back of the shop, getting ideas for new table displays until Sylvia finished with the customers, who ended up buying several books and a copy of
Transition
. Lily wished they had bought more, but Sylvia was humming after they left. Lily could tell that merely having people come in was a success for Sylvia.

Lily approached the desk, where Teddy lay gnawing a bone.

“Sylvia?”

“Mmm.” Sylvia didn’t look up. She kept scribbling on the pad.

“I brought some of my writing for you.” She placed the sheaf of papers on the desk. Sylvia didn’t look up.

“How am I going to make this month’s rent appear?”

Lily shriveled inside, wishing she could just suck the papers back up into her purse.

“I wish I could help. What can I do?”

Sylvia removed her glasses and tossed them onto the desk. She rubbed her eyes like she was trying to erase them, to press away everything she saw that she couldn’t do anything about.

“Help me conjure up some customers.” She put her glasses back on. “Nothing. You can’t do anything to help.”

Lily lost it.

“I already have helped! We already had more customers since I rearranged the window displays! No wonder you’re in such a bad way—you don’t let people help you. You could do a lot more if you collaborated, learned not to always be so damn stoic! Why can’t you admit that you don’t know what you’re doing and are just hanging on because you’re more stubborn than sensible? Why don’t you go home, too, before it’s too late?”

Sylvia sat back, a look of shock on her face. Teddy stood, abandoning his bone, staring up at Sylvia.

“How can you talk to me like that? You pipsqueak—after all I’ve done to help you?”

“That’s right—play the martyr. You’re so used to helping everyone else, you haven’t even noticed how desperately you need help.”

Lily stopped. She hadn’t really said all that to Sylvia. She couldn’t have, and yet the look on Sylvia’s face assured her that, yes, she had spoken words she could never retract. Lily crept toward the back of the shop, but the tiny bookstore offered no escape. She heard Sylvia’s chair scrape against the floor. Sylvia’s cigarette lighter clicked and Lily smelled the smoke immediately.

“Come back here, you coward.”

Lily inched along a bookcase and out into Sylvia’s line of fire.

“Now you listen here.” Sylvia jabbed her cigarette in Lily’s direction. Both Teddy and Lily watched Sylvia.

“I’m here because I choose to be here. I’m no martyr. I might be a fool, yes, but I like my life here. I like the bookstore. I like this street, and I like my friends. I like Adrienne and I like Paris. What’s back in the States for me anyway? Ha! A life in my family’s shadow? It took an ocean between us for me to finally be able to breathe. Oh, I love them, of course, but try to have a life around them.” She puffed on her cigarette and came closer to Lily, blowing the smoke toward the ceiling.

“And who do you think you are? Just because you rearranged some books and penned a few good lines doesn’t give you the right to judge me. What makes you think you know anything about my life? I live under no one’s scrutiny. My decisions are my own and I’ll be damned if someone like you is going to come in here and pass judgment about me allowing help.” She stabbed her cigarette into the glass ashtray on the desk. Her eyes were bulging—all traces of the old lady Lily had pitied earlier were gone.

“I’ll tell you about help. I get help every damn month. Without help, I wouldn’t be here. Without Bryher’s monthly check, the shop would have closed years ago. Without Gide and his brilliant idea to have readings here and ask for donations from friends, I would have closed two years ago. Goddamn you, I do take help and don’t you for a minute think it doesn’t make me sick every time. I wish I could close up and go hide in my apartment, catch up on my reading, finally, instead of running this dying ship further aground. But I love it too much to admit defeat. And there is nothing else for me anyway.”

She wound down and took her seat. For once, Lily didn’t know what to say. After an uncomfortable silence, she apologized.

“I’m sorry, Sylvia. That was completely out of line. I had no right—”

“You and everyone else who comes in here think they know what is best for me. Do I look so feeble?” She slammed her fist on the desk. “Do I look so feeble?”

She did look feeble sometimes, but Lily wouldn’t tell her that.

“Sylvia, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. And you’re right, I don’t know what is best for you.

Sylvia waved Lily’s apology away. She lit another cigarette and paced the small rug in front of her desk. As she walked by, the rubber stamps shook in their rack. The piles of books and papers on the desk balanced precariously. Lily resisted going over and straightening them.

“Damn this headache. Damn this Expo—as if I didn’t have enough to do just keeping this shop afloat.”

The chime above the door sounded again and the women looked up. A young man in a uniform carried a large box into the shop. He doffed his hat and announced a delivery for Lily Heller. Sylvia gave an involuntary cry of surprise and Lily said, “C’est moi.” The messenger set the box down on a table, right next to the sign that said Do not place anything on the books! Sylvia pursed her lips while Lily signed for the package, and this time Lily gave the delivery boy a coin.

“What is it?” Sylvia asked.

“I don’t know. Let’s see.” Lily placed the large box on the shipping desk. She untied the string and pulled off the cardboard lid. Inside, a dove-gray dress with pleats lay nestled in light blue tissue paper. Accompanying it was a pair of ivory gloves with a line of tiny seed pearl buttons running up the sleeve. She touched an adorable hat adorned with netting and tiny white beads. At the bottom of the box, in a cloth bag, Lily found a pair of heels. She grimaced when she saw the shoes, but the dress took her breath away. She pulled it out, and the dress cascaded down. Long and elegant, it was unlike anything Lily had ever worn. Poking around the box, she saw no name of the sender, no explanation. Heinrich must have sent it.

“Now where did that come from?” Sylvia wondered aloud. Lily held the dress against her body and smoothed her hand over the silk.

“It’s just my size!” Lily couldn’t believe it—she didn’t even know her size in France, especially since she’d lost weight since being here. Sylvia sighed, while Lily for once was excited about clothes.

“Maybe I have a fairy godmother,” she said.

“Hmmph. I could use a fairy godmother,” Sylvia said. When Lily peeked at her from under the hat’s netting, she saw that Sylvia was smiling.

“Is there a card?” Sylvia poked among the tissue paper. “Aha!” she said, holding up a small envelope. Lily grinned and snatched it from her. She tore open the tiny envelope, but her face fell when she read the card.

“Well?” Sylvia prompted.

“It says, ‘We thought this would suit you tonight.’ Who’s ‘we’?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Heinrich wouldn’t have sent this, would he?”

“Well, he would be the obvious one.” Lily was suddenly aware that she was hiding most of the truth from Sylvia, and she didn’t want her to ask more questions.

“You really are going with him to that party. Are you sure you want to mingle with those people?” Sylvia lit a cigarette while Lily pulled the shoes out. “You’d better put that on now. He’ll be here to pick you up soon.”

Lily put everything back in the box and rushed to the back room. How she wished for a hot shower to wash away the bookshop dust and the week’s accumulation of city grit and sweat. But the best she could do was use the damp rag and the pitcher from the courtyard bathroom to wipe herself clean. Slipping on the dress, she found that it fit perfectly. She wasn’t able to get the last part of the zipper up, so she left it while checking her hair in the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed. The dress revealed her bare shoulders and made her look most elegant. She hadn’t gotten dressed up for a fancy occasion since her high school prom, which hadn’t gone well. Lily had gotten ready in the bathroom that evening, and was curling her hair when her mother came in. Lily jumped, accidentally pulling the curling iron toward her head.

“Ouch! You made me burn myself!”

“I’m sorry, honey. You look so . . . all that makeup.”

Lily inspected her face. She thought she looked good, grown up. “What!”

“Well, don’t you think it’s a little much?”

She had told her mother that her friend Sandy had done her makeup for her. “I like it,” she said. “I think it looks good.” She moved the curling iron to the left side of her head.

“I think you should take some of it off.”

Lily slammed down the curling iron. “Oh, now you’re giving advice.” Her mother had spent so much time being an independent woman, and ruining her marriage, that Lily had gotten used to being more or less on her own. All the advice she got about female issues, sex, whatever, she got from her friends. “Well, let me tell you,” she snapped at her mother. “You’re too late.”

“If you just smudged off some of the blue,” her mother persisted, “I think it would look great. Just a smidgen.” She picked up a tissue. Her fingernails were broken and filled with dirt. Lily dodged her hand.

“Mom! Stop! You have no say.” She pushed past her mother into her bedroom. Her dress hung from the closet door, a long lavender silk she’d borrowed from Sandy’s older sister. It almost fit her. She sat on the bed and pushed her feet into a pair of pantyhose. Her mother sat next to her on the bed, watching Lily struggle with the hose.

“You have to roll them on one foot at a time.”

“I know how to put hose on. Will you just leave and let me get ready? The big night of the year and finally you’re giving advice? I told you it’s too late.”

Her mother stood, and for a moment Lily saw herself from her mother’s perspective: her hair half curled, the pantyhose stuck at her knees, wearing enough makeup to cover two prostitutes. Lily went on struggling with the pantyhose, hoping her mother would just go away. She kept her head bent down so she wouldn’t have to see her face. She had to hurry: Brad was picking her up soon.

Lily stared at herself in the mirror, watching her eyes well up. She hadn’t thought about prom night for years. Now she saw that her mother had been trying to help, not interfere. Regret brought a lump to her throat. Lily wished her mother were here with her now. Her practical advice from her would certainly come in handy.

“I don’t see what you want with Heinrich.” Sylvia had slipped into the back room while Lily wrestled into the shoes. They pinched her feet but looked adorable poking out from underneath the hem of the dress. She looked up at Sylvia, wanting badly to confess everything. She smiled brightly, turning slightly to show off the dress.

“Can you zip me up?”

Sylvia nodded. Grasping the zipper, she spoke to Lily’s back. “Are you lovers?”

Lily was mortified. That Sylvia would assume she and Heinrich were intimate. That she’d said the word lovers. That Lily had indeed felt an attraction to Heinrich, especially when he laughed so easily. She felt the zipper reach its zenith.

“No! Of course not. Heinrich already has a girlfriend in Germany. I’m sure he just took pity on me, thinking I was too bookish.” She turned and fanned the skirt out, posing for Sylvia.

“Still, I should know better than to wait up for you,” Sylvia said. “You look lovely, as you should. The dress is perfect; whoever chose it has a sharp eye.” Her expression softened. “Here,” she said. She held out a silver lipstick tube. Lily gave a quizzical look.

“I didn’t see any makeup in that soirée ensemble,” Sylvia said. “This might come in handy.”

“Merci,” Lily said. “I . . . I wish I could explain why I’m going tonight. Maybe I just need a little excitement.” She bent toward the speckled mirror and applied the lipstick, which seemed much too red to her. But Sylvia’s look said otherwise. Lily even thought she saw her eyes glistening. She smiled and held her arms open, framing Lily.

“You look marvelous. Now, go, enjoy yourself.”

Lily was pulling on her gloves when they heard the shop bell ring. Sylvia nodded and began to mount the stairs to her apartment. Lily slipped into the shop and found Heinrich near the door, dressed in a tuxedo, exuding charm with his smile.

“Bonsoir.” He bowed slightly and Lily almost curtsied, then stopped herself.

“You look very nice,” he said. “That dress suits you.”

“Thank you,” Lily said. She wasn’t sure she was thanking him for the dress or the compliment. She felt uncomfortable asking if he had sent it, so she stayed quiet.

“Ready, then?” She nodded and waved good-bye to Sylvia, who leaned against the back bookcase, watching them leave the shop.

A black sedan was idling out front. Heinrich opened the door, gesturing Lily in with a smile. She was about to step in when she glimpsed someone coming toward the shop. It was Paul, and he caught sight of her just as she saw him. He was carrying a small bouquet of red flowers. The look of betrayal on his face turned Lily’s stomach. She stared long enough to watch Paul turn his back with a shake of his head, the flowers falling to the ground.

Heinrich, seeing him, turned back to Lily, nodding her toward the back seat. “Please.”

Lily refocused on Heinrich, producing a false smile. They got in the car and Lily tried to concentrate on Heinrich.

“You look stunning, Lily.”

She tried to smile but the thought of Paul’s expression made her feel like the worst liar. This traitorous feeling only grew as the sedan glided down the street toward Paul. Lily tried to stare straight ahead but all she saw was the Nazi hood ornament, and at the last minute, as the sedan glided past Paul, she broke and dared one last peek. He strode toward the boulevard, hands rammed into his pockets, the flowers cast aside.