Her Mother's Daughter (21 page)

Mamie's husband's name was Jan Sokolowski and he was a little like Poppa. He loved to drink wine, and had brought a bottle with him; and he loved company and talk. He liked Belle, who was so flattered her face felt hot the whole time he was there. And he treated her like a person—he asked her about her work, what she did and how she liked it. Belle answered shyly. She was proud of the place she worked in, grateful she did not have to say it was a factory. But she was not proud of the work she did.

“And you like it, Isabelle, eh?” he asked in Polish. The whole family spoke Polish.

Belle flushed and gazed at him. “It's all right. I wish…I would love…I feel I would be happier doing something more artistic.”

One of Sokolowski's expressive eyebrows rose. “Why don't you come to work in my shop? It's an interior decorating shop and full of artists.” At which he laughed hard and long.

A white glaze settled on Belle's mind. “An interior decorator!” she breathed, remembering the shops she used to see on Madison Avenue. “What would I do?”

“You would be creative, you would make lampshades. It's a good trade, and it requires someone artistic.”

Belle gave notice the following Monday, and two weeks later, she began work at Ostrovsky's. It was in midtown Manhattan, off Madison, and the front of the shop was glass, with beautiful things inside—furniture and lamps, pillows and comforters, little boxes and many paintings. There was a thick carpet on the floor and everything in the window looked expensive. But Sokolowski took Belle in through a side door that led straight to the back. This was a huge space divided into two sections. On one side five or six men stood before canvases, painting. Their pictures all looked vaguely the same, but to Belle they seemed extremely beautiful. They were landscapes and still lifes, and sometimes, beautiful rose-colored women with parasols, and children around them. It was here Sokolowski worked.

Sokolowski spread out his arm: “It is a painting factory!” he said, and burst again into long loud laughter. Belle did not see any reason why there should not be a factory for painting as there was for everything else, and did not understand what he was laughing at. But she smiled. She did not feel frightened of Sokolowski whom she called, always, Pan Sokolowski even though he was her uncle by marriage, or cousin, or something—she was not sure. She looked up to him as she had to her father, but she felt sure he never hit his children or his wife, and she knew he would never hit her. Jan, still full of mirth, led her around the partition to another room where, at two long tables, girls sat on high stools making lampshades. Belle looked at the finished products: pale ecru silks, white organdies with pleats all around, slub silks with tiny pink roses as borders: they were beautiful! She would love to make such things, and besides, that, think how it would sound to say you worked for an interior decorator!

Belle learned the craft quickly. First, she had to cover the metal spokes of the frame with soft padding, and sew it down securely with tiny even stitches. Then came the cover. If it was silk, it had to be spread around the shade so that no crease or ripple appeared; then a lining was spread around the inside, and the two had to be sewn together in such a way that no stitches showed. It was very delicate work, requiring patience and a talented sewing-hand. The final step was the trim, which might be a Greek key, or rosettes, or a simple gold line: this had to be attached with the tiniest stitches of all so it would be firmly and strongly, but invisibly, fixed. Organdy shades were pleated, and for this you needed long strong fingernails to press and fix the pleats. The organdy was then sewn on the padding, then lined and trimmed in the same way as the silk shades. Sometimes they used linen, too.

Belle found this work pleasant, and she did not feel oppressed sitting in the large room with the other girls. Mr. Ostrovsky was not a tyrant: they could chat as they worked, only not too much. And it was with joy that Belle recognized, sitting at the table, her old friend Gertrude Hunrath, who still looked the same, and grinned at her, cocking an eyebrow when she saw her.

“You've changed, Bella,” Gertrude said.

“I had my hair cut,” Belle admitted shyly. “And please call me Belle.”

Gertrude laughed. She had a long long face and a nose that matched it; a wide mouth and a tall lanky body. She was as out of style physically as a woman could be, and she wore nondescript clothes. But for some reason, Gertrude always seemed happy, just as she had been on the block, years ago. She lived with her sister, who resembled her, and their short, fat dumpy mother: the father had absconded many years before. And the three of them were always laughing together. “So you're modern!” Gertrude cried, amused but without irony.

Gertrude and Belle immediately renewed their friendship, and soon they were going on Saturday-afternoon shopping expeditions. Some Sundays they went to Manhattan and visited the Metropolitan Museum. Belle could not really see any difference in the paintings hung there—except the really old ones, which she did not like—and the paintings done in the factory. She liked paintings of pretty things—vases of flowers, landscapes, and especially, women. She lingered over Renoir and Sargent, following every line of body and clothing in their women. But she revered even those paintings she did not like—those she said she did not “understand.” She couldn't understand, for instance, why anyone wanted to paint bowls of fruit over and over; and she hated crucifixions. She read the cards on the wall, and soon she knew who the Impressionists were, and that they were her favorite painters.

Her little knowledge did not give her confidence, however; it only opened up another enormous area of ignorance. She was conscious of this because Sokolowski had begun to ask her to go with him to galleries and openings. Mamie was always surrounded with babies, and he did not like to go alone. She was presentable; she thought that was why he asked her. But she was honored, and trailed behind him as he greeted friends and drank champagne—always getting her a glass first—at openings in the Fifty-seventh Street galleries, or to parties at someone's studio. She was awed at such gatherings and would stand, trying to look poised, gazing around her at what she imagined was a room full of famous people. They all seemed to know each other, and they had so much to say. At first, her ignorance isolated her, like a black pall: she was too intimidated to say anything at all. But she soon realized that that was exactly what was expected of her: a shy, smiling silence along with a good appearance. She felt safe with her tall handsome relative, and he was invariably proper and courteous to her. And if she was bored at the gatherings, she banished the feeling: she knew it was an honor to be among such great people.

They were at a party at the studio of a friend of Sokolowski's drinking red wine and standing around, when Belle saw a beautiful young woman who seemed as silent and isolated as she. So alone did the woman appear that Belle was able to overcome her own shyness and approach her. She smiled radiantly at Belle and her words tumbled out of her mouth nervously. She was a newcomer, she knew no one but her brother, who was over there with the men surrounding the easel, commenting on a painting. Her name was Adele Kosciuszko and she had just emerged from a convent. Adele had large pale eyes, of a color between blue and violet, and long blond hair wavy in the way Belle's used to be. She gazed enviously at Belle's bob and said she wanted to cut her hair too, but her mother forbade it. Belle giggled, and described the scene in her house on the day of her haircut. She was amazed to hear herself talk in this way—it sounded almost as if she were making fun of Momma—and she quickly stopped, but Adele was laughing too, and Belle knew some bond had been established between them. Adele looked longingly around the room and asked who this one was or that one. Belle told her the few names she knew, and Adele gazed at Belle as if she were a sophisticate, at ease in this strange world. She said she wanted very much to get a job, but didn't know what she could do. Belle asked her if she could sew, and when she said she could, Belle asked her if she would like to work with her, making lampshades at an interior decorating shop. Adele gasped, “Oh, yes!”

Belle knew Mr. Ostrovsky liked her. He often said she was his best worker—her shades were the neatest and cleanest, and she was also the quickest of them all. In the six months she had been with him, he had given her two raises. She knew she could get him to hire Adele, and indeed, it was done. Now she had two friends at work, and she felt herself the center of a circle. It was glorious. Gertrude asked them if they wanted to go to dances, and once or twice a week the three would meet and go to the dance hall. They each paid ten cents to enter, and spent the evening doing decorous dances with strange gentlemen. Belle loved it. Dancing was one thing she felt she could do well. And in the spring, Adele and Belle signed up for a tap-dancing course, which they attended once a week.

Belle felt she was finally having the life she had yearned for, and her triumph overflowed when, in a contest two years later, Adele won the title of Miss Poland. She had let her hair down—it hung far below her waist—and put on one of the shocking new bathing suits, a one-piece knit with two-inch-wide straps at the shoulder—very daring. And she won and there was applause and ginger beer, and they tied a ribbon across her front, and her picture was in the newspaper. Belle showed the picture to her brothers and Jean: “This is my friend!” she announced.

Often, when she arrived a little early at the shop, Belle would stand in the doorway to the showroom and gaze in. The room was light and spacious, and carpeted with a beautiful Chinese rug, beige with a design in different shades of blue. On the walls, inside heavy gilt frames, arranged in pleasing groups, were the paintings of Sokolowski and the other men in the “art factory”; and there were different pieces of furniture, also artfully arranged. Belle had learned to see the difference among styles and even some names—Chippendale and Louis XIV, Sheraton and her favorite, Queen Anne. There were occasional chairs, a sofa, a sideboard, and some small tables with drawers. And on the sideboard, the tables, the Regency desk, were lamps, some bearing shades she herself had made. And there were little boxes, and porcelain miniatures, and embroidered doilies. And in one corner of the shop, thrown gracefully on a brocade-covered chaise, were embroidered sheets made of silk and linen, and towels and even some nightgowns and bed jackets. Each time she stood there, Belle would study a few objects carefully, as if she could absorb them, take them into herself by osmosis. After months of observing, she found the courage to enter the shop—carefully, as if her presence might create such turbulence that everything would collapse. She listened to the clerks talking to Mrs. Ostrovsky, who ran the shop, and learned their language—Regency, Louis Quatorze (which she thought was spelled Catoars, but memorized it anyway, wondering at the strangeness of things).

Mrs. Ostrovsky insisted on being called Madame: she was Russian by birth, but had gone to France during the Revolution, whatever that was. Belle knew only that Madame frequently began her utterances with “Before the Revolution, in Petersburg …” Madame was tall, with a hard face and coarse skin, heavily powdered. Her hair was blond and pulled away from her face severely into a bun in the back. Well, not quite a bun. It was nothing at all like Momma's, it had, Belle knew, style. Lydia, one of the girls who made lampshades, said it was called a French knot. Madame had a full body shaped rather like a bolster, firmly encased from top to bottom of her torso in what Belle imagined was a corset. She always wore a simple black silk crepe dress and black suede pumps (except in summer, when the pumps were patent leather, and the dress a lighter silk), with a diamond pin and diamond earrings and many rings on her fingers. Madame had a nasty tongue, and Belle feared her, but she respected her too: after all, Madame knew so much and had beautiful taste, and was able to run this fine shop. Belle hungered to learn, to know as much as Madame.

In 1926, on Belle's twenty-second birthday, when she had been working for a year and a half at Ostrovsky's, she was standing in the door absorbing the things in the showroom, when Mr. Ostrovsky came and stood beside her.

“Beautiful, huh, Belle?” he smiled at her.

“Oh, yes,” she breathed, and without even thinking, added, “It must be wonderful to work here.”

Mr. Ostrovsky was startled. He didn't know she was simply uttering a daydream out loud, and had had no intention of making a request of him. “You want to be an interior decorator, huh?” His immense forehead crinkled. “I will have to speak to my wife.” He walked away heavily. Everyone knew that Mr. was terrified of Madame.

All day Belle's stomach churned. She had not really meant to say that to Mr. Ostrovsky, and she worried that he would think she was unhappy making lampshades. And she wasn't, she really wasn't, although it was no longer as much fun as it had been. It had become routine, too easy, and she could not be really original—she had to follow prescribed patterns. But could she do it, could she work in the salon?—as Madame called it. She thought of Paul, the salesman who knew the most, saying, “Yes, aren't they charming? All eighteenth century, Madame found them in a collection of boxes squirreled away in a château in the Loire Valley….” Or, “Indeed, madame, very fine work. Notice the grain of the inlay, and the burl! Gorgeous! We don't have workmanship like this today, madame.” Would she be able to sound like that?

All day she waited, her stomach churning, and all day nothing happened. Except one of the artists threw a tantrum and screamed at Mr. Ostrovsky to take his schlock art and…do something with it, Belle didn't understand. And the telephone kept ringing in Madame's office that day. Eventually, Belle drifted into daydreams, and so was startled at hearing Madame's furious voice saying “Stupid Polack!” and Mr. O.'s quiet rumbling. Belle shivered and her finger trembled and she messed up the border she was sewing, and had to take out the stitches. This was bad because reworking something soiled it, and the lampshades had to be immaculate. She bent her head very close to the shade and took painstaking tiny stitches to repair the error. It was all right, she understood. Why would Madame want her, a stupid Polaka, who knew nothing at all? She'd been a fool, and she bit down hard on her tongue to punish herself for having said anything at all to Mr. O. She finished the shade and held it away from her, examining it. It was not as good as her shades usually were, but it would pass. She picked up a scrap of silk and wiped her cheek, which was wet. There was no dance tonight, nothing to look forward to. Maybe Momma would like to go to a movie.