Lilac Girls (42 page)

“Would you mind?” I said, turning.

Paul.

And by his side stood a ravishing creature—Leena, no doubt.

“Nietzsche said a diet predominantly of potatoes leads to the use of liquor,” Paul said, shoe still on my train.

His voice robbed me of my powers of speech. It didn't help that his ladylove was almost too beautiful to look at, her eyes thick-lashed, with the kind of perfect face a cigarette lends just the right amount of cruelty to. She was tall, impossibly young, and leggy.

“I see you're stalking me,” Paul said.

The girl wandered off to the fashion show sipping champagne, apparently not threatened if she'd registered me at all.

“You can remove your foot,” I said.

“You have a habit of disappearing,” Paul said.

“Only when provoked.”

He left his foot there.

I had expected Paul to have recovered since the time I saw him last, but was not prepared for how good he looked, fit and oddly well tanned for April.

“Do I need to take off my dress?”

Paul smiled. “This party is finally getting good.”

“Really, Paul. It's Schiaparelli.”

He released my train. “I have the exits covered.”

“Don't concern yourself.”

“Champagne?” asked a passing waiter, flutes bubbling on his silver tray.

“No thank you,” I said with massive restraint. “I need to be going.”

“I thought about calling you last night,” Paul said. “Figured your mother would talk to me at least.”

“After all these years? It doesn't matter.”

“But I got into some cognac. You know how that is.”

“Not really.”

“I hoped you'd be here. Among your people.”

I shrugged. “It's a good cause.”

Another waiter came by. “Champagne?”

Paul took two flutes. “I hoped we could talk about it all.”

“That isn't necessary. It's been almost a decade, Paul.”

“Have you ever read
one
of my letters?”

“I really need to be going—”

“Aren't you the least bit curious about my side of it?”

I took a glass from him with a shaky hand. “Not really.”

“Don't you owe it to me? Leaving me flat?”

“If that's how you remember it…” I said.

I watched Paul's new wife consider a model's scarlet shift. Had she ever tasted foie gras? How did she stay so fit in a country that frowned upon vigorous exercise?

A photographer came by. “Can I get a picture, Mr. Rodierre?”

“Why not?” Paul said.

He pulled me to him with more force than necessary, one arm around my waist. He still wore Sumare. Did his new wife like it? Impossible not to.

“Smile, Caroline. Pretend you like me.”

The flashbulb blinded us both for a second.

“Thanks, Mr. Rodierre,” the photographer said and wandered off.

“Last time we were in this room, I was in command of that stage,” Paul said.

I just nodded and pretended to be recovering my eyesight from the flash, afraid speaking would unleash a few tears.

“You've been tanning,” I said after a moment.

“Cannes. It was horrible. I hate all that.”

“I'm sure. So where is Rena?”

“Who knows? Last seen on the Greek island of Hydra with a young man half her age.”

“How wonderful for her.” I meant it. Rena deserved her time in the sun.

“You may have kicked me to the curb, but life did go on, Caroline. I guess I don't make the best decisions when it comes to women.”

“Maybe give them up for Lent.”

Paul smiled. “It's good to see you again, C. You hungry? I'm taking Leena to meet some film people. I know a little place by the Hudson—”

“Look, Paul, I obviously never really knew you. Let's just leave it at that. Maybe remember the good things.” I turned. “I have to go.”

Paul caught my wrist. “Nothing has ever been as good as our time in New York. You ruined me for love, you know.”

“Looks like it,” I said, watching his Leena pluck a lobster canapé from a tray.

“What's wrong with you? I've been through hell. You're not the only person affected here—”

“Mon cher
,” Leena called to Paul, “I'm famished.”

I really was invisible to her as she waved Paul to follow.

“Come here, darling,” Paul called to her.

Leena worked her way toward us. It had been a long night. Did I have to meet his wife?

“Oh, please, Paul. I'd rather not—”

Paul pulled his Leena to him, one arm around her waist. “Leena, I'd like you to meet—”

“Caroline
Ferriday,
” Leena said. “How did I not recognize you?” The girl took my hand and pulled me to her. “Of course I know you from photographs. With Helen Hayes
.
What was it like to be on the same stage with her?”

“Thank you, but I really must be going.”

“She runs away, Leena,” Paul said. “You need to hold on to her.”

Leena held my arm with her other hand. “Oh, please. I'll do anything to have lunch. In Paris. The next time you're there.”

“I'd rather not—”

“But, Father, you must convince her.”

A chill ran down my arms.

Father?

“Miss Caroline Ferriday, Leena Rodierre,” Paul said, his smile still more dangerous than ever at close range.

“
Pascaline
is my stage name, but do call me Leena.”

How had I not seen?

“I too played Balthazar, Miss Ferriday. My first role, just like you. Father's told me everything about you.”

“Do call me Caroline, dear,” I said as I stared at her. Leena was a perfect mix of her parents, tall, with her father's stage presence, no doubt. “You must have been a perfect Balthazar, Leena.”

The girl circled me in her arms and held me tight to her. The lovely child I'd found at Orphelinat Saint-Philippe.
Pascaline.
Born on Easter…

Pascaline released me. “
Do
say you'll come to Paris, Caroline. I'm to have my first lead role. It would mean the world to have you there.”

I nodded. It was all I could do to contain the tears. She was a darling girl with her father's charm. “Of course, dear,” I said.

“Well, we must be going,” Paul said.

“Father's introducing me to
movie
people,” Leena said.

“Au revoir, Caroline.” Paul kissed me on each cheek, the familiar scratch of his beard, my hair shirt. “How about you write me back this time? At some point, even I give up.”

“You haven't changed,” I said.

He smiled. “I guess somewhere in a corner of our hearts, we are always twenty.”

Paul disappeared into the crowd, and I felt the old rip of him leaving, but this time it was a little easier somehow. Had that just happened? Paul's daughter had invited me to Paris?

I escaped into a cab after a bellboy heaved my gift bag into the trunk, its contents already earmarked for charity. As the cab drove off, I caught a glimpse of Paul in the crowd and felt a rush of
retrouvailles,
another one of those words that do not translate into English, which means “the happiness of meeting someone you love again after a long time.” I hugged myself there in the back of the cab, fine with going home alone.

Would he write? Maybe. I might even write back if I had time.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
I
took Rosemary Gaynor's advice and called Norman Cousins, famed editor of the
Saturday Review,
hoping to chat with him for a moment in his office. Perhaps have him mention the Polish women in his magazine. He suggested I come by that afternoon.

I sat in the reception area paging through the newspaper. I turned to the society page by habit and saw a full page of photos of the April in Paris Ball. Just under a picture of Marilyn Monroe and the British ambassador, his gaze fixed upon her décolletage, was a photo of Paul and me. I just about fell off my lobby chair. Though his tuxedo was cut in the European style, a bit too nipped at the waist, and my train was soiled, we did make a reasonably handsome couple. The caption read:
Miss Ferriday and Paul Rodierre, back on Broadway?

I was still reeling from seeing the photo when the receptionist ushered me down a hallway past oversized prints of
Saturday Review
covers in aluminum frames to a conference room. Norman had gathered his staff at the long conference table, a yellow legal pad at each place.

“Nice to meet you, Caroline,” Norman said, as he stood to greet me. It was impossible not to be charmed by his old-fashioned good looks and generous smile. Though even the simplest bow tie can be most unbecoming on the wrong man, Norman wore his madras butterfly with aplomb. “You have our undivided attention for a whole five minutes.”

Norman went to the far end of the room and leaned against the wall. I was thrown for a moment to be in the presence of such a distinguished editor, known around the world. All at once the butterflies in my stomach would not settle, and my mouth went dry. I summoned Helen Hayes's advice, which had always helped me onstage: “Don't be boring. Use your whole body.” I drew myself up and started strong.

“Mr. Cousins, since you and your wife have raised a considerable amount of money for the Hiroshima Maidens—” I paused and looked about the room. Norman's staff was anything but attentive. They fidgeted with their watches and pens and wrote on their pads. How could a person communicate with such a distracted audience? “I thought you might be equally interested in this group of women in similar circumstances.”

“These are Polish women?” Norman asked, playing with his handheld tape recorder.

“I'm afraid I can't continue without your full attention, Mr. Cousins. I need to use the little time we have effectively, you see.”

Norman and his staff leaned forward, all eyes on me. I had my audience.

“Yes, Polish women, Catholics, political prisoners arrested for their work with the Polish underground. Held as prisoners at Ravensbrück concentration camp, Hitler's only major concentration camp for women, and used for medical experimentation. There was a special Doctors Trial at Nuremberg, but the world has forgotten the victims, and there's been no help or support for the ones who survived.”

Norman averted his gaze and looked out the window to the taupe stone rectangles and water towers of Gotham that filled the view ten stories up. “I don't know if our readers will be up for another campaign so soon, Miss Ferriday.”

“The Hiroshima project isn't even off the books yet,” said a man built like a pipe cleaner, his Dave Garroway glasses at least two sizes too big for his face. I knew him by sight as Walter Strong-Whitman, a man who attended our church, though we'd never been introduced.

“These women were operated upon in a complex series of experiments,” I said.

I passed a series of eight-by-ten glossies around the table and watched the staffers' faces as they passed each photo on to the next person, revulsion turning to horror.

Norman stepped to the table. “My God, Caroline, these barely look like legs. This one is missing whole bones and muscles. How can they walk?”

“Not well, as you can imagine. They hopped about the camp. That, in part, is why they were called the Rabbits. That and the fact that they served as the Nazis' laboratory animals.”

“How did they even make it home to Poland?” Norman asked.

“However they could. The Swedish Red Cross rescued some. Some were sent home by train when Russians liberated the camp.”

“What are their immediate needs?” Norman asked.

I stepped closer to Norman. “They are having terrible trouble in Poland, behind the Iron Curtain with little access to modern medical care and no help from the German government.”

“The Iron Curtain,” Mr. Strong-Whitman said with a laugh. “We have no place messing with all that—”

“West Germany has compensated other deportees, but not the Rabbits, since they don't recognize Communist Poland as a country. Some have died from the simplest conditions we can cure here.”

“I don't know, Caroline,” Norman said. “The Russians aren't cooperating with anyone these days.”

“Why should these girls have to suffer because their oppressors won't allow them to leave the country?”

“Murphy got into East Germany for the United Airlines story,” one young staffer said.

“This might work as a travel piece,” said a woman in a handsome houndstooth jacket.

“The Pan Am client might help,” said another.

“This is a terrible idea, Norman,” Strong-Whitman said. “We can't go to our readers for every little thing, on the dole for this and that. Our readers couldn't care
less
about Poland.”

“Why don't we find out?” I said.

“This is a literary magazine, Miss Ferriday,” Strong-Whitman said. “We can't be expected to cover the pet charity story of every clubwoman in New York.”

Clubwoman?
I took a deep breath.

“You can maintain high standards and still aid the disadvantaged. Norman has proven that with the Maidens.”

“We can run a piece in Lifestyle and offer an address for donations,” Norman said. “Nothing too fancy, mind you. Maybe a page.”

“This country's charitable muscle has atrophied,” Strong-Whitman said. “It has been how many years since the war ended? Twelve? No one will give.”

“What address should we print?” asked a young woman with a steno pad.

“The Hay, Main Street, Bethlehem, Connecticut,” I said.

Were they really doing this? Every muscle relaxed.

“Sure you want mail sent to your home address, Miss Ferriday?” the woman asked.

“How's the post office in Bethlehem?” Norman asked. “Can they handle some extra mail?”