The Pink Suit: A Novel (19 page)

After
was a very difficult word, indeed.

In March, the Wife traveled to India, and Kate told Patrick that the pink suit had gone along, too. “It's like you're with her,” he said. And so the ritual began. Every day, Patrick would gather newspapers and magazines with articles about the trip, and he and Kate would go to the pub, eat their dinner, and search for the suit.

“Why not?” he said. “Just for laughs.”

The First Lady's trip began with a caravan of steamer trunks being loaded onto the Pan American jet, along with the Wife's entourage: the ambassador, the Wife's sister, the Secret Service detail, the assistants, the secretary, the hairdresser, and Provy—who Kate thought looked quite glamorous for a personal maid. The Wife was not wearing the pink suit.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Patrick said, and he was kind enough not to mention that most of the articles went on at great length about the seemingly endless amount of trunks filled with “unworn gowns from the most expensive couture houses in the world, Lanvin, Oleg Cassini, and Chez Ninon” and how shameful it was to have all these fancy things made up for India, “a land of extreme poverty.” When Kate read that, she was embarrassed enough for the both of them.

Every night after, the press covered the First Lady's trip in excruciating detail, from her elephant rides with her sister to her visits with children at a hospital. Her radiant smile and gentle charm seemed to make people happy, but the reporters also dwelled on the protests over her Somali leopard coat and smart mink sweater.

On St. Patrick's Day, a Saturday, the First Lady took a barge across a lake surrounded by stone tigers. The photograph was in color. It was daytime, but she was wearing a sleeveless apricot silk cocktail dress gathered at the waist with a bow. It was a Cassini, designed specifically to be photographed. The silk was sturdy. It dazzled in the sun. You couldn't take your eyes away from her. All the crowds who lined the shore knew it was the First Lady making her way to the Maharana of Udaipur's white marble palace to a lavish party in her honor. They cheered and threw marigolds and lotus blossoms in her wake, although many of them looked like they hadn't eaten for days.

“What's the point of that?” Kate asked.

“Beauty,” Patrick said. “Isn't beauty its own reward?”

Kate had thought that all her life, but now she wasn't so sure. So many of the starving were children. Patrick leaned across the booth and kissed her.

The next night, Patrick did not bring the
Times
to the pub for dinner. Instead, he covered the table with old newspapers that he'd found in his basement. “Your girl may not be that much of a Holly,” he said. The papers were peach from age and brittle. There was a picture on the front page of the Wife, back before everything, back when the President was just a senator. He was being wheeled on a gurney, to his second back surgery in seven months. He seemed to be dying. The look of fear on the Wife's face was thinly hidden.

“You have to look beyond the clothes,” Patrick said. “She loves him quite clearly. You can't let the clothes get in the way. They're just things.”

That day he'd taken all of Peg's belongings and boxed them up for charity.

“Things aren't people,” he said. And Kate loved him all the more for it.

The pink suit was finally worn by the Wife on the way home from India. Much to Kate's delight, the press took color photographs. Although the pink was not as bright as she remembered it to be, not as bright as her own jacket, the women of India had never seen a color like it before, and a newswoman was quoted as saying, “I would love to have a sari like that.”

The suit was worn with a single strand of pearls and pearl earrings, which made it seem plain to Kate. But there was finally a matching hat. Unlike Schwinn's version, this one had a thin line of blue trim, which made it stand out when photographed and drew the eye to her beautiful face. When Kate told that to Patrick, he laughed. “They really are a clever lot,” he said. “It makes her look like a sweet, playful girl.”

It did, but Kate was no longer sure that mattered. “She'd look better if she were doing something useful.”

October 1962

I
t had been more than a year since the pink suit was made. Chanel was no longer the latest thing. When the Ladies arrived back from the Paris shows that October, they were wearing Shetland-wool miniskirts. Everyone could see the Ladies' knees, which was a sight that seemed to make only the Ladies ecstatic.

“André Courrèges! The man is visionary!” Miss Sophie said.

The back-room girls were not so sure.

Miss Nona's knees were like two shriveled apricots; Miss Sophie's were like blushing grapefruits.

“Do they not have mirrors in France?” Maeve asked.

The trip was a great success. The Ladies had copied every single dress Courrèges had presented, and it was their intention to fill the racks of the showroom with skirts that looked like bath towels. It was a new year and a new collection.

“The First Lady, circa 1962,” Miss Sophie announced.

After the meeting, Kate was called into their perfumed office.
Lilacs,
she thought. Apparently Mr. Charles had started a trend. Kate tried not to stare, but Miss Sophie and Miss Nona, in their tiny plaid skirts, were a remarkable sight—and not in a good way. They'd paired their skirts with frilly lace blouses that looked as if they had been stolen from the wax pirates at Madame Tussaud's museum. Ropes of gold chains and pearls wound round their necks.

“We'd like you to be in charge of fabrication at Chez Ninon,” Miss Sophie said. “We'll mock up the designs. You can create the patterns.”

Kate wasn't sure she'd heard that correctly. “You don't want me to do the finishing anymore?”

“In addition,” Miss Nona said.

“Yes. In addition.”

In addition?
There weren't enough hours in the day already. The Ladies sat there smiling at Kate and waiting for an answer. They seemed so happy, Kate didn't know how to tell them no. Miss Sophie leaned over and patted Kate's hand, as a mother would. The gold bracelets on her arms rattled. “We'll need you to help train the new girls, too. They'll be two.”

“And we have a present for you,” Miss Nona said.

“Yes, we do.”

Miss Sophie crossed the blue glass floor in slow, halting steps, which made the tiny skirt and the frilly lace of pirates seem all the more tragic. She opened the closet and took out a large white box with a red ribbon. Miss Nona watched with great concern as her partner, the “younger” one, made her way slowly back to the gilt desk that they shared. The package seemed bigger than the woman.

How much longer can they do this?
Kate thought.

By the look on the old woman's face, she could see Miss Nona was wondering the same thing too. She turned to Kate and said, “Money. Did we mention the money?”

“I don't think we did!” Miss Sophie said as she sat, slightly winded, and placed the package in front of Kate.

“Well, Kate. It will be twenty dollars a week more for you. The two girls will do most of the finishing. You can take the Wife, Mrs. Paley, and Mrs. Astor for yourself.”

“You'll remain in the back room for now, but you'll be, more or less, Mr. Charles.”

“Is that agreeable? You'll get the present either way, so don't let that sway you.” Miss Nona pushed the large package over to Kate, as if to tempt her.

“Thirty dollars a week extra. It's a supervisory position and a lot of work,” Kate said.

“Twenty-five,” Miss Nona said.

Sharpen your pencils and recalculate,
thought Kate. “Twenty-five dollars and one percent of the profit if the Wife buys the miniskirt and it catches on.”

“Twenty-five dollars and half of one percent if the miniskirt trend still holds by October 1963.”

It was a deal. Miss Sophie pushed a stack of
Vogue
magazines across the faux French desk. “Study up,” she said. The model on the cover had her hair wrapped in a length of gold lamé.

Miss Nona tapped the photo with a crooked, tiny finger. “See, you could make a skirt out of that! Think of the profit! It's barely a yard of fabric!”

Miss Sophie pushed the gift-wrapped package closer to Kate. “Now open it.”

The Ladies seemed as excited as children at Christmas.

The ribbon fell to the floor when Kate pulled it. She took the lid off the box. Even the tissue paper was pink. Kate was speechless.

Miss Nona said, “I saw the man from Linton at the Chanel show, and he had some samples left over from last year. It's not an exact match, but it's close enough.”

It was the pink bouclé, about three yards of it, neatly folded and wrapped in tissue.

“I don't understand.”

“I felt so badly when you unraveled it,” Sophie said. “I hated to make you do that.”

The Ladies looked so very pleased with themselves. “Thank you,” Kate said, and bit her lip so she wouldn't cry.

Miss Nona stood. “The model will be here any minute.”

Kate hugged both the Ladies, something she'd never done before. Miss Sophie tapped her watch. “Time is money,” she said, but hugged her back.

The Wife's model, Suze, was late, detained by reporters again. The press made it a practice to follow her ever since she had gone to The Carlyle for a drink after work with friends. Reporters were in the bar, hoping to catch a glimpse of Her Elegance, and overheard Suze talking about the Wife. The poor girl's life had now become impossible.

An hour later, Suze called from a pharmacy somewhere in Midtown to check in. The photographers had been trailing her all morning. “I'm not sure how to get rid of them,” she told Kate on the telephone. The girl was nearly hysterical.

“Stop crying and get on the bus,” Kate said firmly. “No one who is going to see the Wife would ever take a bus.”

And it was true. The model arrived ten minutes later, which made Kate quite proud. Being a Mr. Charles, even a More-or-Less Mr. Charles, was obviously her calling.

That day, the fitting did not go well.

“I miss the Wife,” Miss Sophie said and sounded more forlorn than usual. Suze was a very sweet young woman, very good at modeling, and very pretty, in a First Lady sort of way, but she was such an exhausting and expensive complication. In the past, Mrs. Molly Tackaberry McAdoo and her dog Fred would simply meet with the Wife and show her the Ladies' sketches. They would have champagne and discuss all the options. It was very civilized. Now, because of Maison Blanche's memo, every season—including Pre-Winter and Cruise—when the Ladies came back from Paris with drawings for the Wife, they had to quickly knock off copies, often sewing them directly onto the model in large, loopy stitches. When done, a number was assigned, and the model would pose for photos.

“Think
Cole Porter!
” Schwinn would shout.

The girl would hold a cigarette in a long, sleek holder and tilt her chin in a bored but beautiful way.

“Think
Lunch at the Ritz!
”

She would hold a champagne glass as if to toast and tilt her chin in a bored but beautiful way.

“Think
I am so sick of Lady Bird going on endlessly about Texas!
”

The girl would just appear profoundly bored.

And then they'd do it all again for the next outfit. Hours upon hours, day after day, the model would stand motionless while the two old women cackled and stitched around her. When the piece was done, she'd be photographed, and then they'd start all over again. It was exhausting to watch.

Neither bothered to remember the model's name. She was either “darling girl” or “dear girl.” It was an enormous amount of work for two women in their late seventies. The Ladies were quickly winded.
How much longer can Chez Ninon continue?
Kate often thought.

That morning, when the first miniskirt was snipped and basted and then photographed for the Wife, Miss Sophie handed Kate the drawings and said, “I need toiles for these in sizes eight to fourteen, which you will clearly mark as if they were sizes two to eight. Understand?”

She did.

“And be very careful,” Miss Sophie said. “This is groundbreaking. True originals.”

Originals that we copied from André Courrèges,
Kate thought. The Ladies apparently still had some life left in them.

It was half past one when Kate finally sat down to lunch. It was another banana-and-butter sandwich, which she'd grown quite sick of, but since Patrick always cut off the crust, just as her mother had always done, she couldn't tell him to stop. That was the last moment of calm Kate would have in a very long time.

She looked up from her sandwich; Maeve was dressed to leave. She looked bloodless, and she was holding Kate's coat and hat out to her.

“There's been an explosion. The New York Telephone Company. A boiler in the lunchroom.”

Maggie Quinn usually brought Big Mike lunch on Fridays so she could make sure his paycheck found its way to the bank instead of the pub.

“The entire street was destroyed.”

Patrick.

Smoke had shut down the trains; the subway was closed until further notice. The buses weren't running either. No cabs. No phone service. Hundreds of cars were detoured, and some had been abandoned in the clogged streets. Kate and Maeve took a bus as far as it was willing to go and then ran all the way to Washington Heights. They couldn't get closer to home than 175th, and that was miles away. They hitched a ride on a milk truck and then ran up Broadway. It looked like a used-car lot.

Out of breath, cold, their feet aching, they kept on running, past the abandoned cars, past the others who were running too. The closer they got to the telephone company, the heavier the smoke got. Maeve gave up somewhere on Dyckman. “I can't go on,” she said. Kate didn't hear her. She didn't notice her drop away.

When Kate finally arrived at Patrick's butcher shop, the intersection was overrun with police and firemen. They were covered in ash, darting in and out of the big building across the street, panicked as ants. “Everyone stay calm,” a man on a loudspeaker said over and over again, but his voice was tinny, and it had rained glass and steel and concrete—the request was impossible.

Kate tried to make her way down to Patrick's shop, but she couldn't get through the crowds. She crawled on top of a car that someone had abandoned. The smoke was thick, but she thought she could see that the windows at Harris Meats were blown out. The hanging sign was gone. The shop was dark. It was difficult to see anything else.

“Get down,” a police officer said. Kate pointed toward the shop. The car rocked back and forth in the crowd. He reached his massive hand up to her.

“It's not safe here.”

It was true. Behind her, the telephone company was no longer a building but a huge, wounded beast, creaking and moaning. There was not just a fire, although the fire was still burning. There was not just an explosion, although the walls were still collapsing.

A group of women jumped out the windows, onto the street. Some were caught. Some were not.

Panic will not do,
Kate told herself. She pointed toward Patrick's shop again. “I'm the butcher's wife,” she said, and it felt true.

The policeman understood. He pushed his way through the crowd, with Kate following in his wake.
Don't panic,
she thought. But it was difficult not to. What was once the sidewalk outside Patrick's shop was now the edge of a crater filled with drifts of debris, spikes of glass and twisted steel. In front of his shop, in neat rows, there were bodies. Mostly of women. Some had blankets over them; some were covered only with coats or sweaters. Some looked as if they were sleeping. Some seemed to have stopped speaking midthought: their eyes were blank, and their mouths were slack.

“I'm sorry,” the policeman said to Kate. “You'll have to stay back.”

The streets of Inwood were no longer filled with music. Tears fell like sheets of rain. Kate wandered for hours through the crowd, searching. She overheard snips of stories from those who could still speak.

“Like an atomic bomb.”

“Like ten thousand cars backfiring.”

“It was as if two trains collided.”

Five hundred people had been in that building; the hospitals were overflowing.

Kate asked everyone she met, “Do you know the Irish butcher? Have you seen Mike Quinn? Or his wife, Maggie? They have a little boy; he would have been with them.” Most knew her family, but no one seemed to know where they were. Kate kept walking in circles until finally she found a man who said he knew Patrick.

“The butcher ran in,” he said. He looked like an accountant, wearing a thin cotton shirt rolled up at the sleeves and a tie.

Kate wasn't sure she'd heard him correctly. “In?”

“Into the building after the explosion. He and some of the transit fellas—the uniform men, subway maintenance. Last I saw, they were pulling debris off people. Carrying them out.”

“They ran in?”

“They did.”

The man didn't remember seeing Patrick come back out again. “Walls were toppling over. Tough to see anything.”

Kate's breath was irregular.
Fear is such a silent thing,
she thought.
It winds its way around you until it holds your heart in its hands.

“You need to sit, before you go down,” the man said.

“I need to know what happened.”

“All I know is that most of the survivors are in the hospitals by now. But if you go to the triage area in the parking lot, my boss is making a list of the others.”

“The others?”

“The ones that didn't make it.”

The parking lot was next to the garage where Rose was kept. It looked like a war zone. Someone had written the words
triage
and
morgue
—with arrows pointing in different directions—and taped it over the
EMPLOYEE PARKING ONLY
sign. Men and women were lying across the hoods of cars, as if they were beds, talking to nurses who moved quickly from one to the next. Some were sitting in chairs, wide eyed and panting. Priests and ministers and rabbis were leaning over the dead and dying. Kate didn't see Father John, but she was afraid to look too closely.