Lilac Girls (41 page)

I retreated to my bedroom, vibrating with shame, and stood in the tiny room looking at the bed Halina and I shared. Her stuffed bear sat upright against the pillow. I lay on the bed and held the bear to my own chest. It smelled of Halina. Of sweetness and honesty. What kind of a mother had I become?

Before long the bedroom door opened, and Marthe stepped in. I sat up with a groan.

Marthe shut the door. “I may be the last person you want to see, but no one else would come in.”

“Please, Marthe…this isn't—”

“I've watched you for twelve years now, Kasia. I understand a lot more than you may think.”

“I'm not feeling well. My leg—”

“I understand that your mother favored you. That you lost her, and that is a terrible thing, but it's time to move on. Time for some honesty.”

“Honestly, you get in my way. I'm the only one who disciplines my daughter. You just cook and give her things.”

“Your daughter needs love.”

“Don't lecture me. Of course I love her.”

“You have to rise above all this and show her.” Marthe sat beside me on the bed. “And you can't force Halina to be something she's not.”

“Nothing good comes of art.”

“What happened to your mother was tragic, but let's move on.”

“I'd like to rest now.”

“And your husband? He needs help, Kasia. It's your life, but your mother would want Halina to be cherished. Your papa and I are going to stay with friends tonight. Pietrik and Halina will take our room so you have some time to think. You have a choice. To wallow in the unfairness of it all or rise above it. Fix it. Let other people in.”

“Easy for you to say. You don't feel the heavy load of it all. You're not even a mother.”

Marthe stepped to the door. “And neither are you right now, dear girl.”

She left, and for the first night in so long, I had a room to myself. A quiet space to think and work things out. I looked at my rubber band limp on my wrist. From now on, I would use my own resourcefulness and intuition
.

By the time I fell asleep, I had a plan. I would make things better. I would look for help, let other people in. Make sure I spent more time with Halina. Pietrik and I would find time to be alone together. I'd survived Ravensbrück. How could ordinary life be harder than that?

M
other and I traveled half the globe once we finally left Paris after the war. India and Italy. A cruise up the British coast to Scotland.

The first thing I did when Mother and I landed back in New York for good was help organize that year's April in Paris Ball. It was an elaborate fundraiser that supported any number of charities, French and American, including my new Ravensbrück Rabbits Committee. It had been over a decade since Anise Postel-Vinay had introduced me to the cause, and Mother and I had grown terribly attached, corresponding regularly with the Polish women. Wallis Simpson, formally known as the Duchess of Windsor, the American divorcée who'd married England's former King Edward VIII, would be attending the ball, and I planned to ask for her support.

The Waldorf ballroom had never looked better. The cavalcade of Hollywood glitterati and Washington VIPs went through endless rounds of how-do-you-dos, highballs in hand. But one woman was stealing the show. Man or woman, it made no difference—all eyes were on Marilyn Monroe.

Betty and I were worker bees on a committee that turned the ballroom into a Manhattan matron's idea of a French wonderland. A massive dance floor anchored the center of the room, flanked by long dining tables. We festooned tricolor bunting above the stage and helped drag an enormous golden statue of General Lafayette on horseback center stage, where he reared up out of a sea of white lilies. The decorating committee was well funded, for this was a group with assets to spare. Men wore tuxedoes and ladies wore red, white, or blue. Marilyn Monroe wore a midnight-blue sequin gown that did a marvelous job of showing off her own assets.

I felt like a screen siren myself that night, dressed in a hydrangea-blue Schiaparelli with a flirty little train that dusted the floor as I walked along the tables, performing the last of my decorative duties. I thought I looked pretty good for being on the other side of fifty.

I set a red rose, dethorned, in a plastic water vial at every female guest's plate, reading place cards as I went, a
Who's Who
of A-list Hollywood stars and political bigwigs: Senator John Kennedy. Jacqueline Kennedy. Mr. Winston Guest. C. Z. Guest. Raymond Bolger. Gwendolyn Bolger.

Mr. Paul Rodierre.

A cold splash washed over me. Paul? How could I have not known? It had been ten years since I'd seen him. Next to him, Leena Rodierre. He was remarried? Delightful. What had happened to Rena? I set a rose next to Leena's place and finished quickly, wanting to distance myself from Paul. I'd seen his name in the news here and there in connection with new acting projects, but I'd never seen his films. What could I possibly say to him?

Actor Jean Marais and actress Françoise Arnoul, dressed in French military uniform, started off the evening by entering the ballroom in an open carriage drawn by two black horses. As I watched, Betty, radiant in blue organza, found me and handed me a glass of champagne.

“You should see the gift bags this year, Caroline. All Dior. And
good
caviar finally…”

The gift bags at the ball were actually suitcases packed so tight with luxury goods, guests needed porters to carry them to waiting cars.

“Can you believe all the movie people? You would've been big in pictures if you'd stuck with acting.”

“Right there with Gloria Swanson—”

“Well, you're ready for your close-up tonight. You look fabulous, honestly. Wish I could say the same for poor Wallis Simpson. She's positively fossilized. Saw her in the powder room, and she complimented my dress. ‘Is that Wallis blue?' she said. Really. It's always about her.”

“It's good she came.”

“It was no hardship, Caroline. She lives upstairs in the Towers. The staff has to call her ‘Your Royal Highness,' even though she's not officially allowed to use that title. And the Duke is here. Looking a bit dazed. I think Wallis has him medicated.”

“At least it's good press for the cause.”

“Really? Try and get the reporters away from Marilyn and Arthur.”

“I'm going to ask Wallis to support the Polish ladies.”

“Good luck, Caroline. She's tight as a tick.”

“She and the Duke do nothing but charity work.”

“As long as there are cameras around. Speaking of cameras, I was going to let you find out on your own, but Paul Rodierre is here.”

I drank half the flute of champagne in one gulp, the bubbles like fizzy fireworks going down.

“How do you know?”

“I saw him. With his new wife. Some child actress. He looks good, tan as a Palm Beach matron. They must both be wearing girdles.” Betty waited for my reaction with a sidelong look. “Don't go running off now.”

“It's fine,” I said, my stomach doing somersaults. “I actually saw their place cards. I have nothing to say to him.”

“Well, if you two do speak, stay away from the knives.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” I said, draining the glass. It had been years since I'd seen the man, and I was hardly carrying a torch.

Betty went to find her husband, whom she'd spotted winding his way through the crowd with two champagne flutes, and I went in search of Wallis Simpson. Though reviews on her were mixed, she seemed like a compassionate woman. I hoped she'd be sympathetic to the plight of the Polish ladies and lend her support.

I squeezed through the crush of guests, the train of my gown trod upon by more than one patent leather dress shoe. I found Wallis off to the side of the ballroom with Rosemary Warburton Gaynor, wife of a prominent plastic surgeon, Dr. William C. T. Gaynor, and chair of the ball. Up close it was plain to see why Wallis had been fifteen times on the International Best Dressed List. She stood in a pillar of white Mainbocher lace, her dark hair clenched in a tight chignon. Her husband waited nearby, half-listening to the British ambassador, eyes trained on Wallis, like an aged sporting dog ready for his master's whistle.

Wallis and Rosemary stood together—gazelles at a watering hole—a stone's throw away from where Marilyn Monroe sat with her husband, Arthur Miller. I lingered nearby, waited for Rosemary to notice me, and accepted another glass of champagne to help bolster my courage. It isn't every day one asks the Duchess of Windsor for money.

Before long, lovely Rosemary noticed me and reached out, seeming happy for the diversion. “Oh, Caroline, come meet the Duchess.”

Dressed in a floor-length off-the-shoulder white gown with a ruffled hem, Rosemary drew me closer. “Your Grace, may I introduce my friend Caroline Ferriday? Caroline Ferriday, may I present Her Grace, the Duchess of Windsor.”

Wallis hesitated and then extended one satin-gloved hand. I shook her hand, wondering what one calls a divorcée married to an abdicated king. I went with Rosemary's lead and chose “Your Grace.” So much had been written about Wallis Simpson at that time, I felt I already knew her. The press obsessed over every aspect of her life—her French couture, her large hands, the mole on her chin, her dismissive attitude, and above all, her jewelry.

Rosemary waved in the direction of the dance floor. “Caroline has been
awfully
busy helping us put all this together.”

“So nice to meet you,” Wallis said.

My heart beat faster. How to bring up the Rabbits? Why was I so nervous? I'd once played to an audience of fezzed Shriners in Boston who'd passed a gin bottle down the front row of the theater. That was much scarier than this.

“Can you believe Marilyn Monroe?” said Wallis to no one in particular. She looked toward the horde of people clustered about Marilyn and her husband. A French television news crew, lights bright, was interviewing Marilyn and Arthur at their table. “Every photographer here is smitten with her.”

“It's the dress,” Rosemary said.

“Not one's even glanced my way,” Wallis said.

Mrs. Gaynor turned to me. “Caroline works
tirelessly
for the downtrodden, Your Grace. She has quite a reputation.”

“How is that?” Wallis asked, perking up as she accepted a glass of champagne from a tuxedoed waiter, perhaps hoping for scandal. How nice it is, when one's own reputation is damaged, to hear of others' misfortunes.

“A
good
reputation, of course,” Rosemary said. “She heads up an American arm of a French organization to assist women in need. She's been awarded
both
the Cross of Liberation and the French Legion of Honor for her work.”

“Don't go near those canapés, dear…too salty,” Wallis called to the Duke, who stood nearby apparently mesmerized by a waiter's tray of liver mousse canapés.

“Yes, I head up American Friends of the ADIR, Your Grace,” I said. “We support women who have returned from concentration camps. Help them regain normal lives.”

“Still?” said Wallis, drifting back into the conversation. “It's been how many years since the war? Doesn't their government help?”

“Some, but they still need assistance. We're working to get reparations for a group of women from Ravensbrück, a German concentration camp near Fürstenberg.”

“The Duke and I try our best to avoid any place with ‘berg' in the name.”

Since the couple's prewar trip to Berlin, where they were received by Hitler, the press often revisited the faux pas, even twenty years after the fact.

“The women are called the Ravensbrück Rabbits, Your Grace,” I said. “Polish women, girls really at the time, experimented upon by doctors there.”

“Just terrible,” Rosemary said.

“Poles?” said Wallis, a furrow between her brows. “I thought you worked for the French. It's all terribly confusing.”

Wallis's attention shifted to a fashion show model who settled near us, one hand on her hip, the other held high, a diamond cuff on the wrist. The Duke raised his eyebrows at Wallis as if asking her opinion of the bracelet. Wallis sent him a noncommittal shrug.

“We help women of any nationality who've returned from the camps,” I said. “Conditions are especially difficult in Poland. Many of them are sick—some dying—and still have no reparations, since West Germany doesn't recognize Communist Poland as a country.”

Wallis glanced about the room, perhaps looking for the exit. “I'm not in a position to donate to anything these days. We have to bow and scrape for everything we're given. We're not even on the Civil List, if you can imagine. Plus, the world has grown weary of all that death and destruction. Those stories even bore the people who went through it all. Who
hasn't
written a memoir?”

Wallis turned to the Duke, smoothed the royal Peter Pan's hair in place, and fussed with the gold medals and ribbons at his chest. She removed a canapé from his hand, placed it back on the silver tray he'd taken it from, and took the Duke by the hand.

“Let's pop up and check on the dogs.” She motioned for the waiter with the silver tray to follow. “Pugs need to eat at least every two hours,” she said with a smile and swept off toward the exit.

“If you'll excuse me, Rosemary,” I said. Apparently Wallis was not sympathetic to my cause after all.

“Good luck with your fundraising, dear,” Rosemary said as I turned to leave. “I'll certainly be donating. And maybe pop in on Norman Cousins at the
Saturday Review.
He and his darling wife helped the Hiroshima Maidens after all.”

“I will, Rosemary. Thank you.”

I trekked the periphery of the ballroom in search of more champagne, smarting from Wallis's rebuff. I was careful to play the “If I were Paul Rodierre, where would I be?” game in order to avoid him. He would plant himself as far from the whole fashion show spectacle as possible. Probably near the food.

Definitely near the bar.

I circumvented the bar and walked by the Dior models as they twirled and sashayed through the guests. A waiter passed through the crowd, offering microscopic potatoes topped with sour cream and caviar. Was all the food that night to be tiny? I stepped toward the tray but stopped short, my train pinned.