The Pink Suit: A Novel (15 page)

It was still a Chanel—at least to her.

She also wrapped the pieces of the skirt in muslin. Then placed the entire bundle in the Ready-to-Wear in-box, along with Chanel's instructions, even though they were no longer needed. Someone would just run the skirt off in the morning, maybe even one of the Ready-to-Wear girls. It would take less than an hour.

It was difficult for Kate to believe that the suit was suddenly no longer hers to make. It felt as if someone had died.

Miss Sophie had told Kate that when she was finished with the suit, she should wrap up all the remnants of pink and send them on to the White House. “Every last bit,” she said. Kate was to put it all in a box and address it to Provy at Maison Blanche so that the diplomatic courier could pick it up.

Provy was the Wife's wardrobe mistress, her second-floor maid. Kate had never met her, but she had spoken to her on the telephone on several occasions, and she was very nice. It was Provy's job to replace buttons, adjust hems, and reweave fabric that suffered from cigarette burns. Since Maison Blanche gave clear orders that the Wife's clothes could not be replicated exactly, Chez Ninon always sent Provy all the usable remnants.

Kate measured out a quarter yard for Chez Ninon's files and put it in a plastic bag. Tagged it. She then folded up what was left of the bouclé and tried not to cry.

It was startling how much fabric remained. Kate knew she'd been very careful when she cut for the jacket, but there was clearly more than enough left for another suit. Perhaps even a pink suit done exactly as Chanel demanded.

Beauty must be honored,
Kate thought. She cut a large swatch of the fabric and placed it in the box for Provy.

The rest of the pink Kate wrapped in more muslin and stuffed into an old Bergdorf Goodman bag that Maeve often used to “borrow” things from the Ladies, things that never seemed to make their way back to Chez Ninon. Kate took off her white cotton gloves and placed them on her desk. She punched her time card and pinned Schwinn's pink pillbox back on top of her towering red hair. Kate's hands were stiff as she buttoned up her coat. She picked up her purse and Maeve's bag and walked down the cement stairwell of Chez Ninon, into the cool night air. The door locked behind her.

October had finally arrived. It took Kate a block or so before she realized that she'd left her kidskin gloves behind, those poor leather gloves that had once been so beautiful had but never quite recovered from being caught in the rain. No matter. They no longer fit.
No sense trying to make something fit,
she thought. Kate stuffed her cold hands into her pockets; the bill from The Carlyle was still there, along with Mr. Charles's card.

Instead of making her way back to Columbus Circle to catch the train to Inwood, Kate started down Fifth Avenue, with bits of pink wool trailing behind her. Whorls of pink caught in the wind and stuck to her towering hair like wayward stars.

Mr. Charles laughed with pleasure when he opened his studio door and saw her standing there.

“Kitty,” he said. “That color suits you.”

“It's Kate,” she said. “Thank you very much.”

T
he Atelier, as Mr. Charles called his studio, had crystal chandeliers and gold-painted walls. There was even a machine that sprayed perfume into the air every ten minutes so that you would feel “intoxicated by lilacs,” as Mr. Charles had said. Kate had stayed longer than she'd planned to. Patrick wasn't angry, but he was clearly unsettled by her visit with Mr. Charles. Perhaps a little jealous, and that was just fine. Flattering, even.

“He made you an offer?”

“He did.”

“He showed you his workshop?”

“It was lovely.”

“My turn, then.”

“Turn? He's not asked me to marry him, Patrick. It's not like that.”

“But he wants you to help build his business. And that's what I want too. You can't give your heart to both. He made his case. Let me make mine.”

“Don't you want to know what I said?”

“I do. But even if you said no, you can't be a butcher's wife if you know nothing about what I do.”

“That doesn't sound very romantic.”

“There'll be a romantic moment later, trust me. Nothing's more romantic than dead meat.” He was grinning, which made Kate laugh.

Patrick took off his topcoat and put on a fresh butcher's coat, long and white. He handed her a clean apron—“Hook it around your head”—and a twelve-inch steel knife. “And you'll need the gloves.” They were not the thin cotton gloves Kate used to handle fabric, but roughly woven canvas. “Wrap your hair up so it doesn't get in the food,” he said. Kate was suddenly glad that she'd washed all that hair spray out of her hair before she came.

“Do you need a hat? I can get you a hat.”

Patrick always wore a white wool fedora behind the meat counter—very dashing and very old-fashioned—but he handed her a paper cap that looked like it belonged to a carhop.

“That's awful.”

“Would you rather have a hairnet?”

“I'd rather eat supper.”

“Soon,” he said. He picked up a small silver saw. “Let's start with a special order.”

“You're serious?”

He was. With a rather large thump, Patrick slapped the front quarter of a calf on the stainless steel table in front of Kate. The meat was soft and pink. “Veal,” he said. “Your first cut needs to separate the brisket and the shank from the shoulder and then separate each of the prime ribs.” He was pointing at where the cuts should be with a long skinning knife.

“You skin things, too?” she asked.

He laughed.

On the wall was a framed needlepoint, probably Peg's own handiwork. It was a poem from Robert Burns:

Kate hoped that there would not be a long tradition of meat poetry or too much skinning involved in their lives together.

Patrick patted the small front quarter with the flat of his hand. “See how tender?” he said. She couldn't look.

That morning, when Kate agreed to dinner, she expected dinner. She did not expect a class in Irish butchery. Kate put the knife down next to the joint. “It's a little late for this,” she said gently.

Patrick indeed looked tired. “Right, then. We'll save the cutting-up part for another time.” He picked up the quarter and balanced it on one shoulder, a trick she imagined that he'd practiced for the phone operators. It teetered there, making him look like a strong man in the sideshow. “In French,” he said, “the word
entrecôte
means ‘the good stuff.' The veal is the good stuff.”

“You don't speak French.”

“It's a butcher word.”

He swung the joint around and slid it back in its place on the shelf, next to the rest of that poor baby cow. The shop was closed and cleaned. Tomorrow's special orders were lined up for early delivery. Patrick and Kate should have been on their way to the pub. He'd asked Mrs. Brown to make them a proper meat pie, with steak, Murphy's ale, and Patrick's own cured bacon. There'd also be a bit of mashed, because nothing goes better with any food than potatoes, butter, and cream. “A tad of parsley on top for the veg,” he said. “A proper meal for courting.”

But instead of having a proper meal for courting, or any sort of meal at all, Kate and Patrick were standing in the walk-in cooler, with raw meat stacked on the stainless shelves all around them. In the center of the small room, hanging between them, was a half of a cow, caught on a hook. It was split through its spine and hung upside down. A thick chain on a pulley held it steady. It reminded Kate of a nightmare she once had.

“This is good stuff, too?” she asked.

“Dry aged. Very rich. Brings in twice the price.”

The carcass was enormous, bigger than Patrick. The skin was mottled, yellow and moldy.
Poor cow,
Kate thought.

“You'll get used to the smell of the blood,” he said.

Poor me.

The lexicon of Irish butchery was apparently vast.
Rib eye, club steak, Scotch
fillet,
contre-filet
—which some called sirloin—and
strip loin,
which in a restaurant is actually called sirloin but in a butcher shop is usually
rump,
although it could also be
shell steak, Delmonico, Kansas City,
or
New York strip steak.

“Patrick?”

“Cold?”

“It's slightly above freezing in here.”

“With eighty-five percent humidity?”

“Absolutely.”

At least she'd learned something.

Patrick took off his fedora and placed it on the hook. “Since we're not up to slicing tonight,” he said. His hair was alarming in its independence, poking up here and there. With a skinning knife in one hand and a carcass in another, he looked slightly mad.
A man possessed by meat,
Kate thought, and, oddly enough, she wanted to kiss him. But he was too busy talking about the science of fat ratios.

The night was slipping away from them, and it was such a shame. Kate had taken such pains to choose the right lipstick, the right rouge. Her nylons were real French silk; the Ladies had given them to her last Christmas. The dress that she was wearing she'd never worn before. She'd been saving it for a special occasion. It was navy-blue crepe, with sweet cap sleeves and a flounce skirt, a lovely, feminine thing.

Kate hadn't planned on a night of raw meat. It didn't seem as if Patrick had.
Old Spice,
she thought. He'd shaved.

“The top side of beef is the one with a fat cap. Sometimes they call it
round
or
London broil
. It's used for pot roasting, cottage pies, or shepherd's pies.

“Tallow is trimmed fat. It has to be rendered before it's resold.”

The language of bone and muscle seemed foreign to Kate. Was there any beauty in it?

Mr. Charles's atelier was so elegant, an amazing little jewel of a place, with carved chairs from India that were as ornate as thrones. The rugs were hand-knotted Orientals. And there were cocktails. Kate had never had a martini before. It was very small and cold and strong. She coughed when she took the first sip. Mr. Charles had laughed.

“You have to be careful and sip slowly,” he said. “Gin is designed to make one elegantly fluffy.”

The gin had made Kate feel elegantly fluffy right up until the moment that Patrick began to explain the capricious nature of the walk-in meat cooler: The air conditioner is old and testy, the humidifier works but is covered in rust, and the fans overheat and must be watched carefully.

“Is everything in this room unreliable?” she asked.

“I hope not.”

He meant her, of course. Patrick swung the cow slightly, like a child kicking a can. The chain creaked. He took off his butcher's gloves and ran a hand through his hair, and for a moment, he looked so profoundly tired. And lonely. And, perhaps, slightly afraid. “Peg loved this shop more than anything because it was hers,” he said. “Nobody told her who she could speak to. She was the lady here. Don't you want that?”

“I do, but—”

“But it's a butcher shop?”

The side of beef swayed a bit. It was mottled like a bruise. The stench of it was overwhelming. The air conditioner cycled on and then off, and the humidifier hissed in the corner. “Patrick, the First Lady of the United States wears clothes I make—”

“And yet you're not good enough to speak to her.”

“It's not that simple.”

“ 'Tis,” he said. “You once said that the Wife is the ‘best of us,' but that's wrongheaded. It's the other way round. She's not the best of you, Kate. You're just as lovely—more so, actually. And you're a real person. You sew until your hands go numb to help support your old man and Maggie Quinn, and for the pride of craft and country, both Ireland and America. She doesn't have your sense of justice or humbleness in front of a mighty God.”

“Patrick—”

“Somebody needs to tell her to get off her exquisite bum and do something. Free Ireland. Get on the bus with the coloreds and Dr. King and his wonderful tie. Somebody needs to say to her,
Do something important because you can. If you're one of us, be us, then.
”

The rusted air conditioner rattled on again. Out of habit, Patrick leaned over and felt the air to see if it was still working.

“Patrick, in the neighborhood. What do they say about me?”

“Who?”

“People.”

“Nothing.”

“Maggie says—”

“Maggie's a little high-strung.”

“But she's no liar. Tell me. Please?”

Patrick hesitated.

“Please?” she said again.

“It's just a joke, really. They call you Queen, but they don't mean anything by it.”

“Queen?”

“The Queen of Inwood. It's just talk, though. It's like having a nail that sits up too high—you have to bang it down a little, or it will trip people up. You know what I'm saying?”

She did.
God save our glorious Queen
—Kate could still hear him singing that, the sadness in his voice. It was no joke to him. Maggie was right. Patrick was the only one who wasn't laughing.

“Kate, they just talk. It's just talk, nothing more.”

She nodded but felt numb. Patrick took her hands, removed the gloves, and kissed her tenderly. “You can't pay people no mind, Kate. They say so many things they don't mean.”

“And if we marry, what will they say about you?”

Patrick shrugged, but Kate could see that he'd thought about that, maybe even worried about it. Gossip can kill a business.

“You could walk away from the Ladies,” he said, “if you're worried about what people are saying. You could work here at the shop and sew for people in the community—that would turn things around. There are thousands of girls in Inwood who need First Holy Communion dresses every year. Mrs. Brown from the pub makes a tidy business of it on the side. She can't keep up with the work, though. She'd asked Peg to take the overflow. You could do that. We could set up in Mam's room. Mrs. Brown likes you very much.”

He'd obviously given this a good deal of thought.

As Patrick spoke, the geography of Kate's life grew smaller, until it fit into the palm of his hand. She wanted to say:
I told Mr. Charles no. I want to open my own couture shop. I know I can do this. Mrs. Vreeland did.

Kate wanted to say all this to Patrick but couldn't. She was, after all, the Queen of Inwood. She was a nail to be pounded down.

“I love you,” he said. “Always have.”

“I know.”

Patrick waited for a moment to hear her say the word
love,
but some words must be carefully considered. They complicate. They define. They own you. Kate wasn't sure she wanted to be owned, but she couldn't imagine her life without Patrick, either.

He looked hurt for a moment and then seemed to think better of it. He kissed her again. He was still searching for that word somewhere in Kate's eyes when he said, “Should we get some dinner? Shake all this off?”

“Please.”

He took off his butcher's coat. He had on a tie, the Harris clan tartan—
How sweet of him
—and a freshly pressed shirt. It was supposed to be a proper date, after all. He was lovely, if men could be called lovely. He put on his overcoat and then stopped for a moment, as if he'd just remembered something. “I'm not saying you have to leave the Ladies.”

“I know.”

“Good.” Patrick checked the air conditioner again, and the humidifier. “I think we're good.”

“Are we?”

“We are. You know, I did have this little speech worked up for you. It was all about the unpredictability of dry-aged beef. How you can't rush it. Takes forever to do properly, but tenderness comes, always—but it comes on its own terms.”

As promised, the poet butcher did have a big, romantic finish.

Kate said his name with such tenderness. “My dear Patrick Harris.” Yes, tenderness. It surprised them both. She wondered, just for a moment, how many telephone operators he'd told his dry-aged meat story to—but then she kissed him for it.

It was not a chaste kiss, or a drunken kiss, although she still tasted of olives and gin. It was the kind of kiss that one remembers through both good times and bad.

“May we have our supper now?” he asked.

They could. And they did. But only after Mrs. Brown had a word or two with them about “punctuality being the road to heaven.”