The Pink Suit: A Novel (22 page)

“I'm not even sure I can find the car again,” he said. Kate hoped he was joking.

The plan was to try to get to Satellite City just before the fireworks. The futuristic city featured the Blast-Off Bunker, an authentic reproduction of Cape Canaveral's control room. Little Mike wanted to watch a rocket launch. They all did, actually.

After the fireworks, Count Basie and his orchestra were scheduled to play at Satellite City's Moon Bowl, the outdoor amphitheater and dance floor. Kate had hoped they could listen for just a moment or two on their way out. Maybe have a quick dance under the stars. But they had to be careful not to run out of time. Freedomland was so large, and the day was nearly over.

“Let's map this out,” Patrick said.

He and Little Mike sat down on the bench by the harbor, with the official guide on their laps. While they plotted their course, Kate took off her shoes and put her feet in the San Francisco Bay—at least that's what the sign said.  It was just a big pond, really.
It's a knockoff,
she thought. And wondered what the Ladies would think of Freedomland—the greatest knockoff of them all.

Her nylons were ruined, but the water was soothing. The pillbox hat made her head itch, but she didn't want to take it off. Not yet, at least. Kate closed her eyes for just a minute; she couldn't remember the last time she was this tired. They'd seen less than half the park.
Next time,
she thought, and then caught herself. There would be no next time. It was now or never.

Kate yawned, and a man snapped one picture of her and then another. Her mouth was open. Yawning was not attractive. The Wife knew better than to be caught doing that, but Kate no longer cared. It was late. She was tired. She yawned again and hoped the annoying man would just go away, but he didn't. The man was moving around Kate as if to capture that particular quality that the Wife had. Kate was trying not to pay attention to him. He was like a spot on the edge of her vision.

Patrick and Little Mike were still looking over the map, trying to figure out the shortest point from here to there, when Kate noticed that there was a tear in her nylons. She wanted to slip them off—the garters would pop easily—but that man was still there, taking pictures. Kate refused to look at him.

She closed her eyes again and focused on everything else except the flash of the camera. There was the smell of popcorn, burnt sugar from cotton candy, and clouds of cigarette smoke. There was so much noise from the chugging railroad, the long drawl of the horn from the paddle wheeler, and a brass band in the distance—it was a lot like being in the city: the hum of it, life under the clouds. It was tiring, though. Everyone wanted something. Everyone thought you could be someone you weren't.

“Look this way,” the man finally shouted. “You're making me waste film.”

Kate looked at him. He was about her age, with sandpaper skin, wearing rolled-up blue jeans and scuffed boots. He was a roughneck. Behind him there was a thin young woman in a housedress; it was not the kind of thing meant to be worn outdoors, and certainly not to an amusement park. They were obviously together.

“Do you know how much film costs?”

“Sorry,” Kate said, but she wasn't. She had a ticket, like everybody else.

The man pushed the young woman forward, next to Kate. “Go on, now,” he said. “Stand next to her. Hurry up.”

He must have been her boyfriend. Kate looked back to see that Patrick and Little Mike were still talking logistics on the bench. They didn't even notice the commotion.

“Would you like a photo with me?” Kate asked her.

The young woman nodded.

One more can't hurt,
Kate thought, and hoped that the shot was from the waist up. When she stood and brushed herself off, the run in her nylons spread across her knee.

The young woman seemed apprehensive.

“It's fine,” Kate said.

“Why are you dressed like that?”

That was the first time anyone had asked Kate that all day. It surprised her.

The man with the camera was growing impatient. “Just stand next to her. It's as close as you'll ever get to the real thing.”

The young woman didn't move. “You don't really look like her,” she said. “A little, but not much. The hair's totally wrong. From far away it's better.”

“Viola, shut up and pose.”

The thin woman in her threadbare dress tentatively stood next to Kate, as if she might run away at any minute. The vibrant pinks of the bouclé suit reflected off the woman's face and gave her a rosy glow. The man took the photo. Another flashbulb sizzled. She leaned in and whispered, “I lost my baby, too. Like the First Lady.”

What was I thinking, wearing this suit?
Kate thought. The young woman suddenly looked so pained. She seemed to be hoping for some words of advice, or comfort, but Kate had none. “I'm sorry” was the best she could do.

Viola shrugged, and then touched Kate's sleeve, the bouclé. She rubbed it between her fingers. “It's stronger than it looks.”

“A lot of things are stronger than they look.”

The young woman looked at Kate closely—not at the suit, but at Kate.

“Could be,” she said.

This is how the story changes,
Kate thought. The story of the pink suit was no longer about beauty or forgiveness. It was about strength.

Little Mike fell asleep in the car. It was amazing to Kate how big he'd grown in just a couple of years. He was nearly six years old now, and not a trace was left of the Gerber Baby smile he'd once had. The tour was a farewell to Little Mike, too. Kate hoped he would always remember it, and her. And Patrick. But she suspected that when they left, the next time she'd see Mike, he'd be all grown up. Maybe even married. His aunt Kate would be just a dim memory.

Kate kissed his salty forehead and wondered if the kiss would push its way through to his dreams.

Patrick carried the boy into Maggie's apartment and then drove home in silence. The night had turned humid. The pubs all along Broadway were closed for mourning. Some of the doors had black wreaths over them. Many of the signs were covered in black shrouds. After all, the President's baby was Inwood's own son.

The parking garage now held only Rose. The explosion had compromised its foundation. Rose and her Oldsmobility, her poetry of steel and thunder—Patrick and Kate would miss her so. They sat in the car holding hands until well past midnight. They didn't care that the garage was stifling hot and precariously tilting to the left.
Like the bats,
Kate thought,
always to the left, always toward home.

“Our farewell tour,” Patrick finally said, as if it were a summation of the day. The words were filled with wonder and regret. They made Kate feel a bit closer to heaven, but a bit closer to death, too.

That night their part of Broadway was quiet, as usual. The last bus came by, dotted with passengers. When Patrick went downstairs to take his shower in the shop, as he always did, Kate finally took off the pink suit. She was going to fold it, wrap it in tissue paper, and put it away—but didn't. She hung it in the shop window. It would be her gift to the neighborhood.

“It's like waving a flag,” she told Patrick. “Patriotic.” Then told him what the girl had said.

“Strength?” he said.

“Absolutely.”

In November, the Wife wore the suit for the last time.

There'd been no orders for Thanksgiving at all. Kate and Patrick had taken the proceeds from the sale of Rose and bought two one-way airplane tickets—her Oldsmobility was apparently worth a good deal. The apartment was now filled with boxes. Some were to go to Maggie. Some were for Father John to distribute to the poor in the parish. Patrick would take only his butchering knives and a few clothes. “That's all I need,” he said.

Tomorrow they would be gone.

Mrs. Brown had asked them to drop by for lunch before they left. “I'll miss you both like the devil,” she said. Kate held her until they both stopped crying.

“Yes,” was all Patrick could say. He'd recently discovered that he wasn't very good at good-byes.

Mrs. Brown had her rituals. Monday through Friday, between the hours of one o'clock and three p.m., she cleaned the pub. It was never open for lunch, and that was a perfect arrangement, because her “stories” were on television then. She was particularly fond of
As the World Turns,
although she kept the volume low unless it looked important—like an indecent proposal, or a marriage proposal, or both. She usually plugged the jukebox with change from the register. The music was loud and Irish.

“I like to have a good weep while I clean,” she always said.

When Patrick and Kate opened the door to the pub, fiddles were whirling like dervishes; the accordion was breathless. A small black-and-white television was sitting on the bar, blaring. The place reeked of ammonia and Murphy's soap. Mrs. Brown was dressed for lunch but still had on her yellow rubber gloves. She was in a panic. On the television, the Wife was standing on a tarmac, holding a spray of roses. It didn't matter at all that the TV was black and white.

“That's your suit,” Mrs. Brown said.

Patrick pushed the jukebox away from the wall. The needle scratched the record hard. He pulled the plug, but the music was still ringing in Kate's ears.

“After the shot hit,” the reporter said, “his head fell into her lap.”

Kate was speechless.

Into her lap—and the suit.
The suit that Kate knew every stitch of, had lived every tuck and pleat of, had worried over, and cried over, and fell in love with Patrick over—this pink suit was the last thing the President ever saw. It was a particularly reckless pink, wild and vibrant, improbable in its beauty. And it had been made by so many hands, so many hearts. Those who were well known and those who were never known, and those whose names would be forgotten, not just Kate: it was part of them all.

After the shot hit, the President died with that vision of pink.

He died in all of their arms.

After,
Kate thought. That word again. It was too much to bear.

That night, their very last in America, Kate and Patrick stood in the butcher shop, looking out through the window, into the deserted street. It was snowing, quietly. The snow was like an afterthought, like a task that had been forgotten in the chaos of the moment.

The pink suit was still hanging in the shopwindow.

“Shouldn't we take it down?” Patrick asked, but both knew they couldn't. The streetlight made it shine like a rose-colored moon.

Mrs. Brown from the pub was the first to arrive. She'd brought a dozen or more candles that she lined up outside on the windowsill, a store-bought constellation, which she arranged just so. And then came Mrs. O'Leary, thin as a ruler, whom Patrick had once thought of as “Sunday Morning Fatty Bacon.” She'd brought more candles and some plastic flowers that she'd arranged in a glass vase. Father John and his altar boys soon joined them. The priest began to pray, “Our Father…” The snow fell harder.

One by one, people from the neighborhood gathered outside the butcher shop window to pay homage to the suit. Above them there were stars, but they were beyond the reach of those who gathered, and so they had brought their own. Their candles flickered, went out, and were lit again. They would not be denied the light.

When the crowd grew to the point that it spilled off the sidewalk and into Broadway, and then blocked it, Kate and Patrick could no longer see the profound brokenness that had surrounded them for all those months. The rubble of the telephone company had disappeared into the darkness. The only things they could see were the candlelit faces of the people they knew so very well.

They were beautiful in their sorrow.

After a while there was the sound of bagpipes. At first, the notes were confused and leaky, as if the players had tumbled out of the back of a truck, but then a song took hold in the crowd—“Amazing Grace.”

Standing on the other side of the window, in the dark that was once their butcher shop, Patrick and Kate looked out onto a world that would not be theirs much longer. They could not sing along: the song, and the moment, and the loss—tomorrow they were no longer a part of it. Even though they still felt it in their bones.

More than anything, Kate wanted to reach out and touch the suit one last time, as the woman at the park had done, for comfort, for strength. But the suit was no longer hers.

She took Patrick's hand and kissed it gently and hoped that, in years to come, when people asked, “Whatever happened to that Irish butcher and his wife?” the bad things would not be remembered, nor the tragedy that had changed everything. All that would be remembered would be the suit.

It was a beautiful suit, after all.

Of the real Aunt Kate, the real Little Mike once wrote: “Aunt Kate was a seamstress of note, [with] fine fingers like delicate pieces of spun glass. . .”

Mike Naughton, professionally known as “America's Best Dressed Ringmaster,” grew up to run away with the circus and eventually bought one of his own. While there were three “back-room girls” from Inwood, his aunt Kate did the finish work for the pink suit, and so Mike granted me permission to use his aunt's real name as a way to honor her.

However, the Kate in this book is a product of my imagination. And while Mrs. Kennedy was, indeed, affectionately known as “the Wife” by many in the fashion industry,
The Pink Suit
is a novel. It is a work of historical fiction based on facts.

Writing
The Pink Suit
took me on a worldwide adventure that began at the Piper's Kilt in Inwood when I sat down at the bar and ordered a cheeseburger, and the man next to me told me that he grew up in the neighborhood. Even though the Yankees and Mets were battling on the televisions overhead, most in the bar soon added their story to his, and a vision of Inwood circa 1960 began to take shape.

Inwood is just that sort of neighborhood.

At the Capitol Restaurant, across the street, they showed me pictures of the old days, plied me with iced tea, and made a few calls to those who still could remember a Broadway lined with Irish flags. The staff of Good Shepherd School, including development director Joseph Smith, schooled me in the fine points of Gaelic football and gave me a tour of the grounds. Even at new places, like the Indian Road Café, I found photos and stories about how life once was. History is a point of great pride in Inwood.

In County Cork, with the help of Rachel Gaffney, who writes the blog
Real Ireland,
I met professors Claire Connolly and Jools Gilson from University College Cork, and the textile artist Sue Tector-Sands. They are wonderful women who graciously shared both meals and stories with me.

On the great island of Cobh, Peggy Sue Amison of Sirius Arts Centre befriended me and found me a lovely place to stay atop Gilbert's Restaurant. She also connected me with the force of nature that is Claire Cullinane, who drove me around for hours, telling me tales about the way of life on the island, and even coaxed some of the volunteers at the Fota House to give us a behind-the-scenes tour.

I'm still amazed that so many people helped me with this novel. The staff and management at The Carlyle hotel in New York City verified the accuracy of the scenes that were set there. Stephen Plotkin from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum answered my endless e-mails with professionalism and kindness. And when I found Mrs. Kennedy's live model from Chez Ninon, Susan Ullery Stewart, she was more than generous with her time and photos.

Susan gave me amazing insight into the Ladies' process of design—which really made me love them. I do want to make it clear that when they copied designers in the late 1950s and early 1960s, they were not alone in this process. While our fictional Kate is quite concerned over this practice, it must be remembered that she's really not a fashion insider. Many in the industry copied French designs and still do. It should also be noted that Chez Ninon often did get a license to copy some garments, especially in the later years, and designed originals, too. And after the pink suit, they copied several more pieces of Chanel, all licensed line-by-lines. However, they, like everyone else, were “inspired” by French fashions. Listening to Susan, and a few others who were familiar with the Ladies, I truly could imagine them at runway shows, sitting in the front and then sketching from memory at cafés and pinning their copies onto a young girl fresh out of modeling school while arguing about politics.

These women were something, that's for sure. Something wonderful. I hope I rendered their fictional memory with as much affection as I truly feel for them. They were trailblazers, and I thank them for that.

Many thanks also to fellow writers Tim Nolan, Sally Bedell Smith, and Jeff Kluger—they were all kind enough to encourage me in this daunting project, as did my longtime agent Lisa Bankoff of ICM.

Lisa is amazing, and I'm lucky to have her. In addition to her support, keen eye, and friendship, her knowledge of the NYC subway system and Inwood proved indispensable to the writing of this novel, as did the use of her guest bedroom. I could not love her more.

Jon Parrish Peede of the
Virginia Quarterly Review
saw an early draft of
The Pink Suit
and published sections of it, which gave me the courage to auction the book. My heartfelt appreciation also goes to publisher Reagan Arthur (Little, Brown), associate publisher Ursula Doyle (Virago Books), and editor Laura Tisdel (Little, Brown), who gave it life. I am also grateful for the support of my colleagues at Bath Spa University. Gerard Woodward and Dr. Tracy Brain provided keen insight and a guiding hand. Steve May, Maggie Gee, and Fay Weldon cheered me on in a rather elegant manner. I thank them all for their understanding and generosity of spirit.

Many thanks also to the unflappable Mr. H, my assistant on this project. I would have been lost without his fashion-industry experience, acumen, and Cole Porter wit.

And, finally, much love to my Steven E. As we all know, novelists are not easy to live with, and he loves me with such a kind heart.