The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard (44 page)

Safe would have been farsighted enough to leave my home in South Gate with a purse full of money. Nell the shoppie would never have overlooked such a basic necessity, but Madame Annelle had sailed into her newly single morning without taking a nickel from the cracker tin. If George were to check, I had wanted him to see that I took nothing. Now I glumly realized that I had left plenty of cash for him to lavish on Lisette. She had said she wanted enough champagne to bathe in. Over dinner, I imagined her sturdy figure in the bathtub, wreathed in pale bubbles, and my appetite dissolved. I gave Mary my egg.

Rose had already asked whether Mary and I mightn't need assistance, and I had proudly said no, only to cross the lawn five days later and ask for a loan. She did not make the moment difficult, as Mrs. Hoyt would have done, and the moment was more difficult because of that. "Poor thing. You didn't bring a penny with you?" She tried to keep the shock out of her voice.

"I brought some, but it goes very quickly."

"I don't mean to pry."

"The situation is—delicate." I gestured at Mary, my little pitcher. I had brought her with me for exactly this purpose, even though at the moment she showed no interest in adult conversation and was running her finger over the fuzzy leaf of a potted African violet.

"Of course it is." Rose pulled me into the living room and rang the bell for tea. Mary, who had been so glum lately, brightened. The bell meant treats were coming, particularly cream cakes.

Rose said, "Mr. Barnett was a close man. He would give me anything I asked for, but I still came into the habit of putting a bit aside. I told him I always wanted cab fare in case I was caught in the rain, and that was true. I also wanted to be able to buy a lovely pair of gloves if I saw them. You can never count on such things remaining behind the counter."

"Not if the shop girl is doing her job."

"One night Mr. Barnett went through my handbag." Rose raised an eyebrow, helping me to imagine the marriage in which a husband opens his wife's handbag to see what interesting things he might encounter there. "He found fifty dollars and asked where I would need the cab to go."

I arranged my face into a sympathetic expression. Fifty dollars! Rose could have taken a cab to Canada.

"It led to a quarrel," Rose said. "Mr. Barnett asked several times if I understood the appearance of a woman with such a full handbag. He was concerned with appearances."

"I suppose you allowed him to take charge of the fifty dollars."

"I did," she said. "And I became more canny about"—her eye lit on Mary, and she paused for a moment, casting for words—"where I might deposit my funds."

"Hatbox?" I said.

"Glove. I had a pocket sewn on the inside. I'll bet you didn't think I was conniving, did you?"

"I know about pockets." I reached over to wipe cream from around Mary's mouth before I said, "And now here we are. Two grown women. Free as birds!" My laugh was complicated, Rose's likewise, but she still had no trouble pressing a hundred-dollar bill in my hand and saying that I need not think about paying her back. I thought about repaying her all the time after that.

Rose's cottage was small, but it was room enough for Mary and me, and Rose sent over her own maid to tend us. For the first time in my life, I was not laundering my own bed linens, and when decency forced me to protest to Rose, she raised the teapot in her hand. "Join me?" she said.

Rose treated me like her equal, a lady of leisure in the slightly improper California style. Her maid, seeing the thimbles and spools of thread lining the cottage windowsill, treated me like a tradesman, for which I could hardly blame her. The first group of my old clients to whom I sent lavender-scented notes did not answer them, and a chill settled in me that even Pasadena's steady warmth could not touch. One night, Mary asked if I was ever going to start sewing again. "I'm doing the best that I can!" I responded, and my daughter turned white. Although I apologized, she remained subdued the next day as we went from stop to stop on the streetcar.

We were covering the city, calling on my old clients and leaving my card when the ladies would not receive us. I gave Mary a card to play with, and when it flew from her fingers through the open streetcar window, I gave her another. "Madame Annelle:
Modiste
" At some point, I would be money ahead and would have new cards made.

At that lovely time, when I had cars and furs and my own home, I would enroll Mary in a school where she would learn every French word correctly. I imagined her in five years, demure and longhaired, the kind of girl who seemed to exist now only in the movies. If I wanted Mary to become that girl, we should leave California right away, hastening to someplace that had never heard of girls who smoked and created tiny, bee-stung mouths with their lipsticks. I could bring her to Kansas, where girls didn't know about elevators. Even then, it would be too late. Mary knew what we had taught her. I would have apologized if I could.

For now, I took her with me on the calls because I had no choice. She was a mannerly child who held her tongue in the ladies' fine living rooms and foyers, but a six-year-old, even well-behaved, does not make the same delightful impression as an infant. I thought of hefty Irish washerwomen arriving to work with their sallow-faced daughters, and I noted the new coolness in Mrs. Donlavey's manner, quite like Mrs. Wicket's. It was up to me to remind them of their good fortune in having access to Madame Annelle.

I started with Mrs. Homes, who had once been friendly. Her note, arriving after I had twice left my card on her red and black lacquered tray, informed me that her schedule was crowded. I had to wait a further week before she could make room for me. Even then, as she had her girl show me into the parlor where we had never sat before, a room of ponderous gilded furniture that she must have inherited and could not have enjoyed, she made it clear that she wanted to finish our business swiftly. Her manner warmed a degree when I showed her new fabrics, full of the opulence of imperial Russia, and a degree more when I remarked that Gloria Swanson had been seen wearing a dress in a similar wool, though not as fine.

It was when I mentioned George, however, that I had her full attention. Her haughty manner abandoned like a coat at the side of the road, Mrs. Homes clasped my hands. "He made you move out? You, with your child?"

I cast my eyes down.

"It is a scandal! To set you out, defenseless, with little Mary—oh, madame!" Her eyes were brilliant now, wide and damp, and her mouth quivered with outrage. "There must be a reason," she said.

"I suspect so,
oui"

Her eyebrows flew up. "You must tell me," she said, taking my hand and pulling me to the side parlor, where a deep davenport looked out on the garden.

Mrs. Donlavey was not equally quick. Unhappy to have a child in a room that held a tea set from London, England, she kept a strict eye on Mary. But when I informed her that a change of address had been forced upon me by my own husband, so soon after my sisters had come to stay, she could not stop herself from folding her lips. Five minutes later, while I was measuring her arm for a tight sleeve, she burst out, "Your own sisters?"

I spoke carefully. Mrs. Donlavey did not wish to know of Madame Annelle's scandal. A lady with a reputation to think of did not invite scandal into her drawing room. But if scandal had been brought upon the unsmirched lady of fashion, if the legendary Madame Annelle had found herself the object of cruelty and was now forced bravely, uncomplainingly to make a new path for herself and her sweet child—why, I could be played by Gloria Swanson.

"Your own flesh and blood?" she said.

"They are young."

"That does not excuse him."

"I could not agree more."

"I have recalled another evening at the opera that I will be attending with Mr. Donlavey," she said. "Might you be able to make me two dresses?"

The second dress was a kindness. It was when she decided to have me make a coat for her, too, that kindness spilled over into frank greed for details. While I busied myself with a new set of measurements, she could ask other questions about sisters, a husband, a wife and child set out on the street.

I was judicious. To say little excited far more interest than talking at length, and soon old clients were sending me five-or ten-dress orders on their lavender note cards. In a matter of weeks, my delivery time grew to several days, then a month, delays that made my clientele only more avid. Using Rose's loan, I had a new Singer delivered, and now my cottage was stacked with fabrics and thread and trim. "You are a thriving business," Rose said. She had arrived at the door, as she often did, carrying a plate of sandwiches. Over her protests, I had thus far paid her back twenty-five dollars, and now she was openly feeding Mary and me. Every evening we were expected to dine at her table, whether she was there or not, and every morning a basket waited on our step with cooked eggs or toast. "This is
good,
Mama. Mrs. Barnett's food is
good
," Mary said, sampling a raisin biscuit, and I had to turn away. George would have laughed so.

It seemed unlikely that he was laughing now, with Lisette. Whatever my oldest daughter called forth from him wasn't laughter, which was a shame. George had a fine laugh, polished from frequent use. Of all the men I had known, only George loved to laugh.

I could think about him in this sidelong manner, not quite acknowledging what might or might not be occurring between us. The afternoon Mary asked directly when she would see her daddy again, I pointed out the window, at a neighbor's cat slinking along the fence. Mary liked cats, but she wasn't young enough to be distracted for long. She would ask again about her daddy, when there wasn't a cat nearby, and I would try to find an answer that did not betray my fear. Every man I had ever known was capable of cruelty. Pa, of course, Jack, even Pete. I had no reason in the world to think laughing George would flinch from punishing me, when I had given him such peerless cause. I could hope only that he would not punish Mary, but day followed day and we carried on our tiny, dainty life without him.

I sewed until midnight and rose again at dawn to sew some more, ignoring my heavy eyes and a spine that felt like a length of macadam. Schools that taught girls to speak perfect French cost hundreds of dollars. I stopped buying the newspaper, saving myself a nickel a day.

"I can't thank you enough," I told Rose. "Mary and I would not be able to survive without you."

Rose held up her hand like a traffic policeman. "I like having you here. I wish I could have you and Mary stay forever."

"Be careful what you wish for," I said.

"I have a piece of news, though. I'm pretty sure you'll want to know."

"Lisette has fallen off a bridge?" Rose looked at me strangely. Even with her, I should have known better than to try certain jokes.

"It's Aimée. Harry remembered seeing her at Universal, and he set up a screen test."

"Now you are joking."

"The man never forgets a pretty face." Her voice remained even, as transparent as air, a tone that no one can achieve without practice. "He says she was luminous."

"Hark at that."

"Everybody back in Grant Station will be pouring into the movie palace. Ain't that Nell's girl?' they'll say."

"'She don't have her mama's mouth. Got her ears, though.'" I loved slipping into these moments with Rose, so I was slow to catch on. She had to tap me on the arm. "Harry cast Aimée in a picture?" I said.

"Barmaid."

"A low neckline," I said. "A tight bodice."

"He says she looks charming."

"She doesn't know anything about acting."

"'Charming,' he kept saying. It isn't a word he uses very much. I imagine she's a natural," Rose said. "She has a way about her."

There was no reason for my eyes suddenly to be full of tears. I had no quarrel with Aimée.

"Nell, she's moving out of South Gate. She found lodgings closer to Hollywood."

"She couldn't have. She can't get to the end of the street without getting lost."

"Harry asked me to help her find a place. It's a nice little bungalow. She'll be safe." Rose stopped talking then, allowing me to understand: Lisette and George alone in the house, without even the pretense of respectability provided by Aimée's soft arms hanging out tea towels every morning.

"Believe me—this is no change," I said.

"It changes the look of things."

I put on a Hollywood smile. "Igbay ealday. Shift a light. Make the actress stand back two feet. Same set, same actress. Same movie." Aimée's change of residence was a piece of information sure to be well received by my clients. Mrs. Donlavey had promised to introduce me to Mrs. Wilmott, who knew Mrs. Chandler, of the
Times.
Rose didn't understand: this was not bad news. It was excellent news. All I had to do was survive it.

Only a few more days passed before George appeared at the cottage. Mary flew into his arms and clung to him as he swung her around. "Where have you
been?
" she demanded. My heart felt as if it were turning inside out, and I wondered whether George's felt that way, too. His face was red, his expression determined. "Mr. Curran," I said.

"Missus," he said. He bounced Mary, who nuzzled his neck and said, "Silly."

"Go out into the yard and make me a flower pie," he said.

"Pink flowers or white?"

"Pink," he said, quickly scanning the yard, which had few pink plants. She darted away, the lawn swallowing the sound of her footsteps. George smiled crookedly and said "Missus" again.

I gestured at the Singer. "Madame. Madame Annelle is back in business."

"I heard."

"It hasn't been easy. When you're building something for the first time, you have energy. Vision is exciting when you're seeing something fresh. Re-Vision is a little harder. I'm coaxing back my old clients."

"That's not how I hear it." He stood awkwardly in the doorway. "They say the tony downtown crowd can't get enough of Madame Annelle and her fancy dresses. They say she's never been better."