The Sight of the Stars

From the kitchen, where Rea’s friend had come to help out in the house, came the clatter of pots, followed by a dreary silence. Blanche, with head bent, was examining her fingernails.

  “You’re a young woman,” Adam said gently. “Life will begin again for you.”

  Blanche sighed. “I suppose so. But Jonathan is hard to forget.”

  “He will be with me till the end of my days.”

  “I keep thinking of that evening when we sat in the pavilion and looked out at the ocean, talking about the future. I could never have imagined what it would bring.”

  There was no answer to that, and Adam gave none. What could he say to her except to repeat, “Life will begin again for you.” Intense pity filled him. It was a hard thing for any human being to be all alone in the world, but especially hard for a woman, he thought.

  “What are you looking at?” Blanche asked him. “My hair? I saw a picture of Irene Castle dancing the tango, and she had bobbed hair. That’s where I got the idea. Soon everybody will be doing it. Do you approve?”

  “I hadn’t noticed, really,” he replied, taken aback.

  “Nobody notices it very much on me, because my hair is so curly. It looks like a hat when it’s bobbed.”

  He gave a short laugh. She’s terribly nervous, he thought. And this conversation is making me uncomfortable.

  “I don’t suppose Emma will ever cut that marvelous hair of hers,” Blanche went on.

  “I hope she won’t,” Adam said.

  “It’s lovely. And she’s lovely. And her music is lovely.” Blanche said all this so blandly, and yet . . . Adam thought he heard the sadness behind the words.

  “Yes, it is. When the back door is open, you can often hear it when you’re in the yard. The neighbors sometimes come outside to listen.”

  It would soon be dark, and he was beginning to wish that Blanche would make a move to go back to Sabine’s house.

  “Tell me, how is it that you never even mentioned her to Jon and me when we met?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. Because Jon was going overseas, and it was your time to get all the attention, not ours.”

  “Well, now it’s yours, with a new house, a new baby, and a new business. Wonderful!”

  “I’m grateful for all of it.”

  “The store is really magnificent. The day after the party, Sabine took me through it. Even though you still haven’t got all your merchandise, I could see the potential. The aisles are wide, people have room to browse, you have beautiful cabinets for separate displays, the dressing rooms are spacious—yes, it’s as nice as any store in Paris or New York.”

  “You talk like an experienced manager,” Adam said.

  “No, just an experienced looker. I love clothes.”

  “Well, you certainly saved the day—the evening—for Emma. She calls those blue ruffles a stroke of genius.”

  “Oh, they were relatively simple. How do you like this suit I’m wearing? Or haven’t you even noticed it? I’ll bet you haven’t.”

  When she stood up, he realized that he had noticed, in spite of having a head full of other concerns, that Blanche, dressed in soft, rosy wool, looked very smart.

  “Hobble skirts are finished in Paris. Next year they’ll be finished here, too. Skirts will be short enough to show the ankles. Paquin and Lanvin already have a new, very slender silhouette. No more whalebone and corsets. We are always a year or so behind, you know.”

  Adam, amused by this tone of authority, asked where she got all her information.

  “There are plenty of French magazines to which you can subscribe. I copy a lot of things in them.”

  “Without a pattern you do that?”

  “One can figure it out. It’s not hard. Maybe you don’t get it exactly like the original, but you can certainly get the effect.”

  After a pause, Blanche continued. “Sabine took me around that neighborhood on the hill where the golf club is. There’s plenty of money up there. Where do those women buy their clothes?”

  “They buy a whole lot from us. If they want something special, they buy our yard goods and have their seamstresses make it up.”

  “The dressmakers go to their homes?”

  When Adam nodded, she seemed to be thinking for a few minutes, and then, speaking slowly, she remarked that she had a much better idea.

  “Why don’t you hire your own dressmakers to work in the store for wages? I’m sure you would find plenty of them who’d be glad not to be traipsing from house to house. They’d have a comfortable place to work in and a dependable income that they don’t have now. Your store would have some more traffic to be tempted by other things on display, the shoes, the shawls, and the whatnots, to match the dresses. Right? What do you think?”

  Not bad, he was thinking. Pretty clever ideas. This woman has a good head for business. She seems dependable, too. He recalled his first impression of her as a good wife for Jonathan, who had never been what one might call practical. Would she, perhaps, want to stay here and supervise these dressmakers? Maybe she would. He wouldn’t exactly be hurting himself, either, by walking in with a brand-new idea so soon after his promotion.

  He watched Blanche now as she walked across the room to pick up her cape, which matched the rosy wool of the jacket. She was really very attractive—not pretty, but still better looking than he remembered. She was not the kind of woman who usually appealed to him—in the days before Emma, of course—but she could be a fine advertisement for Cace Arnring.

  “Well, you do have an interesting thought,” he said. “Of course, I’ll have to talk about it with the people on top.”

  “Naturally.”

  “If they like the idea, would you personally want to consider getting it started? No promises, of course.”

  “I understand. I don’t mind staying awhile, a couple of weeks, let’s say, until you decide.” Blanche smiled. “Sabine likes my company.”

  No, she doesn’t, he could have told her. But instead he said, “I’ll get my car.”

  “Don’t get your car. It’s not far, and I enjoy the walk back.”

  For a moment he stood at the door and watched her. I really don’t like her, he thought, or is it that I don’t quite trust her? Why don’t I trust her? She’s done nothing wrong. And life has beaten her down. I should only be sorry for her.

  Chapter 16

  After the armistice, after some months of lag and uncertainty, the economy, nourished by oil and beef, began to bloom over the next few years.

  This could be clearly seen on Cace Arnring’s main floor, where imported British shirts, hats by Reboux, French perfumes, and a hundred other fine luxuries were on display. Although Adam’s office, three times the size and grandness of his former one, was situated in an administrative area on the third level, he still spent much time keeping track of business on the selling floors. He knew the merchandise, the sales staff, and many of the customers, as well.

  “When you think of what this place was on the day you and I met, it seems impossible, doesn’t it?” Reilly said. “All that mess, and the yelling, the place folding up? It’s like a dream.” They were standing in front of the shoe department, where Reilly was now the buyer in charge, and earning more, no doubt, than he had ever dreamed of earning.

  “I’m glad you can feel that way,” Adam replied.

  He was asking for no credit, but he knew all the same that a good part of the credit belonged to him. That longtime saleswoman over there, who used to worry about her young sons home alone, and that thin spinster behind the glove counter who used to worry about the myriad things a solitary woman worries about, had each received a decent raise and were feeling more secure than they ever had before. It was still not good enough, he thought, but it was better, and he intended to keep on trying to make it better still.

  “That Madame Blanche keeps pulling the customers in,” Reilly said. “She’s put this store on the map, the great big map, hasn’t she? ‘Madame Blanche’—sounds funny, doesn’t it?”

  ??
?Women love anything French.”

  “Seems like it. You have to get up early in the morning to get ahead of her. Got enough vigor and vim for three people.”

  Yes, she did, except, of course, when Jonathan was mentioned.

  “It’s more than vigor,” Adam said. “She’s an artist. Clothes are a kind of art. Some women live for clothes. My wife doesn’t, but a lot do.”

  “Your wife looks like a doll. She always did, even when she wasn’t much taller than a doll. Oh, look! Look at that display cabinet! What kind of crazy hat is that? It looks like a pot.”

  “It’s called a cloche. That means ‘bell’ in French.”

  Next to the hat stood a photograph of a woman wearing such a hat, along with a handwritten card in Blanche’s pointed European writing: This is how you are all soon going to look.

  “A clever woman, Madame B.,” Reilly said. “I didn’t know what to make of her at first, but now she has my respect. And when you get used to her, you begin to see that she’s a good-looking woman in her own way. Don’t you agree?”

  Having many other things on his mind, Adam was in no mood to get into one of Reilly’s long conversations about trivial matters. He replied that he was in a hurry to get home, which was true.

  Emma had planted redbuds in the yard. Why were they called “redbuds,” Adam wondered, when they had lavender flowers in the spring and yellow leaves in the fall? He must ask her. She was one of those people who took pleasure in simple things like those redbuds, or the gardenia plant that flourished in the dining room window, or the corn muffins with strawberry jam that he liked with his breakfast coffee.

  In the side yard the nanny rocked James in his carriage; at seven months he was sitting up and shaking a rattle in his hand. Jonathan, now three—and where, as people always ask, has the time gone?—was running around with a neighbor’s four-year-old. He was tall, already taller than the four-year-old, Adam noted with satisfaction. Deep within him had lurked a fear that he had never confided to anyone, certainly never to Emma, that the wayward strain, the one that had produced Leo, would reappear in a child of his.

  Faintly, out of the room at the far end of the hall, came the sound of the piano, first a halting, dissonant phrase, and then the phrase repeated as it was supposed to sound. Emma was giving a lesson.

  On the kitchen counter stood a pot of her favorite fish soup, cooked these days without wine so that Jonathan might have some. Beside the pot stood a cup of real wine which Adam might add to his if he chose to. She always said that of course the soup wasn’t the same as when the wine had been there from the beginning.

  He wondered how she found the energy to cook after giving piano lessons at home, teaching two music classes a week at the university, and putting in an hour of practice every day for her own advancement. She ought to have some help. Sabine said so, and Sabine was right.

  The trouble was that the house was too small to hold another inhabitant with any comfort. As soon as I have finished paying my debt to Shipper’s bank, he thought, we’ll have to move. One of those places on the hill near the golf club would be nice, not that the club would ever admit a Rothirsch connection! He smiled to himself. He didn’t play golf and had no desire to learn.

  In the small den, surrounded by walls of the books that he could never resist, he sat down at his desk and began to write an overdue letter.

  Dear Pa,

  Thank you for remembering our anniversary. We love the beautiful, leather-bound album with all those old pictures of us boys in our knickerbockers and black cotton stockings. I often think we should be grateful for the way that time’s passing helps us cope with our grief, so that I can actually bear to look at a picture of Jonathan.

  So you were surprised when the neighbors showed you our ad in Foibles. I have to confess that was Blanche’s doing and not mine. I’ve had ads, but never a double page, which costs a fortune that you’d never believe. But she says that’s the way to get national recognition, and that it won’t be long before Cace Arnring will have a fashion show in New York.

  Do you remember how we all felt so sorry for Blanche? Emma swears that she will be on her way to a career like Chanel’s. If you don’t know about Chanel, let me tell you she’s famous.

  Remember how Sabine always boasted about Emma’s being famous? Well, Emma doesn’t want to be! She is very happy making music and caring for our beautiful boys.

  When are you coming here to see us? We keep on asking you. And please tell Leo that we really expect him to come, too. Love,

  Adam

  The children slept and the house was still, as the last notes of a Chopin sonata died away into the night.

  “It’s not every man,” Adam said, “whose day can end with a little music of his choice.”

  “Unless he listens to the radio.”

  “No comparison! Oh, come on upstairs, let’s go to bed. I’ve been thinking about it for the last hour.”

  In the bedroom, Emma opened the closet door and took out a dress wrapped in a protective bag.

  “First you have to have a look at this. I brought it home from the store today.”

  This was an evening gown of pale green velvet. A narrow diagonal panel of darker green crossed the skirt, while the bodice was low enough to display bare arms and naked shoulders.

  “It’s for the governor’s inaugural ball. Do you like it?”

  “You bet. The color is wonderful with your hair.”

  “Blanche is amazing, isn’t she? She gets it right every time. I didn’t ask her, but has she been invited?”

  “No, it’s for names, politicians and businesses that have contributed to the party. You know how it is.”

  “Maybe she feels overlooked. Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought she was just a trifle cool toward me today.”

  Adam shrugged. “Why would that be?”

  “I wonder whether she’s been lonesome since she’s been in that little apartment by herself. But Sabine laughs when I say so. She says Blanche can get all the men she wants, any place, any time.”

  “Well, she can certainly make more contact now than she could living with Sabine.”

  “I thought you didn’t think she was that attractive.”

  “Well, maybe she is, in a way. She’s just not my type. Put that dress back in the closet, will you, and come here?”

  Out of the blackness, a thin white light fell through the slatted blinds, laying stripes upon Emma’s breasts and her thighs. The bed was fragrant, not with any perfume, but with the natural scent of her lips and her hair. And Adam lay there holding her to himself, not letting her go until they both fell asleep.

  Chapter 17

  The country had certainly known prosperity often before, but never anything like this in the year 1928. One had to wonder whether blue-ribbon stocks like Standard Oil and General Electric would simply keep on rising forever. Property values soared, too, and there was hardly a street in town or a road out of town where somebody was not either constructing or improving something.

  Adam kept his investments within his own company, where he was able to have a little control or at least some knowledge of affairs. Having paid his debt in full to Shipper’s bank, he owed no man.

  From back east, Pa wrote,

  You wouldn’t believe what’s happened to real estate here. They’ve built a grand road in from the suburbs, and my store is right on the four corners, along with a big new gas station, a pharmacy, and a Woolworth’s. I never dreamed how a grocery store could boom. I’m having it modernized, inside and out. I’ve hired two men dressed up in white jackets to wait on my fancy suburban customers. Leo is keeping the books for me, going to the bank and the stockbrokers, doing a really great job this time, Adam. Really great, you’d be surprised. He’s taking some classes at the new state college, he’s busy day and night, and I hardly see him, so we don’t have time to argue.

  Adam had his doubts about putting Leo in charge, but he hoped his father was right. He would always help his family back home if th
ey needed it. But for now he had plenty of people right here to take care of.

  Emma was pregnant with their third child. This tiny house was too crammed with people and all their goods—nursery furnishings, baby carriages and strollers, bicycles, books, and concert grand piano—to say nothing of the one-car garage for a two-car family. So the time for a move, long postponed, had arrived.

  Reilly always talked about “real money up on the hill, ranches, cattle, and oil. It’s not the kind of money doctors and lawyers have, but big money. Real big. Bigger than Mrs. R.”

  Adam was unimpressed by the hill and the people on it. He was interested only in a certain piece of land on the other side of the hilltop, a plateau with a view of long, level miles, where corn and grain were growing and cattle were grazing. There, the distant horizon was blue-gray, like the one that rims an ocean. There was a great calm.

  The wreck of an old farmhouse, half burned out, was still standing, as were the graceful elms that had once shaded it.

  “They look like green flower vases,” said Emma.

  The new house could be built on the foundation of the old; it would stand with its back to the town and the daily bustle of the great store. Standing in a silence that was broken only by birdsong and the rush of wind, Adam and Emma planned their home.

  No doubt their architect was surprised when they gave him an outline of their idea. They were not interested in any grand display of what Reilly called “real money.” They wanted a simple house, much like the oldest ones in the town below, but more spacious, with room for everything that they and their children owned and did, along with rooms for Pa, when and if he should come to stay.

  The architect smiled. “A farmhouse, you said?”

  “Well, not exactly,” Emma said. “Something very comfortable, but surely not one of those awful ‘look-at-me’ things that we sometimes see. You know what I mean.”

  Adam knew, too. Please, she meant, nothing like my aunt Sabine’s house.