Concentration camps.
I taped a map to my office wall and peppered it with pins as we were notified of new camps. Roger fed me the lists, and I kept track. Soon Austria, Poland, and France were dotted with red pins, as if sick with scarlet fever.
Months went by without another letter from Paul. With the Nazis running roughshod over France, it was hard not to imagine the worst. Roger passed on news from abroad. At first the French had adopted a wait-and-see attitude about the Germans. As Nazi officers requisitioned the best restaurant tables, Parisians did their best to simply ignore them. Paris had been occupied before, after all. They seemed to be hoping it would all go away.
Never particularly good at taking a hint, the Nazis started requisitioning the best charcuterie and wine for themselves and announced their plan to relocate Paris’s entire fashion industry to Hamburg. After all this, and once the Nazis started rounding up French citizens with no warning, we received reports that said small resistance groups had started to crystallize here and there in Paris and distribute anti-German leaflets, laying the groundwork for an effective intelligence network. Less than a week after we received these first reports, there was a sharp increase in reports of underground activity all over France.
—
I HAD MY ORPHAN WORK to keep me busy, and Mother was a tireless partner for the cause. One evening I pulled everything out of the guest-room closets at the apartment searching for garments we could dissect and transform into orphan clothes, while Mother stitched together the few decent pieces of material we had.
The guest room was a curious combination of Mother and Father, for it had once been his study and retained a masculine air with its striped wallpaper and ebonized partners desk, but had later become Mother’s sewing room and bore the remnants of her projects: tissue-thin amber dress patterns flung about; padded Wolf dress forms of assorted sizes, unfortunately growing less wasp-waisted over the years.
I hauled out Mother’s rummage sale bags and our winter woolens, scrounging for soft scraps of material. I’ve never shown aptitude for sewing, and it’s just as well since it’s ruinous to good posture, but Mother was a brilliant seamstress. She sat at her sewing machine, head bent over the old black Singer, her hair white in the lamp’s arc of light. Once Father died, her dun-colored hair had turned the color of Epsom salts almost overnight. She had cut it short, started wearing mostly riding clothes, and put her rouge away. She’d always loved her horses and was more comfortable with a currycomb than a silver one, but it was sad to see such a beautiful woman give up on herself.
We listened to war news on the radio as we worked.
April 19, 1941. While Belfast, Northern Ireland, sweeps up after a heavy Luftwaffe raid, London has suffered one of the heaviest air raids of the war to date. As German troops advance into Greece, Greek Prime Minister Alexandros Koryzis takes his own life, and the British evacuate Greece.
“Oh, do turn it off, Caroline. There’s so little hopeful news.”
“At least we’ve stuck a toe in the war.”
Though still officially a neutral nation, the United States had finally begun sea patrols in the North Atlantic.
“To think of Hitler running about what’s left of the Parthenon,” Mother said. “Where will it stop?”
I slipped a seam ripper into the tin sand pail Mother used as a catchall for bobbins and scissors and felt metal meet grit. There was still sand at the bottom of it, from the beach at Mother’s family’s Gin Lane cottage in Southampton. Such a lovely beach. I could see Mother and Father there—she in black bathing costume, he in suit and tie, wrestling with his newspaper in the wind, the salt air pricking at my lungs. At night, in the chiaroscuro of the vast living room, I would pretend to read, one cheek to the cool linen sofa, and watch them play gin rummy, laughing and drinking each other in.
“Let’s go out to Southampton, Mother. A change of pace will do us good.” We had sold the Gin Lane cottage by then, but Betty still kept a house there.
“Oh no, it’s full of New Yorkers now.”
“You’re a New Yorker, Mother.”
“Let’s not bicker, dear.” She avoided the beach. It brought back memories of Father for her too.
“I suppose we can’t leave now anyway. The orphanages will be desperate for warm clothes once the weather turns colder.”
“You can still post your comfort boxes through the mail?”
“The Germans encourage people to send help for the orphans and even to those in transit camps. Keeps costs down for them.”
“How kind of the Boche.” Mother used the French word Boche, meaning “square-headed,” when referring to the Germans, her small act of defiance.
I turned to the bed and gathered an armful of Father’s woolen jackets.
She pulled the sleeve of one toward her. “We can cut those down—”
“We’re not cutting up Father’s things, Mother. And besides, we need fabrics that children can wear next to their skin.”
I pulled the jackets away from her.
“It has been over twenty years since he died, Caroline. Camel hair is moth candy.”
“I’ve been having Father’s jackets cut down for myself, actually.”
Father’s jackets fit me well after alterations. They were made with the best two-ply cashmere, vicu?a, or herringbone, each leather button a work of art. The pockets were lined with satin so thick putting a hand in one felt like dipping it in water. Plus, wearing Father’s jackets kept a piece of him near me. Sometimes when I was standing on a street corner waiting for a light to change, I found crumbles of cigar tobacco in a deep crease or an old peppermint in cloudy cellophane in a hidden pocket.
“You can’t keep every old thing of his, Caroline.”
“It saves money, Mother.”
“We’re not in the poorhouse yet. The way you talk you’d have us all lashed together singing ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’ We always make do.”
“Maybe we should cut back on staff.”
After Father died, Mother collected mouths to feed the way some people collect spoons or Chinese export porcelain. It wasn’t unusual to find some poor soul from a hobo den living in the guest room, propped up with a goose-down sham reading The Grapes of Wrath, cordial glass of sherry in hand.
“It’s not as if we keep liveried footmen, dear. If you’re talking about Serge, he’s family. Plus, he’s the best French chef in this city and doesn’t drink like most.”
“And Mr. Gardener?” I said.
That question needed no answer. Our gardener, oddly enough called Mr. Gardener, was practically family as well. With his kind eyes and skin brown and smooth as a horse chestnut seed, he’d been by our side since we planted our garden up in Bethlehem just before Father died. It was rumored his people had come to Connecticut from North Carolina by way of the Underground Railroad through a stop once located in the old Bird Tavern just across the street from The Hay. In addition to having a genius for cultivating antique roses, Mr. Gardener would have taken a bullet for Mother and she for him. He would be with us forever.
“And a few day maids don’t break the bank,” Mother said. “If you want to pinch pennies, have the consulate pay shipping for your orphan boxes.”
“Roger’s been splitting the cost with me, but I won’t have much to send this time. There isn’t a scrap of wearable material to be bought.”
“Why not arrange a benefit performance? You may enjoy being onstage again, dear, and you still have the costumes.”
The costumes. Yards of material, disintegrating in an old trunk, of no use to anyone, perfect for every sort of children’s clothing.
“Mother, you’re a genius.”
I ran to my bedroom and dragged the trunk from the closet. It still wore the souvenir stickers from every city I’d played in. Boston. Chicago. Detroit. Pittsburgh. I hauled it back to the guest room, winded. I had to stop stealing Pia’s cigarettes.