“Thank you.”
“Mom? What’s going on?” I joined Mat. “I was gone for twenty minutes.”
“He read my article, called her, then basically gave me an interview. He added a lot of good stuff, Caroline. Would you like to read the first draft?”
“It’s written?”
“I’m submitting it tomorrow. I told you that.”
Mat’s words were slow and measured. He wasn’t asking permission or a question, but I sensed he wanted my support. He needed me on board and I accepted—even embraced—that he needed me just as much.
“Yes.” I lowered myself into the chair my father had vacated. “I do.”
I handed him his coffee and he handed me his laptop. I sat and read, not an article, but a story. The story of a lie, pain, and a family; a story of misperceptions, misunderstandings, and loss; a story of heroism, resilience, hope, and truth.
Throughout it all, Mat sat silent. I cried.
“He said those things?” There were quotes from my father about his solitary and shadowed childhood, the pain of losing Amelia, even his “dark night of the soul.” There were also comments about me, how proud he was, how grateful, and how he felt—three generations later—that I’d brought light back into his world.
“It’s different from what you expected?” At my nod, Mat sat back. “Caro taught me a few things these last few days. While so much is perspective, it’s not ultimate truth. In many ways, I’ve been doing history a disservice by claiming it is. She was right about Lewis and his BBC talk. Some truths, some absolutes, are above perception. I hope that comes across.”
“Powerfully. It’s what makes what we went through, what we fashioned for ourselves, all the more real and painful. No one got out of their own way to see what was rather than what they perceived it to be.”
“Will you comment?” My nod inspired a bright smile. “Then, if we get the file, I’ll add it to the end . . . The National Archives guy texted me. He’ll try to get it to us today.”
“It’s the middle of the night there.”
“Yeah, I woke him up. Who doesn’t put their phone on Do Not Disturb at night?”
Thirty-Eight
Mom arrived with lunch.
“I stopped at one of my favorite places, Pontochoux on rue du Pont aux Choux.” She set down the bags. “It’s a wonderful Japanese spot. Do you like Japanese curry, Mat?”
While he answered, she kissed me on the cheek then darted over to Dad to do the same. Her nervous energy bounced her between us like a pinball.
“Then after lunch let’s go to Maison Schiaparelli. Don’t you think that’s fitting?” she chirped.
“Didn’t it close in 1954?”
Mat shook his head and I remembered that was where he made his initial connection between his research subject and my aunt.
Mom replied, “It reopened in 2012 at the same address Schiaparelli left it, 21 place Vend?me. We can wander the boutique and imagine what it was like in Caro’s day. It’ll be fun.”
And it was.
When the doorman opened the door, I felt like Cinderella—in her scullery clothes—trespassing at a royal ball. The gap between Schiaparelli’s haute couture and my world felt vast. But the feeling only lasted as long as my walk to the small anteroom at the back of the salon.
On my way there, I sensed that the grandeur of the place swept over us all. Schiap’s black-and-white knit sweater with its iconic bow rested front and center. The design that started an empire. Fantastical handbags, hair combs, and accessories filled every shelf and display case. And the dresses . . . color upon color. Embroidery, glass beading, extraordinary stitching. Everything was more splendid than I could dream and pricier than I could imagine.
“Wow,” I whispered to my mom. “Was it always like this?”
“Always. Schiaparelli was the avant-garde designer of the day, of the world. This is Paris.”
My aunt was part of this.
My yearning to find her in all this directed my gaze past the decadence on display to the history on the walls. Pictures from today—Cate Blanchett, Ella Balinska, Joan Smalls, Emilia Clarke, Michelle Obama . . . all dressed in gorgeous couture gowns—were displayed near the front. But as I walked back in the salon, I also walked back through time.
Pictures transported me to the fifties, the forties, the thirties. Wallis Simpson, Mae West, Katharine Hepburn, and Marlene Dietrich—all as Caro described—adorned an entire wall of the small back anteroom.
There was Wallis Simpson in the Lobster Dress, not at a showing, but at a fitting with young women surrounding her, displaying other dresses while their coworkers measured and served her. There was another of a mannequin—I’d read that’s what they called models in the ’30s—wearing the Tears Dress, and another displaying what must have been the ephemeral Butterfly Dress Margaret couldn’t bring herself to wear. Caro had been right. The Butterfly Dress became one of Schiaparelli’s most famous creations.
There were also pictures of openings and parties. There was one with young women in ice cream cone hats—the opening of the Circus collection. Caro had written about that night as well. I looked closely and felt certain I spotted her in the foreground of one of the black-and-white photographs.
I was probably only seeing what I wanted to see, but then again . . .
“Dad . . . Mat . . . Mom . . . ,” I whisper-called to each of them. There were so few people in the boutique, each heard me, turned, and hurried my direction.
“Do you think that’s her?” I pointed to a young woman with short dark hair, dressed in a black calf-length dress, like all the others, with a cone hat on her head. A radiant smile brightened her eyes.
“Could it be?”
“Oh my . . . Maybe.”
“Do you think?”
We all looked at each other. I beamed. “So we’re agreed. That’s Caro.”
We spent the rest of the day wandering Paris slowly. Mom was so anxious that Dad not overdo it that we sat in more cafés than we wandered the sites. One could say we saw Paris one café au lait at a time. And despite my spending a year here before, Paris felt more complete, more inviting, and more bubbly—my new favorite word—than I remembered.
The sky’s blue had deepened to a resplendent cerulean. And while sitting at a table in the Tuileries Gardens, I could not imagine a more wonderful moment or day. All my angst and discontent over our lack of answers had oozed away, probably helped by coffee and sugar, but certainly by the company as well. My history with Paris had been fast, exciting, young, and passionate. This was an older feeling, more secure yet more enticing, like watching a flower open to the sun. I sensed I could capture this feeling and hold tight. I could hold tight because, as I looked around the table, I wasn’t alone—and perhaps never had been.
We found Caro.
A contented sigh escaped—one that only Mat, sitting close on my right, heard. He winked. I blushed.
Dad shifted his attention from the Roue de Paris—Paris’s towering ferris wheel—to me. “I’ve asked your mom to accompany me to Berlin.”