Tales From My Closet (16 page)

“Arnaud?”

“Come see Becka!” he yelled over to his friends a second time.

But I didn’t want to meet everybody. I didn’t want to meet anyone — anyone, that is, but Arnaud. Hadn’t he realized that I’d been standing there waiting for him all that time? And who were all those people, and why were they there? Clutching the shopping bag with Arnaud’s raincoat in it, I felt my entire body go heavy and light at the same time, as if I were both a blown-up balloon and burlap sack filled with sand.

“This is for you,” I finally said, handing the bag to Arnaud as his friends watched.

“
Ah, oui. Un present?
”

“
Oui.
”

He unwrapped it. “
Mon impermeable?
”

From the far sidewalk, his friends started laughing, like the sight of his raincoat was the funniest thing in the world. A moment later, they’d joined us on the sidewalk, all of them, including Arnaud, seized with some hilarity that only they understood. Finally, Arnaud turned to me and asked if I was hungry, which I wasn’t. I was the opposite of hungry. But one of Arnaud’s friends said he knew of a good café in the Latin Quarter, and a minute later, after they’d all conferred with one another, I found myself following along, pretending that I couldn’t have been more delighted.

“So good to see you!” Arnaud murmured when, at long last, we were sitting next to each other at a long table covered with a not-very-clean white cloth.

“I promised.”

“What did you promise?”

“Don’t you remember? I promised I’d bring your raincoat back to you.”

“You did?”

He took both ends of my scarf in his hands, tugging on them in a way that brought my forehead closer to his. “Lovely,” he murmured, as much to my scarf as to me, and in that moment, I felt myself relax into his kiss. Except he didn’t kiss me. Instead, he turned to his friends to say: “Let’s celebrate Becka’s arrival with food and wine.”

Everyone smiled at me — but it was the kind of smile you give to a toddler who’s stubbed her toe. They talked to one another and to Arnaud, and even though my French was really pretty excellent, they hardly talked to me at all.

As I sat there feeling more and more lost and alone and humiliated, one of the girls looked directly at me and said: “I love your scarf.
Très chic.
”

“
Merci
,” I said, feeling slightly better.

“I used to have one like that,” she continued, fingering her own scarf, a lovely pale blue dotted with silver stars. “I lost it last spring.”

“I hate it when that happens,” I said, but she didn’t seem to notice that I’d spoken. Instead, she directed her attention to Arnaud. “I am so stupid.”

“Are you,
mon cher
?”

“I must have left my Hermès at your apartment.”

“I don’t understand, Ellie.”

“My Hermès,” she said. “I lost it. In May, I think. Maybe in early June? I bet I left it at your apartment. . . .”

“Ah!” Arnaud finally said, blushing a little. Then: “Do you think so?”

“Let me see it.”

Reluctantly, miserably, my face on fire, I undid the scarf —
my scarf, the one that Arnaud had given me
— and handed it across the table. As Ellie took it into her hands to examine it, she murmured, “It
is
my scarf. The exact same one, with the little heart-shaped stain on the back of it. Why didn’t you tell me that I’d left it over at your house?”

“I didn’t know,” Arnaud said. “I just assumed . . .”

“That you could give it to your American friend?”

He raised his hands over his shoulders, palms up, in a “who, me?” gesture, protesting that he’d made an honest mistake. “Oh, shut up,” the girl finally shot back. “Your friend can keep it. It really doesn’t matter.”

But it mattered to
me.
So much so that, when the waiter offered me wine, I instantly said yes — and even though I’d never had more than a sip or two of Meryl’s wine during dinner before, now I drank it all down, practically in one long gulp, and then had a second. By the time I got to my third glass of wine, I was feeling much more relaxed — sociable, even.

By the time lunch was over, the whole world had shifted: Arnaud’s friends told me how good my French was and how much they wanted to come to America, and one of the boys kept flirting with me. So when they invited me to go to some party on the other side of Paris with them, I said yes. After all, I thought, if I didn’t go with them, I’d
never
have a chance to tell Arnaud about my decision: my decision about us.

As we walked to the Metro, I took him by the arm, saying: “I really need to talk to you.”

“Ah,
oui
.”

“I wanted to tell you something. Because I’ve been thinking — all this time, since I left Paris last summer, I’ve been thinking about something. Something serious.”

“You are far too pretty to be so serious,” he joked.

He was barely looking at me now, his attention scanning his friends as they clowned around a few steps ahead of us. “But, Arnaud!” I said. “Remember, last summer, how I wouldn’t, you know, go all the way?”

“What is this?” he said, finally paying attention.

“The thing is,” I said, “I’m back, and I’ve been thinking that maybe — maybe I was wrong.”

“I’m sorry about the scarf,” he then said. “Really. I am very stupid.”

“But, Arnaud!” I said. “Did you even hear me? I’m ready to
do it
.”

Which is when all his friends stopped dead in their tracks and, while they tried to stop giggling, I threw up. All over my gorgeous black riding boots. Weeping, I wiped my face with the only thing I had to wipe it with: my — Ellie’s — Hermès scarf.

When I was done, Arnaud put me in a cab. The last thing I remember as the cab pulled away from the curb was the sight of Arnaud tossing his beat-up raincoat into a trash bin.

E
ven after that
last round of insanity when Mom made me go “talk to” Meryl, she insisted that when it came to shopping, I couldn’t be trusted. Not only that, but she started harping on, again, about how the Temple nursery school was always looking for extra help. She even came right out and said that she could see me making a career working with small children! Not that there’s anything wrong with that, except that I had no interest at all. NONE. I’d show her, though — I had to! Compared to Ben, I was already second best. Which was just so unfair in every way that it made my hair stand on end. Sure, he was supersmart, but so what? The kid had barely ever worked a day in his life (unless you count the two-hours-a-day job Dad got him over the summer shelving books in the library at Dad’s law school). Meantime, I busted my butt babysitting
and
handling my internship. No one I knew worked as hard as I did! Becka’s parents gave her everything she ever wanted, including that beautiful raincoat, which Mom kept insisting was a “symptom” of my “clothing addiction,” and which I didn’t even feel like wearing anymore, not after Meryl had freaked on me like that. And sure, I’d love to wear designer clothes like Becka did — Libby Fine dresses or Coco
anything
, or just have the ordinary nice stuff that everyone else had. But Mom was so cheap about clothes that she didn’t even buy decent duds for herself, insisting that her ancient hippie styles from her grad-school years were just fine, and her awful tattered sweaters from ten years ago would never go out of style. Even Polly, who lived in a small apartment and never even had enough money to go out for lunch, had a mother who was happy to buy her cute, fashionable clothes.

But just before the holidays, I caught a break and was hired to work the preholiday crush at Daphne’s Designer Digs. It was the answer to my prayers, with a real salary, plus commission for each sale I made, which meant that I’d be able to pay Mom off (again)
and
have plenty of left over to buy myself a present, too. Recently, in addition to dreaming about stocking up on some high-end classic-looking woolen slacks and jackets and sweaters, I’d started lusting after the same kind of low-heeled black boots that Becka had, and when I say lusting, I mean it.

The only hitch was that Daphne herself wasn’t crazy about my look, at least not as it pertained to working at her store. “Don’t you have anything a little more conservative?” she said, taking in my swishy bell-bottom pajama pants, which I’d paired with an oversized sweater and my suede eggplant boots. I gave her a stupid grin. There was nothing in the entire shop that I wouldn’t have given my right arm for. “You seem like a good girl, and I’m impressed by how much babysitting you do,” she said. “But I need you — I need all my girls — to look they’re about to go out to dinner at the White House. Which means the classic, tailored look: tweeds, knitwear — think Ralph Lauren if you will, or Gucci or Carl Lagerfeld. Valentino. Classic. Classy. Clean.”

Had she read my mind OR WHAT?

Daphne herself was wearing a gray knit Jones New York wrap dress, with pearls. She had short blond hair and wide-spaced green eyes framed by lashes thick with black mascara. Her face reminded me of a kitten’s, small and delicate, with a pointy nose, but her hands were bossy and masculine, with square fingernails and big knuckles.

“But,” I had to admit, “I just don’t have any clothes like that.”

“Tell you what. I’ll rent you one of my own dresses — two of them, in fact. I keep a few in different sizes for just this kind of situation.”

Rent?
As in
pay her money
? But she must have seen the look on my face, because she immediately explained that, if I was even reasonably good at sales, I’d be making so many commissions that at the end of my almost-three “crush” weeks at Daphne’s, not only would I be making the big bucks, more than enough to cover the rental fee, but that when I returned the dresses to her, she’d return the rental fee to me anyway — or at least most of it. She’d keep ten dollars for herself in order to cover the dry-cleaning bill.

“And, hon?” she said. “One more thing. Your hair.”

“What about it?” I’d recently been wearing it in two or even three or four braids.

“Either wear it in a single braid, which would look gorgeous with those cheekbones of yours, or pull it back into a chignon.”

“Okay.”

“So we’ve got a deal?”

“Deal,” I said, grinning. It would be like playing dress-up, only this time in real designer clothes.

A minute later, I was rummaging around in Daphne’s “rental” closet. From which I emerged with two of the most exquisite outfits I’d ever worn: a knee-length dress of pale-pink cashmere, real Chanel, and a black pantsuit with a fitted bolero jacket with velvet cuffs. Both outfits transformed me, so much so that when I saw myself in the mirror, it was like looking at a princess.

How predictable was it that Mom wasn’t happy with my news? “A clothing store? Isn’t that kind of like an obese person working at an ice-cream parlor? Yes, you need to make money. But isn’t it more important to learn how to control your urges?” And how predictable was it that Dad said, “Very, very subtle,” and Mom replied, “I’m not trying to be subtle, I’m trying to keep my loved ones from being stupid,” and Dad stormed off, slamming the door behind him?

“Yo! Ho! What that be all about, y’all?” It was Ben, with his usual impeccable timing, eating ice cream straight from the container.

“Oh, for God’s sake! Put that in a bowl! And sit down! You have the manners of an ape.”

“Eeee, eeee, eeee,” Ben said, bending down and swinging his arms near his knees to indicate apehood.

“I got a job,” I told him.

“Cool,” he said. “Where?”

“Daphne’s Designer Digs. You know — uptown, near the Starbucks.”

“Sissy gonna be richy-rich,” he sang as he lurched, in monkey-mode, back to the kitchen.

Daphne had told me that the weeks leading up to Christmas were so busy it was insane, and warned me that there would be no time for phone calls or even texting, but I didn’t believe it until I saw it for myself. Women came from all over northern New Jersey to shop at her store, and most of them seemed frantic. But for some reason, I was able to calm most of them down, and more often than not find something for them that was just right. And despite the craziness of it all, I loved it! I loved knowing that, after all, I had a good eye, and could tell at a glance what would or would not work for this or that woman. And even if it meant losing a sale (and the commission that went with it), I was honest with the customers when something didn’t work. Just a few days after I’d started, Daphne took me aside to tell me that she’d gotten some nice comments about me from her customers.

I was so busy, doing so well, and making so much money that I didn’t even mind it when Ben, as a joke, ha ha, hid under my bed until I got in it, at which point he started making scary noises, like a man was choking to death under there. I was about twenty dollars short of paying off my debt to Mom entirely. And then I’d be free. Free of Mom’s nagging. Free of debt. Maybe I’d even be free, I thought, of Becka.

It sounds horrible, but with Becka off in Paris with Libby (LUCKY HER!) I was a lot happier than I had been for a while. It was the same feeling of when you’re sick but not enough to stay in bed, but when you finally feel better it’s like the whole world feels brighter? That’s how I felt. Even when, at work, some customer or another got cranky (which happened
all
the time) or Daphne got in a snit over something, I just sailed through it.

Then Becka came back from Paris.

It was Christmas Eve, my last day of work.

She called me in the morning, just as I was pulling on that divine soft pink dress. In it, I felt so professional and grown-up, like there wasn’t much that could come at me that I wouldn’t be able to handle. The first thing she said was: “I’m going to slit my wrists!”

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“I’m not joking!” she cried. “I have to see you. Now! I mean it, Robin. I’m like — oh, I can’t even tell you!”

“I have to go to work.”

“Cancel it.”

“I can’t. It’s a real job. At Daphne’s Designer. I’m supposed to be there in about ten minutes.”

“When do you get off?”

“Not until nine. It’s the last-minute rush.”

“Come over then. Please. Meryl’s driving me crazy and . . .” Her words got gobbled up in her sobs.

“Fine,” I finally said. “I’ll come after work. Just don’t call me there, okay? I’m not allowed to get phone calls. I’m not allowed to so much as glance at my cell phone to see if there’s a message. My boss is a slave driver.”

Work was even crazier than usual that day. “Santa Claus panic,” Daphne explained with a shrug. It was nonstop until around eight, when I finally had a moment to myself. Except a second later, an older woman came in saying that she needed something extra special because she’d just found out that her favorite grandchild was bringing his fiancée over to meet her on Christmas day, and I must have hauled out two dozen different outfits before she found one she liked. In the middle of all that, Daphne came storming across the store and said: “Your mother’s on the phone, Robin. She said it’s an emergency.”

An emergency? All I could think of was that Dad had gotten into a car accident. Or fallen down the front steps. Anything could have happened. My heart raced.

“Oh my God,” I said into the phone. “What’s wrong?”

But it wasn’t Mom on the phone. It was Becka. “I have to talk to you!”

From the corner of her eye, Daphne was observing me. “I’ll see you later, Mom,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’m coming straight home after work. I’m glad everything’s okay. You scared me!” Then I hung up.

“Robin?” Daphne said as I returned to my spot on the floor. “What was that all about?”

“Just that she wanted to tell me where she’s going to hide the house key for me,” I fibbed. “We just got our locks changed. And Mom and Dad are going out tonight.”

“Is that so?” Daphne said, looking at me with her face in a clench like someone just gave her a wedgie. “You know,” she said as I reddened, “I really like you, Robin. You’re a good worker, and you have what it takes. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”