“Me? Spy?” I protested when Schiap and I were behind her closed office door.
She was standing at her window, looking at the colonnade and the statue of Napoleon on top.
“Not spy, actually,” she said, turning and giving me the full intensity of her dark gaze, a look that sent shopgirls scurrying and customers bobbing in obedience. “Just listen. Look. Pay attention. Visit that Chanel woman once in a while. It is for Madame Bouchard as well as me. And Gogo. She must come back to Paris soon; she can’t stay away forever. And I need to keep her safe.”
There was hurt in Schiap’s voice, the mother’s pain of knowing her daughter preferred to be elsewhere, not with her. From what I could remember of Gogo when she’d been at the English school where Allen and I had been, she was shy, very self-contained, easily overwhelmed. And Schiap could be very overwhelming.
“How does my keeping tabs on Coco and von Dincklage help you and Gogo?”
Schiap looked at me as if I were a little slow-witted. “Von Dincklage is head of propaganda. He knows everything the German army is going to do almost as soon as Hitler has planned it. It would be good to know what Germany plans for Paris, don’t you think? They say that von Dincklage will be Chanel’s next lover. And you are already friends with his driver.”
“Not really,” I protested.
“Yes, really, I think.”
Schiap studied a ragged fingernail she’d torn that afternoon and hadn’t had time to repair. “You . . .” She gave me that appraising glance once again. “You, I will dress in my sportswear. Culottes, a long split skirt with a tight jacket. And a hat. You must always wear a hat, with a brooch or feather pinned to it. It will add some sparkle. One of these.” She rifled through a basket of samples next to the ebony screen and brought out a deep-scarlet knitted cap, the kind of grandmother-knitted whimsy you’d put on a child for a day playing out in the snow, but this was knitted of cotton string, for warm weather, with a tawny pheasant feather tucked into it. When she pulled it onto my head, very low over one eye, it became chic, whimsical, and a little mysterious. What is it about a woman’s face when only one eye is showing?
“I will have one made for you in forest green, with navy sequins and a little corsage of feathers on one side. For evening. But this one”—she gave the scarlet cap a little tap—“this one you must wear every time you go to Coco Chanel. She will know it’s mine, and it will drive her mad.”
Schiap laughed gleefully. “So?” she asked.
I was still studying my reflection in the mirror. Short hair, a frisky little hat, the red lipstick Ania had convinced me to use. I didn’t know what Gerald and the schoolgirls would have made of their art teacher. Or Allen. This was another step away from him in the long, eternal parting.
“Okay,” I agreed.
“And maybe you should thin your eyebrows a little. Arch them,” Schiap said. “Open your eyes.”
That same day I climbed the glamorous and intimidating mirrored staircase to Chanel’s salon. It was a sun-high early afternoon, and the streets felt like all the ovens of Paris had been opened, it was so hot. July hot, with shimmering sidewalks and the leaves of the chestnut trees curling at the edges in self-defense. My steps dragged with lethargy and second thoughts.
When a woman went to Chanel she had no choice but to glimpse herself all the way up that stairwell and notice everything. Perhaps Coco had taken the Delphic oracle’s advice—“know thyself”—as a business motto, thereby forcing her clients to have a long look at themselves before entering her salon.
“An evening frock,” I told the vendeuse, who eyed me warily when I was upstairs in the gleaming crystal-and-gilt salon. “Something in satin, low neck. Then maybe a cocktail dress?”
“Certainly.”
Champagne was offered. I declined. Coffee was brought instead. Feeling more than a little foolish, I eyed every corner of the salon, taking mental notes of the glamorous, expensive furnishings, the displays, the people.
“Is this the gown you wanted to see?” A mannequin strutted out and turned in a circle, showing how the bias-cut gown swirled with movement. “The Duchess of Windsor recently purchased one very like this.”
The dress was of black satin, shiny as lacquer, liquid as water, completely formfitting except for a low cowl neck that draped over the bustline, adding dimension.
“Very nice.” I sipped my coffee so that she wouldn’t see the envy in my face. Schiap’s clothes were beautiful and whimsical and suggestive of Oriental luxury, with their embroideries in gold and silver threads, and feathers from rare birds. Chanel designed clothes for women who preferred reality to fantasy, women who believed so strongly in their own beauty that embellishment was not needed, just a good cut and the right fabric. I already had a preference for Schiap’s designs, her insistence that clothing was art, not just fashion.
“No, that won’t do. Bring out the black jersey smocked gown,” a smoky rasped voice said from behind me. I looked over my shoulder, and there was Coco Chanel. “No. Something . . . the gown Diana Vreeland ordered. Show her that model.”
Coco sat next to me on the sofa and stared hard into my face, keeping silent until the mannequin returned in a different gown. It had a huge skirt of silver lamé quilted with faux pearls, topped with a lace bolero also embroidered with pearls. It had to weigh at least thirty pounds, but it was beautiful.
“Gorgeous,” I agreed.
“I thought you might prefer something a little outré, rather than subtle,” she said. “But what a silly hat you are wearing. Doesn’t suit you at all. In fact, doesn’t suit anybody.” She was wearing one of her jersey dresses, short and close to the body, cinched at the waist with a wide belt. “How is my dear friend Schiap?”
“No lingering sunburn,” I said, and Coco flinched.
Recovering immediately, she leaned into the sofa, one arm resting on the back of it. “You don’t look like him at all. Your brother. Pity.” She patted my knee. “You enjoy yourself, my dear. Jeannette, show her as many gowns as she wishes. But not the new collection, of course. Only what is already being worn. And no discounts, no credit. She is getting those elsewhere, I think.”
Coco rose and gave me a cool smile over her shoulder. She walked away, slightly turned, showing to best advantage her narrow, elegant figure.
“On second thought,” she said over her shoulder, “come with me. Let’s have lunch together. I can’t have you distracting my salesgirls like this.”
We left the salon on rue Cambon, the mannequin sighing heavily with relief, and crossed the street to the Ritz, Coco leading the way. A side entrance led to her apartment, suite 302.
“I keep an apartment here. So convenient,” she said over her shoulder as we went down a hall, up a stairway, and down another hall, our steps making no noise on the heavily carpeted floor.
“Convenient to your salon?” I asked.
“That, of course. But also, when the Germans come into Paris, a good hotel will be safer than a private home or apartment. They will stay here, don’t you think? The German officers? There is no finer hotel in Paris, or in France.”
“They may not come,” I said. “It is not certain there will be war.”
“Of course. I misspoke.” But there was a tone in her voice, that of an adult reassuring a child.
I had already seen some of Coco’s suite at the Ritz two years before, in Harper’s Bazaar, in an advertisement for her perfume, Chanel No. 5. Coco had posed for the ad herself rather than use a model. It hadn’t been her fabulous black evening gown and jewels that caught the eye, but her gaze. She looked away from the camera off to the side, slightly bored, a little challenging, her long, lean arm resting of the mantelpiece of her fireplace. A queen would have posed in this fashion, except for that sideways gaze.
It gave Coco great satisfaction, I think, when the maid opened the door and I stood there, in the hall, gaping. Here, in this hotel suite, was all the fantasy that Coco would not allow in her clothing. The walls were covered with carved Chinese lacquer screens, except for the walls lined with bookcases. Aubussons covered the floor. Pictures hung over marble fireplaces, and the tabletops were covered with precious objets d’art. It was like a jewel box, that suite.
No one had ever accused Coco Chanel of being a simple, uncomplicated person. Here in these rooms were two of her most dominant aspects: her origins in austerity, the peasant poverty followed by the hard years in a convent school, made visible by Coco herself in her simple black jersey sheath. And here, too, was her love for luxury, the costume jewelry that mocked real jewels, the glitter of make-believe.
“Nice, yes?” she said, waving her beringed hand at the marble fireplace, the gilded screens.
“Very,” I agreed, thinking of my attic hotel room with its washbasin behind a torn linen curtain.
“Sit, please.” And we sat on a comfortingly soft velvet sofa.
“Poor Schiap!” She lit a cigarette and drew on it. “She will never forgive me for ruining her costume. She wasn’t injured, was she? God, how clumsy I was.” Coco sat there, surrounded by her velvet furniture and expensive carpets, the gleaming antique screens and Louis XVI side tables, acting as if she’d merely spilled cigarette ash on Schiap.
I understood what Coco wanted from me, needed to hear, that had been buried under her false sympathy for Schiap. Were people gossiping about her? What was being said? Ego. Both Coco and Schiap were larger than life; they both had the egos of Olympian deities.
“No, she was not injured. The flames were put out before any real damage was done. Except to the dress, of course. It was scorched.”
“I will pay her for the damages.” A peasant’s thoughts. Make everything right by the exchange of coins.
“She won’t expect it. It was an accident, after all,” I goaded.
Coco had the sense to blush because we both knew it had not been an accident.
The maid, her head bowed, announced lunch, and Coco led the way to her dining room. We sat, the two of us, as the maid served a chilled cucumber soup followed by roasted lamb with salad. Coco ate very little, mostly pushing the food around her plate with the heavy silver cutlery.
“That night . . .” she began, and I put down my knife and fork to focus better on what she was about to say. The lamb was delicious, and I’d had nothing but bread and coffee for the past two days, trying to stretch my money.
Coco dabbed her handkerchief at the corners of her mouth. Stains of red lipstick came off on the white cloth, and she frowned at them in disapproval. She twisted her rope of pearls, and her black eyes flickered over the ornate, luxurious dining room as she worried over the words to say.
“It was an accident,” she said finally.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Is that what people are saying? Is that what Schiap thinks?” She couldn’t leave it alone, wouldn’t admit that the more we talked about it, the less able we would be to pretend it had been an accident.
Coco began twisting her pearls again, this time with such force I thought the string might break. She thought better of it and placed both hands flat on the table, next to her crumpled, lipstick-stained napkin and crystal water glass with its own red imprint of her rouged lips.
“You know,” she said, not looking at me, “when I was very young and living with Étienne Balsan—you have heard of him . . . my first love, my great love?—in his chateau, I had to eat with the servants. No one knows that. He picked me up out of the revue I was appearing in—God, the costumes, the cheap, disgusting costumes. He taught me how to use the right forks.” Coco, one of the richest women in the world, picked up her fork and flung it across the room like a petulant child. Her maid, waiting in a corner, wordlessly picked it up, put it on a side table. She disappeared through a doorway and came back out with fresh plates and a bowl of grapes and oranges.
“That Ania,” Coco said, peeling an orange. “Do you know her well?”
“We’ve just only met,” I said, not wanting to discuss Ania or my brother.
“Baron von Dincklage knows her. Very well. In fact, she is his mistress?” She was still uncertain. Of course, she couldn’t ask him such a question. Couldn’t ask anyone that question, without giving herself away. Except for me, who was a nobody in Paris. For a second I let the sense of power I had in that moment thrill me the way a brushstroke of aquamarine thrills. I didn’t answer. I withheld. And I peeled my orange.
“She is attractive in a predictable sort of way, I suppose,” Coco said. “Her family in Warsaw keeps a junkyard, I hear.”
It was an antiques shop, and they specialized in Louis XVI furniture, according to Charlie.
“Such a lot of books,” I remarked, changing the subject. There was one on the table, and I picked it up. Mouchette, by Bernanos, a best-seller in France that year, a misery tale about a young peasant girl.
“Have you read it?” Coco asked.
“Not yet. Are you enjoying it?”
“Bernanos sentences are like Christmas trees, full of decoration. One should know when to stop. Schiaparelli, like Bernanos, never knows when to stop. But the story is good. I’ve read all of these.” Coco gestured at the bookshelves, the piles of titles not yet shelved. “Once I start a book I have to finish it, have to get to the end. Books saved me, when I was a girl. In the orphanage I used to steal up to the attic, at night. There were trunks of books there, mostly cheap romances, but I devoured them. I learned about life from those books, about the life I wanted to live.”
The revelation, that intimacy of what she had said, seemed to surprise her. She stopped in midsentence and smiled her public smile, the Coco Chanel smile, head tilted, lips barely turned up, eyes wide open as if a flash had just gone off.
“Let me guess,” she said. “Your family . . . New York, is it? . . . has a large house and a library filled with leather-bound books that nobody reads anymore. Correct?”
“I’ve read quite a few of them. A little privilege doesn’t guarantee illiteracy.”
She laughed. “Very good! I think we will be friends, you and I. Well, I learned mostly from books, but not all. Étienne taught me how to ride, how to have polite conversation, how to leave behind my childhood of swiping my soup bowl with a piece of bread, sleeping four or five to a bed, bathing once or twice a month in water already used by others. And then he made me eat in the kitchen with his servants.”
“I’m not going to feel sorry for you,” I said. “We’ve all, most of us at least, lived through things that still give us nightmares.”
Coco stared down at her plate in confusion. When she looked back up at me, she was smiling.
“Your husband. Yes, I know. We have that in common. Motor accidents. That is how Boy Capel died. My first great love.”
I rose to leave and my napkin tumbled to the floor. The maid again approached and picked it up for me.
“I’m simply saying, don’t judge. Please sit,” Coco said. “I know Elsa Schiaparelli laughs at me. She laughs at everybody. Enough. I’m getting bored. It’s too warm today, don’t you think?” She rose. The maid began to clear the table with the unnaturally quiet, precise gestures of a servant trained to be invisible. Coco knew that kind of training.
We went back to her drawing room and sat on the beige sofa. How elegantly Coco moved, so full of charm and confidence and style, yet underneath it all was a little girl abandoned by her father, raised too strictly in a colorless orphanage of bare walls and grim silences.
“Baron von Dincklage wonders how well you actually know Elsa Schiaparelli. She is a communist, you know.”
“That was a long time ago, in New York.”
“She still has sympathies. She’s backing the wrong side. Russia won’t be able to save France when the war comes.”
“Isn’t Hitler about to sign an agreement with Chamberlain and Daladier? That’s what the BBC says.” Like most Parisians, I’d begun listening to the radio, to the nightly news, as well as reading the newspapers.
Coco looked at me with exasperation. “As if that will stop anything. Go now,” she said. “I need to get back to my office.
“Wait!” At the door she stopped me, pulling me back inside and grabbing at the hat I’d been wearing, the strange little scarlet cloche that Schiap had given me.
“That ridiculous thing,” she said. “Wear this. Much more flattering.” She took one of her own hats from the antique carved credenza, a straw hat with a tiny brim that turned up just over the eyebrows.
“Young women don’t need mystery, that is for older women who have lost their freshness. You are what, about twenty-five? Believe me, age comes soon enough. Don’t rush it.”
She stood back, admiring her hat and that precise angle she had achieved.
“Lovely,” I agreed. “But . . .”
“A gift,” Coco said. “I insist.” She took Schiap’s little scarlet cap and tossed it in a wastepaper basket near the door, and then she emptied an ashtray over it. “And this.” She pulled at my dress, a short-sleeved linen print. “It must fit at the shoulders. If it doesn’t fit properly at the shoulders, it won’t fit well anywhere. Have it tailored.”
Coco started to shut the door behind me, then opened it again. “Thank you for coming,” she said. “I don’t have many friends, you know. People are either afraid of me or dislike me. You seem different.”
After the door clicked behind me, I sleepwalked down the hall of the Ritz, away from Coco’s rooms, over the plush carpets, past the gleaming, curtained windows and little gilt side tables of the grand hotel. The sun blazed red over the curved glass dome of the Grand Palais, hues as bright as a Matisse interior. Crimson, scarlet, Chinese red, sienna, madder, formless shapes of pure color. Who needed line and representation? Color was enough.
I crossed the vast granite expanse of the Place Vendôme, avoiding stepping in the shadow of Napoleon’s column, no longer interested in the emperor’s swagger. What a huge, empty space, so exposed. “When the Germans come into Paris,” Coco had said. For a moment, a flash of that space crowded with Wehrmacht soldiers filled my vision, and I shivered.
I passed the Hotel Le Meurice, less grand than the Ritz but still luxurious. Ania had told me that the top floor of the hotel offered the best view of the Eiffel Tower and the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. Ania knew all sorts of things like that. Maybe that was another quality that had made Charlie love her—that worldliness she wore like an evening gown, casually and with great style.
I missed her, her gayness, her energy and charm. I hadn’t seen her since the ball. Where was she? Charlie must be suffering so, I thought.
The next day, when I reported every detail of the time I had spent at the Chanel salon, the cuts, colors, fabrics, accessories, Schiap laughed, winked, thanked me, and added, “But of course I already knew all that. As Coco said, they are already being worn on the street.”
“Who was there? In the salon?” Bettina wanted to know.
“No one I recognized,” I said, “though there were several women with diamond rings the size of almonds.”
“She’s useless. Schiap, what were you thinking?” Bettina stormed out of the office, ashes dropping from her cigarette onto the carpet.
“Don’t mind her,” Schiap said, laughing. “I think she was hoping for Nazi secrets or something.”
“Would Coco have those?”
Schiap scowled. “She is friends with Nazi sympathizers and anti-Semitics.”
“You already know more than I ever will. What’s the point, then?”
“Does there have to be a purpose to everything? I don’t know yet. When I think of ‘the point,’ I’ll let you in on it. Maybe it’s just a little joke.”
Bettina came back in with her arms full of bolts of cloth and a fresh cigarette hanging between her red lips. “Pick one,” she said to Schiap. “I need some background drapery. You . . .” She pointed her cigarette in my direction. “I want a seaside scene. Can you paint waves?”
Later that day I went back to Sennelier’s for a tube of Prussian blue for Bettina’s waves, delighting in the smells of ancient dust and pigments and carefully counting out coins to make sure I’d have enough for my week’s rent.
Standing by a display of colored pencils was a girl who seemed familiar, and then, as I studied her from behind the paint rack, I saw who it was. She’d had a baby face when I’d last seen her at the English school, puffy and bland, but Schiap’s daughter had grown into a lovely, fashionable young woman.
“Marie!” I touched her shoulder to get her attention, and she turned toward me. She was dressed in Schiaparelli, of course, a summer frock printed with butterflies and a cloche hat, her brown curls carefully arranged around the edges of it. The patrons of the store, mostly men in paint-splattered shirts, gave her appraising sideways glances.
“Mrs. Sutter!”
We looked at each other for a long while, each seeing in the other’s face the shared memories of the school, the dreaded therapy room for the “special” students, those still recovering from illness, the bland overcooked food, the cold tap water, the house mistress screaming for lights out. Even the way she had said “Mrs. Sutter,” in the formal schoolgirl tone of reverence used for favorite teachers.
“I heard about the accident. Your husband, Mr. Sutter. I’m very sorry.” Gogo was shy again, as she had been when she was a student at the school. Even though there was only five years’ difference in age between us, out of habit she was deferential.
“Call me Lily, please,” I told her, not wanting to talk about Allen. It’s difficult to talk about that kind of grief and loss with younger people who have not yet experienced it. “And I’m now working for your mother, painting window displays.”
She stood back and gave me that very Parisian glance of assessment. “Well, Lily, then,” she agreed.
“And what brought you into Sennelier’s? Have you taken up painting?”
Gogo laughed, a full and rich laugh like her mother’s. “No. I’m just postponing the reunion with Mummy. Steeling myself. I’m back from a sailing vacation and haven’t been home yet. Come with me, let’s both go see her.”
“You’ve been here for a day and haven’t seen your mother yet?”
“Several days, staying with friends. And we won’t tell her, will we?”
In the cab Gogo and I sat politely on either side of the backseat, stealing glances at each other. How pretty she had become, and so very stylish.
“I like the bob,” she told me. “The haircut. You don’t look as fierce as you did with your hair pulled back so tightly.”
Was that how the schoolgirls had seen me? As someone fierce? Allen had sometimes called me his teddy bear, but we are different in the privacy of our bedrooms, aren’t we?
“So do I call you Gogo or Marie?” I asked.
“Gogo, in Paris. Mother and all her friends do, so you might as well, too.”
Schiap was on the ground floor when we arrived, criticizing a display of gloves in a vitrine, Bettina next to her puffing on the omnipresent cigarette and making faces behind Schiap’s back.
“Gogo?” Schiap froze.
“Surprise!”
“I thought you were in Nice!”
“And so I was. But now I’m here.”
They stared at each other for a moment, eye to eye exactly, since they were the same height.
There is a photo I saw, later, in a magazine, Elsa Schiaparelli and daughter, dressed alike, eyes locked in a gaze that excluded all others, a gaze full of love and questions and more than a touch of animosity. It is not easy to be the daughter of a very famous woman, a woman who sometimes works twelve and more hours a day, ignoring everything else. It’s not easy to be the mother of an extraordinarily beautiful young woman whom one barely knows because of so much time spent apart.
Schiap and Gogo looked at each other, and the room seemed combustible. In one shared look they seemed to express every emotion that can pass between mother and daughter, good and bad.
The mother, though, had only a shadowy existence in the daughter’s face. Gogo’s eyes were brown but not dark like Schiap’s. They were flecked with gold so that when she stood with the sun in her eyes they reflected back as amber. Her brown hair was lighter, her cheekbones more pronounced. Schiap was striking. Gogo was beautiful, and I remembered what Ania had said about Elsa’s husband, the fake Polish count, that he had been spectacularly handsome.
Gogo and Schiap, after that long appraisal, ran into each other’s arms.
I left mother and daughter to their private reunion, wondering if there was any such thing as a wholehearted relationship, one not tinged with doubt or regret or bitterness. Allen had been out of sorts when we had returned from that London lunch with Elsa Schiaparelli and her daughter, years before. “A waste of time, when you think about it,” he had concluded. “So much talk about fashion.”
“The yachting party was a bore. All they could talk about was the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, how romantic it was that he gave up his throne to marry the woman he loved,” Gogo said the next day, spreading a napkin over her lap. “Ridiculous, I told them. He’s a friend of Hitler’s. If England goes to war, he probably will side with Germany and so the royal family decided to dump him. But then it turned out that a few people on the yacht also thought Hitler was a splendid fellow. Time for me to leave.”
We were at the Dome, sitting at an outside table. The heat was stifling, and every time a car went by it sent dust and grit into the air. We had to constantly shake it off our skirts, wave it away from our plates of omelet and pommes frites.
“Chanel seems to approve of Hitler, as well,” I said.
“You’ve met her?”
“Several times. We had lunch a few days ago, and she gave me a hat and some clothing advice.”
Gogo gave me an appraising look, seeming more like her mother than she might have wished. “You are dressing better,” she said. “Is that one of Mummy’s dresses?”
“Yes. An abandoned order from last year. She gives me a discount, and sometimes she just gives me a frock.”
“I bet Coco asked you to wear the hat when you were with Mummy.”
“Correct.”
“They detest each other. When Mummy first came to Paris she invited Chanel to a supper. Chanel came out of curiosity but was rude. She literally held her nose as if she smelled something bad. She made fun of Mummy’s furniture.”
Gogo put down her fork and took a sip of water that had grown warm and flat with the heat. “It must have been terrible,” she said. “Losing your husband. I remember him. How I dreaded that math class. He would get so impatient with us.”
“Allen was impatient?”
“Not always. But sometimes, yes, very.”
I tried to imagine Allen as impatient.
“I want some more fries, but don’t tell Mummy. She’s terrified I’ll get chubby again.” Gogo signaled for the waiter, and he came over at a gallop, eager to wait on the pretty young woman who was making passersby on the Boulevard du Montparnasse do double takes.
“Why Paris?” she asked. “Why not back to New York? That’s where you’re from, isn’t it?”
“My brother was here. And I’m not ready to go back.” Every day was a new way of losing Allen, but once I crossed the ocean and left behind all the places we had known, the loss would be complete, and I was not ready to face that.
“Are you still painting? I mean, things other than window displays?” Gogo had left the school the year before Allen’s death. She didn’t know about the empty canvases sitting in the corner of my studio at the school.
“I stopped painting when my husband died.”
“Well, time to start again, I think,” she said, sounding very much like Schiap.
“There may be nothing there. Gone.”
Gogo looked at me from under her very long eyelashes. “Maybe you just have cold feet. Do you know what Mummy’s first creation was? An evening dress, to go to a ball in Paris, the first time she was here. Before I was born, before she married my father. Only she couldn’t afford to buy one, so instead she went to the Galeries Lafayette and bought some dark blue crepe de Chine and orange silk. She couldn’t sew, not a stitch, so she just draped it around herself and pinned it in place. Off she goes to the ball, and tangoes for the first time and of course she doesn’t know how to tango. Does that stop her? What almost stopped her was the dress, because the pins started falling out. Her partner had to scoot her out of the ballroom before she was stark naked. And now look where she is.”
“That’s an interesting pep talk. But—”
“No buts, Mrs. Sutter. I mean, Lily. Do you know how many times she has told me that story? She wants me to become ambitious, like she is.”
“And what do you want?”
“A husband. Children. And to be far away from Mummy. I love her, of course, but she is so tiring. She sucks all the air out of the room when she’s in it.”
I thought of the plans Allen and I had made: a little house, children. When Allen died, I lost the future as well as my husband.
Our desserts came, small chilled cups of chocolate.
“You,” she said. “You should paint. What have you got to lose?”
We ate in silence for a few minutes, relishing the food, the company, even the sultry weather.
“So this brother of yours. Is he good-looking?” Gogo smiled at me over her coffee cup.
“Very. And very in love with someone already.”
“Too bad.
“More than you know.”