Between the Shadow and the Soul - 35
"Run into the garden, and bring me a pumpkin."
Cinderella went immediately to gather the finest she could get, and brought it to her godmother, not being able to imagine how this pumpkin could help her go to the ball. Her godmother scooped out all the inside of it, leaving nothing but the rind. Having done this, she struck the pumpkin with her wand, and it was instantly turned into a fine coach, gilded all over with gold.
-- Charles Perrault
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The Godmother
I emerged from the backseat of my limousine and said merci beaucoup to the chauffeur my daddy had hired to cart me around the city. I liked the Lincoln's pearly white ostentatious flair, knew exactly how glamorous I looked when ascending from its opulent leather backseat (a solid “Grace Kelly” on my private and very embarrassing Hollywood Glamor Scale), and was appreciative of the ample room it offered for splurge shopping storage.
My brand new grandmother Lily had taken me for tea at the Carlyle just before Christmas and informed me, in the midst of our conversation, that wealth in Manhattan was really all about stealth. Certain people tended to frown on outrageous displays of status or affluence, which meant my love of the finer things in life might be viewed as crass or tragically nouveau riche. I had considered her words for all of 3.7 seconds, then spotted a crop of such pecking hens eying me from a few tables over, and come to the swift conclusion that those people were stuffy and boring and just jealous that they couldn't rock an Anna Sui bubble-hemmed crepe de chine mini.
The day I wore jeans from The Gap or a knit sweater from Abercrombie & Fitch was the day I turned my back on all that was good and Elle with the world.
I had dressed for comfort that morning - meaning I had slipped a hand wash only Stewart + Brown merino wool sweatercoat over a silk pullover dress and protected my legs by pairing my ensemble with a pair of textured black Eloise tights - and was immensely glad for it. One sweeping look at the uneven sidewalk pavement, the chipping paint on surrounding stoops, and the ugly garage door graffiti art on either side of the prim pink-and-white café at 248 Broome Street, and I was almost dizzily happy that I had opted to wear practical brown leather pull-on construction boots.
My first choice had been 4” Valentino rosette peep-toe pumps.
I had no idea why we were meeting so early so soon after Christmas, and on the Lower East Side no less, but it really had been too long. I had so many things to catch her up on, so many questions that no longer needed to be asked but which I wished she had been around to answer, so many wild stories to hear about her 'holiday' in the Italian Riviera. What men had she dated? Had she toured the rest of the country and, if so, had she brought me anything from Via Montenapoleone? And, if she hadn't, what did she intend to buy me to make up for it?
She could have easily come to visit me in the comfort of my new luxurious home, or asked to meet me for lunch at the boat house or Gracie Mews or any other of my new dining haunts. We could have flirted with the well-dressed waiters, ordered obscenely expensive items off the menu only to send them back and demand complimentary dessert, sampled delicious imported wine (from France, évidemment) and been seated by the windows the better for onlookers to see and admire. Instead, we were incognito between Orchard and Ludlow, below Houston Street and not even in SoHo. The only people who would admire us would be hobos. Or worse, Lower East Siders.
My godmother was just lucky I loved her so much, and was prepared to endure a sweet tooth overload at a place called Babycakes. (It sounded like it should have housed low dollar strippers in trashy Alice in Wonderland get-ups. I was, in fact, expecting to find just that.) I squeezed through the cramped front door and spotted her instantly, sitting by herself at a tiny table and punching away at her QWERTY keyboard with more speed and precision than even the deftest of my recently acquired minions. Handmaidens. “Friends”.
Before I could part my lips to form the first syllable of bonjour, Serena unleashed a squeal more high-pitched than anything I had attempted since the age of seven. It was jarring, undignified, a bit too over-the-top, and altogether unpleasant, but that was my godmother; and when her arms went around me and she peppered me with delighted kisses, she smelled as she always had. Sunshine and Dolce & Gabbana. It was like every last ray of light wound its way through her hair and seeped into the golden brown of her skin so that, on gloomy winter days such as that one, the world would see her and remember what it was like to be in the presence of white summery bliss.
“Elle belle,” she crooned, pulling back to arm's length to drink in my features. Her navy blue eyes sparkled with all the brilliance of a spinning mirror ball. “Oh, I've missed you.”
“I 'ave missed you too.”
I wanted to say so much more, but how would that have been for a friendly greeting?
Why didn't you ever tell me? Why weren't you here for cotillion? Why don't you ever answer your phone? When are you going to change that voice mail message? And, while I'm asking questions, why did mère leave daddy? Why didn't I know about Teddy or daddy at all? Would anyone have told me if I hadn't come here? If so, when were you planning on it and did you think I wouldn't be absolutely furious and hate all of you forever? Didn't you think I deserved to know about my family? About my TWIN? About my daddy? (Who is, undoubtedly, the best daddy there ever was. I can't believe you kept him from me all these years!) Why does mère hate daddy?
My mental list of inquiries grew longer every time I thought about it. It would have to wait until after the macaroons and hot tea.
The heat inside the café was oppressively stifling. After five minutes of playing catch-up, I removed my plum coat and asked the woman behind the counter for some ice water to cure my arid throat. When she paused in the act of pouring to ask how many ice cubes I wanted in my glass, I put my face in my hands and muttered a carefully phrased oath about the incompetence of American food service (not to mention the rampant epidemic that was the country's pathetic lack of common sense).
I knew my godmother had heard me when I heard a muffled giggle, and looked up to see her hiding in the folds of her ruffled scarf. “I guess that answers my question.”
She chewed her bottom lip to contain her trademark smile, and dipped a finger into her teacup to flick some of the piping hot tart cherry green tea brew in my face.
“What question?” I shook out the napkin I had used to shield myself from her attack and spread it across my knees, trying to pretend it wasn't made out of paper. (The fact that it had scalloped edges is a fact I am still trying to erase from my memory.)
“My question about how you're adjusting to life in New York.” Serena wrinkled her nose at me and took a bite out of her scone.
The conversation seemed to grow wings from there, and we fell into the nonsensical rhythm we had perfected over years of all-night 'slumber parties' in the luxury suites of hotels all over France - hotels I finally knew had opened their doors to her free of charge on the courtesy of her status as an extended member of the Bass dynasty. This meant, my brain finally realized with a shock-wave that sent a tremble trilling from the base of my skull all the way to the bottoms of my freshly manicured toes, that Serena van der Woodsen, Manhattan socialite extraordinaire, internationally renowned globe trotter, wildly successful editorial model, shining blonde bombshell re-imagining of Holly Golightly from 2019's classic Breakfast at Fred's, was not only my glittering gold godmother, but a shiny new family member I could call tante.
This newly discovered connection with her seemed to wordlessly fortify the already solid bond of our mentor-protégée friendlationship. We fluttered from topic to topic on a breeze of informality; she had amusing commentary for every episode of what I informed her was officially called The Saffron Debacle: The Fall of a Really Pathetic Monarchy, I played the part of the scandalized innocent when she waxed on and on about her wild nights in Santa Margherita and all the various ways she had entertained her delicious Italian boyfriend, and we indulged each other with oohs and aahs as we swapped Christmas shopping horror stories. In terms of sheer danger, Aunt Serena probably had me beat - the queues in Italia were horrendous and could hardly be called 'lines' by even the loosest definition of the word.
The only hiccup in the conversation occurred when my aunt(!!!!!!) paused to wipe her mouth and asked, in that innocently curious way only someone who had been sunning in the Mediterranean for the past few months of my life could have done, about my love life.
“I do not have one,” I answered a little too promptly, twisting the ugly napkin between my fingers and trying to look very busy watching the steam rise from my teacup.
Perhaps my failure to meet her eyes gave her the false impression that I was keeping some namelessly handsome blue blood chéri all to myself, because she nudged my shin with her foot. “You don't have one boy - ”
“Non.” This time, I punctuated my denial with a sharp lift of my chin. “No one.”
We finished our tea in a discomfited silence, Serena waiting patiently for me to elaborate on my romantic situation, me looking carefully at anything but her and imagining a world in which I had been able to say a blushing oui and carry on and on about mon amour until her ears bled from the details. In Paris, just weeks ago, that would have been my hushed response - I would have cast a paranoid glance around the café to ensure our conversation was too quiet for eavesdropping ears, and then unleashed a girlishly delighted tidal wave of the dashing Tristan Marchand and all the promises he had made me.
Phantom lips brushed my neck as ghostly traces of the patterns he had drawn across my skin with his fingers tingled and pricked unpleasantly. Daddy had assured me, with a hard cut in his jaw that told me there would be hell to pay if he was wrong, that Tristan had been deported to France and would never darken my life again (under pain of an airtight restraining order). All the same, I felt vulnerable when I remembered the well-paid bodyguard I had so thoughtlessly failed to bring with me - I would never take his presence for granted again.
By the time I had finished my crème-filled Fauchon macaroons and swallowed almost half of my zippy candy cane/cranberry/vanilla chai blend, I had mostly regained the use of my vocal chords, and was able to resuscitate our reunion with some colorful commentary on the cracked and vacant little shops that sat outside the petite boulangerie. We twittered back and forth about what we thought of that season's winter fashion, the looks we planned to pull together for the following Spring, and whether or not we should just give up on the mainstream news entirely and cancel our subscriptions to Vogue and, my personal favorite, Elle.
“The dress Aunt Jenny made me for cotillion was a little like the Maggie Sottero in January's Harper's Bazaar,” I dipped a toe into the stormy sea that was the subject of the debutante ball. After all, I did not know if she had read anything about my American debut in the society pages, or perhaps heard something from my daddy or Uncle Eric about the catastrophe that had been my much photographed and wildly gossiped about grand Bass limo exit; and, most importantly of all, I had not one inkling about her uncharacteristic absence. “I wish you could have seen.”
“I know you looked amazing. Mom sent me the picture of you and your escort.”
“I looked better in person,” I pressed, leaning forward and resting my chin on my fist. “The picture didn't show all the little details...”
“'Figure flattering pleats throughout the bodice and a band of beads and jewels at the natural waistline, an A-line silhouette in shimmer taffeta with a caught-up skirt and corset back.'” Serena propped her own chin on her opposite fist and flourished her memorized quote with a grand wink. “All the fashion columns were buzzing about it, et mais oui, ma petite poupée, you were très magnifique et la reine du bal, and I could shower you with compliments all morning and still not make up for the fact that I was late for my flight and missed the whole thing.”
The penitent look on her face was too precise for someone who did not already know I was upset. “Uncle Eric called you, didn't he.”
It was not a question, a subtly inflected fact she picked up on quite admirably.
“Oui, and I want to make it up to you.”
“Are we going shopping?” My posture instantly improved as my fingers twitched towards my olive patent leather Orla Kiely carryall. “Can we go back uptown? I have my limousine!”
“Oh! That reminds me,” Serena crossed left leg over her right knee, and leaned her elbows against the edge of the table to implore me with the full strength of her feared puppy dog face. “Please tell me you haven't already been to the three Bs.”
I was pretty confident that daddy's black credit card had been swiped at every store and boutique worth frequenting, but I was tentatively excited about the thought of a new and exciting catalog of items to peruse. “The three whats?”
Serena glowed when she chirped, “The three Bs, silly. Barney's, Bergdorf's, Bendel's!”
I wilted and my short-lived fantasy shopping excursion promptly went poomf. “I did not know they were in a gang, but mais oui, I have been to all three of them.”
“I wanted to take you the first time,” my aunt(!!!!!!!!!) pouted, her tone an elegy for the hypothetical experience she had lost. She dropped a few dollar bills on the table and threaded her left arm through my right as she led me back into the snow-ridden Manhattan air.
“If it will make you feel better,” I supplied, “you can get me the three Gs.”
“Oooh,” It was Serena's turn to look excitedly bewildered. Her version of the facial expression differed from mine in that it resembled a four-year-old's. “And what are those?”
“Gold, Godiva, Gucci, silly!” I raised the pitch of my voice to better match hers, which earned me a playful kick in the back of my knee as I slid into the heavenly comfort of my Lincoln's wonderfully climate-controlled backseat. “My jewelry, chocolate, and purse preferences.”
She chuckled as she situated herself beside me and moved the hem of her pea coat away from the slamming door. “Speaking of gifts...”
I saw the mechanics of her facial muscles as they individually tensed and relaxed, and the minor acts of apprehension showed me a detailed study on how Bouguereau's glorious Venus could become, with the passage of decades, The Madonna of the Roses. Her gaze waved back and forth between both of my eyes, as she seemed to be deciding which one would better benefit from the view; she ceased to be the mythical goddess from my childhood daydreams, and the veil parted to reveal an ordinary woman whose expression gave away the secrets all her night cremes and visits to the microdermabrasion clinic could no longer fully keep.
There was a part of me that expected her to realize she had been found out, to shift the light that filtered through the windows and gleam at me like the ageless sprite of never ending cheer and joy she had always been. There was an even bigger part of me that wished for that, because I could not stand to see her diminished at the time when I needed her most. But, she remained unwaveringly pale and serious and put her hand on my knee. Her touch grounded me in reality, and though I could feel the wheels turning smoothly beneath the floor of the auto, the sudden maelstrom in her usually steady eyes pitched me about in an unfamiliar sea.
“Did you like your Christmas present?”
For such a breathless build-up, I had expected something more life-altering. I could not seem to remember opening anything with her name on it. “My Christmas present?”
Her forehead puckered, and I felt her hand curl into a loose fist on top of my leg. “The package I sent you in the mail. You didn't get it?”
I thought back to the pile of gifts that had been underneath the elaborate tree that Christmas morning, remembered the obscene amounts of wrapping and tissue paper that had littered the snow white floor, and went through my mental checklist of all the pretty little embroidered thank-you notes I had already asked Teddy to organize and address for me, and nothing brought to mind a single offering from Tante Serena.
“It had a card on it that asked you to open it in private?” she offered, and that jogged my memory.
I had assumed the little box contained high-dollar lingerie or maybe a carton of her signature Dolce & Gabbana Donna Fatale perfume, the American film noir campaign for which featured her as a sophisticated reincarnation of Veronica Lake. The fact that it still sat, unopened, somewhere on my vanity or buried underneath bracelets and earrings in the top drawer of my dresser, prompted me to fight down an embarrassed blush and so I could shoot her the most enthusiastic fake smile I had managed to muster up in quite a long time. It could not hold a candle to her own similar sunny expression, but she had had much more time to practice and, after all, I could not be expected to get too worked up over whatever thoughtful but impersonal trinket she had air mailed to me that year.
“I love it!” I gushed, hoping I could phrase my sentences carefully enough as to not reveal how totally ignorant I was. Blair Waldorf had taught me better than that. “It is exactly what I wanted, but did not know I wanted. Comment avez-tu su?”
No matter how nicely ambiguous I had managed to sound, Serena was somehow not fooled. She rolled her eyes, leaned back against the left back door and crossed her arms over her chest.
“I know that face, Ellie,” she pinched her lips together in a humorless smile. “It's the same one Blair makes when she forgets what my boyfriend's name is.”
“Marcello?” I guessed, because honestly I could not keep track of her many boyfriends any better than ma mère could.
“Sergio!” Serena huffed. “But that's beside the point. You need to open that present as soon as you get home, comprenez-tu?”
“Pourquoi?”
But she would elaborate no further than to say some variant of “it's just really, really important that you open it as soon as you get home” four or five more times, all the while carefully avoiding my inquiring gaze as she waited for the traffic to clear so she could scurry away from me and into her hotel.
“Serena,” I reached out to touch her arm when her fingers twitched towards the door handle, and she paused to turn her head and glance at me through a curtain of her honey silk hair. “You're staying in the city, aren't you?”
We had had such a short time together, I had barely been able to really discuss all the questions turning and multiplying in my mind. If only we could sit somewhere quiet and not bother with chit chat and small talk...
My godmother reached across her body to press her palm against my knuckles. There was a gentle smile on her face that told me she was not saying adieu to me or New York just yet, and then she slipped out into the chilly morning and shut the door behind her. A few halfhearted snowflakes fluttered on the ghostly breeze and melted into the dark strands of my curly extensions as I watched her sidestep her way through a bustling crowd the way only a true born-and-bred city girl could have done, and then her shining head disappeared behind rotating doors, and I was alone.
Maybe it was better. So many others had let me down on the forthcoming-information front, and she had clammed up rather stoically about the strange importance of her mysterious Christmas present; perhaps it was better not to bother. What reason did I have to believe that Serena would be different from anyone else? 'It's not my business to say' or 'You should ask your mother' were more likely to come out of her mouth than 'Okay, here is the entire story with all the truthy details'.
It was better to soldier on and make my discoveries on my own. It had worked so far.
The driver did not wait for my instructions to begin the winding route back to the Bass penthouse, because she knew I was due to meet my father, brother, grandmamma, and saba for brunch at 1136 5th Avenue less than two hours. If I was going to sneak back up to ma chambre and pretend to have been taking an extra long morning bubble bath while everyone else slept in, I couldn't dawdle on street corners.
Fortune was on my side, because when I ascended to the apartment, everything was as dim and peacefully quiet as I had left it. Moppet puttered down the stairs and across the marble floor to greet me, and I hurriedly scooped her into my arms before she could bark or whine and wake anyone.
“Shhh,” I pressed my fingers to her cold snout and dropped a kiss between her wagging ears.
There was a bit of clanging in the kitchen that meant the staff was already hard at work making preparations for my maternal grandparents' arrival, and the get-together that would serve as our odd little family's entire Chanukah celebration. I had been too wrapped up in my own personal issues to attend the nightly dinners my saba had put together for most of his Jewish friends and co-workers, and I had desperately missed out on my annual eight days of bounty, so it had been my idea to get everyone together and celebrate for the first time as a real cohesive family.
Except it's not really the whole family, is it?
An annoying little voice that did not sound at all like me had taken the habit of reminding me that maman was still across the Atlantic, all alone in Paris with her stylish Christmas tree and only Dorota to exchange presents with.
At least, that's how I had come to imagine it.
But, that day, I had a mission that would hopefully bring me one step closer to riddling out exactly why Blair Waldorf had left her throne in Manhattan to reign over a foreign kingdom. The upstairs hallway was still, as though under a sleeping spell, and when I pressed my ear to my father's bedroom door, I heard only the deafening silence he required for a solid night's rest.
His office was a few doors down, wide open and unguarded, because the only things worth hiding were kept locked up in the Döttling safe behind his desk. I thought there must be piles of crisp clean money in there, maybe stacked alongside a few gold bars (because my daddy was just as ostentatious as I), on the same shelf as a collection of rare and exotic diamonds.
But I had a sneaking suspicion there were other things in there, too, things that might concern the dissolution of my parents' marriage and helpful hints about how to fix it.
I let the door snick shut behind me, but was careful to hold the knob so that it didn't make a sound as the latch caught in the lock. The time on the Bang & Olufsen BeoSound 3 read some minutes after 9 AM, which seemed highly implausible - had I really been downtown and back all before noon?
I slid out of my boots, the better to walk quietly across the herringbone parquetry and onto the thick Arabian rug that cushioned daddy's work desk, and the shelves and storage spaces behind it. The security light on the safe mocked me with its steady blinking pattern - precisely one second between each silent beep, and I knelt in front of it to examine the little keypad underneath it. Daddy had punched a 6 digit code into it a few days earlier as I watched breathlessly through the miniscule crack in the doorway, so now I only had to overcome fathomless improbabilities and guess the right combination.
Of course, I had not entered the office without a list of possibilities. My birth date was one, along with daddy's own, and maman's just in case he was that sentimental. I did not waste thoughts on what I would do if none of those options worked, because I had tricked my pessimistic brain into thinking positively.
That was what made it so utterly depressing when none of them opened the door.
I had been so sure of mine and Teddy's birthday that I had entered 061511 with a little of a triumphant gleam in my eye. When that failed to turn the taunting red light green and allow me entry, I thought - well, of course, it must be in the European style, in honor of all my years abroad. But 150611 was just as incorrect as daddy's birthday after it, and even numerous tries of maman's birthday after that.
Perhaps it was something spelled out numerically? CHUCK B. 248252.
Wrong.
BLAIR B. 252472.
Wrong.
BLAIR W. 252479.
Very, very wrong.
I tried the same thing with my name, once with W. and once with B. When that likewise failed to crack the security code, I did the same with Teddy's without even realizing that neither of our names fit the 6 digit requirement. Then, I got desperate and started punching in all sorts of unlikely numbers, and it was only after I unsuccessfully attempted BASSDORF, CHAIR, and WALBASS that I realized how fruitless my guessing game really was.
Daddy's office chair was custom-crafted Humanscale and very comfortable, which made my sulking a relaxing affair. I rested my chin on my crossed arms and stared at the row of pictures lining the outskirts of the lacquered Parnian desk - the magnificent Archibalds with their broad smiles and sad eyes, Evelyn “Misty” Parker Bass in all her dark and exotic glory, Nate and daddy as young men in the city, several of daddy and Teddy with various people I did not know, and even a hilariously large photograph of the living extended Rhodes-Van der Bass-Humphrey family (minus moi et ma mère, bien sûr).
I picked up the black-and-white shrine to Misty Bass and cradled it in my lap so I could look down at her radiant smile; I did my best to copy it in my polished glass reflection. As I tilted the frame up and down to try and catch our identically straight white teeth at precisely the same angle, I noticed something at the top right corner.
The pin-up beauty shot of my long dead Bass grandmother ended less than an inch shy of the ornate little frame, but there was something else - a white piece of paper of some kind - tucked carefully underneath to create the illusion that her fading face filled the entire rectangular space.
Now, to anyone else this might have just seemed like a nice little decorative gesture, an aid to fit a pretty old picture in its ideal vintage frame, but I fancied myself something of a connoisseur at finding secreted-away pictures in their altogether-quite-obvious hiding places, so I didn't even pause to consider my actions as I turned the whole frame over and undid the little snaps that kept its contents in place.
Two pictures fell into my open palms. The first was, of course, Misty's old and weathered likeness, but the second was from an entirely different era, printed on entirely different material, depicting an entirely different scene. It was one I had seen before, tucked away in a drawer in maman's girlhood bedroom, of mère at 20 years old, her chestnut hair dripping down her back in delicate curls that ended just before the waistline of her pale ivory dress. Père lifted la voile de mariage de ma mère and kissed her in front of politely clapping company.
December 27, 2010.
My daddy had to be the most romantic man in the world! And he wasn't even French.
I twirled the chair around so fast that had the wheels been touching the wood flooring, I would have slid right into something and made a terrible racket. As it was, I was able to reach out and hurriedly press 1, 2, 2, 7, 1, and 0 without alerting anyone to my top secret doings.
And when the light beeped and shifted from ruby to emerald, I was able to turn the handle, push the heavy door aside, and look upon the collection of things daddy considered so very valuable. There were gold bars, the $10,000 watch and really gross looking old boring American baseball signed by some famous femme in a glass cube daddy had told me he had spent 'years tracking back down', along with all sorts of official looking documents and other private memorabilia.
I glanced back at the door to make sure no one had slipped in behind me without my noticing, then dug through the assortment of things as carefully as I could, to avoid shifting everything out of place. I found a few items that made no sense whatsoever, and a few things that did: files on moi et ma mère which tracked our movements in France from a discreet and respectful distance. Medical records and report cards and certificates of merit, along with copies of my old school photos.
Then, in a simple mahogany box with a gold clasp, I found something much more useful.