after shaving prevents ingrown hairs.
Which is more than I can say for Madame Henri. Not about the deodorant (not that I’ve ever gone up to her and taken a big whiff) but about being nice to me. Oh, sure, she tolerates me.
But only because I take on a significant portion of her husband’s workload, leaving him free to spend more time at home… a fact about which I’m not entirely sure he’s that happy.
When I walk through the door that afternoon, in fact, Monsieur Henri and his wife are having a violent argument—only in French, of course, so that Jennifer Harris and her mother, who are there for Jennifer’s final fitting, can’t understand what they’re saying.
“We’ve got to do it,” Madame Henri is saying viciously. “I don’t see how we’re going to manage otherwise. Maurice has sucked away every last bit of our business with those newspaper ads of his. And when he opens up that new shop of his down the street—well, I don’t need to tell you, that will be the nail in our coffin!”
“Let’s wait,” her husband says. “Things might pick up.”
Then, noticing me, he says in English, “Ah, Mademoiselle Elizabeth! Well, what do you think?”
As if he has to ask. I’m standing there staring at Jennifer Harris, who has come out of the dressing room in her gown, and looks…
Well, like an angel.
“I love it,” Jennifer says.
And anyone could see why. The gown—now with an open, Queen Anne–style neckline, and tight, over-the- wrist lace sleeves (with loops that go over the middle finger, to keep the lace in place)—looks fantastic.
But it’s Jennifer herself who’s the most beautiful of all. She’s glowing.
Of course, she’s glowing because I did a kick-ass job on her dress.
But that’s beside the point.
“Are you wearing the shoes you’re going to have on for the ceremony?” I ask, Monsieur and Madame Henri’s latest tiff forgotten as I hurry forward to fuss with her skirt. I’ve added a lace drape—to match the sleeves—at the waist, giving her more of a Renaissance-style look. Which, with her long neck and stick-straight hair, really works.
“Of course,” Jennifer says. “You told me to, remember?”
The hem is the perfect length—just sweeping the floor. She looks like a princess. No, like a fairy princess.
“Her sisters are going to kill me when they see her,” Mrs. Harris says—but not unpleasantly. “Because she looks so much better than any of them ever did.”
“Mom!” Jennifer knows she looks fantastic, so she can afford to be gracious. “You know that’s not true.”
But the fact that she can’t take her gaze off her own reflection illustrates that she knows itis true.
Pleased with the results of my labor—and Monsieur Henri’s, as well. He did, after all, provide the lace—I help Jennifer remove the gown and am packing it up for her while her mother pays the not insignificant bill (although it’s a lot less than if they’d bought a whole new dress, even if they’d gone to—shudder— Kleinfeld’s).
I’ve given Jennifer her garment bag with instructions on how to steam any creases out (by hanging the gown in the bathroom with a hot shower going). Whatever happens, I inform her, DO NOT IRON it. Jennifer is so high on how pretty she looks in her dress that she just says “Okay” in a daze, and runs out to where her mother has parked the car without another word.
Her mother, however, is more circumspect, stopping beside me after paying Monsieur Henri to squeeze my hand and say, while looking into my eyes, “Lizzie. Thank you.”
“Oh, no problem, Mrs. Harris.” I’m a little embarrassed. It’s weird to be thanked for doing something you love and would have done in any case, whether or not anyone was paying you (which, in this case, no one was).
But when Mrs. Harris takes her hand away from mine, I see that I’m wrong. Because she’s surreptitiously pressed a bill into my hand.
Reminded immediately of Grandma and her emergency sawbuck (which I still have in my handbag), I look down and am surprised to see two zeroes after the number one on the bill Mrs. Harris has given me.
“Oh, I can’t accept this,” I start to say.
But Mrs. Harris has already swept out the door, with a promise that she’s going to tell all her friends with daughters of marriageable age about Monsieur Henri. “And I’ll make sure they stay away from that horrible Maurice!” is her parting cry.
The second she’s gone, Madame Henri starts in again on her husband.
“And as if things were not bad enough, those boys of yours stayed in the apartment again last night!”
“They’re your sons, too,” Monsieur Henri points out.
“No,” Madame Henri corrects him. “Not anymore. If all they are going to do is come into the city to go to the clubs, then dirty up my perfectly clean apartment—which they know they are not supposed to stay in—they are your boys. Because you will not discipline them.”
“What do you want me to do?” he demands. “I want them to have the advantages I did not have growing up!”
“They have had enough advantages,” says Madame Henri emphatically. “Now is the time to let them fend for themselves. Let them see what it is like in real life, to have to earn a paycheck.”
“You know it’s not that easy,” Monsieur Henri says.
Has he got that right. I look down at the hundred-dollar bill in my hand. It’s the first “found” money I’ve had since moving to this city. Everything here is so expensive! It seems like no sooner do I get a paycheck than it’s gone again, first to rent, then to Con Ed, then to food, then to cable (because I can’t live without the Style channel), and then, if there’s anything left over, to my cell phone bill.
“Well,” Madame Henri says with a sniff. “I am having the apartment locks changed. And I am keeping the key here in the shop. Hidden.”
And what about FICA taxes? FICA—Federal Insurance Contri butions Act (or as Tiffany insists the letters really stand for, Fucking Idiots taking my Cash Assets)—seems to eat up more of my paychecks than anything.
“How much is that going to cost me?” Monsieur Henri wants to know.
“However much it is, it will be worth it,” Madame Henri declares. “If it means those pigs will be kept out of the place. You should see what I found in the bedroom wastebasket. A condom! Used!”
It’s impossible to pretend I don’t understand French when I hear this. I can’t help making a face… especially when Madame Henri brandishes a plastic trash bag that apparently holds the evidence of her claim.
“Ew!” I cry.
When both Henris look at me curiously, I quickly wrinkle my nose and say, “That garbage smells.” Because, truthfully, it totally does. “Do you want me to take it out for you?”
“Er, yes, thank you,” Madame Henri says after a moment’s hesitation. “It’s the garbage from our flat upstairs.”
I take the bag between two fingers. “You own the apartments upstairs?” This is news to me. I didn’t know they owned the entire brownstone the shop is in. And I thought they lived in New Jersey. They certainly seemed to complain enough about the commute.
Monsieur Henri nods. “Yes. The second floor we use for storage. The top floor is a little flat. I sleep there sometimes when I have to work late on a gown—” Which hasn’t happened, as far as I can tell, in a long, long time. Business hasn’t been good enough for any of us to pull any all-nighters. “Otherwise, it sits empty. Our sons use it from time to time—”
“Without permission!” Madame Henri cries in English. “I would like to rent it out, help with some of the costs of the business—and to keep my pigs of sons from thinking they can sleep there whenever they miss the train home after a night of debauchery. But this oaf here does not like the idea!”
“I don’t know,” Monsieur Henri says, not looking as if his sons’ alleged debauchery bothers him that much. “I don’t want the responsibility of being a landlord. And supposing we get one of those crazy tenants, eh? Like we read about in the papers? The ones with all the cats, who won’t move out? I don’t want that.”
Madame Henri responds by shaking a balled-up fist at her husband. I smile and slip outside to deposit the
