The favor, p.7
The Favor, page 7
“I doubt Evelyn needs any clarity on boundaries,” says Jacob. “She’s good to act like you two are sisters one minute, and let you get down on your hands and knees to hem her skirt the next.”
“That’s a little brutal,” I say. “I just don’t want the money part to matter.”
“Nore, don’t kid yourself,” says Jacob. “The money part always matters.”
Eleven
Dean Nicholson’s apartment in Chelsea reminds me of him—spare, elegant, and discreet. He’s got an alfresco lunch waiting for Jacob and me. We spread the cloak in a swoon across his couch, then enjoy Greek salad and pear tartine in the postcard Shangri-La he’s made of his small outdoor space.
Dean is recently retired, and he catches us up on his life with the ease of someone luxuriating in a newfound abundance of free time. After he refreshes our iced teas, he brings out a tin of shortbread cookies and a book.
“I found this for you at The Strand, Nora,” he says. “Though I’m sure you’ve read it.”
“Thanks—yes, I’ve read it, but I don’t own it.” I take the book he’s offering, an out-of-print biography of Frieda Bergessen. I turn it over in my hand. Its crackled Mylar jacket is Scotch-Taped across the front, bisecting the hand-tinted photo of a baby-faced Frieda just before her catapult into fame.
“A big twenties and thirties,” I say, “and a quiet everything after.”
Dean nods. “Her popularity didn’t survive the war, but she spent her happiest years up in the Berkshires, observing the seasons and finding poetry in everything from her calico cats to her walks in the woods. I also marked where it mentions Evelyn’s family connection.”
Dean’s stuck a Post-it to a photograph of Frieda squashed between a couple on a porch swing. The man and woman are laughing and turned toward Frieda, who is erect as a puppet. Her stare into the camera is atomic.
There’s a joke happening here. I certainly don’t get it. But what I can tell is that Frieda’s not enjoying it.
“I’m sure I looked at this photo when I read this book before. It’s a fresh context now that I know Evelyn.” I read the caption out loud. “‘Bergessen, pictured in the summer of 1946 with Evelyn Stoker Fitzroy and her husband, Theodore Fitzroy, Jr., at the family farm, Old Orchard. Bergessen had a lifelong regard for the Southern socialite.’”
“The piece you’ve brought is a cleaner spin on Dior’s cut,” says Dean. “But anyone looking for haute Dior wants his New Look. The fox trim, the soutache, the mink extending down the front. All the bells and whistles.”
“What about the fact that an almost-famous poet wore it?” asks Jacob.
“There’s a photo of her wearing it too,” I add.
“That helps. Nora, remember Joanne Speck?” asks Dean.
“The tank watch.” I groan. “How could I forget?”
Years ago, I’d gone along with Dean, a senior appraiser, to meet Joanne Speck in her studio apartment in Lenox Hill. A former model, Joanne showed us photo albums from her days palling around with Brigitte Bardot and Gunter Sachs in Capri, and she informed us that her Cartier watch, a pink-gold face with a cordovan leather strap, was a gift from Babe Paley.
The watch itself was gorgeous. But with no monogram or proof of provenance, all we had was a fun story. Joanne sold it reluctantly for fourteen thousand dollars, a lot less than she’d hoped. Then, a few years later, a photograph circulated of young Paley wearing the same watch. Sotheby’s scooped this image and—with some flashy copy evoking the glamour of that bygone era—used it for the inside front page of its catalog when they obtained the watch as part of their International Fine Jewelry Auction. They resold the watch for a quarter million.
Mrs. Speck was not amused. She left Dean several spiteful messages, using shocking, inventive combinations of very bad words.
“The needlework is stunning,” says Dean. “These vermicelli stitches. The tubing and paillettes. That gold thread. You need a special buyer who recognizes its worth.”
“But who’s that special buyer?” asks Jacob. “Count Dracula?”
“One rich count will do the trick,” says Dean. “But I don’t see anyone bidding past twenty-five hundred. Three, best case.”
We leave with promises on both sides to reconnect soon for an Odeon night.
“You’ve been quiet,” I say to Jacob on the subway. “But I hear your mind whirling.”
“What if we put it up on this site?” Jacob thrusts his phone at me. “Curiosity Corners? It sells vintage weirdness. Elvis Presley’s Bible just went for ninety-four thousand dollars.”
“That’s because of dedicated Elvis superfans.”
“The Aston Martin from Goldfinger sold for seven million.”
“Intense James Bond people crossed with rabid antique-cars people.”
“For five thousand you can own scraps of Charles the First’s beard. Snipped by his personal physician after he was beheaded. It’s DNA certified.”
I shiver. “I don’t want to think about people who buy beheaded beard scraps.”
Jacob is still scrolling. “Guess how much Marilyn Monroe’s Seven Year Itch dress sold for? That subway grate dress…”
“Hollywood’s not my specialty.”
“Humor me.”
I sigh. “It’s a known dress, a known costume designer, William Travilla. Mint condition since the dress was always famous. Six hundred thousand?”
“Thanks for playing.” Jacob’s eyes dance. “Five point two million.”
“Wow, okay. Was not expecting.”
“There are over thirteen thousand Bergessen hashtags on Twitter,” says Jacob, deep in his phone again. “Huh. So she’s not as stone-cold obscure as I thought.”
“Frieda Bergessen was a one-hit wonder poet from a hundred years ago,” I say. “She doesn’t have Marilyn Monroe’s star power. Or Sylvia Plath’s star power. She doesn’t even have Elizabeth Bishop’s star power. There are zero intense Frieda Bergessen people.”
“Let’s put it on Curiosity Corners for a week. See if we get any bites.”
“I don’t want bites. You wanted an appraisal. Dean, who’s a certified appraiser, guessed three thousand, tops. I know that’s different from what Henry told us, but the estimate on a luxury-gift tax write-off isn’t the same as how you’d price it in the commercial marketplace. We made a deal, and it’s still worth less than your Peugeot bike. So we get to keep it.”
“It’s just like the Paley watch—we don’t know what we’ve got,” he says.
I try another angle. “Since I’m currently earning some money working for Evelyn,” I say, “I’d prefer to focus on that instead of looking for ways to mess up my relationship with her.” It’s a thought that I speak before I have time to process it. But it’s true. I’ve never earned more money than Jacob until Evelyn began padding my income, and along this line of reasoning, I feel a new twitch of power—and I don’t mind it.
Even if it drives a wedge into this conversation.
Even if we are silent for the rest of the ride home.
Twelve
Evelyn calls me at the shop the next day to see if I can come over to her apartment and sew a bird’s-eye back on the Galliano that I’ve couriered for her to wear to the Proust Ball.
“It’s too gorgeous to save,” she says, “so I’m wearing it to Bryce’s tonight. I’ll Zelle you another five hundred if you hunt me down a new dress. I know, I’m such a pain!” She laughs off her confessional truth-telling.
I agree to come see her after work.
And now I need to reschedule tonight’s date with Frankie.
“Will we ever hang out again in this lifetime?” he asks as we close shop. “Also, I’ve got a request. I’d planned to do it at drinks.”
I stop buttoning my coat. “Ask me now.”
“All right, well.” Frankie’s hand is at his neck. “Seth and I want to appoint you and Jacob to be the twins’ legal guardians.”
I freeze.
His eyes widen, mirroring mine. “If it feels like a lot, Nore, you don’t have to do it. But we can’t think of a better couple to take the twins if we die in the proverbial fiery plane crash.”
“Frankie! We’d be honored!” Though I feel short of breath, picturing Jacob and me like a traumatized childless couple in a German fairy tale, catching those orphans as they fall from the sky. Our good fortune at a terrible price. It’s moments like this when I realize I haven’t moved past my grief at all; I’ve just hidden it, like a drop cloth thrown over a pile of broken glass.
“Can we get a date on the books for real talk?” Frankie asks. “I miss you.”
“Me too.” These past few weeks, I’ve ducked three of Frankie’s invitations for drinks or dinner—mostly so that I can avoid listening to his topic of choice, impending fatherhood. But I’m becoming a bad friend, the person I swore I wouldn’t be. Irish goodbye-ing my way out of his life when he needs support most. The only family who came to Frankie’s wedding were an aunt and uncle and his little sister, Trix.
Frankie’s big brown eyes are unblinking on me, and there’s a seriousness in his face. He’s feeling the rumble of change in his life; he’s nervous and determined; he wants to talk about it and he wants me to care. I do care. I can do better.
“Next week. Pick your night,” I tell him. “We’ll go to a very Frankie place with cocktails that take at least twenty minutes to prepare.”
“I’ll drink to that.” He smiles. “And before you go—look. Sixteen weeks.” He hands me his phone.
The twins are a pair of melon-head aliens suspended in the grainy weather forecast of their ultrasound image. I’m rapt as Frankie points out knees and noses, but when he takes back his phone, I keep my head down. Intently watching my fingers buttoning my coat. Winding my scarf up and over my chin like a mummy so it hides anything raw and pitiful printed on my face. I need to get to Evelyn’s. I need to make sure she’s still mine.
Thirteen
“Sangria?” Evelyn asks the moment I step onto her roof deck. “I got the recipe from Hotel Xcaret in Mexico.”
“Wow. Thanks.” I hold up my sewing basket. “I came prepared.”
“You’re the best.” Evelyn reaches for the pitcher as Anya, who delivered me here, now leaves us. Evelyn’s hair and makeup people have come and gone, serving her with this evening’s loose waves and eyelash extensions. “And how drop-dead gorgeous is this? You’ve got a real jeweler’s eye for what works best on me.” She indicates the Meng robe she’s wearing that I also found for her this week. It’s a light piece, silky and breathable, a watercolor-blossoms print with dolman sleeves and a delicate ruffle around the hem. Each detail of the wrap is a small victory for me—the ruching that doesn’t pinch her middle, the banded sash that adds weight but doesn’t hamper the drop.
“Now come take a load off,” she instructs, pouring me a glass.
I drop into the chaise next to hers. The clouds are just beginning to lift on a Manhattan sundown when Anya reappears with a tray of tidily compartmentalized dried fruits, nuts, and olives. Listening to Evelyn chat about her impending dinner party, I feel the pressures of my day dissolve. The confused but mostly cranky old guy who returned a smoking jacket that he’d in fact purchased at Decades, a vintage shop in Los Angeles. The Hunter College girls who tried on everything; turned the dressing room into molehills of wrinkled, discarded clothing and then left empty-handed—or so we thought until Frankie discovered the detached ink tag in the bathroom’s wastepaper basket and our black velvet Azzedine Alaïa catsuit missing.
But now I’m in the kingdom of Evelyn. Where her smile and this delicious sangria make me feel cared for.
Monogrammed tumblers too! trills my mother’s voice. Greek olives as big as malt balls!
After we’ve drained our drinks and the sun has sunk, I follow Evelyn downstairs and along the hall to her dressing room. But it’s all different. I step back, confused. The rose golds of the dressing room are gone, replaced with heavy creams and shiny brass that evoke a feel of Old Hollywood.
“Cute rethink, right?” Evelyn lifts onto her toes and twirls. She looks so tall and yet graceful, like an exotic bird. “This room needed a glow-up.”
Did it? The bookshelf with the first editions is gone too. But to ask where they went might rupture the mood. Evelyn disappears into her walk-in closet and returns with the navy Galliano slip dress I’d sourced from Elle Encore Couture, its sheer-tulle back scattered with an appliqué riot of hummingbirds and flowers. She finds the ruby bird’s-eye where she’s kept it in a ring box in her dressing table drawer. I open the basket and search out the right needle and thread.
“I’ll be quick.”
“Take your time. You know Bryce, so type A. I think I almost want to be late, just to get under her skin.”
Bryce Appell was a couple of years behind me at Phelps College, and Evelyn always assumes I know her, but I don’t. None of my friends did. Bryce, granddaughter of cosmetics mogul Opal Appell, mostly orbited our collegiate life in sightings and rumors.
Her family foundation is putting twenty-five kids through Phelps every year.
Britney Spears performed for her tenth birthday party.
Her grandfather is cryogenically frozen in Zurich.
Bryce and I intersected once when we were getting to-go, on-campus coffees at Wake-Up Café. She asked me to pass her the soy milk, and we shared a moment about how the lids never fit. I attended Phelps on a Pell Grant and half a dozen other stitched-together loans, plus all my mother’s savings. I balanced classes with a full-time work-study library job, and most of my meal plan was Cup Noodles. Bryce had a Lamborghini and a bodyguard.
The bird’s-eye is a droplet of ruby, surrounded by tinier beads of jet-black.
I squint, choose a thinner needle, and thread it.
“Bryce and Jorge tell us eight,” says Evelyn as she sits at her dressing table and screws a gumdrop-sized diamond into each ear. “But they don’t even serve until nine. When they hosted the Friendsgiving last year, we were snoring in our vichyssoise.”
“Friendsgiving… Is that a tradition?” I ask.
“It’s more like my reaction to a tradition. It’s inspired by the show Friends. Bryce and Pauline and I rotate who’s the Monica. It’s me this year.” Evelyn takes a pavé-diamond necklace from her jewelry box. “Help with this?”
I put down my sewing and move to stand behind her, arranging the necklace around her neck. It’s my Downton Abbey moment, where I’m the lady’s maid in black bombazine, dressing glamorous Lady Evelyn for dinner.
“Look at us,” says Evelyn, and I glance up from the catch and hoop to see Evelyn staring at our reflections in the mirror. Our physical similarity is like a shared electrical current, though Evelyn is all glossy hair, glazed makeup, and sparkling diamonds.
I look down to fasten the necklace’s clasp and then its safety catch. Evelyn is still staring at us in the mirror. “I’ve got an idea—why don’t I bring you on for my Friendsgiving? Then I know it’d be special. Poppy was fixing to do a whole Gatsby thing. You could manage that, Spell. You’d find me a fun outfit, and you’d be so clever at decorating the table, scouring around for all those antique-y little party favors.”
“Do you mean plan your Thanksgiving for you?” I’m already shaking my head. “Don’t you go see your family?”
“My parents use Thanksgiving to do a couple’s detox at their favorite ashram in Miramar,” says Evelyn. “It’s the one holiday I don’t have to hear my dad preach about ethics and capitalism and football.”
“We always go to Massapequa,” I say as I return to my chair and the sewing. “Every year since we got married.”
“Just saying, it can be fun to spend one holiday with people you choose. Xander loves to drop his Gen Z wisdom on me, telling me how Thanksgiving is next up to be canceled. But Friendsgiving, I tell him, now that’s just chitchatting and pie à la mode. And if I had you, then you’d make it your own quirky special Spell-thing, and you’d keep everything well managed.”
“There’s no I way I could miss—”
“I’d pay you too, of course. I know a little extra in your pocket helps the dream along.” She winks.
Evelyn means well, but the phrase a little extra in your pocket feels humiliating, like I’m an urchin selling peanuts from a handcart.
“Evelyn, I’m touched that you’re thinking about Jacob and me, and our financial situation,” I say, “and I’d do this job for free, as a favor for a friend, if I could—but I can’t.”
“How about don’t give me an answer right this minute,” Evelyn says, even though I just did, “and help me get into my dress?”
And so I retrieve the Galliano and finish helping Lady Evelyn dress for her dinner party.
Fourteen
“Are you kidding?” Jacob stares at me for a second or two. “Tell me you’re kidding.” I’ve waited until Sunday when we’re at the dog park. A good place to deliver big news. Jacob can’t slam out the door if he’s already outside.
“I’m not. I said I wouldn’t do it. But then yesterday she Venmoed me—and she wrote me a very kind note about it, too, thanking me.”
“Very kind note? Who very kind gives a crap? She’s paying you to handle her Thanksgiving. It doesn’t even make sense. Thanksgiving is just cafeteria food. Nobody cares if you burn the green beans.” He’s shaking his head. “I don’t get it.”
“We don’t have to do it, obviously,” I say, “but it might be interesting to spend one holiday with people we choose?”
“But I didn’t choose the goddamn Elliots,” says Jacob, pulling his hands through his hair so that it sticks up like grass. “I barely know them! And I thought you liked visiting my folks.”
“I do!” Though in recent years, our visits coincided with a couple of IVF-related hormone crashes, and one of my less-joyous Hammond holiday memories is when I hid in the powder room, hissing “Get it together, Nora!” at the mirror like I was giving some psychotic TED Talk.
