Judith Krantz - Sex And Shopping: the Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl: An Autobiography

Sex
and
Shopping

The Confessions of a
Nice Jewish Girl

Previous Publications by
Judith Krantz

Scruples

Princess Daisy

Mistrals Daughter

Ill Take Manhattan

Till We Meet Again

Dazzle

Scruples Two

Lovers

Spring Collection

The Jewels of Tessa Kent

The Confessions of a
Nice Jewish Girl

An Autobiography

Judith
Krantz

SEX AND SHOPPING: CONFESSIONS OF A NICE JEWISH GIRL. Copyright 2000 by Judith Krantz. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Design by Heidi Eriksen

ISBN 0-312-25196-3
ISBN: 978-0-312-25196-3

First Edition: May 2000

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is for the children who are
the future of my family:

My grandchildren: Kate Mattie Krantz and
Michael Ryan Krantz.

Mimis grandchildren: Adam Michael Guren,
Julie Valerie Guren, Matthew Tarcher Valji, and
Andrea Lauren Valji.

Jeremys grandson, James Abraham Tarcher Hood.

Sex
and
Shopping

The Confessions of a
Nice Jewish Girl

I PUSHED, DRAGGED, AND BUMPED MY HEAVY SUITCASE ALONG THE narrow corridor of the night train to Paris. I was so filled with the exhilaration of wild high spirits that I welcomed the challenge of finding a seat. Finally, in triumph, I wedged my luggage into an almost nonexistent slot Id just noticed with the experienced eye of a veteran of the New York subway.

I was one of the last, amid the overflow crowd of other skiers, to find a place to sit for the long ride back to the Gare du Nord. The slowly moving train started to pick up speed and we were finally well under way, back from Megve, in the French Alps, where Id just spent two weeks skiing. Twelve hours from now Id be home, but I had twelve hours to pass with a blessed partition to lean against and a reassuringly bulky sandwich safe in the pocket of my ski parka.

Even if Id been able to get a ticket in a compartment, Id have been too blissfully excited to sleep this night anyway, I realized. Right now, at this very minute, it was still January 8, 1949, and I, Judy Tarcher, was only twenty years old. In just two hours, at the very first stroke of midnight, I would turn twenty-one. I would attain my legal majority, Id be able to vote, Id be allowed to drink in a bar without false I.D., I could get a driving licenseat last, at last Id officially be a grown-up! Tomorrow I was going to be given three birthday parties, and that wonderfully celebratory prospect made me giddy with anticipation as I looked around me, beaming in good humor at the prospect of a night in the packed, lurching corridor.

Dozens of skiers were settling down, already engrossed in newspapers or books. Id been too busy in the station, struggling to balance my skis on my shoulder and manage my suitcase, to buy a new copy of Paris Match or Elle. But Id spent what seemed like most of my lifetime reading, so I welcomed this opportunity to sit back quietly and think about where and whither and what next. I needed this time before I got back to Paris and the bewildering pace of my new existence there. I was living as a paying guest in the home of Nicole Bouchet de Fareins, a fascinatingly complicated divorced woman in her late thirties, with three teenaged daughters, and my life held daily surprises.

I knew I was being silly, but I was unable to stop myself as I opened my shoulder bag and fished out a little date book. Once more I checked tomorrows date. Sunday, January 9, 1949. No, nothing had happened to change it in the two hours since Id last looked.

As I tucked the book safely away, I realized that a middle-aged, well-nourished Frenchman was looking at me with barely disguised attention as he took a pull on his flask. He was close enough for me to smell the brandy and I imagined, in my heightened sense of self-awareness, that I could read his mind. A fresh young one, hed probably be thinking, with childishly round pink cheeks, still far too young to be of any real interest yet not totally without a certain appeal. I knew perfectly well that my light brown hair and artless, fluffy bangs framed an ingenuous, innocent face. Petite as I was, this man would never believe I was as good as twenty-one. If he kept on staring, I flattered myself, he might eventually catalog what I considered my only features of distinction, a pouting lower lip that was much fuller than the upper one, and large, light gray-green eyes.

Of course hed be able to tell with half a glance that there was no possibility that I was French. There was just something about me, I couldnt figure out what, that breathed American-ness. But perhaps, later on, when the train ride had come to seem unbearably long, hed offer to share some of his brandy with me. Perhaps not. Hed certainly assume that I didnt speak enough French, if any, to offer any amusement.

Losing interest in trying to mind-read, I closed my eyes and returned to my own thoughts of the morrow and Nicoles welcome.

Ah, that Nicole, how she dominated my time in France, I mused. I was still incredulously happy that wed finally become friends. I hadnt dared to imagine that such a thing could ever happen during those first miserable weeks in September when Id arrived to live at her house once my family had returned to New York after our summer tour of Europe. For weeks she regarded me with unmistakable suspicion in her brilliantly dark and often frighteningly cold eyes. Shed been so unwelcoming that I realized only dire financial need had made her take me in. But, God almighty, Id been so lucky to have landed at her house instead of at some proper French ladys.

Fascinating, mysterious undercurrents of intrigue, drama, and inside humor ran among Nicole, her two sisters, and the group of four or five young men in their twenties who dropped by almost every night for a drink and often stayed through a meager dinner that was rolled into the salon on a trolley and carefully served by the three younger girls and me. I was still unable to understand precisely why these eligible fellows came by so often, but Id learned to accept them with pleasure.

But then every hour in Paris was a major learning experience, I reflected joyously, leaning back against the partition behind me, slumping as comfortably as possible and swaying with the rhythm of the train. I was learning at Nicoles, learning at my relatively new job in public relations, learning even through the laughter I provoked and the criticism I received.

Only a few months earlier, in October, Id been thoroughly put in my place by Nicole and her sisters. I was just beginning to venture a few quavering, timid words of the language I was learning rapidly through total immersion, which was backed up by my three years of high-school French that consisted of barely remembered written drills in verbs and vocabulary.

After lunch, when Nicoles daughters had gone back to school, I was allowed to join her and her sisters, Francette and Anne, for a demitasse and a single, carefully chosen piece of the brown, roughly hewn lumps of sugar that were the only sweet thing ever offered in these postwar days of strict food rationing. I sat and listened to them chirp at each other, catching words here and there, and sometimes even the meaning of an entire sentence. It seemed to me that Francette, the youngest of the sisters, had said something highly disparaging about love, and in the silence that followed, Id forced myself to formulate a phrase and finally managed to say that