Joan Juliet Buck - The Price of Illusion

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For Joyce and Jules

S hrieks of lightning hit the parking lot at Linate Airport, but the flight from Paris had been smooth. I sheltered flat against the plate-glass wall waiting for the car and wondered where this storm had come from. I told myself it wasnt personal.

The lightning and the rain created traffic jams through Milan that made me late to meet Jonathan Newhouse at Caff Cova, where Id been summoned for a talk before the first fashion show. When I arrived, I apologized for the weather.

He sat on a corner banquette beneath a display of porcelain, wearing new glasses that made him look like Rodchenko.

The teacups shone in the glass case behind him; the brass fittings on the mahogany glowed around us in the muted clatter of high heels and waiters shoes and teaspoons in china cups and distant bursts of steam nozzles foaming the cappuccinos in the front room. I could feel the tight armholes of my narrow tweed coat, the tug of the pink velvet seat against the crepe of my dress, my platform shoes tight over my toes. My laptop was at my feet in a Gucci case designed for me, next to my Prada bag. New look for the new season, every label in place.

I want you to take a sabbatical, starting today, he said.

On the first day of the European collections? I cant do that.

Two months, starting now, he said.

Sudden stillness. Ice water in my veins. Guillotine. Its over. What did I do?

Two thoughts collided and set off a high-pitched whine in my head. No more Vogue . Back to writing. Ive been on show watching a show for almost seven years, and its always the same show. I have nothing to write about.

Thats the end of the salary, the end of the job, why did I think salary before I thought job? How can I take care of Jules now? Hes eaten everything I earn. His apartment, Aneeta who looks after him, Johanna who relieves Aneeta, the studio for Johanna above his apartment, the taxi service, his doctors and his dentists, his meals, his clothes, his everything.

This is between us, dont talk to anyone, said Jonathan. He pushed a piece of paper at me with one word on it, the name of the place where he wanted me to go. Its just two months, then youll come back. Im doing this because Im your friend.

Either youre my friend, or youre setting me up, I said. I choose to believe you are my friend.

And having demonstrated to myself how gallant I could be, I decided to proceed to the next item on the typed list my assistant had pasted in my datebook. Im late for Prada, I said, and before he could stop me I rose and carried my two bags through the steam and crowd of the front room, out into the rain to the waiting car, and on to the Prada show, where I stared at the shoes on the feet of the editors across the runway, and then at the shoes on the feet of the models on the runway, until it hit me that my opinion of the shoes, the dresses, the models, the hair, had entirely ceased to matter. When the show was over, the front-row editors headed backstage to congratulate Miuccia Prada, and I walked very slowly the other way, out onto the street.

Back in my hotel room, I stared at the bed, uncertain what to do next. Beautifully wrapped packages from fashion houses were piled everywhere. I knew the same gifts were in the rooms of every editor in chief in every hotel in Milan: small leather goods with logos, the new handbag, the new fragrance, the new scarf and tassel. Garment bags lay across the sofa, heavy with the fall clothes Id ordered from Missoni and Jil Sander six months earlier. Clothes for a life I no longer had. Hed said I would come back, but I knew that wasnt true.

I looked at the name of the place where I was supposed to go. It didnt occur to me to call my lawyer.

No talking to the press, no talking to anyone, no noise, no movement. He wanted me off the planet, invisible. I couldnt stay at home; my apartment in Paris was in the center of a knot of fashion streets patrolled by attachs de presse and luxury-goods executives. Id always thought that in a crisis Id retreat to a friends ranch in central California, but we were in one of our periodic frosts and hadnt spoken for over a year. There were others in America whod welcome me; I could hide in their big houses by the sea as fall became winter, but there would be weekends and weekend guests and gossip, and I had been ordered to vanish.

My entire life had been one easy exile after another, but Id lived in too many places to belong anywhere. I had nowhere to go. I looked again at the slip of paper Jonathan had given me. Cottonwood.

F or expatriates there is no firm ground. Wed arrived in Paris from Los Angeles in May; by Christmas we were in a grand hotel in Hamburg across from a white lake full of seagulls. A Santa Claus stocking with a big red 1951 on it went up on the mantelpiece. I was four, too young to know that we were at the end of 1952. My two dolls and my hand puppet disappeared the day the stocking went up. I wondered if theyd been stolen by the waiter who brought up my dinner, or had decided they didnt like me and made a break for it. On Christmas day I tore open silver-glitter packages with red ribbons to find, nestled in layers of tissue paper, my own two dolls and my hand puppet. My friendsloyal in the end, and a promise that whatever was lost would always return.

Train stations, waiting rooms and foggy buffets, and then sunshine.

The villa above Cannes was called Coup de Vent, gust of wind. It had a Lucite grand piano in the salon, and flypapers in the kitchen. The view was splendid, the Mediterranean framed by fat fig trees on the dining terrace. When the aircraft carrier Coral Sea pulled into Cannes, my parents and grandparents were invited on board and photographed, composed and glowing, surrounded by dials and valves, the captain in his white uniform clearly smitten with my mother, whose Balenciaga stole set off the extreme dcollet of her gala dress.

My father was Jules. My mother was Joyce. Her parents were Morey and Esta, known to me as Poppy and Nana. They were short, but grand. Morey was dapper in his silver ties, pearl tiepin, ostrich gloves, and, until he realized that they dated him, white spats buttoned over his shoes. When he wasnt at the casino or the racetrack, he did deals; some worked out, some didnt. He moved stuff around. When the stuff was frozen, like postwar German marks, he moved himself around.

Esta wore dresses as stiff as boxes, diamond pins along the upper slope of her bosom. She bandaged the tops of her feet every day to hide a condition that split and mottled the skin. The star sapphire on her finger was turning milky from soapy water, but the sapphires on her bracelets stayed a fine dark blue. She hid her jewels at night, mostly from Moreys gambling emergencies, and mainly in shoe bags. Esta rolled her eyes when my father spoke, and when he drove us along the Grande Corniche in the convertible, she whimpered from the backseat and shrieked at each glimpse of the precipice below.

Morey sent Jules on trips around the Continent to chase schemes that never fully worked out, though they produced enough money to pay the rents on the big houses, to pay the staff, to buy the cars. So did the gambling at Longchamp, the Paris racetrack, and at the Cannes casinos. They went to the casino every night to play with money, first to the winter casino by Golfe-Juan, later to the summer casino down by the port. My mother played Poppys numbers at roulette, Finale 88, 18, 28. They went to galas that ended with fireworks. Some nights I was woken by lightning, some nights by fireworks.