Bazaar,
the
New York Times,
and the
Herald Tribune
to tell them about it. When they dropped by Le Fourreur, he charmed them by serving tea in Haviland cups and by throwing in a black or silver fox stole with whatever garment they bought and paid for as a way of saying Thank you for your patronage. After a spectacular December 1952 season, the Whites were no longer comfortable. They were well-to-do.
Sylvia had charge accounts at Saks Fifth Avenue, Tailored Woman, and Henri Bendel. Leonard went from ready-made English suits off the rack at Moe Ginsburg’s to perusing a book of swatches in a suite in the Plaza that M. Thierry Boucault, the noted Parisian haberdasher, occupied on his semiannual trips to New York. They hired a live-in maid. They bought a suite ofsigned Picasso lithographs for the living room. They donated money to the United Way and the Boy Scouts. They bought a Christmas tree. (However, Leonard could not figure out how to get it to stand up on its own. He forbade Sylvia to ask the maid how to do it, so the tree lay dying on the living room floor until the second of January. They waited until the following year for their first real Christmas: Leonard spent a half hour on an early December Saturday at Colonial Nursery and Garden Supplies, pretending to survey their inventory of snow shovels but actually checking out their Christmas tree. Its secret was finally revealed: underneath a ladylike green velveteen skirt lay a clunky metal brace. To decorate their tree, Sylvia spent an entire day at Bergdorf Goodman—without even stopping for lunch—choosing ornaments: blown-glass orbs within orbs, a galaxy of silver stars.) And they sold their house two weeks before the raspberry bushes Sylvia had planted in the fertile soil of Great Neck bore their first fruit. Once again, the Whites moved eastward and upward.
Getting back to the X for a moment. Sylvia had some bad times right after her first child’s birth. There she was, drained, pulled at by episiotomy stitches and dragged down by the blues, and Leonard had sauntered into her hospital room with a huge bouquet of white roses and an I-don’t-care-that-it’s-not-a-boy grin, and she’d thought: Who is this man? Of course, she knew he was her husband, and the father of her baby, but he had looked so strange. Those big lips, the insides displaying themselves, pink and wet, like some insect-eating tropical flower. He’d come over and sat on the edge of the bed, taking her hand in his. She tried to gaze into his eyes, but those giant lips filled her range of vision and they moved, inexorably, toward her, puckering slightly for a kiss. She wanted to shriek the way that woman did in—what was that horror picture?—
I Walked with a Zombie.
Grotesque! Abominable! Please, please don’t get any closer! Don’t …
Well, he’d kissed her and she lived through it. In the next couple of years, however, those horrible moments recurred, and a couple of times the lips seemed to puff up right before her eyes. How could his customers think he was so attractive, the Christian ones with husbands whose lips were never any wider than zippers?
But things had gotten better. And better. They’d had a good anniversary the past June. Leonard had taken her to the best restaurant in the city, Le Pavilion, where he’d shaken the hand of the man in the front, except she realized he was giving a bribe or a tip or whatever. The man had glanced into his hand and gotten very charming and offered them a nice table. Leonard ordered champagne and then let the wine waiter pick out their wines, and by the end of the evening, Sylvia slipped her foot out of her black peau de soie Chanel sling-back and was using it to rub the inside of Leonard’s thigh. And that September, he told her to meet him in the store—salon—right after closing. He asked her to try on the Russian sable Mrs. General Motors had ordered. But then he said: “This is too good for Mrs. General Motors. Why don’t you keep
the
New York Times,
and the
Herald Tribune
to tell them about it. When they dropped by Le Fourreur, he charmed them by serving tea in Haviland cups and by throwing in a black or silver fox stole with whatever garment they bought and paid for as a way of saying Thank you for your patronage. After a spectacular December 1952 season, the Whites were no longer comfortable. They were well-to-do.
Sylvia had charge accounts at Saks Fifth Avenue, Tailored Woman, and Henri Bendel. Leonard went from ready-made English suits off the rack at Moe Ginsburg’s to perusing a book of swatches in a suite in the Plaza that M. Thierry Boucault, the noted Parisian haberdasher, occupied on his semiannual trips to New York. They hired a live-in maid. They bought a suite ofsigned Picasso lithographs for the living room. They donated money to the United Way and the Boy Scouts. They bought a Christmas tree. (However, Leonard could not figure out how to get it to stand up on its own. He forbade Sylvia to ask the maid how to do it, so the tree lay dying on the living room floor until the second of January. They waited until the following year for their first real Christmas: Leonard spent a half hour on an early December Saturday at Colonial Nursery and Garden Supplies, pretending to survey their inventory of snow shovels but actually checking out their Christmas tree. Its secret was finally revealed: underneath a ladylike green velveteen skirt lay a clunky metal brace. To decorate their tree, Sylvia spent an entire day at Bergdorf Goodman—without even stopping for lunch—choosing ornaments: blown-glass orbs within orbs, a galaxy of silver stars.) And they sold their house two weeks before the raspberry bushes Sylvia had planted in the fertile soil of Great Neck bore their first fruit. Once again, the Whites moved eastward and upward.
Getting back to the X for a moment. Sylvia had some bad times right after her first child’s birth. There she was, drained, pulled at by episiotomy stitches and dragged down by the blues, and Leonard had sauntered into her hospital room with a huge bouquet of white roses and an I-don’t-care-that-it’s-not-a-boy grin, and she’d thought: Who is this man? Of course, she knew he was her husband, and the father of her baby, but he had looked so strange. Those big lips, the insides displaying themselves, pink and wet, like some insect-eating tropical flower. He’d come over and sat on the edge of the bed, taking her hand in his. She tried to gaze into his eyes, but those giant lips filled her range of vision and they moved, inexorably, toward her, puckering slightly for a kiss. She wanted to shriek the way that woman did in—what was that horror picture?—
I Walked with a Zombie.
Grotesque! Abominable! Please, please don’t get any closer! Don’t …
Well, he’d kissed her and she lived through it. In the next couple of years, however, those horrible moments recurred, and a couple of times the lips seemed to puff up right before her eyes. How could his customers think he was so attractive, the Christian ones with husbands whose lips were never any wider than zippers?
But things had gotten better. And better. They’d had a good anniversary the past June. Leonard had taken her to the best restaurant in the city, Le Pavilion, where he’d shaken the hand of the man in the front, except she realized he was giving a bribe or a tip or whatever. The man had glanced into his hand and gotten very charming and offered them a nice table. Leonard ordered champagne and then let the wine waiter pick out their wines, and by the end of the evening, Sylvia slipped her foot out of her black peau de soie Chanel sling-back and was using it to rub the inside of Leonard’s thigh. And that September, he told her to meet him in the store—salon—right after closing. He asked her to try on the Russian sable Mrs. General Motors had ordered. But then he said: “This is too good for Mrs. General Motors. Why don’t you keep
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