Page 50 of Still Me
“I used to have one like that from Biba.”
“ItisBiba!” I said delightedly. “I got it from an online auction two years ago. Four pounds fifty! Only one tiny hole in the waistband.”
“I have that exact skirt. I used to travel a lot in the sixties. Whenever I went to London I would spend hours in that store. I used to ship whole trunks of Biba dresses home to Manhattan. We had nothing like it here.”
“Sounds like heaven. I’ve seen pictures,” I said. “What an amazing thing to have been able to do. What did you do? I mean, why did you travel so much?”
“I worked in fashion. For a women’s magazine. It was—” She lurched forward, ambushed by a fit of coughing, and I waited while she recovered her breath. “Well. Anyway. You look quite reasonable,” she said, putting her hand up against the wall. Then she turned and hobbled away up the street, Dean Martin casting baleful glances simultaneously at me and the curb behind him.
—
The rest of the week was, as Michael would say,interesting. Tabitha’s apartment in SoHo was being redecorated and our apartment, for a week or so, became the battle ground for a series of turf wars apparently invisible to the male gaze, but only too obvious to Agnes, whom I could hear hissing at Mr. Gopnik when she thought Tabitha was out of range.
Ilaria relished her role as foot-soldier. She made a point of serving Tabitha’s favorite dishes—spicy curries and red meat—none of which Agnes would eat, and professed herself ignorant of that when Agnescomplained. She made sure Tabitha’s laundry was done first, and left folded neatly on her bed, while Agnes raced through the apartment in a toweling robe trying to work out what had happened to the blouse she had planned to wear that day.
In the evenings Tabitha would plant herself in the sitting room while Agnes was on the phone to her mother in Poland. She would hum noisily, scrolling through her iPad, until Agnes, silently enraged, would get up and decamp to her dressing room. Occasionally Tabitha invited girlfriends to the apartment and they took over the kitchen or the television room, a gaggle of noisy voices, gossiping, giggling, a ring of blond heads that fell silent if Agnes happened to walk past.
“It’s her house too, my darling,” Mr. Gopnik would say mildly, when Agnes protested. “She did grow up here.”
“She treats me like I am temporary fixture.”
“She’ll get used to you in time. She’s still a child in many ways.”
“She’stwenty-four.” Agnes would make a low growling noise, a sound I was quite sure no Englishwomen had ever mastered (I did try a few times) and throw up her hands in exasperation. Michael would walk past me, his face frozen, his eyes sliding toward mine in mute solidarity.
—
Agnes asked me to send a parcel to Poland via FedEx. She wanted me to pay cash, and keep hold of the receipt. The box was large, square and not particularly heavy, and we had the conversation in her study, which she had taken to locking, to Ilaria’s disgust.
“What is it?”
“Just present for my mother.” She waved a hand. “But Leonard thinks I spend too much on my family so I don’t want him to know everything that I send.”
I humped it down to the FedEx office at West Fifty-seventh Street and waited in line. When I filled out the form with the assistant, he asked: “What are the contents? For Customs purposes?” and I realized I didn’t know. I texted Agnes and she responded swiftly:
—Just say is gifts for family.
“But what kind of gifts, ma’am?” said the man, wearily.
I texted again. There was an audible sigh from someone in the queue behind me.
—Tchotchkes.
I stared at the message. Then I held out my phone. “Sorry. I can’t pronounce that.”
He peered at it. “Yeah, lady. That’s not really helping me.”
I texted Agnes.
—Tell him mind his own business! What business of him what I want to send my mother!
I shoved my phone into my pocket. “She says it’s cosmetics, a jumper, and a couple of DVDs.”
“Value?”
“A hundred and eighty-five dollars and fifty-two cents.”
“Finally,” muttered the FedEx employee. And I handed over the cash and hoped nobody could see the crossed fingers on my other hand.
