The Beautiful American by Jeanne Mackin Read Free Book Online Page A

said, “and how to discuss art in various languages, and how to seat people at table—you know, where the countess goes and how to address a bishop. Probably a bit of flower arranging thrown in. Nice is famous for its flower market in the Cours Saleya,” I said, quoting the encyclopedia. “And the Promenade des Anglais, a four-mile boardwalk along the ocean.”
    “I hear she’s fast,” Jamie said. “She’ll be teaching those French boys a thing or two. Maybe she’ll dance the hootchy-kootchy for them.”
    I slugged his shoulder. Hard. “Shouldn’t talk about a girl like that.” I had never told Jamie that Elizabeth and I had once been friends. Never told him about that day on her porch, the white dress, the smell of medicines, the gossip about the rape. There was always plenty of talk about Elizabeth in Poughkeepsie, but no one ever talked about that and I had come to realize almost nobody knew. It was better that way, and I wasn’t about to break the silence. Not even a rich girl would survive such gossip, small-town pity and judgment.
    “That hurt! Penalty. Now you have to kiss me.” Jamie sat up.
    That wasn’t a penalty, of course, and it was a game I was willing to play.
    Elizabeth never made it to finishing school in Nice. As soon as she arrived in Paris, she fired her chaperone, cashed in her train ticket to Nice, and wired home to her father that she intended to stay in Paris and study art. So much for fish forks and bishops.
    •   •   •
    S even months after Elizabeth’s departure, Mr. Brennan, the butcher who filled Mrs. Miller’s kitchen orders for lamb chops and roasts, told me Elizabeth was back home. Her mother had fetched her, kicking and screaming was his understanding, back from Paris. Speculation on what exactly Elizabeth had done to end her studies abroad ranged from smoking opium to a stint as a white sex slave.
    “Emancipated,” my mother muttered. “She probably had sexual intercourse with half of Paris.”
    “Sounds like fun,” I said, and Momma slapped me.
    •   •   •
    E lizabeth, dragged back home, didn’t stay put for long. She toyed in theater studies at Vassar College, got bored, and went to live in Greenwich Village before I even had a chance to bump into her again at the bookstore. We heard she was dancing in a chorus until illness drove her home to P’oke. For several years local gossip trailed her as she went back and forth, New York to P’oke, P’oke to New York, her moodiness and fragile health making it impossible for her to stay long in one place, stick with one idea.
    Her face was already appearing in magazines, though. She had begun a modeling career. Girls like Elizabeth Miller didn’t settle down like the rest of us were expected to do. They made names for themselves. They thumbed their noses at that convention called reputation.
    Elizabeth Miller took classes at the Art Students League in New York; she modeled lingerie at Stewart’s department store. One day, as she was crossing Fifth Avenue, she stepped into the path of an oncoming car and was rescued by a stranger who pulled her back onto the sidewalk.
    The stranger was Condé Nast himself. Yes, that one, the head of the huge publishing empire. Mr. Nast took in Elizabeth’s slender height, her long neck and blue eyes, the dress she had purchased in Paris the year before, and within months she was a Vogue cover girl, beginning the climb to fame. This was the legend of Lee Miller. How much was truth, how much rumor or invention, I’d never know.
    The larger question: do they matter, simple facts? America was in love with celebrities, the photographers and flappers with their short bobs and sexual daring. The world was already in love with Lee and all she represented: the new woman, brave and bold, matching men in sexual freedom, and carrying secrets. They were like their own photographs, full of dark and light, heavy with shadows.

CHAPTER FOUR
    “S tand still,” Jamie shouted.