Chapter 7 Mourning Dove
Seven
Mourning Dove
Zenaida macroura. Sometimes known as the turtledove, this attractive gray bird, which reminds some observers of a woman in Quaker garb, is one
of the most abundant and widespread North American birds. Doves are often hunted, with more than twenty million birds shot
annually in the US, both for sport and meat. Some think the bird’s distinctive low call sounds like a lament. In the Bible,
John the Baptist referenced a dove to signify innocence. In the second century AD the Roman writer Juvenal said, “Censure
acquits the raven, but pursues the dove.”
Now began the hardest time of my life to that point.
What do police say, the training takes over? I would dress and work and eat and drive and make coffee and brush my teeth and
remove my mascara at night because I knew how to do those things. I was used to being alone.
I went to the Kate Spade event alone.
Alone, I walked through a field of flower beds fashioned into an elaborate carpet (there was no way to not walk on the flowers,
which made me nervous) toward a series of gilded tents set up just outside the ballroom at one of those cornfield castles
on the Wisconsin border, purpose-built in the twenty-first century to look like an eighteenth-century English great house.
Kate Spade was my favorite designer. I often thought about her bright and bold and ultimately heartbreaking life, of her death by suicide and her final note reassuring her adored young daughter that Daddy would explain everything.
I wished I could have been there to tell her, hold on, tomorrow could be better, tomorrow could be worse, you can always decide that another day will be your last day.
Depression was something I had never experienced. That day, I understood that I was only sad. People had died of a broken
heart, but I would not; I was not that finely strung. In time, I might even be happy, albeit without the astonished completedness
I had briefly known.
There was a row of huge easel-backed photos of Kate Spade: flanked by a display of purses, with her arms out to embrace the
doorway of one of her retail stores, a close-up of her with her sweet, iconic sixties-style French twist hairdo, her smile
both mischievous and demure. Behind the easels were boho flourishes, including a pickup truck overflowing with artfully disarrayed
baskets of roses and lavender, each bushel basket adorned with a huge patent leather bow. Risers draped with bolts of pink
satin were decked with bags and wallets and totes and shoes in characteristic bright primary colors, decorated with pink carousel
horses, teddy bears, cartoon pineapples with faces, hearts, and windmills.
I wandered about, desultorily talking to fans and shoppers, writing down a few of the things they said, spending a few extra moments with a woman who described the worth of collecting accessories, smiling because I knew how to do that.
An extravagant array of gustatory delights sat there for the taking, mimosas at ten in the morning, tiny baked brioche egg cups, strawberry flan cake.
Waiters offered trays of crab puffs. I bit into a baked brioche, swallowing the single bite with difficulty, dropping the rest into a wastebasket.
I drank three mimosas in rapid succession, and the swirl of bright colors around me began to pulse and emit a kind of noise like the far-off siren of an approaching police car.
“I’m eating too much,” said Stevie Lan, a casual friend who freelanced for Vogue. Carrying a clear plastic sack with five graft purses, he sat down beside me and kissed my cheek. “What’s the big word, Reeno?
What’s the big story?”
Normally I would have teased him and demanded that he give me one of the purses as a present for my mom, who had the best
collection of purses in Wisconsin. Puzzled by my silence, he handed me one anyhow. I drained another mimosa in two swallows,
then examined the bag for country-of-manufacture tags and a collection label. It was a copy, but an excellent copy; the manufacturer
had misspelled the Maira Kalman collection designation, replacing one of the a’s in the first name with an o. I tried to laugh, but that proved too big a task. “This is a fake. Fathead fraudsters, learn to spell already,” I said,
showing Stevie the error. “All the great criminals have moved out of town.” He said he would keep it anyhow, for his teenage
niece, and gave me a white Kate Spade clutch shaped like a seashell.
“So, Reenie, you look a little pale. Maybe pale green.”
“I’m temporarily out of pocketbook, Stevie. I won’t be back in Handbaghdad for a few months. The gossip is that I’m writing
a story about my best friend from home, who is going on trial for murder.”
Stevie had the grace to say nothing at all for a full minute. A full minute is a long time, as I have observed. Then he asked,
“Was it her husband? Did he beat her up?”
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “She was an escort. They were clients of hers.”
“They?” Stevie said. “More than one person?”
“Two,” I told him. “Well, really more than two.”
He added, then, slower, as if finally hearing what I had said, “Your best friend from back home was an escort?”
“I didn’t know she was. We didn’t see each other after high school,” I told him. “Just holidays. And once in a while in summer.”
On Stevie’s face I saw what I was destined to see on the faces of all my party friends—a look that suggested that somehow
I was complicit, as it always seems when a reporter befriends a criminal. It occurred to me then that maybe I deserved that.
Wasn’t my disclaimer of Felicity a kind of betrayal, making her sound like barely an acquaintance? Bye-bye, lovely world!
All my new friends were going to be strangers.
Stevie and I watched the crowd stroll past, so-called street photographers snapping photos of well-heeled shoppers and sellers
and fashion reporters, slim as pleats and always cold, who wore bright oversize blazers and wispy cashmere ponchos and took
only one nibble of a tiny brioche before lighting up a cigarette. I’d watched models eat one bite of rare steak and a gigantic
bowl of greens and onions with a squeeze of lemon. That was what you did to make a hundred dollars an hour, less, I thought
then, than what Felicity earned.
I didn’t want anyone taking a picture of me, in jeans and one of Sam’s white dress shirts I had stolen, my hair scraped up
into an actually instead of artfully messy ponytail. The last thing I wanted was for Ivy to see me this way, representing
Fuchsia looking like a college student late for an eight-o’clock class.
I would have to have the shirt cleaned and give it back to Sam. I told myself that I hadn’t really meant to steal it.
“Let’s take a walk,” I said to Stevie. “I think I’ve had too much champers and sun.”
We walked over the flower carpet to a little bridge that crossed a stream, where there were some trees. My dad said really
rich clients who built their mansions on former farm fields had full-grown trees installed, for why should they have to wait
for nature?
Just after we sat down in the shade, I leaned over and kissed Stevie on the mouth, not a peck but a hungry kiss to which he responded, pulling me against him and lying back so I lay on top.
I opened a button on my shirt, then all of them, so he could reach inside, holding the back of his head as his mouth touched my hot skin.
Then I screamed when, from somewhere, a hard jet of cold water drenched me.
Both of us scrambled to a sitting position.
“What are you doing on my land?” said the beefy blond guy pointing the hose at us.
“We . . . we’re at the event,” Stevie said.
“This isn’t part of the event. Get out of here,” the guy snarled. He directed a jet of water at me, soaking my shoes.
Stevie gave me his hand and pulled me up and we ran for the parking lot, with him still dragging his bag of purses. We were
laughing at first but then the stupidness of the whole thing got to me.
“Stevie, I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Reenie, no reason! That guy was a complete asshole.” He added, “I’ve always wanted to kiss you.”
“I’m so sorry I made a pass at you. Really sorry.”
My stomach lurched then and I ran for the nearest trash barrel, throwing up all those mimosas and minibrioche. Stevie quickly
got a bottle of water from his car.
“Not wanting to kiss you as much right now!” he said. We did honestly laugh then, as I used the water and a roll of paper
towels to wash my face and hands. Stevie said, “I get the feeling something’s wrong, Reeno.”
“I met a guy and fell in love. It was this whirlwind, not even a week. He broke up with me yesterday. And it’s all my fault.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. I’ll live. Not enthusiastic about that right now but give me time. I have to go and write this story now.”
“Call me, Reeno. Maybe you’ll want to kiss me when you’re sober.”
I said, “Stranger things. Thanks, Stevie. Thanks for being there.”
I wrote:
The vibe at a Kate Spade “swap meet” north of Chicago, where collectors of the late, legendary designer’s pop styles met to
sip breakfast champagne, munch on baby brioche, and to buy, sell, and admire vintage pieces, was bright, antic, and a little
wacky. It seemed to reflect the public persona of Katherine Noel Brosnahan Spade herself, a Kansas City girl who came to the
big city for the bright lights, but who, at last, couldn’t evade the shadows, and who died by suicide in 2018 at just fifty-five
years of age. Those close to her said she struggled all her life against depression. After her death, the profile and prices
of her whimsical purses, shoes, handbags, and clothing soared. Those who loved Spade’s work can be forgiven for their desire,
certainly meant as admiration for most, but for others as investment.
Kitsy Murray, a veteran collector, said there was an inherent dilemma in “collecting” a functional object. “Do you use a vintage