Love In The Time of Intrusion

Fall 1939 in a small city in Northern France

 The dress shop, "Au bord de la rivière de roses," was like a murky carnival's electrical eel tank at feeding time. Rich middle-aged women slinked through cream-colored silk crepe slips and lace corsets, admiring lavender taffeta gowns for their teenage daughters while waiting with charged spit on their tongues to ambush each other with conversation.

      "What they do to captured soldiers is horrific," a pretty redhead in her mid-thirties said as she flipped through the fall house catalogs.

       "And what soldiers do THAT to grandmothers, 75 years old with gray hair and fat bellies. No one is safe," a petite woman with straight black hair and horn-rimmed glasses sprawled out in the red velvet chaise lounge, hand clasped to her leather Louis Vuitton bag.

      "They burn down orphanages while children sleep. In the morning, survivors kick around the ashes and all they find is baby teeth melted to the glass teddy bear eyes," a bright, cheery woman who loved a good one-upper declared, holding up a yellow dress that clashed with the pink and black damask velvet wallpaper that strangled the shop walls.

     "And what about work camps?" asked a white-haired woman who wore a mink stole with shiny black beads for eyes, comparable to the mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa, captivating one from across the room. Except there was no mystery; the mink pleaded to be thrown in the trash.

     "For Jews. Ukrainians. Lithuanians," graveled an obese woman with a swollen larynx, trying to alleviate some concern that these women could somehow end up in a camp farming potatoes with a Nazi luger to their spine.

     Annalissa Murphy was forced to listen through the thin crimson drape of the dressing room. She tried to take up as little space as she could in the tiny room she occupied with Mrs. Dumas. She hunched her shoulders and became a human clothing rack, dangling a pink cotton dress with little yellow coneflowers and a longer blue one with white daisies for Mrs. Dumas to choose. Mrs. Dumas had lost every conceivable thought of modesty in sixty years, swaying her droopy green and purple doodle-mapped breasts and cellulite belly back and forth.

   "The blue one," Mrs. Dumas greedily grabbed it from the hanger in Annalisa's hand.

    Annalisa focused on her scuffed-up nut-brown oxfords as Mrs. Dumas struggled to stretch the fabric over her fleshy hips.

    "You know what Georges said?" Mrs. Dumas turned around before Annalisa's fast fingers could finish the abalone shell buttons. "The reason the Nazis are super soldiers is that Hitler injects them with bull hormones. Strong. Relentless. And you know..." Mrs. Dumas cocked her face, contorting it to wrinkle her nose and widen her eyes at Annalisa. Annalisa stayed silent, trying to re-find the button pattern on the dress.

    "I'm scaring you. You are innocent. But you should know..."

     Annalisa said nothing. She wanted to keep this job. Mrs. Cloutierre, her mother's employer, a sophisticated woman who exuberantly accepted her husband's infidelities because it meant expensive Cartier atonements with prong and pave settings, had gone out of her way to put in a good word with Mrs. Sauveterre, the owner. Mrs. Cloutierre's persistence occurred when the last shop girl started showing from her liaison with a married pastry chef.

     By recommendation and serendipitous luck, she had got a coveted position as a shop girl at "Au bord de la rivière de roses," the most prestigious dress store in the city. The job required perfect manners, kept her on her feet for hours, demanded a broad knowledge of tulle, lace, linen, and required seasonal catalog memorization of Chanel, Schiaparelli, Patou, and Levin.

       Annalisa's impoverished upbringing hadn't put her at a fashion disadvantage. She didn't mispronounce the Italian or American designers' names like the mistresses of businessmen and politicians paying in cash. She had been around fashion since she was old enough to push a broom, helping her mother, Mona, clean and scrub the homes that lined the lake