Brenda Janowitz: Jack With a Twist

My mother was so excited when we got an appointment with Monique deVouvray, wedding dress designer to the stars, that she bragged about it for three weeks at her weekly mah-jongg game, which was funny since she was mispronouncing Monique’s last name for the first two of them.

“My mother will kill us if we’re late for Monique,” Vanessa says, leading the charge out of the dressing room.

“Your mother knows Monique?” the salesperson asks, doing her best to furrow a Botoxed brow.

“Yes, she does,” Vanessa says, her right arm linked in my left as she guides me quickly to the elevator. “Thanks so much for everything. Bye!”

As we hit the button for the elevator, I can hear my mother whispering to the salesperson that Vanessa’s mom used to model with Monique. My mother dashes into the elevator just as the doors are about to close (I was willing to leave her up there, it was Vanessa who pushed the door-open button), and in moments, we are down at the car.

Vanessa’s dad lent us his car and driver for the day so that we could hop around town to our various appointments. The three of us pile into the backseat of Vanessa’s father’s huge Mercedes (affectionately dubbed the “Nazi-mobile” by my mother) and head uptown.

“We need to get you a bite to eat before stopping at Monique’s,” I say to my mother. “We don’t want you throwing up all over the couture.”

“There are a million little delis up Third Avenue,” Vanessa offers.

“Let’s go to Tasty D instead,” my mom slurs. “A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips!”

She’s been saying that my whole life.

“Tommy,” I say to the driver, “would you please pull over here?” I run out of the car and hop into Dunkin’ Donuts, returning with a massive cruller, a delicacy that I know my mother cannot refuse.

“Well,” my mother says, “I suppose I could have just one tiny bite.”

Vanessa rolls her eyes.

By the time we pull up to Monique’s exquisite Upper East Side brownstone, my mother has downed the cruller…and also a stale cup of coffee that Tommy still had up front since this morning.

The brownstone looks exactly like the type of place where Monique deVouvray and her glamorous French businessman husband, Jean Luc—a couple who’ve been fodder for the tabloids since before Lindsay and Britney were even born—would live. To call it a brownstone doesn’t even really do it justice. It’s a huge brick house right across the street from Central Park. The ground floor is divided by a gated portico, and if you peek in (never mind those pesky security cameras), you can see straight back to the lap pool. On the left side of the portico is a two-car garage and on the right is a white brick stairway leading to the front entranceway—a huge mahogany double door with a big brass knocker, monogrammed with Monique and Jean Luc’s initials. Basically, the entrance to their single-family home is nicer than the one in the more-than-we-can-really-afford co-op building where Jack and I live. Actually, the entrance is really nicer than ninety-eight percent of the buildings I’ve ever seen in New York City. And that’s including Gracie Mansion.

As we walk up, I can hear clicking over my shoulder. I turn around to see a photographer hiding behind a parked car across the street. Only his lens peeks out from the hood of the car. A tiny smile creeps onto my lips. Now that I’m going to the person who designs wedding dresses for movie stars, maybe I’ll start being mistaken for a movie star! Vanessa sees me sucking in my stomach for the camera and says: “No need to get ready for your close-up, Brooke, they’re not here for us. The paparazzi is always staking this place out, just waiting for something to happen.”

And it often does. In 1979, Mick Jagger took off all of his clothing in the middle of a cocktail party at Monique and Jean Luc’s brownstone and jumped right into the lap pool. This probably wouldn’t have made news but for the fact that as he jumped, he dragged Monique with him. Who was wearing a white dress with very little underneath. ( Playboy reportedly offered her one million dollars to pose nude after the “white dress” pictures became public, explaining to her that everyone’s already seen it all. Monique, to hear People magazine tell it, was unamused.) In 1985, Brat Packer Bobby Highe was caught in a compromising position in one of the guest bathrooms with Monique’s niece. Who was fourteen at the time. He somehow got out of the criminal charges, but later told Vanity Fair that it wasn’t fair—French women were so beguiling that he really had no choice. (Which, strangely, later became the advertising slogan for Monique’s signature perfume when it came out the following year.) In 1998, it was Monique’s husband who was front-page news—hosting a very bizarre “business” meeting in their kitchen with various condiments being used and passed around, but no actual food in sight. And on a summer evening back in 2003, you couldn’t get within a ten block radius of the entire Upper East Side since Monique and Jean Luc were hosting an engagement party for Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck. The New York Police Department had to block off the entire eastern side of Central Park since photographers and tourists all up and down Fifth Avenue blocked traffic by standing smack dab in the middle of the street.

But I assume that nothing like that will be happening today. Even so, it’s not a bad idea to suck in my gut.

“How do you know they’re not looking to take pictures of us?” I ask, turning my head slightly so that the pap can get my best angle—left side of my face.

“They’re not,” she says. I can feel her eyes burning into the side of my head.

“Yes, but how do you know? ” I say, careful not to move, so that I don’t mess up the shot.

“I just know,” Vanessa says, “okay?”

I begrudgingly nod back at her, but I can see her standing a little straighter, no doubt for the benefit of our invisible paparazzo friend.

On the first floor of Monique’s brownstone, we are greeted by a doorman, which is strange for a private single-family residence. Even in New York City, only large apartment buildings usually have doormen. But then Vanessa explains the set-up to me: Monique’s studio is on the second floor and she lives with her husband on the top three floors. (Vanessa doesn’t say a word about the lap pool, but I know what I saw.) I should mention here that it is absolutely impossible to get an appointment with Monique—she only designs for movie stars and diplomats and really, really, really rich people, so she doesn’t have an open showroom that you can just walk into off the street. (That and the fact that the Post ’s Column Five gossip mavens are always looking to catch her or her husband in the act of something.) We only got our appointment because of Vanessa’s mom, Millie—she and Monique lost touch for a while after modeling together in the sixties, but had recently become friendly again when Millie needed a dress for a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

“You must be Vanessa,” Monique says as we enter her studio, pulling Vanessa in for a hug. “You’re just as beautiful as your mother. She tells me that you are a big important lawyer?”

“Well, I don’t know how big and important I am,” Vanessa says, “but I am a lawyer. And so’s our bride. We actually used to work together at Gilson, Hecht before Brooke abandoned me.”

“You still have Jack working with you there,” I say, smiling at my self-indulgent mention of my fiancé’s name.

“Ah, Brooke, our bride,” Monique says.

She kisses me on both cheeks and I introduce Monique to my mother.