Until the End of Time Read Free

miscarried several times, and they couldn’t have afforded another child anyway. She missed France and longed to see her parents, but they had no money for her to go home. It was a miserable life, and the only thing that brightened it for her was her love for Jack, his tenderness with her, and the joy they derived from Jenny. Jenny remembered her father as a big man who played with her and carried her on his shoulders and told her bedtime stories. She looked a great deal like him, judging from photographs when he was young. Her mother was small and fair and looked very French.
    They had been in Pittston for three years after the war, when there was an explosion in the anthracite coal mine where he was working, and Jack was one of five men killed that day. He had been greatly respected and well liked, and the head of the mining company came to tell Helene. They gave her a small settlement, but it was enough to make a difference to her, along with a surprisinglydecent life insurance policy Jack had taken out for her in case something happened to him. It was more than most of the men had to leave their wives. The two amounts together allowed Helene to move to Philadelphia with Jenny.
    Helene’s father had died two months earlier in Paris, shortly before Jack, and her mother was sad, living alone. She tried to get Helene to return to Paris, but jobs were scarce after the war, and she had been in the States for nine years by then, and didn’t want to go back, and convinced her mother to join them in Philadelphia. Jenny was only five years old then, but she remembered moving from Pittston with her mother, and her grandmother arriving in the States to live with them.
    The two women started a seamstress shop in Philadelphia after Thérèse, Helene’s mother, arrived from Paris. Jenny had called her “Mamie,” in the French tradition, and learned to speak French from her. The shop did well, and once one of the Main Line socialites discovered them, they became all the society ladies’ “best little secret,” copying Paris gowns for them. Thérèse’s skill was remarkable, and Helene did the simpler work, lacking her mother’s training. They made some beautiful dresses and earned a good income, which eventually sent Jenny to Parsons, where her own career began.
    Jenny’s first internship one summer, while still at school, was working for Oleg Cassini, during the time when he was making dresses for Jackie Kennedy when she was First Lady, and Jenny saw her there a few times, selecting designs for important occasions. Her mother and grandmother had been excited to hear of it, and proud when Jenny graduated, and landed the job at Vogue .
    The two women were always excited to hear about what Jennywas doing. They subscribed to Women’s Wear Daily just so they could read about her. Their little couture shop and the money Jenny’s father had left them had served them well. Bill had been incredibly impressed by Jenny when he met her, and even more so when he learned her history and met her mother and grandmother. He thought they were three remarkable women, and his wife most of all. The five years of their marriage had flown by, and he loved her more than ever. His life had been improved by her immeasurably, and Jenny insisted that hers had been too. He was supportive of everything she did. She was still at Vogue when he saw her first, on a snowy day in New York, when she was running a shoot outside the Plaza, and in spite of the weather, he had stopped to watch.
    Jenny had been running around the models like a shepherd dog, herding them back to their places, as the snow fell. She was wearing a huge fur hat herself, which she later told him was a policeman’s hat she had bought on the black market in Moscow, while on another shoot. And she was wearing jeans, boots, and a big down man’s coat. Everyone on the set looked frozen, and Jenny was moving too fast to care, as she watched the photographer and models, and made constant