Zoya

“It seems like a waste of time sometimes,” Nicholas confessed, but he knew that his mother expected him to go to Princeton. And it wasn't too far from home, he was planning to come into the city whenever possible. He had a busy social life, but he also managed to do well in school, unlike his sister. She was a beauty at thirteen, and she looked easily five years older than she was as she slinked around the room, in the dresses Zoya still bought her.

“That's too babyish!” she complained, eyeing the evening gowns at the store. She could hardly wait until she was old enough to wear them.

And when Simon offered to take her to the new Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, she was highly insulted.

“I'm not a baby anymore!”

“Then don't act like one,” Nicholas taunted. But she wanted to dance the samba and the conga instead, as Simon and Zoya did when they went to El Morocco. Nicholas wanted to go with them too, but Zoya insisted that he was too young. Instead, Simon took them all to “21,” and they talked seriously about what was happening to the Jews in Europe. Simon was deeply worried about what Hitler was doing by the end of 1938 and he felt certain there was going to be a war. But no one else in New York seemed to be worried about it. They were going to parties and receptions and balls, and the dresses were flying out of Zoya's store. She was even thinking of opening another floor, but it seemed too soon. She was afraid business might slack off, but Simon only laughed at her worries.

“Face it, darling, you're a success! Business is never going to slack off. Once you've made it, as you have, that doesn't go away. You're backing up your name with quality and style. And as long as you have it to sell, your customers will be there.” She was afraid to admit he was right, and she worked harder than ever, so much so that they had to call her at the store, when Sasha got suspended from school again, just before the Christmas vacation. They had gotten her into the Lycoe Frangais, a tiny school run by a distinguished Frenchman, but he tolerated no nonsense there, and he called Zoya himself to complain about Mademoiselle. She took a taxi to Ninety-fifth Street to beg him not to expel the child. Apparently, she had been playing hooky, and she had smoked a cigarette in the town house's lovely ballroom.

“You must punish her, madame. And you must adhere to strict discipline, otherwise, madame, I fear we will all regret it some day.” But after a lengthy conversation with Zoya, he agreed not to expel her. Instead she would be put on probation after the Christmas holiday. And Simon promised to drive her to school himself to make sure that she got there.

“Do you think I should leave the store every day when she gets home from school?” Zoya asked Simon that night. She was feeling guiltier than ever about the long hours she worked at the store.

“I don't think you should have to,” Simon said honestly, angry at Sasha himself for the first time. “At almost fourteen, she should be able to behave herself until six o'clock when we both get home.” Although he knew that sometimes Zoya didn't get home until after seven. There was always so much to do at the store, so many alterations she wanted to oversee herself, and special orders she wrote up herself so there would be no mistakes. And part of the success was her availability for clients who demanded Countess Zoya. “You can't do it all yourself,” Simon had told her more than once, but she secretly thought she should, just as she thought she should also be at home with the children. But Nicholas was almost eighteen by then, and Sasha only four years younger, they were hardly children anymore. “She's just going to have to behave herself.” And when he told her as much that night, she flounced out of the library and slammed her bedroom door, as Zoya cried.

“Sometimes I think she's paying the price of the life I led before,” she blew her nose in Simon's handkerchief and looked up at him with unhappy eyes. Sasha was worrying Zoya terribly these days, and Simon was angry at her for it. “I was always at work when she was young, and now … it almost seems like it's too late to make it up to her.”