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.

“Enchanté,” my mother says and curtsies. Maybe we should have stopped off at McDonald’s—the woman is clearly still drunk. I look over to Vanessa for some assistance with my mother, but she has meandered over to look at a framed copy of an old Vogue cover with both Monique and her mother on it. The contrast between Millie’s dark skin and Monique’s pale complexion is striking, and I watch Vanessa examine every square inch of the photograph. Millie, who I see frequently at her downtown art gallery, is every bit as gorgeous today as she was then, if not more so.

So is Monique. Who is now seated on a love seat with my mother. Who is drinking yet another glass of champagne.

“A celebration, no?” Monique says in her thick French accent, handing me my own glass. She wears black cigarette pants and a pristine white button-down shirt with its sleeves rolled up. On her feet, she wears simple black Chanel ballet slippers. Vanessa is wearing the same pair today in tan. Monique’s hair is pulled into a tight bun, pinned back in exactly the same way that Vanessa’s mom wears hers.

“Absolutely,” I say, taking the glass, and trying to push my mother’s drink as far away from her as possible without actually tipping it over the edge of the coffee table.

“So, Brooke,” Monique says, “Tell me a little bit about yourself. I want to know everything. Tell me about what you like, what you don’t like. Everything.”

“She wants something with sleeves,” my mother says, reaching across the bowl of candy that Monique has placed on the table, in a play for her champagne glass. Hasn’t that woman learned her lesson?

“Mom,” I say, trying to appear happy to be here with my skinny lush of a mother.

Monique intervenes: “Let us do this,” she says, “Mother, you will look at mother-of-the-bride dresses while I go with daughter to look at some dresses for her. Yes?”

“Well, I don’t want to steal my baby’s thunder,” my mother says as Monique guides her to a rack of beautiful dresses. Monique only does couture, so every dress is put together entirely by hand, with extensive beadwork and exquisite seams and workmanship. She has a few samples on hand for my mother to study and, like a baby with something shiny in her hands, my mother is mesmerized. We leave her at the rack.

Monique and I walk over to another area of the showroom where she has a number of muslin garments in different styles.

“First,” she says, “we put you in just a few things to see what styles you like best. What works best. Yes?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Is there a style that you know you want for sure?”

“I’m pretty open.”

“Very good,” Monique says, “Then we try. Off you go.”

I go into the dressing room with Vanessa and she zips me into the first dress, an A-line with a sweetheart neckline.

“So, are you okay with all this today?” I ask Vanessa.

“Of course,” she says, smiling as she smooths out the dress for me, “I’m having a blast. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because,” I say, looking at myself in the mirror. “Well, you know. I just don’t want today to bring up any bad memories for you or anything.”

“I’m okay,” Vanessa says, still smiling, “I’m just happy for you.” I turn to face her and I notice that she’s still wearing her wedding ring. I wonder if she was wearing it all day and I just didn’t notice it, or if she put it on in the car so that she won’t have to face any questions about her impending divorce from an acquaintance of her mother.

“So, what do you think?” I ask, as Monique comes into the fitting room.

“Beautiful,” she says as she picks up an enormous sketchpad and starts to draw. “How do you feel?”

“Pretty good,” I say.

“This next,” she says, gesturing with her pencil. Next up: a spaghetti-strap bodice with a huge ball gown skirt.

We go in to dress, and I turn to face Vanessa as she zips me up. “Do you want to talk about it at all?”