No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [89]
In the evening, friends often called to find her serving only white wine, her response to her husband’s efforts to limit her drinking: “Naturally, everyone had to eat and drink the same things,” her sister-in-law recalled. Meals consisted of the same dish for weeks at a time, such as chicken with sauce suprême (mushrooms, shallots, white wine, and cream). If a melody came to the star, she ran from the table to the Ondoline or summoned Chauvigny for his opinion—even at 3 a.m. Simone observed, “No one dared to tell her no.”
Rehearsals started at midnight. Her entourage watched while Piaf worked with Chauvigny, who doubled as her pianist, on the fine points of performance—timbre, articulation, gestures—and gave notes for the accompaniment or made changes in the lyrics. After a restorative meal at 3 a.m., Edith entertained the group with the tunes of her youth, American melodies (often those interpreted by Lena Horne or Billie Holiday), and, to their surprise, Fauré songs, all in her private repertoire. Rehearsals ended at dawn, when the singer went to bed.
Piaf earned large sums of money in these years, but most of it went “into the stomachs and pockets of her friends,” her sister-in-law recalled. “Anyone could help himself from the refrigerator at any time, but it was the army of so-called friends who borrowed from her without paying her back that ruined her.” Piaf also paid the salaries of the Bonels, Chauvigny, several musicians, and the domestic staff, which consisted of her cook, Chang; two or three maids; and other personnel. (Chang went home with the champagne and other luxury goods after his employer’s parties.) When Barrier noticed her picking up the restaurant tab for twenty people, some of them unknown to her until that night, Piaf protested, “It’s my money.” She had long seen to the needs of old friends like Camille Ribon, but many acquaintances now took advantage of both her generosity and her drinking.
Taking herself in hand, Piaf underwent a series of “cures” at a clinic specializing in aversion therapy. The night before the cure began, she downed bottles of wine like a child defying the grown-ups. The next day, the clinic staff had her drink whatever she liked and, a few hours later, administered drugs to induce vomiting, a treatment that made her detest alcohol but required weeks of recuperation. “We took her there three times,” Simone wrote. “She struggled and finally overcame this temptation”—in Edith’s view, with divine help.
God was a presence in her daily life, her sister-in-law observed. But though she “brought God into everything, Cerdan had become an obsession.” The household accompanied her to masses held in his memory at the Auteuil Church. Edith gave Marinette and her sons expensive gifts and had them stay for months at a time in her apartment. Simone had little to say about her brother’s adjustment to Edith’s obsessions. For the most part, he humored her. “I was happy with Jacques,” Piaf recalled. “He’d understood that I couldn’t bear to be caged, that as soon as I felt shut in I would smash everything and run away; he didn’t try to keep me from living and thinking.… I often made him unhappy without meaning to. But he was as solid as a rock.” Pills’s equanimity served him well as Piaf’s consort. The day after their wedding, he watched from the Toast of