Secrets of Paris, page 28
But is it not cruel and barbaric to regard the death of a person one dearly loves as the starting signal for a voyage one passionately desires to make?
—TO FRANÇOISE-MARGUERITE, GOOD FRIDAY, 1672
IT WAS NEARLY dawn before Michael and Lydie reached Paris. With Michael driving, Lydie slept. She, who could never sleep in a moving vehicle, slept through that entire trip, the dreamless sleep of someone at peace. Only the sound of lorries, rumbling down the slow lane from the Rungis market, wakened her. A golden, cloudless sunrise shimmered over the city.
“Good morning,” Michael said, glancing over as she stretched.
“We’re already here?” she asked, smiling. “Are you exhausted?”
“I’m not tired at all,” he said. Instead of driving into Paris through the Port d’Italie, Michael continued along the Périphérique.
“Where are we going?” she asked, as they left the Eiffel Tower behind.
“Let’s not go home,” he said. “Let’s keep driving.”
“To where?” Lydie asked.
“Normandy.”
He replied so fast, Lydie wondered whether he had been there with Anne, found the perfect romantic hideaway. Was that where he had gotten tan? But, after last night, what would it matter? Her skin tingled with the memory of what she had viewed down the gun barrel. “Why Normandy?” she asked.
“Because we can drive there and back in one day. Because it’s on the sea, and you love the sea.”
“Oh,” she said, still half-asleep, not quite ready to fully waken. She longed to dream, as if further answers could be found deep in her unconscious. While she dozed again, Michael stopped at a boulangerie and brought croissants and café au lait out to the car.
They drove north in silence. At one point, Michael reached across the seat, covered Lydie’s hand with his. The sun rode low in the sky. Every field seemed full of cows. The flatlands around Paris gave way to rolling hills crowned with poplars. Every so often they drove through tiny towns, blinks of civilization that resembled each other: church, butcher, baker, café-tabac. On the open road old men rode bicycles. Workers hoed fields. Laundry flapped on clotheslines outside farmhouses. In every town, stout women and small children walked home with baguettes.
“The ball was beautiful,” Michael said after a few miles. “You did a great job.”
“I think Didier was pleased,” Lydie said. Didier hadn’t even known about Anne until it was over. Michael had tracked down an aunt, who had called Anne’s doctor, who had booked her into a clinic in Anjou. “Didn’t Patrice save the day with Anne Dumas?”
“Two people who can quote Madame de Sévigné at the same party,” Michael said. “It’s bizarre.”
“Well, Patrice has read Anne’s book about a hundred times,” Lydie said. “But why did her quotation snap Anne out of it?”
Michael shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it was the shock of hearing someone else speak her language.” Then, so obviously wanting to change the subject he didn’t even bother to pause, he asked, “Where should we have lunch? Which town?”
“There’s always Honfleur …” Lydie remembered the little port rimmed by crooked half-timber houses, the bar they had visited on their first trip outside Paris.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Michael said.
The smell of apples came through the open windows as they neared the coast; the orchards were thick with them, and with pears. Lydie felt the breeze turn chilly. “We’ll need sweaters,” she said.
“Let’s drive straight into town and find a place with tables on the quai,” Michael said.
“Okay,” Lydie said. They parked their car on the hill near St. Catherine’s, the wooden fifteenth-century church. A market was in progress, the vendors selling cheeses, milk, live chickens, linens, honey, herbs, apples, cabbages, lobsters, sole. Compared to the ball, it seemed real, earthy; walking through it, Lydie felt something in her had been released. Michael bought a small paper sack full of crevettes grises, baby shrimp the size of Lydie’s thumbnail, spiced and cooked live over an open fire. They ate them as they walked down the winding street toward the port.
It was just noon, early for lunch. Café proprietors stood outside their premises, smiling and nodding at passersby. Lydie and Michael stopped at each one, reading the menus set in metal frames by the doors. They chose a restaurant overlooking the old port. Across the boat basin stood the houses, ancient and askew, that Lydie remembered from their previous visit.
They sat side by side at a table near the back of the terrace, against the restaurant’s façade. Lydie smoothed the white paper cloth as Michael ordered the wine: Meursault.
“Meursault?” she asked, smiling. His choice was festive, significant: they always had it with shellfish.
“Let’s have a plateau de fruits de mer,” he said. “I feel like cracking shells.”
Lydie sipped the white wine, dry and flinty, understood that Michael was waiting for her to talk.
“A lot happened last night,” Lydie said, wanting to start off slowly.
“I’d like to hear about it,” Michael said.
“I know you would,” Lydie said, bursting to tell him, searching her mind for the words. What had seemed obvious, explainable, in the midst of an eighteenth-century château, could sound absurd in modern surroundings. Yet she believed, more strongly than ever, in the power of what had happened to her.
Michael was silent, watching her. “I was surprised you weren’t more upset to find me talking to Anne,” he finally said.
“I was upset, at first,” Lydie said, looking him straight in the eye. “I aimed a gun at both your heads.”
Michael said nothing, but held her gaze.
“Kelly stopped me. I wouldn’t have shot, but I didn’t want to put down the gun.”
“Why were you holding it at all?” Michael asked.
Lydie shrugged. Her heart pounded as it had last night. She wondered whether he would believe what she was about to tell him. “I had a vision,” she said.
“A vision?” he asked, frowning. “You mean like a religious vision?”
Lydie nodded, trying to keep her hands steady. “Well, I saw you and Anne, and of course I knew she was the one you had been with, and I went a little wild. Then, all of a sudden, I thought of my father. I can’t explain it.”
“What made you pick up the gun?”
“I’m not sure. I thought if I looked through the scope, I’d be able to see more clearly …” She paused, and Michael didn’t seem able to stand it.
“Tell me,” he said.
“I was thinking of how it was for him, how he had picked up that shotgun, pointed it … But Michael—I didn’t aim at you … I was looking down the gun barrel … God, this sounds weird.”
“At what?” Michael asked. “You were looking down the gun barrel at what?”
And then Lydie felt as calm as she had last night, at the instant she had lowered the gun. “I was looking into my father’s soul. As soon as I did, I understood him. I’ve kept myself from trying to ever since it happened. I had to see it my mother’s way—that he just went crazy—in order to be loyal to her. She can’t bear to understand that he really loved Margaret Downes. I guess I hate him for that. But he was my father, and I love him. And when I looked through the gun scope, I forgave him.”
“You did, Lydie?”
“Just holding the gun made my body feel different, like I had no control over my heart, my lungs, even my eyes. I realize how he must have felt. That second when he pulled the trigger, he didn’t have a choice.” Lydie heard her voice go up; she could imagine it stopping altogether. “I looked through the scope, and I saw you fighting with Anne. Just seeing you together made me want to kill you for a minute. Even though I could see that you didn’t want her there.”
“I didn’t.” Michael sat perfectly still, hanging on every word.
“My father didn’t know what he wanted,” Lydie said. “He loved us all—me, you, Mom. I know that now. But he loved her, Margaret, too. He couldn’t live without her. My mother will never face that.”
“I’ve always known he loved you, Lydie,” Michael said. “But he was desperate.”
“He was desperate,” Lydie said, her voice breaking. “That’s so different from being crazy. Mom saying he ‘went out of his head’ let him off the hook, but it kept me from understanding him. Now I know it was his only way out.”
“And you’ve forgiven him?”
She nodded her head, waiting for her voice to come back. “Do you know? I really believe it was a vision last night. A clear vision. I believe that God showed me, so I could forgive my father. Do you think that’s too strange?”
“No, I don’t.”
Lydie stared into his eyes, silently thanking him.
“But can you forgive me?” Michael asked.
“I’m trying,” Lydie said. “You hurt me.”
“I know. And I’m so sorry,” Michael said, his eyes filling.
Lydie scrutinized his mouth, his gaze, the small lines around his eyes, looking for clues. For what? she wondered. For a reminder of how much she had once trusted him?
“I love you, Lydie,” he said. He stroked her cheek with one hand. She covered it with her own, held it steady. “I have an idea,” he said tentatively. “What if we didn’t go back to Paris after lunch? What if we took a room at some hotel? Would you be ready for that?”
“The old one,” Lydie said. “The farm overlooking the estuary, where Boudin and Monet painted …”
They sat there for a long time, and then the plateau arrived. A battered silver platter piled high with cracked ice and rockweed, it was covered with belons and creuses, clams, langoustines, crevettes roses and grises, periwinkles, and torteaux. Alongside were lemon slices, brown bread and butter, a half-lemon stuck with pins for extracting periwinkles and crabmeat. They gazed at it for a moment, appreciating its beauty, and they began to eat.
The old, famous hotel, whose brochure claimed it was the place where Impressionism was born, stood high on a hill. It faced the mouth of the Seine, beyond which lay the English Channel and the North Atlantic. Ivy climbed its shingled walls, geranium-filled flower boxes hung at every window. The service was correct, even formal. The maid led them to their room on the top floor.
“How many people check into a place like this with no bags?” Michael whispered to Lydie, climbing the stairs.
“Let’s hope they think we’re up to something illicit,” Lydie whispered back.
But when the maid left them alone in the room, Lydie felt shy. She looked out the window, across the garden to the sea. Turning toward Michael, she blinked, thinking of how she had aimed a gun at his head. He leaned on the window frame, watching her. His hand rested on the sill, and she could imagine it tracing the inside of her arm. Then he pulled her toward him and kissed her.
“I hated thinking of you alone in our bed,” Michael said.
“But you did think of me?” she asked, brought straight back to the present.
“Yes, I did. A lot. You have to relax,” Michael whispered, his breath warm against her ear. “Everything will be fine. Haven’t we been here before?”
Lydie laughed at that. “Never here,” she said, not meaning the hotel.
“That’s true …”
She watched the tall windows. Although she couldn’t see the water, she knew it was near by the quality of light. Shadows played on the ceiling as the sun moved across the western sky. The time had come to trust him or not. She lay on her side, looking into her husband’s eyes. She had known him for so long. She had watched him play basketball in high school, she had fallen in love with him in Washington. She had come with him to Paris and nearly lost him.
He was watching her, waiting for her to make the first move. She stroked his cheek, kissed his mouth. One hand closed around his erect penis and the other slid up, grazing his stomach and chest. She felt reluctant desire building as she arched her back against him. Then, as if given permission, Michael came to life. He rolled her onto her back, kissed her soundly on the lips, then moved slowly down her body. Lydie moaned, her throat constricted. She felt as excited, as apprehensive, as she had the first time they had made love. And only Michael’s touch, no longer awkward but sure, reminded her that years and continents and lives and one clear vision had passed since that first time.
The enemy fired, from a distance and at random, just one wretched cannon ball, which struck him in the middle of the body, and you can imagine the cries and lamentations of this army.
—TO MONSIEUR DE GRIGNAN, JULY 1675
THREE DAYS HAD passed since the ball, with no word from Lydie; the last Patrice had seen of her she was driving off, into the sunrise, away from Château Bellechasse, with Michael. Patrice felt optimistic, positive that Lydie’s silence meant that she and Michael were in blissful seclusion. Still, the calendar on Patrice’s desk warned her that only twelve days remained before Lydie would leave Paris, and Patrice resented losing any chance they had to spend time together. The thought filled her with panic and a sort of grief. She knew about vows to stay in touch, and although she believed that she and Lydie could do that, she knew it would be no substitute for their daily phone calls and frequent visits, for simply knowing that Lydie was just across Paris.
Patrice filled diary page after diary page with descriptions of the ball. What everyone wore, what everyone ate, what the orchestra played. Somewhere down the line, people would care about the details of a ball in late-twentieth-century France, not that they would ever see this. But it satisfied her, to think that she was recording history. Her mind kept wandering to the personal details: The set of Lydie’s mouth when she asked if Patrice had invited Anne. The way Patrice’s thoughts kept floating to her mother, wishing Eliza were there—enjoying herself, watching Patrice in her role as hostess. Kelly in defeat, avoiding Patrice and Lydie.
Kelly. The thought of her made Patrice frown. Kelly was off today. Kelly never seemed to lose hope. Yesterday she’d come to work smiling, asking Patrice and Didier if they had enjoyed the ball. Patrice remembered those days, early on, when she had so feared losing Kelly and Lydie that she had wished, fanatically, for Kelly’s petition to be denied. As if Kelly were just a checker or a chess piece or a tiddlywink, a little plastic counter in someone else’s game.
Patrice tried to get Kelly out of mind. She picked up the telephone. She dialed Boston, Massachusetts.
“Hello, Mother,” she said.
“Patsy, darling! How was the ball?” Eliza asked. “It was last Saturday, wasn’t it? I’ve had it on my little mental agenda …”
“Absolutely wonderful,” Patrice said. “All of Paris is talking about it. How are you?”
“Oh,” Eliza said and sighed. “The same—nothing much happens to me anymore.”
Patrice felt her shoulders tighten. “Why don’t you make something happen, for a change?”
“If this isn’t going to be a nice chat,” Eliza said brittlely, “I see no reason to run up your phone bill.”
“I mean, why don’t you go visit Aunt Jane in Cleveland? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Jane’s very busy these days,” Eliza said in a tone that suggested to Patrice that perhaps her mother and aunt had had a falling-out. The thought did not entirely displease her.
“Aunt Jane and her good causes,” Patrice said, inviting some gossip. “But why don’t you call her? You know she’d love to hear from you.”
“Well … maybe I will,” Eliza said. “Tell me what you’re doing, now that the ball is over.”
“I’m keeping a diary,” Patrice said.
“You always did, as a girl,” Eliza said.
“I did, didn’t I?” Patrice said, remembering the locked pink ones her aunt had given her every Christmas. She had regretted the tiny amount of space allowed per day.
“I kept a diary,” Eliza said. “All through my childhood. I had—oh, it must have been twenty volumes. I burned them the week I got married.”
This was astonishing: that Eliza could do anything as introspective as keep diaries, that she in fact had written them and burned them. “Why did you burn them?” Patrice asked.
“I didn’t want your father to read them,” Eliza said. Patrice heard a tiny giggle her mother had, perhaps, not intended for Patrice to hear.
“I don’t care who reads mine,” Patrice said. “I’m just jotting down observations—not really personal things.”
“Many an American has traveled to France and observed it more acutely than the French,” Eliza said. “Hemingway comes to mind. Henry James, Irwin Shaw …”
“Well, no one’s going to read my observations,” Patrice said, laughing nervously, flattered her mother would make such a comparison.
After she hung up the phone, Patrice resumed her writing. A picnic was going on in the Place des Vosges, but she ignored the sounds of festivity. Three Women of the Marais sat on her desk; every so often her gaze would light upon it. How had she come up with the perfect line with which to answer Anne Dumas? It had soothed Anne, somehow, to hear Patrice speaking the words of Madame de Sévigné. Patrice had never consciously memorized her letters, but they had a distinctive rhythm and style that Patrice had found easy to conjure. She sat there, trying to recall other lines, but without Anne prompting her, she found it impossible. The telephone rang, startling her.
“Hi,” came Lydie’s voice.
“There you are!” Patrice said. “Where have you been? Never mind—don’t answer. I’ve missed you.”
“Oh, I’ve missed you too,” Lydie said, her voice full of happiness. “Michael and I just got back from Honfleur.”
“Did you stay at that great old hotel? I forget the name …”
“Yes,” Lydie said. “It was wonderful. We’d intended to stay for one night. Well, for one afternoon, to be honest.”
Patrice put on her Mae West voice. “A quickie at the No-Tell Hotel,” she said.
“It didn’t turn out that way,” Lydie said. “We stayed for two nights. It suddenly hit us—neither of us had work to do in Paris. The Salle is open, the ball is over …”
