Western Alliances, page 8
They stopped at the Carrefour for some staples—milk, eggs, some almost acceptable baguettes since the boulangerie they liked in the tiny town was not open past 2:00 p.m. and the sun was in his last hour. Marcel, Hélène, and Roberto also conspired to have a secret stash of candy, cookies, and alcohol that would remain in the trunk of the car and selfishly not be shared—not shared with the hefty great-aunt, who would offer their precious treats to her intolerable old acquaintances when they came to call, not shared with Monsieur Hacquin, who would spend the day circling around the kitchen, like a hawk riding the thermals, picking and fingering and nibbling and depleting the supplies of anything tasty.
“I cannot believe,” Roberto said, depositing an overpriced package of American Oreos into the shopping cart, “that Monsieur Hacquin is still—one—alive and—two—invited. It has been five years since we were all at Mas Disse together, and I sensed even then that he was universally detested.”
Their supermarket detour allowed a full unpacking of their detestation of Maurice Hacquin, the three of them eager to land the vilest description. His skin was sallow to a remarkable degree, deep trenches of purple under his sad eyes, skin the color of bruise around armpits and groin and, invariably, day after day, his Speedo, which gave décolletage to the ass crack in back and tormented anterior observers with an unseemly bulge that threatened as he craned this way for the drink just out of reach, as he lumbered in and out of his chaise longue (the blue chaise was ceded to him), to expose itself or, at minimum, the pubis. Every time Roberto looked at him, there was a suspicion of an erection as he lay oiled and engreased by the pool, inert, a human sloth limp and slumped on his branch, staring at everyone with disapproval or with furtive lusts.
“You have no knowledge of summer protocol in French country houses,” said Hélène. “I have spoken to my mother about getting rid of him. We both find his conservative politics odious. But my late father, a century ago, invited him.”
Marcel shrugged. “Once invited, it is for life. It would be a social breach to not invite.”
“So breach away,” Roberto said.
All strategies to sneak down to Provence without him were useless because Maurice Hacquin’s Paris acquaintances formed a virtual tracking system of Clementine Disse’s progress south. It was likely what he lived for, Hélène informed Roberto, his greatest social triumph. “I’m sure he is in love with my mother,” Hélène declared. “Probably lives for the summer show of breasts during the sunbathing matinee.”
Marcel: “Yes, he retreats to his room to touch himself, to touch that monstrous, oozing slug between his legs…”
Thank you for that, Roberto said in French. I am thoroughly revolted now. No need for a light dinner.
The Disses advertised Cuges-les-Pins as their summer residence, but the actual house was up in the dry aromatic hills to the north and closer to the village of Lo Bordac. A deader Southern settlement could not be discovered in France; no one ever thought of heading into it for shopping since it seemed to be inhabited by villagers who made it a point of honor to go bankrupt (for their stores were never open) and to roast alive in their houses (since all the windows and shutters remained tightly closed).
From this ghost town began a twelve-kilometer winding ascent upon the chalk-white roads known to the Bouches-du-Rhône high country—switchbacks so severe, a lane so narrow, lurches so nauseating, that it ensured once you were in situ at Mas Disse, you would only begrudgingly leave it. The driver had better have a good memory too, since no amount of practice could build confidence with the four identical intersections. Directions were always kept in the glove compartment; rarely was an ascent from Cuges accomplished without having to reverse for a missed turn.
At Mas Disse, there was one large dining room / kitchen with the designated living room half defined by weather-wracked chairs and a dried-out leather couch with a kilim thrown over it; the other ground-floor room was a bedroom that remained in crepuscular gloom on the north side of the house. Not able to mount the stairs for an upstairs bedroom, Clementine Disse’s eighty-seven-year-old aunt Sidonie had annexed the only truly private bedroom in the whole house. Aunt Sidonie eschewed the sun, never took meals with the rest of the group (nor was there any insistence that she do), just puttered and moped around the ground floor continually, left dishes in the sink for others to wash. She invited an also-loathed set of visitors, old ladies from the town who paid her court, a former house servant, the neighboring farmer and his wife (retired, but they looked after Mas Disse when no one was around and kept the place from becoming a shambles), and two or three indistinguishable spinsters who spoke of old times—old times when all sorts of people were alive who now were not.
“Maman, s’il vous plaît,” Hélène had said before switching to English so Aunt Sidonie would not comprehend: “This spectacle of sitting with my grandfather’s gardener and that horrible fat cleaning lady like they are our intimates…” There was that classic French shudder, no doubt learned in the crib. “How can you bear it?”
“I like to hear them reminisce about my mother,” Madame Disse said evenly, “who barely troubled herself to know me.”
The rest of the visitors were assigned one of four bedrooms upstairs. Roberto’s was the most rustic—a mattress on the wooden floor, the cast-off junk of the house instead of furniture, a child’s floating toy for the pool, a bicycle missing a wheel, winter blankets. He was five inches longer than the mattress provided. But, Roberto reminded himself, free accommodation.
There was the pool, which, all stoically assumed, had never been cleaned. Leaves and needles, dried browned petals, a yellowy film of pine pollen floated upon the surface. I am scared of it, Hélène confided in French: They will have to remove my gangrenous vagina if I swim in it. For once, Roberto thought, the French didn’t pretty up the grotesque: vulve gangreneuse. Good name for a punk band, he decided.
“Be not afraid!” Marcel declared, moments before peeling off his jeans and revealing heart-covered boxer shorts, and taking a flying leap into the murky waters. “But cold!” he proclaimed, bobbing quickly to the top.
There were three pool-seating possibilities: the blue chaise (tainted by the suppurations of M. Hacquin), a second chaise that was La Disse’s by seniority, and a sun-cracked plastic chair that for all its ugliness was much contested. Madame Disse moved her chaise away from the pool, dragged it with a scrape over the concrete, to the grass away from the shade of the trees. This was her sunning station.
That first morning, Roberto observed, Madame Disse was walking around the kitchen, singing to herself, wearing a loose chemise attached by a single button. The strictures of Paris were behind them, it was the south, it was summer. One declaration followed another: she would have everything “tout liberal, tout ouvert, toutes nues.” She chided the others encased, imprisoned in their clothes, as she stepped gingerly over the spiky dry grass to reach her chaise. Roberto’s hostess, her back to the house, removed her chemise for the ritual sunbathing.
Marcel by the pool, Mas Disse
Roberto discreetly turned to see if Maurice Hacquin was fixed on Madame Disse, only to see that he was preoccupied with his pâté and toasts on a paper plate. How he brought each morsel to his mouth as a cephalopod, a tentacle furling and unfurling … Madame Disse bathed in the southern sun, her arms fixed on the arms of the chaise, eyes closed, like a statue of Anubis.
You could hear everything in Mas Disse. The old plaster walls served somehow as amplifiers for whatever was afoot—the ritual honking of sinus clearing from Monsieur Hacquin at bedtime, the tinkle of bottles upon Madame Disse’s toilette table, the creak of the bed with Marcel and Hélène, the tuba-like passing of gas of Hélène’s great-aunt …
“There is no way to make love in this house,” Hélène mumbled to Roberto at breakfast, having made a face at the taste of the coffee that Aunt Sidonie had made.
“But I recall you and I doing it when I was here five years ago—”
“And apparently our every movement was heard and discussed.”
Roberto poured himself a cup. “Oh God. No wonder your aunt stares at me like I’m a fiend.” He sipped. “And she is trying to avenge herself by poisoning us with this coffee.”
“She is so senile,” Hélène whispered. “She probably put potting soil in the cafetière a piston.”
After some indistinguishable sunbaked days, it clouded up. That was the cue for a round of necessary visits: Madame Disse would go see her eighty-five-year-old father in a nursing facility in Aix-en-Provence. And they would take his sister, Aunt Sidonie. It finally became clear that Monsieur Hacquin had a use: after lunch, he would bring his sputtering Renault around to the side door of the house and load Aunt Sidonie into the front seat, while Madame Disse took the back. Monsieur Hacquin was the uncomplaining chauffeur for a long and winding progress to Aix. Roberto wondered why a care center had been found so far from Cuges-les-Pins—even Aubagne or Marseille would be closer—but Hélène stared holes in him. “An hour there, an hour to visit, an hour back—it is the only freedom we have here. Do not talk my mother out of it!”
Indeed, what could have been a three-hour round trip often stretched to five or six, and the sputtering Renault returned around sunset, everyone clutching shopping bags from fashionable Aix, a trunkful of groceries, delicacies unknown to the Carrefour in Cuges, a new scarf for Madame Disse, which she would model as an exhausted Aunt Sidonie moaningly staggered to her cave without dinner.
Madame’s departure was the only time Marcel and Hélène could make love without an audience, so they begged pardon, taking their leave of Roberto, who stayed with his book by the pool. Of course, true to the house, every squeal and laugh and grunt was audible, broadcast to the poolside. Auditory engineers who design concert halls should study Mas Disse’s construction to replicate such aural fidelity.
OK Corral
Marcel stuck his head into Roberto’s bedroom. “Are we still committed to…”
“Oh yes.”
Roberto was not sure what would be reckoned the worse offense to Hélène—he and Marcel planning an outing, just the boys unmonitored, ready to get up to boy things, crude talk about women, crude talk about her … or the offense to her French sensibilities that was OK Corral, the Wild West USA theme park, itself.
“Go,” she said simply, staring straight through the windshield, dropping them in the dreary Lo Bordac, farthest reach of the Cuges-les-Pins public transport bus. She sped back to the house, sending a plume of dry white Provençale dust into the air for them to inhale.
Marcel and Roberto stayed near the bus stop for a few minutes, then wandered around to the one plaza of closed-up buildings. It was like a tombstone, perhaps like the original Tombstone, Arizona, whenever there was a main street shoot-out. They practiced quick drawing and gunning each other down with their phones as guns; Marcel, ever the ham, played out a death scene as drawn out as Massenet’s Werther. Marcel’s throes were so loud that Roberto ssh’ed him—surely someone was alive and being disturbed in this necropolis.
“There is no one here. Halloooooo,” Marcel called out, creating an echo in the plaza. In French: Will one of you bastards show yourself! Nothing. Next, Marcel turned his back to Roberto and undid his trousers, dropped them with his underwear. He stepped out of his fallen pants, then peeled off his T-shirt. “Je suis ici, Lo Bordac! Naked for you to behold…” Roberto had thought Marcel a little chubby, maybe even fat, but out of clothes, it was evident that he was merely large-framed, barrel-chested, and sturdy, good peasant stock. And now Marcel shook his member at the village, offering to bed any woman, no matter how ancient—any man, then … farm animals? He made a quite good cow noise, but no nearby bovine appeared to accept his offer. Marcel shrugged to Roberto and began to dress himself.
OK Corral, for the love of God. By design, it was mostly for kids. Low-impact rides, a few acceptable roller coasters, water slides, all with a Territorial West theme. American flags everywhere, signs in Franglais to keep the illusion of Provençale Arizona extant. That afternoon, there would be a spectacle, six-horse teams barreling into town with a stagecoach, a holdup, some politically incorrect Indians, and Zorro was promised. There was a bar for adults, and after fifteen minutes, Marcel and Roberto parked themselves there. And when it appeared they might miss the Le Spectacle Western Days, halfway across the park, they had just one more beer, and missed it.
Well, the important thing was to defy Hélène and be appalling, so mission accomplished. They caught the bus back to Cuges … where, look, another outdoor bar-café beckoned. They continued with beer. One waiter was decrepit, dating from the days of the Avignon papacy, the other a twentysomething gay guy who kept eyeing them and posing, pouting. After an excess of the La Minotte local brew, they got up to piss.
When they arrived in the men’s room, the gay waiter was there taking his sweet time to finish up at the urinals. Marcel openly flirted, while Roberto turned slightly protectively so as not to be on display. Eventually, the waiter sulked off, and Marcel laughed.
“I thought he was lingering,” he said, showing his cock to Roberto, “for a taste of this.”
Okay, thought Roberto, that was two appearances of Marcel’s penis in a four-hour period. Roberto rarely gave in to making sexual brags, but after the beers, he had become festive. “No,” he said, “I think it was this that piqued his interest.” Roberto let Marcel see himself before repositioning and zipping up.
“Mon Dieu,” said Marcel. “It is as Hélène reported.”
They returned to their table outside. Marcel was now meeting his eyes in an entirely more intimate way, so Roberto tried to tamp down his enthusiasm. “And Hélène told you that it is not reliable.”
“My American friend,” Marcel said, leaning into him, “there are pills for that sort of thing.”
“And I might die if I take them.” Roberto hadn’t told the story in a while, so he told it to Marcel:
When he was eleven, he began a growth spurt that would not stop. At eleven, he shot up to six feet; by thirteen, he was six-five. He looked like someone in a refugee camp, his body outpacing his ability to fill in proportionately. The kids in the public school called him Skeletor and Auschwitz, but, despite the abuse, he was assured that once he got to middle school, he would be pressed into service on the basketball team—there was even a visit from an assistant coach or two. When he complained to his dad that he wasn’t good at basketball, that he was sure to fail before arenas of frothing fans, the idea of a prep school was floated. Was there such a prep school that emphasized academics and barely bothered with athletics—so the temptation to indenture his son to some team or other could be again resisted? Brockton Academy was such a place, top ten private preps in New England, big enough (nine hundred students) that one need not be a part of any clique or athletic impulse, recently coed, a springboard to the Ivies … but it was a boarding school forty miles north of Providence. Roberto assumed that his parents would never let him live away from their beloved sight … and so he thought, up to the day when his mother dropped him without preamble at their gates.
Throughout adolescence, there were tests, of course, for thyroid and pituitary problems; there were ugly procedures and scans looking at his aorta, which was enlarged. The doctor thought it might be Marfan syndrome. His blood pressure was through the roof, and he had to be put on hypertensive medication at fourteen. His arms and legs were long, like his long fingers, a little out of proportion. At fifteen, they detected a heart murmur; his sophomore year at Brockton, he had to stop playing during a casual volleyball match because of angina, which he assumed was a heart attack, though it was not. He was whisked to the hospital by ambulance; soon his mother appeared at his bedside, then Salvador and his business associate Gehrman van Till, driving in from a corporate meeting in Boston. Then Mrs. Santos clutching her rosary—all hands on deck, apparently.
Marfan syndrome manifests itself on a spectrum from mildly health-compromising to early-death-dealing. A cardiologist said that they would monitor him and that one day, inevitably, they would have to resect his aorta, which was developing an aneurysm and must not be allowed to burst. To Roberto, lying in the ICU, living until thirty seemed unlikely. Marfan runs in a family. Lena confessed that she had some cousins still in the Azores who were overly tall and yes, one who died young, but she was certain that had more to do with drinking and driving …
“But it works, yes?” The only interest for Marcel in this narrative was the state of Roberto’s penis.
“I’m good for a few minutes. But I’m approaching the day when it won’t work at all. And again, Viagra is off-limits.”
Marcel grew pensive.
The next day was gray and, therefore, another pilgrimage to Aix for the older denizens of Mas Disse. Roberto, sprawled in his bed, was reading Gilles Leroy’s Alabama Song in French, and struggling a bit. It was about the Fitzgeralds, mostly about Zelda and not so much F. Scott. Roberto thought it would be good to see what a French author made of America’s most famous expats.
He put the book down. Marcel and Hélène were going at it down the hall, unaware he was upstairs. He listened to them for a bit. Yes, that had not changed, Hélène’s little breathy squeaks. He reached for his phone and his earbuds, but they were in his day pack downstairs. So as not to embarrass them, he stayed very still. But the astringent lavender smell of the sheets, mixed with some floral fabric softener, made him sneeze. They stopped … before resuming.
Hélène, once showered and redressed, leaned into his room. “Marcel swore you were not in the house. But now I see he wanted you to hear us.”
“I tried not to make a noise.”
“You should listen more often. Marcel was never better.”
“He likes an audience.”
“He likes you as an audience. He will consider it a defeat if he does not sleep with you before our time here is over.”
