by Lily King
I nod, though I sense no change at all. She still has a fever and no appetite.
I wait for Nicole in the driveway. Through the open windows I can hear her primping: a brush being set down, a cosmetic case snapping shut, perfume being pumped twice. She’ll be overdressed for the streets of Plaire and for the weather. Directly above there are flaky white clouds, but to the west, close to the horizon, the sky is dark and the valley is cast in a sickly yellow-green light.
“There’s a storm on its way,” I call in.
“Coming!”
Nicole appears in another suit, this one slate blue. Around her waist is a leather belt with a big gold buckle. Her shiny purse bounces at her hip.
Accustomed to speaking to Lucie, I say, “We’re not going to the Place Vendôme.”
Nicole stops to dangle a foot in the air. “I’m wearing flats. And no stockings.”
“No stockings beneath long pants. How scandalous!”
It’s nice, I have to admit, having someone to walk into town with again.
The clouds are massing, and the moments of bright sunlight grow fewer and briefer until they cease all together. Still, I figure we’ll make it back before the rain.
Jean-Baptiste, the dairyman’s son, comes barreling up from town in his van, then slows when he sees me. “I was just on my way to drop off a few things.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind. Henri’s there.”
He doesn’t try very hard to conceal his disappointment at the timing. He nods to Nicole and asks about Lucie.
“She seems better today,” I say, mimicking Henri, wanting it to be true.
The car behind him that has been waiting patiently gives a toot.
“You always manage a few admirers, don’t you?” Nicole says, as he drives off.
“He’s not—”
“I’ve already heard he is.”
“She has a pretty big mouth for a sick person.”
A few admirers. Was this her accusation?
She stops in the road. “My house,” she says, at the foot of her old driveway.
“Do you want to take a look?”
“No.”
We stop first at the pharmacy to fill the doctor’s latest prescription. At the sound of the door, the pharmacist looks up from his magazine. As with many in Plaire, his devotion to Lucie now includes me. His features, which were bunched in concentration, widen across his face. Nicole assumes the greeting is for her.
“Monsieur Dudon,” she says, in the accent of the child who knew him.
He makes no effort to disguise his confusion so that by the time she reaches the counter, she’s slipped back into her Parisian lilt as she holds out her hand and reintroduces herself. Her maiden name unclouds his face only slightly.
The incident doesn’t seem to thwart her sudden enthusiasm for Plaire, and as we walk up the street she points to a doorway she claims used to be the newspaper office where she worked one summer collating sections. I never heard about this job, and I thought the newspaper office used to be up next to the police station.
“No, it was right here all my life.”
We’re alone in the street except for a lean dog that has been trailing us.
“Go home, Greco,” I command, though I don’t mind the dog. I just want to say his name in front of Nicole and reclaim this town she’s taking back from me.
I didn’t need to. At the grocer’s, the baker’s, and the butcher’s, the warm reception I receive confirms my place in Plaire. Nicole hangs back near the door of each shop. The women give her no more than the brief acknowledgment they give all foreigners, a sort of humph of the eyes, and the men admire her beauty with the same unengaged glance they’d give to an attractive woman on a poster at a bus stop.
The sickly light has arrived by the time we finish our errands. My guess is we have no more than fifteen minutes to make it the two miles back. I head swiftly down the incline. Nicole falls several paces behind.
“I am a ghost,” I hear her say, but keep walking.
Then the steps behind me cease. She calls out as if I’m already far away. She’s turning that loose gold watch around on her wrist. “I was thinking of making a phone call.”
It might be to the train station. Perhaps she’ll arrange to leave this evening. “Go quickly. It’s about to pour.”
“It’s still up in the square, isn’t it, the post office?” What she’s really asking is for me to come with her.
The telephone cabins are at the back of the building. I take the farthest seat from the phone Nicole chooses, but the place is empty and all I can hear is Nicole’s voice, though not many individual words. I hear her laugh loudly, groan a little, deny something. She speaks for a long time in a low voice, then laughs again. The door has a thin strip of glass through which I can see a thin strip of her. She swivels in her chair. Then she stands up and opens the door.
I reach for our shopping bags, hoping we can still get ahead of the rain. But Nicole is holding the receiver out to me. “Would you like to speak to Marc?”
I put the bags down. No, I think loudly. “All right.” Did he ask or did she offer?
Nicole steps out and I step in.
He would be at work now. “Ça va, Rosie?” It was definitely Nicole’s idea. He sounds distant, like he’s trying to create more distance than there is between Paris and Plaire.
“Oui, ça va.” I duplicate his tone, wanting to give the impression that Nicole is still beside me, though in fact she’s disappeared from the waiting room.
We speak at the same time, pause, and do it again.
“You first,” he says.
“No, you.”
We’re using vous. I want to hang up.
“Have you been okay there?” he asks.
“Yes, fine.”
“Should I believe you?”
“How is Lola?” It’s all I really want to know.
“Good.” He sounds defensive. I give him time, and he says finally, “We’ve talked. A lot.”
“Good.”
“I think so.”
It’s incredible to hold the sound of his voice in my hand. It feels so necessary, so vital. I don’t want to let go. But he does.
“We miss you,” he says.
“I miss you.” Again the vous, safe in its ambiguity. “It’s going to rain. We’d better go.”
The last thing he says is Au revoir, but I will never re-see him. It is a deceptive way of saying good-bye.
I find Nicole looking through the doors out into the square. It’s started to spit, and by the time we go a half block, rain is shattering on the pavement. We stop in a doorway while it thuds hard above us onto the canvas awning. It falls faster and faster, the wind sweeping it one way, then another. Soon the road is braided with fast-flowing streams. The air grows warmer, as if the rain has lifted the heat out of the earth.
Nicole touches my arm. “Smell that,” she says, and takes in a deep breath. “That’s the smell”—she pauses, taking in more—“of everything.”
Her face is radiant. Despite it all, she is home.
Up and down the street, people stand in clusters under cover. Every so often someone makes a diagonal streak across, protected by a newspaper or cellophane bonnet. No one carries an umbrella.
A waiter darts across the terrace of the Café Plaire to rescue the wooden board that advertises their specialties. Nicole asks me if I’d like to get something in there.
We join the streakers, though our hands aren’t free to cover our heads, and our heavy bags make our steps unpredictable. On the threshold of the café, Nicole slips, then rights herself, but not before she lets out a shriek. The sound is launched through the open door, and as we enter, Marie-Jo, standing at the back of the room, is one of the few who doesn’t turn our way.
Nicole chooses a spot in the closest corner. “This was where you could always find my father on Saturday afternoons.” She strokes the table-top as if to collect on her fingers a lingering flake from his pipe.
But I can no longer picture Octave or Marcelle. Even Marie-Jo in her coffee-stain smock, now standing there at the bar, isn’t real to me anymore. She belongs—like this street and its smell and the phone call to Marc—to Nicole. And all I have to do is point, and Nicole can turn to see her sister leaning on the counter, talking gravely to the bartender.
The waiter who ran out into the rain takes our order, two hot chocolates, his hair dripping onto his pad. I don’t ask, but Nicole tells me everything that’s going on in Paris. The weather is awful, and Lola and Odile have gone to the movies every afternoon for five days. That’s where they are right now. Guillaume is at Arnaud’s. The summer fille left and the new one won’t start until the rentrée, still two weeks away. Marc is doing all the cooking. “Tonight,” she says, “he’s making that pasta dish of yours. With the fennel and the meatballs.”
“Bacon.”
“I think he bought meatballs.”
We grin at Marc’s mistake. I imagine being there in my kitchen again, with just Marc and the children and my radio mysteries, a place where I once belonged.
“I was thinking of staying here awhile,” Nicole says, in the same way she mentioned the phone call, as if asking for permission.
“Of course.”
“And I was hoping you’d consider going up there, to help out until the rentrée.”
This is my chance, my chance to explain things to Lola, or to hold Marc again. It’s my chance to escape Lucie’s death.
“No.” It shoots out before I can stop it. It shoots out from a place that cannot be tempted or weakened, a place that is not afraid: a place I didn’t know existed inside me. And though this isn’t at all the answer I want to give, it feels good to say something clear and level and unambiguous to Nicole.
I wonder if it’s a test, if Nicole wants to know how fast I’ll jump at a chance to return to Marc. Does she know? She seems to know everything and nothing. Maybe knowing has never mattered to her. I remember her in the phone booth, swiveling, giggling, teasing, being teased. It didn’t matter at all.
“It wouldn’t be for long. Just until the new girl arrives.”
Behind her, Marie-Jo pushes off the counter to leave.
“That’s your sister.”
She turns just in time to watch Marie-Jo take three steps and go out the door.
Nicole remains with her mouth half open, like an American. Then she says, “I thought she lived—”
“She’s come back.”
Marie-Jo, one hand clutching a brown bag, the other trying to cover her head, runs past the window. The rain has already wet her face but she looks ahead expectantly, as if the next step will be onto dry ground. Nicole jerks to stand, then sits again.
“You should stay longer, Nicole.”
“Then you’ll go to Paris?”
I shake my head. “They’ll be fine on their own.”
Beside us, the window is empty again. Rain lashes the panes in long gusts, then briefer, harder spatterings. The waiter removes our cups and brings us two more, though neither of us remembers ordering them. The café is full now, hot and thick with smoke, and all the extra chairs against the walls have been dragged out. Across the room, a child wakes up from a nap in his mother’s arms and begins to cry. It’s a noise like any other noise in the room, like the steady clatter of plates and saucers, the click of dominoes, the snap of cards, the chatter and the slow peals of laughter.
Once again, I remember it is fall. I think of the word rentrée, the return. For nearly a month now, I’ve slept straight through each night. In my chest I feel a small unrecognizable swell of pleasure at the memory of a pain that has diminished. I think of all the unopened letters outside in the wood bin. Some are so thick she had to tape the envelopes shut. The rain is coming down hard, and the box is cracked, but it’s protected beneath the eaves. The letters will still be dry. It will take me all of tomorrow to read them.
“Did Lucie have a sister?” I ask.
“No. She had brothers.”
“Brothers,” I repeat, and we look at each other in mutual bewilderment.
“Two sets of twins. And all four of them fell in love with my mother’s cousin, Laure,” Nicole begins, and she speaks until the rain eases, the clouds travel east, and the hour, when we step out onto the terrace, has turned a dark gleaming mauve.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the following people for their kindness, generosity, and unending support of this book: my sister, Lisa, and her husband, Lanny; my husband, Tyler; Laura and Tom McNeal, Cammie McGovern, Jeff Darsie, Kathie Min, Naeem Murr, Lucie Prinz, Tobias Wolff, Don Lee, the MacDowell Colony, Beth Gutcheon, Wendy Weil, and my excellent editor, Elisabeth Schmitz. I would especially like to thank my mother for her daily, unswerving encouragement, enthusiasm, intelligence, and faith.
A GROVE PRESS READING GROUP GUIDE
THE PLEASING HOUR
LILY KING
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
We hope that these discussion questions
will enhance your reading group’s exploration
of Lily King’s The Pleasing Hour. They are
meant to stimulate discussion, offer new viewpoints,
and enrich your enjoyment of the book.
More reading group guides and additional information, including
summaries, author tours, and author sites for
other fine Grove Press titles, may be found on
our Web site, www.groveatlantic.com.
DISCUSSION POINTS
1. Discuss the moral implications of Rosie’s sister, Sarah, accepting the “gift” of Rosie’s child. Which sister is more naive to think that the adoption will be easy? Why does Rosie choose to become an au pair after being deprived of mothering her own son? Is it painful for her to care for someone else’s children? Or, is it a necessary outlet for her flood of maternal instincts? Some would argue that Rosie herself is still a child despite having given birth. When does Rosie seem the most childlike and vulnerable? In what ways or in what situations does she seem older than her years?
2. In what ways does the language barrier heighten Rosie’s perceptions and make her more instinctual toward her host family in Paris? How does it affect her initial reactions to Nicole, Marc, and the Tivot children? What clues does Rosie rely upon when she fails to grasp the family’s French? Recall Rosie’s feelings of confidence and superiority when she easily adjusts to Spanish and serves as translator during the family’s trip to Spain. Discuss the complex relationship between language and power throughout the book.
3. Discuss the nuanced portraits the author draws of Odile, Lola, and Guillaume Tivot. How does she explore the disparate experiences siblings can have growing up in the same family? What accounts for the children’s vastly different temperaments and degrees of allegiance with Nicole and Marc? How does the author use the kids’ reactions to the bullfights in Spain as a way of further revealing their different dispositions and approaches toward life?
4. During her time on the Tivots’ houseboat, Rosie is terribly intimidated by Nicole, who is critical and difficult to please. But as the novel progresses, similarities are revealed in the characters’ pasts. Both Rosie and Nicole, for example, lost their mothers early. How does this loss affect each of the women? What else do Rosie and Nicole have in common despite their differences?
5. Recall the change Rosie senses in Nicole during their travels in Spain and her feeling that the trip had “loosened things” inside Nicole. After their return, Rosie believes that Nicole has come to trust her, yet she also suspects that Nicole knows about her affair with Marc. Is it possible that both of Rosie’s insights are correct? Do you think Lola told Nicole that she saw Rosie and Marc holding hands? How do you account for the change in Nicole toward the end of the book? Why do you think she softens toward Rosie and toward Marc?
6. Trace the development of the women’s relationship, and discuss how Rosie’s presence affects Marc and Nicole’s marriage. How does Rosie act as a condui
t for Marc and Nicole? How does Rosie’s love for Marc change him in Nicole’s eyes?
7. Was Rosie really in love with Marc? He with her? Or were they using each other in various ways? Do you think that Rosie is just another au pair under Marc’s belt? And did Nicole encourage their affair, want it to happen? What reasons would she have for that? What did Nicole learn from the way in which Rosie loved Marc?
8. What are Nicole’s true motives in encouraging Rosie to live with and care for Lucie Quenelle in Plaire? Is she protecting her marriage, helping Lucie, or giving Rosie the gift of a warm mother figure and friend? What is the effect of Rosie growing close to Lucie and learning about Nicole’s history? Is it possible that Nicole hoped Lucie would tell Rosie about her past?
9. The book offers detailed portraits of two marriages: Marcelle and Octave’s and Nicole and Marc’s. Compare and contrast the dynamics of each relationship. Do the similarities suggest that daughters are destined to repeat the marital patterns of their mothers? Why are both women so disappointed in their husbands? How do Octave and Marc react to their wives’ emotional distance? Do you think that Nicole and Marc’s marriage is as ill-fated as Marcelle and Octave’s? Or is there still hope for their relationship?
10. Leslie, the other American fille Rosie meets, says: “The French have a totally different definition of marriage.” Do you agree? Can one glean from the marriages depicted in this book what that definition might be?
11. Discuss the theme of unrequited love throughout the novel. Recall Octave’s steadfast loyalty toward Marcelle; Père Frederi Lafond’s obsession for Marie-Jo; Nicole’s passion for her first boyfriend, Stephane; and Odile’s infatuation with the sculptor Isabelle. Does the book suggest that we are drawn toward those who refuse to return our love? Compare and contrast these characters’ reactions to rejection and loss. How do their disappointments shape their choices and futures?
12. Recall the “psychology test” Rosie gives Nicole and Marc in Spain, asking them to rank the people in a scenario from most admirable to most despicable. Apply the test to the characters in The Pleasing Hour. Which character do you find the most admirable? Which the least? Why? What traits do you most admire in people? What traits do you find the most deplorable or unforgivable?