by M. E. Kerr
“That’s C. He always waits until the others are finished.”
“So that’s what he’s up to? What does C stand for?”
I got off the bike. I told her Nevada’s theory about not naming things you didn’t want to get attached to.
“They’re just guard dogs,” I said. “Do you always get up this early?”
“This isn’t early. I’ve already been to town.”
“What’s there to do in town at this hour?” Nothing much was open before nine.
“What do you care? First you think I’m going to buy you a shirt, and next you want to know all my business.”
She was smiling, though; she seemed to have this game in her.
So I blurted out, “Next I wonder if you want to go to a movie Sunday night.”
“Oh, you do? How come you do now? Uncle Ben said you might have other things to do than show me the sights.”
“You could come with me and a friend.”
“The rock thrower?”
“No. It’s a male friend.”
“What movie?”
“I don’t know what’s playing.”
“So you just want my company?”
“Yes.”
“How are we going to get there, on your bicycle?”
“It’s your Uncle Ben’s bicycle.”
“Am I going to go there on the handlebars?”
“What does it matter how we go there?”
“Uncle Ben said maybe you were embarrassed because you don’t have a car to take me in, and that’s why you might not ask me places.”
“Uncle Ben might not know we can walk from here to town.”
“Or Franklin can take us.”
“Or Franklin can take us.”
“I accept,” she said.
“What kind of movies do you like?”
“I don’t like guns going off and people bleeding.”
“Do you like comedies?”
“Some comedies…. Look! C’s eating now.”
I got back on my bike. “Then all is well…. When the local paper comes out tomorrow, it’ll list the movies. You can pick the one we’ll see.”
“Where are you off to?” she asked.
“First you want to buy me a shirt, and next you want to know all my business,” I said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
FOURTEEN
“I SEE YOU CHANGED your mind, Lang.”
“You mean about Huguette?”
I hadn’t heard him coming. I was chopping wood, helping the groundsman clear away the old trees that had fallen down near the road. Nevada was paying me twenty dollars an hour.
“She said you’re taking her to a movie Sunday.”
I leaned on the axe and wiped my brow with the back of my hand. There was no sweat on him. He was all in black, per usual, a Gitane hanging from his lips.
“Yes. My friend’s joining us.”
“So she said. Does he live out here?”
I told him Alex’s name, and that he was playing in Hamlet, so he would come out late Saturday night and go back Monday morning.
“How old is he?”
“Nineteen.”
“Does he drink?”
“Neither of us drinks.”
“You can take the Aurora. You might want to go someplace after for dinner.”
“Thanks anyway, Mr. Nevada. We’d prefer to walk.”
I didn’t want to be indebted to him, or want him to think it was the beginning of “the deal” he’d set forth that Monday.
He reached into his pocket. “Since you’re walking, you might want to eat at The Palm. It’s down the street from the theaters. They’re known for their steaks, and their lobsters.” He pulled out a leather wallet.
I shook my head. “It’ll be our treat,” I said. “It won’t be a regular thing. Just this once.”
“That would be an expensive treat.”
“I was thinking we could come back to the cottage after. I’d pick up some pizza. She might like to try our food.”
“They have pizza all over France, even in the sticks,” he said. “I think she’d enjoy going out.” He took several hundred-dollar bills from his wallet. “Just this once.”
He held out the money.
“No thanks. Maybe we’ll pick up Chinese food.”
“Or Lucy could make a light supper for you.”
“My mother has Sundays off,” I said.
He said, “I see…. You won’t let anyone help you, is that it?”
“I figured she’d do what we do normally.”
“The cottage is very small for the three of you and your mother,”
“My mother has a date,” I said. He looked as surprised as I’d felt when she told me about it. But she’d waved her hands as though she was shooing away a fly and mumbled something about not that kind of date. The only place she ever went was to the Presbyterian Church on Main Street. I figured she’d met a friend there, maybe several people. Maybe she was going out with a group. I doubted that she’d be dating a man. Not so soon. She’d just said good-bye to one; she’d said she always found Mr. Not Quite Right, instead of Right himself.
Nevada said, “I have a dinner date too. I’m renewing old acquaintances to introduce to Huguette, so I appreciate this.”
“It’s just this one time, though.”
“I heard you…. If you want to come back to Roundelay, you may. But please leave by eleven thirty.”
Alex would be ecstatic. I couldn’t refuse that offer.
“Thanks,” I said. “We might.” We would. I was sure of that.
I started to pick up the axe and he said, “One more thing, Lang.”
“Sir?”
“I know what Huguette’s up to.” He pronounced her name the way she said you’d get nothing pronouncing it that way. “She took over the feeding of the rottweilers so she could leave the house early mornings. She goes into town. To call him, I suspect.”
I thought of the $320 blue shirt.
“I don’t know anything about it,” I said.
He took a long drag from his cigarette and looked back toward Roundelay. “I can control things on this end. I have her passport. But if you should hear anything, or observe anything, I’d appreciate the information.”
“I’ll only be seeing her this one Sunday night,” I said.
“I heard you,” he said, “and you heard me.”
FIFTEEN
AFTER A LOUSY MOVIE starring Al Pacino and a lot of guns, we hiked down the street to a place called Sam’s for pizza. Nevada was right. They did have pizza all over France, even in the sticks. She said it was her favorite food.
“Either that,” Alex said, “or she’s giving us a break. Pizza’s the only cheap thing in this town!”
She’d gone into the women’s. We sat across from each other, grinning. Alex in the same blue blazer with the gold buttons he’d worn the first time I’d ever laid eyes on him in Barnes & Noble.
“I love you, Spartacus,” I said softly. It was one of Tony Curtis’s lines spoken to Kirk Douglas in an old movie. I’d say it to Alex times we were out somewhere together in public. I’d put my foot against his ankle under tables. My eyes would look all over his face…. Our secret games together.
Alex said, “I thought you said she didn’t like movies with guns going off.”
“Guns going off and people bleeding. She picked it.”
“You knew Al Pacino was in it. That should have told you it wouldn’t be a day at the beach.”
She was back.
“Guns going off and people bleeding! Merde! What a movie!”
She sat beside Alex, facing me. “That is the thing I hate about America. You never can feel safe. You can be mugged, stabbed—anything.”
Alex said, “Do you know the difference between stabbing a man and killing a hog?”
“No,” she said.
“One is assaulting with intent to kill, and the other is killing with intent to salt.”
“You!” Huguette said.
Actors need lines written for them. Alex needed a comedy routine, or he’d resort to riddles and puns. He wasn’t a world-class wit, wasn’t comfortable with small talk. Alex was the serious type. It was what I liked about him.
“What about me?” Alex said.
“You and your one-worders.”
“One-liners,” I corrected her.
As we’d walked to the movies, Huguette had told us that Nevada’s French was so bad, she’d asked him to please speak English. Although French was her first language, she spoke English fluently, only occasionally stymied by certain expressions and slang, like one-liner, and like the one the day we’d gone shopping: burrowed a hole instead of burned a hole in her pocket.
We ordered pizza and Caesar salad, and as we ate it, Alex trotted out all his props for socializing. He analyzed her handwriting, a skill he’d picked up from an actor who posed as Dr. Scribe at parties, between jobs. And he did his astrology bit. He was a believer like a lot of actors: superstitious, fascinated by the occult. For my birthday he’d promised to have my horoscope done by this woman who the lead in Hamlet swore was prophetic.
Huguette was born under the sign of Scorpio, which Alex said was the sexiest sign of the Zodiac.
“A lot of good that does me here,” she said. “You know the sign I’d like to be under?”
“What sign?” Alex said.
“The sign that says Aniane.”!
“Uh-oh. Homesick?”
“You both know why I’m here, don’t you?”
I said, “Yes.”
“So now we have the ice crusher.”
“The icebreaker,” I said.
“I can talk about him,” she said.
I said, “Feel free.”
SIXTEEN
BEFORE WE LEFT SAM’S, she showed us a black-and-white photograph of Martin Le Vec, who could have been Leonardo DiCaprio’s double.
As we walked toward Roundelay, she told us that he had hair the color of the terra-cotta canal-tile roofs you saw all over la Moyenne Vallée de l’Hérault, and that his eyes were the color of dried lavender.
Alex would catch my eyes and roll his, wink and grin at the fun of hearing her go on (and on) about Martin. She pronounced it Marten.
He worked at a mas, a farm on the road between Aniane and Gignac.
“Picking grapes?” I said.
Her eyes flashed angrily. “He does everything. He is boss of the crew!”
He was seventeen, six foot three, “and talk about sexy!” she said.
“Talk about it,” Alex teased.
“No! That I do not tell you!”
The rottweilers barked for emphasis.
The gates at Roundelay swung open. The lamps lighting the driveway turned on.
“How did that happen?” I said.
“Franklin sees us,” she said. “And now that we’re here, he can go. I told Uncle Ben we don’t need a chaperone.”
“I would say not,” Alex said, “from all you’ve told us about your feelings for Martin.”
“So now,” she said as we went up the road toward Roundelay, “you tell me your feelings!”
Even though it was dark out, the soft yellow and pale-green colors in the huge living room seemed to wash it with this sunny glow.
While she put on some CDs with Alex’s help, I counted three sofas, two settees, ten chairs, six benches, and four potted trees—all in that one room. It didn’t look the least bit crowded.
On the far wall, near the marble fireplace, there was a portrait of Nevada, a shoulders-up view of him when he was younger, wearing a blue shirt the same color as his eyes. He looked like he’d stepped out of that old movie Wuthering Heights—Heathcliff fresh from the moors, dark and resentful.
Glass doors opened onto the terrace where I’d had lunch six days ago. I could hear the ocean in the distance.
The room was divided by a big round table covered with a yellow linen cloth and piled with books.
While an old Smashing Pumpkins album played, we began pawing through the books, mostly expensive, coffee-table art types.
One book had a photograph of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Alex made some dim-witted crack about what made it lean was that it never got anything to eat.
“No more one-worders!” Huguette said. “I want to hear about you!”
“I believe in pheromones,” said Alex.
“What are they?”
“They’re why you love your Martin. We all give off these secretions that are irresistible to the one who responds to them.”
I knew the play. It was called You Made Me Love You. Before Alex had landed the roles in Hamlet, he had tried out for the Scientist—a minor speaking part. This young genius discovers a way to produce the pheromone that will attract a beautiful girl to a rich sheik who wants to marry her.
“Love”—Alex never forgot anything he’d once memorized—“is what we name it, but it’s pheromones that create this compelling chemistry between two people. It is what pulls you toward another like a nail sliding down to a magnet.”
“Pheromones?” Huguette said. “I never heard of them!”
“One day,” Alex said, “I was in a Barnes & Noble bookstore. The one on Twenty-second and Sixth.”
I felt my stomach turn over.
Alex said, “I was there to hear this old Chet Baker album.”
I tried to get his eye. He wouldn’t look at me. We hadn’t talked about it, but I’d thought he’d have the sense to shut up about us, since we were only seeing her this one night. What was the point?
My mother said once that coming out to strangers was a little like knocking over a wineglass at a dinner party. You stopped the flow of conversation instantly. There was the mop-up; the assurances it wasn’t your fault, it could have happened to anybody—all the boring business of attending to all that.
Then Alex said, “And she was there to hear this new George Michael album.”
“She?” said Huguette. “Who’s she?”
“Lynn”—his father’s name for me. “The love of my life.”
I’d never heard Alex describe our first meeting. I didn’t mind that I was in the third person with a sex change. As he talked, that moment went from the usual glib cover-up to something dizzy and sweet. I knew from his tone he felt it, too.
“So where is she?” Huguette asked at the end.
“She lives in New York.”
Alex used to say that in that closet we all tried so hard to come out of were all the letters you wrote home changing he to she; all the memories of saying “Hi, there!” brightly to someone getting off a train you haven’t seen in ages and want to hug to death; all the secret, long looks across the crowded room; all the times you didn’t say who you were with last night while others did say; all the artifice, evasion, subterfuge, and hiding that goes into being gay.
Alex gave me that look that always made me feel my blood jump in my veins.
Then we heard a low buzzing hum, and Huguette looked at her watch. “Eleven fifteen. Is that Uncle Ben already?”
“He said we had until eleven thirty!”
“Come on,” she said, and we followed her out into the hall, where a tiny screen monitored the action down by the gates.
“It’s the Aurora,” Huguette said, “so it’s Franklin. But what’s this? He has a girl with him.”
I almost didn’t recognize Franklin in a sport coat and pants, instead of the usual dark suit. But I recognized my mother. Franklin had gotten out of the sleek white car and gone around to help her from the passenger seat. He was about to walk her down the path to our cottage.
“He does have a girl with him!” Huguette said. “Where did she come from?”
“The same place I come from,” I told her. “The caretaker’s cottage.”
“Your mother?” Alex said. “Is he her date?”
“It looks that way,” I said. “We’d better go too.”
“But I was just going to ask you about yourself, Lang.”
“Another time,” I said.
My mother was already in her room by the time we got down to the cottage.
There were two bedrooms in the place, mine and hers.
The couch in the small living room was made up with sheets, a cotton blanket, and a pillow. Same as the night before. Same as always when Alex came to visit. A silent reminder from my mother that no matter where we were for the summer, it was her home and we played by her rules.
Alex laughed. “Next week Nyack!”
“Nyack?”
“My parents’ twentieth anniversary, remember? You promised you’d come with me.”
Then he sat down and began taking off his shoes. “I like Huguette,” he said, “but I wish she’d told us about Cali instead of Marten. Maybe next time.”
“There won’t be a next time,” I said.
“How are you going to avoid her? She’s going to be right up there for the rest of the summer.”
“I just am,” I said. “The masquerade is over, although I liked hearing your version of our first meeting.”
“I meant everything I said, Lynn.” He chuckled and held out his arms.
Later, the shock of seeing my mother with Franklin gave me insomnia. I didn’t even know if Franklin was his first name or his last. I only knew he reminded me of one of these snooty salesmen in a high-class men’s store, or a mortician. I couldn’t remember him ever smiling.
I was still awake when I heard the rottweilers announce Nevada’s return.
SEVENTEEN
I WAITED UNTIL MONDAY afternoon, when Alex was on the jitney headed into New York.
Then I said, “Since when do you date Franklin?”
“Since last night. We only went to dinner—a very late dinner thanks to you, Alex, and Huguette.”
“Eugette,” I said. “If you say her name Yougette, you get nothing.”
“We had to wait until you got back to Roundelay.”
“Why didn’t you just say you were going out with him?”
“Look at your face. The answer’s right there.”
“Well, I’m not overjoyed, you’re right. For God’s sake, Mom, he moves like a robot.”
“He’s a little wooden, that’s true, but he’s pleasant.”
“It’s a little hard to take, you with Franklin.”