Miracle

by Deborah Smith

  She owned a day-care facility, a very exclusive one where the fees were high and the children of the rich were taught by the most advanced methods. She was intent on making the world safe for intellectuals, starting with the youngest. Sebastien wasn’t certain that he approved of formal schooling for mere toddlers; he preferred to let them enjoy their innocent ignorance for as long as possible.

  But Marie’s dedication impressed him, as did her independence. Her father was the chief administrator at Sainte Crillion, a hospital of great renown situated in one of the wealthiest suburbs of Paris. She could have lived handsomely on family money and her late husband’s wealth, but she didn’t.

  “My father asked about you before I left to come here,” she told Sebastien. “He hopes that you’ll contact him. He practically spied on you the entire time you were working in America.”

  “I know. Several surgeons told me that they were acquaintances of his. I suspected that they were reporting on my progress.’

  “That doesn’t annoy you?”

  “Your father is no tyrant. I respect him. I was flattered.”

  “He is so impressed with you, Sebastien. The department of cardiac surgery at his hospital is becoming very prominent, I’m sure you know. Father has spoken to the department’s chief surgeon about you. They’d love to have you on staff there. Would you be interested in meeting with him when you return to Paris?”

  “Of course.”

  She looked pleased, smiling at him under darkly lashed eyes nearly devoid of makeup. Her black hair was twisted atop her head in a soft, simple style. Like many French women, she gave the natural look a distinct elegance.

  He found himself wanting to know more about her, wanting to explore the personality that viewed life with such cool control. She was self-absorbed and made no apologies for it.

  “You know, we share many memories,” he told her. “I recall a time when you were tutoring Annette in the violin, practicing together at our home. I was preparing to enter the university and you refused to speak to me because of it.”

  “I was envious! All of the servants kept talking about you—Oh, he’s so advanced for his age! I wanted to compete with you! And, you must understand, I was terribly infatuated with you. You were only two years older, but you seemed so confident and so mysterious. There was an air about you, even then, of great purpose. I wanted to be part of that purpose, whatever it was.”

  “And now?” he asked, propping his chin on one hand. A waiter brought coffee, and she smiled slightly while she stirred cream into hers.

  “Now?” she repeated, her eyes settling on his with businesslike challenge. “Annette says she’s going home tomorrow. Jacques says he’s staying for a few days to make you uncomfortable. What do you think I should do?”

  “Do you know why my brother and sister are angry with me?”

  “Yes. Annette told me.”

  “Do you think they’re right?”

  “I think that you’re one of the few men in the world who never lets sentiment interfere with principle. And that, my dear Sebastien, is why I’m still fascinated with you. Now, what should I do? Go home, or stay here?”

  Sebastien held out his hand. She placed hers in it, cool and still. “Stay here,” he answered. “Definitely.”

  That night he took her to his apartment and to bed, where she surprised him with the ferocity of her needs. She suited him, with her pragmatic tenderness and unhesitant requests, offering her slender, small-breasted body to him much more easily than she would ever offer love.

  He was happy that she stared at his body in awe; happy that she writhed under him, clawing his back with her long, carefully manicured nails; happy that her needs were easy to satisfy. He was frantic for a woman’s touch after being alone for so long; abstinence made it easier not to think about Amy, at least during the most heated moments.

  When Marie came, calling the name of her dead husband, Sebastien was only mildly perturbed. She apologized quickly, and he assured her that he understood. They both realized the truth—this was not about love but about something much simpler and safer. They were perfect together.

  Amy wandered into the kitchen, an economics book under one arm, huge circles under her eyes, her face gaunt. “Cheese toast with pickles. At midnight. Ugh. Are you pregnant or something?”

  Mary Beth chortled. “If I were, the kid’d be wearing a coat hanger by now.”

  “You’re like totally gross.”

  “Nice Valley Girl impression, bitch.” Mary Beth grinned at her. “I made extra cheese toast for you. And here’s a glass of milk. Now sit down and eat. Your half-Jewish mother commands it. How are you feeling?”

  “Better. I think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

  “Don’t tell me you miss that Atwater jerk. I never even met him, but I know the type. He’s not worth missing.”

  “I don’t miss him. I’m glad he’s in California. I hope he never comes back.”

  “Then stop feeling guilty over what happened. The guy preyed on you like a fox on a rabbit, sugar. You never had a chance.”

  “This rabbit didn’t hop too fast. I let him catch me.”

  “So you’re human. So what? Let’s cut classes tomorrow. It’s summertime. We should be sunning our tits, not working.”

  Amy sat down at their battered table and wearily propped her head on one hand. “Nah. When I lay in the sun. I think too much. My moods starts to smell like a dead fish.”

  “A good deodorant would take care of that.”

  That made her smile. She grabbed a pickle slice from a small plate and threw it at Mary Beth. “I like the delicate way you treat my feelings.”

  Mary Beth dodged the pickle and laughed. The poor kid was too nice. Somebody had to look out for her. She sank her teeth into a piece of toast and ripped a bite free with predatory pleasure.

  Amy hunched over a soft drink in the cafeteria of the student center. She had just gotten her grades from a quarter filled with accounting, management science, and economics. Only through agonized efforts had she come out with straight B’s. It galled her to lose her A average; all this time she’d submerged herself in the pursuit of a perfect grade-point average. It had become her holy grail, something she could present to Sebastien if she ever saw him again, proof that she was smart enough and determined enough to be loved.

  She was halfway to her degree, but now she admitted a disturbing truth: Business administration was as exciting as watching Mary Beth’s latest boyfriend blow bubbles in his chocolate milk, which he was doing right now with great gusto.

  Beau was another athlete; a member of the track team, lean and rangy where Harlan had been bulky and squat. Mary Beth made no excuses for her puzzling taste in men. “I don’t need an intellectual fuck,” she had once explained. “I want my men hard, I want ’em sweaty, and I want ’em dumb.” Beau qualified.

  Mary Beth, dressed in a pink tank top and overalls, threw both sandaled feet onto the cafeteria table and reared back in her chair, watching Amy. “Business isn’t for you, sugar,” she announced. “You can recite all of Joan Rivers’s best jokes and make ’em funnier than she does. You act out your dumb Broadway songs when you think I’m not around. Oh, hell yes, don’t look shocked. One time I peeked through your keyhole and saw you doing the soundtrack from The King and I.”

  “Oh, no. I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Hey, you make a great Yul Brynner.”

  “That stuff’s just for fun.”

  “You ought to switch your major to drama.”

  “No! No way!”

  “So this fall you’re going to take another miserable quarter of business subjects, and I’m going to have to watch you be sexually unfulfilled, introverted, a workaholic, and depressed over your grades. I think I’ll strangle myself with one of my many fake gold necklaces.”

  “I’d be glad to help you strangle yourself.”

  “Say it. Comeon. I’ve been coaching you for months. Say it. Let me have it, sugar.”

 
“Oh, all right. You’re a heartless slut.”

  Beau laughed and snuffled milk up his nose accidently. Or on purpose. It was hard to tell.

  Mary Beth grinned at her. “Bravo! You’re ready to progress to your next stage of therapy, which means finding a good boy and getting laid.”

  Amy straightened angrily. “I’ve told you why I don’t want to date anyone. I don’t want to talk about ‘getting laid.’ Sometimes, Mary Beth, you’re really cruel.”

  Mary Beth looked apologetic. The reality of Mary Beth Vandergard, outcast debutante, was that she often embarrassed herself and was so aggressive that she scared most people off. And she didn’t like that about herself.

  She pulled her feet down and leaned across the table, her eyes somber. “Sugar, you’re going to get your little heart busted all to hell. I think you’re the dearest person who’s ever learned to put up with me, and I don’t want to see you get hurt. Please, please, forget about this French doctor and get on with your life.”

  “I can’t. You don’t understand how it was between us. I have this feeling, this intuition, that he wouldn’t mind seeing me again. I’m going to France next week and I’m going to find him. Don’t you see, Mary Beth? If you love somebody this much, you have to believe that he loves you back, even if he didn’t say so. At least, there are some things I have to talk to him about. Explain some stuff.”

  Mary Beth arched a blond brow wickedly. “I oughta hold your head against the TV set so Oral Roberts can have at you. He’ll slap you right between the eyes and yell, ‘Heal,’ and you’ll be fine.”

  “I’m going to find Sebastien,” Amy repeated, nodding firmly. “And then everything will be fine.”

  Amy parked behind the château and went into the square concrete building that housed the winery offices. The plump little woman behind the receptionist’s desk beamed at her.

  “Lord have mercy, look at you. Maisie said you’d gone off and gotten real grand, and she wasn’t kidding.”

  The woman’s admiring eyes scanned Amy’s flowing white skirt and cowl-necked blouse. Amy swallowed hard and forced herself to act nonchalant. “Is Mr. Beaucaire around? I’d like to talk to him, if he has a minute.”

  “Well, shoot, I’m sure you could talk to him if he were still here. But he went back to France a week ago, and we’ve got a new manager. You remember Gordon Thompson, don’t you? Mr. Beaucaire promoted him.”

  Amy sat down limply on a couch.

  Suddenly the door opened, and a small sweaty man came inside, wiping his forehead with the back of one hand. A Panama hat was propped on the back of his grizzled hair. His face had a perpetually sour expression. Amy recalled Gordon Thompson well. One of the vineyard assistants, he’d been a tyrant.

  “Mr. Thompson,” the receptionist called cheerfully. “Look who’s here to see you.” As she explained Amy’s visit Amy stood up and forced herself to smile at the man. He examined her, frowning.

  “Didn’t you get fired?” he asked sharply.

  “No. I … I had some personal emergencies, and I had to quit.”

  “Wait a minute. Wait one minute. I remember what was going on with you, because Mr. Beaucaire was mad about it.”

  “I wasn’t in any trouble. Look, all I need is Mr. Beaucaire’s—”

  “You shacked up with Dr. de Savin.”

  Amy could feel her face growing hot. “Dr. de Savin was my friend—”

  “Yeah, right. And now you’re trying to hunt him down, I bet. Look, I know how Mr. Beaucaire felt about that situation. There’s a name for girls who take advantage of their jobs that way. You just haul your hot little ass out of here.”

  “I don’t think Dr. de Savin would want you to talk to me this way. I don’t care what you think of me, but I’m sure he’ll care, because we’re good friends. In fact, I’m going to visit him in France next week.”

  The new manager smirked at her. “Oh? You’re gonna visit him and his wife?”

  The last word was a sledgehammer. Amy stared at him in a dumb shock. “What did you say?”

  “I said wife. Dr. de Savin just got married. He married some woman he’d known all his life. A French lady. So I guess you and him aren’t such close friends anymore, huh?”

  Her mind was frozen. “He wouldn’t get married. He wouldn’t.”

  The receptionist cleared her throat awkwardly. “It’s sure true. Mr. Beaucaire told me all about how they had a nice Catholic ceremony down in Africa. Mr. Beaucaire was invited to it.”

  “Guess you didn’t get an invitation, huh?” Thompson asked.

  Fierce pride welded her bones together so that she could stand still. “Well, shoot,” she said dryly, “You give a man the best two weeks of your life and two years later he forgets you’re alive.”

  Thompson looked puzzled. “Huh? He forgot a long time ago.”

  “That’s the joke, see?” Amy smiled at him. “Whoops.” She peered at his head. “I better slow down. I guess the traffic’s a little heavy in there.” A harsh hand was clawing inside her. “So the doc got hitched? An African wedding. Hmmm. Must have been hell trying to rent a loin cloth to match his tux.”

  “I got a snapshot,” the receptionist told her, staring at her oddly. She opened a drawer. “Mr. Beaucaire gave it to me because I wanted a picture of him. It’s at the wedding. It’s got Dr. de Savin and his wife in it.”

  Amy marched over to the desk and studied the photograph. She stared at the woman she had first seen in the photo Mr. Beaucaire had shown her. “She’s got a nice smile. I like the way her eye teeth curve down into little points. Funny how you can’t see her reflection in the mirror.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Thompson asked.

  “Nothing. Hey, the doc looks great, for a guy who just married one of the undead. She’s gonna be a real drag at the beach. Not to mention that embarrassing little problem with garlic.”

  Thompson snorted in disgust. “Next time you go fishing for the big ones, you better use fresh bait. Now get out of here.”

  Amy walked slowly to the door. With her ice-cold hand resting on the knob, she turned back. A list of Mary Beth’s best obscenities ran through her mind, but they weren’t her style. And Thompson’s insults didn’t matter to her anyway. Nothing mattered except the knowledge that Sebastien was beyond her reach forever. “Thank y’all for the information,” she said softly, and left.

  “Sugar? Amy? Poor honey, comeon. Comeon now.” Mary Beth sounded wretched. She tugged at Amy’s arm. “You can’t sit in the backyard all night. And I’m afraid you’re gonna set yourself on fire.”

  “Roasted in lighter fliud. What a way to go.”

  Hiccuping between sobs, Amy dropped another poster onto the pile of ashes, squirted liquid from a small can, then struck a match and tossed it. Blue flames engulfed the poster only inches from her updrawn feet. Amy took a swig from a bottle of wine. “We now say good-bye to the lovely province of Normandy.”

  In seconds Normandy was indistinguishable from its charred predecessors. Amy leaned back, wiped her arm across her eyes, then reached for another poster from the trash can she’d carried outside. “We now say good-bye to—what’s this one—” she squinted in the dim light from the back porch, trying to read the poster, “the Alps. Good-bye, Alps.”

  Mary Beth took the poster away from her. “Time to go inside, firebug. You can finish this tomorrow.”

  Amy dropped the wine bottle and hugged her knees. She cried raggedly, her head tilted forward. Mary Beth sat down beside her and draped an arm over her shoulders. “It’ll get better, honey. I’ve been dumped by some of the biggest heartbreakers in Atlanta, so I know what I’m saying. After a while you feel fine again, and then you go out and kick some poor innocent guy’s ass to get even with men in general.”

  “I don’t want to get even. I still love him. I’ll always love him.”

  “I guess you better drink some more, then.” Mary Beth retrieved the bottle and looked at it. “Oh, God. You bought de Savin wine. What
are you trying to do—rip your heart out?”

  “It feels like I already have.” She rocked back and forth. “What do you do when you know there won’t ever be anybody else as wonderful?”

  “You promise yourself that you’ll never love anybody that much again. And you hope you’re right, because it’s not worth all the trouble.”

  “Never again. But he was worth all the trouble. I swear that he was.”

  “He must really have been something special, then, I envy you.”

  Mary Beth began crying, too. She put her head against Amy’s, and they held hands. Amy shut her eyes. Never again.

  It was one of those nasty days that sometimes struck northern Georgia in the cusp of late autumn. The temperature hung just below seventy-five degrees, the sky was a deep, clear blue, and the air smelled like dried wildflowers.

  There was no excuse for staying inside. Amy dipped one hand into the box of cereal that was balanced on her stomach, while she stared dully at the television set. Her bare heels were a little numb from resting on the arm of the couch for too long; she crossed them at the ankle, right over left, the most monumental decision of the day, so far. A corn flake fell on her T-shirt, and she let it stay there.

  Mary Beth came in and punched off the TV. “No more bellyaching,” she announced. “I’m out of sympathy. You’ve been like this for more than three months. Are you going to pass any of your courses this quarter?”

  “Not unless somebody uses a big grade curve. Like maybe half the circumference of the earth.”

  Mary Beth threw herself into a squeaky chair they’d purchased at a garage sale. Her rose-hued nails rapped imperiously on its scarred arms. “Well, at least you’re not bawling over your damned herb plants anymore. Or burning posters of France.” She sighed. “Now you’re just concentrating on proving that you’re worthless.”

  Amy set her cereal box on the floor, turned on her side, and hugged a throw pillow to her chest. “Yeah, it’s straight from here to a career as a game show hostess.”