Lorna Mott Comes Home

by Diane Johnson

  “Out of the question,” Amy snarled.

  * * *

  —

  The day was fine; no one had worried about the California weather or made alternate plans for rain, though there were uncharacteristic clouds. The brief ceremony would be at 11:00 a.m., and Phil Train came at about ten to have coffee with Ran and Amy and try to cheer them a little with the idea that society’s (and God’s) designated forms preserved those aspects of human existence worth preserving, and by acceding to them, even with whatever reservations, they were helping civilization along.

  Gilda stayed in her room until it was time. She would have liked one or two of her friends to be there, but everyone had firmly nixed it. Julie was invited but said she was down with the flu. Only Carla was cheery. She did Gilda’s hair into a fat, shining braid and zipped up the dress and seemed over the moon about the whole thing.

  Gilda understood her parents’ general air of false cheer and felt it herself; she certainly didn’t want to get married but would be polite about it. She knew she didn’t have to go off anywhere alone with Ian afterward, and that was a relief, but she also felt slightly sick to her stomach. She heard the tires on the gravel of the parking area, probably the Aymeses.

  She still stayed in her room. At a little before eleven Carla came in and hugged her. “Your dad’s out there—there’ll be a ten-yard wedding march from the lanai to the gazebo, what do you think of a few strains of Mozart?”

  Gilda wondered where Amy was. She could hear Ursula, Ian, and another voice, perhaps Ian’s aunt, greeting the Reverend Train. She could hear Carla taking them through the garden to the little gazebo where Ian and the Reverend Train were to stand. Finally Amy came in and hugged her. Gilda noticed that her mother’s eyes were red and swollen.

  Outside, standing in the garden with Ian, Ursula thought the Motts were getting on with things a little precipitately; they were not in the right spirit. She looked around for Amy, who soon came out of the house with Gilda. This also didn’t seem quite in the spirit; Gilda ought to be concealed somewhere, then emerge on Ran’s arm to the strains of a wedding march.

  Gilda and Ian nodded to each other in a cousinly fashion. The dress looked pretty on her, Ursula thought, but in the sunlight its ambiguous color was maybe a little too gray, not flattering with her pallor. The girl had a determined look, and a polite, self-conscious smile. Ursula kissed her. Amy led them the few steps through the lanai to the garden, and Carla put on some music. It all seemed lacking in some sense of occasion, seemed peremptory, nothing you could put your finger on, but sort of atheist intellectual and Soviet. Carla led Ian off to stand by the Reverend Train, and Amy went to find Ran, without any of them knowing why these ceremonial forms were prevailing over their inner reluctances and general dislike for what they were up to.

  Ran could hardly dissemble. His eyes were filled with tears; but he took Gilda’s arm and they moved from the lanai into the garden to the strains of the overture to Figaro, a walk of a minute or two toward the gazebo through the blooming roses and peonies and new hydrangeas and an unexpected efflorescence of blue dahlias, hard to grow in Woodside, that seemed just to have appeared to line the path like courtiers or police officials. Something blue. Ran and Gilda did not keep time to the music but plunged along the few paces toward Gilda’s fate.

  Ian’s personal beauty, new blue blazer, and serious mien reassured Amy and Ran, as did the gentle, understanding smile of Phil Train, standing next to Ian, welcoming them and mentioning Holy Matrimony, as his role obliged. Ursula had written out a simple, formulaic vow which no one had objected to, now to be recited by Ian and Gilda.

  “I, Ian Geoffrey Pearson Aymes, do take you, Gilda Jennifer Honor Mott, as my wedded wife to have and to hold till death do us part.”

  “I, Gilda Jennifer Honor Mott, do take you, Ian Geoffrey Pearson Aymes, as my wedded husband to have and to hold till death do us part.”

  No lightning came down to strike them. Phil Train pronounced them husband and wife with the authority vested in him; there was an exchange of gold bands, Ian gave Gilda a brief, correct kiss, and that was it. A low sob came from someone; people often cry at weddings.

  Afflicted by a strange paralysis of will, Amy had had recourse to caterers for the dozen people for lunch. Carla had a lot to do as it was, so they just ordered in the cold salmon, salad, asparagus, and cake, leaving a happier impression of hospitality than had the tense faces at the brief ceremony. Gilda, from long experience of being the sprightly child at her parents’ gatherings, reverted to that mode and seemed to forget that she was the bride. Ian didn’t lose his solemnity but did talk to Amy and Ran about general subjects and soccer. He called Ran “sir.” Seated next to her new husband at the lunch, Gilda told him briefly about the school her parents had found for her in Saint-Cloud, France, where she’d be going in a few weeks. This momentarily stunned Ian, who was dismayed enough about Julie’s planned absence, but relieved him when he thought about it.

  “It should be great,” he agreed.

  After lunch, and coffee in the garden, Ian left with his mother and aunt, with handshakes and smiles all around and a chaste kiss for Gilda, and Gilda went to her room to change out of her dress and take off the ring. When she was gone, Amy broke down a little and cried for a few seconds into Ran’s lapels.

  40

  Harvey Avon had been impressed with Curt’s wife; she seemed nice and also smart, understanding what he was talking about when he clarified a few of Curt’s ideas for her. Since she was the nominal owner of Curt’s stake in Mott Development, her grasp and cooperation were propitious. She seemed to have heard about some of their holdings from Curt, who was apparently not one of those husbands who kept his work at the office, and she had expressed an interest in keeping a finger in the pie, not merely accepting the income but involving herself in the management decisions. This could have been a pain in the ass, but Avon, who might have simplified his presentation for most women, saw she could understand the full complexity of their situation. She seemed especially knowledgeable about the hydroponic software they had developed, and was interested in Avon’s plans to expand it to the brick-and-mortar phase, specifically installing a small test facility somewhere near Colma, where he had bought land.

  “Tell me more about what Curt owes and the value of his shares now,” she asked. Believing in Curt’s vision, she figured that if only she had some money, she could follow it up. His ventures would repay further investment. She was captivated by Curt’s—and Avon’s—imaginative range. She was impressed by Avon, and also had her own good ideas about applications for the plant material Curt’s hydroponic unit would produce in shimmering vertical strings of saladlike leaves.

  “I’ll get the financial statements to you,” Avon said, wondering why he hadn’t approached her before. “Curt’s father doesn’t seem that willing to get involved.”

  “I don’t know that he controls the purse strings at his house,” Donna said. “Who else do you have on board?” He gave her the several names, including her former brother-in-law Dick Willover. Only after he’d gone did Donna think of one way of getting some capital, taking out a second mortgage on her free and clear house. She’d talk to the bank about it, and then ask for some of Avon’s practical smarts for getting her ideas about plant protein into production.

  Later she also consulted Amy, who understood investment and banking issues, and who seemed almost maternally pleased with Donna’s grasp of her business situation, though not surprised, since Donna did have an MBA. But in the end, Donna was unable to get a loan on the house, now deemed dangerously overvalued—an ominous indicator of the problems that seemed to be looming in the economy in general.

  Despite this, Mott Development thrived. Donna was almost unprepared for the speed with which money began to pour in, jolted forward by a remarkable event, a huge investment by a firm in Bahrain that had learned about Mott Development innovati
ons at an agro-tech fair in Singapore. That location, Singapore, when they learned of it, gave them hope that it had been Curt himself at the agro-tech fair, and it revived their notion of beginning there to look for him, picking up the trail from the fair, Singapore hotels, and airline records.

  The money came from start-up investors—Willover, Donna, Harvey Avon, Amy, and a few others, but within months also from the profitability of the product, this gooey plant protein extracted and distilled from ropes of sparkling green leaves dangling above the hydroponic vats in Colma. Donna drove down to look at them twice a week like a responsible entrepreneur, and more than once dusted or dabbed with her hankie at specks that had fallen on the spotless stainless-steel tanks. She interviewed, or was interviewed by, manufacturers of food products, plastics, toys, and vending machines, all exploring uses for her nourishing protoplasmic blobs of green stuff. Simple as it was to produce, she and Harvey Avon, and their maintenance guy, Juan, couldn’t even meet the demand. She and Harvey began talking it over at dinners and, later, in bed.

  * * *

  —

  The summer did not bring much change to Gilda’s silhouette, slightly disappointing and slightly relieving her. She insisted on going to diabetes camp as usual in the middle of August, against the strenuous objections of her father, and no one but the director even knew her condition. “I’m not going to let this ruin my life,” she insisted. She hung out with her friends in Woodside and read War and Peace and the orations of Demosthenes, and some Greek plays in line with her plan to do classics someday. She and Ian never spoke, not for any special reason, they just had nothing to say, but exchanged some laconic emails.

  Ian tried not to think about his basic life situation, facing a new, notoriously demanding educational institution in the fall, hoping to continue with soccer there (time consuming), and with two women—one an actual wife, though in name only, the other hot and in need of a lot of sexual attention—three women if you counted his mother, who required phone calls and dinner at least once a week, and he had no money. How quickly things had evolved from just the beginning of the summer, when he lived peaceably in Mountain View and took classes and played soccer with other guys.

  * * *

  —

  August drew on. In the cemetery of Pont-les-Puits the work of the forensic analysts was nearly done, and preparations began for a reburial celebration to be held early in the New Year, which left time to get in touch with all the descendants, find donors for the cost of processing the bones still unclaimed, and organize the wine and food, which was to be elaborate and revive or maintain the culinary reputation of the town. Famous chefs had been recruited from America and England as well as France.

  Armand-Loup consulted again the Woods papers in the mairie, studying the artist’s words about selling his works, and especially the role assigned to Lorna. He went over the passage a number of times and came to a new conclusion, that not only was Lorna to get a fee for selling the village’s Woods painting, she was to become in effect Woods’s agent for future dealings, the actual transactions to be conducted by the guy in Chicago, but with a cut for Lorna if she found buyers. He was glad about this, some income for Lorna, not only because it took the heat off of himself, but from genuine goodwill. His thoughts warmed tenderly at the recollection of his visit to her drab San Francisco apartment, her looking so distracted, and her hair so different; she could use some money. He missed her. He brought his discovery about the legalities to Mayor Barbara Levier, who promised to investigate. Madame Dumas, très bien! It would come as a relief to them all if someone took charge of the pictures still stored at the hotel and dealt with the encroaching PR demands of Woods’s posthumous career.

  * * *

  —

  In Woodside, Julie, Gilda, and Carla prepared for the fall semester in France, in a suburb of Paris where it was unlikely Gilda would meet anyone they knew. Ran and Amy had convinced Julie to shift focus, giving up Greece and Peace and Conflict, and she was now enrolled, at their expense, in Global Cities, Urban Realities, also a UC Berkeley program, but in Paris, which they assured her was more useful and prestigious in the long run, and situated conveniently in the Parisian seventh arrondissement, where she along with Carla would be able to keep an eye on Gilda.

  The young women were intensely excited at their prospective adventure, though Julie’s feelings were mixed: she expected to miss Ian, but she had positive memories of France from childhood visits to Grandma Lorna when Lorna lived in the big house in the French village and they had had amazing roast-pig feasts and a man came in and cooked for them all—pie was what she remembered best. Carla had never been abroad, and she was apprehensive, foreseeing her inability to speak French, getting lost, and catching giardia and other untreatable stomach bugs from the undrinkable water.

  * * *

  —

  On the website ParisChezVous, Amy had found an apartment in Neuilly for Carla and Gilda, and large enough for three now that Julie could commute from the seventh. Amy flew with them to Paris to settle them in. They allowed a few days before school began to enjoy the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, the Bateaux Mouches gliding around the islands in the Seine. The apartment was more than acceptable, a roomy Haussmannian place with carved mahogany furniture and an iron-grilled elevator, and lumpy beds with thin mattresses. Gilda had to buy school uniforms, which she got prudently overlarge at Carla’s suggestion. Carla was to cook dinners and was enrolled in a language course at the Alliance Française during the day. They bought a blackboard and put it up in the kitchen to keep everyone’s schedules straight, and conjugate French verbs on.

  Ran’s old friend the French physician Xavier Karas—they were in medical school together—had been contacted to oversee Gilda’s health while she was in France. In Paris, she had agreed to a weekly visit to Dr. Karas, who wasn’t an obstetrician but could monitor her situation, with his colleague the ob-gyn guy Olivier de Panapieu standing by in case something went wrong. Amy, usually comfortable with foreign travel, was beset by images of dreaded European germs menacing Gilda and the fetus, though she gallantly controlled her anxieties and didn’t mention them to the travelers.

  Gilda’s new school, Saint Ann’s British School, was in Saint-Cloud, twenty minutes to the west of central Paris. As an American and pregnant, Gilda was conscious of her outsider status at Saint Ann’s and didn’t expect to make friends. Her schoolmates, mostly daughters of English businessmen in Paris for a year or two, some French girls perfecting their English, and some random Greeks and Lithuanians, were friendly nonetheless, as far as it went, and her teachers seemed to like her even if she was behind in a few subjects. The school allowed for Americans always being behind. Yet it was odd and disagreeable to be called Mrs. Aymes in class where the rest of the girls were called by their names: Vèronique or Hélène or Marigold. Gilda wondered, if she had been permitted to go on at Saint Waltraud’s, would they have stopped calling her Gilda and switched to Mrs. Aymes?

  But apart from that, Gilda had never been so happy, so enraptured with the romance of history. Everything Parisian thrilled her—the statues in the Louvre, the old-timey carpets in the halls of her building, the buckled sidewalks where the roots of ancient trees pushed up. She had discovered there were concerts and paintings in churches, no matter which one, though they were all Catholic; she took to going into any old church to see what she would find. She loved a composer named Pergolesi whom she and Carla heard at Saint-François de Marie-Rose. Above all, she was amazed to see how many churches there were, and how old, and how beautiful. She got interested in the tombs within them, their half-effaced inscriptions hard to read, sometimes topped with carven effigies—sometimes in armor! Sometimes the effigies were naked, to symbolize how you came into the world and left it. She began to feel that her parents, though loving and intelligent, were not especially tuned in to all this, and neither was Saint Waltraud’s. Californians were not as cultivated as Europea
ns were.

  For her whole life, she had had to allow for her physical condition, so pregnancy was just one more pathology she could cope with by ignoring it as much as possible. Sometimes it rushed in on her that this Paris idyll would end, she would have to go back to America and be a mother, whatever they decided to do with the baby. Whereas the idea of a baby had pleased her at first, she had begun to regret it and put it out of her mind as much as she could. By the end of September, she still didn’t show too much; she just looked thicker. She loved it here. Maybe she could come back after—afterward.

  Carla, too, was in heaven, entranced by the foreignness, all the people blithely, guiltlessly smoking, the lovely wine, above all not having to get in a car and tool endlessly back and forth on Highway 280 between Woodside and San Francisco. She felt dumb at French but didn’t care—it was pretty close to Spanish—table, tabla, table, no big deal. Je instead of yo. Easy. Some French words were better—je suis désolée, for example, was a wonderful phrase, more expressive than lo siento. Desolate.

  Julie hated Paris; she was on hold; this was a break from real life. She didn’t like not being able to speak the language and thought knowing about the many kings all called Louis didn’t seem useful to her future life. She hated the smoking, hated cheese, missed Ian and lovemaking—the latter not something she could discuss with Gilda and Carla, who had no idea she had seen Ian more often than meeting a time or two for casual lunch. And now the love of her life was three thousand miles away. She and Ian had long, passionate conversations on FaceTime about when they could be reunited. They never discussed that he was married now, and Julie tried not to think about that. “I love you, I love you,” she sobbed at night into her pillow as silently as possible, so the others couldn’t hear.