“You’d better get into Barnard or NYU,” he warned her on the drive back into the city. “I’m not letting you go away for that long again.” She didn’t answer him for a few minutes and was looking quietly out the window, and then she turned to him with a serious look of determination that he had never seen in her before. She looked into her father’s eyes, and what he saw for the first time was a woman and not a child.
“I’m not going to NYU or Barnard, Papa. I’m going to apply to the Ecole Hoteliere in Lausanne.” She said it in a quiet voice. It was the same school he had gone to, but the last thing he wanted for her now was a career in the hotel industry. She would have to sacrifice too much and have no other life. “I looked them up online, and they have a two-year program that I qualify for, and one of those years is an internship in the industry. I want to run the hotel with you one day, and I have a lot of good ideas we can even try out right now.”
“I used to dream about your running the hotel with me,” he said sadly. “But I want you to have a better life. You won’t have a life. You’ll never have time for a husband and children. Look at me, I work eighteen-hour days. I want more for you than that.”
“That’s all I want and what I love,” Heloise said emphatically and looked like she meant it as she gazed intently at her father. “I want to work with you, not just fooling around like I did as a kid. And I can take it over when you get old.” She had thought it all out and was completely sure that she wanted to work at the hotel, after what she’d seen that summer in Europe.
“I’m not that old yet, thank you very much,” he said, although he was touched. “And I want a better life for you than working eighteen-hour days for the rest of your life. You just want that now because it’s all you’ve ever known.” The hotel was familiar to her, but he wanted her to have a saner life than his own.
“No, I want it because I just saw every great hotel in Paris, and I love what you’ve done with the Vendome. Maybe together we can make it even better. I love living at the hotel and working there. It’s the only life I ever wanted.” As she said it, he felt acutely guilty for not getting her out of the hotel more often. He didn’t want her adult world confined to a small hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He spent the rest of the drive into the city trying to convince her she was wrong.
“Why are you saying that?” she questioned him finally. “Don’t you like what you do, Papa?”
“I love it for myself but not for you. I want you to have so much more.” And then as he said it, he heard himself saying all the same things his parents had said to him thirty years before. He was giving her all the same reasons they had given him, wanting him to be a banker or a doctor or a lawyer. They had done everything to dissuade him from the Ecole Hoteliere, just as he was doing to his own daughter now. He suddenly fell silent as he looked at her and realized that she had to make her own choices, and if this was what she loved and wanted to do with her life, he had no right to stand in her way and dissuade her.
“I don’t want you giving up your life for a hotel,” he said sadly. “I want you to have kids and a husband and a bigger life than mine.”
“Are you unhappy at the hotel?” she asked, as she watched him, and he shook his head.
“No, I love it,” he said honestly. He had found his niche early on, no matter what his parents thought about it.
“Then why won’t you let me do what I love? I’ve loved being in the hotel all my life. There’s nothing I could ever love doing more than that. It’s what you taught me and what I want to teach my children one day, to pass it on.”
Hugues laughed softly as she said it. “They’ll probably want to be doctors and lawyers.”
She smiled at him. “Well, I want to work with you till we both grow old.”
“And you’re telling me you want to leave me and go to school in Switzerland for two years,” he said sadly.
“You can come over and visit. I’ll come home for holidays and vacations, like Christmas and spring break.”
“You’d better,” he growled as he put an arm around her. A page had turned for her while she was in Paris, and they both knew it. She had stepped out of her childhood into adulthood, and the adult life she wanted was at his side, running the Hotel Vendome. “I never should have let you go to Europe this summer,” he grumbled good-naturedly, looking at her and seeing how much she had matured in two months. She looked terrific and seemed very sure of herself and the future she wanted, more than ever before.
“It would have happened anyway. I don’t want to go to NYU or Barnard. I want to go to hotel school. I’m proud of what we do, and I want to learn how to do it better so I can help you.”
“All right,” he sighed, as they pulled up in front of the hotel. He turned to his daughter with a resigned expression. “All right, you win. And welcome home.”
He followed her out of the car and into the lobby as all the bellmen, desk clerks, and concierges ran to greet her and welcome her back. He could see that the child she had been had vanished forever, and the woman she was becoming had returned. Somewhere between Paris, Bordeaux, and St. Tropez, a butterfly had been born.
Chapter 6
HELOISE BEGAN HER senior year at the Lycee with more self-assurance than she’d ever had before. She knew what she wanted to do now, and had established clear goals. She sent her application to the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne in October.
She told Mrs. Van Damme about it when she did. Her old dog Julius had died several years before and had been replaced with a white female Pekingese named Maude. Mrs. Van Damme emphatically approved of Heloise’s idea of going to hotel school since it was what she loved. Her grandson Clayton was at Yale and wanted to study photography eventually, which Heloise knew from talking to him that summer, and his grandmother was encouraging him to pursue his dream too. She said that in the end it was all one had, and turning those dreams into reality was the only worthwhile path. Heloise liked hearing from Clayton but hadn’t seen him for several months. She had been too busy since the summer, and he was enjoying his freshman year in college and seldom came to New York. But he called Heloise from time to time and said he liked Yale but was thinking of transfering to Brown, where he could study photography.
The elderly doyenne seemed to be failing in the past year. Heloise worried about her and always promised herself she’d visit her more often, but she was particularly busy with school-related activities, and it was her last year at home, if she got into the hotel school in Lausanne, as she hoped.
Over Thanksgiving Mrs. Van Damme got ill. She caught a nasty cold that turned into bronchitis, and to pneumonia after that. Hugues stopped in to check on her daily. And Heloise came in to see her religiously every day after school, and brought her little vases of flowers that Jan made for her. Her son came to visit her from Boston, and after consultation with her doctor, they put her in the hospital. She left the hotel by ambulance. And Heloise kissed her goodbye and promised to take care of her dog. Hugues and Heloise visited her and brought her a big bouquet of flowers. But Mrs. Van Damme seemed less and less interested as the days went by, and a week before Christmas, she quietly slipped away in the night. She was eighty-nine years old and the only grandmother figure that Heloise had ever had. All her real grandparents had died before she was born. And she mourned the loss of the elderly lady who had been kind to her all her life. And she was grateful when her son allowed her to keep Maude.
They went to her funeral at St. Thomas, and many of the hotel employees attended as well. Hugues asked Jennifer to arrange for a van to get them all there, there were so many. Even Mike the engineer went, wearing a dark suit. So did Ernesta, Bruce, Jan, several of the maids, an elevator man, two bellmen, Jennifer, Heloise, and Hugues.
Heloise saw Clayton there with his parents, but they barely had time to say hello as they left the church. He looked as bereft as she felt. And living in the same hotel with her, Heloise had had the chance to see her more often, and perhaps know her better, than her own g
randson, who didn’t see her often and rarely came to New York. It was a somber day for Hugues and Heloise, and put a damper on Christmas for them.
It was a busy season at the hotel, and Heloise had already tried to implement some of the things she had seen in Paris. Jan was trying to do their flowers for the lobby now like Jeff Leatham at the Georges V, from photographs Heloise had taken there. And she had added many things to their brunch menu that she had noticed at the Ritz. People were already commenting on how spectacular the flowers were, and how great the brunch. Hugues was proud of her and she was pleased. And she was applying what she had learned in Bordeaux to the wines she selected from their cellars. And as soon as she’d gotten back after the summer, she went back to work organizing their donations to the food bank, and working downtown at the soup kitchen and family shelter once or twice a week. Hugues was very impressed.
But the high point for Heloise came in January, when the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne accepted her for the fall. She hadn’t applied to a single other college. And she was ecstatic when she got their letter. It was exactly what she wanted, and it was her dream. She called all her friends at school to tell them, none of whom knew what colleges they were going to yet and wouldn’t know till March. She was all set.
The months after that flew by, with the usual activities at the hotel, important guests, VIPs, foreign dignitaries, famous movie stars, and politicians. Her father narrowly averted a strike by the kitchen staff. Some employees quit or retired, and new ones were added. She rarely had time to stop and peek in at the wedding receptions. And she spent every weekend working at the front desk, for experience and practice. And everything he saw her do had a bittersweet quality for Hugues, knowing that she was leaving in a few months, even if it was only for a year or two. He was hoping that she would do her year of internship for her degree at their hotel, but Heloise wasn’t sure. She was thinking of trying her wings at another hotel, possibly in Europe, before she came back to the Vendome for good.
Hugues was sad about her leaving to go to school in Europe and said so to Jennifer, but she thought it would do him good. It was time for both of them to cut the cord. And she knew it would be hard because they were so extremely close.
Heloise went out with some of the boys from her class that spring, but she had no serious romance. Her whole focus now was on leaving and starting school in Lausanne. It was all she thought or talked about. And Hugues planned a trip around Europe with her for the month before he dropped her off at school in Lausanne. It was going to be the first real vacation he had taken in years. And Jennifer made all the arrangements for him. They were planning a few days at the Hotel du Cap/Eden Roc at Cap d’Antibes. From there they were driving to the Splendido in Portofino, flying to Sardinia, and then to Rome. They were going to drive north then to Florence and Venice and eventually wind up in Lausanne. And they were both looking forward to it.
Jennifer could only imagine how lonely he would be when he came back alone. She had gone through it herself when her kids left for college. She wisely suggested he take on a new project for the fall. Heloise seconded the idea and convinced her father to redo some of the bigger suites, to keep them fresh and new, especially the presidential and penthouse suites. The hotel was now fourteen years old, and it was time. They had done small repairs on an ongoing basis to keep things in good condition, but Heloise suggested new colors, new fabrics, and a fresh decor in their big suites. They agreed that he’d need a decorator, and Jennifer got a list of names. There were four, three women and a man, and Hugues agreed to meet them when he came back at the end of August, after dropping Heloise off in Lausanne. She and Jennifer agreed that it was just what Hugues would need to keep him even busier and distracted without her.
The trip that they took in Italy and France was the most exciting of Heloise’s life, and they had a wonderful time. They stayed at the best hotels in each location, ate fabulous food, admired the virtues and details of each hotel, and decided to borrow a few. It was a terrific trip for both of them, and Hugues’s heart was heavy when they got to Lausanne and checked into the Beau Rivage Palace, where he had done an internship himself when he was young. Being there was a trip back in time for him. It reminded him of his parents and how strenuously they had objected to his attending the venerable school that Heloise was about to start. And no matter how sad he was to see her leave, he had to smile in spite of himself when he saw how happy she was, how excited to be starting classes, and learn everything she could before coming to work at the hotel with him. It touched his heart.
The school itself was as beautiful as he remembered, with spacious modern buildings, neat walkways, handsome trees, and well-kept lawns. There were housekeeping services for the students, and phones in nearly every room, along with Internet access everywhere. The school was impeccably run. They even gave each student their own computer, which they would take with them when they left.
Heloise was required to take two of the eighteen sports they offered, and signed up for swimming and modern dance. They wanted to encourage healthy bodies and minds and expected them to work hard.
There was an excellent library, state-of-the-art kitchens, and several restaurants on campus, which the locals loved coming to. They offered courses in oenology, to learn about wine, which Heloise signed up for, after getting interested in it in Bordeaux. And there were two bars run by the students, which were full every night.
Heloise signed up for the Management of Hotel Operations Programme and would be taking classes in English and French. There were fifty students in her section, and another hundred and thirty in the longer program, representing eighty-five nationalities combined, equally divided between men and women. There was no question in Hugues’s mind, or Heloise’s, that she would have a wonderful time there, and learn everything she needed to know. But it made his heart ache to let her go.
The chill of fall was already in the air in late August, and the forests and mountains around the school were beautiful. It all reminded him so much of his youth. He had taken her to Geneva for a day as well. It was only an hour from the campus, and he had shown her where he and his parents lived when he was a child. This trip was a pilgrimage of sorts for him.
They both cried when he left her in her studio room. Heloise looked as sad as he did the day he left, but an hour later she was unpacking, and a flock of young people invited her out to dinner, and by that night she had half a dozen new friends. Hugues was on the plane to New York by then, looking out the window and wondering what he would do without her in New York. It made him miss her even more to see the dog when he got home. She looked at him expectantly, as though wondering where Heloise was. He unpacked that night and was in his office the next morning at six. Jennifer was surprised to see him there, with a stack of finished work piled up beside him, when she came in at eight.
“What are you doing here at this hour? Jet lag?” she asked, pouring him a cup of coffee and setting it on his desk.
“Probably,” he conceded. “The apartment is so quiet without her, I couldn’t stand it, so I came down here to work since I was awake.”
“Do you remember what we promised Heloise we’d do today?” she asked him in a maternal tone. He was suffering severely from empty-nest syndrome. Having been both mother and father to his only child, losing her to a school three thousand miles away was a big adjustment, and a hard one, just as they all had known it would be.
“What was I supposed to do today?” He looked blank.
“Pick a decorator, so you can start doing the remodel on the suites on the ninth and tenth floors.” She handed him the list again, and he looked bored.
“Do I have to? I don’t have time to think about it. The union is threatening a strike.”
“That’s why you need a decorator, so you can take care of things like that.”
“Heloise and I can pick fabrics when she gets home. It’s waited this long, it can wait another few months.” He tried to dodge her.
“No, it can’t. Yo
u promised your daughter, and I promised her I’d see to it that you pick one of the decorators and get started before she comes home.” He growled but looked at the several photographs of apartments and hotels his assistant handed him. One was too modern and too stark; the rooms done by the man were too ornate. All four interior designers were the most successful in New York. The last two both did work that seemed in keeping with the hotel, elegant and sophisticated without being overdone. “May I make appointments for you with both of them, so you can see which one you like? After that, they can submit designs and plans for the suites, and an estimate of cost.”
“Fine,” Hugues said, sounding irritated, and Jennifer was unimpressed. She and Heloise had agreed to follow it through whether he liked it or not. And for now, it was “not.” The last thing he wanted was a decorator following him around, waving swatches in his face and color charts. The whole project sounded like a nuisance to him, but it needed to be done to keep the hotel elegant and fresh.
Jennifer left the room with the sample photographs, and he went back to the work on his desk and forgot about it. He had a text message from Heloise that afternoon. She said she was running between classes and didn’t have time to talk, but everything was great. The obvious excitement in her text depressed him even more. He knew he was worrying unreasonably too. What if she found a job at another hotel, like the Ritz, and never came back? He was torturing himself with a thousand fears. He missed her terribly.
He was in a dark mood for several days and startled when Jennifer told him a week later that he had appointments with the two decorators back to back that afternoon.
“I don’t have time,” he growled at her, which was unlike him. But he had been short with her and everyone else since his daughter left. He was in pain. Jennifer knew it well and had gone through the same phenomenon when both her children left for college within a year of each other. Her job at the hotel had distracted her and made the process less painful. And she was committed to helping Hugues get through it too. He had been a good employer and a good friend over the years, and if she was able to get him to adjust to Heloise’s leaving for school in Switzerland, she was happy to help out. And the decorating project he had discussed with his daughter seemed like their best shot at it for now.
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