Coq au Vin

by Charlotte Carter

  My mother didn’t understand it any better than he did, but she loved Vivian just the same. Maybe that was due to the same kind of sympathy with strays that had moved her to take Aubrey to her heart. Mom looked on with pity while Auntie Viv blew all her money and drank too much and got her heart broken by trifling pretty men and then recovered to start the cycle all over again.

  In time Vivian married and divorced—two or three times, if I remember right—and moved out of New York and then back again, half a dozen times—to L.A. and Mexico and France and Portugal—wherever the job or the party or the boyfriend might take her. Daddy and she finally had one final royal blowup during the cocaine-laced eighties and stopped speaking to each other altogether. We didn’t even know where she had been living for the past eight or ten years.

  And now, apparently, some disaster had befallen her.

  “Is she dead?” I asked. “How did it happen?”

  “No, no. She isn’t dead.”

  “She isn’t? Then what happened to her? What about Vivian?”

  “She’s in trouble. Wait here a minute.”

  Mom vanished into the dining room.

  I sat looking around the kitchen in puzzlement, at last fixing on the covered Styrofoam plates that held our dinner, waiting to be popped into the microwave. And I thought the day had been long and weird before I crossed the bridge into Queens. What the hell was going on here? Well, at least my mother hadn’t tried to reach me at NYU. That sure would have resulted in an interesting phone message. But I had always discouraged her from calling me at work, telling her that as a part-timer I didn’t really have an office of my own.

  “Look at these.”

  She handed me two pieces, one a standard tourist postcard with a corny photo of the Eiffel Tower, the other a telegram.

  I turned the postcard over and read:

  “Long time No see. Hate to ask you but I’m strapped. Can you spare anything? Just send what you can—if you can. Love, Viv.”

  The postmark on the card was about three weeks old.

  There was an address beneath her signature. A place on the rue du Cardinal Lemoine—my Lord, Viv was in Paris.

  I looked up at Mom and began to ask a question, but she ordered me to read the telegram first, which was dated a week or so after the postcard.

  JEAN

  DID YOU GET MY CARD?

  WORSE. I CAN’T GET OUT.

  VIV.

  “What’s this about?” I asked, the fear rising in my voice.

  “I don’t know, honey. I don’t know.” Her spine stiffened then and her eyes took on a glassy look. “I finally called…him. I mean, he is her brother.”

  “You’re kidding! You called Daddy?”

  She nodded.

  I tried to imagine White Mrs. Daddy picking up the phone in their apartment near Lincoln Center. Handing the receiver over. Jesus, the look on his face when she told him who it was.

  “What did he say?” I asked. “Did Viv write to him too?”

  “Yes. But he doesn’t want to know anything about Vivian. Says he tore the card up without reading it. It’s a sin. I told him I hoped one day he would be hurting in the same way and when he reached out for help—well, never mind. I told him I think it’s a sin, that’s all.”

  I shook my head. “Wow. This is so weird. What are you going to do? You don’t have any money to send her, and if Pop won’t do it—”

  “He wouldn’t give it to her, but I managed to shame him into giving me something for you.”

  “Me? What do you mean?”

  She pulled out a chair for herself then and sat down in it before answering. “Listen, Nan.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t have any money to spare. But—well, I do have it, but it’s not mine. As a matter of fact it’s Vivian’s money.”

  “What are you talking about, Mother?”

  “I mean I actually do have some money for Vivian—especially for her. When your grandfather died he left most of what he had to your daddy, naturally. And you got enough to take that beautiful trip. But you know how he was. He feuded with Viv just like your father did, but at the end he wanted to come to some kind of peace with her. Nobody even knew where Vivian was at the time. So he left her some money, and gave it to me to keep for her. It’s in a special account. Waiting. There must be close to ten thousand in it by now.”

  “Ten thousand dollars! That sure sounds like enough to bail her out of trouble. And you mean you’ve had this money all along?”

  “Yes. I knew sooner or later we’d hear from her again.”

  “But not like this,” I said.

  “No. Not like this. And so…” She glanced away from me then.

  “What is it?”

  “I know it’s a lot to ask, Nan. You haven’t seen Viv since you were a kid. I just know she’s over there drinking, broke, stranded somewhere. Maybe even sick. I wouldn’t know where to begin to help her. I don’t know how I’d even get out of the airport over there. But I thought—since you’ve been there so many times—I thought maybe you could go over there and help her—take this money to her and help her get home. Like I said, I managed to shame your father into giving me enough for your expenses.”

  Expenses?

  “What are you saying, Mother? You want me to go to Paris!”

  “Yes. Would you do it? If—I mean, only if you could take the time from work. You’re going to be on spring vacation soon, aren’t you?”

  “It started yesterday, Mom. No problem.”

  A lot to ask.! Holy—

  I felt a kick right then. Right on the shin. I knew who that was: my conscience, Ernestine. I just kicked the bitch right back. Yes, I’m a liar, I told her; a deceiver, a coldhearted Air France slut. I was thinking not of my Aunt Viv in a French drunk tank but of the braised rabbit in that bistro on the rue Monsieur le Prince.

  A lot to ask? Coq au vin, here I come!

  CHAPTER 2

  Can’t We Be Friends?

  I know I’m a fool. A sentimentalist. A sucker for a sad song. The same old hokey things undo me every time.

  I was crying so hard I could barely see out the window of the taxi, one of those workhorse Renaults with a driver who smoked Gitanes, a beautifully dappled Dalmatian asleep beside him on the front seat. It was April and the trees were budding and we had just passed the Arc de Triomphe and it was tearing my heart out.

  It helped a lot that I had sucked down about fifty glasses of Veuve Clicquot on the flight over and been hit on big time by both an African diplomat in a vintage Armani and a sublimely big-nosed Frenchman.

  Drying my eyes, I recalled that first time I saw Paris, from the window of a train. I was still a student and traveling on the cheap. I took a charter flight into Amsterdam, where I met up with a couple of classmates and their European boyfriends. After a couple of days of museum going and smoking pot till I was pixillated, I took the train into Paris. That first sight of the roof of the Gare de Nord, alive with pigeons, had produced the same kind of waterworks.

  By the time the cab deposited me at the picturesque little square in the 5th arrondissement, I was working on one hell of a hangover. The address on Vivian’s postcard turned out to be a clean but decidedly unglamorous little hotel at the top of a rise in the pavement. Their one-star rating was not mere modesty—nothing fancy about the place. I set my valise down and walked over to the reception.

  There was no such American madame as Vivian Hayes registered at the hotel, the well-fed gentleman behind the desk reported. Perhaps my friend was at the small hotel at the other end of the square? No, I said, checking the postcard again, this was the address given. It occurred to me then that Aunt Viv might be using either of two—or was it three?—married names. So I began to describe her, thinking even as I did so that she had probably changed so much since our last meeting that the description might be worthless. I was just about to dig into my bag for a twenty-year-old snapshot of Vivian, when the monsieur suddenly realized who I was seeking.
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br />   A sneer pulled at his lips. “Oh yes. I recall your friend now.” I waited for him to go on. “This Madame Hayes,” he said contemptuously, had checked out more than ten days ago.

  “Checked out” was not exactly the phrase he used to describe her departure. Apparently Vivian had left without paying the last week’s rent, abandoning her suitcase and clothing and personal items. She had simply gone out one afternoon and never returned.

  Not good.

  I had counted on some kind of trouble. Still, I didn’t have to hit the panic button yet. I might have to mount a search for her. On the other hand, she might be able to raise a few dollars from somewhere, in which case she would show up again to pay her bill and collect her things.

  But I couldn’t think about that at the moment. My head was pounding and I needed some sleep—real sleep, not airplane nodding. This hotel was not exactly what I’d had in mind as a base of operations, but it would do for now. Hell, dowdy French hotels short on amenities but rich in character had been the sites of some of my most delightful adventures.

  I asked for a room and, to forestall any problems, paid for a few days in advance. I pulled the envelope with the Thomas Cook money orders earmarked for Aunt Vivian out of my carry-on bag and committed it to the hotel safe. Mom had asked if it wouldn’t be better to buy traveler’s checks in my own name, but I wanted to guarantee I wouldn’t be tempted to start dipping into those funds for my own use. In Vivian’s place, I don’t think I would’ve appreciated any messenger messing about with my inheritance, even if it was a totally unexpected gift from heaven.

  I splurged on the best room in the house. Even so, the toilet was down the hall. The bidet had been cracked and repaired half a dozen times. The bureau smelled faintly of mildew. But the room was a good size, and the view wasn’t bad. Not bad at all: my room, on the sixth floor, looked out over the busy square with its ancient copper fountain. I put in five minutes at the open window just looking at the people, pulling the air into my chest—and thinking about Aunt Vivian, somewhere out there. I didn’t know yet what kind of shape I’d find her in. But I did know she wouldn’t be high stepping in her designer jeans and smart black pumps. She wouldn’t be laughing her tantalizing laugh that put lights in her clear brown eyes. She wouldn’t be young anymore.

  I thought, too, of my first trip to Paris and all the subsequent ones; of the friends I’d once had here, all dispersed to other places, other lives, now; of my summer in Provence; the meals, the men; the just plain fun. I’d been happy, ecstatic, in Paris—drunk on it—and yet I’d also known that peculiar tristesse that could fasten around your heart like a vise, for no particular reason, and suddenly make you feel so very alone.

  Tiredness overtook me then. I closed the shutters tight. I turned back the covers on the creaky iron bed and slipped between the ironed white sheets. And then—darkness.

  The trick is not to let yourself sleep too long lest you fall victim to jet lag. It was the only travel tip I could ever remember. You’ve got to crash and allow the old ankles to lose the swelling that results from sitting constricted in one place for so long. Nap, yes. But you mustn’t sleep too long, or you’ll be on the way back home before your body clock is running right again.

  I was groggy when I pulled myself out of dreamland—and ravenous. I opened the metal shutters. Pam! Night had fallen. Those inimitable lights were all around me, and, down below, the canopies of a thousand cafes. I went and cleaned up quickly in the communal shower room and then jumped into some black trousers and a leotard. I threw my long raincoat over that and I was ready to roll.

  I did a quick turn around the Pantheon, where I had often gone in the dark of night to sit and think and sometimes consume a couple of boules of rich ice cream purchased at one of the carts dotting the landscape. Then I headed back across the square and the boulevard St. Michel, pulsating with young people.

  I hit boulevard St. Germain, or rather it hit me. It was Friday night and the street was hopping. Traffic was the predictable nightmare. I took a deep breath and ran, snaked, bullied my way across the street, heedless of the color of the traffic lights. I headed north then, away from the worst of the crowds. I had decided to eat at the Café Cloche, which was on the pricey side, but my mouth was watering for a couple of their beautiful spring lamb chops. I remembered that they didn’t take reservations—the only reason I had for believing I’d get a table on a Friday night. The cross streets were beginning to look familiar now. Yes, this was the block. The café was near.

  Except it wasn’t. It was not there. The Café Cloche, where I’d once been seduced by a chain-smoking academic from Toulouse over a fine daube of beef, was no more. I stared stupidly, dejected, at the darkened window of the boutique that had replaced the restaurant.

  Well, what was the big deal? Things change. So I’d find someplace else to eat dinner. A restaurant closing was a small thing, yet, inexplicably, it unsettled me. I walked back slowly into the heart of the crowd and found a friendly looking if undistinguished place where I ordered foie gras and then went on to langoustines and a half bottle of white wine. Afterward, I browsed somnolently through a few of the late-night bookstores on St. Michel, buying nothing, and found my way back to the hotel.

  I got into my nightgown almost immediately. It was cool in the room but I opened the window wide and let the low night sky fall in on me. Another one of those singular Paris moments. The lights on the Pantheon were silver blue and I watched them for a long time, wondering how many others were doing the same thing, their hearts moving in their chest. But, curiously enough, I had stopped crying.

  I made a bet with myself as I called downstairs to order breakfast. At every hotel I’d ever lived in on this side of the Seine, the maid’s name was Josette. I figured that would never change.

  I lost. Marise bid me good morning in her musical colonial accent—was she from Antigua? maybe St. Croix?—and set the wooden tray bearing my soupy black coffee and croissants down at the foot of the bed.

  I spent the late morning and all afternoon checking out the really low-rent hotels on streets like Gay Lussac, thinking that Vivian might have got her hands on a few bucks to live on, but not enough to go back to the hotel in the Square. The next day, I figured, I’d go another rung down on the ladder and try Pigalle and the parts of Bastille that had not yet been gentrified. Then, if I didn’t turn up any leads, I’d head out to the edge of the city, Buttes Chaumont or someplace, where I’d probably be mugged and left for dead somewhere.

  I put in a full day. Nothing. At six o’clock I returned to the hotel and put in a call to my mother, reporting on my progress, or rather lack of progress.

  I took a long soak in the pay-per-bath room down the hall and changed into something slightly slinky. There was a fabulous wine bar on the rue du Cherche Midi that I loved. It had been the scene of two or three major flirting triumphs.

  They sold lighting fixtures there now. I stood on the pavement watching the clerk clear the register and begin to close up for the evening. I could have cried.

  I wandered down into the métro and took the train to Pont Marie, on the right bank. Surely the much more staid wine bar that a friend’s father had once taken us to would still be there. And it was. But it was obvious there would be no lighthearted seductions taking place that evening. Oh no. No sharing a steak frites with a cute translator and then a nightcap at some avant garde jazz loft. No and no. Average age of the patrons at this stately establishment: 55 by my calculations. Successful businessmen and their co-workers, or their Chanel-clad ladies. I put away two lovely glasses of Medoc and was on my way.

  I walked along the Seine in the twilight, feet hurting in my strappy heels. The magazine/postcards/junk stands on the quai were all closed now. Here and there I could hear voices down below, along the water. I had to smile. One thing you never forget, your first kiss on the banks of the Seine. I just know it’s one of those pictures that go flying across your vision as you lay dying.

  I had had nothing to
eat except the breakfast croissant and a yogurt taken on the run midday. I was starving but I hated the thought of eating alone again.

  What choice did I have, though? I went to Au Pactole, a perfectly nice place on St. Germain, just the tiniest bit stuffy, up the block from a hotel I’d once lived in—the Hotel de Lima. It was almost pleasurable to behave so formally with the maître d’, like playing a role, or wearing a disguise. Hmmm—she is black and French speaking. Must be an immigrant. Spinster on vacation from the provinces, I could almost hear the young waiter thinking. Trying to dress Parisian. Not bad looking. Needs to get laid, though. I was the only solo table in the good-sized room, which was awash in fresh white flowers and skyscraper-tall candles. After an already too heavy meal, I pigged on goat cheese and a big-time dessert.

  The thing is, I mused during my meandering walk home along the quai, the main thing is: the police have to be avoided.

  If nothing happened with my search for Vivian in the next day or so, I might have to contact the American embassy. But not the French police. It was half instinctual cop-o-phobia and half worry that maybe Vivian had wandered into something not on the up and up; then there was the plain gut-clenching terror based on the Gallic mind-set. Guilty until proven innocent was not a metaphor over here, it was the law. You just did not fuck with cops in this country—not even traffic cops.

  What does a foreigner do when he or she is broke, in trouble—no friends, no resources? I didn’t know. True, I had bummed around Europe before, hitchhiked with companions, smoked dope with kids I met at discos, and so on. But I had never been anything like stranded or in trouble with the law. I always had a return ticket in my pocket, and help was a collect call away. I thought about the asshole white boys who thought they were slick enough to get away with smuggling hashish out of Turkey. I found myself shuddering.

  The Herald Tribune? What about placing an ad there—“Aunt Viv: You’re richer than you think. Call home. All is forgiven.” Something to that effect.