by Anita Hughes
I remember the evening I first walked into Andre’s bistro. My friends all had big Fourth of July plans but I didn’t feel like celebrating. It was our first holiday since my father died, and by evening I desperately needed to get out of the house. My mother was trying to keep herself together. She filled her days with philanthropy but at night she sat in the library and smoked. I couldn’t get her to stop. If I told her she was killing herself she would look at me knowingly and nod. If I suggested we go out to dinner or hit a movie she would say she was tired and go to bed.
I asked Rosemary to watch her and I headed out to Sacramento Street. I needed to get some fresh air. Sacramento Street was deserted. All my usual haunts were closed. I kept walking, hoping at least Starbucks was open and I could get a hot mocha before I went home. I saw a tall man with a black ponytail lounging outside a restaurant.
“Allo, beautiful,” he said.
I turned around. There was no one else on the sidewalk.
“I am talking to the beautiful girl with curly brown hair,” he said as I walked closer. “That’s you.” His face broke into a wide smile. He had very white teeth and a Roman nose.
“Hello,” I replied.
“Come inside and have something to eat.” He motioned to the doorway. He wore dark blue jeans, a white apron, and white sneakers.
“Are you open?” I asked.
“Mais, oui. Why wouldn’t I?” he asked.
“It’s the Fourth of July,” I replied.
“So?” He shrugged his shoulders.
“America’s birthday. You know, a national holiday.”
“Bastille Day is my national holiday. I am Andre Blick, this is my restaurant.” He held out his hand. I shook it awkwardly. I had been so busy worrying about my father during college I hadn’t dated. Every now and then I would get pizza with a group of kids, but mostly I kept myself apart.
“Okay, I am hungry,” I agreed finally.
“Excellent, you are my first customer this evening.” He escorted me to a table, his arm lightly touching mine.
I turned out to be his only customer. He cooked for me and served me himself, his waitress having gone home early. Eventually he sat down next to me and opened a bottle of wine.
“I don’t drink,” I said, pushing away the wineglass.
“You have to drink, it’s a national holiday.” He filled my glass and poured one for himself.
“I thought your holiday was Bastille Day,” I said.
“I am in America now, with a beautiful American.” Andre clinked my glass. “To national holidays; may we celebrate many more.”
I knew he was flirting. No one had ever flirted with me and I didn’t know how to respond. He was handsome, like the Roman gods we had studied in mythology. I concentrated on my crepes and let him talk.
“I have worked in a kitchen since I was this high.” Andre placed his hand four feet off the floor. “My father was a chef in Toulouse and he let me stir the sauces and chop vegetables when the owner of the restaurant was away.” He paused and sipped his wine.
“When I was nineteen, I hitchhiked to Paris and became assistant chef at a bistro in the Thirteenth Arrondissement,” he continued. I liked the way he moved his hands around when he talked.
“Last year an American came in every morning and ordered my crepes. He said he was opening a French restaurant in San Francisco and asked me to be his chef and partner.”
“You left your family?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine living an ocean away from my mother.
“America is the land of opportunity.” He flashed his perfect white teeth. “I could not refuse. I moved to San Francisco and voilà. Crepe Suzette was born,” he finished his story, refilling our glasses and moving his chair closer to mine.
“Who’s Suzette?” I asked.
“My partner’s wife. Ex-wife now. She didn’t like the long hours he keeps at the restaurant so she’s divorcing him for a stockbroker who is home at four p.m.” He shrugged. “You Americans are funny. In France you get married, you stay married. Affairs, long hours, doesn’t matter. Marriage is for life.”
“I can understand long hours. Affairs would be another story,” I said.
“See, Americans. Very puritan.” He shook his head. His English was almost perfect. And he was so beautiful, his features chiseled from stone; I had to stop myself from looking at him. He was only twenty-four but he seemed older.
“Your crepes are wonderful. I have to go.” I fished my credit card out of my purse.
“Do you have a boyfriend waiting at home?” Andre leaned on the table, his elbow pressed against mine.
“No boyfriend. My father died recently, I am staying with my mother. They were married a long time and she really misses him.”
“Love. There are no happy endings. That is why we must live now.” He touched my face with his fingers.
I pulled back. “I better go. What do I owe you?”
“Dinner is on me, in exchange for your beautiful company.” Andre shook his head.
“Your English is very good. But you say ‘beautiful’ too much.”
“One can never say ‘beautiful’ too much if it is true.” He didn’t get up or remove my plate. He just sat looking at me.
“I need to pay, please. I don’t want your night to be a complete waste.”
“I will let you pay if you let me take you out to dinner on my night off,” Andre said.
“Okay. Agreed,” I said.
I handed him my credit card and he got up and walked over to the cash register.
“I need your phone number,” he said, placing the bill in front of me.
I wrote down my phone number and gave it to him. I opened the bill and signed my name. He picked up the bill and studied it closely. I remember thinking maybe I shouldn’t have tipped him; it was his restaurant. He handed me back my credit card and touched my shoulder. “When we get married you won’t have to change your initials, Amanda Bishop.”
* * *
I should have seen the warning signs, I thought, kicking a handful of pebbles into the lake so the ducks lifted their necks and shook their feathers. Andre had told me stories of wealthy women who propositioned him when he worked at the restaurant in Toulouse. How he lost his virginity in the giant fridge with the wife of the local judge. Andre had the morals of an alley cat and I had been blinded all these years by his declarations of love, and by the way he put his hand on the small of my back.
In my parents’ circle, at the highest rung of San Francisco society, infidelity was not tolerated. Families lived in mansions at the top of Pacific Heights and their morals were as lofty as their real estate. My father had been a member of the Bohemian Club and every summer he had spent a week at the Bohemian Grove, a private enclave in the redwood forest visited by heads of state, where women were denied entry. One year as he was leaving for his week’s retreat, one of my friends asked him what they do there.
“What’s all the hush-hush?” Maisie was sixteen and going through a rebellious stage. She liked to rile up her parents, or mine when she slept over on the weekends. “My father has taken a vow of silence. He won’t tell my mother a thing.” She leaned against my father’s Mercedes. “Do you guys import a bunch of strippers and play strip poker under the redwoods?”
My father looked at her levelly and opened the car door. “Maisie, I think it’s time you went home. I’ll drive you. And I’d like to have a word with your mother.”
A few days later my father received a written apology from Maisie in the mail, and she was not allowed to sleep over again.
When a scandal did occur among their friends, the culprit was ousted from the Pacific-Union Club and the Bohemian Club, and his social invitations were rescinded. A few of my father’s friends were self-made like he was, but most were descendants of the robber barons: Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins. They had spent the last hundred years making their names respectable; they weren’t going to let any blackguard tarnish their circle.
So how had I fallen for Andre, I asked myself, hurling the stones so they fell in the middle of the lake. Was I just taken in by his looks, by his Continental charm, or in the beginning had he been a gentleman?
* * *
That first summer Andre treated me like a princess. Whenever he arrived at the house he brought presents for Rosemary, my mother, and me. For Rosemary it was often a tomato from the restaurant’s garden, for my mother a small bouquet of lilacs or daisies, and for me a special chocolate dessert. At first I questioned his motives—he knew I was an heiress. But as the summer progressed and we explored the city together, he kept saying he enjoyed my company. And he thought I was beautiful. No one except my parents had ever called me beautiful.
In August my mother seemed more herself. She started going to lunch with friends. She wore her favorite color, pink, and she began accepting some of the invitations that kept pouring in. I thought about the fall and New York. I had mentioned my plans to Andre. He hadn’t said anything for or against. He hadn’t tried to sleep with me either. I was partially relieved. I was the only twenty-two-year-old virgin I knew and was terrified he would shrug me off as a juvenile if he found out. But each time he left me at the front door with just a long, deep kiss, my whole body quivered.
Sometimes I thought he was just filling his days off. I would leave for New York, and he would kiss me good-bye at the airport and find a new girl to hang out with in Pacific Heights. The week before Labor Day he proved me wrong. It was a Tuesday evening. I had worked all day at the boutique and was in the kitchen nibbling popcorn. My mother was at her book club and Rosemary was upstairs, turning down the beds. I heard a knock at the back door. I went outside and turned the corner toward the front of the house. Andre was sitting on a bench holding three bunches of roses. Beside him were a bottle of champagne and two glasses.
“Pick a bouquet,” he said as I approached.
“Why?”
“One of them holds a prize. A prize for me, but I want you to pick.” He smiled. His green eyes were like emeralds in the evening light. He wore a crisp white shirt, open at the collar, and navy slacks.
“Okay.” I stood uncertainly in front of the roses.
“Pick this one,” Andre said.
I took the bunch of roses he offered. “Why this one?”
“Look inside.”
I undid the tissue paper and found a small red box sitting at the base of the rose stems.
“Open it,” Andre said quietly.
I opened the box. Inside was a white gold ring with a small, square diamond.
“You are my prize, Amanda. Will you marry me?” Andre took my hand, which was shaking, and put the ring on my finger.
“Why do you want to marry me?”
“You only get to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Not why,” Andre told me.
“Before I answer yes or no,” I replied, trying to sound like an adult, “I have to know why. I don’t have a brilliant career. I’m not sexy.”
Andre put his finger on my lips and kept it there till I stopped talking.
“In California I have met a dozen women. They all have breasts out to here”—Andre stuck his hands out in front of him—“and blond hair down to here”—he touched my back—“but they have nothing up here.” He put a finger on my forehead. “You have hair like the Mona Lisa, eyes like a tiger, and up here”—he touched my forehead again—“you are an angel.”
I studied the small diamond on my finger. I looked at Andre, kneeling in front of me like a medieval knight. I wanted to believe he thought I was beautiful, but when I looked in the mirror I saw brown curly hair that frizzed up in the summer. My eyes were green but they were placed too close together, and though I was tall I had a neck like a giraffe.
“But we’re so young. We hardly know each other,” I said, trying another avenue. My whole body wanted to say yes, but somewhere inside me I knew a sophisticated Frenchman wanted more than a twenty-two-year-old virgin.
“Getting to know each other will be an adventure. You make me feel happy, Amanda. You give me something to look forward to when I am working.”
I sighed. He almost had me convinced. I had to bring up the one subject we had ignored: my money. “You know, I’m not really rich. All my money is in trust and I only get an allowance. I don’t see any real money till I’m thirty.”
Andre did not take his eyes off my face. He stayed kneeling and he held on to my hand. He chose his words carefully.
“Amanda, I know you were raised like a princess, and I will not be able to support you like that yet. But one day I will have my own restaurant. I promise I will never ask to borrow money from you, and we will never live on your income.”
We were both silent. I smelled the scent of three dozen roses. My parents had married after six weeks and they lasted twenty-three years.
“Yes,” I said, nodding.
Andre stood up and kissed me. He crushed the roses against my chest and he held my hand so tightly my new ring left an indentation on my finger.
* * *
We were married at Thanksgiving in my father’s library. It was too soon after my father’s death to hold a big wedding, and I didn’t want to wait. Since the day Andre proposed, I was a bundle of nerves. Like most girls who stay a virgin into their twenties, I became obsessed with sex. I clung to some romantic notion that we should wait till our honeymoon to really “do it.” Maybe I still thought I wouldn’t live up to Andre’s expectations and he would call off the wedding.
Thanksgiving morning was foggy and drizzly. I wore a simple Jackie O–style wedding dress: white and short with a full skirt. Andre wore a gray suit and a red rose in his lapel. His partner, Eric, was his best man and my best friend from high school, Kate, was my maid of honor. My mother gave me away. She was completely charmed by Andre and pleased that I was starting my own life.
“You and Andre haven’t known each other very long, Amanda, but he seems to make you happy,” she said in my bedroom on the morning of the wedding.
“I’m deliriously happy,” I replied, trying to tame my hair into a bun and slipping small diamond earrings into my ears.
“Deliriously happy doesn’t last,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette. She still smoked a pack a day, but she tried to stop when she was around me.
“You and Dad acted like life was one big party.”
“Your father lived large, but he had a solid backbone.”
“Andre is going to be very successful. The restaurant is doing really well. Dad started small.” I slipped my feet into ballet flats. Andre was tall, but I wanted to be looking up at him when we said our vows.
“You’re right. I’m just playing devil’s advocate. Marriage is a long haul.” She looked in the mirror and smoothed her pink Chanel skirt. She was over sixty but her face was smooth. Only her neck was wrinkled, hidden under a bright Hermès scarf.
“We’ll be great, Mother. I had the best role models.” I hugged her.
She snapped open her bag to find another cigarette. “I’ll go downstairs and see if the caterers are here.”
The ceremony was short, performed by one of my father’s old friends, Judge Hansen. Afterward we popped a bottle of champagne and nibbled salmon and rice balls. The wedding-Thanksgiving lunch was served in the long dining room under crystal chandeliers.
Andre sat at the head of the table, my mother at the other end. I was on Andre’s left, Kate on his right. Andre kept his hand on mine the entire lunch, so I had to eat one-handed. While we waited for the pumpkin pie that was going to be our wedding cake, Andre stood up to make a toast.
“This is my first Thanksgiving. I am so lucky to be welcomed into this family. And Grace”—he nodded to my mother—“I will treat Amanda like this champagne flute: delicate, perfect, and priceless. Thank you for allowing her to be my wife.” He lifted his glass and we all drank.
Later, when I was changing into my going-away outfit, Kate knocked on my door.
“What do you think?” I asked. Kate
and I had known each other since grade school.
“A little corny,” she said, pulling off her heels and lying down on my bed.
“What do you mean?” I frowned.
“I like Andre,” she said carefully, releasing her short blond hair from its ponytail holder. “He’s just a little clichéd.”
“Well, thanks.” I sat down on the bed next to Kate.
“He’s just sooo romantic. So French.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. I hope it lasts.”
“You’re jealous.” I laughed. “You want someone to shower you with rose petals.”
“I’m fine being single. Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be nasty.”
“I forgive you. It is my wedding day,” I said. I closed the overnight bag that held my La Perla negligee. “And tonight is my wedding night.”
“Maybe you should have had the wedding night first,” Kate giggled.
I threw a silk pillow at her. “Maybe I should have made you catch the bouquet.”
* * *
We checked in to the Mark Hopkins on top of Nob Hill. I felt electric shocks run up my spine when the concierge welcomed us as Mr. and Mrs. Blick. I wore a taupe Eileen Fisher skirt, a Donna Karan silk bodysuit, and camel-colored Prada flats. I had straightened my hair and it lay in silky layers over my shoulders. I looked like a confident San Francisco twenty-something. But as Andre and I stood in the elevator, climbing to the twenty-third floor, I felt like a little girl going to her first ballet class. Andre placed his hand on the small of my back. I was too nervous to make polite conversation with the bellboy. I pretended to search my Michael Kors clutch for some imaginary item until we arrived on our floor.
While Andre inspected the room I stood by the window, hoping the familiar view of San Francisco Bay would steady my nerves. I watched the ferry leave its wake in the gray water, and I studied the Golden Gate Bridge. I took a deep breath and turned to face Andre.