Beautiful Americans

by Lucy Silag

  “That will change with the season,” Sonia explains. “Fall is philanthropy season in Paris. But weekends, they still go to the Dordogne. They can’t stay away. You’ll see. You’ll fall in love with it, too.”

  Friday afternoon, I can’t stop squirming as I sit on the TGV high-speed train racing its way to the southern coastal French city of Bordeaux. At the Bordeaux station I’m going to switch to a train to Perigeaux, where M. Marquet will meet me and drive me to the Marquets’ château in the Dordogne.

  Just listening to the French announcements over the train loudspeaker makes me shiver with excitement. I’ve always loved France, loved the language, the culture, the artistic heritage. Annabel loved France too, but for different reasons—she loved the romance of it, the idea that Paris was where you found yourself. But Dave would always tell her they had all the romance they needed right there in Vermont.

  Annabel and I used to have a big, classroom-sized map of the world on the wall in the bedroom that we shared. For fun, we’d close our eyes and spin in place, then poke our finger on a spot on the map, pretending it was where we were destined to end up one day. We’d always try and aim for France, and usually end up somewhere in the Atlantic off the coast of Spain when we opened our eyes. We’d get Africa, England, Russia, Israel . . . but never France.

  The night Dave asked Annabel to marry him, she came home giddy. She spun around with her eyes closed while I watched her from where I was tucked up in my twin bed.

  “Aha!” she cried as she put her finger down on the map. “I got it!”The memory makes me smile a little bit.

  So far, my brief meeting with the Marquets just as they were leaving for the benefit is all that I have seen of them. The day after we met, they left for the Dordogne again while I was at school. Sonia is there during the day, but at night I stay all by myself in their palatial apartment. Sonia doesn’t seem too interested in housekeeping. She mostly talks on her cell phone or reads tabloids in the kitchen.

  Olivia stopped by briefly to make sure I was okay, but then had to run off to a study session with Sara-Louise and Mary. Olivia is obsessed with the Final Comp, in case anyone hasn’t noticed.

  “I found out that your host dad is a magistrate,” Olivia told me before she left.

  “Oh, really?” I’d been wondering what M. Marquet’s seemingly negligible job was. Except a magistrate doesn’t sound so negligible. “What’s a magistrate?”

  “It’s like a judge, but also, like, a political office. Mme Rouille told me that your host dad was just recently elected to the district court in the Dordogne, which explains why they’ve been so absent. But the rumor is,” Olivia whispered in an uncharacteristically gossipy tone, “that he wants to run for national office.”

  “Ooooh, Olivia, how scandalous!” I teased her.

  She laughed. “Well, that was how Mme Rouille said it! I guess it’s not that big a deal. Still, sounds like you’re living with high society over here.”

  The last few days living there have been something out of Eloise in Paris—velvet Louis XIV chairs, glittering chandeliers, eight-foot mirrors in gilded frames. I didn’t know anyone besides maybe Marie Antoinette who had ever lived like this—I certainly never expected myself to be in the lap of luxury.

  And certainly not after everything I’ve done.

  Last night, I bought a baguette and some gruyere on my way home from school, and after Sonia left, I made a sandwich and ate it in the middle of their elegant living room floor, facing the ornate doors leading out to the terrace. The sun was going down, and I opened up the drapes so I could watch the dusk settle over the Place des Ternes. Hilly, animated Montmartre, with the Sacre Coeur crowning its top like a white star in the misty evening, rises just beyond the Marquets’ safe, placid residential neighborhood. Careful of the crumbs on the carpet, I chewed thoughtfully, contemplating the strange roller coaster of the last few months. When I finished eating, I flossed and brushed my teeth, and lay on my bed for several hours, wide awake.

  It was the most alone I’ve ever felt.

  The train is packed with weekenders, but my seatmate disembarked at the Poitiers station. Families and couples are crowded all around me, restless with anticipation for the weekend as the train chugs across the valleys and hills of southern France. The atmosphere is hospitable, but I feel removed from it.

  I open my notebook, thinking (as I often have in the last few weeks) of Annabel. I know my older sister will never get this letter, but I write to her anyway.

  Dear Annabel,

  You’d never believe it if you could see me right now. You’d be so proud of me. The Marquets barely know me, and already they want me to stay with them at their house in the country.

  You’re the only person who could ever understand how much I want this. How much I need them to feel bonded to me, and ask me not only to come for this weekend, but to stay for winter break so I won’t have to go home to Vermont anytime soon. It was the one flaw in my plan, the one thing I didn’t think of until I got on the plane. The program specifically says that all students have to leave their French families for the three weeks of winter break unless formally invited for the holidays by their host families. That only gives me three months to secure that invitation. Only three months to secure my fate.

  Besides the things I want to tell Annabel about my own new life in France, there are a million questions I want to ask about hers. My sister was always a mystery, but now, after this long separation, she’s an enigma. Whenever I picture her, she’s running, her hair a dark streak behind her. Her legs even longer than mine, I could never keep up with her.

  I love trains. I wish we used them more in the States. It’s dreamlike to be sitting on a train, looking out the window. Even loneliness, even gloom, seem comfortable on a train whistling and rolling through the French countryside in the dark.

  Where are you out there, Annabel? I ask my dimly lit reflection in the window. Will I ever get to see you again?

  All of a sudden I’m reminded of Jay, how he noticed my caffeine habit, how he wanted to work with me on the Louvre project. I’m missing our study date! And the party at Sara-Louise’s, too!

  Oh, no, I despair for a moment. Then I brush off all thoughts of Jay. I’ll deal with that later. Nothing could ever be more important than this trip.

  I find a very jolly M. Marquet waiting for me in Perigeaux. He picks me up and swings me around like a little girl. I laugh, too loud.

  “Eh, I would have sent Charles—that’s the groundskeeper, the man who tends to the animals and the gardens—but I wanted you to feel welcomed, at home here,” M. Marquet tells me as we loop around the windy roads leading up to their estate. “Marie, the housekeeper here, will get you some dinner, and in the morning, Mme Marquet and I will show you the place. It’s very special. This land has been in my family for a long time.”

  The château is very special. It’s dark, the way I would imagine an old castle to be, and creaks and shudders in the windy night. I fall asleep immediately in the huge feather bed I’m sent to after eating roast quail and haricots verts in the big dining room.

  Decked out in sturdy rubber boots and stiff, starchy jeans, the Marquets take me for a robust hike around the grounds the next morning. I’m practically jogging to keep up with them, thinking of questions I might ask to get to know them better.

  The house itself, built from bricks that are an almost fluffy pink, is flanked by two cone-shaped towers on either of its rear corners. Surrounded by lush green gardens on all sides, the landscape of the grounds becomes gradually more rugged the farther you get from the château. Each doorway to the house is oversize and regal, fit for kings and queens and the banners and flags that would have attended them and their entourage. The gravel paths trace the rolling hills for miles in every direction, leading to barns, fields, and pastures full of the Marquets’ sheep and horses.

  My own sketchy knowledge of French history is based purely on the old portraits I’ve seen in the meager collection of art b
ooks at the library of my old school in Vermont. This house looks like the houses I’ve seen in those paintings. At least three hundred years old.

  “Five hundred, actually,” Mme Marquet sniffs. “Not including the additions our family has put on over the generations.”

  I give her my most genuinely impressed expression. She doesn’t react to it, just carries on admiring her own house.

  The front entrance of the château is several stairs off the ground, about as high as a horse’s back.

  “So that you could just hop onto your horse without ever stepping on the ground,” M. Marquet elucidates. “The ancestors so hated to get themselves dirty.”

  I chuckle. In contrast to their somewhat decrepit, dusty home, the Marquets’ boots, jeans, and barn jackets are spotless. Meanwhile, I’ve managed to get completely sodden with dirt during our exertions.

  M. Marquet leads me out to the pasture, a green expanse dotted with black horses. It’s starting to feel cooler now, even in the middle of the day when the sun is high in the sky. I’m glad I brought my dad’s old baggy sweater with me, even if Mme Marquet did give it a funny look earlier.

  “Do you like to ride?” he asks me.

  “Sure,” I say. “I mean, I’ve never done it before, but I’d love to try.” That’s not exactly true. Dave’s parents have an old pony, and when I was little I rode it bareback along the creek while my sister and Dave made out behind a tree. Somehow I don’t think that’s what the Marquets have in mind.

  Mme Marquet looks down at my Converse sneakers. “You can’t ride in those. The soles are too soft. The horse won’t understand your commands.”

  “Pas de problème,” M. Marquet says, motioning for Charles to take the horses to the stable and saddle them. “Go ask Marie for an old pair of boots. There are dozens in the mud room; there’s sure to be some in your size.”

  Mme Marquet sighs. “Dépêche-toi, Penelope.”

  “I’ll be really quick,” I promise, running down the hill toward the house.

  I bang open the back door and look around for Marie. I remember that when she served me breakfast this morning, she’d said something about going to mass down the road. The mud room, just off the kitchen, is easy enough to find without her, as is the closet where all the outdoor wear is stocked. It doesn’t look like the stuff in here gets worn very often. There are cobwebs laced around the half-dozen pairs of boots. I kneel on the floor, picking through them, willing myself to quickly find a pair that fits. I imagine Mme Marquet with one hand on her hip, the other tapping that gold watch.

  From far away, I hear a noise like the shutters slamming.

  “Marie?” I call, rising to my feet. No one answers.

  I haven’t been gone that long. Is it Mme Marquet, impatient to get our horseback ride underway? I go back through the kitchen to the hallway that connects these old housework areas—the kitchen, the laundry room, the stairs to the wine cellar, the mud room—to the rest of the château.

  The château, even during the day, is dark and musty from lack of sunlight. The darkness makes me unsure, afraid. It’s so dark that I wish I had a flashlight.

  The hallway is empty, of course. But that tingling at the top of my spine, that horrible feeling, is the same one I got when I was pouring the coffee for my parents up at the gas station near the Canadian border this summer. That night, I didn’t have to go outside to know something was off. I could just feel it.

  I creep into the sitting room. Like at the Paris apartment, the furnishings at the château are old and slightly decayed. The yellow curtains in the sitting room are browning at the edges, and the ancient pianoforte in the corner is covered in a thick layer of dust, despite the presence of Marie. While the Marquets are most certainly living in absolute splendor, their homes are the tiniest bit decrepit, just about to give way to neglect and disrepair. The chandelier hanging above the little armchairs set in a half-circle has several bulbs out. The majestic fireplace is covered in soot.

  Hardly able to breathe for the sensation that I am being watched, I reach out toward the yellow drapes, pulling the fabric back an inch, then slightly more. When I see a face at the window behind them, I let out a bloodcurdling scream that sends the face bounding away from the window. There are several flashes of light, all in a row, and then a shout to run in French.

  I realize, after a moment, that I’m squeezing my eyes closed. I open them and look out the window, up the gravel driveway that leads to the main road back to Perigeaux. There are two men dashing toward a Peugeot hatchback, cameras and flashbulbs hanging off their bodies and bouncing along with them.

  From the pasture, on horseback, comes Charles, the groundskeeper, shouting at the men with the cameras in harsh tones. He has a horsewhip in one hand, raised above his head like he will strike them with it if they return to the château.

  “I see you’ve met our friends,” a low, deep voice says from behind me.

  “M. Marquet!” I jump away from the window, jostling the curtain so that it leaves me covered in a shower of dust. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

  “Bonjour, Penelope,” M. Marquet says tiredly. “Adele! She’s in the sitting room!” he calls behind him.

  Adele, better known to me as Mme Marquet, comes in, followed by Marie, back from church.

  “Did you say anything to them?” Mme Marquet asks me sharply. “Did they ask you any questions?

  “No!” I answer her. “I’m so sorry I took so long getting the boots. I suddenly felt like someone was watching me, so I came in here. . . . Who were those men?”

  “This is no place for you to be sneaking around,” Mme Marquet says, her back rigid. “You have to be more careful! Did they get photos of this room?”

  I shrug. “All I know is that they flashed the camera right at my face.”

  “Photos of you would not be bad,” Mme Marquet says, almost to herself. “But this room—with all these old things in it, all this old junk—that would be a disgrace to the Marquet name.”

  I don’t understand. Suddenly, before I can stop myself, I start to cry.

  “Ah, Penelope,” M. Marquet breaks the tension and gently puts his arms around me. “Off with you. Marie, take Penelope to lunch in town. Penelope, Perigeaux is très, très belle this time of year. Every time of year! Marie will take you to lunch, and then perhaps we’ll ride tomorrow.”

  “But those men,” I say, still confused, still afraid of the way Mme Marquet has her hands on her hips like I’ve messed something up, big time. “What were they taking pictures of?”

  Mme Marquet sighs. “They just want photos of the new magistrate’s house. Now that M. Marquet is in the public eye, the tabloids are just a part of our lives. But whatever you do, Penelope, don’t ever talk to them. You hear me?”

  “They were photographing me?”

  “Yes,” Mme Marquet says, exasperation in her voice. “God knows why.”

  I nod. I feel like I can’t catch my breath. The Marquets are public figures. If they find out who I really am, what my family has done, they will want nothing to do with me.

  “Good girl,” M. Marquet says, patting the top of my head and pushing me toward Marie. “Now go on with Marie. Don’t worry anymore about those silly men.”

  Marie whisks me down the hall and into an old station wagon parked in the garage. I help her shop in the market in the town square, picking out vegetables for dîner. When we return to the château, I’m looking forward to eating with the Marquets, but I find out that they’re having dinner at a friend’s house. I’m not invited. I can’t help but wonder if they’re shunning me, if I’ve offended them. Do they think I was poking around in the sitting room on purpose?

  It’s true, I can’t explain why I was drawn into the room I think as I fall asleep, how I knew there was someone else looking in on it, but it’s not like I was trying to sneak around.

  Mme Marquet swishes by me in the kitchen the next morning, wearing a fancy dressing gown with sable trim.

  “Penelo
pe,” she says, much more warmly than she’d addressed me yesterday. “M. Marquet must have left for his ride without you. How odd of him not to wait. He must have thought you weren’t interested.”

  I’m befuddled. “Really? Why would he think that?”

  “Hmm, unclear,” Mme Marquet says. “Care to join me for some tea upstairs? I’ve got to get ready for a brunch we’ve been invited to at the château of les Lafontants. Their good favor is important to us.”

  “I’d love some tea,” I tell her, and follow her to her bedroom. As in her apartment in Paris, Mme Marquet has a large boudoir where she gets ready. The vanity is lined with bottles, compacts, brushes, and pencils. I whistle at the sheer number of products she has in her collection.

  “Sit,” she commands me, pointing toward an empty chair across from the bed. I lift a cup and saucer from the tray on the table and help myself to some hot tea with lemon. It helps calm the shivers I can’t seem to get rid of in this big old house.

  Mme Marquet is what the French call jolie-laide—“pretty-ugly.” It means that in her wide features, her pronounced overbite, and her deep-set eyes, there is a kind of beauty that is far more than the sum of its parts. Many members of the French aristocracy have this look, I’ve noticed from looking through old issues of Paris Match around the Marquets’ Paris apartment. Both Madame and Monsieur Marquet heavily resemble old paintings printed in French history books with the medieval sensibility of their looks. Despite not being a natural beauty, Mme Marquet obviously takes her regimen quite seriously.

  “I don’t have it as easy as a natural beauty like you, Penelope,” Mme Marquet comments, noticing my looking at all of her makeup and perfumes. “I need all of these.” She gestures with the eyeliner in her hand.