by Lucy Silag
After breakfast the following Saturday, M. Marquet offers to finally take me for a horseback ride. He helps me saddle up a dark brown horse, buckling all the tack into place and snapping a belt on the velvet-covered riding helmet under my chin.
“What’s the horse’s name?” I ask, petting its soft, furry nose with the back of my fingers.
“Vanille,” replies M. Marquet, laughing jovially. I can’t help laughing too. The horse’s fur is so dark that it is almost black.
M. Marquet gallops ahead. I barely know what I’m doing, but Vanille stays astride M. Marquet’s horse. I just hold rigidly to my reins.
“Regarde!” M. Marquet shouts, gesturing broadly at the landscape. It’s stunning, like a scene from a fairytale. We’re riding along a bluff, below which stretches the town of Perigeaux and a snakelike river and ravine topped by small, slender bridges called ponts in French. The skies are gray today, with a tiny bit of drizzle in the air, but not threatening real rain or snow.
“C’est magnifique!” I shout to him. He smiles at me. It seems that he really has forgiven me after all.
When we get back to the house, Mme Marquet greets us at the door to the mud room. “I didn’t realize you were going for a ride with Penelope,” she says crossly to M. Marquet. “We have the hunt this afternoon with the Lafontants. Did you forget?”
“Adele,” M. Marquet goes over to his wife and puts his arms around her. “You know I love to ride. I won’t be too tired for the hunt this afternoon!”
One thing rich Europeans seem to do a lot is go fox hunting with their rich friends, and then have a giant dinner afterward with a bunch of different kinds of meat. Alex had told us about the custom, which grossed out Olivia, who’s a vegetarian. Then Zack had told us how his dad makes him hunt every spring with his uncles and male cousins, and they all have to pray before they kill anything.
“Tu me rends folle,” Mme Marquet says in a low voice. “We have so much to do to get ready for the Lafontants. I won’t be able to go with you now.”
“Isn’t that what Marie is for?” M. Marquet asks. Mme Marquet glares at him, then looks at me as if she hadn’t realized I’ve been here this whole time.
“Penelope,” she says, “the gathering tonight is for adults only.”
M. Marquet looks embarrassed. “Adele, you don’t want Penelope to join us?”
“No! This dinner is far too important,” she says.
“It’s okay,” I reassure M. Marquet. “I’d be happy to help you get ready,” I tell Mme Marquet sweetly. “What do you need?”
“Well,” Mme Marquet says generously, “as long as you don’t mind.” She leads me into the kitchen. “Just help Marie with whatever she needs.” She gestures around at the table full of fruit, vegetables, and potatoes. Hanging above the sink is a hock of beef that needs to be cleaned and butchered.
I, of course, want the Marquets to think of me as helpful, and useful, and never, ever as a burden to them. Hell, if they asked me to clean their château from top to bottom, I’d do it with a smile after letting their vase get broken.
“Merci, cherie,” M. Marquet says, touching my cheek with his wrinkled hand. “Adele, let’s go dress for the hunt. Did Marie wash my new jodhpurs?” He guides her out of the kitchen. Neither of them looks exactly comfortable in here.
Marie puts me to work chopping chunks of beef for boeuf bourguignon—a hearty, delicious beef and vegetable stew served with peeled, boiled potatoes topped with butter and parsley. It’s hard work, and messy. Soon my T-shirt is covered with splatters of meat juice. The cubes I’ve cut are rough and hardly the same size.
“Is this okay?” I ask Marie. She nods.
“Some caregivers you’ve got,” she mutters quietly in French. “At least I’m getting paid for this work. They’ve got you working in here like servile labor.”
I pretend not to hear her, even though the same thought occurred to me as I was tearing cow’s flesh from the bone.
We cook all afternoon in the hot kitchen, washing and peeling vegetables, baking bread and praline cake. By the time Marie excuses me I look like I’m about to be battered and fried myself.
I take a bath in the old tub down the hall from my room, soaking in the steaming water for over an hour. After I’m good and clean, with all the vegetable matter dislodged from my fingernails and soaked out of my hair, I wrap myself in a big towel, lie on my canopied bed, and try and read Annabel’s old copy of Madame Bovary I’ve been carrying around with me since she left. Unlike my sister, I’ve never been much of a bookworm. I can’t sit still for long enough.
Downstairs, I hear a car drive up and Marie let in the Lafontants.
Even though I’m not invited to the dinner, I take care to look less rumpled than usual before I head down to my own dinner, left in the oven by Marie, who’ll serve dinner buffet style, then go back to the little caretaker’s cottage she shares with her husband across the pasture from the main house. I’ll eat in the kitchen.
I run a comb through my long hair, shaking it out so that it makes a shiny yellow fan over my shoulders. I brought one of my nicer sweaters with me, a simple black cardigan that I button over my tucked-in white collared shirt in an attempt to look more polished. I wear my cleanest jeans with the least holes in them.
The Lafontants and the Marquets are drinking wine in the dining room, which seems odd to me. I wonder if Mme Marquet was too embarrassed to entertain them in her sitting room, since it’s not as nicely kept up as other parts of the house. I wonder when the last time the Marquets had anyone over socially. I pass by the door to the dining room as quickly as possible to keep myself out of the way.
The trees outside rustle in the windy autumn night, their branches tapping the kitchen windows. Marie is a fantastic cook. Each bite of the boeuf bourguignon is absolutely lovely, though it’s a shame to eat something so cozy all by myself.
I think about my horseback ride today, how lucky I am that the Marquets were so forgiving about the party. One of the things I’ve missed about my life in Vermont is being in the outdoors and roaming around the woods by our house. The château is almost like being there, except even more stunningly beautiful.
I wonder how Dave’s doing. In Vermont, there’s probably already frost covering the grass every morning when he wakes up. I bet he’s lonely, wondering where Annabel is, not having my parents’ house to go hang out at. When he realized finally that I don’t know where she is, and I realized things weren’t changing for my parents—they are still facing time, and I’ve still got to get the Marquets to invite me for winter break so I won’t have to go home to Vermont—our conversations dropped off. My desperation to talk to him turned into dread. I figure if there’s more bad news, he’ll email me. Though I’m not sure I could stand any more bad news.
I wash the dishes I used in the sink, drying them with an old dishrag and setting them back into the cupboards. I hear bells of laughter from the dining room, M. Lafontant and M. Marquet gloating over their success during the hunt today.
“Would you men like some more wine?” I hear Mme Marquet ask them. “I’ll have to go down to the cellar to get it. Marie did not bring out enough for our dinner.”
“I’ll come with you,” Mme Lafontant tells her. I hear them scoot their chairs back, and their shoes clack the floor as they come toward the kitchen, behind which are the stairs to the Marquets’ wine collection. I duck into the shadowy china closet, hiding among the dishes used by Marquets over hundreds of years, each imprinted with their initials. A curtain hangs between the kitchen and me, and as Mme Marquet and Mme Lafontant pass through, I can hear them talking softly.
“So what happened to l’americaine?” Mme Lafontant asks Mme Marquet. “I thought she was in the Dordogne with you this weekend.”
“Ah, Penelope,” Mme Marquet responds. “She’s upstairs. I told her to make herself scarce tonight. The men would be falling over themselves trying to impress her if she ate with us.”
Mme Lafontant laughs. “How d
o you stand it? Such a young, pretty girl in such close proximity to your husband. Doesn’t it make him wild?”
My mouth hangs open. M. Marquet is an old man! That’s revolting!
“It’s miserable,” Mme Marquet confesses. “But he knows he can’t touch. Besides, it makes him appear quite the benevolent patriarch to his voting public. Taking in American brats so they can learn the beauty of French culture. It promotes his image as a harbinger of cross-cultural interactions! The citizens of the Dordogne are so zealous for tourist dollars, they will do anything to kiss American ass.”
“You really think it’s worth it?” Mme Lafontant says as they go down the stairs to the cellar.
“If it would help my husband get more votes, I’d let Carla Bruni come and live here,” Mme Marquet jokes. “In fact, it probably would help!”
I creep out from behind the curtain and stand at the top of the stairs to keep listening. I never understood before why on earth the Marquets had signed up with the Lycée to take on an American student. Now I see it’s to make M. Marquet’s image more family friendly!
“How is she behaved?” Mme Lafontant asks.
“Oh, you know,” Mme Marquet says. “We let her do what she wants.”
I hear them coming back up the stairs and scramble out of the kitchen and back to my room.
I guess this means staying for winter break shouldn’t be that hard to accomplish.
DECEMBER
19. ZACK
Allez! Allez!
I’m sitting in a hard wooden desk behind Jay in history class at school. We’re reviewing for the Final Comp, now that the test is only two weeks away. He’s so close to me I could reach out and stroke the back of his lovely brown neck.
And I never would!
Not unless . . . not unless I knew he hadn’t been freaked out by what Alex blurted in the McDonald’s in Lyon. And to know that for sure, I’d have to actually come out and ask him.
I never would.
I wonder if Jay is worried that his scholarship won’t be renewed. I know I personally would just be hung up to dry if he didn’t get his 90 percent.
Watching him now, hunched over his French history textbook, taking notes on Mlle Vailland’s epic lecture on Louis XIV and the Ancien Régime, I can almost understand why Alex would think it was better to have my crush out in the open. Not knowing what Jay thinks of me is torture.
When Alex stormed off to go smoke after her scene at the McDonald’s in Lyon, I went back to the table to eat the rest of my cold sandwich and soggy fries. When I sat down, Jay sympathetically clapped me on the back and asked if everything was ok. Was he trying to tell me he understood? Had he, oh God, heard what Alex said, and was he trying to tell me that it was ok?
Since we got back from the trip, I’ve agonized over that moment, that hard, friendly thump of Jay’s hand against the back of my cardigan, the genuine caring in his voice. If I could only figure out what he meant. If only I knew if I had a chance with him or not.
It’s too risky. Not knowing is better than knowing the awful truth, if Jay turns out to be straight, or worse yet, gay but doesn’t like me back. Then I won’t have anyone but myself—the geeky, awkward kid from Memphis—to blame.
U r not geeky! Pierson gchats me later this evening. Urarock star. U r MEGACOOL!
Hehe. Hannes always says that. MEGACOOL. LOL.
Tell JAY that, not me, I type back.
Why don’t U tell Jay that? Pierson counters. Why don’t u tell him u like him? Give him a list of all your great qualities. Tell him there’s no better offer in town. Just see what he says . . .
Easy for you to say, I sulk. Now that you’re in raptures with Hannes, you forget how hard it is to make a move. Any move.
Maybe HE’s the one who’s shy. Maybe U have to make the first move, because if u don’t he never will. I roll my eyes at Pierson’s grinning avatar. But I know he’s right.
Even though I’m a basket case about what happened in Lyon, I can’t hold a grudge against Alex. She won’t let me.
“Alex, I told you I needed some space from you,” I endeavor to blow her off during PE one afternoon. Mme Cuchon had gotten wind of the fact that we’d not been to one PE class this term and basically blackmailed us with failing the Final Comp if we didn’t at least go take the end-of-the-year fitness evaluation.
Mary and Sara-Louise are recording our scores as we do basic exercises like push-ups and pull-ups and crunches, keeping time with a stopwatch. I can’t really get away from Alex, since she’s lying right next to me on the wrestling mat, grunting as she does her crunches.
“Haven’t you had enough time away from me? Don’t you miss me?” Alex asks. “I miss you.”
“It hasn’t even been a week since I told you that,” I remind her.
The stopwatch beeps. “Time!” Sara-Louise calls. The way she says it, it sounds more like Tam.
Alex wriggles over to me. “Cut it out, Zack,” she demands. She sits up on her elbow and looks at me gravely. “This is getting ridiculous.”
I roll over and start doing some push-ups. “I don’t have to talk to you.”
“But Zack! It’s almost my birthday. My seventeenth,” she whines. “I wanted you to get dressed up with me and sing Stevie Nicks to me all night. Just like the white-winged dove, ooh, ooh, ooooh,” she sings campily. She knows it’s one of my favorite songs. “You know, ’cause I’m at the edge of seventeen?”
“Oh, you’re on the edge, alright,” I retort. “And I’m fixin’ to push you over it.”
“Good lord!” Sara-Louise cries in frustration. “I’ve had enough of this, you two. I don’t know what Alex did to you, Zack, but I’m sure it was par for the course. Stop acting like such a little bitch and get over yourself !”
Sara-Louise is standing over me, her hands on her hips. Besides PJ, she’s the tallest girl in the class, and she’s about twenty pounds heavier. From this angle, she’s a little scary. “Y’all are gonna do what my brother and I do whenever we need to work somethin’ out—leg wrestle!”
“Awesome!” Mary approves. “Good one. Go!”
“Yes!” Alex says. “Let’s do it. I will leg wrestle you for your forgiveness.”
Once again, I’m struck by the irony of the situation. I’m surrounded by three girls who want to wrestle, and I’d rather run naked down the Champs Elysée wearing nothing but Alex’s red Christian Louboutins.
“Ugh,” I say. “Fine. When I kick your ass will you leave me alone?”
We lie down side by side, toe to head. “One, two, three!” we count along with Mary and Sara-Louise, kicking our legs toward each other. On the third count, we interlock our legs and try to flip the other one over.
Well, Goddamn. Alex is strong. She has me doing a somersault in three seconds flat.
“Best of three!” I protest. But she does it again the second time, too.
“You’re beat, bestie,” she says, jumping up and embracing me. “We’re friends again! Aren’t you so happy?”
I hug her back. “I think, actually, that I might very well be.”
Alex wanted to have her birthday dinner at one of the trendiest, hardest to get into spots in Paris—L’Atelier on the Rive Gauche. As we all know by now, what Alex wants, Alex gets, so here we are, about to be feasting on chilled octopus and squash foam and feeling not the slightest bit satiated by the ridiculously small portions. Or at least that’s what I expect, from the descriptions of the other restaurants Alex tells me about in New York.
Alex gets everything she wants—except having George at her seventeenth birthday party. Apparently, when Alex extended the invite to George earlier this week, George said, “We’ll see.” When she texted him this afternoon to see for sure if he would be there, he texted back a taut Can’t make it. Have a great one! I thought Alex would have broken down into tears from his dismissal, but she managed to keep her head up.
“You look stunning,” I tell her at the restaurant. Besides George, the only other friend of hers tha
t can’t be here is PJ, and I think Alex was a little relieved by her absence, to tell the truth. As much as Alex recognizes that she has no reason to dislike PJ, really, I don’t think she can wrap her head around the idea of being friends with someone that disarmingly gorgeous.
Crowded around our table are me, Olivia, Sara-Louise, and Mary. I’d been too afraid to ask Alex to invite Jay—too afraid he’d say no, and also too afraid he’d say yes.
Alex told all the girls (and me!) to wear all black on her birthday, so that no one at the restaurant would know that we’re in high school. Alex has on a high-necked lace number with little black suede booties, and her hair is piled on top of her head like a fin de siècle Gibson Girl, with loose tendrils falling romantically around her beautiful face.
“Thank you,” Alex says into my ear. “I hope you have a great time tonight. I owe you, after what I did in Lyon.”
“Thanks, Alex,” I say, sincerely.
The waiter fills our glasses with an expensive, delectable Merlot. “Tell him we all want the prix fixe,” Alex says to me. The waiter, used to rich girls with bad French, understands her. I don’t have to translate for her like usual.
“To the birthday girl!” I raise my glass and clink with everyone else’s.
“And to Olivia running off with the Paris Underground Ballet Theatre!” Alex chimes in. Her eyes are wet with feeling. “To leg wrestling!”
“To new friends,” Sara-Louise says warmly, squeezing Mary’s hand.
“To new challenges,” Olivia adds with a big smile. Her ankle is finally fully healed, and she’s wearing new patent leather high-heeled pumps with her black pleated miniskirt and tights for the occasion. Her hair is pulled back in a French twist. This is the most grown-up I have ever seen her look.
“To new places,” Mary says, gesturing around us at our adopted foreign city. Alex has given her the skull necklace she got at Colette, seemingly out of pure generosity, or because Mary always seems to have an extra cigarette, and lately, Alex doesn’t seem to have any.