The Body in the Vestibule ff-4

by Katherine Hall Page

  The kitchen had a stone slab of a sink and a doll-sized refrigerator and stove. To get hot water, there were two Victorian contraptions, one in the kitchen, one in the bath, that required a great many pressings of buttons, lightings of matches, and prayers.

  Faith loved the apartment more than any place she had ever lived.

  They'd immediately gone to Mammouth, a sort of combination supermarket, department store, and hardware store in a building the size of an airplane hangar, and bought a tricycle for Ben and other essentials. He careened recklessly from room to room. There was nothing to worry about: no furniture, no heirlooms, hardly any possessions at all. Faith filled the rooms with flowers from the market, arranged in some pitchers and vases from Mammouth. She covered the table in the dining room with a few yards of paisley fabric, from the Monday nonfood market, the marche forain, and that was the extent of her decorating. She didn't miss her home, the parsonage with all their things. The feelings possessions bring seemed to depend on immediacy. Or, as she put it to herself in her current euphoria, the whole place could sink into the earth and she'd merely say, "Too bad.”

  The first night, savoring the cheese course, still suffering from decalage horaire, jet lag, and feeling slightly drunk—Tom on the excellent Cote du Rhone he'd discovered he could buy in bulk at the vinotheque nearby and Faith on the grape juice she'd found at Malleval, a fancy epicerie—they'd watched the sun set and asked themselves how they were ever going to be able to leave.

  And now after she put the food from the market away, this was how Faith started a long-overdue letter to her younger sister and only sibling, Hope. Their parents had stopped short at Charity. Hope was a newlywed, living and working in New York City with her husband, Quentin, and their yours, mine, and ours Filofaxes.

  I can't remember ever being so happy. Tom says it's my hormones, but he's grinning, too. Even the job of switching from winter to summer clothes early—you know how boring that is, and in New England, you no sooner drag all the stuff out than the season has , changed again. This year it was easy, because nothing fit Ben or me and I decided to wait to get things here. You must be wondering what it's like in Lyon. Very different from Paris. No place is like Paris, but I think it's more livable here. The Leblancs have been sweethearts. I liked them immediately. We've been there twice for meals en famille and sit and laugh and talk for hours. They have two children: Stephanie, who's thirteen and can seem thirty, as well as seven when she plays with Ben, and her nine-year-old brother, Pierre. He's very solemn and like all these French children, so perfect in their long Bermudas and polo shirts, Chipie, the hot brand and very branche, of course. The small children in Benjamin's school, the garderie, look as if they are going to a birthday party every day. But the marque with the greatest cachet for the preschool set is—Oshkosh! Very expensive and treated like gold.

  We've also met some of the other people in our building. The d'Amberts live directly below us and their apartment stretches from Place d'Albon to Place St. Nizier, so they look out at the church on one end and the river on the other. The Saone, that is. I've finally gotten them straight. We're hi Presqulle, the center of the city, which extends like a finger between the Saone and the Rhone. Lyon is a very walkable city and Ben and I go exploring every day. He's changing so fast. You won't recognize your grown-up nephew when you see him next, and I miss my little two-year-old. I think this is how kids get their parents to produce siblings for them to play with.

  It's hard to describe our apartment's location. Two buildings back onto and around a kind of courtyard, except no court—more like a large, open elevator shaft. Everyone uses the deep sills for plants, small laundry lines, and for cooling pots. The windows are all discreetly curtained, of course, but not always closed, and I'm becoming dangerously voyeuristic—or whatever it is when you eavesdrop, too. I can see the Saone if the windows in the apartment across from us are open and at the right angle. I can also see the photos of their ancestors hanging on the wall— Grand-pere looks remarkably like Lenin, or maybe it isn't Grand-pere at all. It's a bit strange to know so much about your neighbors—what they're having to eat, the state of their lingerie—without knowing who they are or what they look like in some cases. By the way, the French really do say "ooh la la" or "ooh la" for short. They also say merde a lot, and I don't think it's as bad as saying "shit" at home. Anyway, back to the travelogue.

  Vieux Lyon, the medieval part of the city, is on the other side of the Saone and I haven't been there much yet. The best cheese, cakes, chocolate, and sausages are all on the other side of the Rhone. I know this may not fascinate you as much as it does me, but it tells you how I'm spending my days. (Citibank, you'll be happy to hear, has an office on the next block. So we are not totally devoid of amenities.) Not getting much done on Have Faith in Your . Kitchen, but I plan to incorporate lots of Lyonnais ji recipes into it and so this all falls under the category of if research. | Faith looked up from the letter and out the window to j| the square below. Another thing that was making it difficult to work on the cookbook she was writing was the noise. ; Not the traffic, or occasional siren, but the music from the « clochard's radio. Clochard was the word for "tramp," she'd ,'| learned, and the literal translation did not take into account !! the kind of romanticism these men—and a few women—of , j the roads had been invested with by their more prosaic jj compatriots. She wouldn't have minded a little Edith Piaf '1 or Charles Aznavour for atmosphere, but this clochard had other tastes—the French equivalent of elevator music and j loud.

  He arrived each morning quite punctually, spread out a small tattered blanket, took a couple of bottles of wine from the battered attache case he carried like a proper homme d'affaires, then positioned his animals—an old mutt and a rabbit in a cage—and sat down. Just in time for the first mass. He took a small brass bowl from his case, set it down, and placed a ten-franc piece dead center. By the end of the day when he reversed the proceedings, his bowl runneth over. Faith wasn't too sure what the animals were intended to convey—a latent sense of responsibility or simply colorful window dressing. He was often joined by other clochards and frequently by non-clochards, especially teen-agers, all of whom appeared to invest him with some special kind of wisdom. The court of the bearded philosopher beg-gar. The large, greasy-looking cap, casquette, he always wore—his crown. She resumed writing.

  So, there are the d'Amberts. They need a big apartment because they have five children. I see them on the stairs, very polite, very BCBG, "bon chic, bon genre," Stephanie Leblanc told me. It's some sort of French version of a well-born Yuppie. Stephanie did not seem to be all that impressed. Tom told me the other version he'd heard from Paul, "bon cul, bon genre," considerably cruder and roughly translates as "nice ass, may be underused." I don't know the d'Amberts well enough yet to know to which, if any, category they belong. They do have a very elegant card on their mailbox and a fancy, highly polished brass nameplate on their door, though.

  Then above us are the Joliets. He's also at the university and always to be found at the forefront of whatever anyone is protesting, Paul told us. Madame is Italian, Valentina, and owns a small art gallery a few blocks away. She has invited us to a vernissage, an opening, Saturday night. She's very lively, very pretty. No kids. She told me her husband was enough.

  On the top floor, there are some students and, in a closet-sized apartment, Madame Yvette Vincent, the widow of another professeur—it's quite an academic building. Madame is over eighty and climbs up and down the stairs several times a day to do her marketing or take her little dog out. (Everybody seems to have dogs here, if the streets are any evidence. We even saw a couple bring their dog into a restaurant we ate at the other night, and order for him. When the food came, it was garnished with parsley, just like ours. Bonne preparation, as if FiFi would notice!) Back to Madame Vincent. Besides being agile, she's extremely elegant— well coiffed and very a la mode suits. I had a chance to see her apartment when she invited me for a cup of tea. The main room was filled w
ith armoires, commodes, tables, fragile little chairs all from Louis somethingth. Her bed was behind a silk drape, which she proudly pulled to one side. Ben's crib was bigger. We drank from Sevres cups, of course, or I should say, bien sur. My French is improving dramatically, but not as fast as Ben's. He rattles on about le petit lapin—named Peter Rabbit!—at school and his bon ami Leonard.”

  Faith looked at her watch. She'd have to finish the letter later. It was time to get said child. She glanced in the tiny mirror over the bathroom sink and put on some lip gloss and blush. French mothers, at least in Lyon, never appeared in the streets in untidy clothes or without makeup. They didn't have the kind of style Faith saw in Paris or even elsewhere in Lyon, on rues Victor Hugo or Emile Zola, where skirts were very short, and agnes b. or Clementine supplied them, yet the mothers still had that seemingly unconscious ability of most French women to look good—no matter how homely they were. She thought of her neighbors back in Aleford in their ubiquitous jogging suits, jeans, or, in the case of the older women, ensembles from Johnny Appleseed's. Informality was easier, but it didn't look as chic.

  She raced down the stairs, paused almost at the bottom until the walls stopped spinning around, then opened a door and took Ben's stroller out. She'd been lugging this up and down the stairs with Ben and usually a full panier in tow until, happily, Madame d'Ambert pointed out that one of Faith's keys opened up what had formerly been living space for a concierge and was now a storage area for bicycles, etc. As she grabbed the stroller, she was struck as always that the good old days hadn't been so lovely for all concerned. The Belle Epoque in this case meant a low ceiling, a single interior round window, so dirty that little light passed through, and narrow rooms extending the length of the building. She locked the closet again and went out the door into the square, hoping Ben would consent to be pushed in his poussette and not demand to push it, as usual.

  It was close to noon and everything in Lyon had come to a halt for the sacred hour, sometimes longer, for lunch— or almost everything.

  Faith and Tom had been amused to discover that St. Nizier and the small, narrow surrounding streets composed one of Lyon's red-light districts. At lunchtime, the prostitutes were out in full force, as men put aside work for the pleasures of the table, and perhaps the bed, as well. Every day to and from school, Faith passed the same three women who stood casually a half block down from the butcher's. One had a small, fluffy dog that Ben adored and it wasn't long before they had entered into conversation. The dog's name was Whiskey, she told them. Faith realized that as an outsider, and a transient one, as well, she had the freedom to break the conventions people like the d'Amberts, and even the Leblancs, followed whether they wanted to or not. So she was fast becoming close friends with her butcher and his wife and could stop and shoot the breeze with the ladies at the corner. Their names were Marilyn, Monique, and Marie. Marilyn appeared considerably younger than the other two and wore glasses, which she pulled off whenever a car slowed at the curb, then called discreetly, "Tu viens mon minet?" The little dog was hers.

  Monique appeared to be about Faith's mother's age and had the largest bust Faith had ever seen. She favored tube tops in a variety of neon colors, miniskirts in black, and patent leather go-go boots—a kind of universal outfit, as much at home over the years in Boston's Combat Zone or Paris's Pigalle as here.

  Marie could have been twenty or forty. She smoked constantly—how constantly was a question that crossed Faith's mind—and had a mane of bright red hair to her waist. It was when Marie had told Faith one day last week to hurry upstairs, her husband had come home for lunch, that she'd begun to suspect Lyon was a village, too.

  It was always difficult to get Ben to leave school, especially when he'd been playing with the riding toys in the big room, and today was no exception. It ended the same way as usual, too. The teacher, Jeanne, watched Faith cajole, speak firmly, start to leave in the blind hope he would follow; then, with a smile, she stepped in and said firmly, "A demain, Benjamin. Dit 'au revoir.' " And Ben kissed her, said good-bye, and left. Of course, it was one of life's perverse truths that children will always behave better for anyone else than a parent, but Faith was convinced Jeanne possessed some hidden powers. Mesmerism, or something she sprinkled in their milk.

  The garderie was a godsend. Faith was afraid she might get a little boring about how wonderfully the French arranged their lives when she got back to Aleford, but the government-sponsored child care was truly wonderful. And the public transportation. And the health care. And the...

  Benjamin was in high spirits and raced out to the street with Faith in swift pursuit, awkwardly lugging his stroller. She called, "Stop" at the top of her voice, then switched to "Arret," and he did. Miraculously, he also allowed himself to be strapped into the stroller. Ben's blond hair was losing its curls with each haircut, although hot weather and exercise produced the damp that restored them and his face was framed with tendrils. He gave her an angelic smile. It didn't fool her for a moment, but it was a nice moment.

  They made their way slowly back to the apartment. Ben was fascinated by a barge on the river, crying, to Faith's delight, "Bateau! Mom! Bateau!" They crossed the street to the bridge to stand and watch it pass underneath. It was a houseboat, a peniche, with a small, bright green square of AstroTurf, complete with lawn chairs, on the deck. From the bridge they were standing on, they could look down the river to the other spans arching gracefully across the Saone. On one side, old Lyon sloped from the medieval cathedral of St. Jean and the Palais de Justice up the mountain to Fourviere, a nineteeth-century basilica with Byzantine leanings that dominated the skyline. Then, on the other side, the shops and apartments of Presqu'ile crowded close to the quais, row upon row of brightly painted exteriors—rose, ocher, yellow—their balconies filled with pots of flowers. Once, Paul Leblanc had told her, Lyon was completely gray, matching the rains that fell for weeks in the winter. Louis Pradel, the mayor during the sixties and early seventies, had started the restoration back to the original colors. Paul was convinced this was when the city began to shed some of its reputation for bourgeois correctness and provincial snobbishness. He swore it began to rain less, too. Faith looked up at the brilliant sun. For whatever reason, the weather had been perfect so far.

  When they got back to their block, Ben saw Marilyn and ran to her. As Faith drew near, she noticed the dog was cradled in Marilyn's arms, instead of at her feet as usual, and she had buried her face in its fur. Her stiff, slightly pink blond hair contrasted oddly with the puppy's fluffy brown fur. The other two women were nowhere in sight. Ben was trying to pet the puppy. Marilyn lifted her head toward them and Faith said, "Another time, Ben," and pulled him away.

  Marilyn did not look like une fille de joie. She was crying her eyes out.

  Two

  Faith and Tom had been to two French dinner parties, not counting the familial gatherings at the Leblancs, and on the basis of these experiences, Faith, never one to shy away from sweeping generalizations, declared that they were the easiest parties in the world to give. And naturally, she was giving one, too.

  “You don't have to worry about the food," she'd explained to Tom. "If you don't have the time or inclination to cook, you simply go to Chorliet the traiteur, pick up say some blinis and smoked salmon for the first course, maybe a nice duck with green peppercorns for the next or veal stuffed with sweetbreads, a few hundred of those yummy puffed-up souffle potatoes, salad, cheese. Then off to Tour-tillier for some incredible gateaux. Light a candle or two, pour a great deal of wine, and you're in business. Plus, you never have to worry about people not going with other people or a lack of conversation. Even if they don't like each other, the French will always talk. Then, of course, they look so nice and come prepared to have a good time."

  “I think your sample is a bit small and contaminated by bias, but I agree with you. There is that tendency in Aleford to view a dinner invitation with fear and loathing.”

  Faith laughed. "That's because of two
things. One is the weather. In the winter—roughly October to May—once you're in your own warm house, you don't want to go anywhere. The rest of the year, you don't want to go inside, because you'd miss those few fleeting moments of heat."

  “And what's the other?"

  “That if you go, you'll have to invite your host and hostess back to your house someday, and since I'm not back in business yet, this means cooking your own mess o'porridge."

  “So that's what I had at the Fortieses' when I first arrived in Aleford! You can't imagine what I had to eat before I met you, darling."

  “Poor thing, but let's not give ourselves nightmares.”

  As minister's spouse, Faith had herself consumed enough portions of mystery meats and chicken drenched with every Campbell soup sauce known to woman to want to push these memories back into her dark unconscious.

  Tom was getting in the mood. "I think a party is a great idea. Who should we invite? And what'll we do about chairs? We can't ask people to stand around balancing plates for hours. Speaking of which, what will we do about plates? We only have four."

  “All this is true, but the people in the building can bring their own chairs and maybe one or two extra. We'll ask the Leblancs for some more plates and accoutrements. Ghislaine keeps telling me to let her know if we need any- thing. It may not be the usual kind of dinner party, but we're Americans. We can be as eccentric as we please.”

  They settled on the Leblancs, d'Amberts, Joliets, Madame Vincent, the Veaux, and the Duclos, one of the couples from the university who had invited them last week. The Duclos couldn't make it, nor could the Picots, the other couple. Faith figured she'd be doing another party soon. She might have to invest in some plates. It left a guest list of eleven, and by putting in the leaves she'd found in one of the closets, they could all sit around the table.