by Nell Goddin
4
Iris Gault finished cutting up the potatoes and slid them into a huge pot of boiling water. It was the last day of school, and while she was happy to be getting off work for a few months, she always missed the children terribly. She checked her watch, always careful to time the cooking so the food would be ready all at once, and then stepped into the bathroom and used a paper towel to wipe the steam from her face.
The mirror over the sink was old and not perfectly clean. Iris looked at herself. She was forty-four and unhappy. She understood this was a common enough state for people of her age—the sudden realization like a thump to the side of the head that the end of life was zooming ever closer…and there she was, wasting time, still waiting for the good part to begin.
Her marriage was no comfort.
She still had her looks, she could admit that to herself, though she guessed their days were distinctly numbered. For a while, when she was young, she had believed that her beauty had significance somehow—that it was a kind of good luck that meant she was going to have an extraordinary life. There was no one she could talk to about these feelings, since, understandably, even her best friends did not want to hear about such things. But—briefly—the world had seemed so welcoming, so happy to have her in it! Where had that feeling gone?
Iris ran a finger down her nose, looking at herself in the spotty mirror. She wiped under both eyes to catch some errant flakes of eyeliner.
What now, she asked herself. What am I going to do now?
“Iris!” her co-worker Ada was banging on the bathroom door. “Don’t mean to disturb you but the purée? It’s gotten too thick and sticking to the bottom of the pans.”
“Take it off the heat,” said Iris through the door. And then she took a deep breath and held it until she was uncomfortable, and squeezed her eyes shut. Turning the cold water on hard, she put her face under the tap and shivered at the cold.
Leaving the bathroom without another glance in the mirror, she appraised the situation in the kitchen to see if they were on schedule for lunch. A big man in blue coveralls came in the back door, his hands and face shiny with plumber’s grease. “Madame Gault,” he said, “I don’t know what you or Ada is putting down that sink, but I can’t keep the thing clear if you keep on like that.”
Iris sighed. She suspected that Hector himself was putting something down the sink just for an excuse to come into the kitchen and bother them.
“I will speak to Ada and make every effort,” she said. “What was it this time?”
“A wadded-up rag, that’s what!” said Hector. He flexed his shoulders and looked intently into Iris’s eyes. “What’s a pretty girl like you doing in the kitchen, anyways? Don’t your husband take care of you?”
“Oh, Hector,” laughed Iris. “None of that is your concern. I’m very happy in my job. Thank you for fixing the sink and now I’ve got to get lunch served, the children will be here any moment.”
She directed Ada and the others until the tables were set and all the food—baguettes with butter, courgette and potato purée, pork, salad—was ready. They could hear the laughter and clamoring of the first group of students on their way to the cantine, and Iris glanced at the tables to make sure they were set properly: glasses, cutlery, napkins. Lunch was serious business and considered part of a child’s education; they practiced not only using knives and forks but also conversation, guided by their teachers and occasionally their principal.
“Bonjour, Iris,” said Caroline, smiling as she held the door for the children. “I’ve brought Madame Poirier’s class today—she just went home with a headache.”
“That’s a shame, and no way to start vacation,” said Iris brightly. “Samuel, I have your very favorite cheese today!” She reached out and touched the boy’s shoulder as he went by, grinning at her. “Eveline! Mousse au chocolat for dessert!”
Eveline shrieked and the two girls whose hands she was holding shrieked in response, and they danced in a circle singing a song with “mousse au chocolat” as the only lyric.
“You have any summer plans?” asked Caroline, once her charges were all seated at their tables.
Iris shrugged. “Who knows?” She watched the children scrambling into their seats and felt a pang of missing them in advance. “I feel like a big change, Caro. Maybe I will go to Mozambique!”
Caroline looked startled at Iris’s sudden vehemence. The other classes were led in by their teachers, the children louder than usual from the excitement of having their last lunch of the school year. Tristan Séverin came in just as they were beginning to eat, his pants a little too short for his long legs and a swipe of black marker on his cheek.
“Students!” he cried, and miraculously, they quieted down to listen. “I want first for you all to say thank you to Madame Gault for feeding you so well all year—”
“MERCI MADAME GAULT!” shouted the whole room with glee. Iris smiled and nodded, twisting her braid in her fingers.
“—and then I want you to thank Mademoiselle Dubois for all her work in the office and making sure the buses went where they were supposed to—”
“MERCI MADEMOISELLE DUBOIS!”
Caroline made a bow and waved.
“—and then…well, what about me?” said Principal Séverin, and the children laughed before screaming their thanks to him as well.
After the meal was over and everyone had left but the staff at the cantine, Iris was tempted to go back into the bathroom just to have a moment’s privacy. As soon as the kitchen was cleaned and straightened, her vacation would start. She had no plan, no solid ideas, nothing but a nearly feverish desire to change her life somehow—to go somewhere, to start over, to shake everything up and begin again.
After another day of scraping wallpaper and working in the garden, Molly wanted to go to Chez Papa and see friends. Ben was deep in a book about the Napoleonic Wars and so Molly rode her scooter into the village alone.
“Madame Sutton is in the house!” said Lawrence Weebly, seeing her stop to chat with someone in the doorway. Molly grinned and waved, then came over to kiss cheeks.
“What’s the news?” she asked, always ready for a juicy bit of gossip, and knowing Weebly to be not just a good source, but the best.
“I’ve got nothing,” he said, holding up his hands. “I’ve never seen the village so quiet and well-behaved. As far as I can tell, Castillac for the moment is the epicenter of contentment and honest living.”
“For the moment,” said Molly.
“We should be glad.”
“But we’re not,” she whispered, and they both laughed. “Hey Nico!”
“Kir coming right up,” he said, breaking away from a conversation at the other end of the bar.
“Frances coming tonight?”
“I think so,” Nico answered, glowering. “She’s a little hard to pin down.”
Molly laughed. “Yep! That’s our Frances all right. Don’t take it personally, Nico.”
He shrugged.
“Trouble in paradise?” asked Lawrence.
“Eh, wherever Frances goes, there’s trouble. You know I love her like a sister, but I’d kill myself before getting romantically involved with her. She’s…unreliable.”
“Ah,” said Lawrence. “I’m not shocked to hear that. But still, no doubt it’s that very unreliability that attracts our Nico? Frances is unpredictable and a little mysterious. He can’t become complacent. That’s alluring, am I right? Not that I have experience in these matters,” he added, looking away.
Molly shrugged. “I guess so. For sure, if what you want is cozy nights watching television together, Frances is not your girl. Last week she drove all over the Dordogne looking for vintage clothing because she got it in her head to dress up as an heiress from the Belle Époque.”
“Did she find what she was looking for?”
“It’s safe to say Frances almost never finds what she is looking for,” laughed Molly. “Which is probably the point. Anyway, she unearthed a moth-eaten
skirt with a bustle but that was it. I think the fever has passed though, so she won’t be driving to Bordeaux or Paris trying to complete the outfit.”
“She’s an heiress for real, have I got that right?” asked Lawrence, sotto voce, after a long sip of his Negroni.
“Yes. Well, maybe. Her family has truckloads of money, that’s for sure. Something industrial, I believe, that the great-grandfather did. But they try to hold that money over Frances’s head, possibly cutting her out of the will entirely—not that it makes any difference to her. She went out and made her own money long ago, so the family shenanigans don’t affect her much.”
“Good for her,” said Lawrence raising his glass. “To independence!”
Molly raised hers, as did others down the bar, who pronounced “independence” pretty well for people who spoke little English.
“Well bonsoir, Pierre, we so rarely have the pleasure!” said Lawrence, speaking over Molly’s shoulder to the mason as he came into the bar. “And the second appearance in one week!”
“Bonsoir Lawrence, Molly,” said Pierre Gault. “Whiskey,” he said to Nico. And then he stood still, looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar, biting his lower lip with some ferocity.
“Did you just finish up at the Lafont’s?” asked Molly. “How are the circular stairs going?”
For a moment Molly and Lawrence were not sure Pierre had heard her. Then he turned to her, another long pause went by, and he managed to say, “Yes, just left. It’s a big job. I’m not sure when I’ll be free to start your barn.”
Molly was a little taken aback since he seemed to be answering a question she had not asked. “No rush,” she said finally. “I probably shouldn’t do it anyway, not this year. It’s sometimes hard to know how quickly to put my profits back into the business,” she said, looking from Pierre to Lawrence.
“The usual advice is to have a decent-sized nest-egg first, especially since your income is on the unpredictable side,” said Lawrence. “You don’t want to have a bad couple of months and not have money for operating expenses. Or anything to eat.”
Molly sighed. “Well, sure. A nest-egg. That would be the safe path, wouldn’t it? And I do have a nest-egg going, it’s just…small. Pierre, I’ll have to see your estimate first of course, but unless it’s way higher than I expect, I’ll want you to go ahead with it. Once I can get capacity over ten guests at once, I think my situation will be a lot more secure. I’m willing to take some risks to get there.”
Lawrence shrugged, knowing that Molly would do whatever she wanted no matter what advice she was given— and it was something he liked about her. Indecisive she was not.
Pierre stood between them like a statue, still looking at himself in the mirror, which Molly thought was a bit strange since he had never once struck her as the narcissistic type. She considered asking if anything was wrong, but decided it was too nosy a question even for her, since he was a very private sort of man.
Later, she fervently wished she had asked, but of course by then it was too late.
5
The children of the village school were blissfully en vacances. Though she missed their high spirits and happy noise, Caroline was looking forward to bringing some real order to Tristan Séverin’s office now that the pressure of the school year was finished. She was dressed in her customary crisp white shirt and tailored skirt, paired with low heels—a flattering, professional outfit. She wore little makeup, but hardly anyone would say it was missed, as her bone structure was striking and her color lively.
She did not see Tristan’s car in the small lot for the school. She often teased him about being lazy for driving, since he and his wife lived in the village and he certainly could have walked. But Tristan insisted that his car was his refuge, the one place he could sit and have a private moment to think, and would not be deterred from using it nearly every day.
Caroline opened the door to the school and let herself in, leaving it unlocked behind her. The school building was newish and modern, with large windows in the corridors and rooms that let in plenty of light. One of the things she liked about her job was that the school was positioned in the center of Castillac so it was convenient to everything, and easy to meet up with a friend for lunch if she didn’t have duty in the cantine that day.
For a person who liked to organize, having an entire day with nothing else pressing to attend to was bliss itself. She settled at her desk to run through any emails that needed her attention, and made short work of those. Then she took the first stack of files and papers from Tristan’s desk and sat down to deal with them. She did not drink coffee or tea because she did not like to mix work with food or drink.
An hour, then two, slipped by. Caroline made her way through that stack and then another. How satisfying it was to see the top of Tristan’s desk coming into view! She hoped he would be pleased and surprised when he saw how much she had accomplished.
Absorbed in a thick document about a proposed curriculum change for the second graders, Caroline startled mildly when she heard footsteps in the corridor. She glanced out of the expansive window and saw the florist’s van parked in the small school parking area.
“Coucou!” called the delivery man for Madame Langevin’s florist shop.
“Bonjour,” said Caroline, jumping up from her desk as he appeared in the doorway holding a large bouquet.
“Here you are!” he said. “Big day for flowers for some reason. More deliveries, I have to run!”
“All right, thanks very much,” said Caroline, not allowing herself to hope they were for her, since she had no one in her life who would be sending her such a magnificent bouquet—or any bouquet, for that matter.
The arrangement was primarily roses, pinks and a few light reds, with blue irises artistically placed among them. The rounded rose blossoms made a pleasing contrast with the spikes of the irises, the colors blended perfectly…all in all, the work of someone who knew flowers and what to do with them.
Caroline leaned her nose into a rose and inhaled, knowing that roses from the florist were almost always without fragrance since stamina was the more important quality. But this rose, a cabbagey pink, had a delicate perfume that made Caroline smile wistfully.
The small envelope clipped to a plastic stem simply said “Tristan.”
She stood thinking about his calendar, wondering whether she had forgotten his birthday or some event that she should have remembered. Why in the world would someone have sent her boss a bouquet like this? Caroline wondered for a moment and then sat back down at her desk and reopened the document on the curriculum change.
Suddenly, quickly, before she had a chance to change her mind, she stood up and approached the bouquet. She paused for a second. Then she plucked the small envelope from among the leaves and opened it. She read it. Her face instantly flushed and a sensation of watery weakness ran through her body.
How could he do this to me! she thought, the words like a scream inside her head. Caroline read the note again, her hands trembling with fury. She let loose the filthiest series of expletives she could think of, though ordinarily she never used that kind of language. Then, after taking a deep breath to calm herself down a little, she eased the card into its small envelope and clipped it back to the stem among the glossy green leaves.
Caroline didn’t know what to do next. She looked rather wildly around the office, as though hoping something she saw would give her direction. She noticed the bare spot on Tristan’s desk but it gave her no joy, not now.
Finally she picked up her handbag and left, locking the door of the school behind her, and fled for home. It was ten blocks away but her heels were comfortable. She prayed she would not run into anyone she knew because she felt unable to master her emotions.
How could he?
Caroline rented a small apartment in an old building on rue Tartine. It suited her quite well as she could walk easily to work, and the other apartments in the building were rented by women roughly her age. She used to ha
ve a drink regularly with Adèle Faure, before she moved out a few months ago, and though she knew the others less well, they were still friends of a sort. They shared the work of a simple garden in the backyard, split up the electricity bills without arguing, and got on without incident.
She walked quickly, on the verge of running, the intense assortment of feelings she was in the grip of not diminishing as she got closer to home. Caroline wrenched open the door and ran up the creaky old stairs to her rooms. Without hesitation she went to the kitchen cabinet, took out a plate, and hurled it to the floor.
She took out another and flung it into the wall. Porcelain shattered, sending splinters in a wide spray. Caroline kept going, picking up plate after plate and throwing them with as much force as she could muster, in every direction but the windows.
When she had no more plates, she sank to the floor, put her head in her hands, and sobbed.
Edmond Nugent liked order in his life. His work schedule was ruled by the demands of dough and baking times, and he had followed the same routine—making the same things at the same times every day, every week—for years. It suited him. He appreciated that his customers also had their habits: most of his regulars tended to come into Pâtisserie Bujold at the same time of day, buy the same pastries, even exchange the same flavor of small talk.
So Nugent was a bit disturbed that Thursday when Caroline Dubois appeared at the shop early in the morning, when usually she came in the afternoons, after school let out. Thankfully she asked for the same strawberry tart she always got, so all was not chaos. But nevertheless he could see that something was very wrong.
“Mademoiselle,” he said gently, “I don’t mean to overstep, but you seem…you seem to be in some distress. Is there anything I can do?”
An uncharacteristic expression of contempt blazed on Caroline’s pretty face. “No, Monsieur Nugent. I don’t think there is anything at all anyone can do.” She fished in her purse for the correct change, and then a wicked idea occurred to her, which, also uncharacteristically, she acted on without hesitating.