A Twist of Orchids

by Michelle Wan

  “Just for now,” Mara demurred. Everyone knew she did not cook. At least, did not cook well. “The other women and I are taking it in turns.”

  “What d’you feed him? Hot dogs?” jested Paul.

  Mado punched him. “He has Parkinson’s, doesn’t he? I had an uncle with Parkinson’s. He went funny toward the end. Saw things that weren’t there.”

  “So does Joseph.” Mara told them about Joseph’s nighttime episodes.

  “A monster without a head?” Mado marveled. “Zut alors! My uncle only saw cats.”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but I don’t think these are just hallucinations. I really think someone is trying to frighten him.”

  “Why would anyone do that?” Paul looked skeptical.

  “I don’t know. If I knew, maybe then some people would take me seriously.” Mara aimed this remark at Julian, who pretended not to hear.

  Mado asked, “Doesn’t he have any family who can take care of him?”

  “Just a daughter. Estranged, I’m afraid. I’m trying to trace her. I thought she ought to know about her father. Only …” she paused unhappily. “Now I’m not so sure Christine’s the right person to be looking after him.”

  “Why not?”

  “She … she once tried to push her mother down some stairs.”

  Julian sat up at this. “Christine tried to push Amélie—you didn’t tell me that.”

  Mado, Paul, and Loulou stared at her.

  “The same woman who fell off the Two Sisters’ porch?” Mado gaped. “The daughter tried to push her down some stairs?”

  “It was a long time ago,” Mara said miserably.

  “So maybe,” said Paul with his usual bluntness, “she tried it again. And maybe you’re right. Your old boy’s not hallucinating after all. This Christine’s an only child, right? Once her father’s gone, she’ll stand to inherit everything. You should check her out, Mara. You’re good at these things. Stop her before—” He broke off.

  “Before what?” Loulou leaned forward, a professional glint in his eye.

  “Well, before she takes it any further,” said Paul with uncharacteristic restraint.

  • 22 •

  The village of Les Faux was roughly a hundred kilometers north of Ecoute-la-Pluie. As she set out, Mara pondered the irony that Christine should be so lost to her parents and yet live scarcely two hours away. Somehow she had expected the daughter to have emigrated to the far side of the moon. But then, as she negotiated the network of small roads, going ever deeper into the rough north country of the Dordogne, she realized that Les Faux might just as well have been in another galaxy. The farms and hamlets all had a stopped, stranded look, as if caught in an ancient landscape that had escaped the stream of time. Only an occasional, jarringly new construction, some city dweller’s secondary residence-to-be, suggested that the booming real estate market would drag things into the twenty-first century soon enough.

  It had been easy finding the listing in the phone book once she knew the place-name to look under. Christine still went by Gaillard. Perhaps she had never married. Mara had thought about calling first, but decided a direct approach was best. She also decided that this was a journey she wanted to make without Julian. He was poor company nowadays, and he strongly disagreed with her desire to find the Gaillards’ daughter. Meddling in other people’s business was a bad idea generally. Look where trying to fix things for the Ismets had got him. Water should be left to find its own level, he said.

  “But suppose Christine did push her mother down the Two Sisters’ stairs and is now trying to kill her father?” Mara had protested. She hated his passive-defeatist philosophy.

  “For pity’s sake, Mara,” he had replied, “Amélie’s death was an accident. And Joseph’s midnight visitors are imaginary. The man is subject to hallucinations.”

  “All right, maybe you’re right about Amélie, but that doesn’t mean Christine isn’t trying to capitalize on the chance to shortcut her way to her inheritance. Her father is, after all, sitting on a lot of land. The property market at the moment is hot. She could make a killing. In more ways than one.”

  “Then why in God’s name would you want to get them together?”

  “I don’t. I wouldn’t. Not if that’s what she’s up to. But don’t you think it would be a good idea to let her know in no uncertain terms that we’re on to her, and that she’d better leave her father alone?”

  “And what if she’s innocent? It’s the most likely scenario, you know.”

  “In that case, what’s wrong with bringing father and daughter together?”

  “Et voilà,” Julian had finished, with brittle cynicism. “Problem solved either way.”

  Mara downshifted into a turn. She had read somewhere that a relationship had four stages: forming (during which a couple, seeking to impress, were on their best behavior); storming (when the gloves came off); norming (when, exhausted with fighting, they decided to lay down some basic ground rules); and performing (when they had worked out the kinks and everything went tickety-boo). She and Julian were past forming. They had gone through storming—at least, she hoped they had. That brought them to norming, but they definitely seemed to be having trouble getting their ground rules right.

  “Take fair play, for example,” she complained to Jazz, who occupied the front passenger seat. “It’s a fundamental issue, wouldn’t you agree? I went with him to Périgueux to help him find Kazim. Okay, the outcome wasn’t what we’d hoped for, but shouldn’t Julian now be helping me to check out Christine? Instead, he’s sniping at me. It’s like he’s saying, ‘If I couldn’t bring Kazim home, how can you expect to do any better with Christine?’”

  Jazz gazed avidly out the window.

  “Then there’s the issue of communication. Oh, I know Julian’s still depressed over Kazim, and I understand his dread of facing Betul and Osman. But it hurts to think he can’t trust me enough to open up about how he feels. His way, when things get rough, is to shut me out.”

  Jazz jammed his nose against the glass, marking it with long, wet smears.

  Mara sighed and switched to composing another phantom email to Patsy in her head:

  > The trouble is, things are going to get worse, not better. May is around the corner, and then I’ll lose him to his damned seasonal hunt for his orchid. In fact, it’ll probably give him a reason to withdraw even farther. Oh, he might ask for my help—tramping through fields and woodlands goes faster with two than one—but he walks around in a kind of mystical world of his own. That is, when he’s not being downright overbearing, barking instructions at me and telling me to mind where I put my feet. Orchid season, as I’ve told you before, Patsy, can be a very lonely time for yours truly.<

  Les Faux stood amid rough, heavily wooded countryside broken up here and there by meadows where sheep and cattle grazed on the new spring grass. She stopped at the mairie to ask directions to Christine Gaillard’s house. The mayor, a fat, genial man, gazed at her with undisguised curiosity. Then, with a knowing smile she did not quite understand, he told her it was a farm and gave her directions. When she thanked him, he waved a hand.

  “Think nothing of it. I have nothing better to do. How much nicer to give foreigners directions than to worry about road repairs.” He had picked up her accent. “Oh, and I also have to find the money from God knows where to do something about our eleventh-century church, which is falling to bits. I’d much rather not be mayor, you know, but no one else wants the job. If you need to use the toilet, there’s one at the back of the building.”

  The farmhouse was situated near the road. It had a dilapidated look, its roof badly patched, its shutters in need of paint. Mara parked in the shade of a crumbling stone barn and got out of her car. Jazz moaned his disapproval of her departure through the open car window.

  In the distance, sheep were being brought in from pasture. They were a breed Mara had not seen before, with neat black faces, curling horns, and small, almost delicate feet. A tall, slim woman in a straw
hat was driving them. She moved with an almost reckless grace as she skipped from side to side, heading off wayward animals, her high voice carrying on the wind like the cry of a bird. She secured a gate and herded the sheep toward the barn. Yellow hair fell loosely about an oval face that, even at a distance, projected a kind of pre-Raphaelite beauty. Mara could see no trace of a harelip. If this was Christine Gaillard, she was not at all what Mara had expected.

  The truth was, she did not know what to expect. Everyone had their own way of describing the Gaillards’ daughter. She had been a disciplinary problem in school, Francine had said. To Huguette she was a deformed unfortunate. Suzanne was of the opinion that she was violent. The matter of the stairs weighed heavily on Mara’s mind.

  “Oui?” A voice behind her made her jump. A large woman stood watching her from the doorway of the house. She was of an age when features began to lose their definition, but Mara recognized at once Amélie’s gray eyes, Joseph’s hefty build and square-cut jaw. Her nose was flattened and twisted where it joined the thick scarring of a badly repaired harelip. It gave her mouth a circular, gaping look, like a landed fish gasping in a hostile environment. This, not the fey creature dancing over the meadow, was Christine.

  “Mademoiselle Gaillard?” Or should it be madame? Nowadays one never knew.

  “Who are you?” Christine’s voice was flat, her articulation made nasal by her deformity.

  Mara approached. “My name is Mara Dunn. I’ve come—I’ve come to talk to you about your father.” No point in beating around the bush.

  Christine stared at her in surprise.

  “Maybe you’d better come in,” she said.

  Despite its exterior shabbiness, the interior of the house spoke of care and simple comfort, and Mara liked it immediately. The kitchen into which Christine admitted her was large and bright. The whitewashed walls were clean, the windows garlanded with plants. Cooking vessels hung in order of size from hooks driven into a ceiling beam. There was a large table in the middle of the room. Its scarred surface showed the effects of use and repeated scrubbing; the straight-backed wooden chairs surrounding it were in good repair. None of Amélie and Joseph’s cache-misères. Christine waved her into one of them. Mara sat down. At the far end of the kitchen she noticed a large standing loom. A weaving of rust and ocher wool was in progress.

  “Is the wool from your own sheep?” Mara hazarded, trying to strike up some rapport with this marred, wary female.

  “Partly,” said Christine. She did not sit herself. Instead, she stood, towering over her visitor.

  “Are you the weaver?”

  “No. Look, if you don’t mind, I have a lot to do. What is this all about?”

  Mara cast about for a way to begin. “I live in Ecoute-la-Pluie. I’m a neighbor of your father.”

  Christine studied her. “You’re a new one.”

  “I’ve been there nine years, if that counts as new. My house is across the road from your parents.’”

  “Joubert’s old place.” Christine regarded her curiously. “But you’re not from around here.”

  “Quebec.” Mara forced a laugh. “I’m French Canadian. My Montreal accent always gives me away, I’m afraid.”

  Christine ignored her attempt at pleasantry. “I suppose Suzanne Portier told you how to find me. I expect she told you a few other things about me as well?”

  Her bluntness threw Mara, who scrambled for her next line. “Well, yes—I mean, no. I mean, have your parents always known where you are?”

  A shrug. “I made no effort to inform them. Word gets around. And before you ask, I know my mother’s dead. I didn’t come to the funeral because there was no point.”

  “It’s your father I’m concerned about.”

  “What about him?”

  “He has Parkinson’s. Maybe you know that?”

  Another shrug. Mara took that to mean yes. So some exchange of information had taken place.

  “His condition is getting worse,” Mara went on. “He’s on his own, and he needs you, Mademoiselle Gaillard.”

  The woman scowled. “He needs me? After all these years? I hope you haven’t come here to suggest I go back home like the dutiful daughter to look after him?”

  “No. But you are his daughter. I just think it would mean a lot to him to be reunited with you. He’s suffering greatly from the loss of your mother. He was very dependent on her.”

  “You’re telling me? He couldn’t move a finger without her approval. Maman was like that.”

  Mara sensed that she was getting nowhere with Christine. Nevertheless, she pushed on gamely. “When you’re old and ailing, family is everything. In your father’s case, you’re all he has left.”

  Christine said bitterly, “He should have thought of that a long time ago.”

  “At least consider getting back in touch with him.”

  The daughter tipped her head back to study Mara. A look of faint amusement came over her face. “You’re really worried about the old man, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am. He’s not managing well on his own. He wants more than anything to stay where he is, and he can, but he needs help. He has visiting nurses, and he’s applied for home care. However, he’s had some problems lately. There have been … incidents.” Mara, raising only now what should have been her starting point, dwelled on the last word. “He claims someone—or something—has been coming into the house at night to frighten him.”

  Christine regarded her blankly. “Who’d want to do that?”

  “I thought you might know.”

  “Me?” The surprise, which was perhaps authentic, quickly shifted to hostility. “Why should I know anything about it?”

  “No reason. Just that it’s happened twice. If it continues, I intend to call the police.” She realized she was handling it badly, but at least Christine had been warned. If a warning were indeed warranted. She could not make up her mind about the woman. She softened her tone. “It’s why I wanted to talk to you. It’s possible that he’s imagining things, or even making them up because he’s unhappy. Being back in contact with you might make all the difference.”

  “I doubt that.” Christine’s face took on a surly look. “Let me tell you something. It wasn’t easy for me, growing up with them. My father was always under my mother’s thumb, and she could be a misery to live with. Oh, I know she was highly thought of, but you don’t know what she was really like. Religious, controlling, always worried about doing the proper thing, what the neighbors would think. Anything different was shameful. You hid a deformity, bullied sinfulness into line. I admit I wasn’t an easy child. For one, I had a lot of problems because of my—this.” She touched her mouth. “Kids used to tease me. There was a boy who really used to give me a hard time. I’m sure the neighbors told you about it. One day, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I stuck a pair of scissors in him. That earned me a bad reputation. I was only ten, bon sang! No one, not that pig of a teacher Francine Boyer, not even my parents, could see that I had no other way of defending myself. My life was hell until I met someone who was able to see past my face, who encouraged me to be myself in ways my parents could never accept. I ran away to be with this person when I was fifteen. My mother was furious. She found me and dragged me back. I was a minor then, so I had no choice but to come home. One day I got some rope and told my mother that if she didn’t let me live my life as I wanted, I was going to hang myself in the garret. She told me she’d rather see me dead than have a daughter who only brought shame on her head. She even followed me up to make sure I did a good job of it. That’s when I pushed her. For God’s sake, I couldn’t even hang myself without her telling me how to do it. I wasn’t trying to kill her. I just wanted her to leave me alone, to give me some space.”

  Christine broke off, breathing raggedly, as if she had just run a long-distance race.

  “I’m sorry,” said Mara, feeling deeply shaken. Christine’s disclosure brought to light a side to Amélie she had not known. “I—I had no idea.”<
br />
  “No, you wouldn’t have, would you?” The daughter’s eyes were bright and hard, and her voice was flooded with bitterness. She turned away to look out a window. Mara’s eyes followed her gaze. The slim woman with the hat had secured another gate and was crossing the muddy courtyard.

  “You see,” Christine went on, “by the time I was in my teens, I understood my own sexuality better than most people do in their lifetimes. That’s what my parents couldn’t handle. I was their hidden daughter, not because I had a harelip, but because, as they put it, I was unnatural. I went with other women. So now do you get it? They preferred to let everyone think I ran after men, even that I’d had an illegitimate kid, because it was easier for them, particularly her, that way. That’s what I can’t forgive them for: they couldn’t be honest. They made me out to be a slut, when all I wanted was my right to be. Oh, I know that kind of thing was hard for them to deal with back then, living in a rural backwater. But times change. Not them. She never accepted me for what I am, and he won’t either. And I’ll tell you something else, Madame Nose-in-Other-People’s-Business. You’ve got the wrong end of the stick. My parents broke with me, not the other way around. So now I just want to be left alone. My father doesn’t want me back, except maybe as a skivvy. As for the neighbors”—her scarred mouth twisted—“they’ve never approved of me, and I’m sure they all continue to think the worst.”

  “The worst?” Mara echoed as the door swung open and the other woman stepped into the kitchen. She pulled off her hat, revealing her fey shepherdess’s face, finely etched with laugh lines. Her expression as she took Mara in was avid and mischievous. What fun, it seemed to say. A visitor.

  Christine nearly shouted, “Oh come on. You’re not that dense. I’m sure they told you, and I can see it’s what you’re thinking. I pushed my mother down some stairs before. Who’s to say I didn’t try it again?”

  Mara rose to the challenge in Christine’s voice. “And did you?”