An Unexpected Guest

by Anne Korkeakivi

  “Not folding the napkins, dumb shit,” Jamie had said. “Sitting behind the big desk in the study, writing something, making a list or something.”

  They were in the car, on the way to a party. Edward had craned his neck around from where he sat beside the driver in the front seat. “It’s not necessary to address your brother like that.” Tiny drops of drizzle competed with the wipers on the windshield behind him.

  “And, anyway, Jamie, who are you to say how I remember Mom?” Peter had objected, and the whole question of how Clare was to be remembered was forgotten, except by Clare, who’d since returned to it in private from time to time when she thought about her children and how far away from her they were now. Somehow she’d been unprepared for the inevitable separation that maturation had wrought between them; their healthy arrival into the world had filled her with such astonishment that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to think of them as someday moving on. As expats you were on a magic carpet, you and your spouse and children, floating through the world together, unable to get off individually, not quite of the world around you. Clare sometimes felt she’d leaned on her children, when they were still living at home, as much as they had on her. She’d needed them, anchors in the floating world. Just as they’d needed her to provide a wharf, a common ground, a pillar.

  “Your mum is like that lovely column over there, boys, don’t you think? Tall, cool, white, smooth, and wonderfully classic,” Edward had said during a visit to the Acropolis seven years ago. He’d said it with a straight face, but to this day she asked herself: Edward had a sly sense of humor, but had he really once compared her to a caryatid on the Erechtheum, holding up the firmaments of the British Foreign Service? The caryatids were voluptuous, and her chest barely offered cleavage enough to console dinner-party décolletage, much less support the workings of the Queen of England. So many things she was beginning to forget, or at least question her memory of. Most of all she seemed to keep forgetting her sons had left home. She sometimes caught herself up short, rushing back from a reception to check they were safely in bed, with the realization that this was something she couldn’t know about them, might never know about them again on a regular basis, their beds being from now on distant. If only people could choose what to forget and remember; how curious that we often remember what we wish we could forget, and forget what we seek to remember.

  The elevator stopped on the third floor with a thud that rocked Clare forward on her feet. She would have preferred to take the stairs, but walking up instead of riding the elevator might seem indecorous, more suitable to a schoolgirl than a diplomat’s wife, the sort of thing only an American woman would do. Not on the same level as wearing galoshes, but still. When they moved on from the minister’s residence, she didn’t plan to leave any gossip behind her. She pushed on the cage, and the door clicked open with a big clank and a thud. She thought it all too noisy, but that was how elevators were in Paris. If no one else minded it, why should she?

  “The men are on their way up with the plate,” she told Amélie, finding the housekeeper in the dining room giving a last polish to the heavy mahogany table. It would soon be set with delicate china trimmed with the golden standard of the British Crown. A few hours later, she and their guests would all be lined up around it, the P.U.S. to her right, Edward facing her from the other end of the table, everyone in their evening finery, expectant. “Are we okay with the liquor?”

  “Oui, Madame.” Amélie made one last concentric circle on the table with her cloth and looked up. “Ze table, she is rea-dy.” She hesitated. “Madame?” She pointed towards the hall, in the direction of the bedrooms. She raised one hand to chin level and shook it.

  Clare handed her basket over to Amélie, taking the homeopathic drops out of her pocket and stacking them on top. “Please tell Mathilde the chemist said to put three drops in a glass of juice, twice daily.” She made a squeezing motion with her hand to demonstrate. “Three drops in juice. Two times a day.”

  The service doorbell rang. This would be the men with the plate.

  “I open the door,” Amélie said.

  “Thank you.”

  She turned towards the bedrooms.

  A few rays of electric light squeezed out from under the door to Jamie’s room. Clare knocked and pushed the door open. Sprawled the length of the bed was her oversized fifteen-year-old, reading, she noted, a Philip Roth novel. Jamie pushed the book under an arm as she entered.

  She took one fast step forward, then stopped herself. Instead, she said, “Jamie! How did you get here so quickly?”

  “That’s nice, Mom. I mean, hi and everything.”

  She sat down on the edge of his bed and tried to kiss him. He shrugged off her embrace but, as she straightened away from him, continued to hold on to her, grabbing one of her arms. With her free hand, she ruffled his hair. There was a faint scar still visible along his hairline from the time he’d woken from a nap in the London town house where they’d lived after the Cairo posting, heard her voice downstairs, and tried to join her while clutching on to a stuffed bunny. They’d had a nanny back then named Nia, a young woman from Wales, who was supposed to be watching him. Edward had dismissed her as soon as they’d returned from the hospital, maybe the only time he’d ever taken on a staff decision. “The point is that she wasn’t doing her job. It’s not an act of vengeance,” he’d said. She’d nodded, relieved. She hadn’t wanted to see the woman again herself, not even long enough to fire her.

  Jamie released her arm and shook his hair back over his forehead.

  “I was already in Paris when I called,” he said. “I was at the airport.”

  Her young son, alone in an airport. Had he taken a bus in? A taxi? She folded her hands over each other. “How did you leave school grounds without first getting my permission?”

  “I just left.”

  Clare heard the front door to the Residence open and shut. That could mean only one thing. Edward. What could he be doing home for lunch on a day this busy? She gently closed the door to the room. She had better warn Edward first about Jamie’s latest troubles; he had a lot of other things on his plate today. “You can’t just leave school, Jamie.”

  “I didn’t. I sent them an e-mail in your name first.”

  “Jamie!” She lowered her voice. “Jamie. You can’t do that.”

  There was no further sound from the foyer. Edward had gone either into the study or through the dining room into the kitchen.

  “Yes, I could. You gave me permission.”

  “No, not for that. To visit the science lab after hours.”

  Jamie shrugged.

  Clare frowned. “You may not leave the school grounds without my knowing, and you may not go sending e-mails in my name either, without my express permission. The science lab thing was just that one time. And you certainly may not go around hopping on planes.” She heard more sounds from down the hall and lowered her voice again. “Jamie, I’ve talked to the school. They’re really angry.”

  Jamie rolled his eyes.

  “Tell me.” When Jamie didn’t respond, she added, “The science lab? Did you do it?”

  “They didn’t let me hand it in. A-holes.”

  “No? Although you did do it? And though you did go to the lab after hours?”

  The hint of a grin flitted across his face. “Yeah, well. I did that.”

  She sighed. “Do you think this is funny? ’Cause I don’t think this is funny.”

  The smile disappeared. “I was just trying…” His voice trailed off.

  She stood up. He did the homework, but they wouldn’t accept it. She could think of one sole explanation. She could only hope there was another. “What exactly happened?”

  “I thought you just said you talked to Barrow.”

  “I did. But they didn’t tell me the details. I’m giving you a chance to tell your side first.”

  He shrugged. “A prefect saw. The fascist. He didn’t have to go and tell on us.”

  “Oh, J
amie.”

  He looked towards her suddenly, his face searching hers. “Mom,” he said. But nothing followed. Finally he said, “Whatever.”

  She surveyed him, a heap of adolescence. He didn’t need to spell it out. He had been caught cheating again. “How many days?”

  “A week.”

  A week. Jamie was lucky the school wasn’t kicking him out altogether; still, a week was a major suspension. He’d get F’s on every test or assignment he missed and not be allowed to make them up. The offense would go down on his permanent school record. She sighed again.

  “Okay, well. Stay here for now. If we’re going to have a week, there’s no point getting your father involved when he’s so busy. You and he can talk once we’ve gotten through tonight’s dinner.” Jamie would understand she meant he wasn’t to let on to his father he was there, not before tomorrow. He could be naughty, but he would never interfere with his father’s work. “But you know you’re in trouble. Have you had any lunch?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  She turned to go, when Jamie bolted up and snagged on to the hem of her sweater. “But you don’t understand, Mommy! It’s just mean what they did. They wouldn’t even listen!”

  Clare smoothed her sweater and took his hands firmly into hers. Where had things gone wrong with this wonderful son of hers? She wished it would all go away: the dinner, Ireland. Here was Jamie. She didn’t want to go tussle with Mathilde and fill out names on place markers. She wanted to hug her son and rock him and make every mistake he’d ever made—and they were piling up so fast now—vanish.

  “James, I don’t know what is going on in your head.” She held up her fingers and started counting. “Forging my signature? Flying from London to Paris without telling me first? It’s all just crazy. You know this. How did you even get started on this? What were you thinking? Your father and I made it very clear: better you flunk honorably than get into this sort of trouble again.”

  Jamie drew back. He examined her as though there was something viscous between them. When he answered, his tone was soft and almost dreamy. “You didn’t really speak to anyone at Barrow, did you?”

  “Of course, I did. What are you saying? I spoke with Mrs. Thomas. But they’re giving you another chance. You are being suspended, not expelled. So I’d say they were being fairly generous. They could kick you out, you know, altogether.” She hesitated. She hated to go there—Edward would say it was none of their business. He’d say everyone had to take responsibility for his or her own actions. “Robbie didn’t also get into trouble?”

  Jamie’s face fell shut. “Robbie wasn’t part of it. It was just me and Rian.”

  “Who’s Ryan?”

  He stuck his lip out. “You’re busy.” He flopped back on his bed and folded his hands on his chest.

  She knew that sullen face, the hands closed up like an oyster. Whoever Ryan was, and why Ryan was involved rather than Robbie, his lab partner—Jamie wasn’t now going to explain, not until he was ready. Jamie was like the shower they had in that first home in London. Sometimes the water would suddenly turn cold, sometimes hot, sometimes the pressure would disappear altogether. You had to be ready to jump in and out accordingly. She shook her head. “I want you to stay in your room until I tell you that you may come out. I’m going to see Mathilde about fixing you something. Did you see her?”

  Jamie shook his head. “I said I’m not hungry,” he repeated. “I bought two Camembert sandwiches at the airport. I ate them on the bus.”

  Her heart swelled up against her rib cage. He knew how to take the airport bus by himself; he bought himself stale sandwiches wrapped in paper. He would have been sitting there, in the same city as she, without her even knowing it, chewing on his baguette, his heart a mix of joy at being back home and dread over being in trouble at school. Maybe dread also at having to face his parents—at having to face her. Jamie. However bad what he’d done was, he’d done it just out of desperation. He didn’t want to disappoint them. “Okay.”

  “Don’t go bugging Mathilde,” he said and raised an eyebrow. “If you know what’s good for you.”

  “That’s enough.” She would not laugh. “You just sit tight.”

  She shut his door behind her and made her way back down the hall. The door to the study was closed. She could hear the clip of Edward’s voice behind it but muffled by the heavy wood of the door such that she couldn’t make out what he was saying. This was not the first time she’d faced this same scene, a closed door, the sound of her husband’s voice on the phone behind it in midday. She shook the thought from her mind. If something terrible had happened somewhere, she probably would have heard it from Patricia Blum. Bad news spread faster than a virus amongst the expat community in Paris.

  “Did you speak with the minister?” she asked Amélie as she passed through the dining room into the kitchen. She couldn’t go in there while he was on the phone, talking.

  “Excuse me, Madame. The ministre goes to ze study and closes ze door. Clac! I do no speak with him.”

  The harder she worked at it, the worse poor Amélie’s English seemed to be becoming. Clare tugged on her hair. If something had happened, surely Edward would have looked for her before closing himself into the study. At the very least, he would have asked her whereabouts from Amélie.

  She noticed a bit of dust on the back of a chair but resisted the urge to flick it. Amélie might take it as a reproach. “Well, let’s go see about the plates,” she said.

  The men had brought the crates all in by now and opened them.

  “Votre signature, Madame, s’il vous plaît,” one of the men said, handing her a clipboard.

  She signed her name at the bottom, added the date, and handed it back to him. She took one last look around the dining room while Amélie showed them out. Their dining room might not be the Salon Bleu of the ambassador’s residence, but rich with polished wood and sparkling crystal it did look attractive. With Amélie no longer watching, she removed that one tiny piece of dust. Then she followed the deliverymen’s path through to the kitchen. As she passed the pantry, she could see the wines in their wooden boxes. She hoped Amélie had thought to check the contents against the order sheet, but she refrained from asking. Amélie didn’t usually make mistakes, other than grammatical ones. Amélie, for example, would intuit she shouldn’t mention Jamie’s return to Edward. Clare couldn’t count on Mathilde for the same sort of discretion. But maybe Mathilde hadn’t seen that Jamie had come in.

  The cook was standing beside the kitchen table, a huge bowl pushed up against her abdomen, a whisk the length of a donkey’s tail in her hand. Clare could smell freshly sliced onion, mint, and basil; Mathilde must have already prepared the sauce for the potatoes. For one sweet second, she was swept back outside, into the spring, into the light.

  “Well, Mrs. Moorhouse, the minister is home à midi and a bit early at that, n’est-ce-pas?” Mathilde commented, without stopping her flaying of the pale yellow yolks in the bowl. “And now I suppose you’ll be needing a lunch for him, and me trying to make a miracle out of these here eggs. They’re a right waste of good money, they are, these eggs. He’s no good, ce marchand.”

  The image of Jamie, alone in the airport, buying sandwiches, came to her. As much as the idea disturbed her, she couldn’t help but think he’d done well to get them. She wouldn’t want to ask Mathilde to prepare a lunch for him now, and Mathilde probably wouldn’t accept anyone else mucking about in the kitchen. Mathilde was in a creative fury. “That’s all right, Mathilde, I’ll find something for Mr. Moorhouse.”

  “Oh, and be leaving the minister with a cold sandwich at lunch? Anyhow, I can’t have anyone fussing about in my kitchen right now.”

  Clare smiled; Mathilde was as consistent as a toothache. Knowing her so well gave Clare a curious sense of satisfaction.

  Then she remembered the closed door to the study.

  “Did the minister come to speak with you when he came in? I mean, he didn’t come to say anything abo
ut having to cancel?”

  “Cancel!” Mathilde dropped the whisk. “Ça va pas ça! First you announce we’ll be putting on a V.I.P. dinner on one day’s notice, and a night off for me, too, then you add to it just hours before without telling me, then you want to take everyone away! Were you planning to tell me that after I finished preparing dinner? And me already with the dessert half done and the bread rising?”

  “No, no, no,” Clare reassured her, inwardly scolding herself. If something serious had happened, something that might demand cancelation, like another bombing in London, Edward would have called her before he even got home. And he wouldn’t have been the one to tell Mathilde about it. Dealing with staff was her job.

  Where was her phone? She reached into her sweater pocket—but her BlackBerry was still in her purse. She hadn’t used it while she was out, although she almost had, to call the embassy to find a ride back from the airport tomorrow for Jamie. Wasn’t she glad now that she hadn’t! How embarrassing if word had gotten round that James was already in Paris when she’d called: the minister’s wife didn’t even know in which country her younger son was. Still, it was odd she hadn’t received any calls. Had she neglected to switch it back on after Edward’s welcoming speech at last night’s reception? Maybe Jamie had tried to call her on her cell phone to ask permission to leave, to fly to Paris. Unable to reach her, he wouldn’t have tried the home phone, because he’d have had to call when his dad was still home in order to catch that morning flight. It didn’t make anything okay, but it did explain things a little.

  “I found some nice cheese at Bon Marché,” she said, and prayed for Mathilde to pick her whisk back up without further remonstration. “Some very nice Irish cheddar.”

  “Well, Irish is better than English,” Mathilde said, eyeing Clare. A Scottish nationalist when she wasn’t being a Swiss loyalist, Mathilde enjoyed taking whatever swipe she could at England. Not that she had any reservations about working for the British Crown. Clare wouldn’t be surprised to discover she had heard about the post in Dublin opening up and was worrying it, in her mind, just as she was the eggs. Mathilde seemed to know everything, especially anything that might pertain to her own work status. After all, this evening had its meaning for Mathilde as well. Unlike Edward’s secretary, for example, who was within the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office system, if Edward and Clare left for Dublin, Mathilde might well be out of a job, as would Amélie. They’d been independent hires by Clare, and the next minister couldn’t be counted on to hire either of them.