Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived_Short Stories

by Lily Tuck

  Cécile is halfway across the field.

  “Who were those people?” Cécile asks Amy when Amy catches up to her. “Tourists,” she says before Amy can reply.

  The field has not yet been mowed and it is filled with tall grasses and Queen Anne’s lace. The Queen Anne’s lace reaches up nearly to Amy’s knees, idly she reaches down and touches the tops of the flowers as she walks. Some of the flowers are pink. She is tempted to stop, to pick them. Ahead of her, Cécile has started to sing a song Amy recognizes immediately.

  “Like no other lover—” Cécile’s voice is loud, mock-impassioned, her accent even more pronounced.

  “Something in the way he moves—” Amy starts to sing along with her.

  “I love the Beatles,” Cécile tells Amy when they are finished singing.

  “It’s a great song,” Amy agrees. She has almost forgiven Cécile.

  In front of them, at the far edge of the field filled with Queen Anne’s lace, tall dark pines rise almost parallel to the side of the mountain.

  Following the path up through the trees, Amy walks directly behind Cécile. The blue sky overhead is hidden from view by the tall dark pines and, except for the occasional snapping of a branch underfoot, it is quiet. Amy is amazed how quickly the countryside has changed—twenty minutes from the village of Rossinière with its red geraniums, and they are in no-man’s-land, as remote, Amy thinks, as a jungle. Above them she can hear but not see a jet, no doubt a commercial airliner, and she imagines the passengers in their seats, perhaps sipping cocktails and admiring this view from above, feeling safe as they fly over Switzerland.

  Looking ahead at Cécile, Amy worries about whether Cécile has ever gotten lost on a walk. The dark trees frighten Amy a bit and it might take hours, days even, Amy thinks, before someone would find them, especially if one of them were to fall and break her leg. Cécile’s legs would snap in a trice they are so thin.

  Amy also wishes that they would talk as they walk. So far, Amy knows very little about Cécile. Amy would like to know, for instance, if Cécile has ever been in love.

  Amy has.

  Farah was a fellow student, an artist. He painted large abstract canvases filled with yellow bubbles. “Yellow is a difficult color. After van Gogh—” Farah had shrugged his bony shoulders, given Amy a sad smile. Life, too, for Farah was difficult. In America on a grant, Farah was afraid he would be sent back to Libya, would have to stop painting. Amy sympathized—it would be unfair. But when her parents found out about Farah, to hear them talk about it, Farah and Qaddafi were one and the same. Nothing Amy said could placate them. The angrier they got, the more determined she was to defend Farah, like a cause. Eventually, Farah did have to go back to Libya and Amy went to Switzerland—a neutral country. But from Switzerland, Amy secretly fantasizes she can go to Libya—it is a lot closer. This is a notion Amy clings to for her self-esteem and is not anything she has the courage to do.

  When finally Cécile and Amy emerge from the trees, it is colder, windier. The sky, too, is no longer blue, but gray, almost white. Ahead of them, Amy sees a moraine of stones. The stones are loose and slippery and are covered with patches of last winter’s crusty and now dirty snow. Cécile holds out her hand to Amy and together they cross the moraine.

  “We are nearly there,” Cécile says.

  Amy stops both to catch her breath and to put on her sweater. As it turns out, the hole made by the barb is right over one of her breasts. Amy sees Cécile look at it and look away.

  Cécile is pointing toward the rocks on top of the mountain. At first, Amy is afraid that Cécile means that they must climb up there. The rocks are steep, sheer. Then, all of a sudden, Amy sees something move. Then something else moves. As her eyes grow accustomed to looking, Amy sees several more chamois. Five or six of them, at least.

  The way the chamois stand, flat against the rocks, reminds Amy of those extinct villages she has seen pictures of in the National Geographic that are carved into and perched on the sides of mountains—long ladders are strategically placed in front of dark doorways, windows, yet the villages look totally inaccessible.

  “I was hoping they would be here for you to see,” says Cécile.

  Standing quietly next to Cécile, Amy watches the group of chamois. They were absorbed in eating—tufts of dried grass, moss, lichen growing on the rocks—but now, as if sensing the two girls’ presence, the leader raises his head, looks around. Then, leisurely, not in any kind of a rush caused by fear, all the chamois start to move on. They jump farther up the mountain, first one, then the next one—the chamois look as if they are jumping almost at random, with no specific purpose except to keep in motion—from one sheer rock face to another. Amy can see neither ledge nor foothold. They float gracefully in the air, feet tucked in, head and antlers contained, and land lightly and neatly, daintily. Occasionally, a chamois dislodges a stone and the stone rolls noisily down the rock face.

  Cécile nudges Amy with an elbow.

  The last chamois in the group lands on his knees. When he stands up, one of his front legs does not touch the ground. The leg dangles.

  “Oh, my God,” Amy says.

  The chamois’s broken leg crumbles underneath him as he lands on it again. Precariously perched on his knees, the chamois struggles to get back onto his three legs; when he does, without pausing or hesitating, he jumps to another rock. Amy watches the chamois do this several more times—jump, fall to his knees, get back to his feet, jump again—as he tries to keep up with the other chamois. The other chamois pay no attention to him. They neither modify their pace nor in any way acknowledge that there is something wrong. It is almost too painful for Amy to watch, while, for the chamois, there seems to be no connection between his broken leg and his falling. He just keeps jumping—jumping from rock to rock is what a chamois does, like breathing, Amy thinks. Even if something were to go wrong with one of her lungs she would still have to keep taking breaths.

  “I’ve never seen a chamois with a broken leg before,” Cécile confesses to Amy on their way back down the mountain.

  “Terrible. He won’t survive long,” Amy agrees.

  And, in a rush of words, Amy tells Cécile about Farah, about how she met Farah, about how immensely talented Farah is and how he must be allowed to continue painting, about how her parents are prejudiced and have forbidden her to see him, about how much she loves him—Amy has never loved anyone else the way she loves Farah—and how unhappy she is, although as she says all this to Cécile, Amy does not feel so unhappy. On the contrary, she feels happy to be confiding in Cécile.

  “I wish you could meet him, I am sure you would like him,” is what Amy is saying to Cécile as the two girls emerge from the trees and once again start to cross the field filled with Queen Anne’s lace.

  “Shall we stop here for a minute,” is how Cécile answers Amy.

  Obediently, Amy sits down next to Cécile in the grass while Cécile busies herself picking the flowers within her reach.

  “Last year, at just about this time, in July, a man gave me a lift in his car. I was hitchhiking. I always did—it’s so safe here,” Cécile is saying. In her hand, she holds several long stalks of Queen Anne’s lace and she waves the flowers at Amy. “He was French, I think. Or maybe, he was Belgian, I don’t know. A tourist.” Cécile shrugs her thin shoulders and gives a little laugh, at the same time that she starts to gently brush Amy’s brow with the bunch of Queen Anne’s lace. Cécile brushes Amy’s nose with the flowers, Amy’s mouth, Amy’s chin. “He was the reason I cut off my hair, afterward. I did it myself. I did it with nail scissors. It took me all afternoon, my hair was so long. My parents didn’t know. I never told them.”

  The flowers tickle, but Amy does not move. Amy does not speak. Amy, probably, does not breathe as Cécile brushes Amy’s neck with the Queen Anne’s lace, and, lower down, as she brushes the place where the hole in Amy’s sweater is.

  “We’d better get home,” Cécile finally says, throwing away the bunch of Que
en Anne’s lace and standing up, “or we’ll be late.”

  They are late.

  Madame Cottier is both worried and upset that the dinner she has been preparing will be spoiled, overcooked. Monsieur Cottier is busy trying to choose the proper red wine to serve with the meal. When finally Monsieur Cottier has opened the wine, a Dôle, and they are seated at the table, Cécile tries to explain to Monsieur and Madame Cottier.

  “You see,” Cécile says as she cuts into the duck’s pink breast, “it was my fault. I took Amy for a walk up the mountain and on the way home, we hitchhiked—I do it all the time—and this man gave us a ride in his BMW. He was a tourist, a Frenchman, I think, or, maybe, he was a Belgian.”

  Avoiding Cécile’s gaze, Amy lowers her head. She, too, busies herself cutting the duck meat.

  “He wouldn’t stop the car when we asked him to,” Cécile continues in an even voice. “He wouldn’t let us off here at Rossinière. He just kept right on driving, isn’t that right, Amy? Lucky for us, the barrier was down at the railroad crossing, and Amy and I opened the door—we were sitting in the backseat of the car—and we jumped out.”

  “Cécile,” Madame Cottier says, “how many times do I have to tell you not to hitchhike. You never know what sort of person is going to give young girls a lift.” Then Madame Cottier says, “It isn’t overdone, is it? One must be so careful when one cooks a duck. One moment the duck is too rare, the next moment the duck is dried out.”

  “I told you didn’t I how I am a twin?” Amy suddenly turns to and asks Monsieur Cottier. “You may not believe this, but you know how people are always saying that twins can feel each other’s pain—well, it’s true. One time when Peter, my twin, was away playing football at school, I got a pain right here,” Amy touches her chest. She is warming up and beginning to enjoy her story. “I could hardly breathe it hurt so much and sure enough afterward I found out that Peter had broken two ribs and punctured his lung.”

  Without looking over at Amy, Monsieur Cottier takes a sip of his wine and says, “I should have opened this bottle earlier, I should have let the wine breathe.”

  That night, Amy does not sleep well. She does not sleep at all. Instead she tosses and turns in Josef and Marie-Thérèse Henchot’s pretty painted bed. One time, when Amy opens her eyes she thinks she sees Josef Henchot standing next to the bed. With rough red hands that are more accustomed to milking cows, he is unbuttoning the row of small silver buttons on his short-sleeved black velvet peasant jacket that is exactly like the one Monsieur Cottier wears to dinner from time to time.

  The next morning during breakfast, Monsieur and Madame Cottier talk about an old armoire which has come up for sale. Monsieur and Madame Cottier say that they have had their eye on this particular painted armoire for a long time—no one builds or paints armoires like this one anymore—but the old man who owned it refused to part with it.

  “What made him change his mind?” Amy asks.

  “He died,” Madame Cottier answers, spreading more honey on her slice of bread.

  The armoire, Madame Cottier is sure, comes from Fribourg; the armoire, Monsieur Cottier is certain, has never been restored, and never in all his years of dealing with Swiss antiques has he seen an old armoire in such good condition and the armoire, Monsieur Cottier also says, should bring him at least one hundred thousand francs.

  When he finishes his breakfast and gets up from the table, Monsieur Cottier takes Madame Cottier by the hand and helps her to her feet. Monsieur Cottier puts his arm around Madame Cottier’s waist, and, together, they do a little two-step dance. Cécile claps her hands. Then, standing up, she goes over to Amy and takes her hand.

  “No, no,” Amy shakes her head, “I can’t dance.”

  Nonetheless, Amy lets Cécile pull her to her feet.

  Second Wife

  According to a statistic Helen reads in a magazine while she waits for Duane’s plane to land, the second wife is usually two inches taller than the first wife. The article in the magazine makes no mention of the height of the second husband, and Helen wonders if this means that he is shorter than the first? And what about the third husband? Helen pictures a whole series of men becoming shorter and shorter crushed by the weight of yet another marriage, more children, more obligations and expenses. Meanwhile the women are getting taller and taller, because, no doubt, they are younger and stronger. They are blonds, too, Helen has decided by the time Duane’s plane is parked at the gate.

  Robert, Helen’s ex-husband, had remarried a woman who was the same height as Helen, only she was younger, fitter. Helen would never forget how she and Robert had signed the divorce papers on a Tuesday, and Robert had married Margo the next day, Wednesday. Since then, Margo has gained an enormous amount of weight—from her car window, Helen happened to see Margo crossing the street (Margo, thank God, did not see her). Margo, Helen guessed, has gained at least thirty pounds.

  “You’ll like her, I promise,” Helen had been the one to say to Robert—ha! truer words were never spoken she was to keep reminding herself—on the occasion of a paddle-tennis game she had arranged between the two couples. Of the four of them, Margo had been by far the best player. She was quick and strong, while Jeffrey, her husband, was steady. Robert had played erratically—occasionally he hit a brilliant shot or he aced Margo and Jeffrey with a serve, but more often than not, his balls went out or went into the net, which, Helen could tell, made him angry. As for Helen, although she played a lot of tennis and was good at it, she had never played paddle-tennis before, and it took her a while to get used to the flat wooden racket, the underhand serve, the different ball that hardly bounced, the size of the court. The whole first game, Helen did nothing but say to Robert: “It’s not like the tennis I am used to playing” or “It’s not my fault if I haven’t played this game before—”

  Helen believes in the power of suggestion. How many times has she heard how a person, who, because she thought she could not have one of her own, adopts a child, only to find out soon afterward that she is pregnant? Likewise, months earlier and long before the paddle-tennis game, someone had told Helen that she happened to see Robert drive through downtown Charlottesville in his green Toyota pickup truck with a woman (clearly not Helen) sitting next to him. This woman, seen from the back had a lot of hair—a mass of frizzy hair. It took Helen a few moments to realize that the woman sitting next to Robert was not a woman at all, but their standard brown poodle, Oliver. Oliver loved nothing better than to go for a ride in the car and sit next to the driver, pressing up against him, so that from the back the two heads looked as if they were touching.

  When, exactly, Robert and Margo had started their affair, Helen could not say—shortly after the paddle-tennis game (Helen and Robert had lost to Margo and Jeffrey) her mother broke her hip and Helen had to leave town for a week—but the day she found out about the affair was also the day she found the floor of Robert’s green Toyota pickup truck littered with peanut shells. To this day, Helen is certain there must be a connection.

  As for Duane’s ex-wife, Helen has never met her. Nor does she expect to. Marie lives far away in another city, in another state, and Helen has only seen photographs of her. Photographs that Duane has told Helen he will get rid of, but has not. Photographs of their wedding when Duane was twenty years younger and his hair was darker, more abundant, and where Marie is standing in a long white dress holding a bouquet of lilies of the valley, and smiling. More photographs of Duane and Marie sitting in their bathing suits on the deck of a boat off the Turkish coast—Duane has described to Helen the cruise in the blue Aegean water, the archaeological sites, the inept crew—and photographs of the two of them skiing, again in a place that looks foreign (Helen can see chalets in the background). In all these photographs, Duane and Marie look young, happy, and Marie looks both blonder and several inches taller than Helen.

  Marie has not remarried for good reason. Marie has discovered herself to be a lesbian, and although it embarrasses Duane to talk about this, Helen kno
ws that Marie’s companion, Teresa, is Hispanic—her family is from El Salvador—which might mean, Helen thinks, that Teresa is dark, short, perhaps even hefty.

  Not as hefty as Margo, Helen is ready to bet. Helen could hardly believe her eyes at the amount of weight Margo had gained, and Helen has just to close them to recall, as if it were yesterday and not several years ago, how slim and trim Margo had looked on that paddle-tennis court—even though, because of the cold (February, the month Helen’s mother had slipped on an icy sidewalk) she had on several layers of clothes—and to this day, Helen can describe exactly what Margo wore, how energetically Margo had run after the ball, how her serve had invariably gone in, all of which, no doubt, contributed to Robert’s sudden infatuation. More than just an infatuation, Helen had to admit, since hadn’t he gone ahead and married Margo?

  Helen first met Margo at a luncheon. The luncheon had been given for the benefit of the Charlottesville Horticultural Society, an event Helen had felt obliged to attend. As it turned out, Margo had felt a similar obligation, and, leaning over in her chair she had whispered in Helen’s ear during the first course—artichoke hearts vinaigrette—that, frankly, she could hardly tell one plant from the other. Neither could she, Helen had whispered back. The two women met once more, this time in a restaurant in downtown Charlottesville; they drank a bottle of California wine. From gardening, their talk quickly moved on to other topics, principally, their marriages. Margo confided to Helen that she found Jeffrey dull. Dull in bed, she said she meant. Oh? After a moment’s hesitation, Helen had volunteered that she, too, was bored by sex—actually, Helen had never thought about whether sex was boring or not, to her sex was simply sex. Drinking more of the wine, Helen heard herself go on and describe to Margo how, in bed, she could predict all of Robert’s moves: first he kissed her, then he squeezed her breasts, squeezed her buttocks, he put his hand in between her legs, et cetera, et cetera, and he never varied it. Helen had never said this sort of thing to anyone; in fact, she had never thought about it before, and even while she heard herself telling Margo, she wondered whether she was telling her the truth. It sounded like the truth.