The menu is a small blackboard on the wall with a handful of options, all written in French. After a small bit of conferring, the parents order two steak frites and a croque-monsieur for Tabby.
“It’ll be great to go back tomorrow and see the inside of the palace,” says Phoebe’s stepdad after the waiter steps away.
“Oh, I know. I just wish Phoebe could see it.”
“Fee,” says Tabby.
She’s only repeating her beloved sister’s name, but Phoebe’s mum lifts her shoulders and opens her eyes wide.
“Do you see her?” she asks.
I look at Tabby’s large eyes. Does she? She has before. But Tabby’s twisting around to look up at her mum, not her sister, with a worried expression. I think that she, too, is getting her head around that overall sadness. What’s going on with Phoebe’s family today?
“She would’ve loved it,” says Phoebe’s stepdad. “I bet she would go crazy in the gift shop, too.”
“She’d buy one of everything,” Phoebe’s mum agrees.
Phoebe looks at me, outraged, and I stifle a laugh.
“Is this how they see me?” she asks. “Seriously?”
“I like to think about her racing Tabby around on the grass,” says Phoebe’s stepdad.
Whoa. Had he sensed in some unconscious way the chasing that had taken place along the canal earlier?
I notice that Phoebe’s mum barely eats, maybe a handful of bites, before she sets down her fork and knife for good.
“Want some cake for dessert?” she asks Tabby. “If you can finish your dinner, I’ll let you have some.”
Tabby doggedly works on her croque-monsieur, which her father cuts up into small pieces for her as she eats them. She’s too young to point out the hypocrisy that Phoebe’s mum isn’t finishing her dinner.
“What was your favorite thing we saw today?” Phoebe’s stepdad asks Tabby.
“The worm.”
Eleanor laughs. Must’ve been something that happened while Phoebe and I weren’t there.
“The Belvedere,” says Phoebe’s mum. “I want to make one at home to match it.”
“There might be one already!” says Phoebe’s stepdad. “We haven’t explored all the grounds yet.”
Phoebe gives me a funny look, and I realize she doesn’t even know what the Belvedere is. I visited the round pavilion with golden paneling when I came here with my parents, but she missed it while we were in the queen’s house and at Gillian’s.
I glance guiltily at Eleanor. She catches my eye and I know she’s thinking the same thing.
“I liked the theater,” Phoebe’s stepdad says. “I like thinking of Marie-Antoinette putting on plays. Today they’d be all over YouTube and maybe she wouldn’t have lost her head.”
Phoebe’s mum laughs. “The Internet could’ve changed history in many ways.”
He finishes, his plate a clean moon. “That was really good,” he comments. “You didn’t eat much.”
“Can’t.”
He nods.
The waiter in his white apron covering his hips takes away all the plates and Tabby starts chanting, “Cake cake cake cake.”
“Can you say it in French, sweetie?” her dad asks. “It’s le gâteau.”
She repeats, “Le gat toe,” and he gives her the most delighted smile.
“Perfect!”
Phoebe’s mum orders gâteau au chocolat, but they’re out. The waiter apologizes and they order the other dessert, tarte aux pommes, an apple pie. As soon as he walks away, he goes to the chalkboard and uses the flat of his palm to wipe away the word gâteau.
“Sorry, Phoebe,” her mum murmurs.
“Why?” asks Phoebe aloud.
Her mum takes her purse off the back of her chair, puts it on the table, and unzips it. She takes out a small, carved wooden box that says Phoebe Irving on it in silver, cursive, embedded lettering.
“What is that?” Eleanor asks. I can’t bear the look on Phoebe’s face, so I quickly look away.
Tabby touches the box. “That’s a good girl,” praises her mother. “You’re being so gentle like we talked about.” Phoebe’s mum takes out an envelope and props it up against the box. It’s addressed:
Phoebe Irving
c/o Anne and Steven Arnaud
Auldkirk Lane
Grenshire, England
“Oh my God,” chokes Phoebe. “It’s from Bethany, my best friend back in California.”
Now Phoebe’s mum takes out a ziplock bag. Inside are tiny pastel candles and a piece of paper. I lean over to see that it says, Est-ce que je peux avoir une allumette pour ces bougies?
“What’s the note?” asks Phoebe’s stepdad.
“I Googled the French for ‘Can I have a match for these candles?’ ”
“You think of everything.”
When the waiter comes with the tarte, she holds up the piece of paper for him and he smiles broadly and pulls a lighter from his pocket. Of course. Everyone in France smokes.
Phoebe’s mum quickly inserts the candles, counting aloud for Tabby’s sake. Tabby joins her for the first ten.
There are seventeen.
It’s all coming clear to me.
“I can’t sing it,” whispers Phoebe’s mum, her voice tear filled. “But I want Tabby to have that experience. Kids love birthdays.”
There’s no one else in the restaurant, but Steven starts singing the “Happy Birthday” song in a really soft voice as if he’s trying not to disturb other people. Tabby joins in, and with a tremulous smile, so does Phoebe’s mum.
Phoebe turns away, into my arms. She’s holding me so tightly it almost hurts. I’m glad to feel that sensation: I can still feel a vestige of physical pain. Something to be grateful for.
The waiter hovers nearby, happy in the shared celebration, but he’s frowning. When the song ends, he asks, “Too many candles for her?” as he gestures to Tabby.
“It’s our other daughter,” says Steven. “She’s not with us anymore.”
“Well, she is but she isn’t,” says Phoebe’s mum, pointing to the engraved box.
The waiter looks stricken. He bows to them and leaves.
“That box contains my ashes,” says Phoebe in a low voice, her face still pressed to my chest. “She keeps it in their bedroom closet at home—I mean, at the Arnaud Manor. I’ve always avoided that closet but couldn’t figure out why. I knew, but I wouldn’t let myself acknowledge it.”
“Oh, Phoebe,” says Eleanor. She rubs Phoebe’s back gently.
Tabby gets to make the wish and blow out the candles for her missing sister. In the smoke drifting up, Phoebe’s mum asks, “Tabby, is Phoebe here?”
“No.”
“We’re celebrating her birthday today. Do you think she knows it?”
“Not.”
“We love and miss you,” says Phoebe’s mum to the air. “Dear Phoebe, how I miss you.”
I know how upset Phoebe is because she doesn’t turn in my arms to look at her mum. She’s not trying to reach Tabby to send a message. She’s buried in the only thing she has: me.
We should leave. It’s too sad to watch this. But where would we go? My own parents are probably doing their own version of a birthday remembrance for me, and I honestly don’t think I can handle that. I’m here to watch over Tabby. I helped protect her from Madame Arnaud, and I’ll continue keeping her safe until we three understand what our role is and why we don’t move on to another realm. We can’t physically intervene since we’re ghosts, but we can watch and strategize when Tabby’s in trouble. There’s nothing I can do to help my own parents. Useless son. I’m dead.
Then it hits me.
Phoebe and I have the same birthday.
That must mean something.
It may be part of why we don’t “graduate” to the next stage of our death, part of the work we have to do. Why fate threw us together, her always driving with me in my car, the way we always met up at the pool.
“I miss you, too,” says Steven. A w
orld of melancholy is in his voice.
“Me, too,” says Tabby.
“Happy birthday,” says Phoebe’s mum. She silently cries as she opens the card from Bethany.
“Don’t, Mom,” says Phoebe, muffled in my shirtfront. She can hear the envelope being torn open.
“ ‘Dear Phoebe,’ ” she reads. “ ‘I couldn’t not send you a card. I hope your family is doing okay. I think about you all the time. I look at pictures of us and I wish more than anything that you were still here. I don’t really talk to anybody. I don’t have a best friend anymore. I want you back. Happy birthday.’ ”
And that’s the end of that. Steven plonks down a handful of euros and her mother silently puts her collection of items back into her purse.
“I was too ambitious,” says Phoebe’s mum through her tears. “I honestly thought we might be able to celebrate. To find something good in it.”
“There’s no guidebook for this,” he says. “We just have to do the best we can.”
He picks up Tabby while her mum uses a napkin to wipe as much food off Tabby’s face as she can. The waiter comes up and hands the euros back to Steven.
“Please,” he says in stilted English. “We wish to treat you tonight. So sorry about your daughter.”
He nods over to the kitchen, where the chef has come out and stood by the door. He bows deeply to the Arnauds.
Steven looks at the bills in his hand for a long time. “Thank you,” he says finally. “Merci beaucoup.”
“You are so kind,” says Phoebe’s mum.
As we leave, another group comes in, loud with frivolity and youth. They are going to deplete the wine list and make the poor waiter wipe more things off the chalkboard. They’re attractive, three girls and two fellows in their midtwenties, out for a fun night. They’re French. They must live here, maybe they even work at the chateau. They start pushing tables together; more are coming. They’re laughing hard at something, or maybe just at their good fortune.
I grip Phoebe harder and think, This could’ve been us in a couple years.
If only.
We return to the hotel, a boutique-type room on the second floor. The furniture makes a small pretense to the Louis Seize style, with curved legs supporting the mirrored vanity. Phoebe’s mum busies herself with locating Tabby’s pajamas and toothbrush in their shared suitcase. Steven tries to read his secret societies book, and I lean over his shoulder, hoping to learn something, but he stays on the same page for ten minutes. He’s not reading. Eventually he gives up the charade and closes the book.
“You two have the same birthday,” says Eleanor when Phoebe’s calm.
“October twentieth was a very auspicious date,” I say.
“All the best people are born then,” says Eleanor. I almost want to stop and give her a high five, not that she’d know what that is. She’s made extraordinary steps in the short time we’ve known her. Born in the 1800s to become a servant in the Arnaud Manor, she’s developed a wry sense of humor she simply wasn’t capable of when we first met her.
After the family is asleep and we sit looking bleakly at one another, Eleanor stands up and comes to sit next to me.
“Can we go see your family?” she asks. “It’s your birthday, too. Maybe they left something for you.”
“Like those offerings of fruit and sweets people leave at altars?” I ask. “My parents aren’t like that.”
“How do you know?” she persists. “This is the first birthday since you died, right?”
I nod.
“I’d like to know them,” she says. “We’ll go with you.”
“It’s not necessary,” I say. “I don’t need anything from them.”
She just looks at me.
“And they don’t need anything from me.”
Now Phoebe’s on her feet. “Let’s go. Eleanor’s right. I’ve been so self-involved. You haven’t seen your parents in . . . how long?”
“I don’t know. Can you sit down?”
“Just a check-in,” she urges. “We don’t have to stay. We’ll look at them, make sure they’re okay, and blast off.”
I don’t want to. I don’t think it’s going to do anything except make me feel a hundred thousand times worse than I already do. I’m an only child, so my parents aren’t even parents anymore. I can’t stand to go see how quiet they’re going to be, watching the telly without speaking to each other.
“Maybe next year,” I say.
In the morning, everyone seems to be making an effort to act encouraging. Steven compliments Phoebe’s mum on her shirt and she seems pleased.
“I ordered it online,” she says. “There just isn’t much available for women’s clothing in downtown Grenshire.”
“There isn’t much ‘downtown’ available in downtown Grenshire.”
They laugh. Phoebe’s mum packs the nappy bag for today’s outing, letting Tabby pick the nappy designs she wants (Minnie Mouse holding balloons).
A short walk later, we’re back at the chateau. We briefly queue with the tickets Steven bought the day before, and we’ve lucked out that it’s not so busy. We middle-class ghosts will get to penetrate the king’s inner sanctum, an opportunity many nobles would’ve killed for back in the day.
It almost seems you have to make a special, dramatic inhale upon entry. If you have air in your lungs, that is. If not, you just pretend. The halls are touched with gold, open and spacious, with statuary everywhere.
The place is also, I have to add, completely haunted.
Not only are there today’s tourists, pressed so closely together that they block one another’s view of everything, becoming grumpy although this is the vacation they’ve saved up for and they’re hell-bent on enjoying it . . . but there’s an equal number of ghosts. Some panicking, others calmly reenacting their days of blissful, ostrich-in-sand affluence, walking slowly in their finery.
It’s claustrophobic to a high pitch and visually stressful, such a volume of bodies. I feel like I’m looking at a life-sized Hieronymus Bosch painting.
One ghost woman dressed in a lacy rose-colored gown runs shrieking through the hall, her face tormented and terrorized. She enters at one end, runs through, and exits—then instantly she’s back at the beginning again. She’s on an endless treadmill and I pity her . . . she’s been doing this since 1799?
“What on earth was her role?” asks Eleanor, her face stricken. “She’s running from the mob of angry peasants?”
I wonder aloud. “Maybe she’s running to warn the royal family?”
“And she’s guilty forever because she didn’t make it there?” asks Phoebe.
“Who knows what her story is?” says Eleanor. “Perhaps she was cut down in the next moment. Maybe there was just one person chasing her in the middle of the night, bent on harming her, not even related to the Revolution.”
I watch her cycle a few more times. I think Eleanor’s initial guess might be right; there were people pursuing her once, but they’re not here now. They found their final rest somehow—or maybe they’re haunting the site of even worse crimes. If there is ever a definition of hell, this is it: eternal panic without resolution. For this poor ghost, being caught would probably be an intense relief.
I look around to see who of the living is aware of her. There’s one older man with a gray beard who watches her with horror and excuses himself from his companions with a few quick words. He exits the hall without noticing me, Eleanor, or Phoebe. Who knows what he’ll see in the next room? I think grimly.
We slowly move with the crowd through the rooms of state with their enormous portraits of prior kings in fur and jewels, with furniture that doesn’t look comfortable although it does seem obvious craftsmen took their time carving the wood, tufting the upholstery, and embroidering it with gold.
Everyone wants to see the same thing, and after we walk with shuffled half steps through many chambers—absolutely no one here can walk at a regular pace—we see it.
Marie-Antoinette’s bed.
The bed is so wide six people could rest in it, a ménage à six rather than trois. We’ve caught up with a tour already in progress, and Phoebe’s family nudges close to hear better.
“Notice the door to the left of the bed. It’s left ajar for us to see today,” says the English-speaking guide, a tall brunette wearing a red scarf twisted around her neck, which always looks so French. “But when closed, it blends into the wallpaper and becomes invisible. It’s a hidden passageway through which the queen fled that fateful day the palace was invaded. Despite the temporary reprieve, she was captured and brought to Paris with the king and their children.”
I hadn’t remembered that detail from my last visit here. We didn’t have the benefit of the guide, and probably our eyes had just glossed over it as a small door without meaning.
“Marie’s lady raised the alarm,” says the guide, “and she fled through the interior hallway, which connects with the oeil-de-boeuf chamber, and then on to the king’s room. He wasn’t there; he was looking for her in another hallway. Eventually they were reunited with their children, and just in time. Rioters killed two of Marie-Antoinette’s Swiss Guards as they tried to prevent the mob from entering her chamber.”
She continues on, describing how they howled and ransacked, and even stabbed Marie’s bed. I try to imagine how it feels to have hundreds of people running through your house, calling for you, terrifying your children, loud and violent.
Just as our collective attention shifts away, I see a tiny bolt of blue—the fleece jacket Tabby’s wearing, as she slips through the secret door.
I bolt over the velvet ropes restraining visitors, although that’s just a reflex. I could go through the ropes; I’m made of air.
Betrayed Page 6