Going Topless

by Megan McAndrew

  “I don’t think that’s what Bleak House was about,” Jane says.

  “Well,” Isabelle says, “I’m going to tell her that she has our blessing.”

  “I agree,” I say. “We’re all grownups.”

  “Well, you can count me out. For heaven’s sake, this is the woman who threw Jane’s girlfriend out of the house!”

  “She did not throw her out,” Isabelle says. “She just made tactless remarks that Marge was too humorless to brush off. It’s what’s known as a cultural misunderstanding.”

  Jane says nothing.

  “If he moves into her bedroom, I’m leaving,” Lucy declares before stomping out.

  “What a grouch,” Isabelle sighs, flopping onto the bed. Our little conclave has been taking place in my bedroom, formerly Lucy’s and possibly yet another of the little things that set her off. “I was wondering why Yves stayed out of sight when the mayor came. Poor Odette: She’s probably afraid he’ll think she’s a hussy.” She frowns. “It is kind of creepy, her keeping Dad’s ashes in her bedroom. I mean, when you think about it.”

  “Where was she supposed to put them?” I say.

  “I don’t know. The living room?”

  “She’s French,” Jane says dryly. “They’re very pragmatic about that sort of thing.”

  This latest affaire, at least, has distracted Lucy from the matter of Electra’s food raid. By dinnertime she’s calmed down and even offers to cook, always a good sign with Lucy. Isabelle had a talk with Odette, who was mortified and protested that she wouldn’t hear of Yves moving into the bedroom that she had shared with Ross. Go figure. Maybe they just like sneaking around. As for Yves, he pays meticulous attention to the food on his plate: a vegetable ragoût of Lucy’s composition with, perplexingly, crushed peanuts sprinkled on top.

  “Délicieux,” he murmurs, eyes cast firmly downward. Lucy tosses him a look of utter contempt. Richard remains glacial. He has obviously not forgiven her her little scene of yesterday. The only ones unaffected by the tense atmosphere are Isabelle and Electra, who has not behaved inappropriately since yesterday with the exception, as gleefully related by Sophie, of eating a big booger. Sophie and Olga are out of control as usual. They’re dressed up as Gypsies, which, as Odette tersely points out after the salad, does not give them license to act like “ sauvages.”

  “Mommy! What’s a sauvage?”

  “An uncivilized person.”

  “Mommy! Are we uncivilized?”

  “Yes,” Isabelle laughs.

  “When is Daddy coming to visit us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You said he was coming!”

  “I did not.”

  “You promised!”

  “Manipulative little beast,” Jane whispers to me.

  Everyone drinks too much, except Odette.

  Later on, upstairs, Jim asks, “What was that all about?” I never got around to filling him in on the latest developments because he was gone most of the day hiking with Richard. It occurs to me that, except at night, we’re not spending a whole lot of quality time together. I should have known that my family was going to be a distraction.

  “Lucy caught Yves and Odette in a compromising position.”

  “Really? I kind of figured there was something going on there. So I guess you’re upset because of her being your dad’s wife and all?”

  “No. Come here.” I grab him by the belt and pull him down on top of me. “Take your pants off. I couldn’t care less. Lucy flipped her lid, though.”

  “Oh.”

  “Hence the slight tension at dinner. That and the fact that she and Richard aren’t speaking.”

  “Richard’s a good guy.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” I’m tugging at his boxer shorts. Unaccountably, I have a mental flash of Yves in the little bikini briefs I imagine he wears, with a big erection poking out. The bulge in his bathing suit suggests that he’s rather well endowed.

  Speaking of erections, Jim seems sadly distracted tonight, or maybe it’s the wine. I let go of his penis and tickle his balls instead.

  “Why are you all so dismissive of him? Do you think he doesn’t notice?”

  I give up altogether. It seems somehow inappropriate to discuss Richard while fondling Jim’s scrotum.

  “If Richard is looking for respect,” I say, “he’s going to have to learn how to stand up to his wife.”

  “Well, he kind of implied to me that he’s going to.”

  “Nothing like male bonding for that testosterone rush, huh?”

  “Are you ever not sarcastic?”

  “Not about my family. It’s a necessary defense mechanism: In case you haven’t noticed, most of them aren’t right in the head.”

  “I know it’s none of my business,” says Jim, “but you guys sure aren’t very nice to each other.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I snap. “Get over it. You’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  It’s our first fight. We sleep back-to-back.

  CHAPTER thirteen

  The next day, our new neighbor moves in. Isabelle, out hanging laundry, is the first to see him. She reports at breakfast that he is most attractive, very Paris Intellectual: longish black hair, Alain Mikli glasses, nice clothes.

  “Uh-oh,” Jane says, “now she’ll start walking around completely naked.”

  “Not around you I won’t, you old pervert. I wonder where we could find a copy of his book….”

  “We must ask Madame Peretti. Perhaps she has one stashed behind the tins of spaghetti sauce.”

  “Why don’t we have him over for dinner?” Lucy suggests brightly.

  “This is France,” Jane says. “You can’t just invite strangers over for dinner. He’ll think we’re mad, or desperate.”

  “We are desperate,” Isabelle says.

  “Speak for yourself,” Lucy says.

  Yesterday’s crisis has dissipated. Jim forgave me this morning after I woke him up with a blow job, and then took off early for the beach with his new best friend, Richard, and all the kids. Odette has remarked on how good he is with children, so unusual in a man. I guess she’s right, though frankly, the last few days have made me seriously wonder about the whole breeding issue. Who needs the aggravation? Yves and Odette are in Flore, doing le shopping. “About bloody time too,” declares Lucy.

  “Anyway,” Isabelle says, “I told him he was welcome to use the patio.”

  “Big of you.”

  “The main question is, has he come alone? I saw no evidence of either a wife or a girlfriend.”

  “Mmmm, solitary brooding intellectual …” Jane says, winking at me.

  “Alors, have you seen him?” Yolande Van Langendonck comes scooting in, in a long djellabah with a matching turquoise turban. Her eye job today suggests that she’s been getting makeup tips from old Star Trek episodes. As our local eccentric, Yolande is exempted from the rules of decorum that forbid things like wandering into other people’s houses, something Madame Benoît, with whom Odette is much chummier, would never presume to do.

  “Only Isabelle,” Jane says. “She contrived to be hanging up her wet underpants just as he arrived.”

  “Tssss, naughty girl. I saw him in the parking—very handsome. I understand that he is divorced….”

  “Do tell. What’s your source?”

  “Monsieur le Maire heard it from Countess Fatulescu. Have I earned a cup of coffee?” Yolande, the only person in Borgolano to have actually gained an entrée to the reclusive Countess Fatulescu, has been trying ever since to make social capital out of this great good luck, imagining that we’re all dying to meet her too. I have to admit, I wouldn’t mind seeing her house, by far the grandest in the area and, in Lucy’s opinion, one that we should rightfully inhabit.

  “Oh, of course, I’m so sorry—here, Lucy made some chestnut-flour scones.”

  “Tiens, how original.”

  “And how exactly,” Jane asks, “is Countess Fatulescu privy to this information?”


  “Well, she is a poetess. I expect they move in the same circles in Paris,” Yolande says grandly.

  The word on Yolande is that her husband died in the Congo under mysterious circumstances—he was some kind of explorer, apparently—and she never really got over it, hence her semi-exile in Santerre. Odette says more likely she’s on the run from the Belgian IRS. She is, in any case, a local figure of some substance, especially given her friendship with the mayor. Personally, I think they may well be fooling around. Madame Mayor has a mustache and doesn’t seem like the type who would wear frisky G-strings under her housedress. If I were Yolande, though, what with the Santerran predilection for vendettas, I’d be worried about her relatives.

  “I must betray a secret,” she now announces. “The countess is thinking of having un petit cocktail, to get to know the neighbors. She has asked me to make a guest list—you understand, she doesn’t want to invite n’importe qui —and, naturally, I suggested your family.”

  “Too kind,” Jane says with a straight face.

  “I think now that I will also include Monsieur Kahn. Hmmmm, a Jewish name, non?”

  “You can ask him yourself,” I say, glancing out the window. “He’s heading this way.”

  Philippe Kahn is indeed good-looking, if you go in for that sort of thing: I’ll bet he wears a leather jacket in the winter. He also speaks good English, the result of having spent five years teaching at Columbia University in New York. He came over, he explains, to introduce himself and to ask if we knew the location of the gas and electric compteurs, both of which were shut off by the Costas. While clearly not a leering oik, he seems gratified to find that two of his neighbors are major babes, one of whom—Isabelle—is looking like lunch just walked in. Lucy has slipped into her ice queen act. She can’t help it: She thinks it makes her look mysterious.

  “Didn’t they tell you?” Isabelle says with a smile that reveals her diastema to fetching effect. “They locked them up in the basement after they found out that the Paolis were siphoning off their current.”

  “A completely unfounded accusation, by the way,” Jane points out.

  “Pas du tout,” Yolande leaps in. “Some of these retraités will stop at nothing to reduce their utilities bills. I myself—”

  “Madame Peretti up at the shop might have a key,” Lucy coolly interposes, obviously aiming to rein the conversation back from the loopy regions where Yolande will take it if left unrestrained. “She was friendly with the Costas.”

  “Have you come alone?” Isabelle asks our new neighbor.

  He smiles self-deprecatingly. “I’m afraid so. I have come to work. I suppose I could live without electricity, but I need it for my computer….”

  “I have just finished La Cloche Fêlée,” Yolande says breathlessly, returning to the charge.

  Lucy cuts her off. “Then we must have your power restored. I’ll call Madame Peretti.” She gets up and glides majestically out into the hallway, her loose linen shirt floating behind her like a vestal virgin’s train. Isabelle also rises, a motion that causes a gravitational shift inside her tank top and that is duly registered by our new neighbor, whose eyes flicker in acknowledgment.

  “Will you have a cup of coffee while you’re waiting?”

  “Please. What a charming kitchen: I see you have kept it in the original state. I’m afraid mine has been ruined.”

  “Madame Costa was not known for her bon goût,” Yolande says primly. “You must come and see my house; I like to think I have found a happy compromise between tradition and modernity. Surely you will wish to make travaux; I have found a reasonable local équipe, though of course one has to watch them like hawks.” She leans forward and lowers her voice. “The gentleman Madame Benoît hired last year to do her bathroom turned out to be a sexual degenerate.”

  Our neighbor represses a smile. “Did he? Good Lord! I’m afraid I won’t be in any danger, though, as I really have come to write. I may rip up the linoleum in my spare time: There must be a stone floor somewhere underneath.”

  “You’re in luck,” says Lucy, returning. “Madame Peretti does have a key.”

  “Oh, good, I’ll run right up. What delicious coffee.” His eyes flicker again and I realize it’s not Isabelle he keeps glancing at but Jane, sitting beside her.

  “Mademoiselle Nicholson,” he says, “I must confess that I am an admirer of your work. I own two of your paintings.”

  Jane blushes. For all her success—just last month there was a big feature on her in Art Forum —she’s one of the most unassuming people I know.

  “Though you must not think I am one of these stalkers. I promise you I only found out after I bought the house.”

  “I’m sure,” Jane says, “that your intentions were entirely honorable.”

  “You must come to dinner sometime,” Lucy says.

  “I would be delighted.”

  “What’s with the sexual degenerate?” I ask after he’s gone.

  “Oh, don’t you know?” Yolande says eagerly. “It was one of the Simonetti boys. Madame Benoît caught him reading the label on her birth control pills. Can you imagine?”

  “Weird,” Isabelle says.

  “These are not civilized people,” Yolande says.

  CHAPTER fourteen

  That night we head out for dinner at the Marmite du Pêcheur, our local bistro. Even Lucy, with her undying faith in peasant cooking, has abandoned all hope of redemption for the Simonetti family’s tourist-fleecing operation, where, under a canopy of moldy salamis and desiccated garlic bunches, diners are subjected to Madame Simonetti’s lethal interpretations of Santerran cuisine. As summer residents, however, we have to pay our respects once, after which, like everyone else, we can stick to the café.

  Of all the Marmite’s pretenses, most cynical is its implied relationship with any kind of pêcheur, Monsieur Simonetti, now slumped at the bar in a drunken stupor, having long ago given up fishing for drinking. Whatever hapless sea creature ends up in Madame’s pot has made a long journey from the Super-Géant in Canonica, as have the few vegetables on offer and the charcuterie du pays.

  “Ah, our American friends!” the patron calls out as we file in the door, much to the disapproval of Odette, who, despite having married one, considers herself anything but. “Alors, what are you having?”

  A bottle of the thistle-based local apéritif appears and is sloshed into glasses and handed around. The patron wisely sticks to whisky. Behind the bar, his son Fabrice grins toothily. It is rumored that he and Eddie the butcher are involved in nationalist activities, in light of which it’s occurred to me that the attempted poisoning of tourists by Madame Simonetti may be part of a wider and more sinister plot. Eddie is also present, his hairy chest festooned with gold chains and a diamond stud winking in his ear, as well as Toto, the village halfwit and winner of last year’s pétanque tournament.

  Now that Ross is gone, Isabelle is the only one of us who has any meaningful contact with the natives. She’s been known to hang out at the Marmite, tossing back fines and flirting up a storm, though so far her consumption has been limited to beverages. The hungry leer Toto the halfwit gives her when she pecks him on the cheek doesn’t seem to disturb her, though, nor the rustle of Eddie’s jewelry in his thickets of chest hair. But then, Isabelle doesn’t find lust alarming.

  “Ça va?”

  “Ça va?”

  Lucy, Jane, and I stick to shaking hands, cementing our reputation as frosty Anglo bitches, except with Albertine, the Simonettis’ daughter-cum-slave-laborer, who hastens out of the kitchen to greet us. According to Isabelle, Albertine’s ambitions to go to fashion school in Marseille were thwarted forever when her brother married the perfidious Marcelle, relegating Albertine to the bottom of the familial pecking order. Marcelle herself, a handsome woman in her thirties, now appears, every inch the hostess in her tight skirt and high-heel pumps. Her scheme, as I understand it, is to keep Albertine gravy-stained and aproned in the kitchen while she takes over the firm’s mana
gement. It seems to be working.

  “Terrible about Monsieur Wright,” she murmurs. “Une tragédie …”

  “Un grand homme,” slurs the patron.

  Under what I assume is Marcelle’s influence, the menu has taken on a decidedly nouvelle cuisine intonation since last year. Gone are the chops and fish fries, the mucilaginous soupe de poisson. In their place, to Lucy’s (premature, I’m convinced) delight, a saddle of baby lamb (local) with a crust of wild herbs from the maquis, a méli-mélo of garden vegetables, and even bouillabaisse.

  “Hey, I’ve always wanted to try bouillabaisse,” Jim says eagerly.

  “I’d stick to the pork chops,” I caution him.

  Albertine stands dolefully by, waiting for us to make our selection. She used to be a snappy dresser, hoping perhaps that a man from the continent would walk in one night and sweep her off her feet. Tonight she looks resigned in a T-shirt and jeans. What must it be like, I wonder every time I see her, to be stuck in Borgolano all year with Eddie and Toto and the guy who sniffed Madame Benoît’s birth control pills, waiting for the next tourist season, imploding with rage as your prospects inexorably diminish? At the next table, a group of vacationers from the mainland are tucking into one of Madame Simonetti’s terrifying charcuterie platters, reviving my doubts about the new menu. The popularity of her fifty-franc formule touristique certainly puts to rest any notion of all French people being discerning gastronomes.

  “I think I’ll give the lamb a try,” Lucy says. “Electra, stop it!” At the other end of the table, Electra is picking her nose with furious concentration, to hysterical giggles from Sophie and Olga. “Richard, can’t you see what she’s doing?”

  Richard ignores her and goes on talking to Jim.

  “Richard!”

  “Sorry, darling?”

  Electra belches, long and loud. Olga and Sophie scream with delight.

  “Girls,” Odette says severely, “if you do not stop, I will have to lock you in the car.” Lucy, who disapproves of threats, opens her mouth to object, but just then Albertine appears with our first courses.