Going Topless

by Megan McAndrew

  “I warned you,” I tell Jim when his bouillabaisse arrives: two boiled fish in a viscous pool of Madame Simonetti’s soupe de poisson. Lucy’s rack of lamb turns out to be the familiar greasy chops dusted with bread crumbs.

  “Tinned green beans!” she exclaims with disgust.

  “Good thing you didn’t order the lobster,” Jane remarks.

  After dinner, which we’ve washed down with several carafes of the gut-wrenching réserve du patron, Isabelle follows Albertine to the kitchen for a smoke. It’s what Albertine’s been waiting for all night: Isabelle seems to inspire people to confide in her—a mistake, since she has absolutely no discretion. I head off to the bathroom, which is to the left of the bar, and on my way out find our new neighbor ordering a Pernod. No sign of Eddie or Toto.

  He smiles. “We meet again.”

  “Trust me, the novelty will wear off.”

  He seems to find this funny. He’s got a navy blue sweater draped and knotted around his shoulders, a style that normally irritates me.

  “Then I shall have to enjoy it while it lasts…. Cigarette?”

  “No, thanks, I’m one of those American nonsmoker types.”

  “Of course. You don’t mind?”

  “Not at all. I like the smell.”

  He lights his cigarette and exhales in that unaccountably sexy way that has been exploited by every French movie ever made. “Borgolano seems a curious place for an American family to buy a summer home. I should think it would seem rather rustic.”

  “Oh, we like rustic. Besides, we’re not really an American family: My sister lives in Prague and Jane and Lucy are from London.”

  “And how, if I may ask, did such an international group of people come together?”

  “My father kept marrying women of different nationalities,” I say.

  “I see. I would argue with you that this in itself is very American.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean. I guess he was more of a professional expatriate.”

  “You speak of him in the past tense.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay, it happened a year ago. We’re here to disperse his ashes, actually; I think the mayor is going to make a speech. What were you doing at Columbia?”

  “Teaching literary theory to alarming girls in black leather.”

  I laugh.

  “You are familiar with the species?” he asks.

  “I went to Columbia. For business school, though, not undergrad.”

  “Ah, yes, I shouldn’t imagine there was much black leather in the business school.”

  “Only on people’s feet.”

  Now he laughs. “Well, Miss Nicholson—”

  “Wright. Jane and Lucy are Nicholsons, different fathers; I know, it’s confusing. You can just call me Constance.”

  “Constance. How pretty. Well, Constance, I have held you up long enough. I think I shall go in and have some dinner—unless you would like to join me?”

  “Thanks, we’ve eaten already. Don’t order the bouillabaisse.”

  “Constance, there you are!” Lucy, also on her way to the bathroom. Her expression subtly shifts when she sees who I’m with. “Hello, Philippe. What a shame we didn’t know you were coming: You could have joined us—though, to tell you the truth, you’d be best off going home and making yourself an omelette.”

  “Good evening, Miss Nicholson. Don’t worry about me: My standards have been hopelessly adulterated by university cafeterias.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll find Madame Simonetti’s cooking several notches even below that. Constance, we’re going back down, the children are getting wild. Perhaps you could drag Isabelle out of the kitchen.”

  “I’d be happy to walk back with you if you want to stay,” Philippe says.

  “That’s all right. Isabelle might take you up, though.”

  “Ah, yes, your charming sister.”

  In the kitchen my charming sister is deep in conversation with Albertine, or rather, sucking intently on a cigarette while Albertine relates the latest string of indignities inflicted upon her by her sister-in-law. Isabelle is the kind of person who, at a catered party, will always end up in the kitchen with the staff. While I find this presumption of being more at ease with the commoners to be completely affected, she does seem to take a genuine interest in the pathetic details of Albertine’s life.

  “Hey, Constance, come and join us.” Albertine doesn’t seem to think this is such a great idea. My French isn’t good enough for cozy chatting, and I don’t have Isabelle’s populist touch.

  “Can’t, we’re going. You can go back down with our neighbor if you want to stay. He’s in the bar.”

  “Oooh, really?” Isabelle drolly crosses her eyes. She has a slight strabismus, which intensifies when she’s tired or drunk.

  “Yup. I wouldn’t make that face around him if I were you.”

  “My little sister,” Isabelle says in French to Albertine, “is always picking on me.”

  Albertine shoots me a baleful look. I’m clearly ruining her evening.

  “Have you seen him? He’s quite the dark and mysterious stranger….”

  Albertine shrugs, no doubt figuring that if Isabelle’s got her eye on him, he’s out of her range. Besides, Marcelle has just come in and is wondering what all those dirty dishes are doing stacked on the table. Isabelle pats Albertine consolingly on the shoulder and, to me, whispers, “What a bitch”—none of which prevents her from abandoning Albertine and following me out, her big mouth stretched into her most seductive smile.

  “Complete weirdo,” Isabelle announces the next morning. “We talked about Czech theater and then he walked me home. D’you think he’s gay?”

  “Clearly,” Jane says. “Otherwise how could he have resisted you?”

  “Stop picking on me, you big old lezzie. Oh, well, I guess I’ll have to resign myself to a month of celibacy….”

  “There’s always Eddie the butcher,” I suggest.

  “Please, he’s a child molester.”

  “I very much doubt that,” Jane says. “It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing the aborigines would put up with.”

  “Well, whatever—a teen molester, then. Remember the Danish girl?”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Anyway, I don’t really think he’s gay. I think his wife left him and he’s still getting over it. He’s got that shell-shocked look.”

  “Sounds to me like you have tons in common,” I remark.

  “Is Jiri keeping in touch with the girls?” Jane asks.

  “They’re supposed to be spending August with him in Krasna Hora,” Isabelle says, meaning Jiri’s spartan mountain dacha near the Polish border, which has neither hot water nor electricity and where I once spent a miserable week listening to them conceiving Olga in the attic.

  “I sometimes think,” she says dreamily, “that if Dad were still alive, none of this would have happened.” By which I guess she means her divorce, though with Isabelle you never know. As she bends down to scratch a mosquito bite, exposing a patch of golden down on her lower back, I am thinking that our neighbor is indeed an odd bird, even as I am equally convinced that in the end he will succumb.

  CHAPTER fifteen

  Overnight, the air goes still. We wake up to a white haze that cloaks the sea in a metallic sheen. “God, it’s hot,” Jim groans. Our sheets, tossed off in the night, lie in a twisted heap on the floor, next to my discarded underpants and a spent condom that looks like a little shroud. It’s a good thing Jim and I have been fucking so much, because our conversations haven’t been anything to write home about. Not that they ever were: In New York we spend most of our free time at the gym, and how much meaningful intellectual exchange can you have on a StairMaster? Could it be that our relationship has been fueled entirely by sex and exercise? I don’t even know anything about his family except that they have a farm, and I think he has a sister in Minneapolis. I’ve caught myself wondering o
f late if my lack of interest in the details of Jim’s life is symptomatic of some fatal character flaw. Undoubtedly it is, but he shouldn’t take it personally: The truth is, I find most people outside my family boring. What had not occurred to me until now is that this might present a problem.

  “It’s the sirocco,” I explain, resolving to be a better person henceforth, or at least one who does not get irritated by nice midwestern American boys who can’t tell one Mediterranean wind from another.

  “The what?”

  “A wind that comes from the Sahara. It’ll be really oppressive for a couple days and then it’ll start blowing—or not. Sometimes it changes its mind.”

  “Weird.”

  “Not really. Africa isn’t that far away.”

  Jim yawns and gazes at the big crack in the ceiling. “Why did your father buy this house?”

  “He liked to live on the edge. It’s the only part of France with terrorists.”

  “Yeah, right,” Jim says languidly. I’m noticing a change in him, a subtle but unmistakable erosion of his midwestern innocence—the beginnings of an edge? Maybe it’s all the time he’s spending with neurotic Richard.

  “Actually, Odette found the house. She used to come here on vacation. My father was a big indulger of the whims of women.”

  “He must have been really in love with her,” Jim says wonderingly.

  “Oddly enough, I think he might have been.”

  Jim frowns. “What do you mean, ‘oddly enough’?”

  “Nothing,” I say lightly. “It’s just hard to imagine Odette inspiring a great passion.”

  “Well,” says Jim, “I can see how a lot of men would find her glamorous and fascinating.”

  “Whatever,” I say in a bored tone.

  It’s so stifling outside that we decide to walk down to the water after breakfast—even Lucy, who naturally suggests packing a picnic.

  “This English tradition of eating outside is very curious, non?” Odette remarks to Isabelle.

  “The idea is to make the consumption of food as uncomfortable as possible,” Jane says. “It’s a part of the Protestant experience.”

  “At least we eat our food and keep it down,” Lucy retorts, with a meaningful glance at Odette: a bit rich, coming from a former bulimic, who even now, for all her obsession with fine gastronomy, fanatically watches what she and everyone else eats—unlike Isabelle, who has taken the mention of a picnic as a cue to start throwing potato chips and cookies into a bag.

  “I thought perhaps some cheese and fruit,” Lucy says testily, her eyes on Electra.

  “I’m not eating Santerran cheese outside. The last time we tried, those dogs followed us home.” Howls of laughter from Olga and Sophie, who start chanting, “Stinky cheese! Stinky cheese!” A pretty apt description, actually.

  And so we’re off, Richard in the minivan with the cooler, the kids, and Odette, who, not being a Protestant, doesn’t see the point of walking if there’s a perfectly good motorized conveyance available. The rest of us go on foot. Borgolano is perched atop an escarpment so that if you want to reach the water you have to go down, first past a series of disused terraces where, before EC subsidies, people supposedly grew vegetables, and then through the maquis, the scrub-wood that carpets the mountainside, on a path originally meant for goats. There is a road, too, which Richard has taken, but it’s twice as long. Either way, getting to the water is a production, and once you’re there, perils await in the form of jagged rocks and the irascible marine wildlife. Which is why we usually drive to Orzo where the beach is sandy—well, pebbly, anyway—and reasonably child-friendly, and the worse thing that can happen to you is drowning.

  Not being a sun worshipper myself, I prefer our treacherous cove with its glinting pools full of crabs and minnows. The Borgolano plage was once an integral part of the village, as you can tell from the stone fishing cabins that cling stolidly to the final stretch of slope before the sea, and the cement dock where the daily catch was unloaded. Yolande owns three of these fishing cabins, currently all rented, to judge from the towels hanging out the windows, and the other four, entangled in inheritance disputes, are falling apart, which drives Lucy nuts. She’s been trying for years to buy one, yammering on about stark purity of form and the sound of the waves at night, though we all know that what she really wants is to get away from the rest of us.

  What luck: Eddie and Toto have also picked today for a swim. I catch sight of them as we round the bend, Eddie furry and oiled in tiny bikini briefs, and Toto, mercifully, in boxer shorts with Malibou Beach plastered all over them. The two of them are reputed to be inseparable—strange, you might think, considering Toto’s mental handicap, but then, while he’s not officially retarded, Eddie’s IQ isn’t jumping off any charts, either.

  “Shouldn’t they be at work?” says Lucy, frowning with disapproval as Isabelle waves in their direction. “Stop it, they’ll want to join us.”

  “They’re all right….”

  “I’m really not up to socializing with the local fauna.”

  “Why don’t you just relax; it’s not like you have to have sex with them.”

  “That is disgusting.”

  Too late: They’re upon us. Isabelle pecks them both on the cheek, which means that the rest of us have to follow suit. The politics of kissing, as far as I can make out, are that you can get away with a handshake the first time, but on the second encounter it looks rude. Even Lucy submits, with barely concealed distaste. The guys all manfully shake hands, Yves netting a thump on the back, an indication of how much time he’s been spending at the Marmite bar.

  “Attention les filles,” Eddie says with a leer, “lots of jellyfish today….”

  “Both in and out of the water,” Jane observes.

  “Ssssshhh!”

  We spread our towels on the flat area above the dock, Eddie and Toto sauntering around and looking helpful. They’re both wearing blue plastic jelly sandals—a necessity, due to the sea urchins—which make them look childish in a way that is somehow more alarming than incongruous. Jim’s fancy diving shoes from Paragon Sports in New York arouse much admiration:

  “Cool!”

  “James Bond,” Toto says with an idiotic grin.

  Once we’ve arranged our towels, we all stand around looking foolish, except for Eddie and Toto, who just look expectant. What do they want? Ah, of course: While we’ve all been waiting for them to leave to strip down to our bathing suits, Isabelle, never prey to bourgeois modesty, has tossed off her sundress and, in a flash, removed her bikini top. Toto’s tongue doesn’t exactly hang out but his eyes go glassy. Eddie’s are hidden by his mirrored sunglasses. His smile stretches wider. Poor Yves has gone all mottled and Jim has the bemused look of a tourist stumbling upon a natural wonder.

  “Must you do that?” Lucy hisses.

  “Whaaat?” my sister drawls.

  “Don’t you boys have anything to do besides block the sun?” Odette says briskly.

  They shrug and amble off, Toto casting a longing look behind him.

  “Vraiment chérie, you should not provoke them so. These are not civilized people.”

  “Odette,” Jane says, pulling off her T-shirt to reveal her sensible blue bathing suit, “your political incorrectness is always refreshing.”

  Odette, undressing with her usual efficiency, looks at her blankly. She and Jane have never really gotten each other, and the incident with Marge didn’t help.

  “Anybody going in the water?” Jim asks.

  “Would you take the girls, please?” Isabelle says lazily. “They’re champing at the bit.”

  “Sure. Come on, last one in is a rotten egg!”

  “Aren’t you going to put swimsuits on them?” says Lucy.

  “What for?”

  Lucy glances meaningfully toward Eddie and Toto but says nothing.

  Electra, squeezed into a pink bathing suit, waddles off after the naked and already toast-brown Olga and Sophie, followed by Richard, brandishing a bottle o
f SPF 30 sunscreen.

  “Don’t forget to do her shoulders,” Lucy calls out. She herself is in the process of covering every inch of her skin with lotion, her face already protected by a huge straw hat. With a quick look around, she removes her bikini top, too, keeping it close at hand in case Eddie and Toto reappear. Lucy’s breasts are small and elegant and tipped with dainty pink nipples. I always get the sense that it’s torture for her, baring them, that she goes topless only because she’s in France, the way some women feel obligated to wear a head scarf in Muslim countries. Meanwhile, Isabelle has changed her mind, jumping up and racing toward the water.

  “Cor blimey!” Jane exclaims.

  “She’s had them done,” Lucy says flatly.

  “What?” I say.

  “Her breasts. She’s had them lifted.”

  “No way.”

  “They didn’t look like that last year.”

  I try to summon a mental picture. It’s not like I spend a lot of time staring at my sister’s breasts, though I have to admit that there was something curiously gravity-defying about them as they bounced by. She is, after all, thirty-eight.

  “Gosh,” Jane says, “d’you really think so?”

  “You can see the scar line when she’s lying down.”

  “Bloody hell!”

  Odette props herself up on her elbows and gives Lucy a pitying glance.

  “Et alors? So what?”

  “Well, I just find it rather ironic.”

  “What is ironic?”

  “That our carefree Isabelle would try to cheat the clock.”

  Odette raises a perfectly plucked eyebrow. I don’t suppose she’s had her own breasts lifted, since they’re of the neat and tiny French variety. But she’s had her face and butt done, and no doubt some additional tightening here and there, judging by her drumlike stomach, which barely even creases above her bikini bottom when she sits up, as she does now.

  “What an interesting expression, cheat the clock. A very English idea.”

  “Quite right,” agrees Jane. “Laden with guilt, just the way we like it.”