“Well, we French do not feel guilty about cheating the clock,” Odette says serenely.
“That’s pretty obvious,” Lucy says.
“Yes, we want to look good, to embrace life’s pleasures. This is a difference between us.”
“Oh, please, spare us the clichés.”
“But most clichés are true. This is why they become clichés, no?”
Yves saunters back, all dripping wet, and plops himself down next to Odette, who makes a playful show of pushing him away. Though he’s still nominally residing in the attic, they both seem to have relaxed a bit on the public opinion front. Still, Yves continues to baffle me, as does Odette’s interest in him. Beyond his generic Frenchness, he doesn’t really seem to have a personality. Lighting his cigarette now with a cupped hand, even though there’s no wind yet, and except that he’s in a bathing suit, he could be any one of those men you see leaning up against the counter in Paris cafés on a weekday morning, their jeans a little too tight, one small loafer propped on the foot rail. It’s almost as if he’d perversely decided to embody all of Lucy’s stereotypes. Jim keeps saying he’s a good guy, but Jim would probably think Mussolini was a good guy.
“Had a nice swim, Yves?” Lucy inquires, her voice dripping sarcasm.
“Yes, sank you.”
“I’m delighted to hear it. Our father was an accomplished swimmer, as Odette has undoubtedly told you.”
A scream pierces the air. Richard is running toward us, a howling Electra in his arms, followed by Jim and the girls, babbling in their strange Czech-English jargon. Lucy leaps to her feet. I guess she’s forgotten that she’s topless since Toto and Eddie, attracted by the commotion, also hurry over.
Electra, we are informed breathlessly by Sophie, has been stung by a jellyfish. An angry rash has begun to spread down her right cheek, which, with flailing arms pinned by Richard, she is frantically trying to scratch, all the while emitting panicked yelps.
“I thought you were keeping an eye on her!”
“Hey,” Jim objects, “it wasn’t Richard’s fault: The thing just swam by!”
Lucy whips around. “Who asked you?!”
Jim backs off, a wounded look in his eyes. Richard tries to put Electra down, but as Lucy reaches for her, she burrows sobbing against him.
“Mean old jellyfish,” Sophie declares solemnly.
“Bad,” says Olga.
“Don’t just stand there like a bloody fool!” Lucy cries. “We’ve got to get her to a doctor!”
“Fais voir.” Eddie the butcher puts his hand out to touch Electra’s face.
“Get your hands off her!” Lucy screams. As if she’d just realized that she’s half naked, her arms fly up across her breasts as her face turns as crimson as her daughter’s.
CHAPTER sixteen
It’s a good thing Odette is around to take control at moments like these. She produces a tube of anti-inflammatory cream from her beach tote and briskly sets about applying it. Once everyone has calmed down, even Lucy realizes the pointlessness of driving all the way to the emergency room in Canonica. She slathers Electra’s face with more ointment and even allows Odette to give her a piece of candy.
I still can’t believe that Isabelle would have plastic surgery. Not only does this fly in the face of everything my sister is supposed to be about, the source of the imputation is inherently suspect. Nonetheless, I find myself sneaking looks, as, I notice, does Jane. Finally I can’t take it anymore. I corner her on the roof, where she’s gone up to catch the sun’s last rays. Isabelle has never minded the heat: You could say it’s her element. She’s lying on her back and I can clearly see now the two pale pencil lines.
“Have you had your breasts done?”
“Whaat?”
I gather from her disoriented look that she was asleep.
“Have you had your breasts lifted?”
She reaches for her sunglasses, puts them on, and slowly sits up, casting her shadow across me. “Yes,” she says.
“You’re joking.” I stare at them. The nipples are perfectly symmetrical in a way that probably doesn’t exist in nature. They are also, I now see, pointing at the sky.
She grins at me. “So, what do you think? Didn’t they do a great job?”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“No. I’m not going to have any more children; I don’t need all those milk ducts.”
“Right, of course. That makes perfect sense. Make sure and remind me when the time comes so I can get mine done too.”
She peers at me quizzically, or so I imagine, since she’s wearing dark glasses.
“Why are you so upset?”
She has a point: Why am I so upset? It’s her body. And yet, a thought flashes through my mind that she has diminished herself. I realize that I’m standing over her like the Grand Inquisitor. I pull over the beach chair that Odette keeps up here for sunbathing—she and Isabelle are both impervious to ultraviolet rays—and lower myself onto the cheap plastic webbing, not sure it will hold my weight.
“I’m just shocked, I guess. Why did you do it?”
Isabelle shrugs in a fatalistic way I associate with Czech women and lies back down, removing the glasses and laying them beside her on the dusty rooftop. “Why do you think? Because I want to stay young and beautiful.”
How strange it’s never occurred to me that my sister is vain, that she would remember to take off her glasses so she won’t get raccoon circles around her eyes. That she would get her breasts sliced open and hoisted to look like an eighteen-year-old.
“Don’t look so disapproving. It’s no big deal in Prague: Everybody does it.”
“Why? So you can keep on catching men? You do anyway; you didn’t need to have surgery.”
“I lost Jiri,” she says.
“I thought you didn’t care.”
“Oh, Constance, you are so literal. Of course I care, but I also see the writing on the wall. He’s always liked younger girls.”
“Yeah, because he’s a disgusting old goat.”
“Honey, they all are. Even your nice Jim. One day he’ll get old and he’ll be a disgusting old goat, too, you’ll see.”
“Any other pearls of wisdom?”
“Use it while it lasts.”
“Were you really in love with Jiri?” I ask her.
“Of course I was, dummy. Why else would I have followed him to a communist country?”
“Are you still in love with him?”
She appears to give this serious consideration. “I don’t know,” she finally says. “I can’t figure out if I’m wounded because he ran off with that bimbo, or because I miss him. I feel bad for the girls. Since I told him to go to hell, he’s been punishing me by not seeing them. I’m not even sure he’ll really take them in August: I haven’t heard from him since he mentioned it. I don’t know what he was thinking—that we’d all go on playing happy family while he had it off with his little sex kitten? The Czechs are completely twisted: Maria thinks I should humor him; she says it’s the kind of thing men do, especially famous men. Frankly, I used to think she was on my side, even though she’s his mother, but now I’m not so sure.” Oddly enough, she doesn’t sound bitter. But then, Isabelle never was one to feel sorry for herself.
“Jane got dumped, too, you know.”
“What, by boring old Marge?”
“Yeah, she’s going into politics.”
“Are they starting up a Ministry of Castration in England?”
“Yeah.” We both start to giggle. “I wish you’d cover them up,” I say. “Now that I know, I can’t stop staring at them.”
“That’s exactly the idea. Do you think I should go parade them in front of Mr. French Writer?” She sits up again and jiggles them for my benefit. They are undeniably spectacular, if somewhat unreal-looking.
“Can I touch?”
“Go ahead.”
I poke her right breast. It feels normal, but then, it’s not like she got silicone implants. I guess all they did was tighten things
up a bit.
“What are you two doing?” Lucy’s head pops up through the trapdoor, followed by the rest of her in one of her long linen shifts.
“Want a feel?” Isabelle offers.
“You’re disgusting.”
“It’s all right,” I say. “She confessed.”
“Where did you get the money?” our ever practical Lucy demands. “I thought plastic surgery was expensive.”
“Oh, I had it done in Prague—by an old friend of Jiri’s, actually. Lots of people come to him from the West now because it’s so much cheaper: You can get yourself completely made over for under ten thousand dollars.”
“Wow,” I say. “That’s one aspect of postcommunist economic development that I never thought of.”
“You must tell Odette,” Lucy says waspishly.
“Why are you always harping about Odette?” Isabelle says. “What has she done to you?”
“She belittles Daddy’s memory.”
Don’t say it, I think, but of course, she does:
“He’s not your father.”
“Hey,” I say.
Actually, Ross is Lucy and Jane’s father legally, since he ended up adopting them, another one of his many baffling gestures in the waning days of his marriage to Daphne. They didn’t even take his name, though I guess that, after inheriting that beer fortune from their biological father, it would have seemed a bit crass to completely disown the man.
Lucy’s eyes have turned glittery with rage. “Why, you cheap little tramp!”
Isabelle closes hers and lies back. “Remember what Daddy used to say when we were little,” she singsongs. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me.”
“Cut it out, both of you,” I say.
“You can’t hurt me, Lucy,” Isabelle repeats serenely. “You can’t hurt me because I don’t care.”
CHAPTER seventeen
I’m sitting on the patio, trying to read Madame Bovary, when our new neighbor appears. I took an evening course on the nineteenth century French novel this spring, with the plan to improve my mind over the summer by rereading the syllabus in French. I have to say, it’s been heavy going: I never really got Emma in translation, and so far she’s just as vapid in the original. My idea of a great heroine runs more to Mathilde in The Red and the Black.
“Ah, Flaubert, those concupiscent descriptions of the bourgeois interior …”
I look up to find Philippe standing over me, grinning.
“It’s wasted on me,” I say. “In case you didn’t notice, I’m reading it with a dictionary.”
“Very commendable. I should think you might have opted for lighter fare, though, on such a hot day. Bonjour Tristesse, perhaps….”
“I don’t like Françoise Sagan.”
“No?”
“No. I think she’s shallow.”
“Well, it was a simpler time.”
“That’s no excuse,” I say. “You could say the same thing about Jane Austen.”
This makes him laugh. “Well, I am not sure I would describe late-eighteenth-century England as a simpler time, but you are obviously a tough customer, Miss Wright. How are you finding the trials of poor Emma?”
“I don’t feel sorry for her, though I do admire her determination.”
“A very American point of view!”
“That’s me,” I say. “Actually, I was just thinking that there’s not a single sympathetic character in the whole book, really. It’s kind of amazing how he pulled it off.”
“What about poor Charles, and the little girl?”
“Charles is weak.”
“But he loves her.”
“Blind love isn’t a virtue.”
“Such intransigence….”
“I’m an investment banker,” I say. “I look at the world in terms of the efficient allocation of resources.”
“Now you are teasing me.”
“Maybe,” I allow, putting the book down and looking up at him. He’s wearing a faded blue Lacoste shirt that clings damply to his chest. I can’t be looking too fresh myself; the sirocco is still holding back, but the air is as thick as a blanket. He bends down to stroke the belly of the supine cat at my side—a daughter, we think, of the famously dissipated Minette, and one of three young females who spend their days sprawled on the patio wall, toasting in the sun while they wait for the next handout.
“Indolent beasts. I caught them yesterday hissing at that poor old fellow with the torn ear. He must’ve got too close to the food bowl.”
“That’s what I like about them,” I say. “You know what to expect. How’s your book coming along?”
He surprises me by sitting on the wall, sharing with me the shady patch cast by the fig tree. He stretches out his legs and crosses one long espadrille-clad foot over the other.
“Not so well today. If you want to know the truth, I saw you from my window and came down hoping for conversation. I am finding all this peace and quiet distracting.”
“Really? I would’ve thought you’d be used to it, being a writer.”
“Not at all. I am used to solitude, yes, but Paris solitude, with background noise. I haven’t written a word since I’ve arrived.”
“Writer’s block?” I say sympathetically.
“Worse: boredom. Lately I am finding my book terrible.”
“What’s it about?”
“This will amuse you: It’s about an American woman in Paris.”
“What’s she doing there?”
“She has come to study at the Sorbonne. She meets a Frenchman. A married Frenchman, naturally.”
“Naturally. I got the impression you were more of a highbrow writer.”
“Oh, but I assure you it is very highbrow indeed. Perhaps this is the problem.”
“What are you two discussing so intently?” calls out my sister, who must have spied us from the house and is coming over to investigate. Philippe raises a hand in greeting.
“Literature.”
“With Constance? You’d be better off asking her how to invest your money.”
“Actually, I’m not a financial adviser,” I point out, feeling all of a sudden irritated at Isabelle’s ignorance.
“Well, whatever she does, it’s terribly important,” Isabelle says breezily. “Whenever she comes to Prague they put her up at the Savoy, which is fiendishly expensive.”
“I have been to Prague,” says Philippe. “It’s a lovely city—almost too lovely, sometimes it doesn’t feel quite real.”
“That’s just since they tarted it up for the tourists,” my sister declares, plopping down next to him on the wall, much to the annoyance of the cat, who springs up and scampers away. “Normal people live in high-rises,” she adds, with the blitheness of one who has never set foot in one. “Anyway, you should come again. I’ll show you the real Prague.”
“What a kind offer. I shall keep it in mind. Sadly, I must get back to the grindstone now.” He rises. “It’s been a pleasure.”
“Why don’t you come over for dinner some night?” Isabelle says in a challenging way.
“I would be delighted.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I accept. As you can see, my social calendar is hardly overrun.”
“Eight o’clock,” Isabelle calls out as he ambles off. Then to me, “What a weirdo.”
“I don’t think he’s weird at all; he’s just quiet.”
“Say what you will, I think he’s hiding something.”
“I think you have a one-track mind.”
She yawns and extends her feet, their shell-pink nails freshly painted by Sophie, the rings on her toes catching the light. “I’ll have him in the end,” she muses, and I am suddenly stunned by her obliviousness to the possibility that someone, even a man, might find her irritating. But then, my sister has spent most of her life in a shimmery nimbus of male adoration. Why should she expect Philippe to behave any differently from the thousands of poor saps who’ve fallen at her feet? For that matter
, why should I?
“I’ll get Odette to make something really fabulous,” she says dreamily.
CHAPTER eighteen
Lucy, naturally, has other ideas.
“I know, I’ll make vitello tonnato for starters. Lovely and simple. … And then maybe that nice salmon with a fennel crust.”
“Why don’t you just let Odette cook?” Isabelle says.
“But I’d be perfectly happy to.”
“Lucy can help me,” Odette says magnanimously.
“Mommy!” Sophie shrieks. “Electra’s face is all red again!”
Electra seems to have developed an allergic reaction to either the jellyfish sting or the cream Odette put on it. The rash keeps fading away and then flaring back up. It doesn’t, however, seem to bother her.
Lucy turns accusingly to Richard. “I thought you were going to drive her to the doctor in Flore!” We are all, once again, sitting around the breakfast table—except for the girls, who got up at six, Lucy having finally relented and let Electra move into the extra room with them, where they all seem to be having a fine old time getting up to whatever five-year-olds get up to without the benefit of adult supervision.
“We’re going after breakfast. It’s just a rash; she’s not in pain.”
“It’s unsightly,” Lucy says.
“Mind if I join you?” Jim asks.
“I think I will go too,” Odette says. “I can shop for dinner.”
“Oh, then maybe I’ll go along,” Lucy says.
“There’s no more room in the car,” Richard says pointedly. “I’ve already promised Jane a ride.”
“I see,” Lucy says.
What a treat: alone with Lucy and Yves. Since it’s cooler today, I decide to go for a run. In New York, Jim and I jog every day, but it seems that all this Mediterranean languor is undermining our devotion to fitness, not to mention to each other. If you ask me, most people are together out of convenience; but, having now had a boyfriend for almost six months, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s not something more to the equation. I have to say, however, that the couples around us offer few clues: I can’t for the life of me fathom what Odette sees in Yves, and the less said about Richard and Lucy, the better. The only ones who ever made any sense were Isabelle and Jiri, in the way a combustible chemical reaction might make sense before you run for cover.
Going Topless Page 8