“I don’t know. Cowardice, I suppose.”
“I still don’t think Marge deserves you,” I say.
She turns to face me, her eyes cool. “How do you know?”
“She’s just so grim and humorless. She’s not like you at all.”
“Really? And what am I like?”
I hesitate. “Well, you’re great. I mean, you’re thoughtful, and funny, and wise, and—”
“Rather daunting to be considered wise at thirty-two, don’t you think?”
“I … I hadn’t really thought about it that way….” I’m beginning to feel as if I were being set up.
“What if that’s not how I think about myself at all?” Jane says. “What if I considered myself to be wild and sexy? A bad girl?”
“God, Jane, you sound like one of those self-help books!”
“Why don’t you just come out and say what you really think: that you find it impossible to think of me as a sexual being.”
“For crying out loud, Jane, I’m your sister!”
“No you’re not,” she says flatly. “Oh, don’t look at me like that! I am so tired of being considerate of the feelings of others.” And without another word she turns back to her drawing, so that I have no choice but to walk away.
I feel so unsettled by this conversation that I skip dinner and head down to the water. Our little cove is empty, would-be bathers either put off by the sea’s distemper or the jellyfish that wash up when the surf gets rough. I climb up on a rock ledge and watch the orange yolk of the sun, its shimmering reflection bisecting the water like a brushstroke. The mountains beyond Flore look dim and crepuscular in the distance.
“Mademoiselle Wright!”
I turn so sharply that I almost lose my balance. From the cement dock below, the mayor waves at me. I clamber down.
“Alors, Mademoiselle Wright, are you contemplating the forces of nature?”
He must have come down for an evening dip: He’s clutching a rolled up towel and a pair of goggles.
“Isn’t it a bit rough for swimming?”
“Not at all! I like a little movement in the water—makes it more lively!”
“Do you think there’ll be a storm?” I ask to be polite. I don’t have Isabelle’s easy, bantering rapport with the mayor, but the weather always seems a safe subject.
“Ah, Mademoiselle Wright, you know as well as I how unpredictable our weather can be: We could wake up tomorrow to clear blue skies.” He bends down and starts to take off his pants, hopping on one foot as he wriggles one leg out, then another. Having accomplished this, he stands there in his little French bikini briefs, beaming, and bends down again. I realize with dismay that he’s about to take his underwear off in front of me.
“We were up at the hameau this afternoon,” I blurt out, seizing on the first topic that leaps to mind. He straightens himself and peers at me through the thick glasses that weirdly amplify his eyes.
“Ah?”
“There’s someone living there.”
He eyes me speculatively. I’m convinced the mayor has always thought I’m a bit of a moron. “What? Ah, you mean Jojo!”
At least I got his mind off undressing. He smiles benignly, as if to say, Well, and what of it?
“We were kind of surprised to find him there,” I say. “I thought the hamlet was supposed to be uninhabited.”
“Hein? Of course it is uninhabited. Jojo is not a habitant, he is just residing there temporarily.” I detect in the mayor’s gaze a certain crafty blankness people get around here when they’re trying to pull a fast one on you.
“He told us he killed someone,” I say.
The mayor’s eyebrows go up. “Now, why would he go telling you crazy stories like that?”
“It’s not true?”
The crafty look again. “It happened a long time ago,” he finally allows. “A regrettable misunderstanding! I assure you, he is as docile as a lamb. If you want to know, I have hired him as a sort of caretaker.”
“Ah, there you are, chéri!” Madame Mayor comes trotting toward us over the rocks, a pair of plastic sandals in her hand. She must have been waiting in the car. “You forgot your jellies—you’ll cut your feet up again. Why are you standing there in your underwear?”
“I was just telling Mademoiselle Wright about Jojo.”
“He told us he murdered someone,” I explain.
“It was completely justified.”
“Really, chérie …”
“He was provoked,” Madame says curtly. “Are you going to put on your bathing suit or not? Here, give me that towel.” In the no-nonsense manner of a nurse, she shakes it open and holds it up before him like a curtain. Hastily the mayor finishes undressing. “Men are so impractical,” she observes to me.
“This has no bearing at all on our little transaction,” the mayor says. “If you buy the hameau, Jojo will naturally leave. Now, if you will excuse me …” He adjusts his goggles, hops up on a rock, and dives neatly into the water. Madame and I watch him paddling away. I glance up at Borgolano. In the gloaming, the village melts into the gray-green mountain, so that I have to squint to make out our house, which, for all the dramas roiling within, looks as stout and impassive as ever.
“What do you need with that bunch of ruins?” Madame Mayor says. “You have a perfectly good house already.”
“It’s not about need,” I say.
CHAPTER twenty-three
The mayor was right: We wake up the next day to lucent skies.
The fine weather so cheers me that I surprise Jim with a morning special and then, whistling to myself, head down to the kitchen where I find Odette and Isabelle. Judging by their hushed voices and the empty coffee cups on the table, they were just having a heart-to-heart.
“After the age of twenty-five, a woman cannot afford to be sentimental,” Odette is saying.
Isabelle looks up at me with red eyes. “Oh, Constance, I thought you’d gone out.”
“Any coffee left?”
“You girls drink too much coffee. It is terrible for the digestion.”
“We’re Americans,” I say, sitting down. “Our digestive systems have been hopelessly adulterated by junk food.”
“I’m going to leave Prague,” Isabelle says.
“Ah, please do not start again! Constance, you must try to reason with her.”
“Odette thinks I should use feminine wiles to get Jiri back.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I say.
“He is the girls’ father,” Odette says. “He will tire of this young actress, and if you act intelligently, he will come back to you.”
“Isn’t that amazing,” Isabelle says bitterly. “It’s exactly what Maria says.”
“Maybe you ought to listen,” I remark. “It sounds like they know what they’re talking about.”
“Oh, sure, that’s why their marriages were such a success.”
A hurt look flickers in Odette’s dark eyes. “I have no regrets,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” Isabelle says with flagrant insincerity. “I didn’t mean that. The fact is, I don’t want him back. I’m going home.”
“To New York?”
She looks at me like I’m dense. “No, to Paris.”
“You haven’t lived in Paris for fifteen years,” I remind her. “You don’t even know anyone there anymore.”
“That’s not true, I still have lots of friends. And Odette is there.”
“You see, ma chérie,” Odette says hastily, “Constance agrees with me.” So she isn’t all that eager to wake up and find Isabelle and her children on her doorstep.
“This is crazy,” I say. “At least in Prague you have a support system. You have a great apartment, and friends, and Maria to help you with the girls…. What are you going to do in Paris? Where will you live? How will you pay the bills?”
My sister looks at me again like I’m stupid. “That’s exactly why I’m not going to New York. France is an enlightened country; the schools are free and�
�”
“Rent isn’t free. What are you going to do, go on Welfare?”
“I’ll get a job, of course,” Isabelle says grandly.
“You’ve never worked a day in your life.”
“Listen to your sister: You cannot start life again at your age!”
Isabelle’s eyes widen. “What do you mean, ‘at my age’?”
“Ah mon Dieu,” Odette cries in exasperation. “You are not a young girl anymore! You are a mother of two children, alone. The world is a hard place!”
“But look at you!”
“I have no children. And I have a profession.”
“Since when is stewardess a profession?”
“You do not mean what you say. When you think about it, you will see that it is better to act wisely than impulsively.”
“She has a point,” I remark.
“You’re wrong, both of you! Anyone can start over! I’ll be a waitress if I have to, I don’t care!”
“Mommy! Look!”
We all turn toward the door where Sophie, who has inherited her Czech grandmother’s sense of dramatic timing, pauses for a second before rushing up to the table, a beat-up metal box clutched in her hands.
“Electra found a treasure!”
Electra, following with Olga, doesn’t seem all that excited. She chews forlornly on a cuticle while Sophie sets the box down before us and, with uncharacteristic delicacy, opens the lid. Inside are a folded index card and a little cloth Bécassine doll, which I recognize because Isabelle used to have one.
“Electra broke the floor,” Olga says slyly.
“What do you mean, honey?”
Sophie explains: They found a loose floorboard in their room and Electra pried it up. The box was underneath.
“She’s not going to get in trouble, is she?”
“May I see?” Odette says.
Reluctantly, Sophie slides the box toward her, no doubt figuring that, like most good things, it’s going to be found unsanitary or unsuitable and taken away.
“Look at the paper,” Isabelle says. “There’s something written on it.”
Odette hands me the index card. I would recognize Ross’s handwriting anywhere; my father was a prolific dasher-off of notes, often embellishing them with apt quotations that he kept in a special notebook. It was the way he made up for his lack of formal education. Banque Garnier, I read, Zurich, 1326905, Monsieur Samsa.
“It sounds like some kind of bank account,” Isabelle says.
“Mommy, may we have the sweet little doll?”
“Here,” Isabelle says distractedly, handing it to Sophie.
“What now?” a voice drawls behind us. Richard, just back from a run by the look—and smell—of him, followed by Jim, who peers over my shoulder for a closer look.
“Looks like a bank account number,” he says.
“God, don’t you get it?” Isabelle cries. “The Bécassine doll—it’s a sign! Dad put it there for us to find!”
Odette smiles indulgently. “Chérie, it’s a lovely thought, but I think he would have said something, no?”
“Well, maybe he never said anything to you….”
The wounded look again. “No, he did not, but I am quite sure he would have. There was nothing left when he died.”
“But he didn’t know he was going to die!”
“No, he did not.”
“So maybe he never got a chance to tell us!”
“Look,” I say, “I don’t want to be a party pooper, but Dad had accounts all over the world. There was nothing in them.”
“But not in Switzerland,” Isabelle bleats, “and not with the number hidden under a floorboard!”
“I wouldn’t get my hopes up,” I say. “Anybody can open a numbered account. He was probably using it to hide money from his creditors. I’m sure it was liquidated ages ago. Trust me, he was broke when he died.”
“Doesn’t it come with an ATM card, so we can check the balance?” Richard asks sarcastically.
“You’d have to go in person, talk to this Mr. Samsa,” Jim says.
“To Zurich?”
“Yeah, that’s the way it works. It’s not exactly a twenty-first-century kind of financial product.”
“Tell that to Imelda Marcos,” Richard says. “I must say, one has to hand it to Ross: cold in his grave and still pulling your strings—”
“What’s that noise?” Isabelle interrupts.
I go out to investigate. In the hallway I come upon Lucy, trying to back her way through the front door with a giant aluminum pot clasped to her chest and grocery bags dangling from both elbows.
“Oh, hullo!” she calls out. “Give me a hand, would you?”
“What is that?” Richard snaps.
“A pot, darling, what does it look like?”
“What the hell for?”
“Bouillabaisse. I’m going to make a proper bouillabaisse, with masses of lovely rouille slathered on croutons …”
I grab the pot from her before she drops it.
“Whew, thanks! I’ll just dump these things on the table.”
Isabelle catches my eye and rotates her finger at her temple. “Such a gorgeous day! I got to Flore just as they were unloading the boats,” Lucy babbles on happily. “Mind you, I did have to get up at five.”
“Well, you can hang up your apron,” Richard says. “Old Ross has left you millions after all; you just have to pop over to Switzerland and pick them up.”
“What are you talking about, darling?”
“The old box-in-the-attic number … always a big hit with impressionable minds.” He looks pointedly at Isabelle before walking out.
“You don’t have to be such an asshole, Richard,” Isabelle says to his back.
“Well,” Lucy says briskly, “I’m afraid this fish can’t wait, so you’ll have to tell me about it later. There’s masses of things to chop, if anyone wants to help.”
Isabelle remains immobile. Odette makes her The English are crazy face and says, “I must go hang the laundry before it wrinkles.”
“Oh, well, thanks a lot!”
“I help you,” Yves says. I hadn’t even noticed he was in the room; he must have just walked in.
“Why, thank you, Yves. Can you chop garlic?”
“I sink so.”
“The fishmonger let me have all his fish heads. Wasn’t that lovely of him?”
“Did you hear what Richard said?” I ask her.
“Yes, I did, but right now I am going to make bouillabaisse. If I don’t get the stock made, I’ll never be finished by dinner. Here you go, Yves….” She dumps a big pile of garlic out of a paper bag in front of him and hands him a butcher knife. Isabelle rolls her eyes again and walks out. Yves picks up the knife, whacks the garlic neatly with the side of the blade, and begins to karate-chop it the way chefs do on TV.
“Well, you certainly seem to know what you’re doing,” Lucy says, impressed.
“I worked in a kitchen, on a cargo ship, when I was a student.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, I chopped much garlic,” Yves says modestly.
“Elizabeth David says it’s useless to attempt bouillabaisse anywhere but on the Mediterranean,” Lucy says, ripping open a package and shaking out a cascade of fish heads onto a newspaper she’s spread on the table. “It would be a sin not to have it at least once.”
“Can I ask you what you’re planning to do with those?” I say.
“For the stock—another trick from Elizabeth!”
“Very good,” Yves says approvingly. “Gelatin in the bones.”
“Exactly, I just need to get them in the pot. I can tell you, I had one hell of a time finding saffron…. Now, Yves, when you’re done with the garlic, you can put it in this bowl. We’ll need onions, too, and tomatoes. Constance, if you’re just going to stand there, you might as well do something: Can you peel onions?”
“I guess so,” I say doubtfully.
“Yves will show you.”
While Lucy busies herself with the fish, Yves demonstrates how to peel an onion. Like most things about cooking, it seems more trouble than it’s worth. “You know,” I say, “in New York you can buy onions already chopped up.”
Yves looked amazed. “Really?”
“Yeah. In fact most people don’t even cook at all: They get takeout from restaurants.”
“It must be very expensive,” Yves says.
“Oh, well, you know Americans,” Lucy says cheerfully. “They’re all rich as Croesus.”
Who is she kidding? I try to pry the skin off the onion the way Yves showed me, but the knife keeps slipping. Finally I just stab at it and tear a big hunk off. My eyes start to sting. I wipe at them with my arm, which only makes it worse. Pretty soon tears are streaming down my face.
“Heavens, Constance, you’ve wasted half of it. Do try to be more careful…. Here”—Lucy passes me a colander—“You can toss them in and hand them to Yves when you’re done.” She puts a big pan on the stove, lights the burner, and pours in a slug of olive oil. The smell of frying onions fills the room. “We’ll have masses of stock,” she exults. “We can freeze some!”
I glance doubtfully at our shoe-box-size freezer, which holds two miniature trays of ice cubes and Richard’s vodka. Speak of the devil: Just then he comes back. He takes in the scene and, regarding us coldly, says, “Great, now you’ve got half the household enlisted in your mania.”
“What’s that, darling?”
“Cut it out, Richard,” I say.
“That’s right, encourage her. I’ll be up at the bar, with the normal people.” He stalks off again.
Lucy starts dumping fish heads into the pot, creating a great deal of hissing and sputtering. It’s getting awfully hot in the close room with its one window. Not that she seems to notice: Her hair clinging in damp strands to her temples, she stirs energetically with a big wooden spoon, an ecstatic smile on her face.
“Do we have any leeks?” she calls out.
“I check,” Yves says.
“I’m going to get some fresh air,” I say. “It’s too hot in here.”
CHAPTER twenty-four
Richard is still gone by dinnertime, which is probably why it’s such a pleasant meal, at least initially. If Lucy is worried that her husband is always running off to get drunk, she doesn’t show it. She and Yves clearly bonded over that pile of fish heads, now rather more appetizingly transformed into a deep orange broth that she brings to the table in a porcelain tureen from the flea market. Yves follows behind her with a platter loaded with poached fish and potatoes and, extravagance of extravagances, two lobsters.
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