Going Topless

by Megan McAndrew

  “It is a very nice name in French,” Yves says.

  “What we should ask ourselves,” Jiri says, “is, what is Lupa Romesco doing in Borgolano?”

  “Same thing we are, I should think,” Jane says.

  When I head downstairs much later to slip over to Philippe’s, Isabelle is lying in wait in the hallway. Everyone else has gone to bed.

  “And where are you going?”

  “Oh, cut it out,” I say. “You know perfectly well where I’m going.”

  “I have to hand it to you,” she says with a nasty little smile. “You had me completely fooled.”

  “It’s not about you,” I say, but she’s already followed me out. On this windless night the darkness is almost velvety, the only sound that of Muddy Waters drifting out of Philippe’s open window. Like all cool Parisians, my lover feels a special and mysterious connection to the Mississippi Delta.

  “Not that I care,” Isabelle says, “but doesn’t Jim-boy wonder where you’re sneaking off to in the middle of the night?”

  “I doubt it, seeing that he’s sleeping in Odette’s room.”

  “Ha, I’m supposed to believe that?”

  “They’re in love with each other. They’re moving to Paris together after the memorial.”

  Isabelle makes a barking sound. “That is so grotesque.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, I do. I think it’s disgusting—she’s twice his age.”

  “Jiri is twice your age.”

  “It’s not the same thing!”

  “Whatever … I have to go.” I start to move away but she tugs at my arm.

  “Don’t do this to me,” she pleads.

  I stop. I can afford this small kindness. “I think you should go back in to your husband,” I say. “He came all this way to get you.”

  From the way her breath catches, I can tell that she’s crying. Sometimes I wish I were a nicer person, but I’ve seen all of this before. Like Odette says, there’s a reason for clichés.

  “He didn’t come for me; he’s just evening the score!”

  “Look, what does it matter? Just pretend to believe him.”

  “I can’t!” She looks so beautiful, even in the dark. Philippe must be crazy.

  “I have to go now,” I say.

  “Wait!” she cries, but I’m already across the patio. “We haven’t talked about the money!”

  CHAPTER thirty-six

  “L aissons les belles femmes aux hommes sans imagination.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  Philippe nudges me in the stomach. “You must stop taking everything so personally…. Your sister seems determined to test the adage that women are made to be loved, not understood.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Oscar Wilde.”

  “Wasn’t he gay?”

  “Always so literal…. What I meant is that I am perpetually amazed by how different you and your sister are; you don’t even look alike.”

  “I look like Ross. Isabelle looks like our mother.”

  “Ah yes, the Russian ballerina with the studio on the Rue Vavin. I must have walked by it many times; perhaps you were even inside, in your little pink tutu….”

  “Not likely, I was still in diapers. It’s funny you should mention it, though, because Isabelle said something the other day about Vera, that she wouldn’t let her in her class because she wasn’t talented enough.”

  “Perhaps she was trying to uphold standards.”

  “I think it sounds bitchy and mean. Why couldn’t she have just let her give it a try, even if she was a complete klutz?”

  “I don’t believe it’s part of the Russian mentality to encourage the ungifted,” Philippe says.

  “And there’s something else: I’ve checked out all the Russian ballet sites on the Web, and I’ve never found any mention of a Vera Shubin. You’d think, if she was this big Kirov star, she’d rate a mention.”

  “Maybe she was erased from the records. Didn’t your father smuggle her out of the Soviet Union? Terribly romantic story, by the way.”

  “Exactly, it’s a great story—so great that you start to wonder how much of it is true.”

  “Interesting: So you think your father and your sister made her up?”

  “Not exactly—she had to exist, we had to come from somewhere—but frankly, the way Isabelle carries on about Vera, she doesn’t sound real, and she certainly doesn’t sound like the kind of woman who would have put up with my father.”

  “And so, over the years, they created a lovely fantasy….”

  “Something like that. I mean, I’m sure she was a dancer, but not necessarily a famous one. And I’m sure she was beautiful, but—”

  “Paris is full of beautiful women,” Philippe finishes my sentence.

  “Yeah, not to mention Russian ballerinas. And Ross was such a mythomaniac. Plus, when you think about it, it’s awfully convenient having this perfect wife who died young. It keeps all the next ones in line.”

  “How Machiavellian!”

  “Well, maybe that’s not how he put it to himself, but it did absolve him of ever having to make an effort again in a relationship.”

  “He must have been quite a character, your father. I regret not having had the chance to meet him.”

  “I’m not sure the two of you would have gotten along,” I say.

  “Oh really?” Philippe looks amused. “And why is that?”

  “Well, you know, he was a big American guy.”

  “And I am a small Frenchman?”

  “You’re too intellectual. He probably would have found you pretentious.”

  “As you would say, thank you very much.” To my surprise, Philippe sounds wounded. To make up for it I grab his cock. It pulses in my hand like a warm animal.

  “Anyway,” I say, “he’s dead.”

  “Ah yes, but he keeps coming back. This money, for instance, causing all sorts of unpleasantness …”

  “Not for me. I’ve decided to give my share to Isabelle.”

  He shifts, slipping out of my grasp. “My dear Constance, you are either being very noble or very foolish.”

  “She wants it more than I do, and it won’t make much of a difference to me. It’s not really that hard to make half a million dollars. When you work with money, all those zeros get kind of abstract after a while.”

  He smiles. “Something tells me that your sister may not find all those zeros, as you so charmingly put it, quite so abstract.”

  “You really don’t like her, do you?” I say, surprising myself by how much this bothers me.

  “My dear, the world is full of women like Isabelle. Come here.”

  I want to tell him that he’s wrong, that my sister is unique, a goddess among women, but I don’t. I reach for him, despising myself slightly.

  CHAPTER thirty-seven

  Philippe starts writing at six, a habit that he claims he picked up in New York. According to him, the French don’t believe that there’s any virtue in getting up early, or eating low-fat food, or exercising. Still, although he claims to delight in all things American—including, presumably, me—he can’t altogether suppress the little edge of old-world superiority that I’m sure would have driven Ross crazy. I decide to go for a run. As I’m heading back to our house to change, I notice Jane sitting on the stone bench in Mr. Peretti’s garden. She turns around when she hears me approach.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she says, not looking exactly thrilled to see me.

  “Hi,” I say plopping myself down next to her. “Where’s Marge?”

  “Sleeping. I thought I’d come down and do some watercolors—I wanted to capture that ghostly pink the water turns at dawn.”

  “Can I see?” I say, reaching for her pad.

  She hands it to me. “I mucked it up.”

  I think it looks fine, especially the way she’s done the lemon tree that overhangs the ruined wall, its fruit tirelessly coveted by Lucy, but there’s no point arguing with Jane about the in
sanely high standards she sets for herself. We sit in silence for a while, looking at the heat haze beginning to form over the water. Over in Mr. Peretti’s vegetable patch, the tomatoes hang fat and heavy, tied to their stakes with yellow rags that match the color of the lemons. It’s going to be a beautiful day.

  “Constance,” Jane says suddenly. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean: with Philippe.”

  “I’m in love with him,” I say, though I hadn’t meant to, but it’s the easiest way to describe the relentless craving I feel for him.

  “Oh, Constance …”

  “Why do you sound so worried?” I say lightly.

  She gives me a penetrating look. “Because I wonder if you know your heart.”

  I’m about to say something flippant, about bankers not having hearts, but instead I say, “He really admires you; he owns two of your paintings.”

  “I thought it was you we were talking about.”

  I make a goofy face to indicate that I’m just kidding around.

  “Philippe’s liking my paintings hardly constitutes a reason for falling in love with him,” Jane says, ignoring my overture.

  “You don’t like him, do you?”

  “Oh God, Constance, can’t you see it doesn’t matter whether or not I like him!”

  “It matters to me,” I say.

  “All right, then,” Jane says irritably, “I don’t. He strikes me, frankly, as a ladies’ man.”

  It’s such a dumb and stilted expression that, for a second, I could swear it’s Daphne, not Jane, speaking, which is no doubt why the smart-ass in me surges and I tartly retort, “Well, then I guess it’s no surprise I fell for him.”

  “No,” Jane says primly, “I daresay it isn’t.”

  In the silence that ensues, several realizations hit me simultaneously: that Jane has grown closer to her mother over the years, that they share the cold eye of the aesthete, that being her least favorite daughter only made her love Daphne the more. But this is all off-limits, as Jane’s expression makes clear, so I say, in yet another pathetic attempt at bridge-building, “We need to do something about that money in Zurich before Isabelle blows a gasket.”

  “I was wondering when you’d bring that up,” she says.

  “Yeah, well, I think the best thing to do would be to just divide it and get it over with.”

  “And how were you planning to divide it?”

  I glance at her. The gates are still down. “Well, I think that’s pretty straightforward: five ways.”

  Jane doesn’t respond.

  “Oh, come on, Jane,” I say, annoyed. “Don’t tell me you want to cut out Odette.”

  “The problem is not Odette,” Jane says.

  “I’m glad to hear you say that, because frankly, I think she deserves a break.”

  “Not from me she doesn’t,” Jane says, her eyes finally meeting mine. “But anyway, that’s not the problem.”

  “Oh,” I say. I guess my voice betrays my surprise because I catch a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes, which vanishes when she speaks again.

  “You know how I went to see Mum before coming out here? She told me certain things I had had no idea about.”

  “Look,” I say, “everyone knows Ross treated Daphne badly …” And then I stop because, well, so what? But I guess that was the opening she was looking for.

  “Have you ever asked yourself why Ross adopted us?” she says.

  “Well, it did seem a little strange at the time, but I think he honestly thought it was the right thing to do.”

  Jane smirks. “It certainly was—for Ross.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  “You, of all people, ought to. As you might recall, he adopted us in ’84, which, if you go back and read the financial press, was not a good time for gold. He nearly went bankrupt, as you know; what you may not know is that he’d bought call options as a hedge. The margin calls started coming in and he asked Mum for a loan, then another—he was going to pay it all back when the market went back up….” An unpleasantly sarcastic tone has crept into Jane’s voice, though actually, what surprises me more is how much she seems to know about finance. “Eventually, Mum’s money ran out. Lucy and I, however, had been left a bit in trust by our father….”

  More than a bit, I think.

  “You can guess the rest. Not to put too fine a point on it, by adopting us, Ross hoped to put us in a position where we’d never question certain disastrous investments that were made with our inheritance. It was brilliant when you think about it: the combination of cheap sentimentalism and cold-blooded audacity. Quite the most spectacular con he ever pulled off.”

  I’m surprised to find that my mouth is hanging open. I shut it. “Look, I’m not saying Ross was a choirboy. I’ve always had a feeling that a lot of his ventures bordered the fringes of legality, but it’s not that easy to rip off a trust fund. I mean, wasn’t Daphne the trustee?”

  “She was. Unfortunately, Mum was a bit of a twit about money.”

  “This is crazy, Jane. He couldn’t have done anything without her signing off on it.”

  “That’s the pathetic part: She did. Mum never paid any attention to forms. And she thought like everyone else that Ross was a brilliant financier, so after they got married, she left all the business decisions to him, and even more so after he adopted us. By the time she figured out that Lucy and I had become majority stockholders in a series of dubious South American prospecting firms, it was too late.”

  “That’s not fraud,” I point out, “just bad advice.”

  “Yes, so were the Angolan mining rights.”

  “Jane,” I say, “it may have been sleazy and dishonest, but if Daphne approved it, it wasn’t technically a crime. I mean, I’d be the last to try to whitewash Ross—”

  “Would you? It seems to me that we are all perpetually engaged in doing precisely that. And yet, I, for one, have no obligation to perpetuate the myth of his greatness.”

  “Okay,” I say. “So he ripped off your trust fund. You can’t have just found out about this; didn’t you ever look at the records?”

  “I always suspected, but Mum never owned up to it until now. She was too embarrassed, if you can believe it.” Actually I can. Daphne, like a lot of upper-class English people I know, always pretended to be clueless about money.

  We lapse into silence. Finally I say, “Well, this really sucks, but what am I supposed to do about it?”

  “The money in Switzerland would be a beginning,” Jane says.

  I regard her with genuine consternation. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I am not. Morally speaking, you owe it to Lucy and me.”

  I’m so bewildered that I blurt out, “But, Jane, you’ve got plenty of money—I mean, he can’t have taken everything, and anyway, from your paintings alone—”

  “You’re making rather free with your assumptions about my wealth,” she says coldly. “Yes, I am quite comfortable, but I’m about to embark on a venture that is going to require a large initial investment, and I’m afraid I don’t want to eat into my capital. Surely you will understand.”

  I don’t, but I say, “I guess Lucy’s in on this, too, huh?”

  “No, she’s not. As you know, when given a choice, Lucy will usually opt for denial.”

  I’m surprised at how relieved I am. I can even feel a half-smile forming on my lips at the thought of poor, guileless Lucy, traipsing like Ophelia through the maquis in search of fragrant herbs. The sun is already starting to burn the morning freshness out of the air. Mr. Peretti comes out of his house in his blue worker’s overalls and peers glumly at us before unlatching the wooden gate into his garden. He probably thinks we have designs on his tomatoes. I watch him bend down and tug at a weed before unwinding a garden hose that Yolande insists is illegally hooked up to her meter and turning it on so that the water rushes out with a spurting sound.

  “Fucking
suspicious peasant,” Jane says, startling me.

  “Jane,” I say, “you can have my share if you want, but I don’t think Isabelle is going to go along with it. She has plans for that money.”

  “Don’t we all,” Jane says.

  CHAPTER thirty-eight

  As it turns out, even if I’d wanted to relay my conversation with Jane to Isabelle, I couldn’t, since she’s nowhere to be found. More perplexingly, Richard hasn’t been seen since yesterday, before the countess’s party, when Yves ran into him at the café.

  “Maybe he’s been kidnapped,” Marge says.

  “I doubt anyone would want to kidnap Richard,” Lucy says, slathering butter on toast for the girls. “Maybe he just took a room for the night.” Odette eyes her with amazement, though it’s hard to say whether over her cavalier attitude toward her husband—I’m not sure that Odette is entirely aware of Richard’s existence—or because she is actually feeding her daughter butter.

  “Jam too,” Agnes says gloomily. The child may be making progress, but she’s not about to win any charm contests.

  “Oh, all right…. I do think she’s lost a bit of weight,” she whispers conspiratorially after the girls have run off.

  “It is the glands,” Odette says. “You should take her to a homéopathe.”

  “Really, Odette! I’m not going to take the child to some witch doctor—a sensible diet and exercise are what she needs.”

  Odette shrugs. Jim looks uncomfortable.

  “Jeem, don’t you think it’s time to light the grill?” Odette says.

  “What’s eating you?” I ask, catching up with him on the patio.

  “Hey,” he says. He darts his eyes around as if to make sure no one is listening. “I’m not sure I should be doing this, but I think I know where Richard is.”

  “You’d better tell Lucy; the suspense is killing her.”

  “He’s with Albertine,” Jim blurts out. I burst out laughing. Odette comes clicking out on her little heels.

  “What is so funny?” she says, a bit sharply. Jim tells her.

  “Ah, well, what can she expect?”

  “What do you mean by that?” Jim says. God, he’s such a butthead sometimes. Odette smiles at me.