Across Time: Across Time Book 1

by Elizabeth O'Roark

  "How could you argue?" he asks, heading for the door. "You're too busy letting him walk all over you."

  The door slams behind him and the windows rattle in his wake.

  "It's both of you," says Marie. She says something in French as she heads for the stairs, too quickly for me to understand.

  "You know I don't speak French."

  "It was your Emerson," she says, turning to me from the landing, raising a single brow. "Thou art to me a delicious torment."

  The next day, once I’ve donned the hose and one of the better dresses and Marie has rolled up my hair, Henri walks me to the car, holding the door for me, taking my crutches once I’m in. It’s silly, but also kind of sweet. I suppose the 1930’s code of chivalry is helpful if your ankle is broken.

  The two of us have barely exchanged a word since last night’s argument, so I’m not surprised it’s what he decides to lead with. “You only have a year left of school,” he says abruptly before he’s even started the car. “Why would he ask you to move with him?”

  My shoulders tighten. “I’m nervous enough about going to the Beauvoirs. Can you not pile on by starting another fight with me right now?”

  His tongue darts out, tapping his lip. “I’m not trying to start a fight, I swear it. I’m just trying to understand. If I say the sky is blue, you insist it’s green. But this man wants you to drop out of college and you’re okay with it?”

  I let my head fall back against the seat. Obviously I can’t even do a job I don’t want to do without first having a discussion I don’t want to have. “I didn’t say I was going to drop out. I said he asked and I was thinking about it.”

  “You’re missing my point. It’s less about whether or not you do it, though that’s certainly another issue to discuss. It’s about the fact that this man, who in theory cares about you, is asking you to give up the main thing in your life and you don’t blink an eye. If what was best for the woman I loved was for her to stay where she was, the one thing I’d never do is ask her to give it up. And I’d go to her if it was at all possible.”

  “Well, he’s got a job in New York so he can’t come to me,” I say, feeling my stomach tense. “Can we please go? I just want to get this over with.”

  Henri starts the car. “Times must change dramatically, then,” he says, pulling onto the road. “Because in my day, there are jobs in Philadelphia as well as New York.”

  I ignore him, leaning my head against the window. I could argue that the jobs in New York are better…but then again, I’m at a much better school in Philly than I would be in New York. He would probably ask me why the quality of my degree matters less than the quality of Mark’s job. And I guess he’d have a point.

  When we get to town, I look around in wonder, remembering the day I arrived at the train station. Henri watches my face. "Is it very different in your time?"

  "No...no, but also yes. This is the historic section, and the buildings are pretty much the same, but everything is also different." I point to the butcher shop. "That sells macarons now. It's very bright and pretty, and there are these rainbow-colored boxes in the window."

  "An entire store that sells only macarons?" he asks. "Why?"

  "A lot of tourists come here," I tell him, but I stop myself before I go further. How would it feel to learn your entire way of life will, in not so many decades, be a novelty? That people will soon laugh over the idea of buying paper at a paperie, of needing a specific shop just to buy cheese? The consolidation of everything won't seem like a good idea to him, it will seem like an uncivilized one. "It's really not so different, though," I conclude.

  He looks relieved by that, and continues to drive through town, cutting down several side roads before he arrives at a large, regal home, with a wrought-iron fence and a massive garden off to the side.

  "Here we are," he says unhappily.

  I search his face. “Is André like your sworn enemy or something?” I ask.

  “He’s too inconsequential for me to consider him an enemy.” He gets my crutches and then walks me to the front door, looking more and more unhappy with each second that passes.

  He rings the bell and a servant answers, blushing and tipping her head at the sight of him. A reminder of the way women must react to him every time he comes to town.

  “Hi,” I say sharply, with what is probably a somewhat menacing smile. “I’m here to read to Madame Perot.”

  “Désole,” Henri tells her. “Elle ne parle pas un mot de français.”

  I bristle at that, at the snide way he tells her I don’t speak a word of French. Like the meanest guy in high school laughing at the class nerd.

  The girl's brow raises. Not a word?

  She doesn't even know how to say hello, he replies, glancing at me with such a smirk on his face I’d have to be an idiot not to realize he was mocking me.

  He asks her what the plan is for the afternoon and she tells him I'm to read to Grandmere Perot in her room, before I have tea downstairs with Madame and her son.

  Henri's teeth grind at that last bit, and he translates for me with a tight jaw, completely failing to mention the way he threw me under the bus about my lack of French. “And they apparently want you to stay for tea,” he concludes.

  I refuse to act like I think it’s the trial he does. Especially since he seems to hate André.

  What’s the expression? The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

  “Oh, tea!” I say brightly. “How fun!” I flash him a wide smile over my shoulder as the door shuts behind me.

  The house is magnificent. It reminds me of something you’d see on a historic tour, like Mount Vernon or Monticello, a place where whole rooms are cordoned off and you’re scared you might accidentally touch something and get yelled at. The girl leads me upstairs, over gleaming, newly polished hardwood, and I struggle to follow her on crutches. Then we head down a long hall with high ceilings and more crown molding than I've seen anywhere outside of a museum. Even Mark’s parents’ mansion in Westport would look a little slipshod next to this place.

  We enter a room where an extremely old woman lies on a canopy bed, snoring. The maid shrugs at my questioning glance.

  “Les livres sont là,” she says, pointing at the books on the nightstand.

  I survey the pile. Ivanhoe. God, it was boring enough in English. I can’t imagine trying to read it in French. Beneath it is Middlemarch, also in French. Undoubtedly chock-full of 18th century syntax. My French definitely isn’t up to these books.

  Which leaves, beneath it, Baudelaire. A book of poems similar to the one I saw in Henri's room. I open it and begin to translate, painstakingly. The old woman's eyes fly open. She looks irritated to find me there.

  “Lisez le-moi, si vous devez,” she says. Read it to me if you must.

  Awesome. The rude maid works for a rude old woman.

  With a slow exhale, I begin reading. I was never anywhere near fluent in French, and I'd expected to feel even rustier now that I've been forcing myself not to use a word of it, but it seems all these weeks of eavesdropping on Henri and Marie have had some benefit. The words flow off my tongue, less stilted than they'd have been before I arrived, but I’d enjoy it more if the old woman didn’t sneer at me each time I pronounce something wrong. Toward the end of the hour, she’s even begun to slap my hand when I mess up, and I’m worried if it continues much longer I’m going to slap her right back.

  She’s in the midst of a tirade about les gitane, whatever that is, when the girl who answered the door arrives to tell me it's time for tea.

  I follow her to a parlor where Madame Beauvoir waits with a man not much older than me. He must be André, who is, at first glance, not quite as odious as Henri made him out to be. Though he lacks Henri's size and looks, he's handsome enough and wearing a very nice suit. He kisses both cheeks.

  "A pleasure, Mademoiselle Durand,” he says. “André Beauvoir. I believe you’ve already met my mother?”

  Yes, when she burst into Marie’s home bit
ching about the chickens, and then demanded to know who I was. Was that really only five weeks ago? It seems like so much longer. I force myself to smile at her before she leans in to do the customary kiss to the side of my cheek.

  We sit at a table covered in heavy damask and laid out with cutlery and fine china. Mark and I once had tea at a table just like this, only at the Ritz Carlton—memorable because I felt the same sort of anxiety I do now, maybe even worse. It was early in our relationship, the days when he still wanted to know everything about me, and I’d had to spend hours and hours pretending I was someone else entirely—a woman who had normal problems, who suffered only the regular amount of parental disapproval. I had to create a new reason for my father’s departure, for my avoidance of home. Everything I was and everything I wanted seemed to touch back to my sister’s death and the role I played in it—and if I couldn’t tell him that, I couldn’t tell him anything.

  The tea is poured and André proceeds to ask me polite, generic questions: how I'm enjoying Saint Antoine, how long I plan to stay, how I broke my ankle.

  I tell him I tripped on uneven ground and he looks at me with utter sympathy, translating for his mother.

  Poor girl, says Madame. That farm is a disaster. They live like animals.

  I thought it was hard to feign a lack of comprehension around Henri, but this is much worse. My nails dig into my palms as I try to silence myself.

  You're being uncharitable, Mother, André responds. I smile at him, though I’m still supposed to be feigning ignorance of what was said.

  The servant reappears to tell Madame she has a call and she excuses herself, exchanging a quick, meaningful glance with her son. It feels an awful lot like a set-up, but as far as set-ups go, it’s not a bad one.

  He watches her leave the room and then smiles at me. “You were very kind to read to my grandmother. And brave. Did she yell at you the whole time?”

  I laugh. “She yelled at me a little. Mostly she was yelling about something else. Les gitane?”

  He laughs low, glancing over his shoulder before he turns back to me with a conspiratorial smile. “The gypsies. One of my grandmother’s many dislikes. They stole her car at the end of the war, or so she claims. The police found it almost immediately, but she’s never forgotten it. I’ll try to make sure I’m home the next time you read so I can intervene if necessary. I’d have been here sooner today, but work called me away.”

  It’s kind of nice to be around a man who wants to help me, instead of one who’s always lecturing me. "What do you do?"

  "I manage my family’s company," he says. "We own a manufacturing plant on the outside of Reims. It’s not what I dreamed of doing when I went to university, but I can’t complain, obviously. Times are hard and we’re lucky to have the company to fall back on.”

  I tip my head, wondering how Henri can possibly object to this man. Is it jealousy? It must be. I can’t imagine André being anything but pleasant, while I can easily imagine unpleasant behavior from Henri.

  “What did you dream of doing when you were at university?”

  He gives me a sheepish smile. “I studied engineering. I was always fascinated by airplanes. I don’t think they’ve come as far as they might—if they were streamlined and their engine size increased, I believe they could hold perhaps fifty or sixty people at a time. But Maman disagreed, and of course, she needed someone to manage the company,” he concludes with a forced smile, “so it fell to me.”

  He and Henri have more in common than either of them realize. They both gave up their own dreams to take care of their families. And why is Marie not interested in this guy? He’s good looking, he’s sweet, he’s well-off. Yes, it would involve dealing with Madame Beauvoir, but if she married André, she’d live a much better life than she does now. No more Saturdays spent doing laundry. No more hours in the kitchen.

  “Do you know Henri and Marie well?”

  He gives me a cautious smile. “I don’t. I went to boarding school as a child, so I never got to know anyone here in town until I finished university two years ago. And right now, I’d rather get to know their beautiful American cousin.”

  I can understand why he’d rather flirt than become friends with Henri, but Marie is stunning. He should be flirting with her, and I can’t imagine why he is not.

  “Except I’m leaving in a few weeks,” I reply. “And I’m seeing someone back home.”

  He reaches for my hand, grazing my knuckles with his lips. “Perhaps, with a few weeks’ time, I can change your mind about both.”

  Henri arrives not long after that, and André sees me to the door. He is perfectly polite to Henri, who returns his handshake with obvious unwillingness.

  “How was it?” Henri asks when we get in the car.

  I think of the old woman, yelling at me and hitting my hand. “It would not be my first choice as a job, that’s for sure.”

  He turns to me, his jaw tight. "Did something happen? Was André inappropriate?"

  I can’t imagine why this is the conclusion he’d jump to. "No, no, of course not," I say, waving him off. "I just don't like reading. The crazy old woman was yelling at me about talking to Gypsies and hitting me when I pronounced poorly and I...I just didn’t enjoy it."

  "I didn't realize she spoke English," says Henri.

  Shit.

  "She doesn't," I stammer. "Well, you know, just a few words. Enough to make her point."

  "Ah," he says, resting in his seat more easily. "Well if you don't like it, you should not go back."

  I didn’t mind tea with André at all, and if I could just shift his attention from me to Marie, perhaps some good will have come from my visit. Maybe this is how I save Marie, by freeing her from a lifetime of domestic servitude.

  "I have to go back. What would we tell them?"

  "I don't give a shit what we tell them," he says.

  I smile. "Henri, you just cursed. How unseemly."

  He starts the car and pulls into the road. "Congratulations, little thief. You've stolen my good manners." He looks over at me. A muscle in his jaw flickers. “And you haven’t mentioned tea yet. How was that?”

  I could downplay it, since he obviously doesn’t like André, but then I remember the way he gossiped about me to the girl who answered the door. “It was delicious. I can’t imagine why you don’t like André. I think he seems very nice.”

  His frown deepens. “Don’t judge a man until you’ve seen him without an audience,” he replies.

  16

  Marie begins packing her things to leave almost as soon as I get home, and I sigh heavily. “This is ridiculous,” I tell her. “If you are so desperate to avoid me, just fix my damn ankle!”

  Her eyes widen. “Avoid you?” she repeats. “No. I’m not. I promise. I suppose it’s a little selfish under the circumstances, but with you here, it means I can go do things. Normally, I stay in during the evening so Henri’s not here alone. I just thought if he had you for company it would be okay, but if you want me to stay I will.”

  “It’s fine,” I sigh. As much as I resent the whole situation, I don’t really care whether or not she’s home and I do want to see them both move on with their lives. Although the idea of Henri moving on bothers me a bit more than it should.

  “So it’s bread and cheese for dinner,” I tell him when he gets in that night. “It's all I can do with the ankle the way it is." I don’t feel particularly bad about this. His bullshit this morning at the Beauvoir’s house is still irking me.

  His mouth goes up on one side. "I was under the impression it was all you could do anyhow.” He looks at the food I’ve taken out and begins to gather it, throwing everything in one of Marie's baskets hanging from the copper rack overhead, and adding a bottle of wine. "That dinner was meant to be for us both,” I say.

  "Yes, I know,” he replies, heading for the door. “Come with me.”

  He walks outside with the food and I follow, more slowly and far more unsteadily on the crutches than he is on two goo
d feet. He looks over his shoulder at me. "You're okay?" he asks. "It's not much farther."

  I nod and we continue on, past the barn, to a hay bale that sits at the top of a hill, facing west. He spreads a blanket on the ground and helps me sit, before pulling the food from the basket.

  "A picnic?” I ask. It seems kind of odd to have a picnic forty yards from the house, but it’s not a terrible idea. The view of the valley from here is amazing and at least we can get a bit of a breeze.

  "You do this, where you're from?"

  I shake my head. "No, not really." We did it once or twice, driving into the Alleghenies, when I was small, but that was before Kit died. Afterward, my mother went out of her way to avoid any time spent as a family if she could help it.

  "I suppose you have better things to do, what with your televisions and drive-through restaurants.”

  Diplomacy requires I assure him a picnic is every bit as satisfying as watching television, but as my mouth opens to say something polite and meaningless, I realize the truth of it: this is as satisfying as television. Probably more.

  "We don't have better things to do."

  He gives me a sidelong glance, a doubting one.

  I struggle to explain what I mean. It’s nothing I thought about, before I began to spend time here with Marie and Henri, but as the words emerge I know they are unequivocally true. "At home you can watch TV for hours and hours, but when you leave it the time has gone and you have nothing to show for it. You don't even feel rested. You just feel tired, a little empty. And it’s not memorable at all. All the hours you spend blend together.”

  “This will be memorable, at least,” he says, nodding at the sun as it begins to set. The light retracts, sinks into itself until it looks like an orange ready for picking, just over the next hill. Sitting here, with the sun almost close enough to touch, a light breeze blowing, is an experience no show or movie could possibly replicate.

  "We don't do this at home either," I say quietly, unpacking the basket. “Watching the sun set, I mean.”