A Rather Charming Invitation (3 page)

Now it was starting to make sense, although I knew so little about my French relatives, apart from the kind of family lore that gets repeated, like heirloom silver being polished again and again. I was aware that my Grandmother Aimée had died in France when Dad was twenty years old and unmarried, before he came to the States to pursue his career as a chef. His father, an American sent overseas as a soldier, had died even earlier, when my dad was only fourteen. So, in coming to New York, Dad was really looking to leave France behind, and have the new experience of exploring his American roots.

It was in New York that he met up with my mother, who was deliriously happy on her own, released from being under her English family’s thumb. I’m the only one in the family with a nostalgia for Europe and a hankering for a glamorous past I never had . . . well, until now. Life, these days, has exceeded even my wildest expectations. And now, finding out about our French relations was, to me, a bit like opening presents on Christmas morning.

My mother interjected, “Leonora married into a very old, influential French family. So, that makes hers the most illustrious branch of your father’s family tree! She lives in Mougins, an elegant town not far from Cannes.”

“Did
you
ever meet them, Mom?” I asked curiously.

“Oh, yes. I met cousin Leonora and her husband Philippe once, before your father and I got married. It is actually a great honor that she has invited you to come to her home. They are really quite charming, very proper, with beautiful manners, and they’re very generous people. They gave us a gift of a beautiful Sèvres soup tureen as a wedding present. Go, you’ll have a nice time, as your French relatives are fond of doing things
en famille
.”

“Besides,” my father said pragmatically, giving me a hint of what was to come, “it is best to do what Leonora asks, because in the end she always prevails anyway. Even when she was a little girl she was
très formidable
.”

“A real bossy-boots,” Jeremy translated.

“
C’est vrai!
” my father chuckled.

“Anyway, you
should
meet your French relations,” my mother said positively.

“Besides, if you and Jeremy go to Mougins, you can make sure that Honorine returns home as her mother wishes,” my father added meaningfully.

“Er, that raises an uncomfortable question,” I pointed out. “If we go there and accept a wedding gift, does it mean we have to invite all our French relatives to the wedding?” The idea of a huge guest list, filled with people I didn’t know, gave me a strange feeling of stage-fright.

“Yes, invite them all,” my mother said serenely, “but bear in mind that they may have asked you to visit them so that you won’t be offended if they don’t show up for your wedding, especially if you decide to have it in England—and by the way, dear, when
will
you decide? We must make plans, you know; caterers and florists can be beastly. Have you even set a date yet?”

“We think maybe September,” I said hurriedly.

“September? You’re quite mad, you know,” my mother exclaimed. “An autumn wedding when spring is already on the wane? How do you think this will come about, by waving a magic wand?” she added incredulously. I knew this tone well. She was on the verge of telling me that she can’t believe I’m her daughter, so disorganized and impractical.

“Yes, I
have
been putting off a lot of decisions,” I said, since there was no point in denying this. I glanced at the wedding-dress sketches still lying on the ottoman where I’d left them. They’d been sent to me by that nice Monsieur Lombard, whose atelier was busy enough without getting last-minute notes from the bride. A strange feeling of panic arose in me, and I turned resolutely away from the sketches.

My father, sensing two females about to—well, I guess females don’t exactly lock horns, but anyway, Dad cleared his throat and said, “Let’s take one zing at a time. Yes, you should experience Mougins—it’s a great capital of
gastronomie
restaurants that attracts connoisseurs from all over the world—even the Parisians will go out of their way to eat the cuisine of the great chefs there. And,” he added, “although Leonora is a distant cousin to you, you’d better call her ‘
Tante
Leonora’. It’s more respectful, and it’s what we do in our family.”

“Okay,” I said, delighted to have a newly-minted French “auntie,” and grateful to my dad for bailing me out of the wedding talk.

“Meanwhile, you might ask Honorine to give her mother a call,” Mom suggested.

After we hung up, Jeremy and I just looked at each other. I said, “Well, I guess we’re going to Mougins.”

“Seems like an enormous spot of bother just to go and pick up a soup bowl,” Jeremy groused jokingly, indicating that he’d already made up his mind to grin and bear it. I hugged him for this.

“Tureen,” I corrected. “It’s beautiful, I remember it. It always had pride of place on the sideboard of my parents’ dining room. Besides, it’s not about the gift. It’s about family.”

“Right,” said Jeremy. “But don’t you wonder why your father, in all these years, hasn’t gone back to visit?”

“Well, it looks like we’re about to find out,” I said.

T
he next morning, when I came down to breakfast, Jeremy had already made coffee and toast; then he’d disappeared into his office, from which I heard various curses and growls. Eventually, when he returned for a second cup of coffee, he announced, “We’re having incredible computer problems—the whole bloody system crashed, probably under the sheer weight of all these junk e-mails. If I can’t fix it myself, I’ll have to get someone to take a look at it. Meanwhile, you’d best stay off your computer.”

And he drifted right back out again. The computer glitch gave me an excuse to linger over my coffee and have a little tête-à-tête with Honorine when she came down to breakfast, sleepy-eyed. She was a bit disoriented, which I shamelessly exploited by peppering her with questions. I couldn’t help it, I was bursting with curiosity.

Stirring in her sugar and milk, she confided that this was the first time she’d impulsively strayed from her home and country. As she chattered on, I soon discovered that, while Honorine had a certain sophistication, which came from being raised in a “good” family, she was also a bit innocent, having led a fairly sheltered life. The dreams she had in her head were intellectual, not born of a wide experience of the world; and I saw that there was something girlish about the way she’d secretly plotted her escape, in theory, not really making concrete plans, not even stopping to alert her friends of her imminent arrival, as if she feared that doing so would give fate a chance to stop her. So, one day when the family pressure got to be too much, she just impulsively got on the train, and
voilà
!

“But—what is it about your family that’s so . . . difficult?” I quizzed delicately. She blurted out that her mother and big brother were trying to marry her off. “Wow,” I said. “Marriage already? Aren’t you just out of school?”

Honorine nodded vigorously. “Can you believe it?” she demanded. “They are from another century, my parents. And my brother David, well, he’s a big bore!”

I was still admiring her thick, curling dark eyelashes and pale skin. She was as pretty as a doll, but now her eyes flashed with vitality and fierce intelligence. “So, who’s the guy?” I asked, pouring her more coffee so she’d keep talking.

Honorine said, “His name is Charles.
Alors,
we’ve known each other since we were little kids, but really, now that he’s out of school, he is turning out to be a
bourgeois fou
. Does exactly what his parents tell him to do. It is not at all romantic. All the parents are arranging this, just because it’s good for both family businesses. He studied law, and might go into politics, so what he really wants is a politician’s wife. It has nothing to do with me. Frankly, I would rather kiss a pig than marry a lawyer!”

Jeremy entered now, just in time to hear this insult to his profession, but he chose to ignore it. However, I saw that it registered. “The computer guy says he can’t tell what’s wrong with it from our phone conversation,” he announced, having abandoned the DIY approach. “He’ll stop by on Friday to have a go.” He glanced at Honorine, then at me.

“So,” he said meaningfully, “did you tell Honorine about our upcoming weekend in Mougins?”

I shook my head at him warningly, then quickly turned to her, and said as casually as I could, “We’d love to take your folks up on their invitation, if it still stands.”

“But of course, I’m sure it does,” Honorine said somewhat absently.

“Great,” I said heartily. “Why don’t you come along with us?”

At the aghast look on her face, I felt just terrible, for I’d practically told her that she wasn’t welcome here, which normally I would never do. It was all Jeremy’s fault. Rushing me into this phony ruse to get her to join us this weekend. And my father, too, who had come up with this scheme. Men. Always in such a hurry to dispense with a problem, before you’ve even figured it out.

“I don’t want to go home!” Honorine cried. “I want to travel, and see the world, and find my one true love, just like you, Penny! Don’t worry, I won’t impose on you any longer. I will have a career and get an apartment of my own.”

Now I gave Jeremy a dirty look. She’d be back out on the street in no time, after very nearly getting arrested. And it would be on our heads.

“In London?” Jeremy said to her incredulously. “Honorine, do you have any money?” She mumbled that she’d brought a little, but not enough to put down on a flat and pay monthly rent all by herself. “Then,” Jeremy said sternly, “how can you be independent?”

“
The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you,
” Honorine quoted loftily.

“What wise person said that?” I whispered to her conspiratorially.

She looked at me as if it were obvious. “Why, Rousseau, of course,” she said.

“Philosophy major,” Jeremy guessed. She nodded triumphantly. I was impressed. Jeremy wasn’t.

“In France, philosophy majors are extremely respectable,” I reminded him.

“Yes, well, she’s in London-town now,” Jeremy said, not un-gently. “So it’s not exactly a ticket into a high-paying job in this vast, competitive metropolis full of kids with connections, is it?”

I couldn’t deny it, but I didn’t want to say outright that Honorine didn’t have a hope in hell. But she got it, of course, and appeared so crestfallen that Jeremy looked immediately contrite.

“Actually, we’re asking you to come with us to Mougins for purely selfish reasons,” he said, more in the protective tone of an older brother now. “You can help us out with your mum, and explain how hopeless we are with our mail system.”

Honorine smiled, but turned to me, seeking my opinion trustfully. “Yes, we need you to help us with your family, so we don’t commit another faux pas,” I agreed. I was shuffling through my scrawled, disorganized “organizer”, and I now said involuntarily, “Holy smokes! Jeremy, we’re supposed to have dinner with your mother on Saturday!”

“Never mind that,” Jeremy said firmly, having decided that the only way to get rid of Honorine was to personally escort her back home this weekend. “Mum won’t mind rescheduling.”

Dubiously, I picked up the phone. Jeremy’s mother answered it and, to my surprise, although she was perfectly willing to change the date, she insisted that she really had to see us before we went off to France. Something was clearly up. She never insisted on anything. But now here she was, mysteriously saying, “Darling, let’s at least meet for drinks and a curry on Thursday night? All right?”

“Tomorrow? Okay,” I said meekly. This was, after all, my future mother-in-law. I wondered if I’d ever learn to stop calling her “Aunt Sheila”, since she’d been married to my mother’s brother, Uncle Peter, who was Jeremy’s stepfather. The world is a complicated place. At least, my world was, more and more each passing day.

S
o the next evening, we got dressed up to meet Jeremy’s mum for dinner. I put on a nice pale green knit dress to celebrate spring, after a long winter of black-clad city folk. When I came downstairs, Honorine gave me a quick glance of approval, smiling in that appreciative way that Europeans do when you make an effort to look good.

“That color is
magnifique
with your red hair,” she noted. Then she asked daringly, in a low voice so Jeremy wouldn’t hear in the next room, “Is it true that you and Jeremy were raised as cousins, even though, technically, you are not related?”

“Yes, we first met many years ago, as kids. But he grew up in London, and I grew up in America, so we didn’t meet again until just recently, when my Great-Aunt Penelope died,” I explained.

“And you were both heirs to her fortune?” Honorine prompted. I realized that she, and perhaps her entire family, had heard quite a lot about it, but surely not from my parents, who never volunteered personal information. She still seemed to be quoting the international press. When I nodded, she sighed and said, “And when you met again you fell in love? How
romantique
!”

She wasn’t really prying; it was more as if she wanted confirmation that life could be more exciting than the usual path which her elders told her she must take. This I understood perfectly. Still, I felt suddenly self- conscious, and I changed the subject, saying, “Honorine, will you be okay alone here tonight? There’s roast chicken in the refrigerator, and lots of take-out menus in the drawer.”

What I wanted to say was,
So stay put and don’t go out and get yourself arrested again
. She sensed this, and made it easy for me.

“Yes, perfect, you mustn’t worry,” she said, opening a book. “I’ll stay in tonight. It’s fine.”

“Great,” I said, relieved. “Maybe you could call your mother, just to let her know you’re all right,” I added, mindful of my father’s suggestion.