Beautiful Americans (11 page)

“I’ll be really quick,” I promise, running down the hill toward the house.

I bang open the back door and look around for Marie. I remember that when she served me breakfast this morning, she’d said something about going to mass down the road. The mud room, just off the kitchen, is easy enough to find without her, as is the closet where all the outdoor wear is stocked. It doesn’t look like the stuff in here gets worn very often. There are cobwebs laced around the half-dozen pairs of boots. I kneel on the floor, picking through them, willing myself to quickly find a pair that fits. I imagine Mme Marquet with one hand on her hip, the other tapping that gold watch.

From far away, I hear a noise like the shutters slamming.

“Marie?” I call, rising to my feet. No one answers.

I haven’t been gone that long. Is it Mme Marquet, impatient to get our horseback ride underway? I go back through the kitchen to the hallway that connects these old housework areas—the kitchen, the laundry room, the stairs to the wine cellar, the mud room—to the rest of the château.

The château, even during the day, is dark and musty from lack of sunlight. The darkness makes me unsure, afraid. It’s so dark that I wish I had a flashlight.

The hallway is empty, of course. But that tingling at the top of my spine, that horrible feeling, is the same one I got when I was pouring the coffee for my parents up at the gas station near the Canadian border this summer. That night, I didn’t have to go outside to know something was off. I could just feel it.

I creep into the sitting room. Like at the Paris apartment, the furnishings at the château are old and slightly decayed. The yellow curtains in the sitting room are browning at the edges, and the ancient pianoforte in the corner is covered in a thick layer of dust, despite the presence of Marie. While the Marquets are most certainly living in absolute splendor, their homes are the tiniest bit decrepit, just about to give way to neglect and disrepair. The chandelier hanging above the little armchairs set in a half-circle has several bulbs out. The majestic fireplace is covered in soot.

Hardly able to breathe for the sensation that I am being watched, I reach out toward the yellow drapes, pulling the fabric back an inch, then slightly more. When I see a face at the window behind them, I let out a bloodcurdling scream that sends the face bounding away from the window. There are several flashes of light, all in a row, and then a shout to
run
in French.

I realize, after a moment, that I’m squeezing my eyes closed. I open them and look out the window, up the gravel driveway that leads to the main road back to Perigeaux. There are two men dashing toward a Peugeot hatchback, cameras and flashbulbs hanging off their bodies and bouncing along with them.

From the pasture, on horseback, comes Charles, the groundskeeper, shouting at the men with the cameras in harsh tones. He has a horsewhip in one hand, raised above his head like he will strike them with it if they return to the château.

“I see you’ve met our friends,” a low, deep voice says from behind me.

“M. Marquet!” I jump away from the window, jostling the curtain so that it leaves me covered in a shower of dust. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

“Bonjour, Penelope,” M. Marquet says tiredly. “Adele! She’s in the sitting room!” he calls behind him.

Adele, better known to me as Mme Marquet, comes in, followed by Marie, back from church.

“Did you say anything to them?” Mme Marquet asks me sharply. “Did they ask you any questions?

“No!” I answer her. “I’m so sorry I took so long getting the boots. I suddenly felt like someone was watching me, so I came in here. . . . Who were those men?”

“This is no place for you to be sneaking around,” Mme Marquet says, her back rigid. “You have to be more careful! Did they get photos of this room?”

I shrug. “All I know is that they flashed the camera right at my face.”

“Photos of you would not be bad,” Mme Marquet says, almost to herself. “But this room—with all these old things in it, all this old junk—that would be a disgrace to the Marquet name.”

I don’t understand. Suddenly, before I can stop myself, I start to cry.

“Ah, Penelope,” M. Marquet breaks the tension and gently puts his arms around me. “Off with you. Marie, take Penelope to lunch in town. Penelope, Perigeaux is
très, très belle
this time of year. Every time of year! Marie will take you to lunch, and then perhaps we’ll ride tomorrow.”

“But those men,” I say, still confused, still afraid of the way Mme Marquet has her hands on her hips like I’ve messed something up, big time. “What were they taking pictures of?”

Mme Marquet sighs. “They just want photos of the new magistrate’s house. Now that M. Marquet is in the public eye, the tabloids are just a part of our lives. But whatever you do, Penelope, don’t ever talk to them. You hear me?”

“They were photographing
me
?”

“Yes,” Mme Marquet says, exasperation in her voice. “God knows why.”

I nod. I feel like I can’t catch my breath. The Marquets are public figures. If they find out who I really am, what my family has done, they will want nothing to do with me.

“Good girl,” M. Marquet says, patting the top of my head and pushing me toward Marie. “Now go on with Marie. Don’t worry anymore about those silly men.”

Marie whisks me down the hall and into an old station wagon parked in the garage. I help her shop in the market in the town square, picking out vegetables for
dîner
. When we return to the château, I’m looking forward to eating with the Marquets, but I find out that they’re having dinner at a friend’s house. I’m not invited. I can’t help but wonder if they’re shunning me, if I’ve offended them. Do they think I was poking around in the sitting room on purpose?

It’s true, I can’t explain why I was drawn into the room I think as I fall asleep, how I knew there was someone else looking in on it, but it’s not like I was trying to sneak around.

Mme Marquet swishes by me in the kitchen the next morning, wearing a fancy dressing gown with sable trim.

“Penelope,” she says, much more warmly than she’d addressed me yesterday. “M. Marquet must have left for his ride without you. How odd of him not to wait. He must have thought you weren’t interested.”

I’m befuddled. “Really? Why would he think that?”

“Hmm, unclear,” Mme Marquet says. “Care to join me for some tea upstairs? I’ve got to get ready for a brunch we’ve been invited to at the château of
les Lafontants
. Their good favor is important to us.”

“I’d love some tea,” I tell her, and follow her to her bedroom. As in her apartment in Paris, Mme Marquet has a large boudoir where she gets ready. The vanity is lined with bottles, compacts, brushes, and pencils. I whistle at the sheer number of products she has in her collection.

“Sit,” she commands me, pointing toward an empty chair across from the bed. I lift a cup and saucer from the tray on the table and help myself to some hot tea with lemon. It helps calm the shivers I can’t seem to get rid of in this big old house.

Mme Marquet is what the French call
jolie-laide
—“pretty-ugly.” It means that in her wide features, her pronounced overbite, and her deep-set eyes, there is a kind of beauty that is far more than the sum of its parts. Many members of the French aristocracy have this look, I’ve noticed from looking through old issues of
Paris Match
around the Marquets’ Paris apartment. Both Madame and Monsieur Marquet heavily resemble old paintings printed in French history books with the medieval sensibility of their looks. Despite not being a natural beauty, Mme Marquet obviously takes her regimen quite seriously.

“I don’t have it as easy as a natural beauty like you, Penelope,” Mme Marquet comments, noticing my looking at all of her makeup and perfumes. “I need all of these.” She gestures with the eyeliner in her hand.

I shake my head at the compliment. Mme Marquet has a look a girl like me could never replicate—self-assured, elegant, established. Next to her I feel like a farmhand, like I belong in the pasture picking mud off the horse’s hooves.

I watch Mme Marquet get ready in silence for a while, not sure why she’s invited me in here.

“So M. Marquet is the magistrate in Perigeaux?” I ask, trying to make conversation.

“
Oui
,” Mme Marquet answers. “His position is one of great importance in this region.”

“Oh,” I say.

“And this region is of great importance in France,” Mme Marquet continues.

“Is he really thinking of running for a national political office?” I ask, stirring some sugar into my bitter tea. I wish she’d asked if I wanted some coffee. Tea doesn’t quite zap me awake as much I’d like it to.

Mme Marquet sets down her eyeliner and stares at me. “Who told you that?”

I bite my lip. Maybe it was as big a deal as Olivia had thought. “My friend Olivia, from the Lycée. She’s living with Mme Rouille, on, um, the Boulevard de Courcelles. . . .”

“Ha!” Mme Marquet practically spits. “Clotilde Rouille! That widowed hag. She doesn’t know anything that she doesn’t read in the society pages. You tell your friend M. Marquet wants nothing more than to bring justice and peace to the Dordogne. National politics! How tacky. Never!”

Mme Marquet stands up and folds her arms across her chest. “What else have you heard about us? That we’ve lost our fortune? That we’re selling the château? The local papers will tell any old story to sell a few extra copies.”

I take that as my cue to excuse myself. “I better let you get ready for that brunch,” I say, not understanding how I’ve, yet again, managed to offend her. She offers me a small, jerky wave in response.

On the train back to Paris, I read over the letter I wrote to Annabel on the way here, not quite feeling as happy about my host family as I was when I wrote it, and more unsure about my future in Paris than ever.

 

“Where on earth did she go?” Dave asked me after all the wedding guests finally went home, the buffet left untouched. “Did she tell you anything before she left?”

I shook my head. She didn’t tell me anything. All I had was a map of the world with a bunch of lousy fingerprints all over it as clues to where she might be.

Dave suggested that we take a trip to Montreal and ask around for her up there. Since I spoke French, he wanted me to come with. My parents, who must have thought it sounded like a great alibi, came with us.

“Stop here,” my mom told my dad, who was driving Dave’s car. “This place looks good.”

We stopped so that I could pee, at a gas station just across from the customs check. My dad had begged me to wait till we got across the border. He was getting nervous about something, but I couldn’t hold it. I’d had to go since St. Albans.

I suddenly spotted Highway Patrol cruisers, a long line of them getting off the freeway and heading our way.

They told me to hurry inside to the bathroom. Dave took a deep, audible breath. “Really, you guys?” he asked my parents.

“I thought you said if we took Dave’s car . . .” my dad said to my mom.

“Get me some coffee, with plenty of cream and sugar,” my mom said to me, not taking her eyes off the cruisers as they got closer. I took my time, careful to make the coffee smooth so they wouldn’t have indigestion from drinking it so late at night. When I came out of the shop, cops were surrounding the car.

It still gets to me, remembering it, even now on the train, so many months after it happened. It’s still so painful to recall the looks on my parents’ faces that night: not of bewilderment, but of surrender.

Falling Fast

“
O
h, Zack, you should have seen your face when I left the café that night. You gave me a look that could have shattered glass,” Alex crows as she grabs a bottle of Stella Artois from Sara-Louise’s fridge. “I gave you the perfect romantic setup with those guys and yet—here you are, as virginal as when we first met. What are we going to do with you, my dear? Will I have to deflower you myself?”

Believe me—I’ve been tempted by girls in the past. Sometimes, you just want to do the deed and get it over with. But never
that
badly.

“Give it a rest, Alex,” I say, looking around to make sure no one heard her mention my romantic affinity for guys—or heard her make reference to my virginity. “It’s not like you’ve hooked up with George yet, either. We’re both still at square one.”

“Oh, so it’s a competition, is it?” Alex fluffs her wavy, wild black hair in the reflection of the mirror in the foyer. I look at my own reflection—my hair tousled just so, the way I always do it. I’m letting it grow a little longer here in Paris. I wore my glasses tonight, thick black hipster frames with square lenses. I think they are the perfect accessory for the little argyle sweater vest I’ve pulled over one of my button-down shirts and my favorite jeans.

We’re giving ourselves a pre-party tour of Sara-Louise’s homestay, which doesn’t take long. Sara-Louise lives in a tiny, two-bedroom apartment in an uninteresting housing development full of other apartments just like it. No matter how it lacks charm, it is certainly the place to be tonight. It’s the first party of the year!

Sara-Louise’s host parents are on a weekend trip to Bruges, leaving her alone in the apartment with their eighteen-year-old daughter, another student at the Lycée. We got here sort of mortifyingly early, when Sara-Louise and her host-“sister” Anouk were still setting out cheese and crackers and stocking their fridge with all the booze they bought for the party. Tried as I might have, I couldn’t keep Alex away tonight. She didn’t want to miss a
second
of the soiree.

Perched on the little stools at Sara-Louise’s tiny kitchen counter, Alex is using the down time before the party takes off as an opportunity to alternately make fun of me for being a prude and preen in front of the mirror. She’s looking uncharacteristically preppy this evening in a white Polo shirt, a dark denim miniskirt and a green canvas army jacket from Marc Jacobs. On her feet are bright yellow Jack Purcell sneakers. She must think the way to George’s heart must be by dressing like his New England boarding-school classmates. Regardless, Alex looks amazing. She always does.