Family Pictures (7 page)

“Occasionally,” Sylvie says. “Mark travels so much, it’s hard. I’ll ask him, but I don’t think he knows anything or he would have told me.”

“You know what’s truly amazing about all this?” muses Kirsty. “You think you know people, you think you know a marriage, but none of us ever knows what goes on behind closed doors.”

A shout comes from downstairs. “Angie? What the hell are you all doing in our bedroom?”

“Don’t get excited!” Angie yells back. “We’re coming down now.”

*   *   *

Ten people is the perfect number, thinks Sylvie, sitting quietly for a minute as the group talks animatedly across the table.

More guests, and dinner parties become a series of individual conversations, small talk, the reason that Sylvie invariably turns the invitations down when Mark is not around, for small talk is something she has never been good at.

Tonight, the group has bonded, and she does not remember the last time she had so much fun. Mark is home, they are a couple, doing what regular couples do. Instead of surreptitiously looking at her watch and wondering how they can orchestrate an escape, Sylvie hasn’t looked at her watch once, could stay for hours more.

“I’m telling you.” Kirsty, slightly fuzzy with wine, leans forward to make a pronouncement. “You need to be checking their Facebook and texts. Seriously. I check Abigail’s all the time.”

Jon shrugs helplessly at his wife’s admission, which clearly embarrasses him. “I keep telling her she shouldn’t. Abigail would go nuts if she knew.”

Kirsty turns to him defensively. “If our daughter gets into trouble, how are we supposed to find out?”

“Um … she tells us?” Jon spells it out slowly.

“Right,” she snorts. “Because all seventeen-year-old girls go straight to their parents when they get into trouble. This way we
know.
”

“But you
don’t
know,” Jon argues. “You
think
you know, and even if you find something out, how are you going to explain it? ‘I just happened to be reading your texts’? That’ll be successful.”

“Our parents didn’t know anything we did,” Angie says. “At seventeen, I was a party girl, and my parents had no idea. I turned out okay, right?” She looks over at Simon, at the other head of the table, for validation, and he grins and blows her a kiss. “You have to let them learn their own lessons. You can’t protect them from all that’s out there, nor should you.”

“I agree,” Mark says. “Our job as parents is to raise them to be good people in the world, and to make the right choices. You can’t stop bad stuff from happening, but you have to give them freedom in order to teach them to recognize what the best choice for them would be.”

“Mark!” Angie berates him. “You’re the dad who won’t let Eve post anything on Facebook! How is that giving her freedom?”

“I let her post!” Mark is embarrassed. “I just won’t let her post anything personal.” The others shout him down. “Whatever your settings, people have ways of accessing your site,” he insists. “You can’t even believe how much they can find out about you from a photograph or where you live. Eve is responsible in many ways, but she doesn’t understand the risk.”

“The risk really isn’t that big.” Harold shrugs skeptically. “We’ve all read stories and seen movies, but honestly, I really don’t think abductors are going to show up on the doorstep after targeting your kids on Facebook.”

“Really?” Mark says. “Did you see the movie
Trust
?”

“Oh my God!” The women all gasp. “That movie was terrifying!”

“He has a point,” Ginny says. “It was so realistic.” They explain the plot to Harold, that a grown man posed as a teenage boy to instigate a relationship with an innocent young girl, but Harold refuses to back down.

“It’s a movie,” he says. “
That’s
the point. Movies dramatize real life. Facebook has changed the world, and you can’t do things the way they were done before. You have to move on and accept the changes.”

“I kind of think he’s right.” Sylvie looks at Mark.

“He may be,” Mark says. “But I’ve had the bad stuff happen.” He looks around the table. “Years ago, my identity was stolen. I didn’t just lose money, I nearly lost my entire life.”

Everyone sits forward, rapt.

“You have to tell us what happened,” Laura says.

“I was sitting with a loan officer discussing a mortgage, and he asked me what I thought of the Escalade. I had no idea what he was talking about. He looked at me like I was an idiot and ‘reminded’ me I’d just bought a brand-new Escalade.”

“You’d remember something like that, right?” Angie laughs.

“You’d think. So it turns out I’d thrown away my expired credit card, and my identity had been stolen by someone Dumpster-diving. They had opened a ton of credit cards in my name, all maxed out. It was a nightmare.”

“Did they catch them?”

Mark nods. “But it took me almost two years to get my life back. I had no credit rating. It was a disaster. Not to mention I had some guy posing as me.”

“Was he caught?” asks Jon.

“Yes. Straight to jail.”

“Was he, at least, handsome?” Kirsty asks.

“He was a kid,” Mark says. “Twenty-three. His life ruined. But you know what, he almost ruined mine. I was stuck for two years. So … that’s why I’m paranoid. I have reason to be. I know that people aren’t necessarily who they say they are.”

“Oh, that we know,” Angie says. “Poor Bill.” Her hands fly to her lips. “Oops!” She grimaces. “Does it count if we tell our husbands?”

“We already know,” says Simon. “We were talking about it in the wine cellar.”

Sylvie waits a few minutes before turning to Mark, her voice dropped low so the others don’t hear. “You knew and didn’t tell me?” She is shocked and upset. Even when sworn to secrecy, she knows the unspoken part of that is that husbands don’t count. She trusts him implicitly, and there is nothing she wouldn’t tell him, presuming that this went both ways.

“Bill swore me to secrecy,” Mark says. “This was before everyone found out, after Caroline first got the call. He was trying to stop the worst from happening, and he was desperate. Sylvie, he specifically asked me to promise not to tell you. I tell you everything, but I couldn’t tell you this.”

“But I’m your wife. Even if you promise, you know spouses don’t count. And you know I would never talk about it with anyone.”

“I do, but I couldn’t go back on a promise. Once I’d said those words to him, I would have felt like I was committing a crime by repeating it. Even to you. I’m sorry.”

Sylvie nods. “It’s okay. I don’t like it, but I get it. I just feel kind of stupid, being the last to know. How is he?”

“Desperate. And Caroline’s getting ready to move. She doesn’t want to face anyone in this town ever again.”

Sylvie closes her eyes for a second as she shakes her head, unable to get the unfortunate image of Bill, naked and at full mast, out of her head. “That poor woman,” she says. “I can’t think of anything worse.”

9

Sylvie

The phone buzzes over and over, both Mark and Sylvie deaf to its persistent vibration, until both swim upward from their deep sleep, Mark registering the phone call first.

He grabs the phone and picks it up, whispering a hello as he crawls out of bed, going into the bathroom so as not to disturb Sylvie, but it’s too late.

She is now awake, heart pounding, squinting at the clock. Who in the hell is calling at 2:36
A.M.
, and why is her husband taking the call in the other room?

Sylvie creeps to the bathroom door and listens, hearing her husband murmuring softly as a wave of nausea sweeps over her. She can’t hear the words, but she hears his laughter. She pushes the door open, catching him midsentence.

“Sweetie,” he says, holding out the phone. “I didn’t mean to wake you. It’s your mother.”

She takes the phone, sighing as Mark stands up, kisses her shoulder, and heads back to bed, Sylvie sitting down on the edge of the bath in the exact same spot.

“Mom? Is everything okay? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter. There are things I need that I can’t find. Where is my Hermès blue and orange scarf? My favorite one? I haven’t seen it for ages.”

“I don’t know, Mom. It’s probably in storage up in the attic. I’ll check. But it’s two thirty … -seven in the morning. I thought it was an emergency. This will have to wait.”

“What time is it?”

“Two thirty-seven. Mom, you can’t phone people in the middle of the night.”

“You’re not people. You’re my daughter.”

“But I’ve told you not to phone me late unless it’s an emergency.”

“I need Band-Aids too. That’s an emergency. Oh, and another of those Diptyque candles I like. You know the ones.”

Sylvie closes her eyes, inwardly groaning. “Okay, Mom. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m going now.”

“Wait! Tomorrow? What about today? I thought you were coming today.”

“I can’t today. I’m sorry.”

“Why? What’s more important than visiting your mother who gave up her entire life for you.”

Sylvie’s heart sinks. “Mom, I have a doctor’s appointment, remember?”

There is no doctor’s appointment, but Clothilde, who forgets so much, seems to quiet down when she is faced with her lack of memory.

“In San Diego,” she lies. “But I’ll be in tomorrow.”

“San Diego.” Clothilde murmurs, “Pity you never think to bring me into the city with you.”

Sylvie says nothing, knowing that her good night’s sleep is now over. A disturbance of a minute would be okay, might still enable her to go back to sleep, but a whole conversation? Her body may be exhausted, her eyes fighting to stay open, but she is experienced enough to know that her mind is now alert; there will be no more sleep tonight.

It is the scourge of middle age. Angie has taken Ambien for years; Laura, terrified of medication, can’t see anyone before 10
A.M.
, too groggy from the Tylenol PM she has taken every night since her children were born.

The nights she doesn’t sleep, Sylvie gets up, gets things done. She wasted too many nights lying in bed, willing herself to go back to sleep, thoughts flying through her head as she refused to push back the covers, refused to set foot on the floor, in case, by some miracle, she fell back to sleep.

Which never happened.

Now, she gets up.

By the time Eve needs to get up for school at 6
A.M.
, Sylvie will have made breakfast, paid bills, organized files, baked a cake, and managed to research whatever her obsession of the moment is, for a couple of hours online.

It’s not so bad, Sylvie thinks, tuning back in to Clothilde. “… and where are my pearls, Sylvie? The black ones. I know I had them here and they were in the bathroom, and now they are missing.”

“I don’t remember you having the pearls there. I think they may be in the safe with the rest of your jewelry. I didn’t bring them in.”

“Not you. Mark brought them. Or Eve. I don’t know, someone! But now they are not here.”

Sylvie’s heart sinks, for this is a regular occurrence, Clothilde deciding some piece of jewelry is missing, making the accusation before anyone has even had a chance to check.

“It’s that new nurse. She was admiring my bracelet the other day, and I saw the sly look in her eye.”

“Which new nurse? Nancy?” Sylvie almost laughed. “The sweet, quiet one?”

“There’s nothing sweet or quiet about her. She’s a thief. I’m going to talk to the director this morning.”

“Mom, don’t. Wait. Let me look for you. They might be here.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Of course I do,” Sylvie soothes. “But if Mark brought them to you, perhaps he brought them home? Let me just check.”

There is a silence, then a harrumph. “
Ça va.
What time will you come?”

“Around three.”

“Maybe this time you’ll actually stay? You’re never here for longer than about five minutes.”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Sylvie forces. “I will try to stay a bit longer today. Eve has a softball game this afternoon, though. I promised her I’d be there because I’ve missed the last two.”

“You can tell her she needs to come see her
grand-mère.
She hasn’t been here for weeks.”

“No, Mom. She came with me two days ago, remember? You wanted the moisturizer and magazines? Eve did your nails? Remember?”

“That was two days ago?” Clothilde is surprised, although this lapse in spatial awareness, time awareness, happens regularly.

“Yes.”

“Still. She doesn’t come to see me enough. Here I am, with this terrible life, in this terrible
taudis,
and no one comes to see me. I’m stuck here alone all day, with no family, and no friends. I don’t have anyone I can talk to, and no one cares how lonely I am. If you weren’t so selfish, you’d be here looking after me, making sure I’m not lonely.”

Sylvie takes a deep breath. I won’t react, she tells herself. I won’t take the bait.

“What about all the classes, Mom? There are activities all day that are really interesting. Last week they were doing découpage, remember? We went together, but you refused to do it.”

“I did?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon. Around two.”

“Don’t be late.” There is an audible click as Clothilde rings off.

Mark is fast asleep when Sylvie peeks round the bedroom door. There is no point climbing back into bed beside him, spending the next three hours thinking about nothing and everything. She drops a light kiss on his cheek, then tiptoes softly out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

Downstairs, by the back door, is a large box filled with wax, next to it a box of essential oils. She may as well see whether she’s any good at making these candles after all.

*   *   *

After pouring herself freshly brewed coffee from the
cafetière
—her mother insisted fresh coffee must
only
be brewed in a
cafetière,
refusing even to call it a “French press”—Sylvie perches on a stool for a few minutes, inhaling the steam from the large cup before taking a tiny, tentative sip.

The kitchen, so ugly when they first saw it, is now charming. Eschewing the cold white-on-white that seemed to be the current trend, Sylvie had replaced the old melamine cabinets with open shelving, resting on pretty carved brackets, all painted a soft dove gray, stacked high with white plates and dishes.