Gabrielle (5 page)

had I done something wrong?—she would pull me to her, stroke my hair, and tell me all about what my mother had been like when she was my age, growing up in the hills of Provence.

We spent several weeks every summer in the south of France and my grandmother made sure that I saw all the places my mother had played as a child. If someone had asked me a week ago how much I knew about my mother, I would have said everything, that my grandmother couldn't possibly have left anything out.

Now, even though it hurt me to ask her the question, I had to make absolutely sure.

“She knew you were a courtesan, didn't she?”

“Yes.”

“How did she feel knowing that her father was one of your—?”

After our conversation the week before I should have felt more comfortable taking about this, but I wasn't. This was yet another sentence I couldn't finish, more words I didn't want to wrap my lips around.

“Did she ever wish that you had been like everyone else? That you had been married when you got pregnant?”

My grandmother was silent for many moments. “At first, she was too young to understand. And she was not the only girl without a father in the village. But as you know, my mother was still a beautiful woman then, and still working in Paris.”

“Working? You mean as a—?”

“Yes. Your great-grandmother was one of the most widely respected, most widely in demand courtesans in all of France. And so, even though I had saved and invested enough money to retire after having your mother, it would have been impossible to shield your mother from our world. And the truth was, I never intended to do that, just as I never intended to shield you from it.”

“Because you don't think there's anything wrong with it?”

“Do not misunderstand me,
ma petite
. There can be much darkness in that world. Just as there can be darkness between a husband and wife. Some people crave that darkness, even if it will be their destruction.”

There was no reason for me to think of Dylan, but the mention of darkness—of destruction—had his face sliding into my brain.

My grandmother's shrewd eyes held mine. “You have met someone, yes? That is why you are coming to me with questions.”

Instinctively, I wanted to keep Dylan to myself. Which was strange, because I had always shared everything with my grandmother. I couldn't think of one time in my life when she had made me feel bad about a decision I'd made.

Fear that this would be the first time had me holding my cards close to my chest. Of course, my silence was answer enough.

“But we were talking about your mother,” she said then, as if she understood that I could not yet talk about him. “About whether she was ashamed of me, and her grandmother too?”

“
Grandmaman
, that's not what I asked.”

“No, but it's what you meant,” she said gently.

I felt suddenly uncomfortable in my own skin. I wasn't used to feeling this way.

It was the same way I felt whenever I was with Dylan.

“At first, when she learned of her destiny, your mother was angry. She called me names.

She told me she wished that she had never been born. And then, she tried to punish me, hurt me.

But she could not do that without hurting herself, too.”

God, I hated to hear her talk about my mother like this. So different from all the ways we had ever talked about her before—the difference between butterflies and sunshine and hail and lightning.

And what on earth did she mean by
When she learned of her destiny
?

“Forget it,
Grandmaman
. I don't want to know any more.”

“You must know,” my grandmother said, in a voice barely above a whisper. “There is no turning back now. I knew I would have to tell you soon. Very soon. Before your eighteenth birthday.”

Her words made me shiver. “What are you talking about?” I asked, even though I honestly didn't want to know.

“Your mother left school, left home, left my house for a boy who was not good enough for her. I do not think she would have done it if I had been honest with her from the start. All your life I have tried my hardest to be honest with you. But there are things that I've held back because I thought you were too young, because I thought you would not understand. Because I could not bear it if you hated me, too.”

She reached for her cup of tea but her hand trembled, and for the very first time it occurred to me that my grandmother was an old woman.

One day she would leave me, too, just as my mother had.

But the thing was, it suddenly occurred to me, maybe I was already losing her. Because obviously, she had been keeping things from me.

And maybe, when we got to the end of this conversation, nothing would be the same.

“The man she chose in her fit of pique was not a good man. They were married on her eighteenth birthday, and I knew why they had chosen that day. It was a message to me, to your great-grandmother, to her mother before her. She was trying to turn her back on her legacy, trying to turn her back on everything that she was by marrying him. And still, as her mother, I wished her nothing but love. I wished for her all the things that she wanted, all the things in her heart. But I had never once seen love grow out of such impetuous behavior. Out of anger. I had only ever seen it nurtured over time, nurtured through the love of art and music and books and travel. They were all the things that I had passed on to your mother, all the gifts she held inside her. But her belief in the wrongness of being a courtesan—in her legacy, her destiny—made her care badly for herself.”

There was that word again:
Destiny.

“Her husband treated her terribly.” My grandmother wasn't looking at me anymore, gazing instead into a distant memory. “After all, he believed she was born of a prostitute, wasn't she? He made her work while he gambled their money. He stayed out all night while she woke at dawn to scrub floors. He cheated on her with cheap women and brought home diseases that made her ill. But it was when she came home with a bruise across her cheek that I knew he had to be stopped.”

I felt all the blood go out of my face and started to shiver. I wanted to put my hands over my ears and drown out my grandmother's words. I wanted to run out of the room and throw myself down on the bed to cry as I once had. Instead, I sat there listening to the horrible things my mother had been through.

It wasn't enough that she had died so young, that she'd lost the man she loved before he could even see his child born.

“Her husband hurt her?”

But I don't think my grandmother even heard me, she was so lost in her horrible memories.

“As a courtesan, I had close connections with people who had great power. I asked those people to make certain that her husband knew what it was like to be controlled, to be hurt. To make sure he never touched my baby like that again.”

By now, I was curled up into a ball on the couch. The room was perfectly warm, but I was frozen solid from the inside out.

Somehow I got the words out: “Was he my real father?”

“No.”

Relief washed through me. I hated to think that my father could have been an abusive jerk.

“A bully like that cannot stand to think that he will not have someone to hurt. So he divorced her and she came back home. But those months had changed her, made her cautious, made her afraid. I wanted more than anything to see life back in her. It is why we came to America. Because I could see the light in her eyes dim every time she walked the streets of her marriage. Slowly, I convinced her to re-enter the world. And that is where your father came in.”

My grandmother smiled. “He was a lovely man. So kind. So gentle.” She stopped speaking and took a deep breath. “And he was married.” Her eyes locked on mine. “Your mother,
ma petite
, had also made the choice to become a courtesan. And that was the life in which she finally found love.”

I shot up off the couch, the blanket I had pulled around me falling to the ground. “No!

She wasn't. She wasn't a courtesan. People don't do that anymore. Maybe a long time ago when you were young they were still doing it, but not now!”

My grandmother was up now, her hand outstretched as she came toward me. “Ma petite, I have struggled with telling you for so long, but I cannot stand to think that what happened to your mother could ever happen to you. I will do anything, anything I have to, to save you from the pain that she suffered.”

My head was spinning, my stomach churning. “You lied to me,
Grandmaman
. You lied to me, all these years. How could you?”

“How could I have told you before now? You were just a girl, and even though you are on the verge of becoming a woman, I can see how much hearing this hurts you. Your mother loved you so much, and your father did, too.”

“Did my father's wife know about me? Did she know about my mother?”

I expected her to say no. To deny that any of this was out in the open.

“Yes. She did.”

My hands were in fists as I faced my grandmother. She tried to pull me into her arms, but I backed away.

With her, I had always felt love. Never, not once, had I questioned it.

For the first time in my life I felt alone.

Completely alone.

There was no one I could ask for verification of my grandmother's story. My mother was dead. My father was dead.

And then it hit me. There was someone I could ask: my father's wife.

“I can't talk about this anymore,
Grandmaman
.”

Her head was bowed, eyes bent to the ground, her next words barely rising above a whisper. “I understand there is much you must think about. But there is one more thing I must tell you. Tonight. The rest can wait.”

I still wanted to cover my ears with my hands like a child would do. But somewhere in my head, in my heart, I knew that I wasn't a little girl anymore, that I couldn't just run into my bedroom and hide under the covers and pretend that it had all been a bad dream.

My mother had been a courtesan.

And according to my grandmother, it had been her
choice
.

“I love you,
ma petite
.”

I wanted to say, “I know,
Grandmaman
,” but right then, I doubted everything. Every single thing. So I said nothing. I just stood there, my hands still in fists, every single part of me numb as I waited for her to tell me whatever it was that couldn't wait.

“You will be eighteen soon. And with your birthday will come a choice. A very important one.”

In the space between sentences, my brain rewound to her story about my mother. About how she'd married a horrible man on her eighteenth birthday, about how she'd done it in an act of defiance.

My legs were trembling so hard that I stopped trying to stand on them. Sinking back into the couch, I stared at her in disbelief. I knew what she was going to say.

I knew.

Destiny.

My destiny.

“No. No way. I'm not going to become a courtesan.”

“Please, do not try to make any decisions yet,” she begged me. “There is a special
soirée
I would like you to attend first.”

“A party? What kind of party? One for you to sell me off to the highest bidder?”

I couldn't believe this was how I was talking to my grandmother. I couldn't believe this was where my question had taken us.

That wondering about my mother had somehow turned into
my destiny to become a
courtesan.

“Oh,
ma petite
, I have made a grave mistake. I should have told you all about this, all about your mother years ago.”

“It's the twenty-first century,” I said, my words hard, angry. “I get it that back in France, things were different. But it's a different world now. I shouldn't even be thinking about marriage right now, let alone about becoming some rich guy's mistress.”

My grandmother flinched, but I was long past the point of caring.

“The choice will be entirely yours, Gabrielle. Just as it was your mother's choice. Just as it was my choice. Just as it was my mother's choice. You deserve everything. Absolutely everything.”

“And you honestly think that becoming some man's mistress—”

She interrupted me. “Companion.”

“Stop trying to make it sound like it isn't bad. Like it isn't dirty!” I yelled at her. I'd never felt anger like this, fury that took me over inside and out. And then it hit me: “You've been planning this for me my whole life, haven't you? You've been
grooming
me for this! Making sure I was a virgin for the biggest possible sale! That's why I know so much about art and music and painting and history. You've been making sure that some rich guy will appreciate the whore he's bought at night after I finish fu—”

Oh God. I couldn't say that word to my grandmother. Even when it was the one thing we'd been circling around all night.

Her mouth pulled together in a tight line. “You're right, we should stop discussing this tonight. Perhaps in the morning when you are calmer and have more questions, I will be able to find the right answers.”

“There are no right answers,
Grandmaman
. Becoming a courtesan is wrong. It's just plain sick and wrong. And you'll never convince me otherwise. Not even if you tell me a thousand stories of how it can be the path to true love.”

Grabbing my backpack, I ran from the room and out of her house.

I called Missy on my cell phone from the sidewalk. “Can I come over?”

“Sure,” she said, and then, “You sound funny. Is something wrong?”

“Everything.” I disconnected and shoved the phone back in my pocket.

Five minutes later I found her waiting for me outside on the steps to her building. “What is it? What's going on?”

I could feel tears welling up behind my eyes, but they wouldn't fall. I was still too numb, too shocked to react to what I'd just learned about my future—and my mother's past—in any kind of normal way. And that was probably why I tumbled headlong into giving up my biggest secret for the second time in one day.