Lessons in French (16 page)

thirt
y
-one

I rushed home to meet Portia.

As Orlando and I panted into the courtyard, we were greeted by a grinning Madame Fidelio. A
jeune monsieur très bien
had left flowers for me today, she said, handing me a large bouquet of pink and white peonies from Bastien, which I was cradling, incredulous, thinking about how much such out-of-season flowers could possibly cost, hearing Mom rant about the absurdity of South American flowers when there were perfectly good ones in our own backyard, when I bumped into Clarence and Henri.

“Thanks for walking Orlando,” said Clarence, obviously for Henri’s benefit since I walked Orlando every day. Despite his inherited wealth, Henri had no servants and Clarence didn’t like to appear soft.

Henri looked almost timidly at me, as though something had changed between us since last night’s turkey dinner, but then he turned to the peonies and gave them a familiar smile.

“I am telling our friend Clarence that I do not believe in guilt.” The flowers floated in the blue of his gaze. “Do you believe in guilt, Katie? Do you believe you have any responsibility you don’t deeply feel?”

I gave a demented smile and a hesitant head shake.

Clarence must have told him about Claudia, I thought, trying to catch Clarence’s attention with a look of significance. But his eyes were scattershot. He took Henri’s arm and began to pull him away.

“Christ, not now, Henri. Goodnight, Katie. Excuse us. We’re late for the opening of a dear friend. He’ll never forgive us.”

“But perhaps Katie would like to come to the gallery?”

“Thanks, but I’m having a drink with Portia.”

“Lovely,” said Clarence in a particularly unlovely voice as he dragged Henri off. After a few paces, though, he stopped, his back stiffened, and he turned around to me. He took his wallet from his pocket and handed me a one-hundred-franc note. “Here. The two of you have a good time.”

One hundred francs was an obscene amount of money. He must be atoning for something.

•   •   •

I tried to open the front door quietly so as to have some time to compose myself, into what I did not know, but I did know I was not ready to face Portia.

Ready or not, she heard me and called me into her bedroom to show me the clothes Lydia had bought her with Sally Meeks’s journalist discount. The new outfits were laid out on her bed and dressing table, draped over her chair.

“So?” she said brightly. The Valium must have worn off.

“Portia, your father just gave me, gave us, one hundred francs to buy our drinks tonight.”

“Oh, he’s obviously feeling guilty!” She laughed.

“Guilty for what?”

“My God, Kate, don’t be so serious! Mother asked him to come out to dinner with us, and he said he had to go to an opening with Henri, and she tried to make him feel bad.”

“Oh. That’s all.”

“He really is the world’s sweetest man, Daddy. I should admire him.” Then she laughed again. “I should try to be earnest, like you. Where on Earth did you get those amazing flowers? We have to get you a vase.” But she herself made no move to do so, turning instead to contemplate the spread of her purchases.

“Wow, gorgeous,” I stammered, splattering my gaze all over her display.

“Check out this Sonia Rykiel dress. Do you think the color will overwhelm me? It’s on the dark side, but I had to get it to go with these.” And she pulled out a pair of purple and gold Stephane Kélian shoes.

“Of course you did,” I said, weirdly recalling that Balzac had died, in debt, from a coffee overdose.

“Aren’t they kind of perfect together?”

“Is that agnès b, what you’re wearing?” I was realizing how many fashion brands Étienne had made me aware of as a kid. When he was being nice to me, we would flip through magazines together at the newsstand and he would tell me what was important.

“I love that you can recognize agnès b! It’s so refreshing. You should see the way people dress at Princeton. Most of the women look like my brother.”

“Frivolity is serious business,” I said, echoing Clarence.

How bittersweet it was to have escaped Portia’s jealous wrath only to envy her shoes.

Pulling open the door, Lydia smiled in on us, unabashedly glad that I was cheering Portia up. “I knew you two would get along,” she said. “Didn’t Portia and I do well today, Katherine? The clothes are fabulous this fall. Gorgeous peonies, my dear. I hope you didn’t pay for those yourself.” She winked. “You know where the vases are, don’t you?”

Portia was frowning anxiously at her backside in the mirror of her
armoire.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “You have no butt.”

Remember, Portia has the clothes, but I have the boy. There, I had thought it. Fucked up, as Christie would say. Deeply fucked up.

In order to dodge the feeling, I made a mental return to the sculpture of Balzac from what seemed like an earlier, more innocent time. Balzac once said that a debt was a work of art. Maybe Christie would lend me the money for a nice pair of heels to take to London.

“Mother,” said Portia, “Kate and I are going out for a drink. What time is dinner?”

“Our reservation is at eight-thirty. So, take your time. Oh, and here,” said Lydia. “Let me treat you girls to an apéro
.
” She handed Portia a fifty-franc note.

“Thank you, Lydia,” I said, comparing her cash to Clarence’s.

“Thank you, Mother,” said Portia so archly that I knew she was doing the same.

Flushed in artificial respite from her pain, Portia pulled on a new pair of high leather boots.

“Those are great,” I said.

Portia was a casualty, if not of privilege then of ambition. I found myself feeling sorry for her, clothes and all. Her boyfriend had dumped her. Her father was having an affair. Her mother went on competitive diets with her. Her brother hated her. And the friend she thought she was busy making at this very moment was nothing if not untrue.

But what could I do about it now? Leave? Absurd. Confess? To what, exactly? Push her away? Impossible when Lydia was corralling us. Maybe put up some kind of emotional wall? But where should the boundaries be? Did I actually like Portia, or could I simply not bear the thought of anyone not liking me?

“Hey, Kate,” came Joshua’s voice through the door. “Your mom’s on the phone.”

•   •   •

Behind a closed door, I was able to admit to Mom, for the first time, that I had certain doubts about this family.

I tried out an idea on her: “Have you ever thought that, in some way, you always desecrate what you love?”

I plucked a pink petal from one of my flowers and crushed it between my fingers.

“Excuse me? Who’s desecrating what over there? Is it time for you to come home, young lady?”

“Mom, it’s interesting. I mean, if you saw how marvelous these people could be and then how they treat each other sometimes, you’d wonder, how can people who have so much beauty in their lives be so destructive? And you’d ask yourself if it isn’t some form of aristocratic waste. Claudia says there are some moments when Marxist interpretations are still valid.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I called to find out if you celebrated Thanksgiving.”

“Sorry, I meant to call yesterday, but things got hectic.”

“Well, I was invited to the Halls. It was delicious. Do they have turkey in Paris?”

I described Lydia’s meal. I didn’t bother explaining who the people around the table were, but I did tell the story of the vegan stuffing to try to wind my way back to my original point.

“Would you have made me special stuffing if I’d decided to become a vegan a few days before Thanksgiving?”

“I’m not so good at these hypotheticals, dear. We’ve established that. How’s your drawing?”

“You’re interested in my drawing?”

Wasn’t I supposed to be a lawyer?

“Do you need materials? I will sponsor materials. That I will sponsor. You need something of your own over there.”

“Thanks but I’ve got a sketchbook and pencils. That’s all I need for now.”

It seemed everyone in my life was pushing me to get to work. I wanted to tell her about Claudia’s pep talks and Lydia’s promise to look at my stuff soon, about Henri Cartier-Bresson and putting yourself in the way of chance, the decisive moment, Balzac in my sketchbook. I wanted to tell her about Clarence and Claudia’s love affair and to ask her how I should behave to Portia. But instead, I cradled the phone, hugged my flowers and let a quick wave of love wash over me.

“Don’t let these people make you forget yourself,” Mom said.

“Mom, we’ve been over this. I’m taking away something invaluable from this experience.”

“What’s that? What are you taking away that’s worth so much?”

“It’s called
savoir vivre.
”

•   •   •

Once I’d said goodbye to Mom, I called Bastien to thank him for the peonies. His mother answered. I listened for notes of heartbreak in her “
Je vous le passe, mademoiselle.”
Was she sad about getting divorced? But her voice was as unruffled as the spun-sugar coiffure I remembered from our one brief encounter in his living room. Christie and I were picking him up for dinner. Madame de Villiers was tapping her cigarette into a white lacquer ashtray. Her greeting was not warm, but it was not stingy either. We were pretty enough for her son, and, as Caucasian-Americans who had been to a good college, we were most likely not issued from the social dregs of our country. We were condoned.

When Bastien came on the line, I told him what a splash his bouquet was making in the Schell household and how approving Madame Fidelio was.

“But do
you
like them?”

“They’re beautiful. So kind of you. But I should be sending you flowers. You’re the one who is having a hard moment.”

He laughed.
“Ça ne se fait pas!”

Why not? Why wasn’t it done? I could send something big and masculine like birds of paradise.

It wasn’t possible, he insisted, for a girl to send a boy flowers. But if I wanted to cheer him up, I could come to Deauville at Christmastime with Christie. He had told his parents he didn’t want to be with one or the other for the holidays if they weren’t together. His father was staying in Paris and his mother was going to St-Tropez, which she preferred off-season. So, would I come?

I would try.

Would I at least be willing to commit to a lunch date tomorrow? He wanted to show me La Coupole. Did I like oysters?

•   •   •

Portia waited until we were framed inside the window of Café Flore
to get to the heart of the matter.

She lit a cigarette. “Listen, I know I shouldn’t be telling you this because my mom is your boss, but she’s sick. These clothes, this fussing over me and calling me too skinny when she used to say you can never be too skinny, it’s all guilt because she still talks to Olivier on the phone all the time. And I know she has plans to see him when she gets back to New York for Christmas. She’s infatuated with him. He feeds her crazy ego or something. She calls him at night when she’s drunk. She’s a drunk, you know. I can’t be telling you anything you don’t know there. She shouldn’t call Olivier at night. But she still does it. He’s told me. It is sick.” She was crying. “And so, so hurtful.”

I took a deep breath, tried to evade the crash of my own feelings, let it be all about them. “Well, maybe the person to talk to is Olivier. Tell him you don’t like it.”

As soon as I was done speaking, I was flooded with something like resolve. This was the moment to tell Portia! The flits of suspicion shadowing across her face as she looked at me, these were my cue. Tell her about Olivier and me. Tell her about her father’s affair so that she wouldn’t blame her mother for everything. Just let it all out! What was the worst that could happen?

“Portia?”

“Yes?” She was clearly startled by the urgency of my tone.

“I—have you thought that some people just aren’t happy? That they are looking for something?”

“Oh, has Daddy been philosophizing to you again?” She gave a deflated laugh.

“I suppose he has.” I sighed, giving into an overpowering reticence.

“He’s all talk, you know. Sweet Daddy.”

I gave a constricted smile which she must have read as empathy because she laughed again and told me I was becoming a friend.

Our champagne arrived. We
tchin-tchinned.
I slipped into a state of catatonic anxiety.

Portia dabbed her tears with the Art Nouveau border of her tiny napkin. She offered me a Gauloise and I accepted.

“Sometimes I wonder if my mom doesn’t want to fuck Olivier. Sometimes I even think she might have jumped him already. I wouldn’t put it past her.”

I had smoked a few times in college, enough not to hack, but I had no skills. I didn’t want to mimic her directly, so I glanced all around the room, picking up moves.

The cigarette bought me a minute to think the unthinkable. Lydia and Olivier? What? Of course, the world was perverse and nothing was impossible. This was Europe, after all. But no, Lydia and Olivier could not
actually
have slept together
,
virtually, maybe, but not actually. Virtually. Actually. Virtually.

“You know,” Portia continued, “Mother implies that she knows some dark secret about Olivier. She keeps hinting that there’s something he isn’t telling me, something that would totally change the way I feel. As if I don’t know how I feel! As if I couldn’t handle the truth and the two of them have to keep it from me in some sick pact they’ve formed.”

“But, Portia, I mean, what you’re saying is that the pact is all in your mom’s head, right? It’s about the way she makes you feel, not the truth?”

“Like I have any idea what the truth is! All I want is for him to be with me until the summer so I can get through the fucking year at school, and he says he wishes he could, as though there were some mysterious force pushing us apart. Or some fucking person.”

Portia was smoking faster and faster, creating a toxic cloud, a Versailles hairdo impossibly balanced on her dainty forehead. The Flore was pulsating to alternating currents of “virtually,” “actually,” “virtually.”