Precious Gifts (22 page)

“Sure.” He was curious about it. It sounded like an interesting old relic to him.

They walked there after breakfast. It was near the Invalides, Napoleon's tomb, on the rue de Varenne. They walked past the Rodin Museum and Matignon and continued down the street. She took out a key, and opened one of the heavy doors, and stepped over the high threshold into an elegant courtyard. The house was a quadrangle, with a part of the house on each side of the square. There was a wing for the guardian, large stables for the carriages, and ahead of them a spectacular house in immaculate condition.

Aidan stopped to look at her as she rang the bell at the guardian's lodge, and the man greeted her warmly when he appeared. She introduced him to Aidan, and they walked toward the main part of the house, and up a short flight of white marble steps that were spotless. Aidan felt as though they were visiting someone, not touring an empty house. And she always felt that way, too. She remembered her parents too well here, and even Paul and her own children.

She took Aidan's hand in her own then, and as soon as Luc, the guardian, opened the door, she led Aidan into the front hall, with original seventeenth-century wood floors, exquisite moldings and boiseries, and a huge chandelier overhead that was covered to protect it. Everything was immaculate and in perfect condition. There were crystal sconces and enormously high ceilings, which had been painted with clouds and angels. She led him through three small sitting rooms into a large living room, looking out at a perfectly manicured garden, filled with flowers and trees in neat designs. There was a formal dining room, where her parents had given grand dinners, and even a ballroom that looked like Versailles.

Upstairs she took him into countless beautiful bedrooms, including her parents', their elegant dressing rooms, and the room she had stayed in as a child. There was a remarkable library still filled with books. And all the furniture was carefully covered. The only thing missing from the walls were the paintings, which she had long since sold or taken to New York, most of which had originally been purchased by her grandfather. There were also seventeenth-century murals, which were still intact, and some of the walls were upholstered in fabrics. It was easily one of the most beautiful houses in Paris.

Aidan hadn't said a word since they entered, and as they sat in her mother's private sitting room, looking at the garden below, she glanced at him and saw how stunned he was.

“It's beautiful, isn't it? Now you can see why I don't sell the house. I just can't.” She was still deeply attached to it, and everything it represented in her life, her childhood, her parents, her marriage, even though she hadn't stayed there in years. And being there, he had understood several things that hadn't been clear to him before, but were now.

“It's a museum,” Aidan said in a hushed voice, as Luc waited discreetly for them downstairs. “I can't even imagine living here as a child, or as an adult.” The shabby cottage he had grown up in had flashed instantly into his mind. The contrast underscored all the differences between them, like lightning striking his head. He felt dizzy, he was so overwhelmed.

“It's a very special house,” Véronique said simply. She didn't say it to brag, she looked at it as home. And it told him who she was. He was floored. She was so modest and unassuming that he had never suspected something like this. And it was equally obvious that she could afford to keep it. Every inch of the house was meticulously maintained. She led him back downstairs then and they went back to the courtyard, as Luc pointed to the roof, explained the problem to her, of rusting gutters and tiles that were coming loose on the mansard. He was afraid of leaks that winter, which they had always avoided until now. But he admitted that it would be an expensive job to replace the roof instead of doing minor repairs. She listened and then nodded.

“I think you should do the full job now,” she said firmly. She didn't want to risk the house.

“I thought you'd say that, and I agree,” Luc said, nodding. “But I wanted you to decide. It's a lot of money,” he told her regretfully.

“So would be repairing the house.” He knew that, too, but tried to save her money wherever he could.

Véronique walked Aidan into the garden then, with its fragrant flowers and perfectly arranged flower beds. There was an old swing that her children had used. And with a last glance around, they crossed the courtyard. She thanked Luc, and a few minutes later they left. Aidan looked like he was about to faint. She thought he had fallen in love with the house, and she was pleased. He stood rooted to the sidewalk on the rue de Varenne, and stared at her like someone he'd never met.

“Who are you?” he said, with a panicked expression.

“What do you mean?” She didn't understand his question. It made no sense to her.

“Just that. Who are you that you grew up in a house like that, and can afford to hang on to it forever? Do you know what I grew up in, Véronique? A shack that should have been condemned, with a tiny bedroom for my parents, and a bed on the living room floor for me, and half the time we had nothing to eat because my father drank our grocery money. Our whole house was smaller than one of your bathrooms. What the hell are you doing with me?”

“I love you. I'm sad you grew up that way,” she said with pain in her eyes. “I hate all the bad things that happened to you…your father…your mother dying…not just that you were poor. Sad things happened to me, too. It's not about the house. I love the house, and I was lucky to live here, but that doesn't change the fact that we love each other, Aidan.” She sounded certain as she said it.

“I don't belong in your world,” he said with a grim expression as they started walking down the street. He looked agonized.

“You're not in love with a world, you're in love with a woman, and I'm in love with you. I don't care what you do and don't have.”

“I don't want anything from you. Do you understand that?” He stopped walking and was shouting at her and didn't even know it as people stared.

“I know that,” she said quietly.

“All this time I thought your ex-husband had the money, and he'd been generous with you. It's your money, isn't it? It was all you…this house…the château….Was he rich, too?” Aidan was overwrought, and she knew she couldn't do anything to calm him down. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“I thought it would be rude to say I had the money. And to answer your question, he had nothing. And I didn't care. In fact, it became clear later on that that was why he married me. It didn't matter. I loved him, we had three children. Having money doesn't make me who I am.”

“Oh, yes it does!” he bellowed at her. “It's a whole lifetime of living like this, of having everything and not knowing how poor people live.”

“Why are you punishing me for that? I'm responsible about what I have. I give money to help people. Why is it my fault that my family had money? Why are you blaming me?”

“You should have told me,” he snarled at her as they started walking again. “It would never work between us. How could it? And your kids would think I'm after your money.”

“They'd figure out eventually that you're not. And I'm not giving up our future for them. They have their lives, I have a right to mine. You're a good person, Aidan. I love you. It's not fair to punish me because I own that house or lived there as a child. Can I only be a good person if I slept on the floor and starved? Why? Do you think you have an exclusive on goodness because you were deprived, and I'm a bad person because my family had money? What does that have to do with us?”

“You can't understand anything about me,” he said angrily.

“Then you shouldn't have pushed me out of the way of the Ferrari if I wasn't worth saving, or followed me around Venice. We have a right to this if we want it. It's not about rich people and poor people. It's about two people who love each other, and I don't give a damn if you grew up rich or poor, except that I'm sorry it was painful for you, and I don't care what you have now.”

“Of course not. You're rich. Why should you care? You're everything I've hated all my life.”

“And what if you were wrong? What if there are bad poor people and good rich people? Now, wouldn't that be a surprise.” He didn't answer as he stormed along, and she kept up with him. They were all the way back to her place before he spoke again. He stood outside her apartment building and looked down at her miserably.

“Do you want me to leave?” he offered.

“Of course not. I'm not the one with the problem here. You are. For God's sake, Aidan, grow up. Okay, so I have money. So what? And if you can't love me in spite of that, sod off.” He looked at her in amazement then and burst out laughing.

“I can't believe you said that to me. Oh my God! You did it! You told me to sod off.” He couldn't stop grinning.

“I'm sorry, but you deserved it.” She looked embarrassed.

“Maybe I did. But you've got to admit, it's a hell of a shock to fall in love with a woman and think she's a little rich, and then find out you have a house like that, gave your husband a château, and God knows what else you have and could buy all of Paris if you wanted to.”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, I wasn't ready for this. And you're so goddamn discreet, I never knew. Other than the hotels you stay at, but so do a lot of people with, I suspect, less money than you.”

“That's how it's supposed to be. Discreet. Do you want me to act like Nikolai and wear a gold and diamond watch and have a five-hundred-foot boat?”

“God forbid. And why are you so tough on your kids and make them all work for a living as if none of you had a dime?”

“Because I don't want them to be lazy or spoiled. Whatever they get later is something else. For now, I want them all to have jobs and work hard and live on what they make.”

“Do they know about all this?” He waved vaguely toward the house on the other side of the river.

“Of course.”

“And that it's your money and not their father's?”

She nodded. “I don't make an issue of it, but they figured it out a long time ago. He was very spoiled.”

Aidan was shaking his head as they walked up the crooked stairs, and he collapsed on the couch in her small sitting room. Although comfortable and charming, this was a far cry from the house he had just seen. She was definitely low key about her wealth and didn't show off, even if she lived well.

“I have to think about this,” he said, trying to calm down. “I never thought I'd get involved with someone like you. I've never had this problem before. It certainly makes an ass of all my theories for all these years.” She nodded at that, and he walked out to the kitchen to get a bottle of wine and poured himself a glass. “You're hard on my nerves,” he complained.

“You're not so easy on mine either,” she said, looking at him, with all the love she felt for him in her eyes. “I love you, Aidan. For richer or poorer, better or worse. I don't care what either of us has.”

“Obviously. It's up to me to say that. I need to think about it. I'll let you know how I feel,” he said. Then he leaned over and kissed her hard on the mouth, and before either of them knew what had hit them, they were in her bed and making love more passionately than ever before. There was a frenzy and desperation to it, and they were both out of breath when it was over, and she looked over at him with a small smile.

“Wow…you make love to me even better now that you know how rich I am,” she teased him, and he grinned.

“Oh, sod off,” he said, and kissed her again.

V
éronique and Aidan spent two weeks together in Paris, and after the initial shock of his discoveries about her fortune, he slowly calmed down. It took him a few days, but he started developing a sense of humor about it, which she thought was a good sign. It had been a stunning discovery for him, but the truth was that it changed nothing between them, as Véronique had pointed out to him.

They were devastated to leave each other when they left Paris, but Bertie's lawyer wanted to depose her, she had some things to do, and she needed to get back to New York. She promised to come back in a few weeks. It seemed like an eternity to both of them. Their time together had been idyllic. They went for long walks in the Bois de Boulogne and Bagatelle, went to exhibits they wanted to see, dug through the auction rooms at the Hôtel Drouot, which she introduced him to and he loved. They cooked dinner, went to restaurants, talked for hours, or made love and took naps. He even read poetry to her one night, after they found a book he had always loved at a bookstall along the Seine. There was nothing about any of their time together that didn't work, in spite of the difference in their ages and their backgrounds. It just didn't matter.

They left from Charles de Gaulle at the same time, and he walked her to her gate and kissed her, and waved as she went down the walkway to the plane. He felt as though he had lost his best friend when she left. And he called her on her cell before her plane took off. All he wanted was for her to come back soon, and she promised she would.

He had work to do in London, preparing for another gallery show. And she was busy the moment she got to New York.

On her second day back, Juliette called her. She had sold her sandwich shop and was ecstatic. Now she could leave for France. She was determined to leave in a week. In the end it took her two weeks. Joy and Ron flew in for a meeting with a cosmetics company that wanted Joy to be their face in a national ad campaign for a year that Ron had set up. It was a very big deal, and they were both excited about it. It was looking like a sure thing, and if she got it, they were going to pay her a fortune. And it would catch everyone's attention and further her career.

Joy arrived the night before Juliette left for France. It was a rare opportunity for the three sisters to have dinner together, and they invited Véronique to join them. And Ron had agreed somewhat nervously to have a drink with Véronique to meet her before the girls' dinner. Ron came to the apartment with Joy, and his eyes nearly fell out of his head when he saw her mother's art.

“Holy shit, are those real?” he whispered before Véronique walked in, and Joy nodded, with a grin.

“Most of them were my great-grandfather's,” she whispered back. “He was an art dealer.” Ron didn't even want to think about the fortune the paintings alone represented, as Véronique walked into the room in slacks and a simple sweater, looking strikingly like Joy. She smiled at the tall handsome man standing next to her daughter. He gazed adoringly at Joy, and then anxiously at her mother. He suddenly felt like an awkward kid in the elegant room as he met Véronique.

“I'm so happy to meet you,” Véronique said warmly, and offered him a drink. He wanted a vodka on the rocks but didn't think he should. He hesitated. “How about champagne?” She asked for his help opening a bottle of Cristal in the kitchen. She poured them each a glass and they went back to the living room to sit down. She praised him for how much he was helping Joy with her career, and Joy looked touched—her mother was doing everything she could to put Ron at ease—and slowly he relaxed. He could tell she was a nice woman, with her daughter's best interests at heart. She admitted to having been unhappy about Joy's acting career for several years but said she had finally come around, and was impressed by what he'd done to help.

“And this is only the beginning,” he said, smiling at Joy. “She's going to be a big star one day. I'd love to see her get a part where she can use her singing talent, too. And this ad campaign will be great exposure for her. The whole country will see her face for a year.” Véronique liked hearing that he respected her singing talent, too, and agreed that Joy had a fabulous voice.

They chatted for an hour and finished the bottle of champagne. Ron had three glasses and had fallen in love with Véronique by the time they had to leave for dinner, and he kissed her on both cheeks when he left them on the street. And Véronique wished him luck at the meeting the next day. He waved as their cab drove away. Véronique turned to Joy with a broad smile.

“I love him. He's smart, honest, his ideas for you are terrific, and he's crazy about you.” She was immensely pleased. Joy beamed at her mother.

“He's such a good person, Mom,” she said in a voice choked with emotion as her mother hugged her.

“So are you. I'm so proud of you,” Véronique said, and meant it.

“Thank you,” Joy said with tears in her eyes, and held her mother's hand all the way downtown to the restaurant. It was a rare close moment between them, and Véronique hoped it would be the first of many.

Juliette and Timmie were meeting them at Balthazar in SoHo to celebrate Juliette's departure. Juliette was excited when she arrived for their girls' dinner. She had spoken to Jean-Pierre Flarion half a dozen times to tell him she was coming and wanted to decide what part of the project to tackle first. And she was planning to see Elisabeth and Sophie, on a weekend Sophie would be home from Grenoble.

And Timmie thought she might have found a home for the shelter, and was happy about that. And Joy and Véronique looked like they had a secret. Véronique told them after they ordered that she had just met Ron and loved him. Timmie had met him the night before and liked him, too. “He's a keeper,” Véronique confirmed, as Joy agreed.

“You all have great projects under way,” Véronique said admiringly. “I think I'm going to go back to painting,” she added, and Timmie was surprised.

“Why? You haven't painted in years. Why now?” She acted as though Véronique had said she was going to become a belly dancer in a Moroccan soukh.

“Why not? I have lots of time on my hands. And I saw so much art in Italy this summer, it inspired me.” She was excited about it, but they weren't.

“It just seems silly to start a career at your age,” Timmie continued. “You don't need to. And if you take portrait commissions, you'll be tied down, and people will be telling you what to do.”

“That's true. But I think I'd enjoy it.” They all stared at her blankly as she said it. They were ecstatic about what they were doing, and so was she for them, but the idea that she also wanted to be excited about something seemed silly to them. “What do you think I ought to do?”

“Travel a little, relax, see friends,” Timmie answered, and Joy added to it. It sounded incredibly boring to Véronique as Timmie outlined the life she should live at only fifty-two.

“Be there for us when we need you,” she added. It was honest, and they had never been quite as candid about it, that she should do nothing but wait to hear from them if they needed her. A mother eternally on call, with nothing else to do.

“You guys don't need me very often,” she pointed out. “And I need to do more than that. I've been trying to decide for several years what to do, now that you've grown up. And in his will even Daddy thought I should go back to painting. Actually, Nikolai asked me to do a portrait of him the next time he's in New York.”

“Watch out for him,” Joy warned her, laughing. “He seemed like he had the hots for you when we were on the boat.”

“I don't think he does,” Véronique said, smiling at them. “But he'd be fun to paint. He has a very expressive face.”

“And a very
im
pressive boat,” Joy added. They had talked about it for weeks after.

“Thank God you don't need to worry about that, Mom,” Juliette said kindly. “You don't need to get married again, or even go out with anyone. You're totally self-sufficient.” She meant well, but Véronique found what she said depressing.

“I wouldn't go out with, or marry, someone because I ‘needed' to financially. I'd go out with someone, or be with them, because I love them.” They looked instantly uncomfortable when she said it.

“Well, you don't need to,” Timmie said, dismissing the idea, but Véronique decided to pursue it.

“What if I wanted to? If I fell in love with someone,” Véronique said, and all three women stared at her again.

“Like Nikolai?” Joy was shocked.

“No, not Nikolai. Someone. Anyone. What would you all think?”

“We'd think you were crazy,” Timmie said instantly. “Why would you want the headache, at your age? Besides, there are no decent guys out there for women your age. They're all married.” She had managed to crush all hope in one fell swoop. “There aren't even any decent guys at my age, let alone yours. Besides, Mom, you're better off the way you are, and you have us.” The blinding insensitivity of what she'd said took Véronique's breath away. But it was a revelation as well.

“I have you, but you all have busy lives, as it should be. How often do we talk to each other? Not very often. Once a week? Every ten days? You all want to have partners in your life—why wouldn't I?” They wanted her available to them when they needed her, but not to be bothered with her the rest of the time. And they didn't mind at all that she was alone. In fact, it suited them better.

They looked at her as though she had momentarily lost her mind, and then Joy changed the subject, and they talked about Ron and her meeting for the ad campaign the next day. Juliette rhapsodized about the château. And Timmie talked about her homeless shelter. But the idea of Véronique having a life, or a project, or going back to painting, or meeting a man, was of total indifference to them, and seemed absurd. She was supposed to be chained to a wall, waiting for them, for the rest of her life. It made her realize that to them, she wasn't really a person, she was a thing. An object for their convenience. A service bureau. She was still thinking about it at home that night after dinner. It had depressed her hearing their point of view. Her happiness and well-being were of absolutely no interest to them. And she told Aidan about their conversation when he called.

“Children are an ungrateful lot,” he said. “That's why I've never wanted any. I'm sure it doesn't even occur to them that you want someone in your life, don't want to be alone forever, and could be happy with a man.”

“They act like I'm a hundred years old,” she said, hurt by how insensitive and self-centered they were. She was constantly worried about their happiness, and they never gave a thought to hers.

“No,” Aidan said sensibly, “they think you're their mother, who's ageless and timeless, superhuman, and who has no needs of her own. They think they can pull you out of the closet whenever they need you to comfort them or clean up a mess, and then shove you back in when they're finished with you. Kind of like a Hoover,” he said, and she laughed at the image of a vacuum cleaner.

“Exactly like that,” she agreed. “It was an awful feeling listening to them. They don't care about me at all. It never dawns on them how I feel. They think I'm a machine. They don't even want me to paint, they think it's pointless, why bother?”

“Well, I want you to paint. I think you should go back to doing portraits.”

“I've been thinking about it,” she said, but didn't mention Nikolai. And she had no idea if he'd actually call her to pursue the commission.

“When are you coming back?” he asked plaintively.

“I don't know yet. Timmie and I have our depositions in the lawsuit.” They had taken Juliette's a few days before, before she left for France, and she said it had been a nonevent and the questions were boring. And they were going to do Joy's in L.A., at Brian's request. “As soon as we're finished with the depositions, I can figure out when I'm coming back.”

“Soon, please,” he said with a wistful voice. He hadn't mentioned his qualms about her fortune since a week before she'd left Paris. She was hoping he would forget about it, or get used to it in time.

After they hung up, she thought about her daughters and what they had said. She didn't see how she could even mention the subject of Aidan if they thought she was so over the hill that she shouldn't be dating, and should stay alone for the rest of her life. What was she supposed to do with that?…
oh and by the way…
I
have a lover who's eleven years younger than I am, and we never get out of bed….
She couldn't even imagine introducing him to them after what they'd said. And she hated keeping him a secret. But they had expressed very clearly to her that they had no interest in her life, and didn't even think she needed a life, an activity, or a man. Just travel and friends, and them. She knew they loved her, but they never thought about what would be good for her, only for themselves. In that they were not unlike their father, who had only considered himself and what he wanted, all his life. It made for a relationship with them that was entirely a one-way street, which was precisely what she didn't want, but what they had. And they would have been totally horrified if they'd known that she and Aidan were in love. It made her sad to realize that they didn't know her at all, and didn't want to. And they liked knowing she was alone, which made her more accessible for them. It made her even more grateful to have Aidan. She would have been miserable without him if she only had her children. Aidan said that was the nature of all children, but she wasn't so sure.

Véronique's deposition in the lawsuit from Bertie was uneventful, although it took forever. It was five hours, with a brief break for lunch. It took place in Brian McCarthy's offices, in his conference room. Arnold was there to lend moral support she didn't need, and she was very impressed by Brian, and thought he was a very good attorney. He objected in the right places and had instructed her carefully beforehand what not to answer, and how not to fall for Bertie's lawyer's tricks. She was well prepared. They asked her a great many financial questions, and as she told Aidan later, it was boring.