Secrets of Paris (5 page)

“Do you need a ride home?” he asked.

“Actually, I’m going to the Place des Vosges, if you’re heading in that direction,” Lydie said.

“It’s not far out of my way,” he said. “Come along.”

W
AITING FOR
L
YDIE
McBride to arrive, Patrice walked through the cool rooms of her old house to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. She powdered her cheeks with a sable brush. Patrice loved the regality of makeup. She thought it courtly: the powder, the scents, the brilliant and subtle colors, reminiscent of queens and another age. She dabbed her finger in a pot of scarlet lip gloss and rubbed it over her lips.

Turning from the mirror, she walked directly into her bedroom. She couldn’t quite fathom why she felt so anxious about Lydie coming over. Patrice was used to visitors. Since marrying Didier, Patrice had entertained with a vengeance. Dutch diamond cutters, Hong Kong gold brokers, Australian gem dealers were always arriving with their wives, expecting to be courted with food and wine. Patrice had perfected a foreigner’s idea of the true
French dinner: paupiettes of sole, then leg of lamb, then cheeses, then petits fours.

For Didier’s family and French friends she usually served provincial dishes, the way they themselves did. Sausage and potatoes, pot-au-feu, roast chicken. Didier had known his two best friends since boyhood; his sister Clothilde lived half a mile away. At first they had seemed to embrace her without reservation—telling her all the old stories, making sure she knew where to find the best dry cleaner in Paris, giving her the best seat at their regular tables at Taillevant, La Coupole, Chez Georges.
That
had tipped her off—the way they always treated her with a certain
politesse
. Just last week Patrice had discovered a funky little
salon de thé
in the Place Dauphine, but when she invited Clothilde, Clothilde had insisted they go to her usual spot full of bourgeois matrons in the Rue Royale. Where, of course, she had insisted that Patrice take the seat with the best view.

Patrice had high hopes for Lydie. Although people said Patrice spoke French impeccably, it wasn’t the same as speaking your own language: the tongue was only part of it. She looked forward to talking to a married woman her own age, from the eastern United States, with an interesting career. She wondered whether Lydie would find her life frivolous; Patrice lived the life of a housewife and she knew it. In Boston she had managed an art gallery on Newberry Street. Although she had enjoyed meeting the artists, selling their work to appreciative collectors, Patrice had felt happy to give it up. Living in France, Patrice tried to experience everything as the French did—she felt grateful to Didier’s friends and sister for showing her the way, even if she also, simultaneously, resented them for it.

Patrice was drawn to things romantic, feminine, and venerable, and for those reasons alone, France suited her. She pulled the tufted chaise closer to the glass doors overlooking the cobbled
courtyard, and she settled down to read
Three Women of the Marais
. It was a scholarly work by Anne Dumas, in French, over a thousand pages long, about three noblewomen of the seventeenth century who had lived in the Marais, the quarter of Paris where the Place des Vosges was located, in houses that still stood.

When Patrice read about Madame de Sévigné, Ninon de Lenclos, and the Marquise de Brinvilliers, she left the twentieth century, literally left it: she went back three hundred years. She had the feeling that if a malady happened to strike her while immersed in
Three Women of the Marais
, no modern cure could help her. She couldn’t remember ever hearing the telephone ring while she was reading it; if it did, she could imagine the sound being as alien to her as it would to Madame de Sévigné. These were three fabulous women. They knew kings, ministers, and cardinals, and they managed their resources at a time when women rarely did. Telling their stories, which were racy, poignant, and brave, Anne Dumas illustrated the history of Paris at that time. Reading the book, Patrice had come to feel like the fourth woman of the Marais.

Kelly entered the room. She nodded and smiled without saying anything, not wanting to interrupt Patrice. Her silence seemed greater than a courtesy, and it really moved Patrice. She lowered her book. How many people could coexist the way they did? They knew how to stay out of each other’s way, yet they also enjoyed talking together. Patrice had found herself relying too strongly on Kelly’s companionship lately, another reason she felt glad Lydie McBride was coming over.

“I think I’ll go outside for a while,” Patrice said.

She was sitting in the Place, reading her book and sunning herself, when she saw Lydie pull up to her building in a car full of what appeared to be high school students. “Yoohoo!” Patrice called, provoking stares from proper French matrons also taking the sun.

Lydie spied her, waved, walked toward her.

“So, how was the malt shop?” Patrice asked.

Lydie grinned. “Aren’t they young? They’re models and an up-and-coming fashion designer.”

“I’m in a Chanel rut,” Patrice said, sounding but not feeling sad.

“That’s not so awful,” Lydie said.

Patrice noticed Lydie’s clothes, which were good. A sleek black suit, not haute couture, but well made. Heavy silver earrings and bracelets. Tiffany, probably. Saving her place, she closed her book. “Shall we go upstairs?”

“I’d love to,” Lydie said.

Patrice preceded Lydie through the barrel-vaulted arcade that led to her front door. She was composing a little speech in her mind; if she struck the right balance between housewife and tour guide, she wouldn’t sound as though she were bragging.

“These houses were built in 1612,” she said, “and Didier bought an apartment in one of them ten years ago, from descendants of the original owner. Pity they had to subdivide. Here’s the spot where Henri II died after someone put his eye out in a joust. They used to hold jousts in the square until Catherine de Medici called them off. She was Henri’s widow.” Patrice nodded toward a heavy wooden door whose panels were held together by iron bolts. “That’s an original door. A princess lives there.”

“The age of Europe knocks me out,” Lydie said. “Everything seems venerable and ancient.”

“America is practically brand new,” Patrice said. Usually people were impressed when she mentioned the princess. It pleased her that Lydie was not. Then she pushed the button beside her front door, and they stepped off the square into a cobbled courtyard. Patrice led Lydie up one flight of stairs. “We don’t need an elevator for one flight because Didier and I are spry and youthful, but
you should see certain older Parisians who come to dinner. Of course we tell them an elevator would spoil the character of the building.”

“Does every Paris building have some excuse for not having an elevator?” Lydie asked. “Our concierge told Michael there’s an old man in our building who has blocked an elevator for years because when he dies he wants his pallbearers to carry him downstairs in dignity. He claims if there were an elevator, his pallbearers would use it.”

“Poor guy,” Patrice said, finding her key and unlocking the heavy door. “He’ll probably keel over on the street and never even get to travel dead through the building.” She glanced around for Kelly, heard water running in the kitchen.

“This is truly incredible,” Lydie said, surveying the interior.

“It’s nice, isn’t it? Didier already had it when I married him, so I can’t take credit.” Patrice glanced at the Gobelins tapestry and wondered what a stylist like Lydie would make of it. She wondered whether Lydie would realize that many of the other pieces were copies. Most people could not.

Lydie turned around and around, her gaze lighting on the important pieces in a way that satisfied Patrice. Warm light slanting through the front windows made Lydie’s hair look more golden than red. When Patrice knew her better she would suggest a hair salon that specialized in the use of real Luxor henna. “Is Didier a collector?” Lydie asked.

“Well, mainly he just raided his grandmother’s attic, but yes, he does enjoy collecting.”

“Is d’Origny Bijoutiers …?” Lydie began.

“The family business,” Patrice said. She felt so happy to have Lydie over. She had really missed it, the casual visit to or from a friend. “Just wanted to say hi,” she used to say to Lynn or Holly, her two best friends in Boston. A conversation of no particular
importance would ensue over tea or a drink: some gossip, or perhaps the story of a small disagreement with her boss. Occasionally a lengthy reminiscence about the past. About old boyfriends. Such a conversation with Clothilde would never be possible.

“Let’s sit down,” Patrice said. “Can I get you something?”

“Not right now,” Lydie said. “A couple of hours with those models has shown me the need to starve.”

“I think you look great,” Patrice said.

They both smiled, recognizing familiar patterns of girl talk.

“Tell me how you met your husband,” Patrice said.

“We first met in high school. We grew up in New York.”

“High school sweethearts?”

“No, we didn’t know each other well. I went to the convent school and he went to the boys’ school next door. I was too radical to go for him at the time. He played sports, for one thing. Basketball and soccer. I went for solitary types—I had a mad crush on a priest.”

“So, when did you see the light and fall for Michael?”

“We both went away to college. We would run into each other in New York on vacations, but we were seeing other people. Then five or so years later we both ended up working in the city. I was painting, trying to get galleries to show my work. I started working as a stylist to make money. An architectural magazine hired me to do a piece in Washington. Michael happened to be there at the same time … that’s when we fell in love.”

“That’s a romantic story,” Patrice said.

“Things were really good then,” Lydie said, making Patrice wonder how they were now.

“Do you ever feel homesick for America?” Patrice asked.

The smile left Lydie’s face, replaced by an expression dark and confusing to Patrice. A few seconds passed before Lydie spoke. “Yes,” she said finally. “I miss my mother … and father.”

“You’re an only child? So am I,” Patrice said.

“We were a close family.”

“ ‘Were’?” Patrice asked.

Lydie nodded but said nothing. She looked so upset, Patrice felt a wave of tenderness toward her. But the moment was awkward; Patrice really didn’t know Lydie well enough to press her. So she did what she felt most comfortable doing in these emotional situations: she bulldozed the conversation into something they could laugh over.

“My mother’s planning to visit. I’ve known about it, in an abstract sort of way, for a while now. But now she’s set the date—the last week in July.”

Lydie looked interested. “Aren’t you happy?” she asked.

“Not exactly,” Patrice said. “She’ll be exhausted the first week, pepping up just in time for August, when Paris closes down and heads for the beach. My mother hates the beach. And Didier and I plan to go to Saint-Tropez for the entire month.”

“Can’t you talk about it with her? Maybe convince her to change the dates?”

“You are making the obvious mistake, assuming my mother is a reasonable woman. Once my mother makes her plans, they are cast in stone forever. You know, she’s just like the meter maid who tells you once her pen starts writing the ticket it can’t stop.”

“Where does your mother live?”

“Boston.”

“How can someone who lives in Boston hate the beach? With all that New England coastline?”

“Oh, she adores the
shore
—it’s the beach she can’t stand. You know—sand, sunbathing, fun. I’m just imagining the conflict between her and Didier. He goes on vacation to swim and get a tan. So do I, for that matter. But I can just see my mother, trying to drag us to the Matisse chapel at Vence or the ruins in Nîmes.
A trip to Europe doesn’t count for her without one cathedral a day.”

Lydie laughed. “Put her on a tour bus.”

“She doesn’t speak a word of French. She learned the language in college, but she feels it’s the French’s duty to speak English. She considers herself a patriot.”

“How does Didier take that?”

“Oh, my God. It’s like dueling anthems: she’s ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and he’s ‘La Marseillaise.’ You have to realize: my husband feels guilty every day of his life for being too young to join his father and brothers in the Resistance. He truly loves France. Never mind—tell me about your work. Done anything especially interesting lately?”

“Last week a fashion magazine hired me to do a piece on what men carry in their pockets. So I had to think up the types. A businessman, an artist, a tennis player, a priest—and then I went around town borrowing and buying things I thought each one would have in his pockets.”