Monarch Beach (2 page)

“Amanda, did you get into Parsons?” she asked.

“Yes, but I don’t want to go,” I replied stubbornly.

“Amanda, you’ve been talking about Parsons for two years. You can’t put your life on hold for us. I’ll be here with your father.”

“Your mother is right,” my father said, nodding.

“I’m not going to Parsons. I want to stay right here. ” I fled upstairs. My parents may be pillars of strength, but I was an eighteen-year-old girl about to lose the only man I ever loved. I locked my bedroom door and cried until it was dark.

*   *   *

I sat on the bench by the lake, wishing I could ask my father what to do after I discovered Andre and Ursula glued together with shrink-wrap. When I was nine my father and I went on a ski trip, just the two of us, to Aspen. My mother had twisted her ankle doing the foxtrot at the Asian Art Museum Winter Gala, but she insisted my father and I keep our reservations and go without her.

I remember the heady feeling of boarding the plane, the flight attendants gushing over my father, so tall and handsome with his steel-gray hair and his easy manner.

“Can I get you anything, anything at all?” A blond flight attendant leaned close while she adjusted my seat belt. She seemed to be sending my father a secret signal, a discreet flutter of her eyelashes, the way she ran her tongue over her lips, which I didn’t understand.

“I’ve got everything I need right here,” my father replied. I saw his face close down, and he spent the rest of the flight asking me about my drawing classes, and guessing what my mother would do in our absence.

We stayed in a rustic chalet on the side of the mountain with three other families from San Francisco. One night, after a long dinner where the children were relegated to a table in the kitchen and the adults kept flitting in and out, popping open bottles of wine, I watched one of the women take off her fur coat and drape it over my father’s shoulders.

I stopped in my tracks, about to join him in the dining room, and heard the woman giggle, “Nothing feels better than fur on naked skin.” Even before my father saw me, he took the jacket off his shoulders, steered the woman back to her husband, and said he was going outside to get some fresh air.

I joined him on the balcony, and put my hand in his pocket to keep warm.

“Why did Mrs. Graham give you her fur jacket?” I asked.

“Alcohol affects people in different ways,” he explained slowly.

“In bad ways?” I moved closer to my father. It was twenty below zero, and I was wearing leggings and my favorite pair of socks with toes.

“Sometimes, but then you just gently redirect them.”

“You mean, Mrs. Graham got confused and thought you were her husband,” I said, pondering the possibility.

“Something like that.” My father nodded and led me back inside.

The next night my father invited me to eat with the grown-ups. With his wife absent, I was his shield to keep away interested females.

I wiped my eyes and plucked a handful of daisies. I knew what my father would think of Andre. He hated weakness of character.

*   *   *

My father defied the doctors’ prognosis and died two weeks before I graduated from Berkeley. I spent almost every weekend of those four years playing games with him in his library overlooking the bay. He taught me chess and backgammon and how to never lose at tic-tac-toe. They were wonderful weekends. My mother would greet me with hugs and little presents: a pashmina she picked up at Neiman’s, a pair of Tod’s driving shoes she thought would be excellent for walking around campus. Then she would mumble something about a committee meeting and leave us alone.

I learned how to relax. I wanted time to stand still so I could always be looking at my father wearing his “at home” clothes: a silk robe over cashmere pants and leather slippers. I wanted to be able to hear his voice saying, “You can do anything you want, Amanda. Just make sure you know what that is.”

When I stood up with my graduating class on a foggy afternoon in May, I promised myself I would listen to him. Now I would go to New York and start my life. But I looked at my mother clapping furiously as I received my diploma and realized I couldn’t leave her either. She looked perfect in her black Dior suit, but she was thin as a stick and she was smoking two packs a day.

I moved home for the summer and got a job at a boutique in Presidio Heights. I would help my mother heal and in the fall I would move to New York. I pictured walking the avenues of New York and drinking in the winter clothes in the windows of Bergdorf’s and Bloomingdale’s.

I met Andre on July Fourth and by the end of the summer I was engaged to a sexy Frenchman who had been in America for ten months and didn’t know why everything was closed on the Fourth of July. My dreams of becoming a fashion designer came to a halt. I had only myself to blame. No one forced me to fall in love. I could have said no when Andre appeared at my mother’s house just before Labor Day with three dozen red roses and a box with a small, square diamond ring. But I was twenty-two, and drunk from a summer of long evenings holding hands and walking along the bay. Maybe I was trying to replace my father. Maybe I just adored having Andre whisper
“J’adore”
in my ear.

I remember the evening I first walked into Andre’s bistro. My friends all had big Fourth of July plans but I didn’t feel like celebrating. It was our first holiday since my father died, and by evening I desperately needed to get out of the house. My mother was trying to keep herself together. She filled her days with philanthropy but at night she sat in the library and smoked. I couldn’t get her to stop. If I told her she was killing herself she would look at me knowingly and nod. If I suggested we go out to dinner or hit a movie she would say she was tired and go to bed.

I asked Rosemary to watch her and I headed out to Sacramento Street. I needed to get some fresh air. Sacramento Street was deserted. All my usual haunts were closed. I kept walking, hoping at least Starbucks was open and I could get a hot mocha before I went home. I saw a tall man with a black ponytail lounging outside a restaurant.

“
Allo,
beautiful,” he said.

I turned around. There was no one else on the sidewalk.

“I am talking to the beautiful girl with curly brown hair,” he said as I walked closer. “That’s you.” His face broke into a wide smile. He had very white teeth and a Roman nose.

“Hello,” I replied.

“Come inside and have something to eat.” He motioned to the doorway. He wore dark blue jeans, a white apron, and white sneakers.

“Are you open?” I asked.

“
Mais, oui
. Why wouldn’t I?” he asked.

“It’s the Fourth of July,” I replied.

“So?” He shrugged his shoulders.

“America’s birthday. You know, a national holiday.”

“Bastille Day is my national holiday. I am Andre Blick, this is my restaurant.” He held out his hand. I shook it awkwardly. I had been so busy worrying about my father during college I hadn’t dated. Every now and then I would get pizza with a group of kids, but mostly I kept myself apart.

“Okay, I am hungry,” I agreed finally.

“Excellent, you are my first customer this evening.” He escorted me to a table, his arm lightly touching mine.

I turned out to be his only customer. He cooked for me and served me himself, his waitress having gone home early. Eventually he sat down next to me and opened a bottle of wine.

“I don’t drink,” I said, pushing away the wineglass.

“You have to drink, it’s a national holiday.” He filled my glass and poured one for himself.

“I thought your holiday was Bastille Day,” I said.

“I am in America now, with a beautiful American.” Andre clinked my glass. “To national holidays; may we celebrate many more.”

I knew he was flirting. No one had ever flirted with me and I didn’t know how to respond. He was handsome, like the Roman gods we had studied in mythology. I concentrated on my crepes and let him talk.

“I have worked in a kitchen since I was this high.” Andre placed his hand four feet off the floor. “My father was a chef in Toulouse and he let me stir the sauces and chop vegetables when the owner of the restaurant was away.” He paused and sipped his wine.

“When I was nineteen, I hitchhiked to Paris and became assistant chef at a bistro in the Thirteenth Arrondissement,” he continued. I liked the way he moved his hands around when he talked.

“Last year an American came in every morning and ordered my crepes. He said he was opening a French restaurant in San Francisco and asked me to be his chef and partner.”

“You left your family?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine living an ocean away from my mother.

“America is the land of opportunity.” He flashed his perfect white teeth. “I could not refuse. I moved to San Francisco and voilà. Crepe Suzette was born,” he finished his story, refilling our glasses and moving his chair closer to mine.

“Who’s Suzette?” I asked.

“My partner’s wife. Ex-wife now. She didn’t like the long hours he keeps at the restaurant so she’s divorcing him for a stockbroker who is home at four p.m.” He shrugged. “You Americans are funny. In France you get married, you stay married. Affairs, long hours, doesn’t matter. Marriage is for life.”

“I can understand long hours. Affairs would be another story,” I said.

“See, Americans. Very puritan.” He shook his head. His English was almost perfect. And he was so beautiful, his features chiseled from stone; I had to stop myself from looking at him. He was only twenty-four but he seemed older.

“Your crepes are wonderful. I have to go.” I fished my credit card out of my purse.

“Do you have a boyfriend waiting at home?” Andre leaned on the table, his elbow pressed against mine.

“No boyfriend. My father died recently, I am staying with my mother. They were married a long time and she really misses him.”

“Love. There are no happy endings. That is why we must live now.” He touched my face with his fingers.

I pulled back. “I better go. What do I owe you?”

“Dinner is on me, in exchange for your beautiful company.” Andre shook his head.

“Your English is very good. But you say ‘beautiful’ too much.”

“One can never say ‘beautiful’ too much if it is true.” He didn’t get up or remove my plate. He just sat looking at me.

“I need to pay, please. I don’t want your night to be a complete waste.”

“I will let you pay if you let me take you out to dinner on my night off,” Andre said.

“Okay. Agreed,” I said.

I handed him my credit card and he got up and walked over to the cash register.

“I need your phone number,” he said, placing the bill in front of me.

I wrote down my phone number and gave it to him. I opened the bill and signed my name. He picked up the bill and studied it closely. I remember thinking maybe I shouldn’t have tipped him; it was his restaurant. He handed me back my credit card and touched my shoulder. “When we get married you won’t have to change your initials, Amanda Bishop.”

*   *   *

I should have seen the warning signs, I thought, kicking a handful of pebbles into the lake so the ducks lifted their necks and shook their feathers. Andre had told me stories of wealthy women who propositioned him when he worked at the restaurant in Toulouse. How he lost his virginity in the giant fridge with the wife of the local judge. Andre had the morals of an alley cat and I had been blinded all these years by his declarations of love, and by the way he put his hand on the small of my back.

In my parents’ circle, at the highest rung of San Francisco society, infidelity was not tolerated. Families lived in mansions at the top of Pacific Heights and their morals were as lofty as their real estate. My father had been a member of the Bohemian Club and every summer he had spent a week at the Bohemian Grove, a private enclave in the redwood forest visited by heads of state, where women were denied entry. One year as he was leaving for his week’s retreat, one of my friends asked him what they do there.

“What’s all the hush-hush?” Maisie was sixteen and going through a rebellious stage. She liked to rile up her parents, or mine when she slept over on the weekends. “My father has taken a vow of silence. He won’t tell my mother a thing.” She leaned against my father’s Mercedes. “Do you guys import a bunch of strippers and play strip poker under the redwoods?”

My father looked at her levelly and opened the car door. “Maisie, I think it’s time you went home. I’ll drive you. And I’d like to have a word with your mother.”

A few days later my father received a written apology from Maisie in the mail, and she was not allowed to sleep over again.

When a scandal did occur among their friends, the culprit was ousted from the Pacific-Union Club and the Bohemian Club, and his social invitations were rescinded. A few of my father’s friends were self-made like he was, but most were descendants of the robber barons: Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins. They had spent the last hundred years making their names respectable; they weren’t going to let any blackguard tarnish their circle.

So how had I fallen for Andre, I asked myself, hurling the stones so they fell in the middle of the lake. Was I just taken in by his looks, by his Continental charm, or in the beginning had he been a gentleman?

*   *   *

That first summer Andre treated me like a princess. Whenever he arrived at the house he brought presents for Rosemary, my mother, and me. For Rosemary it was often a tomato from the restaurant’s garden, for my mother a small bouquet of lilacs or daisies, and for me a special chocolate dessert. At first I questioned his motives—he knew I was an heiress. But as the summer progressed and we explored the city together, he kept saying he enjoyed my company. And he thought I was beautiful. No one except my parents had ever called me beautiful.

In August my mother seemed more herself. She started going to lunch with friends. She wore her favorite color, pink, and she began accepting some of the invitations that kept pouring in. I thought about the fall and New York. I had mentioned my plans to Andre. He hadn’t said anything for or against. He hadn’t tried to sleep with me either. I was partially relieved. I was the only twenty-two-year-old virgin I knew and was terrified he would shrug me off as a juvenile if he found out. But each time he left me at the front door with just a long, deep kiss, my whole body quivered.