Secrets of Paris (23 page)

After her father died, people kept telling her she should cry more. Michael, her mother, her aunts. Lydie had listened to them, numb. “Don’t you feel like it?” her mother had asked. “No,” Lydie had replied. Then, “What will happen if I don’t?” Her mother had had no answer for that; no one had. But now Lydie knew. All the sadness she should have felt for her father, whom she had loved, was now coming out of her in a torrent. For her marriage, for the image of Kelly in the trunk of a car, for Patrice, who would be lonely in Paris after Lydie and Kelly moved away.

Sadness overshadowed her anger. The fury she had felt toward Kelly as she left had already evaporated, leaving her with only the vaguest sense that she was really angry at Michael and her father for leaving—not Kelly. It hurt to breathe. She had never felt so sad in her life. Sitting at the edge of a Paris square on a brilliant August afternoon, Lydie didn’t think it possible to feel lonelier.

As if she had forgotten how to live on her own, Lydie tried to envision what Patrice would do in her situation. She certainly wouldn’t sit idle, feeling sorry for herself. She might very possibly focus some attention on Kelly, helping her get to the United States. She would also try to fix her marriage.

But Lydie couldn’t see Patrice and Didier falling apart the way she and Michael had. And why not? She played with her wedding ring, trying to figure it out. For one thing, Patrice was too matter-of-fact. Lydie couldn’t picture her putting up with any nonsense in Didier. Patrice kept track of things too closely; she did it with Lydie, Kelly, certainly Didier. If Didier ever had a notion to fool around, Lydie could imagine Patrice knowing about it before he did.

The other, more important reason was Lydie’s profound belief that no two people could ever love each other the way she and Michael did. It went so deep, she actually groaned—out loud—to think she could have lost it. She had trusted Michael to love her forever because she had known she would love him forever. She hated herself for turning it into something banal: taking him for granted. She remembered how she had signed notes to him in the first years of their marriage: “Yours till the butterflies … yours till Niagara Falls … Lydie.” The memory made her cringe.

She forced herself to remember the day. She and Michael were cooking in their kitchen on West Tenth Street. He had been ominously upset ever since the night before, when Lydie’s father had taken him to some lumberyard in Yonkers.

“Tell me what happened,” Lydie said. She and Michael knew little about family intrigue, but he had been hinting about trouble with Neil ever since he’d come home.

“I think your father’s having a midlife crisis,” Michael said.

Neil Fallon was an extravagantly emotional Irishman, so this theory did not sound at all far-fetched to Lydie. “I’m sure he’ll survive it,” she had said.

Now, looking back at it from the Carré des Innocents in Paris, she couldn’t believe those had actually been her words. Had they? She wracked her brain, trying to remember. As if it mattered! Detectives had rung the bell just half an hour later. On a little card in
his wallet, Neil had listed Michael and Lydie as the ones to notify in case of emergency. In a different case—an accident, or a heart attack—the police would have acted differently. Lydie could practically see and hear those other policemen: lowered heads, a sympathetic tone of voice. But Neil had murdered a young woman.

The detective had spoken harshly, asking strange questions that made Lydie think that she herself was suspected of a crime. After three or four questions, Michael had put his arm around her shoulders and whispered that she shouldn’t answer. “Tell us what happened,” Michael had said to the detective.

“Cornelius Fallon is dead,” the detective had said, almost as an afterthought. “It was a murder-suicide.”

The possibility of her father as a murderer was so impossible that Lydie had gasped and asked who had killed her father. When the detective told her the truth, she had turned to Michael. She remembered how carefully he watched her, as if he knew she was going to break and he knew he couldn’t do anything to stop it. She remembered the feeling of his arms around her shoulders and his voice calmly telling the detective he couldn’t ask her any more questions. And Lydie remembered knowing, even before the detective left her kitchen, that her father had given her up, had deliberately bargained her away. Because he would know, by his actions, that for the rest of her life Lydie would first think of him as a killer, second as her father.

“SURPRISE!” P
ATRICE STOOD
in Lydie’s doorway, holding out the magenta cotton parao she had brought as a gift. Keeping secret her return to Paris had not been easy; twice last night she had nearly called Lydie even though she had decided, on the plane from Saint-Tropez, that it would be more fun, more festive just to show up. She had given fifteen francs to Lydie’s concierge to let her up unannounced. But Lydie was not exactly taking it as Patrice had hoped. For one thing, she was frowning. For another, she looked as though she had just been roused from deep slumber.

“You’re back,” Lydie said. “I didn’t expect you until Monday.”

“Didier decided the office couldn’t survive another day without him.”

“Come in,” Lydie said, standing aside. “God, you look great—so tan!”

That’s more like it, Patrice thought. That’s the sort of greeting she wanted from her best friend. She stood in the middle of the room, looked out Lydie’s big windows at the Seine, then turned, beaming, to wrap Lydie in a big hug.

“How was your vacation?” Lydie asked.

“And I missed you too!” Patrice said, stepping back.

Lydie gave her a smile, the first one Patrice had seen. “I missed you,” she said.

“Which do you want to hear about first? The seclusion experience or the Paris-by-the-sea experience? This is for you.”

Lydie took the parao, wrapped it around herself. “It’s beautiful. I’ll wear it at the beach next summer and think of you. Let’s sit out on the terrace,” she said. “That way you can update your tan.”

“This time yesterday I was lying on the beach, those little cups over my eyes … oh, well.” As she spoke, Patrice tossed back her head, looked at the sky. “Two days ago, however, we had lunch at Club 55, which is more Paris than Paris. The only people we didn’t know we recognized from films.”

“The best of both worlds.”

“In many ways, Saint-Tropez is
our
Paris concentrated into one small area. Like frozen orange juice before you add the water. Didier has a bunch of pals from the old days—from school, college, his first marriage, his second marriage, a regular rat pack. They all were there.”

“Do you like them?”

“Yes,
but
 …” Patrice said, smiling slyly. “A little goes a long way. You should have come. I’d have had a great time, filling you
in on the intrigues. Who’s sleeping with whom, who’s slept with whose wife.”

“That sounds sordid,” Lydie said, shocking Patrice with her bitterness. She sat on the deck chair, knees drawn up, scowling.

“It
is
sordid. That’s the point,” Patrice said quietly, trying to get the lay of the land. “That’s why I wish you had been there.”

“I didn’t think Didier went in for that sort of thing,” Lydie said.

“Of course he doesn’t. He’s a big prude. But I’m telling you, his
friends
are like a fraternity—they have the average mentality of twenty-year-olds. All they think about are their penises and their wallets.” Patrice stared at Lydie. “Maybe we should talk about seclusion instead. Let’s see … our house was very secluded. Days went by when we saw no one but each other. The sky was very blue. The sea was even bluer. Most of the time, Club 55 was just a bad memory. Do you like me again?”

Lydie nodded. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. Patrice noticed shadows under her eyes. She looked terrible. “What?” Patrice said, touching the back of her hand.

“Michael is staying at a hotel.”

From the look in Lydie’s eyes, Patrice knew the hotel wasn’t in Dubrovnik. “He’s moved out?” Patrice asked. When Lydie didn’t answer, Patrice squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry. I never would have thought …” She shook her head. “I know you said there was trouble, but I never would have thought …”

“Neither would I,” Lydie said. Suddenly she seemed unblocked. Her eyes went wild. “I didn’t realize how extreme things had gotten. He’s moved out. Patrice, he’s in love with someone else!”

“Oh, that’s terrible,” Patrice said. The only word for Lydie’s expression—for the dazed look in her eyes and the way her shoulders slumped—was “devastated.” To come to Paris married—in
love with your husband—and to have him leave you for another woman must be the worst thing in the world.

“It’s terrible,” Lydie echoed.

“When did you find out about this?”

“A few weeks ago.” Lydie glanced up, a slightly fearful cast to her eyes—as if she thought Patrice would feel offended that Lydie hadn’t called to tell her.

“Don’t worry,” Patrice said. “I understand you had to keep it to yourself.”

“It’s not that,” Lydie said. “I’m thinking of what I just said—that it’s been weeks. At first I thought he’d come home after a few days.”

“Have you seen him? Do you talk to each other?”

“We talk a lot. We tried to see each other, but I wound up feeling worse. It’s awful to say good night at the end of the night and go our separate ways.”

Patrice had a guilty pang for two things she was thinking. The first was that without Michael she had Lydie’s friendship all to herself. She could imagine doting on Lydie, helping her through this. And her second guilt-provoking thought was that she had at least one thing that Lydie did not have: a happy marriage. She felt her heart overflowing. Patrice had always known she had a generous spirit, but until Didier she hadn’t had anyone to give her love to. Demonstrations of love had never been encouraged by her mother. She had the urge to hug Lydie, then make her a nice hot cup of tea.

“Is it possible you could ever fall out of love with Didier?” Lydie asked.

In another instance Patrice might have lied to make Lydie feel better, but this was too important. “No, I can’t. Not in a million years. Why? Are you falling out of love with Michael?”

“That’s what I don’t know,” Lydie said.

“Lydie, that’s not falling out of love,” Patrice said. “Who was it who said, ‘It’s a thin line between love and hate’? Freud?”

Lydie half smiled. “I would have said Cole Porter. Did you say Freud to cheer me up?”

Patrice, who hadn’t, smiled enigmatically. “The point is, if you lie awake thinking of Michael, you’re not falling out of love with him.”

“I feel as if everything good in me is leaking out. It has been, ever since my father died.”

“There’s a lot of good in you,” Patrice said. She wanted to list the things she loved in Lydie, but Lydie’s face had shut down.

“I used to think I was the most passionate person I knew,” Lydie said. “I made a project out of
everything
. I couldn’t just fall in love—I had to fall
madly
in love. I made Michael an obsession.”

“Like how?” Patrice asked.

“Like the beginning of our romance. We were staying in Washington, and one afternoon Michael took me to the Freer, to look at Japanese art. He especially loved the lacquered boxes. The second he told me that, I knew what I was giving him for Christmas. After we got back to New York I took a day off to find the perfect box—a mahogany chest.”

“You mean like a blanket chest?”

“No; it’s about the size of a large dictionary. Then I found a book on the history of Japanese lacquer. I followed the tradition to the letter—applying coat after coat of black lacquer, which I got from the body shop—sanding between coats. At first I used a brush, but when it got to be November and I had only applied ten of the—I think it was eighteen—coats, I broke down and used a spray can.

“Then I chose the design—a plum tree standing on a riverbank. When the last coat dried, I used the traditional method of ‘painting’ the design in talcum powder, then brushing on the glue,
then applying the gold leaf.” Lydie traced a pattern on her knee. “I was thinking of Michael the whole time. I felt as though I had him with me every minute.”

“Did he like the box?” Patrice asked.

“Yes,” Lydie said. “I gave it to him Christmas morning, and he proposed Christmas night. We wrote each other letters, even though we saw each other constantly, just so he’d have love letters to keep in it.”

“That’s lovely,” Patrice said. One of her few regrets about falling so swiftly in love with Didier was that they had very few love letters. She thought of how pleasant it would be for Lydie and Michael, when they were old, to read through their old letters. But here was Lydie saying they might not be together. “Why not make a project of getting him back? You have it in you.”