Secrets of Paris (9 page)

“Not at all.” Patrice surveyed the scene: napkins and doilies draped over buds and roses and leaves. It suddenly struck her as hilarious, grown women arranging linens on rosebushes. She laughed, and so did Lydie. Lydie downed her orangeade so enthusiastically it left an orange smile above her lips, like a milk mustache. Patrice touched her own lips; Lydie got the message and wiped the orange away.

“How did you get into this line of work, anyway?” Patrice asked.

“I started off wanting to be an artist, but …” Lydie said. “This is the closest I could get to it. Sometimes when I’m working I feel like I’m making a collage—but it lasts only until the photographer takes the pictures.”

“The pictures last.”

“Yes, but they’re by the photographer,” Lydie said. “As soon as I take these napkins off the roses, that’s that.”

“I see what you mean,” Patrice said.

Now Lydie was walking around, putting the linens away. “Michael and I bumped into someone the other night I think you’d be interested in. She’s an historian—working at the Louvre.”

“Doing what?”

“Research. It’s really extraordinary, and a little bizarre. She’s obsessed with one woman in French history. In fact, she’s already written about her. Madame de Sévigné. Have you ever heard of her before? Don’t say yes, because I hadn’t and I felt so stupid.”

Patrice smiled, happy in spite of herself to be one up on Lydie in an area besides clothing. “Sorry, honey. I know her well. And she is worth being obsessed by. Most people think she was so loving and sweet, especially to her daughter. I mean, this was long before the days of Freud, and I’m telling you he would have had a field day with those two. Their letters make you cringe—they’re more passionate than what I write to Didier when he goes away on long business trips.”

“Sounds weird.”

“What I find amazing is her influence, which was considerable,” Patrice went on. “She had the ear of King Louis, that is for sure. Get this: little Françoise-Marguerite wanted to be a
ballerina, so Madame de Sévigné convinces Louis to let her dance the role of Shepherdess in the Royal Ballet at the Louvre, with Louis
himself
dancing as Shepherd. I mean, talk about headline entertainment.”

“You’re an expert on this,” Lydie said. “You have to meet this woman.”

“If she’s typical of people who love Madame de Sévigné, she probably idealizes the mother-daughter relationship. Which explains why she would want to hang around the Louvre, her feet touching the hallowed ground where little Françoise-Marguerite first went on pointe.”

“The daughter moved away, is that right?” Lydie asked. “And they never saw each other?”

“Give me a break—she stayed in France. She moved to Provence.”

“In the seventeenth century, that must have seemed very far,” Lydie said. “I wonder if they ever visited each other.”

“Just tell me the name of her book. When I’ve finished the one I’m reading now, I might go for the sentimental point of view.”

“It’s
Three Women of the Marais
,” Lydie said, standing on her toes to reach a napkin dangling from the top of a topiary rosebush.

“Oh, my God,” Patrice said.

“What?” Lydie said, turning.

“That’s the book I’m reading! It’s fantastic, and not sentimental at all. You actually
know
Anne Dumas?”

“I don’t, really. But Michael does.”

“Is she pretty?”

“In a
gamine
sort of way. Like the young Audrey Hepburn, only short. She is so intelligent, that’s what strikes you. And she’s charming, but reserved in a sad way. As if something had
happened to her once.” Lydie glanced over at Martine, who was ready to leave. “Excuse me a second,” she said to Patrice.

Patrice sat on a bench. She could not get over the coincidence, the amazing unlikelihood, that Lydie had met Anne Dumas. Patrice had started thinking of her as “Anne,” of the time she spent reading
Three Women of the Marais
as time spent in Anne’s company, in a sort of seminar. Patrice slid a pair of gold-rimmed sunglasses from her bag and put them on. She recognized, of course, what she’d been doing: using Anne Dumas the way she used Kelly—to fill a void. She adored Didier; she had adjusted very well to France. But she couldn’t deny that until recently, until she’d met Lydie, something had been missing from her life. Lydie was her friend. And as soon as Lydie finished with the photographer, Patrice was going to invite her and Michael for dinner some night soon.

I
T WAS
S
ATURDAY
afternoon, and Kelly was peeling cloves of garlic to scatter around the leg of lamb. Didier liked a lot of garlic. Tonight Lydie and her husband were coming to the d’Orignys’ for dinner. Kelly’s back ached. She felt a little sad. Tonight would point out to everyone the differences between Kelly and Patrice and Lydie. The differences were, of course, already understood by all, but tonight they would be crystal clear. Kelly had seen the dress Patrice was going to wear because Patrice had laid it across her bed for Kelly to iron. It was beautiful: a sheath of rose silk. Just touching the dress with one hand as she passed the cool iron with the other had brought tears to Kelly’s eyes.

“That garlic smells heavenly,” Patrice said, startling Kelly.

“Hello, Mum,” Kelly said.

Patrice leaned against the sink. She started munching some haricots verts that Kelly had already trimmed. She wore a white
tennis dress; her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, but her makeup was perfect.

“Did you have a good tennis match?” Kelly asked.

“Yes, we did. We beat the shit out of the Dulongs. And it’s so beautiful outside. Nice and hot. Summer’s coming on, even if you’d never know it in here. This building holds on to winter until mid-July, doesn’t it? Aren’t you chilly, Kelly?”

“I’m fine, Mum,” said Kelly, who was sweating.

“At least we don’t need air-conditioning. Those ancients really knew how to insulate a place. Are there places as old as Paris in the Philippines?”

“Oh, yes,” Kelly said, thinking of one street in her province said to be older than Christ.

“When you were born and raised in America, you think a place two hundred years old is practically medieval.”

“Is America really modern?” Kelly asked, surprised by how wistful she felt. She would trade old for new any day.

“In some ways, yes,” Patrice said. “But the attitudes can be as backward as anyplace else. Listen, speaking of backward attitudes,” she said, standing up straight, “I came to tell you that Didier wants you to wear your uniform tonight. It’s here, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Kelly said. She had already planned to wear it.

“Do me a big favor. Press it and have it on when Didier comes downstairs.”

“Okay, Mum,” Kelly said, placing the knife in the sink, wiping her hands on the linen towel. Patrice left the kitchen. Kelly could not hear where she went. The massive stone architecture kept sound, like heat, from penetrating the walls. Garments she had yet to iron hung in a small closet off the kitchen. Taking down her uniform, Kelly realized that of all her household chores, she disliked ironing most. And she realized the irony of that dislike,
considering the pleasures ironing had given her in her early life.

When she was young, five or six years old, the whole family worked for Pan Am. The great American airline hired Kelly’s parents to launder their linen. White napkins, tiny pillowcases, aprons, summer-weight cotton blankets. Kelly’s father and brothers would drive to the airport in Manila to pick up the soiled linen and deliver the clean; the women would wash and iron it.

Sometimes they worked inside the house, but more often outdoors, under the hot blue sky. She remembered the three large iron cauldrons boiling over coal fires, steam wisping into the hot air. Annette and Ingrid had charge of stirring the laundry with clean sticks. Marie-Vic, Darlene, and Sophia would wring it out with their bare hands and pin it to clotheslines. In the rainy season they strung lines inside the house and fanned it with paddles.

Along with Pan Am’s laundry they washed large white sheets to lay on the dirt—the floor of their house and their entire yard had been dirt then. Kelly’s sisters would toss the clean linen on one sheet, and her mother would sit cross-legged on another, a large pillow on her lap. And she would iron on that pillow. Kelly had loved watching her.

Absently Kelly lifted the iron she was now using, to test its weight. How light it felt compared to that iron of her mother’s! Her mother’s iron was enormous and round, hollow and filled with coal. She had to constantly change hands, because it was so heavy. After work, Annette would rub her mother’s shoulders with eucalyptus sap. Everyone would be lying on the sheets then, resting and talking. Her older sisters would tell about college, about nice American servicemen they had met: topics that would please their mother, who would smile and say everyone had to work hard to earn money so they could all move to the States and open a fish market.

Kelly finished ironing her uniform. The white collar was starched stiff as cardboard, just as Didier liked it. Unplugging the iron, she remembered the best part of ironing Pan Am’s laundry. At the end of the day, after the iron had cooled, Kelly’s mother had let her blow the coal ashes out of it. She remembered blowing into the tube, watching the silver ash fly out the trap door. She remembered the gritty, twinkly feeling of ash on her cheeks and in her eyelashes. And she remembered how, every time she did it, her mother would smile and call her “Tinkerbell.”

Didier d’Origny gripped the champagne cork with a white linen towel, twisted, and let a wisp of vapor escape the bottle. He filled four glasses, turning the bottle as he poured, to avoid spilling a drop. The room was silent except for the sigh of air as the cork was removed, then the bubbles fizzing in the glasses. The evening was off to a festive start. Lydie glanced over at Michael, tried to see him as the others would: lean, thirty-five, curly brown hair that needed to be cut, a mouth that smiled easily, and eyes that took everything in.

“To health,” Didier said, raising his glass.

“Health,” said Lydie, Michael, and Patrice in unison, smiling, clinking glasses, and drinking.

“So,” Didier said, setting down his glass. “Have you explored the Champagne region of France?”

“We spent one of our first weekends there,” Michael said.

“I loved those underground caves, where they age the wine,” Lydie said, remembering walking down one hundred steps into a dim, damp clay-walled chamber lined with racks of champagne.

“Marvelous caves,” Didier said. His expression was kind, but a little distant. His blond hair receded slightly from his broad
forehead, and he had the sort of weathered skin that made Lydie wonder if he was a skier.

“So, you two were childhood sweethearts,” Patrice said, smiling at Michael.

“Actually, I missed my first chance with Lydie,” Michael said. “In high school I cared more about the hoop than girls.”

“ ‘The hoop’?” Didier asked, lighting a cigarette.

“Basketball,” Michael said.

“I don’t know how I missed him,” Lydie said. “He looked so great in shorts.” She could see him now: driving to the basket, his legs long and muscled, running faster than anyone else. She watched how he grinned at Didier in a way he never would at a woman. One athlete to another, Lydie thought.

“Yes, you know it’s a shame,” Didier said. “It was the same for me—soccer, shooting, skiing. I went to a boys’ school. I didn’t know about girls until I was twenty-three.”

“Oh, give me a break,” Patrice said, snorting. “They’ll think you were queer unless you tell them you’ve already been married twice. I’m his third,” she said to Lydie, which Lydie had not known.

“My baby, you may be third, but you are the best,” Didier said. “It’s not right to talk about my first two wives, so let me talk about myself. They were wonderful women. I was the idiot. I didn’t know anything until I met Patrice.”