The Rake (9 page)

Boulder, December 1987

It was Christmas Eve. Justin would leave the apartment at five o'clock to spend a happy few hours with three friends, Sarah and Paul Robbins (twins), and Hector Block. They would go to the Roxy Theater and catch the double feature. Three solid hours of moviegoing. Then Alice Robbins, the twins' mother, would pick them up, and they would have Christmas Eve supper at the Robbinses' house. At twenty minutes to twelve, Henrietta would drive over and take Justin to the midnight Mass at Saint Martin de Porres.

Meanwhile, Jean-Paul would come for her at six, and they would go for dinner at the country club.

It had been a diligent courtship. Since meeting at Amy's they had lunched or dined together a half dozen times, though never with Justin present. JP was pressing Henri hard, and she sensed that she would have to make a strategic decision tonight. She sensed it and so did he, and when he emerged from his car, in a perfectly tailored herringbone overcoat, she watched him from the window. She thought she could discern a special bounce in his step, but maybe it was the bounce in her own spirits that she was feeling.

She had chilled champagne for him.

“Show me a picture of Justin,” he said.

That was easy for Henri to do. She pulled over an album. JP could examine Justin at age three, playing in the Parc Monceau; at age six, entering the Ecole Belles Feuilles; and so on. There were random snapshots with his grandfather and Nadine at the apartment on Avenue Foch, and one with Nadine setting out a cake for his twelfth birthday. The photo at the airport when they were leaving for Colorado was marked in a childish hand, “Juin, 1985. On part pour l'Amérique.”

“He is a very handsome boy.”

“He is my love.”

“I too am your love. Isn't that so?”

She took his hand, pressed it, and refilled his glass. “I'll relieve you of Justin,” she said, withdrawing the album.

“Henri, Justin is away until you pick him up for the service. May I take you to bed? Express the love I feel for you?”

Henri drew breath. She looked down at her champagne glass. “Well,” she said. “Yes, JP, if you…want.”

“I must, Henri, I must.”

She got up and pointed to the room on her left. “That's Justin's room. You can undress there. I'll wait for you in my room.” She signaled to the right.

In Boulder in December it is dark outside at six-thirty. It had been dark in the duck blind too that night, but there had been the little candle that showed her the whole of Reuben as he slid into the bedroll beside her.

She went to her dressing table, loosened two of the bulbs,
left the third one lighted, and started to disrobe. Still too much light. She dimmed the little bulb by draping her slip over it.

Then she opened her bedroom door and left it open. Through the opening she called out, “Viens, Jean-Paul.”

She covered herself with a single bedsheet, and closed her eyes. He made his way onto the bed, and told her how beautiful she was, and how happy she was making him. “I will try all my life to make you happy, like me.”

“You sound like Daumier.”

That brought a salvific laugh, and a deep and earnest kiss.

Boulder, December 1987

At the country club there was much festivity, including three live Santa Clauses. The first two hours were given over to pleasing the children. At approximately eight-thirty the kids left, and the adults were seated in the dining room. Used as a ballroom in the club's richer days, the large hall had now been partitioned into two smaller spaces. Jean-Paul and Henri's table was far from the incongruous wall, which stood out bare and obvious alongside the crown moldings and rich baseboards of the others. Electric sconces dotted the papered walls, and the floor, once polished crisp wood for dancing, was now carpeted. Two dozen round tables were arranged in what remained of the grand old room; they were draped in white—spare, but elegantly set. The club was no richer than its patrons, who, mostly hailing from the university, were pleased simply to have someplace to relax in a little style.

Henri wondered whether she herself looked as starry-eyed as Jean-Paul did. She enjoyed probing her memory on the act of love, in which she had just now, with surprising pleasure, engaged. She had read that men, mostly younger men to be sure, exchanged information—when meeting in locker rooms or clubs or around the bar—on whom they had bedded, and how. She
thought such conversations vulgar and certainly intrusive…. But what kind of thing might be said in these exchanges interested her. She was, simply, curious.

Reuben had told her at the duck blind that he had never “done it” before. She trusted him to be telling her the truth, although, lacking any experience by which to judge, she could not be entirely sure at the time whether his conduct that night gainsaid what he had told her. All that had distilled in her memory was that the very first time, in September 1969, his handling of himself—and of her—was clumsy by comparison with the finesse of their final copulation four months later.

This had taken place at the motel in Minneapolis. He had driven her there, on the first leg of her long voyage to Paris, in order to “do it one last time.” After the baby was born, after Reuben had graduated from UND, they would be reunited and would do it—every night! She had hoped so, most fervently; and tonight, after an eighteen-year hiatus, she allowed herself to think about the differences in technique between Reuben, the twenty-one-year-old undergraduate, and Jean-Paul, the widower Frenchman of polish and God knows how much experience gained during his youth in France, and then during his marriage to Stephanie.

He knew, certainly, how to engage her physically, how to bring on the transformation. But was she—Henri—an important component of his elation? A critical component of it? Or could a doxy, French or American, have done as much for him? To him? She resolved to assume that she was—herself—in some way unique. Looking over at him now as he looked down at the menu, she found it easy to think of
him
as unique.

He did not mention their lovemaking; nor did she expect that he would. But after the dessert and brandy, and with only a half hour left before she would set out to pick up Justin, he said he wanted to talk with her about plans for the future.

“At some point, of course, when we're married, you will move in with me, or I'll move in with you. Between now and then we will need to make suitable arrangements.” He was glad that the conversation, in French, permitted him to speak of “affaires de convenance,” which was easier to handle than “matters of convenience.” “I'll cooperate in any way you wish, but I do think that early in the new year we should give out the happy news that we intend to be married.”

She put down her coffee. “Darling JP. I cannot marry you.”

He was stupefied. He fumbled for the right words and finally said, merely, “Why?”

“Because I am already married.”

He couldn't make that out. He said, “Your husband was killed in Vietnam.”

“That's the story I give out. That's the story I've always told Justin.”

“In fact—he wasn't killed? He left you?”

“Yes.”

“How is that possible?”

She paused. “We're not going to discuss that aspect of it, surely—why he left me.”

“I assume he has remarried? Surely that dissolves your marriage.”

“Actually, no. If one partner commits bigamy, the marriage is not annulled.”

“I decline to take this matter seriously. You are talking, dear Henri, about a marriage that has not been active for—what?—eighteen years?”

“Yes.”

“A civil marriage? That should make things relatively easy.”

“Our marriage was, I assume, both civil and religious.—Speaking of which, JP, I must pick up my son and take him to church.” She stood up. “I'm not going to kiss you, Jean-Paul, in a public room. Know that I love you truly. I will pray tonight for guidance.”

He led her out the door to where she had parked her car.

Washington/Boulder, January 1988

Harrison Ledyard had foreseen, from very early days, that his friendship with Jean-Paul would turn out to be time-consuming. The friendship was nurtured when the two young men, whose wives were first cousins, lived in Washington, both studying at Georgetown, Jean-Paul at the graduate school, Harrison at the law school. Jean-Paul was, after all, a Frenchman. Frenchmen are always troublesome, Ledyard thought resignedly. And Jean-Paul's being a Frenchman living and working in America naturally augmented the problems.

But the friendship between the two young couples had been strong, and heartily endorsed by all four parties to it: Harrison and Melissa Ledyard, and Jean-Paul and Stephanie Lafayette. For one thing, Harrison was temperamentally that kind of friend, the kind that works at friendship. For another, JP and Stephanie, when they were living in France, had shown the Ledyards the ultimate kindness: they took into their home the Ledyard daughter, Teresa. They gave her a room in their house in Neuilly when, at age sixteen, she said she would like to do a year's schooling in Paris and would most happily do this in the company of the Lafayettes, the couple she had known so well in Washington.

Ledyard had stayed on at Georgetown, moving on quickly
from student of law to professor of law and affiliate of the blue-chip firm of Covington & Burling, for which he did estate work. He was familiar with JP's finances because the two cousins' grandmother had died shortly before the plane crash that took Stephanie's life. Harrison had handled the grandmother's estate on behalf of the two parties, the live granddaughter and the estate of the dead granddaughter.

Ledyard knew his friend JP to be a thorough and ambitious scholar, conscientiously committed to doing his best at whatever job he had in hand. As of January 1988, this job was to serve as professor of French literature at the University of Colorado. The death of Stephanie had meant an influx of funds for the benefit of Jean-Paul, since theirs had been a childless marriage. This lessened the need for JP to concern himself with earning a living. He was financially independent enough to be able to tailor his obligations to the University of Colorado in whatever way was satisfactory to both parties. What he wasn't free to do, however, was marry his new lady, Henrietta Durban.

“Harrison, surely there is something in the law that rescinds a marriage not…exercised? I mean, we are talking about a marriage contracted, I take it, in 1969—perhaps early 1970—with no subsequent interaction between bride and groom.”

“No. There is no such provision as you're reaching for in the law. In theology, a marriage is annullable if never consummated. Your lady—”

“Henrietta.”

“Henrietta has the son—Justin—so that would not apply to her, the hypothesis that the marriage was never consummated. And there is the further complication: civil law doesn't always
harmonize with religious law. She—Henrietta—is a practicing Catholic?”

“Oh, very much so. She takes, well, liberties with the Ten Commandments, but she is structurally a member of the Church. For that matter, so am I.”

“I knew that, JP. Just trying to tie the strands together. As you tell it, neither of the married parties has sought a divorce. That's right, isn't it?”

“I assume Henri would have told me if she herself had ever sued for divorce. If her husband took the initiative, whatever ensued would be part of a court record, right?”

“Goddam it, JP, find out where in hell the marriage took place. We've got to get details of that kind, otherwise we're helpless.”

“But JP, I don't
want
to go into it.” As ever, they were talking in French. “You want me to stir up a hornet's nest. It would be painful to do this. And if I succeeded in getting a civil divorce, what would that do about the marriage in the eyes of God? What reason is there to conclude that the marriage—the
marriage
, JP—can be annulled? Can an annulment take place if the petition for annulment is not endorsed by both parties?”

“Of course it can, Henri. Recall the wedding of George IV to Caroline. His marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert was annulled, and God knows she made a fuss about that, banging on the doors of Westminster Abbey!”

“JP, cher Jean-Paul, I do not want such an exercise. I don't want to protest anything.”

“Then you do not want to marry me.”

“You have to understand what I am saying. I
am married
. My husband is unfaithful. And I have been unfaithful. But I have to be faithful to the eternal vows I made.”

Jean-Paul rose from the sofa. “I have to think things through.”

“Yes. And so must I—my beloved Jean-Paul,” she said. “But call me when you feel like it. And”—she did not try to contain the tears—“take me in your arms, whenever you want.”

Boulder, April 1988

Justin approached Amy in the spring. He was nearly eighteen, he reminded himself, and not inexperienced in the vicissitudes of life. He had learned early that life could be sharp and arbitrary. There had been the shock of his grandfather's death when he was fourteen; then the loss of his great-aunt to the convent; then the wrenching separation from his nurse-protector, Nadine, as he and his mother made the trip into another world, one he had only read about. Of course, he knew English, which his mother had taught him from infancy. But now he had to speak in English day and night. He had had to make a fresh set of friends, and there were new demands at school—it had never occurred to him that the United States had a history, let alone one he would be expected to master. He had learned what every boy learns at puberty, and then there was the special situation at home, he and his mother, with no father.

He thought himself entirely adult in important matters, notably in his concern for his mother, which had evolved into a sense of responsibility for her. But with it all he was still a very young observer of the world around him, with a lanky, obstinate concern to know life and its mysteries.

The whole sexual scene had descended on him the previous spring. There were the hints and allusions that Paul would make about various teachers, and now even about Sarah—Paul's twin sister! She had been an integral member of their team; no longer. Now it was Justin and Paul. Paul brought to their rendezvous the scintillating erotic books, some of them even illustrated. Then came the night at the campsite with Paul, in the pup tent. All alone, except for the battery-powered portable television—and the movie.
Deep Throat
. Justin felt a stirring in his loins not felt keenly before, but now suddenly demanding. He said to Paul in quite solemn tones, “You know what, Paul? We need to get laid.”

Paul agreed, though he was apprehensive about it.

They would do it in Denver, during the summer vacation. Justin would cautiously, but diligently, inquire about just where to go to do it—to have it done—how much it would cost, whether tips were appropriate, all those things. He was a quick learner and in weeks knew everything that was within the reach of an energetic sixteen-year-old living in a sophisticated academic community and bent on exploring that great key to social behavior, social relations, social protocols, and human passions.

All of that—and then Mr. Lafayette entering his life. He thought it urbane, on meeting him, to call him “Général Lafayette,” as though this Lafayette were the great marquis. Jean-Paul thought this amusing and invited Justin to continue calling him “
mon général
.”

And then, for the first time Justin could remember, his mother started going out in the evening. Sometimes she would call him, or manage to get a note to him, saying she would be
working late and going out to dine with colleagues. But several times she had exactly ascertained when Justin would be leaving the apartment, as he often did to watch a sports event with a friend, or to join someone in a study session before an exam. One evening he waited across the street, his bicycle parked around the corner, and saw Général Lafayette approach the entrance to the building. Justin did not stay there on watch, waiting for his mother's guest to depart, but he permitted himself to wonder whether, when he was away on other evenings, and on occasional weekends, Général Lafayette was keeping his mother company.

Justin went to Amy a few weeks later. He trusted her. And he knew that his mother trusted her. From Amy he wanted to know more about his mother, beginning with her background.

Amy told him only that Henrietta did not talk about her married days, “before you were even born, Justin.” Amy felt that Henrietta's privacy should be respected, and that Justin should feel the same way about it. “You're a darling boy and your mother loves you, so don't make life difficult for her.”

Justin had no intention in the world of respecting his mother's privacy.

He had for some time contemplated probing the locker in her closet. He knew only that it existed. But the idea of getting to know more than that had germinated, and he waited impatiently for a convenient time. One Thursday his mother spoke of a late afternoon staff meeting at the Chinook Library.

He got back from school and went to her bedroom. Her closet had no lock. In a corner, behind where her clothes hung, he found a bookcase and in it a leather case about the size of a shoe box.

He lifted it to her bed. It was locked with a simple combination lock. It was a matter of minutes before he had contrived to open it. He had tried first his mother's birthday—9-8-4-8—which failed. Then his own—5-6-7-0—which worked. He opened the case and found his mother's birth certificate, his own birth certificate (“Justin Raymond Durban”), her passport, his own passport, 20,000 French francs in 100-franc bills, and a Crédit Lyonnais bank book. There had been no transactions in the three years since they left France, and the book showed a total of 150,000 francs. He whistled. That would translate to about $25,000. Her patrimony, he surmised.

There were letters, perhaps a dozen. He did not have the heart to inspect these, but he looked with special interest at a photograph, in a slender wooden frame, of a young man, perhaps nineteen or twenty years old. It bore only the notation, in ink, “September, 1969.” The young man was smiling—or was he laughing? His hair was loose in the breeze, his hand gripping a jacket of some sort, a parka perhaps. He was conspicuously American, pleasing to look at, carefree, manifestly at home in the outdoors. This—Justin felt the sweat on his brow—must be his father. And it was the same man he had seen and heard at the Democratic rally the year before. He was looking at a photograph of Reuben Castle.

Justin scooted to his own room for his camera. He photographed his birth certificate, his mother's passport, and then the photograph.

He put everything carefully back in place, and carried away this secret knowledge in silence.

One day, he promised himself, he would uncover the whole story.