When she neared the town all signs seemed to point to one parking lot or another. She tucked her rental car into one of them and walked downhill for ten minutes.
Et voilà:
a long stretch of cafés and bars along the marina, all of them with terraces. Her heart lifted for the first time in two days.
She chose a beach restaurant, Le Bada, away from the docks and the crowds of tourists. She sat at a small table and gazed out at the Mediterranean. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was starting to drop behind a set of cliffs to the west. Kayakers headed back from their journeys, weary smiles on their sunburnt faces. On the beach, some sunbathers stretched out on the sand, taking in the last brilliant rays. Carly saw a gray-haired paunchy man surreptitiously taking photographs of a young topless beauty while his wife, beside him, busied herself with an elaborate picnic. Carly wanted to smack the guy.
I need a drink, she thought.
Her mom was marrying a cowboy—no, he wasn’t a cowboy. Carly knew that. He had been some kind of veterinarian in Bumfuck, Wyoming. But then he gave it all up to move to San Francisco and live with Olivia. Carly didn’t trust him. She didn’t know him despite having shared a couple of dinners with him and her newly smitten mother. He was a Wyoming
man, a tall hunk of a guy. Carly knew nerds and geeks and men like her father, thinking men. She understood those men even if they made her crazy. Wes made her crazy.
“You’re still dreaming that your mother and father will get back together,” Wes had said to her when they received the wedding invitation. Couldn’t her mother have told her in person, rather than by some moronic e-card with champagne glasses as the subject line?
“I am not,” she protested. But the next day, when she gently told her dad that Olivia was getting married, she saw him crumble just a little bit. He was not a man who crumbled.
“Good for her,” he said, almost to himself. They were sitting in a restaurant in Woodside; just a few minutes earlier a couple of men had stopped by their table to tell him how much they admired him. He was top dog at Silicon Valley’s most powerful law firm. Everyone admired him. Carly’s mother admired a cowboy.
“The wedding’s in France,” Carly said, knowing that, too, would pain her father. He and Olivia used to vacation in Paris often, just the two of them. Carly had always loved the idea of it—her parents wandering the streets of Paris, hand in hand, discovering unknown bistros, hidden parks, quirky museums. They’d show her the photo albums later and Carly would imagine herself as an adult, traveling to Paris with her husband, bringing home Jacadi dresses for her own young daughters.
Why was her mother marrying this guy in France? Why didn’t her father show some grit? He must still love her, despite the young women he dated now, stupid women who couldn’t hold their own in an argument with him.
Maybe he was tired of arguing.
Carly was tired of the voices in her head, all of them clamoring to make sense of nothing. Marriages end. Someone says I quit. Where was her own grit?
“Oui, mademoiselle?”
the waiter said, as if they were in the middle of a conversation.
“Champagne, s’il vous plaît,”
she requested, surprising herself. She had been pining for a beer. The dancing champagne glasses from that idiotic e-card must have penetrated her psyche. Well, bring on the champagne. She’d find something to celebrate.
The waiter disappeared and a man dropped into the seat across from her.
“Excuse me?” she said, ready to rumble. She hated aggressive men in bars. She wouldn’t expect French men to mimic Americans this way.
“You’re all grown up,” the man said.
“Sébastien!” She was out of her chair in a heartbeat. She threw her arms around him.
“It is you,” he said, laughing. “I was sure some French girl was going to punch me.”
“I was close!” she said.
He kissed her on both cheeks. “So good to see you,
chérie
.”
When they sat down again, Sébastien called to the waiter, whom he apparently knew, and he used some kind of hand signal that seemed to insure that he would get what she had ordered. Carly loved Sébastien, the sexy Frenchman who had swooped in and taken her mother’s best friend away. At least that’s how Olivia told the story—it was part of the fairy tale of
Emily’s charmed life. First a French husband and then the gift of an inn in the South of France.
“Why are you here?” he asked. “Everyone is waiting for you at the inn!”
“I’ll get there soon,” she said.
“You are hiding,” he suggested.
She nodded. “You found me.”
“I won’t tell.”
“And why aren’t
you
at the party?”
“I am in zee doghouse.”
She burst out laughing. She saw that he was serious, but his French accent mixed with the American phrase jarred her. Besides, how could Sébastien ever be in the doghouse?
“I don’t want to know,” she told him. “Let’s get drunk.”
He shook his head. “I cannot bring you home drunk. Your mother will kill me.”
“Why is everyone always so scared of Olivia?”
“You are the one who will make men scared,” Sébastien said. “I hear you will run the world one day.”
Carly shook her head. “I may run a business in Silicon Valley if I’m lucky. That’s a far cry from the world.”
“In France we think Silicon Valley does run the world.”
“It doesn’t,” she said. “Believe me. Though many of us are filled with delusional dreams.”
Only last weekend she and Wes had argued about that. “We are the new masters of the universe,” he told her after the company party ended and a few of them stayed late at the bar.
“It’s the geek dream,” she told him. “And it will be the downfall of this damn town.”
At twenty-six she was already cynical about power in the valley. She understood its allure; she knew its danger. The Stanford business school had been a crash course in the menace of masters of the universe. And then she was hired to work at EyeDate, a start-up that was going to revolutionize the dating world, or so Wes boasted to his groupies. Now Carly was Chief Groupie or VP of Operations, whichever title she wished to use. After six weeks on the job, Wes had told her that she would take over the company one day and did she want to go out for dinner that night? They moved in together a few months later. Everything they did was fast and efficient. Even sex.
“You are too grown-up,” Sébastien said, smiling.
“I agree,” Carly told him. “This weekend I plan on being completely immature.”
“I want to watch that,” Sébastien told her.
The waiter set their champagne glasses in front of them, filled Carly’s glass, then Sébastien’s. Before he left, the waiter said something to Sébastien in rapid-fire French.
“Translate,” Carly ordered.
“I told you to study French,” Sébastien teased.
“What did he say?”
“He thinks you are very sexy.”
“You damn Frenchmen,” Carly said, though she felt a jolt of pleasure. “In the States I forget that I even have a body.”
“A la France,”
Sébastien said, lifting his glass.
“To France.” They clinked and sipped.
Carly felt her shoulders ease away from her ears. She felt as if she had been holding her breath for days, weeks. In anticipation of Wes bailing on the trip? Or was the trip itself the thing
that kept her stomach roiling? Her mother was getting married. Everyone else was full of joy. She felt a little like a spy sent from the warring party.
But she would not report back to her father. “I’m not going to show you one photo or tell you one story,” she had promised at that lunch.
“Even if your big sister does something so outrageous that you have to call me and rat her out?”
“I don’t rat out my sister!” Carly had argued.
“Every day for twenty-six years,” her dad said, smiling. “It’s your lifeblood. You’d be lost without it.”
And so Carly vowed that she’d be a different kind of sister on this trip. And she wouldn’t tell her dad a damn thing.
“Where is your boyfriend?” Sébastien asked.
“In zee doghouse,” she told him. They both laughed.
“Your sister brought a boyfriend,” Sébastien said.
“Nell doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
“She does now. Olivia is not happy.”
“Mom didn’t know? Who is this guy?”
Sébastien shrugged his shoulders. “I am just a simple innkeeper.”
“Ha!” Carly had stayed with Sébastien and Emily in Manhattan for a week when she was in grad school. She and Sébastien had spent the evenings arguing about the financial world, the recession, the evils of Wall Street. The guy was smart and savvy, and even if he hated his business, he knew it well.
“When we finish our champagne we will take each other back to the inn,” Sébastien said. “I will climb back into zee doghouse and you will climb into the bosom of your family.”
“That sounds disgusting,” Carly said. Her champagne was gone; she wanted more. She wanted to sit and chat with Sébastien at this table on the edge of the beach all weekend.
“Your mother will be very happy to see you,” he said.
It was true. Her mother adored her. For a surprising moment, Carly imagined seeing Olivia at the end of a long expanse of grass, imagined running to her mother as if she were a child and throwing her arms around her. And she knew what she would feel. Love. The full force of unequivocal love.
So what kept her here, ordering another glass of champagne, humoring Sébastien with stories of the tech industry at its wonkiest? Fear, perhaps. Because if it was love she wanted, then what the hell was she doing with Wes?
“Mesdames et messieurs!”
Sébastien called out from the doorway of the dining room. “I present the Prodigal Daughter!”
Olivia was the first to leap from her seat, cross the space from table to doorway in a flash, and engulf Carly in an embrace. From over the top of Olivia’s head—her mother was five inches shorter than both daughters—Carly caught Nell’s eye. Her big sister blew a kiss and smiled beatifically. Happy Nell. That’s something new and different, Carly thought. And then she saw the guy, a scrawny hipster dude, though yes, he had some kind of roguish appeal. He kept his eyes on her while she checked him out. No fear in that guy.
“You look wonderful!” Olivia said, pulling back and holding Carly at arm’s length. “Where were you? You’re hours late! You’ve never been late once in your life!”
But her mother was smiling, that easy smile spreading across her beautiful face, and when Carly looked around the
table she saw that everyone was smiling. It’s a cult, she thought. They’re all drinking the wedding Kool-Aid.
Then Brody was standing in front of her, and Olivia stepped back as if offering him to her. Don’t hug me, please don’t hug me, Carly thought.
He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “I’m so glad you came,” he said.
“Of course I came,” she told him.
“Where’s Wesley?” Olivia asked, and Carly wished he were standing by her side just so her mother wouldn’t have the pleasure of hating him more.
“An emergency at work,” Carly said.
“Poor you,” Olivia offered, reaching out a hand.
Carly bristled. “I’m fine,” she said.
“I know you’re fine,” Olivia said gently. “I’m so glad you’re here. You’re the only one I can count on who won’t turn everything upside down and inside out. Now come to dinner, sweetheart.”
Carly walked around the table, greeting Emily, Nell, Mystery Man, an older woman who turned out to be Brody’s mother and a sunburnt, windswept guy named Jake, who introduced himself as the best man. She fell into a chair between Emily and Jake, until Nell protested that she was too far away, prompting a shifting of seats so that she landed next to her sister at the end of the table.
“Pour this girl some wine!” Nell called, and five bottles got passed their way. Everyone was well on their way to drunk. Good, Carly thought. No one will notice her own wobbly state.
Now she was across from Emily, who looked nothing like
her usual lovely self. She seemed sleepy and unkempt, as if she had forgotten to change from her work clothes to party mode. Emily had always played second mom to Carly, especially during her teenage years. Carly admired Emily’s focus on work, her calm manner, her ability to listen, all things she faulted her own mother for lacking. And now that she was in her twenties, she sometimes turned to Emily as a friend rather than a mom substitute. Easier to talk to Emily about her work-obsessed boyfriend than Olivia, who would just repeat the same mantra: “Get out. You deserve better.”
How did Olivia know what Carly deserved? Maybe Wes was exactly what she deserved since she, too, seemed incapable of much more than cohabitation. Wasn’t she just as ambitious as Wes, just as distracted when it came to matters of the heart? Love? She always thought she loved Wes but maybe she just admired him. Does admiration have anything to do with love?
Carly whispered across the table to Emily. “You okay?”
Emily shrugged. Carly remembered zee doghouse. Sébastien sat at the other end of the table and was already deep in conversation with the best man, whoever the hell he was.
“A toast,” Olivia called out.
“Another?” Nell groaned.
“This will be a weekend of toasts!” Olivia announced cheerfully. “I’d like to raise a glass to my wonderful daughters. Last night I was ready to elope. Now, seeing you both at this table in this enchanting inn, I can’t imagine any other kind of wedding. To Nell and Carly!”
“To Nell and Carly!” everyone shouted. And then there was a cacophony of clinks as the many glasses reached out across the table.
Carly sipped her wine. She looked at Olivia and Brody in the center of the large table and thought: Be a sport, girl. It’s a goddamn wedding.
Nell threw her arm around Carly. “Where’s Mr. Clean?” she asked.
Carly stiffened. She hated the nickname, the delight that Nell, too, would take in Wes’s disappearing act.
“He broke his leg last week,” Carly said.
“What? How?”
“Skydiving.”
Carly felt a moment of panic—she never lied. But with the panic came a delicious rush—she loved the shock on her sister’s face. Is this what she meant when she said to Sébastien that she planned on being completely immature this weekend?