Little Death by the Sea (4 page)

“I mean, where we go from here. You know, The
Plan.”

“Ah, yes, the plan.”

Do the French say “Ahhh” before every
sentence they utter? Maggie wondered. As if even a comment must be
savored like a piece of tender lamb all smothered in rosemary.
Everything was a smacking together of the lips, a taste, a rolling
around in one’s mouth. She didn’t know whether she found it
contrived or charming.

“I am to take you to a place. And then Roger
will come with the little girl.”

“Why not to the
Gray d’Albion
Hotel?”
she asked reasonably.

“It would not be, eh...how you...?
Appropriate.”

“No, I guess I can see that. A friend’s
house, is that where we’re going then?”

“Yes, a house of a friend. You will see,
soon. It is not far. Meanwhile, you will see something more of the
Cote d’Azure, non
? You will allow Laurent to show you?”

“More sightseeing?”

“Not sightseeing this time. No tourists
today.” He paused to take a last drag on his cigarette before
grinding it out in the ashtray. “Roger will not come with the
little girl for a long time.
Ce soir, peut être
. A long
time. Your coffee is good?” He smiled at her and she felt a
definite thrill filter through her, although whether from
excitement or a tiny needle of fear, she wasn’t sure.

“So, we’re basically waiting for Roger, as
usual. Is that it?”

“
Oui, Mademoiselle
. We are waiting
again
aujourdhui
.” Laurent finished his coffee and stared
out at the Gulf, its startling blueness twinkling in the sunlight.
His eyes looked suddenly hooded and careful.

It occurred to Maggie that he might have had
other things he’d prefer to have done than shepherding her around
the south of France for the last four days.

“Call me Maggie, please,” she said
quietly.

He turned to look at her and smiled.

“
Merci
,” he said.

4

Maggie stood with her back to the room
interior and faced the little garden. A jumble of flowers and
weeds, it looked as if it had been untended for years, yet was more
beautiful for its neglect. Geraniums exploded in uncontrollable
bushes of rich reds and oranges to border all sides of the
waist-high stone walls which enveloped the tiny plot. Roses grew
wild everywhere in snaking vines along the ground and up a rotted
wooden trellis that reached towards the French doors and the patio
where Maggie now stood. Over the garden wall, she could see the
Mediterranean Sea, just a patch of it but enough to fill her with
delight. The air was fragrant with the scent of lemons and
roses.

“
C’est magnifique, n’est-ce pas?”

Laurent stood to her left, a glass of white
wine in each hand, his eyes squinting against the sunlight, his
voice light and familiar to her.

“It’s beautiful.” She turned and held her
hand out for one of the wine glasses. “You know the people who live
here?”

“Maggee, no one lives here!” He gestured at
the ruin of the place: the garden a tangle of weeds and garbled,
wayward shrubbery, the panes broken out of the French doors. There
was a small wooden table in the one-room cottage with two shaky
benches propped up against it.

“But, I don’t get it. A view of the sea, and
we’re not that far from Antibes, right? I mean, it didn’t seem like
we are. This property must cost a fortune, to just let it rot like
this? It’s unbelievable.” She walked out onto the patio with her
wine. He followed.

“It is not a good house.” Laurent shook his
head and looked around the room. Paint had peeled off in strips to
lay in crinkled husks on the floor.

“I don’t care if it’s the local crack-house,
Laurent, the location is everything. I mean, they could tear this
place down and build a nice little house on the site, don’t you
see? I mean, look at that view!”

“
Incredible, non
?” Laurent smiled
proudly, as if he’d had something to do with the view.

“It really is, and nobody lives here. I
wonder if it’s for sale?”

“I do not think so.”

“No, I wouldn’t ‘sink zo’ either,” she said
playfully, mimicking his accent. “It’s beautiful. The whole area
is. I’d never been to the Riviera before. At least now I know what
all the fuss is about. Mind you, the major fuss has to be the
prices. I mean, one BLT at the Hotel Splendid cost over thirty
bucks! A bottle of Perrier there cost almost ten dollars.” Maggie
felt suddenly uncomfortable, as if Laurent’s silence and the quiet
beauty of the cottage were working together to unsettle her. “When
did you say Roger would be coming with Nicole?” She turned to face
him, her back to the panoramic blue view.

“It might be a little while.”

“What is a little while? Hours?”

“
Oui
, Maggee, hours, yes.”

“I see. And we’re to stay here?”

“This is where Roger—“

“I know, is bringing Nicole. But, I mean,
there’s nothing here for us to do. Couldn’t we have waited in Monte
Carlo? Or Antibes? I mean, three hours of hanging out here and I’ll
be loopy, you know what I mean?”

Laurent smiled.

“We will not be bored during our wait, I
promise you that. You have enjoyed seeing the
Cote d’Azure,
oui?”

“Yeah, it was great.”

“
Et maintenant
, you will see a part of
France that is not for
la touriste
, eh? Come, bring your
wine.” He turned and scooped up a small backpack and moved out into
the garden. Maggie followed him.

“Laurent?”

“
Oui
?” He took out a small tablecloth
and spread it carefully, ceremoniously, across the weeds, the
buttercups and the violets.

“
Est-ce que vous aviez connu ma
soeur?”

He looked up briefly at Maggie as he began to
unpack the small canvas bag of picnic supplies.

“
Non
, Maggee, I met your sister but
only once and too briefly. I am sorry.” He took out a large jar of
mushrooms swimming in olive oil, two long baguettes, fresh pears,
strawberries, a small wheel each of Gouda and Edam cheeses, and a
roasted chicken pricked with toothpicks of baby onions.

“You’re doing all this to help out
Roger?”

“He is a friend.” He looked up at her again
and smiled. “
Une ami de coeur
.” A friend of the heart.

“He’s told you about Elise?”

“He said she was a girl who had trouble. A
lot of trouble.”

“That’s true.” Maggie dropped down quietly
onto the tablecloth next to Laurent. She picked up a pear. It felt
fat and juicy in her hand. “When did you buy all this stuff? I
never saw you do it.”

“Ahhh, the French, we are clever,
non
?”

“And Roger never really knew her either.” She
put her hand on Laurent’s sleeve and he seemed to freeze under her
touch. “But you’ve heard stuff. You heard about her, didn’t you,
Laurent?”

He sighed and finished emptying his knapsack:
napkins, forks, another bottle of wine.

“What you hear in a town like Cannes is...”
He shrugged.

“Look, Laurent, don’t try to spare my
feelings, okay? I know my sister did drugs and she had this baby,
you know? I mean, I really don’t think you can tell me stuff that
is going to surprise me about Elise. So if you know anything about
her...”

Laurent turned without speaking and put his
large hand on top of her slim one. His eyes were dark and kind and
he looked into her face. “You would not be shocked,” he said,
“
mais non
, and in my country, to have the
bèbè
with
no father is...not so terrible” he shrugged.

“ I want to know about my sister, Laurent.
Please, tell me what you’ve heard.”

“I have heard nothing very bad. That perhaps
she smoked marijuana and she was
toujours
a part of the
folie á deux
, you
comprends
? She always was choosing
the wrong man,
comprends-toi
?”

“You’re not telling me what you know.” Maggie
moved her hand from his and picked up the jar of mushrooms. She
examined them carefully, watching them bob and float in their oily
mire. “But I imagine you’re right about the men she chose. She was
an artist. Did you know that? She painted? She came to Paris six
years ago.” Maggie put down the mushrooms and stared out to the
Mediterranean.

“You were close with her, yes?” Laurent tore
a piece of bread off and offered it to her. She took it
absently.

“Oh, a long time ago, when we were kids,
really. When we got older, she began to dress odd and hang around
with weirdoes and stuff and she wasn’t interested in college or
anything.” She looked at Laurent and suddenly wondered what it
would be like to kiss those full lips. She turned away. “Not at all
like me. I always knew what I wanted to do. And I liked college and
I liked outfits that, you know, matched. We weren’t anything alike.
She scared me a little and that’s funny because that just now
occurred to me. And if you knew her, you’d think I was crazy
because she was totally unintimidating. Sweet and maybe a little
goofy, but not a ditz, or anything. And I think she had real
talent. Anyway, she came over here to go to school. And our folks
thought it would be good for her. I don’t know why they thought
that. Maybe she was just this major embarrassment to them back home
and it was easier if she did her goofy mayhem from a few thousand
miles. That’s an awful thing to say.” She looked at Laurent and
found him watching her intently. “I loved her.”

“
Bien sûr.”

“And I can’t believe, I still can’t believe
that she wanted the kind of life she wanted.”

“It was not a life that you would have
chosen.”

“Are you kidding? Smoking and shooting
dope?”

Laurent made no response.

“And having babies out of wedlock? Maybe
y’all do that sort of thing over here and it’s no big deal, but
it’s a definite
faux pas
where I come from.”

“Perhaps that is why your sister came to
France,
non
? It is, for her, a world that understands her
better than your world.”

“I guess that was my main problem with her. I
just couldn’t believe that she could live the childhood we both
lived—going to the beach and the mountains, with our own ponies and
private schools and stuff, and she could say, after all that, she
could say ‘nah, it’s not for me.’”

Laurent poured her a glass of wine and began
to open the cheese.

“She just dropped off the face of the world.
At first, she wrote a little, but soon she stopped going to classes
and then she stopped writing or calling.” Maggie looked at Laurent
and erupted with a sudden burst of anger.

“Did you know she’d been pregnant, had the
child—Nicole was over a year old—Elise was still calling us from
time to time...and she never mentioned that she’d had a baby? Never
mentioned she’d gotten pregnant and was now a mother? Can you
believe that?”

“Your mother and father, they were very
angry?”

“No, no, they were worried. But, I don’t know
why more wasn’t done.” Maggie pushed her thick, dark hair from her
eyes. “God, I hate myself for thinking they were afraid they might
have found her if they’d gone looking for her and maybe she’d want
to come home and be the crazy artist in their neighborhood and
around their country club and stuff.” She looked into Laurent’s
eyes, her own misting slightly. “Why am I thinking that? My parents
adored Elise. Trust me, they did.”

“But they did not look for her?”

“Well, yes, sort of. I don’t really know. It
was about three years ago and I was all caught up in my job and
stuff, I mean, I knew it was all going on but I was super busy at
the office. I’m in advertising.”

“Ahhh, I see.” He nodded and smiled politely
and Maggie found herself feeling stupid again.

“It’s a really great job,” she said. “I write
the words, you see, for the ads. You know? Television commercials
and stuff?”

Laurent nodded while he unscrewed a jar of
fragrant
tapènade
and rummaged in the basket for a knife
with which to spread the olive mixture.

“Anyway, it’s a great job,” Maggie repeated,
her eyes watching the blue horizon that was the Mediterranean as it
merged with the blue southern sky. “Very fast-paced and exciting.
You meet a lot of interesting people, too. Plus, it gives me a
creative outlet. I think that’s important.”

“Creativity is important,” Laurent finally
said, lighting a cigarette and exhaling a puff of blue smoke
between them.

“It’s essential,” she said, looking away.
“I’ve wanted to be an ad copywriter ever since I saw the first
Volkswagen commercials...you remember the ones? ‘Think Small’?
Remember?” She turned to watch his reaction.

“I don’t watch much television,” Laurent
said.

“It was a magazine ad.”

“Ahhh.”

They were quiet for a moment. From across the
courtyard and down the vineyard-studded hills, she noticed a
colorful, flapping line of laundered clothes starkly visible
against the landscape of browns and muted greens. The clothesline
bucked and twisted in the bright sky like the gay signal flags
she’d seen on the yachts moored in the harbor at Monte Carlo.

“And now we have no idea of where she is, if
she’ll ever even contact us again or if she’s dead.” Maggie brushed
a dusting of pollen from her cotton dress. “Maybe my folks thought
that this was a stage she was going through and she’d snap out of
it, resurface some time and be normal when she finally came home.
I’m sure we all thought she’d eventually come home.” Laurent
reached over and took her hand in his. She looked at him, her eyes
full of tears. She blinked the tears down her cheeks and the burly
Frenchman leaned over and kissed her gently on the mouth. She felt
the comforting coarseness of his rough face against her cheek.
Slowly, she moved toward him, he, simply yielding and making no
other move. She folded herself against his broad chest, smelling
the soap and sunshine in his blue cotton pullover. A moment passed
and then he lifted her chin with his fingers and looked into her
wet blue eyes. He kissed her. His tongue pushed gently past her
lips into her mouth and his arms tightened around her.