Authors: Christine Sneed
On the way to Jeanne-Lucie’s apartment on Saturday, Jayne stopped at a sidewalk vendor to buy a bouquet of sunset-orange and pink roses near the Gare Saint-Lazare, where she caught the Metro, which would whisk her across the city to the eleventh arrondissement in about a quarter of an hour. From there, she would walk the short distance to meet her cagey lover’s ex-wife Anne-Claire and their second-born child. The other luncheon attendees she wasn’t sure about—Jeanne-Lucie’s husband, Daniel, Marcelle, and one or two more Frenchwomen close to Jeanne-Lucie’s age, which was Jayne’s age too, more or less?
Laurent had not wanted to say much more about his role as patron of the arts, but he did tell Jayne that he gave monthly stipends to the artists he helped support, and had been doing so for a number of years, though he had not been supporting the same artists all along. A few had stopped making art, and another had gotten married, and her husband had not wanted her to accept Laurent’s money, which had caused both marital friction and financial hardship, but the husband had prevailed, and the last Laurent had heard, the couple was still married.
“What if the artist had been a man?” Jayne asked. “Would his wife also have insisted that you stop giving him money?”
Laurent was eating bread with raspberry jam in the kitchen while he read the paper at the table. She sat across from him, her own bread and jam untouched. “No, I am guessing not, but I think you understand why,” he said.
“Yes, because a wife is property. A husband is not.”
He took a bite and chewed for a few seconds. “That is one way to say it, I suppose. But what if you were married to a man who was being given money by a female patron? Would you accept this arrangement?”
“I don’t know. Probably not,” she admitted. “But it would depend in part on how well we were doing without the patron’s money. How do you know that your artists are actually working? Do you go to their studios?”
“Yes, usually.”
“They live in Paris?”
“Two of them do. One is in Marseille, but we are in contact from time to time.”
“How did you find them?” she asked.
“Different ways,” he said. “A few have come into the gallery to see if we would represent them. If they are not yet ready but I like their portfolio, I sometimes offer to help them for a little while.”
How much do you give them? she wanted to ask but held her tongue, realizing that the conversation had become more of an interrogation than a dialogue. She didn’t have the right to know what he did with his money, and to make matters more complicated, she depended on him financially herself. Even so, the existence of these other artists bothered her, as if he’d admitted to having a second lover somewhere in Paris. A second and a third, with a fourth down in Marseille.
On the Metro now, as she rode across the city to Jeanne-Lucie’s apartment, Jayne wondered if she or her mother knew that Laurent gave money to poor artists. Were these artists-in-waiting really that good? Another question she wished she had asked: How many of them did become good enough for Vie Bohème to represent them? It was like baseball—Laurent with his triple-A team of artists, all of them presumably hoping to be called up.
On the train she glanced furtively at the other riders: fast-talking, cackling teenage boys in ersatz vintage Who and U2 T-shirts, hair greasy and uncombed; ponytailed, hunched girls in earbuds who tapped on their phones; dispirited-looking men in button-down shirts, some North or West African, some white, who tried to hide behind newspapers or else stared blankly at their reflections in the grimy windows; elderly men and women clutching net bags filled with leeks and peaches and raw meat tied up in clear plastic; tourists in their shorts, knees bald or hairy, speaking German, Japanese, English: “Why do we have to do so much walking, Steve? I thought you said we could take a taxi if I got tired.”
“I thought that woman was a prostitute.”
“I’m never going back to that restaurant.”
She met the gaze of a lone unshaven man with a guitar case and a frizzy nimbus of hair that reminded her of Bob Dylan’s. He smiled at her, chapped lips parting to show a crooked front tooth. Who knew where they were all going. If she asked each of them, said she was researching human happiness, what would they say they had done so far to sabotage their own?
Emerging into the glare of the midday sun from the Metro at Père-Lachaise, she oriented herself toward rue Merlin and almost stepped on a tiny pyramid of dog droppings. This would have been the second time since her arrival in Paris. A wiry, unshaven man in blue coveralls near the Metro exit saw her narrow miss and yelled “Merde!” as he chuckled at his cleverness and her distress. She had on her favorite sandals, silver and dainty, and looked down at her still-pristine feet to hide her angry blush. “Tais-toi,” she said, too quietly for her tormentor to hear. “Tête de merde.”
Laurent had given her the code to the front door of Jeanne-Lucie’s building, which was five stories tall and looked like innumerable other apartment buildings on Paris’s quieter streets: its facade of blond stone, the windows fitted with elaborate black-enameled iron grills. The windows above street level had narrow ledges onto which flowering plants might be placed, but none of the residents had done so. The building was blocky and wide and looked expressionless, as if withholding judgment from the people who glanced at it on their passage down the street. Two blocks east was the cemetery with its famous dead and hordes of tourists trudging the paths that led to Jim Morrison’s, Gertrude Stein’s, and Colette’s graves. She wondered if this was where Laurent wanted to be buried. Or maybe he planned to be cremated. There was undoubtedly some skillful politicking required for the acquisition of a plot at Père-Lachaise.
Unlike the area surrounding rue du Général-Foy, with its busy train station a few blocks away and the innumerable cars and harried pedestrians, rue Merlin was almost peaceful, with its uncrowded sidewalks and the small park where dog owners exercised their energetic Labs and collies. Jayne could feel her body tensing as she pressed the bell for Jeanne-Lucie’s apartment. An engraved brass plate read
M
c
ELROY/MOLLER
. She hadn’t been brave enough to punch in the code Laurent had given her and walk into the stairwell as if she were a privileged regular visitor.
Why
had
Jeanne-Lucie invited her?
Don’t be so eager to believe the worst
, Liesel had advised in an e-mail that morning.
I bet they’ll be nice enough. They’re probably just curious about you.
At the end of the note, she added:
A kindly reminder: don’t flatter yourself. Isn’t that what you always say to me when I think someone’s talking about me behind my back?
Laurent, however, had seemed uneasy before she set off for his daughter’s apartment. “I hope you will not reveal anything too personal,” he said.
She laughed, shaking her head. “You mean about our sex life?”
He showed her what she called his sad-dog face, a smiling grimace. “No, I am not thinking you will speak of that, nor will my daughter ask you to.”
“Will your ex-wife?”
He snorted. “No, she won’t either, at least I do not think she will.”
“What are you worried I’ll tell them?” she asked.
“I am not sure, but whatever you say, my ex-wife will remember it.”
“I won’t embarrass you,” she said. “I’m not a child who goes off and tells all her parents’ secrets to the neighbors.”
His face reddened slightly. “I am not your parent, Jayne. Please do not say that.”
The front door buzzed, the lock releasing with a quiet
click
. No voice called through the intercom to make sure the person ringing was welcome inside. Jayne pushed open the heavy exterior door and made her way into the unlit stairwell. She sneezed twice and wondered if someone had just swept the stairs. Above her on one of the landings she could hear someone opening an interior door.
“Jayne, c’est vous?” a woman called. It didn’t sound like Jeanne-Lucie. Anne-Claire?
“Oui, c’est moi,” Jayne called back. She was five minutes late but wondered if she was the last to arrive. How prompt were the French? Laurent liked to be on time and grew impatient if she was slow getting ready. She looked at the bouquet in her hand and wished she had also stopped for a small box of macarons; the colorful, chewy cookies were as beautiful as they were delicious.
She glanced down at her hemline to make sure her slip wasn’t showing before remembering that she wasn’t wearing one. She also realized that she didn’t know Anne-Claire’s last name and wondered how was she supposed to greet her. Laurent had said that Anne-Claire had not remarried, but this did not help Jayne with the last-name problem.
On the third-floor landing a thin, glamorous woman in a knee-length taupe skirt, matching heels, and a silk blouse the color of orange sherbet awaited Jayne. She had the defiant air of an actress who had not yet accepted that younger women were being chosen for all the better roles. Her skin looked soft as a child’s. She was blond and wore false eyelashes, expertly applied, along with creamy coral lipstick and pearls, her expression more impassive than welcoming. She was used to being listened to, Jayne sensed, to having the last word, though this desire had likely cost her allies.
“Madame Moller?” asked Jayne, offering her hand.
“Non,” said the woman, with a brisk shake of her silken head. “Madame Parillaud. Mais tu peux m’appeler Anne-Claire.”
“Bon, d’accord,” said Jayne. The older woman was using the familiar form of address,
tu
instead of
vous
, which Jayne had been taught was inappropriate between strangers, unless one was a child, the other an adult.
With a faint smile, Anne-Claire stared at Jayne for a moment before stepping aside to let her into the apartment.
As soon as she crossed the threshold, Jayne smelled something delicious—a stew or a roast, its scent rich and heavy. She wondered how Jeanne-Lucie managed to keep the apartment cool with the oven on. Did she have that rare object, an air conditioner, somewhere in her home?
“Follow me,” said Anne-Claire. “Nous allons boire un apéritif dans le salon. You will have a drink, yes?”
“Yes, but a small one please,” said Jayne, not sure why Anne-Claire hadn’t yet acknowledged the flowers. Surely she wasn’t annoyed that she hadn’t thought to bring some herself—her daughter could hardly expect her own mother to appear with a bouquet or some other hostess gift. At least Jayne didn’t think so. She still knew so little of practical value about the French, and she had all but squandered her semester abroad by staying with her American classmates instead of befriending French students; going to the movies, bad American ones in most cases; mooning over the boyfriend she had left on campus in D.C. before he dumped her and she leaped into bed with a guy named Cédric who turned out to be married, although he claimed to be her same age and had looked and acted it too.
Jeanne-Lucie still had not appeared, and Marcelle was nowhere to be seen either; she was likely keeping an eye on her mother. Or else she was somewhere with her father, whom Jayne was curious about. Laurent liked his son-in-law but had told Jayne that Jeanne-Lucie was more than Daniel could probably handle. What Laurent meant by this specifically, he hadn’t said.
“Yes, me too. Un tout petit apéritif.” Anne-Claire turned to look at her and finally nodded at the bouquet. “Les fleurs sont très jolies. My daughter will like them. Très gentil aussi. You are kind to bring them.”
“Merci,” said Jayne, embarrassed now, though she had been waiting for the compliment.
Anne-Claire took the bouquet and motioned for Jayne to sit on a leather armchair, one very similar in design to the pair in Laurent’s salon. In front of the chair and its mate was a glass-topped table with four long-stemmed glasses, a highly polished silver ice bucket, and one bottle each of Perrier, crème de cassis, and white wine. The room with its armchairs and matching sofa was bright with the midday sun. On the wall adjacent to the streetside windows hung a large faded tapestry of a unicorn in a forest, a good copy of
The Unicorn Defends Itself
. Jayne had seen the original at the Cloisters in New York two or three times, once with her sister, who had pronounced the tapestries boring. (“Medieval art,” Stephanie had said with visible irritation. “Sorry, but who cares about a fucking unicorn when people were dying at thirty back then from TB and impacted molars?” “That’s probably why they put unicorns in their tapestries,” said Jayne. “To forget how miserable they were.” “No,” said Stephanie. “They were just repressed guys who drew horses instead of naked women because the church forbade it.”)
The room’s built-in bookshelves housed a colorful jumble of French and British novels, biographies of politicians, scientists, and writers—the ones Jayne would have asked to borrow if she had known Jeanne-Lucie better were fat volumes about D. H. Lawrence, George Orwell, the Curies, and Winston Churchill, and slimmer biographies of Sylvia Plath and Camus. There were many art books too, ones heavy enough to smash all ten toes if dropped from the height of the middle shelves. She spotted the first volume of
Maus
, primly encased in a cellophane jacket. The room did not look like the kind of space where Marcelle would be allowed to spend much time. No toys were scattered about or tucked into a basket, though it was probable that Jeanne-Lucie had had someone in to clean before Jayne’s arrival. She remembered Laurent shaking his head over his daughter’s housekeeping abilities; surely she had a cleaning woman too.
Maybe she also used Pauline, and Pauline reported back to her about what was going on in her father’s household. What would she say?
Judging from the wrappers in the trash, the American girl, or maybe it is Monsieur Moller, seems to be eating a lot of chocolate.
Or,
Your father bought a new bread knife and threw out an old pair of running shoes last week.
Or,
Someone has been making frequent trips to Galeries Lafayette.
Anne-Claire disappeared with the flowers, leaving Jayne alone to wait for whatever arrived next. Jeanne-Lucie’s apartment was larger than any place she could imagine herself ever being able to afford. Whatever her husband did, he made a good living, unless like Laurent’s pet artists, it was Laurent’s money that financed their lifestyle too. The revelations of Thursday night had threatened her sense of her role in his life, in part because there seemed to be so many people he had relationships with who she would probably never meet or have more than a passing acquaintance with.