Authors: Christine Sneed
Marcelle appeared in the doorway and stared at Jayne with a shy smile. She was wearing a pink sundress, satin ribbons tied into bows at her shoulders, and matching pink sandals. With Marcelle as an example, Jayne could see why most women wanted children, though she could not imagine herself as a mother. (“Good thing,” Liesel had teased her. “Because unless he’s lying, Laurent won’t ever be up to the task of impregnating you.”)
“Bonjour, madame,” said Marcelle.
Jayne smiled. “Bonjour à toi, mademoiselle.”
“Maman est dans la cuisine avec Martin et Grand-mère.”
“Bon,” said Jayne. “Should I stay here? Je dois rester ici?”
The little girl nodded. “Oui, restez là.”
Maybe Jeanne-Lucie had burned the roast, and that was the reason behind her continuing absence. A burned beef roast might be one step removed from a catastrophe in France. Jayne remembered her Strasbourgeois host mother spending several hours on Sundays preparing a midafternoon meal for the family, one frequently as elaborate as a Thanksgiving feast.
And who was Martin—Jeanne-Lucie’s husband? Jayne had thought his name was Daniel. It didn’t seem likely that Marcelle would call her father by his first name, but Jayne hadn’t expected to find a man at their luncheon, only a small gaggle of women, one or two of them inspecting her through their lorgnettes, as if she were the poor relation, still dusty and rumpled from her trip in from the vulgar countryside.
Martin, the mystery guest, materialized before her a few minutes later, Marcelle trailing after him, Grand-mère a few paces behind, the roses trimmed and now in a crystal vase that Anne-Claire set on a small cherrywood table next to the leather sofa (
canapé!
Jayne chided herself), its back low enough not to block the windows it hulked beneath. The way he held his chest lightly forward, his shoulders pulled back, Martin looked like a dancer just past his best days. Jayne guessed he was thirty-five, maybe a year or two younger. He stared at her long enough, half smiling, to make her look away. He was wearing slate gray pants and a blue dress shirt that matched his eyes. She wondered if he was Anne-Claire’s boyfriend.
“You’re Jayne from Grandpa’s gallery, Marcelle tells me,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
He sounded American but didn’t look it, not with his fashionably disheveled dark blond hair an inch past his collar, his manicured hands, the tailored shirt that might have been plucked from one of the men’s boutiques in the seventh and eighth arrondissements where Laurent shopped.
“Yes,” she said, offering her hand. From where she stood mixing their drinks, Jayne could feel Anne-Claire watching them. “Nice to meet you.”
“Very nice to meet you,” he said, squeezing her hand twice before letting it go.
“Martin knows Laurent,” said Anne-Claire. “He used to work at Vie Bohème when he was still in art school.”
“Really?” said Jayne. “Were you one of his assistants?”
“Yes, he put up with me for two years.”
“You speak such good English,” she said.
“My father’s American. I was born in a suburb of D.C. It’s my mother who’s French.”
“Which suburb?” asked Jayne. “I went to college in D.C.”
“Bethesda. Did you go to George Washington?”
She shook her head. “Georgetown.”
“Well, good for you,” he said with a smile. “I didn’t even bother applying. I didn’t think I’d get in.”
“I liked it there,” she said. “I like D.C. too. I stayed and worked there for a couple of years after graduation.”
“Before moving to New York,” said Anne-Claire.
“Yes,” said Jayne. She wasn’t sure how Anne-Claire knew this. She didn’t remember talking about it with Jeanne-Lucie when they’d had dinner the other night, but maybe she had. Or else Laurent had told her.
Anne-Claire had moved over to the table with the drinks and was pouring crème de cassis and white wine into four glasses.
Martin settled into one of the armchairs and crossed his legs; he had chosen the same chair Jayne had been sitting in before he’d come from the kitchen.
“Where’s Jeanne-Lucie?” Jayne asked. “Does she need help with anything?”
He shook his head. Anne-Claire gave a small burbling laugh. “Ma fille est très têtue,” she said. “Comme son père. Et son frère.”
“She’s stubborn,” Martin translated. “Like her father and brother. She doesn’t want our help, but I’m pretty sure she could use it.”
“I told her to order everything from a traiteur, but she refused,” said Anne-Claire.
“She’s making roasted quail,” said Martin, “with grilled potatoes and carrots, and a
tarte aux abricots
for dessert.”
“Et un bouillon aux champignons pour commencer,” said Anne Claire.
“I love mushrooms. It all sounds delicious,” said Jayne. “It must have taken her hours and hours.”
Anne-Claire handed Jayne a kir. The glass was almost full, her earlier request for a small apéritif forgotten or else ignored. “Yes, it has taken her all morning and some of last night too,” she said.
“She must be an excellent cook,” said Jayne.
Anne-Claire smiled. “She tries. She is sincere, I think you could say. Not everyone who tries to cook is.”
Jayne noticed that Martin had turned to look at the unicorn on the wall; she wondered if this was his way of disagreeing with Anne-Claire. The older woman gave him a kir too, her fingers brushing the back of his hand. “Merci,” he said, his glass also filled nearly to the rim. “Jeanne-Lucie is a good cook,” he said, looking at Jayne. “But it’s hard to compete with Anne-Claire. Aside from my mother, she’s the best cook I know.”
“Your mother? I thought I was the best,” said Anne-Claire. She smiled. “I am joking, Martin. Je sais que ce n’est pas un concours.”
“Tell that to my mother,” said Martin, returning her smile. “She thinks everything’s a competition.”
“Most women feel that way,” said Anne-Claire. “But I am sure you know that already. Jayne does, yes?”
“Maybe, but I would like to think that it’s not true,” said Jayne.
“I would too, but in my profession,” said Anne-Claire, “it is never a good idea to ignore the truth.”
“She’s a psychologist,” said Martin.
Jayne nodded. “Yes, I heard.”
“Did Laurent tell you?” asked Anne-Claire.
“I think it must have been him,” said Jayne. It had been him, but her perverse instinct was not to admit it to this disconcerting, feline woman.
“You think,” said Anne-Claire with a trace of a smile. “Ah, oui.”
“J’ai faim,” said Marcelle, “Et tu dois parler français, Grand-mère. Je n’aime pas parler anglais.”
She didn’t feel like speaking English. Jayne looked at her and smiled; she didn’t always feel like speaking it either. How precocious, a little pugnacious too, Marcelle was in her own home, very different from the subdued little girl of the other night.
“Marcelle,” said Anne-Claire sternly. “Sois sage, s’il te plaît.”
The little girl gave her grandmother a mulish look. Jayne hadn’t thought Marcelle was behaving badly, but she was used to American parenting, where children routinely bossed their parents around, choosing their own diets and bedtimes. Here, from what Jayne had seen, children were mostly children, and parents were the adults in full command of the family rule book.
Anne-Claire continued to look steadily at her granddaughter. “Le loup aime bien manger les enfants gâtés,” she said.
Marcelle’s expression darkened further.
Jayne blinked, wondering if she had heard Anne-Claire correctly. The wolf liked to eat spoiled children?
“Don’t say things like that to Marcelle, Maman,” said Jeanne-Lucie, who had at last appeared in the salon. She looked so sleek and pretty in her sky-blue sleeveless dress, waist cinched by a matching belt. Her hair was pinned into a bun at the nape of her neck, and tiny silver hoops adorned ears. She seemed to have just stepped off a cloud. “She’ll have nightmares.” She glanced at Jayne and smiled. “Bienvenue chez nous, Jayne. I’m sorry that I have been in the kitchen for so long. Our luncheon is finally ready. Please come into the dining room.”
“Moi aussi?” asked Martin.
“No, you must wait for our scraps,” said Jeanne-Lucie.
“Comme un chien,” said Martin. He winked at Marcelle and barked once. “Your mother told me that I can only have the scraps.”
“Maman, pourquoi tu es méchante à Martin?”
“In English, Marcelle.” Jeanne-Lucie looked at Martin and made a face. “Don’t encourage her.”
“Marcelle doesn’t like to speak English?” asked Jayne. “If her father’s British, does he mind?”
“He doesn’t, not really,” said Jeanne-Lucie, “But I do. She’s being lazy. She speaks French at her nursery school and Daniel speaks French with her too, though I wish he would always use English to help her practice. He’s fluent in both English and French.” She glanced at Martin. “Like Martin.”
“And me,” said Anne-Claire.
“Oui, Maman,” said Jeanne-Lucie. “Toi aussi. Et moi.”
Anne-Claire gave Jayne a tart look. “Always forgetting her mother.”
“No, Maman,” said Jeanne-Lucie. “Never. How could I?”
The older woman laughed, but Jeanne-Lucie did not.
“Your husband isn’t joining us?” asked Jayne.
“No,” said Jeanne-Lucie. “He’s in Manchester until tomorrow. For his business.” Her skin glowed from her work in the kitchen. She had a kind face. Here in her home she was a much softer version of the aloof, slow-to-smile woman who had introduced herself to Jayne at Vie Bohème four days earlier.
How pretty you are, Jayne wanted suddenly to say, but was too shy with their audience of Martin and Anne-Claire.
When they sat down to lunch, Jayne had trouble forming a sentence for the first few minutes: the meal Jeanne-Lucie had prepared was better than any of the entrées and plats principaux in the restaurants Laurent had taken her to, the best she had eaten since coming to Paris. Although the restaurant meals had all been delicious, Jeanne-Lucie’s cooking was extraordinary and personal, the flavors so refined, almost symphonic in their layering, the game hen and sautéed vegetables melting in Jayne’s awestruck mouth. How lucky the absent Daniel was! Did he even realize it? she wondered. When she found her voice again, she could not stop complimenting Jeanne-Lucie, which incited Anne-Claire to skewer her and her daughter with sharp little glances as she ate her food in dainty bites and chewed each forkful far longer than seemed necessary. Jeanne-Lucie kept her eyes on Marcelle or Martin or else on Jayne instead of engaging in a contest of tacit one-upmanship with her mother. Along with her culinary skills, Jayne silently marveled over Jeanne-Lucie’s self-restraint, especially when her mother took a bite and murmured, “Not bad” or “A little too salty, chérie” or “Not enough garlic” or “My bird is fine, but next time, you should roast them for one or two minutes more.”
Whose idea had it been to invite Anne-Claire? Or was it she who had planned the luncheon and used her daughter as the decoy to lure in the ex-husband’s unsuspecting new girlfriend? The conversation was desultory for much of the meal, touching on the rumors of a postal workers’ strike, of the best variety of apples for tartes, and an accounting of the artists Martin admired most—de Chirico and Dalí, and lately the protean Gerhard Richter and another German artist, much different from Richter, Anselm Kiefer. Jeanne-Lucie also liked Richter and Cézanne and Bonnard, because they were geniuses, and why did it matter if they were popular? She also admired one of Martin’s former art-school classmates, a realist painter who had been featured in the most recent Venice Biennale, Émile Tôti-Frère. Martin rolled his eyes over this, but Jeanne-Lucie ignored him. Jayne thought of her own former classmate and the next Biennale, but kept quiet.
“I admire Kara Walker’s work,” said Anne-Claire. “It is so political and striking.”
Jayne looked at her in surprise. “I like her work too.”
“I was in New York in the spring, and I visited the gallery that represents Madame Walker. Just marvelous.”
“You were in New York?” asked Jayne, wary.
“Oh, yes, I was there in late March. Laurent must have told you?”
For a second Jayne felt as if she’d been splashed with cold water. “I think he did,” she lied. “But I don’t remember.”
Anne-Claire paused, seeing through her subterfuge, Jayne knew. “You don’t?” she asked. “Interesting. We met for dinner at an Italian restaurant that is on Prince Street. I always—”
“Maman was there for a conference,” said Jeanne-Lucie, cutting her off. “She goes to New York often. I do not, not with Marcelle now. Daniel has so much travel for his own work too, and he doesn’t like us to take Marcelle out of her little school now that she is used to going to it.”
Martin smiled, his wineglass raised to his lips. “There are worse places to be than in Paris, in any case.”
Jayne looked at her plate with its tiny bird carcass and streaks of rosemary-laced butter from the spring carrots and grilled potatoes. Why hadn’t Laurent told her about meeting his ex-wife for dinner? Did he not think that she would want to know these things? This was the same tendency, she believed, that had kept him until last night from revealing his patronage of other artists. But why he seemed to believe that she wouldn’t find out some of these things on her own, especially if he was permitting her access to the people who knew him best, she couldn’t guess.
“No, I agree, but it is nicer when we did not to have to stick to such a strict schedule,” said Jeanne-Lucie.
“Your life is not so bad,” said Anne-Claire. “You can take Marcelle on shorter trips.”
The little girl hiccupped. Martin looked at her and raised his eyebrows comically. She giggled and covered her mouth.
“Marcelle,” scolded Jeanne-Lucie. “Don’t be rude now.”
“Le loup mange les enfants qui ne sont pas sages,” said Marcelle.
“Maman,” said Jeanne-Lucie. “See what you’ve done? She’s going to have nightmares for sure.”
Anne-Claire shook her head. “No, she is too smart for that.”
Jeanne-Lucie gave her mother a frosty look. “I still have nightmares,” she said. “And I’m smart.”
Anne-Claire opened her mouth, but it was Martin who spoke first. “Jayne, I’d love to see your work sometime. I’m sure we all would.”