Secrets of Paris (13 page)

In spite of what she said to Michael last night, she knew that he had intended their Paris year to cheer her up. Did Michael have any idea how hard it was to rearrange her mind, to start thinking of her father as a murderer? Neil the good father, the family man, the jolly Irishman, the adulterer, the murderer. If Lydie shared Didier’s opinion that complexity was desirable, why couldn’t she accept the fact that her father had had a hidden side? For no matter how she tried, she couldn’t find any hint, in anything her father had ever said or done, that he could be capable of killing himself and someone else.

And her mother. Where widows were respected and looked after by family and old friends, allowed to reminisce mistily about their husbands, Julia was shunned. In a way she brought it on herself; she felt so ashamed, she assumed people wanted nothing to do with her. She stopped going to the retired teachers’ luncheons; she quit the St. Anthony’s Ladies’ Auxiliary. The saddest part was that she still loved Neil, couldn’t bear to hear anything
bad about him. Well-meaning friends might say she was better off without him, but she didn’t see it that way.

For the first time, Lydie thought that maybe coming to Paris
was
the best thing. If she were in New York, Julia wouldn’t be forced to go out on her own. She would rely on Lydie to comfort her. She would eat dinner with Lydie and Michael, as she had nearly every night in the months before they left for France, sometimes drinking so much wine that she would fall asleep on the sofa and stay there all night, fully dressed, under the blanket Lydie would spread over her.

Walking along, Lydie felt happy to be free of all that, distracted by the sights of Paris. She passed shops that catered to tourists, purveyors of T-shirts imprinted with images of the Arc de Triomphe, duty-free perfume, ashtrays in the shape of Notre Dame, last year’s scarves from Dior, St. Laurent, and Givenchy. Then she came to the Quai de Megisserie, the animal market, where cages of swans, peacocks, Rhode Island Red chickens, grouse, quail, and Canada geese lined the sidewalk. The cages seemed cruelly small. She stopped before a pair of swans.

“How much to rent these swans?” she asked the proprietor.

“These are beautiful swans,” the man replied.

“Yes, but how much?”

While the man considered, Lydie imagined holding the fancy dress ball at Fontainebleau or Versailles, with swans and peacocks in the background. What if she rented the birds and never brought them back? They looked so sad in their cages, and Lydie believed they would probably die soon. Perhaps Didier’s budget would cover the cost of buying them. She imagined Didier and Patrice at an estate with a lake and swans, and the image made her smile.

The man named a price. Lydie thanked him and walked along.
“Don’t forget me!” the man called. “Come to me when you need swans.”

At the corner Lydie calculated that she had already walked halfway to the Place des Vosges. She had a sudden, compelling urge to talk to Patrice. She thought of the alarm she’d begun to feel about Michael, their marriage. She imagined visiting a doctor, presenting her symptoms, listening to the diagnosis. She wanted not friendly advice but reassurance. So she turned away from the Seine, onto a crooked street that would lead to the Marais.

“She asks that you wait while she finishes her phone call,” Kelly said after she had announced Lydie to Patrice. “Would you like a glass of tea?”

“Yes, please,” Lydie said. “Patrice tells me you want to get to the United States.”

Kelly stopped still. “Yes, I do,” she said.

“How do you plan to do it?” Lydie asked.

“There are many ways,” Kelly said. “Some girls marry American servicemen. Or find Americans to sponsor them.”

“How does that work?” Lydie asked.

“Oh, you must work for an American, and if you are lucky she will bring you to the States with her. I think she must swear to be responsible for you if you are sick or commit a crime. But the rules are very strict, and even with an American sponsor you do not always get in.”

Lydie’s mother had left Ireland at the age of twenty-one. Her father had been twenty-four, and that year he had started the business. “How old are you, Kelly?” she asked, knowing she would never ask that question to someone who was not a maid.

“Twenty-seven.”

“I mentioned you to my mother,” Lydie said. “She immigrated to the United States a long time ago.”

“Did she arrive with nothing? Does she live there still?” Kelly asked, seeming to hang on every word.

“She arrived with nothing and she lives there still,” Lydie said.

“Did she marry an American?”

“No. My father was Irish. Why do you want to get there so badly? Are the Philippines that bad?”

An expression so devout that it could have been a prayer-book illustration of a child in thrall to a vision had crossed Kelly’s face. “The Philippines are terrible, but they are our home. So we love them. But everyone wants to get to the States.”

“Why? If everyone loves the Philippines so much?”

“The States are the only place you can make money. Filipinos are ambitious. Filipinos dream of a house, fully furnished, a refrigerator, and a freezer full of foods.”

“Is your family very poor?” Lydie asked.

“Oh, yes,” Kelly said.

They stood there for another minute, but Lydie suddenly felt awkward. “Well, keep trying. At least Patrice is teaching you the computer, so you’ll have a skill when you get there.”

“Oh, thank you, Mum,” Kelly said.

“Why don’t you call me ‘Lydie’?” Lydie said.

Patrice found Lydie waiting in the living room. She felt keyed up, exactly in the mood to talk. The timing of this visit was just perfect. She wore her black hair swept back with silver combs and a thin cotton caftan instead of her usual shorts or jeans, as if she had had a premonition of this visit.

“Surprise, surprise!” she said.

“I was in the neighborhood,” Lydie said.

“This is so great! I was just wishing to see you, and you appear. Didier already called, to tell me he hired you.”

“It’s fantastic,” Lydie said. “I already have ideas …”

“Fill me in?”

Lydie shook her head, smiling shyly. “Not quite yet,” she said. “On a project like this, I like to keep them to myself at first … I’m really thrilled. He gave me absolutely no restrictions.”

“That’s my Didier,” Patrice said. “Patron to the artists, a regular Lorenzo de Medici. He does the same thing with his jewelry designers. Well, I have something to tell you. Today is T minus six and counting.”

“What?”

“ ‘T’ means ‘Tyrant,’ alias ‘Mother.’ She arrives in six days.”

“It’s that bad?” Lydie asked.

“You’ll meet her soon enough,” Patrice said, sipping her iced tea. “I suppose you get along great with your mother.”

“We have our ups and downs,” Lydie said. “But yes, in general.”

“Did she give you a hard time about coming to Paris?”

“Not really,” Lydie said. “She’d prefer for me to be in New York but she didn’t make a fuss.”

“God, she sounds eminently reasonable. See, my mother can only understand events in relation to herself. Like, I didn’t get married and move to Paris. I left
her.
”

“I’m the one who didn’t want to come to Paris,” Lydie said. “My mother didn’t have anything to do with it directly.”

Patrice didn’t say anything. This was as close as Lydie had ever gotten to telling her anything really personal. She was afraid of saying the wrong thing, spooking Lydie back into privacy.

“I didn’t want to leave New York because of … a tragedy.”

Patrice had never actually heard someone refer to a personal event as a “tragedy” without sounding pompous or maudlin, but she could believe a tragedy had happened to Lydie, who sat across the room, gripping her glass, trying very hard to keep her voice steady and well modulated.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Patrice asked.

“My father killed himself. And someone else.”

“Oh, Lydie!” Patrice said.

“It came as a big shock,” Lydie said. “We were never a dramatic family, in any way. I never heard my parents fight. My father went off to work every morning and came home every night.”

“Do you know why he did it?” Patrice asked, fascinated and horrified.

“Well, she was his lover,” Lydie said. “Much younger, married herself. With a two-year-old child.”

“When?” Patrice said.

“A year ago. It just … changed everything. Poor Michael. He’s married to a zombie.”

“You? You’re not a zombie.”

Lydie shook her head. “You don’t really know me. I’m different around you—it’s easy to be. But Michael knows everything. He’s been through it all with me. He and my father were very close.”

“Well …” Patrice said, not knowing what to say.

“I can’t make sense of what happened. Michael wants me to. Things have gotten pretty bad between us.” She paused, took a breath. “Michael was wonderful to me at the time. Well, he still is. My parents loved him, and he loved them. Michael was the only person my father ever told … about the woman.”

“Did Michael know what your father planned to do?”

Lydie shook her head.

“What’s gotten so bad between you? I thought everything
seemed fine when you came for dinner that night,” she said, lying. Afterward she had mentioned to Didier how tense Lydie and Michael had seemed toward each other.

“I let it get in the way of
everything
. I feel numb all the time. I look at Michael and it all comes back to me. I hear my mother’s voice on the telephone and I feel guilty for leaving her and for feeling
glad
I left her.”

“Doesn’t she have friends? Family?”

“Everyone handles this differently,” Lydie said. “Her sisters can’t quite bear to talk about it.”

“Michael is your family too,” Patrice said. “He needs you.”

“I know,” Lydie said, her expression blank. “Isn’t it awful? I can take care of my mother, make allowances for her behavior, and I want Michael to do that for me. If I don’t feel like going to bed with him, I expect him to understand it’s because I’m feeling sad. Or depressed. Or scared.”

“I’m sure he does understand,” Patrice said.

“I hope so,” Lydie said, smiling for the first time since the conversation had begun. “It’s a relief to talk about this.”

Patrice felt surprised by how happy she felt that Lydie would confide in her. She herself was an only child; only children grew up without anyone to talk to, with barriers of privacy intact without even knowing they existed. So she understood what it took for Lydie to spill such a terrible secret. She wondered whether Lydie had worshiped her father the way Patrice had worshiped hers. Not that he had deserved it: he had left Patrice and her mother when Patrice was four, leaving Eliza hurt and eventually bitter. Patrice knew she gave her mother a bad rap. But when she thought of her father she thought of presents and hugs, and when she thought of her mother she saw a frown. Just a frown, hanging in the air. Like the Cheshire Cat, only upside down and without teeth.

“I feel better,” Lydie said.

“I still feel rotten,” Patrice said. “It’s still T minus six, and counting.”

“Maybe things will go wonderfully.”

“Let’s face it: they never do,” Patrice said, full of warmth toward Lydie. It felt so comfortable, talking to her. Was this how it felt to have a sister? That thought just popped into her mind. It must be all this talk about families, she thought.