Secrets of Paris (17 page)

“Not that particular one.”

“I came all the way to France to visit my daughter, and this is what happens.”

“The only problem with that is, your daughter happens to be me,” Patrice said.

“Where do you get that idea? I love you.”

“You just hate my life.”

“My darling, I just wish you’d married someone closer to home. Is that so terrible?”

Listening to her mother’s words, Patrice could almost believe them. But the discrepancy between the message and the truth was so great, it made Patrice dizzy trying to figure it out. Patrice and Eliza had never gotten along; if Eliza wished Patrice lived closer to Marblehead, it was only for selfish reasons. For example, if Didier’s family owned Shreve, Crump and Low in Boston instead
of d’Origny Bijoutiers in Paris, well, Eliza could be proud of that. Or if Patrice and her husband owned a great house on Beacon Hill instead of their apartment on the Place des Vosges, Eliza could inform Patrice about Boston’s best designers, antique dealers, linen shops, domestic employment agencies. Eliza could come to Patrice’s parties. Eliza could receive Patrice and her husband on weekends.

Patrice thought of Lydie and her mother, of the great devotion they had for each other. Then she thought of Madame de Sévigné, of the true sorrow she had felt when Françoise-Marguerite had married Count de Grignan and moved to Provence. Patrice found many of the letters written by mother to daughter unreadable: too sad, too sweet, too raw. Now, recalling those letters, facing her own mother, made her realize what they, Patrice and Eliza, did not have. And she despised Eliza for it.

“I think I’m going to go home,” Eliza said in a shaky voice.

“Oh, that’s predictable,” Patrice said. “I’m such an ogre. I’m so mean to my mother. Am I supposed to beg you to stay?”

“Where did you get the idea that I’m so horrible?” Eliza asked, rising from her chair, holding out her hands. “What did I do to deserve it? I came all the way to Paris to see you …”

Patrice started to feel uneasy. Her mother sounded dreadful. Her voice broke; it sounded like the voice of an old woman.

“Listen, I really am sorry,” Patrice said. “Please stay.”

“I don’t know,” Eliza said. Sun streaming through the tall windows lit her from behind; it shined through the diaphanous green silk caftan she wore. Her body, in silhouette, looked incredibly thin and young. “I’m tired. Maybe it’s jet lag—I don’t recover from travel the way I once did. I think I’ll lie down.”

“Would you like Kelly to bring you something? Some tea, maybe?”

“No, thank you.” But she stopped at the door, turning to face
Patrice. She was smiling. “On second thought, I’d like some aspirin. That fizzy kind that dissolves, the kind you can only get in Europe.”

“I’ll get you some,” Patrice said.

On her way to the pharmacy, she considered the innuendo. On the one hand, her mother might have been making a concession to Patrice’s decision to live in France, to her Frenchness, by asking for a specifically French brand of aspirin. On the other hand, it signified that Patrice had given her a headache.

“Aspirine Upsa,” Patrice said to the clerk. She dropped the green box into her bag and headed home. The sun blazed; she wished she were already lying on a beach in Saint-Tropez, working on her tan, her head empty. She was tired of second-guessing, of analyzing every exchange she had with her mother. She remembered how, as a child, she would hear her mother reply to her father’s inquiries about her well-being in any situation: her position at a restaurant table; the number of ice cubes in her glass; her reaction the time she had to cancel her trip to visit her sister in Cleveland because Patrice had contracted mumps. “I’m perfectly fine,” Eliza would say, in a way that made it crystal clear that she was not. The woman was impossible to please; she was a martyr to her own cause.

When Patrice arrived home, she knocked gently on her mother’s door. Hearing no reply, she pushed it open. Eliza sat on the edge of her bed, her back straight, talking on the telephone. She was inquiring about flights to Boston. Patrice placed the green box on the bedside table and, leaving the room, quietly closed the door behind her.

She found Kelly in the kitchen. Kelly, wearing the black uniform she had been instructed to wear for the duration of Eliza’s visit, stood at the sink, shelling peas.

“You may not believe this now,” Patrice said, eating a raw pea, “but you are lucky your mother lives halfway around the world.”

Kelly said nothing, but smiled.

“Did you buy salmon for dinner?” Patrice asked.

“Yes, Mum. It will be such a pretty meal, with pink salmon and bright green peas. I hope your mother will like it.”

“I’m not sure whether I care about that.” Patrice felt her eyes fill with tears.

“What is it?” Kelly asked, sounding alarmed. “What is wrong, Mum?”

Kelly’s voice was so kind, so concerned, that Patrice began to cry. She covered her eyes with her hands and sobbed, and she felt Kelly touch her shoulder.

“Everything will be all right,” Kelly said. “You haven’t seen your mother in such a long time. When I finally see my mother I know we will have to get used to each other again.”

“She is so difficult,” Patrice said. “No one can please her.”

“She is very far from her home.”

“You’ve been so nice to her,” Patrice said, sniffling. “I really appreciate it.”

“It is my pleasure. She is so nice to me! Yesterday she told me all the places your relatives live in the United States. Boston, Cleveland, Palm Beach, and Farmington.”

Listening to Kelly gush, Patrice felt sorry for her. Eliza had made a fool of her, telling her a few pitiful facts about the United States while holding her in contempt. It reminded Patrice of the loyalty she had felt for Lydie at lunch, listening to Lydie talk on about her job, about Michael’s, as though Eliza actually took her seriously. Knowing that Eliza would dismiss Lydie from memory ten minutes after leaving the restaurant, Patrice had felt protective of her friend.

Eliza valued people from families of good social standing, preferably from Boston’s North Shore, certainly not maids or second-generation Irish from New York. The two ironies, of which Patrice was dimly aware, were that Eliza herself came from a nonexalted background, from a family who had owned a small textile mill in Fall River, and that Patrice, in spite of her democratic taste in women friends, had inherited her mother’s respect for old-line names and anything prestigious. Still, in spite of that, Patrice knew she was quite different from her mother. She could appreciate any fine, decent person regardless of background. Wasn’t she standing in her kitchen, spilling her guts to Kelly?

“Do you feel better now, Mum?” Kelly asked.

“A little.”

“Hello, hello,” Eliza said, shaking the box of aspirin. “I’ve come for a glass of water.”

In one swift motion, Kelly reached for a glass, filled it with Evian water from the refrigerator, and handed it to Eliza. “You’re so efficient, dear,” Eliza said.

“Are your travel plans set?” Patrice asked. She felt peculiar. She felt like crying, shouting, belting, and hugging her mother all at once.

“Now, don’t be hurt, Patsy, but I think it is best that I leave a little early. We’ve had this lovely week in Paris. I’ve had such a good time. You know I don’t care too much for the Riviera, and this way I can get back to Boston and you and Didier can have a nice vacation alone together.”

“The trouble is, we’ll always remember this. That you came for a month and left after a week because we couldn’t stand each other.” Patrice remembered what Lydie had said the other day: “Be nice to your mother, it’s only a month out of your life.”

“That’s not true,” Eliza said. “I not only can stand you, I love
you. I simply want to give you and Didier a nice time alone together. Don’t forget, your father was a businessman; I know how hard those men work, how they need their time off. And he is just so in love with you!”

And Patrice knew that Eliza had deemed that tale to become the reality. Eliza was expert at reinvention; it would go down in history that Eliza had left France early not because mother and daughter hated each other but because Eliza did not want to intrude on Patrice and Didier’s vacation. On their little love nest in Saint-Tropez. Patrice tried to feel relieved. Wasn’t this exactly what she wanted? Instead, she felt sick.

Eliza dropped two aspirin tablets in the water, and the three women stood silent, listening to them dissolve. “Why they don’t market this stuff in America is beyond me,” Eliza said.

“The aspirin in America is very different?” Kelly asked after a moment. Patrice thought it brave of her; she knew it was one thing for Kelly to have a conversation with her, quite another to give Eliza the impression that she considered herself an equal part of their trio. But such was the strength of Kelly’s desire to know everything, no matter how minute, about the United States.

“Oh, in America they have these horse pills, impossible things to swallow.” Eliza sipped her aspirin as if it were a cocktail. “You are a very lucky girl, dear, to have Patsy as your employer.”

“Yes, Mum. I know,” Kelly said.

“She is so concerned for your future, she has been trying to recruit me to take you home with me.”

Kelly gasped, beamed at Eliza, then Patrice. “Oh, really? Really?”

“I tried,” Patrice said.

“I’m sorry to say, it won’t be possible right now,” Eliza said. “For one thing, I employ a girl whom I am absolutely devoted to.
And for another, I don’t understand all the red tape. But let me send a letter to my congressman, he’s a good friend, and maybe sometime in the future …”

“Your congressman! Thank you, thank you,” Kelly said, twisting her hands.

God, it’s pathetic, Patrice thought. The lie cost Eliza nothing at all, and it made Kelly so happy. It gave Kelly hope, and it made Patrice a hero. Kelly wore an expression of pure gratitude. Doesn’t this solve everything? Patrice thought. Eliza would feel she had helped Patrice out; Kelly would idolize Patrice for her efforts. If only Patrice had her mother’s talent for reinvention. Then she could stop feeling guilty. She could convince herself that she had truly, vigorously helped Kelly fulfill her dream of getting to the United States.

I
T SURPRISED
L
YDIE
to realize how much she missed Patrice. Daily things would occur, and she would wish she could call Patrice to tell her about them. Small things, really, such as the discovery of a new restaurant with a quiet, shady terrace; the infernal humidity; the frustration Lydie was feeling about Michael’s late hours. Yes, the construction of his project had finally started, and each day brought new milestones of ineptitude: a door incorrectly hung, a batch of new mortar that didn’t match the old. If Patrice were in Paris, Lydie believed she wouldn’t feel so abandoned. She would have someone to call; she and Patrice could have lunch or tea together. In New York she had confided in Julia, but over here she had Patrice.

Postcards arrived from Saint-Tropez. Lydie felt a little surprised, a little thrilled by the vulgarity of Patrice’s cards. Many
were sexual, all featured breasts, as if Saint-Tropez’s greatest feature were its well-endowed female inhabitants. But Patrice’s messages were serious, kind. It seemed she missed Lydie as much as Lydie missed her. “I haven’t spoken a word of English since arriving,” she wrote. “All of Didier’s friends are French with a vengeance.” On another she wrote: “When are you coming? Get down here, and fast! You are my only American.”

That phrase, “my only American,” struck Lydie. In writing it, Patrice had named something Lydie had been trying to define. What would happen to Patrice when Lydie returned to the United States? Lydie had grown so fond of her. She had a private store of memories based on that luncheon with Patrice and her mother and on the time Lydie told Patrice everything about her father and Michael. Lydie couldn’t help seeing herself and Patrice with poignant overtones: two only children in a foreign country.

When Lydie told Michael about it that night, he laughed.

“Patrice can fend for herself,” he said. “I think she’s a tough cookie.”

“She gives the impression of being tough,” Lydie said. “But a lot of it is an act. You should have seen her with her mother—the combination of bulldozer and baby. She wanted to act so competent, make sure the visit ran like clockwork. But when she’d look at her mother her eyes would get all anxious, because she was afraid her mother wasn’t having a good time. Which she obviously wasn’t.”

“It’s a long way to come to have a bad time,” Michael said.

Lydie picked up on something in his voice. She looked at him for a long time without speaking. She had the feeling he was talking about her, Lydie—not Patrice’s mother. It didn’t seem to matter to Michael that she felt better, was working hard on the d’Origny project. “Why don’t you say what’s on your mind?” she asked.