Secrets of Paris (26 page)

By sleeping with Lydie, falling in love with her, he had betrayed Jean-Marie. He remembered feeling that he had won something he had wanted for a long time. Lydie loving him made up for all the times she had turned him away in high school. So, on top of the euphoria of new love, Michael had felt like a victor. It was all false; he saw that now. He felt baffled and exhausted, defeated by the simple truth. For as much as he had loved Lydie then, he had wound up betraying her.

Late one afternoon the urge to clean set upon Lydie. She was sitting on the living room sofa, trying to write a letter to her mother, when it hit her: things were in piles all around her. Piles of unanswered and even unopened letters lay on the desk; piles of magazines tilted on tabletops; a pile of unfolded laundry covered the Barcalounger. She gathered the laundry into her arms and carried it into the bedroom.

It had been a white load: sheets, towels, and underwear. Folding it, she noticed straight off that all of the underwear was hers. Her skimpy silk bikini pants, a more substantial cotton pair, her
underwire push-up bra—when she had worn
that
last, Lydie couldn’t begin to remember, figured that it must have been thrown into the wash accidentally. It had been a long time since she had folded white laundry without any of Michael’s underwear in it. Yet surely she had washed clothes in the weeks he’d been gone? Suddenly she missed him so acutely she felt dizzy.

Placing the clean, folded things into her dresser drawer, her gaze lit on Michael’s letter box. It sat on the dresser top. She couldn’t resist tracing its glossy, lacquered surface with her fingertip. She found a couple of drips she hadn’t sanded down. She touched the crescent moon and the plum tree, its blossom-stippled branches spreading across the river, and her fingers came away dusted with gold leaf.

It was full of love letters they had written to each other. She shuffled through them, all postmarked “New York.” Some envelopes bore letterheads of the company she had worked for then. She opened one from Michael and read it with her heart in her throat.

“
Making love last night made me wonder what kind of thrills you get driving a fast car. Is it at all the same? A sense of being nearly out of control while meanwhile staying very steady and alert? But as I write this, I’m answering my own question. It’s not the same at all. Racing, you start out fast and stay fast and you have to keep control of the car every second. Last night, the way I remember it, we started out slow and didn’t speed up for a long time—and while I remember staying sort of steady, I was at no time in control. But it was definitely more fun than I ever have at the track. All my love, Michael.
”

Lydie folded the letter, put it back into its envelope. She opened another, this one to Michael.

“
It’s great writing you a letter while knowing I’m going to see you tonight. Not that I’ve written any
[here a letter that might have been an
m
had been erased just before the “any”]
love letters before
,
but I’ll bet there’s usually a certain sadness in them. Because if you’re writing a letter, it means your beloved is far away, right? I love knowing you’re just six blocks uptown. Dad called me at work this morning and asked if I’d bring you home for dinner tonight. I told him no, I’m keeping you all to myself. He obviously thinks you’re swell—a factor that has gone against many a boy, but not you! See you tonight—I hope you like our journey to Spain via my experiment in paella. But by the time you receive this, we’ll know, won’t we? Love, Lydie.
”

How shallow she sounded, Lydie thought, reading the words she’d written nine years ago. That cheap trick of turning “many” into “any”—she and Michael had been courting back then, and although she had certainly loved him, she had made him wait and wonder. And that business about her father. While it was true that any time he approved of a boy Lydie liked, Lydie would instantly lose interest, she couldn’t believe she had tormented Michael with it. And yet, she had to admit, she liked the girl who had written that letter: confident and full of pizzazz.

Lydie had adored beards and long hair on men; her father wanted everyone to look like the Beach Boys. Lydie had a weak spot for unorthodox Catholic priests or men who had abandoned the faith. Her father saved his highest regard for men seen every Sunday at church with their families—as children with their parents, as adults with their wives and children.

Michael had fit none of those categories. He had long hair but no beard, he was a run-of-the-mill Catholic who went to church when he felt like it. Anytime he heard a song with an even slightly sad or wistful melody, he told Lydie it reminded him of her. Most of the songs were about things the singer wanted but couldn’t have. “What Is Love” by George Harrison and “I Want You” by Dylan came to her mind. Sitting on their bed in Paris, Lydie smiled as she remembered taking Michael’s hands, looking him straight in the eye, and telling him in a serious tone that the only
song that reminded her of him was Billy Preston’s “That’s the Way God Planned It.”

She closed the lid of Michael’s letter box and replaced it on the dresser. The urge to clean had left her. Suddenly she wished she could get her hands on a race car. She imagined pulling up at the Hôtel Grande Madeleine, honking her horn, opening the passenger door for Michael. Whipping out the Boulevard Haussmann to the Périphérique, and from there—who cares? Instead she reached for the phone and dialed the hotel’s number. It was rather early in the evening, and she didn’t actually expect Michael to answer.

“Hello?” came Michael’s voice after a delay.

“Did I wake you?” Lydie asked, suddenly feeling that unpleasant and recently familiar sense of shyness.

“No,” he said. Then, “Yeah, you did. But that’s okay. I should be getting up.”

Lydie glanced at her watch. “Are you sick or something?”

“Just tired. I’ve been busy at work. How are you? Is something wrong?”

“No. I just wanted to …” To what? she wondered. “Talk,” she finished awkwardly. After a pause she said, “Actually I wanted to take a drive—in a hot car. But I have no idea where to get one.”

“You could probably rent one,” Michael said.

Lydie laughed. “I can just imagine calling Hertz—‘Hi, do you have a regulation Chevy for hire?’ ”

“Right. ‘Forget the unlimited mileage, just point me toward the nearest track,’ ” Michael said, sounding as if he were waking up.

“Can you believe Le Mans is just about an hour away and I haven’t even been?” Lydie said. “I should at least make a visit, to pay homage.”

“You should. It would be like a psychiatrist visiting Vienna without a stop at Freud’s house in the Berggasse.”

“How would you know where Freud’s house is?” Lydie asked.

“Didn’t you see the article about Vienna in the
Tribune
? I thought you’d like the part about the Habsburg balls. You know, I thought it might inspire you for Didier’s.”

“I didn’t see it,” Lydie said.

“Well, I’ll send it to you.”

Lydie was silent, digesting the fact Michael had said “send” instead of “bring.” On the other hand, she had been rejecting his invitations all along. “That would be nice,” she said after a while.

“How’s it coming—the ball?” Michael asked.

“Really well. But there’s still a lot to do for it.”

“What’ll you do when it’s over? Do you have other projects lined up?”

“I’m going back to New York,” Lydie said. “I’m taking Kelly Merida with me.”

“My time here isn’t up till mid-October,” Michael said sharply.

What does that have to do with anything? Lydie thought with a certain bitterness. “I’m tempted to say ‘So what?’ ” she said.

“I don’t know,” Michael said. “Never mind.”

“I wasn’t even sure you planned to leave,” Lydie said. “With your big success at the Louvre and everything else.”

Michael laughed. “My big success is not so big. Everything has turned out ‘okay,’ but
just
okay. I didn’t get the paintings I want, the new curator is grabbing all the credit and trying to take over the final details. It’s a big mess.” He laughed again. “After that great lead-in, I have something to ask you. Will you come to the opening? It’s in a week.”

“The opening party?” Lydie said. She felt excited to be asked—how could she miss it, after all? But it was another official event, like the embassy party, where she’d be appearing as a figurehead wife. “I don’t think so.”

“I wish you would,” Michael said. “I really want you to be there. Come on—”

Lydie hesitated because he sounded like he meant it. “I don’t think so,” she said again.

“I really thought you would,” Michael said. “You call me up talking about a fast car—I really thought you’d go for it.”

“Go for what?” Lydie asked.

“I thought you might take a chance. Take a chance and spend an important night with your husband.”

“Who walked out on who here?” Lydie asked, her temper rising. “What about the
un
important nights?”

“Listen, Lydie—” Michael said. “I thought you’d
want
to come to my opening. I suppose you’re not going to invite me to the ball.”

“I haven’t decided,” Lydie said, although until that moment she had intended to invite him.

“Thanks, Lydie.” Long pause, then, coolly, “Are you asking someone else?”

“That’s your style, not mine,” Lydie said.

“Shit,” Michael said.

“I have to go now,” Lydie said.

“This Kelly Merida thing—” Michael said. “I suppose you’re investing all your energy in her now?”

“Not really,” Lydie said, surprised by his vehemence. “But what if I were?”

“Your father used to say your own grades went downhill when you started spending all your time tutoring.”

“My father was full of shit,” Lydie said, hanging up on Michael. She sat there, staring at the phone, all the confidence and good feeling draining out of her, and she knew she was right back where she had been before she opened Michael’s letter box and started reading.

P
ATRICE STUDIED THE
place card Lydie had just lettered. Now, why was it so much better than the ones Patrice had done? Lydie’s had flair, the way her letters swooped and flowed. They weren’t nearly so neat, so symmetrical, as Patrice’s, but they were undeniably more distinguished. What a waste, that stupid calligraphy class Patrice had taken on Saturday mornings at the Boston Y all during seventh grade. “It will come in so handy, all through your life,” Eliza had said, obviously having graduation and wedding invitations in mind. Yet this was the first chance Patrice had had to use the so-called art.

Well, she wasn’t creative; she had never claimed to be. She sat back in the armchair at the head of Lydie’s dining table, watched Lydie hunched over the little cream-colored card. They had been tentative with each other since Lydie had made her announcement
about Kelly’s petition. Patrice wanted very much to overcome her hurt feelings and open her heart to Lydie. “I want to
be there
for you,” she imagined best friends saying to one another, soulfully, in California. But she and Lydie were just two East Coast girls transplanted to Paris. She thought of the invitation she and Didier had received to Michael’s opening and wondered why Lydie hadn’t mentioned it.

“Mind if I smoke?” Patrice said.

“Go ahead,” Lydie said, not looking up. “This is the third countess I’ve made a card for.”

“Don’t I know it,” Patrice said. “Didier’s inviting all the big guns to this thing. And of course they’re all so excited about the
media
attention. I mean, I think Didier has led them to believe the photographers will be from
Women’s Wear Daily
instead of an ad agency. They’re bringing their own hairdressers and makeup artists. Give me a break.”

“Actually, that will make my life easier,” Lydie said. “I won’t have to hire a beauty crew.” She set Countess Abelard’s card aside, started another.