Secrets of Paris (41 page)

The old, famous hotel, whose brochure claimed it was the place where Impressionism was born, stood high on a hill. It faced the mouth of the Seine, beyond which lay the English Channel and the North Atlantic. Ivy climbed its shingled walls, geranium-filled flower boxes hung at every window. The service was correct, even formal. The maid led them to their room on the top floor.

“How many people check into a place like this with no bags?” Michael whispered to Lydie, climbing the stairs.

“Let’s hope they think we’re up to something illicit,” Lydie whispered back.

But when the maid left them alone in the room, Lydie felt shy. She looked out the window, across the garden to the sea. Turning toward Michael, she blinked, thinking of how she had aimed a gun at his head. He leaned on the window frame, watching her. His hand rested on the sill, and she could imagine it tracing the inside of her arm. Then he pulled her toward him and kissed her.

“I hated thinking of you alone in our bed,” Michael said.

“But you did think of me?” she asked, brought straight back to the present.

“Yes, I did. A lot. You have to relax,” Michael whispered, his breath warm against her ear. “Everything will be fine. Haven’t we been here before?”

Lydie laughed at that. “Never
here
,” she said, not meaning the hotel.

“That’s true …”

She watched the tall windows. Although she couldn’t see the water, she knew it was near by the quality of light. Shadows played
on the ceiling as the sun moved across the western sky. The time had come to trust him or not. She lay on her side, looking into her husband’s eyes. She had known him for so long. She had watched him play basketball in high school, she had fallen in love with him in Washington. She had come with him to Paris and nearly lost him.

He was watching her, waiting for her to make the first move. She stroked his cheek, kissed his mouth. One hand closed around his erect penis and the other slid up, grazing his stomach and chest. She felt reluctant desire building as she arched her back against him. Then, as if given permission, Michael came to life. He rolled her onto her back, kissed her soundly on the lips, then moved slowly down her body. Lydie moaned, her throat constricted. She felt as excited, as apprehensive, as she had the first time they had made love. And only Michael’s touch, no longer awkward but sure, reminded her that years and continents and lives and one clear vision had passed since that first time.

T
HREE DAYS HAD
passed since the ball, with no word from Lydie; the last Patrice had seen of her she was driving off, into the sunrise, away from Château Bellechasse, with Michael. Patrice felt optimistic, positive that Lydie’s silence meant that she and Michael were in blissful seclusion. Still, the calendar on Patrice’s desk warned her that only twelve days remained before Lydie would leave Paris, and Patrice resented losing any chance they had to spend time together. The thought filled her with panic and a sort of grief. She knew about vows to stay in touch, and although she believed that she and Lydie could do that, she knew it would be no substitute for their daily phone calls and frequent visits, for simply
knowing
that Lydie was just across Paris.

Patrice filled diary page after diary page with descriptions of the ball. What everyone wore, what everyone ate, what the orchestra played. Somewhere down the line, people would care about the details of a ball in late-twentieth-century France, not that they would ever see this. But it satisfied her, to think that she was recording history. Her mind kept wandering to the personal details: The set of Lydie’s mouth when she asked if Patrice had invited Anne. The way Patrice’s thoughts kept floating to her mother, wishing Eliza were there—enjoying herself, watching Patrice in her role as hostess. Kelly in defeat, avoiding Patrice and Lydie.

Kelly. The thought of her made Patrice frown. Kelly was off today. Kelly never seemed to lose hope. Yesterday she’d come to work smiling, asking Patrice and Didier if they had enjoyed the ball. Patrice remembered those days, early on, when she had so feared losing Kelly
and
Lydie that she had wished, fanatically, for Kelly’s petition to be denied. As if Kelly were just a checker or a chess piece or a tiddlywink, a little plastic counter in someone else’s game.

Patrice tried to get Kelly out of mind. She picked up the telephone. She dialed Boston, Massachusetts.

“Hello, Mother,” she said.

“Patsy, darling! How was the ball?” Eliza asked. “It was last Saturday, wasn’t it? I’ve had it on my little mental agenda …”

“Absolutely wonderful,” Patrice said. “All of Paris is talking about it. How are you?”

“Oh,” Eliza said and sighed. “The same—nothing much happens to me anymore.”

Patrice felt her shoulders tighten. “Why don’t you
make
something happen, for a change?”

“If this isn’t going to be a
nice
chat,” Eliza said brittlely, “I see no reason to run up your phone bill.”

“I mean, why don’t you go visit Aunt Jane in Cleveland? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Jane’s very busy these days,” Eliza said in a tone that suggested to Patrice that perhaps her mother and aunt had had a falling-out. The thought did not entirely displease her.

“Aunt Jane and her good causes,” Patrice said, inviting some gossip. “But why don’t you call her? You know she’d love to hear from you.”

“Well … maybe I will,” Eliza said. “Tell me what you’re doing, now that the ball is over.”

“I’m keeping a diary,” Patrice said.

“You always did, as a girl,” Eliza said.

“I did, didn’t I?” Patrice said, remembering the locked pink ones her aunt had given her every Christmas. She had regretted the tiny amount of space allowed per day.

“I kept a diary,” Eliza said. “All through my childhood. I had—oh, it must have been twenty volumes. I burned them the week I got married.”

This was astonishing: that Eliza could do anything as introspective as keep diaries, that she in fact had written them
and
burned them. “Why did you burn them?” Patrice asked.

“I didn’t want your father to read them,” Eliza said. Patrice heard a tiny giggle her mother had, perhaps, not intended for Patrice to hear.

“I don’t care who reads mine,” Patrice said. “I’m just jotting down observations—not really personal things.”

“Many an American has traveled to France and observed it more acutely than the French,” Eliza said. “Hemingway comes to mind. Henry James, Irwin Shaw …”

“Well, no one’s going to read
my
observations,” Patrice said, laughing nervously, flattered her mother would make such a comparison.

After she hung up the phone, Patrice resumed her writing. A picnic was going on in the Place des Vosges, but she ignored the sounds of festivity.
Three Women of the Marais
sat on her desk; every so often her gaze would light upon it. How had she come up with the perfect line with which to answer Anne Dumas? It had soothed Anne, somehow, to hear Patrice speaking the words of Madame de Sévigné. Patrice had never consciously memorized her letters, but they had a distinctive rhythm and style that Patrice had found easy to conjure. She sat there, trying to recall other lines, but without Anne prompting her, she found it impossible. The telephone rang, startling her.

“Hi,” came Lydie’s voice.

“There you are!” Patrice said. “Where have you been? Never mind—don’t answer. I’ve missed you.”

“Oh, I’ve missed you too,” Lydie said, her voice full of happiness. “Michael and I just got back from Honfleur.”

“Did you stay at that great old hotel? I forget the name …”

“Yes,” Lydie said. “It was wonderful. We’d intended to stay for one night. Well, for one afternoon, to be honest.”

Patrice put on her Mae West voice. “A quickie at the No-Tell Hotel,” she said.

“It didn’t turn out that way,” Lydie said. “We stayed for two nights. It suddenly hit us—neither of us had work to do in Paris. The Salle is open, the ball is over …”

“Don’t you feel let down?”

“Not yet,” Lydie said. “Do you?”

“Yes,” Patrice said. But she knew that was not so much because the ball was over but because it meant Lydie was about to leave. She felt her throat constrict, and she coughed.

“How is Kelly?” Lydie asked.

“Not here today,” Patrice said. “I’ve given her a couple of days off. She seems fairly chipper, I guess. You know Kelly.”

“I want to try again,” Lydie said. “Michael called some lawyer he knows in New York who recommended someone who does immigration law. I’m writing a letter to him.”

“I thought that lady at the embassy, what’s-her-name, told you not to bother,” Patrice said.

“She did, but she’s a bureaucrat,” Lydie said. “I want to find a way.”

“You know what I’m thinking?” Patrice asked.

“That we should tell Kelly?” Lydie replied.

“
You
should tell her,” Patrice said. “You deserve all the credit.”

“No,” Lydie said. “I’ll be the New York connection, you’ll be the Paris connection. We’re in this together.” She paused. “Michael’s in it too” she said after a moment. “He’s been encouraging me to try again. He explained to me last night what I’ve been doing all along; I want to pass our luck—our ‘good fortune’—on to someone else.”

“I can relate to this,” Patrice said. “I’m the great-great-grandchild of immigrants. Bishops on one side of the family, pirates on the other.”

“So, should we visit Kelly?” Lydie asked.

“We should,” Patrice said.

For the first time in her life, Kelly was taking days off from work. Since childhood she had worked every day—folding Pan Am’s laundry; emptying the fish pond; gathering shells; picking fruit; operating the wash cycle in the college laundry; at her first “real,” respectable job, as an accountant; now as Patrice’s maid. But every day of her working life she had known she was aiming toward something, a good life in the United States. What was there to work toward now? Another day, week, year doing housework, no
end in sight? Her brothers and sisters could not disguise their disappointment in her; she could barely stand to pass them in the hallway.

At the ball she had done her best to avoid Patrice and Lydie; she wished she never had to see them again. She told herself this was because she knew she had failed them, having been judged unacceptable to enter the United States. Another thought kept sneaking up and she kept chasing it back: they had failed her. It was, perhaps, the worst thought she had ever had. How foolish she was, how naïve, to think Americans could do everything! How unfair to Patrice and Lydie!

Kelly remembered one moment at the ball, when she was in a parade with the other servers, rushing out of the kitchen with platters held before them. Spider crabs, red and spiky, balanced on her platter. That was the moment when everything turned crystal clear: she was not going to the States, then or ever. The other servers seemed so happy, hurrying past the guests who had lined up to applaud as they watched the food they would eat go by; two other servers told Kelly they had felt like stars at that moment. Stars don’t carry food, Kelly had wanted to say. At the same time, she knew: this is our life’s work.

Tears trickled down her cheeks. Hearing noises in the hall, Kelly started. She knew she was home alone; perhaps Paul Anka had finished his work early. A knock sounded at the door. Kelly held back, afraid to answer. It was midday: all her family and friends were at work.

Then someone broke the lock, the door opened wide, and two policemen stood there. Kelly edged toward the window. She looked over her shoulder: four flights to the street. She would dive through the glass praying. She rushed the window, but the officer caught her, clipped manacles to her wrists, speaking rough French.

“
Américaine
,” she said. “
Parlez-vous anglais?
” Could she trick
him into thinking she was American? Surely they wouldn’t treat Americans this way, even illegal Americans. But he did not reply. He pushed her into the hallway while the other officer stayed behind, searching for other illegal Filipinos.