The Light of Paris(24)

“Huh. Well, if anyone could tell you in a polite way that you’re ruining the neighborhood, it would be my mother.”

“So I’ll extend the invitation to you instead. You should come to dinner sometime. My treat.”

“That’s a very kind offer,” I said politely, but my stomach, hearing the suggestion of food, growled again quite rudely.

“You should get back to your strawberries,” he said, nodding at my impromptu basket.

“You should get back to your lurking.”

“Can’t lurk all day if you don’t start in the morning,” he said, with such genuine cheerfulness that I couldn’t help but laugh. “Nice to meet you, Madeleine.”

“Likewise.”

Trying to keep from exposing myself in my flimsy boxer shorts, I took a few steps backward, the earth yielding gently beneath me. How long had it been since I had felt the ground beneath my bare feet? It was delicious and made me feel oddly like weeping. When Henry went back to his work, I turned and began to walk toward the house, looking up at its sprawl, the empty windows winking back at me in the sun.

It had always been my destiny to have a big house like this, filled with antiques and enough furniture for dinner parties and enough lawn space to host a fundraiser. It was what everyone I had gone to school with was doing; my mother sent me casually remonstrative pages from the Magnolia Providence-Journal and Magnolia Style, in which the girls I had once known, now women, were photographed hosting luncheons at their home with distinguished guests.

But I didn’t want a house like this. I felt lost in our condo, which was not even a quarter as big, and still more than we required. I dreaded the day Phillip would announce we were going to move to the suburbs and I would have to hire a housekeeper and a gardener, a pool service. I far preferred a life I didn’t need assistance to maintain.

I finished eating the strawberries and tossed the hulls in an oversized planter by the French doors leading into the living room. Inside, the house was still. “Mother?” I called.

“Good, you’re awake.” My mother came bustling into the kitchen, carrying her purse and a stack of papers. Of course, I was still in my pajamas with sleep in my eyes and my hair standing on end, while my mother, who had probably been up since five, had her hair and makeup perfectly done and was armored in a pair of charcoal-gray slacks, a lavender cardigan, and a scarf knotted neatly around her neck like an air hostess.

“Sentient, even.”

Unlike Henry, my mother was practiced at ignoring my wit. “You should get dressed. I’ve got to run some errands and drop these papers off before lunch.”

I braced slightly. “What lunch? I haven’t even eaten breakfast.”

“Well, you’ll be eating lunch soon, so don’t worry about it.”

“No, I mean, where are we eating lunch?”

“There’s a speaker at the Ladies Association. You can see all your old friends—Ashley Hathaway is introducing—I don’t know why you never make the effort to see those girls when you’re in town.”

Ashley and I had gone to Country Day together every year since pre-kindergarten, and for every single one of those years, she had been both my friend and my nemesis. She was the daughter my mother would have preferred, and the girl I would rather have been. She was delicate and petite, with smooth blond hair as perfect in humid July as in damp December. At our debut, she’d been escorted by a third cousin of some sort, who happened to be a supporting actor on a television drama. While I can’t recall her ever being mean to me, exactly, there was something about being around her that felt like sucking on a copper penny.

“What if I don’t want to go?” I asked.

“That’s not an option,” she said.

I pictured the luncheon at the Ladies Association. I pictured the clothing I didn’t want to wear and the people I didn’t want to say hello to. They would ask how I had been and wonder where my handsome husband was, and I’d spend yet another meal wishing I were eating a hamburger instead of pretending I was too full for a salad.

But my mother’s expression made it clear I was going. “Fine,” I said. What I really wanted to do was eat strawberry jam straight out of the jar without even closing the refrigerator door, and then get back into bed and read some more of my grandmother’s journals, but clearly that was not going to happen.

“It starts at eleven. You should get your skates on.”

“Sure.” I took the card and headed upstairs.

“And don’t forget to comb your hair,” my mother called after me. I rolled my eyes.

Yes, my mother was hypercritical, but I was an endless disappointment to her. She had wanted a specific kind of daughter, pretty and petite and soft-spoken, someone to shop with, to show off at Ladies Association meetings. And I had failed her on every front. When I had looked at the girls across the cotillion tables, girls my mother would have chosen over me a thousand times, my heart had ached to be one of them. And, to be completely honest, it still did. If you had told me I had three wishes, I would have spent them all turning into the woman my mother wanted me to be. The woman Phillip had thought he was marrying. Maybe then we would all be happier.

Upstairs, I flipped through everything I had brought, wondering what I had been thinking when I was packing. Finally I settled on a light wool dress in soft rose pink. I had a gray cardigan to cover the cap sleeves, and a pair of pearl earrings, and though the outfit was a little warm for the day, I thought I looked appropriately costumed, as though I might actually belong.