The Light of Paris(95)

“No,” he said. “But it’s fair, isn’t it? They’ve supported me, let me do as I pleased for years, in exchange for only a few requests, like acting as an escort for the season.” He nodded at Margie and she smiled quickly, a perfunctory recognition of the night he had served as her escort. His words sounded so much like Sebastien’s. Duty. A debt to be paid.

“And my sister, Eliza—you went to school with her, didn’t you?”

Margie nodded.

“Well, she’s going to be getting married soon. And my father’s getting older.”

“You sound like someone else I know.” She thought of Sebastien, who had worn the same look of resignation on his face, his eyes tired, yet determined. How alike they had all been, how many dreams, how much hope. And yet now they were, all three of them, bowing to the duties they had once sworn they would not take on.

“I don’t think mine is a new story,” Robert said, without humor.

“Did you come here just to tell me this?” Margie was suddenly tired. The tea sat untouched between them, growing cold, and it might have settled her stomach, but she couldn’t even bring herself to reach forward to pour it.

“No.” Robert shifted, stiffening his spine, tugging his pants straight at his knees, setting his jacket neatly over his shoulders. “My parents have another requirement they have set out for me.”

“Oh?” Margie leaned forward, plucking a sugar cube from the bowl and putting it on her tongue, letting it melt there, a little sweetness in a life that had become so very bitter.

“They want me to get married.”

“Of course they do.” That’s what all their parents wanted, didn’t they? Their children were nothing more than pawns in an endless chess match they were playing with each other. So it had always been, and so, if no one stopped it, it would always be. Margie knew it was only a matter of time before she married Mr. Chapman—or someone exactly like him, it didn’t matter—succumbed in the way of all the girls who had gone before her. That is, if she could figure out a way to include her little friend in her dowry. “Bully for you. Who’s the lucky girl?” Her voice came out hard, and she regretted it, because she felt no anger toward him. It was only that her heart was drained and bleak and hard, like a shell of ice, frozen around nothing but air.

“Well, Margie,” Robert said, leaning forward again and gently taking her hand in his, “I was hoping it would be you.”





twenty-seven





MADELEINE


   1999




I allowed myself to watch my mother carefully, in a way I never had before, the delicate flutter of her fingers, the glittering green of her eyes, so unlike mine, her high cheekbones, the tilt of her head. Every move she made, I wondered where it had come from, which echo of the past was ringing out in her—was the way she drank her coffee the way Sebastien had taken his? What about her gift for gardening? Her cool, calm way of handling crises and public speaking? The way she walked with tiny, quick steps, almost on her tiptoes? My mother had always been inscrutable to me, but this added an entirely new layer of mystery.

How could I not have seen it before? I pictured my grandmother, who looked almost exactly like me, with broad shoulders and heavy thighs and uncooperative hair, and my grandfather, who was tall and rangy and had black eyes. And there was my mother, blonde and slender and small, just the way my grandmother had described Sebastien.

Finding out Sebastien was my grandfather had not shaken my foundations the way it might have if I had discovered I had a different father. But it had made me see my mother differently, and recast the chain of connection—my grandmother, my mother, me.

She had been reading the newspaper and it was spread out over the sofa beside her, open to the society pages. I could see Ashley Hathaway’s toothy smile in one of the larger photographs, a choker with pearls the size of marbles around her neck like a collar. “So you’re back.”

“I am.” I’d shown up on her doorstep, unannounced, with rather more suitcases than my last visit, and she’d taken one look at me and nodded and stepped aside, opening the door without ever inviting me in. I suppose it’s not so much “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,” but “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in, but they don’t have to be happy about it.”

“And what does this mean? How long are you staying?”

“As long as you’ll have me. And I think you know what it means. I’ve left Phillip.”

My mother let out a long, slow sigh, as though she had been holding a century of air. “I see.”

“That’s it?” I asked. I had been bracing for an onslaught. Her response seemed underwhelming.

“What would you prefer I say? Shall I jump up and down for joy? Throw you a parade?”

I winced at her sarcasm. She was right, I supposed. What is the culturally appropriate thing to say to someone when they tell you they’re getting a divorce? “I’m sorry”? “Congratulations”?

“Don’t be mean, Mother.”

“I’m not being mean,” she said, though she was. “I just don’t know what you expect me to say. Am I supposed to be excited about your divorce?”