A Place in Normandy (30 page)

“I thought you were telling me how beautiful it was,” Julia said. “You go all the way to France and forget how to seduce your wife?”

“Sorry.”

“What are we wearing?” Julia prompted.

“You can have that old brown raincoat of my mother's, since you never pack a raincoat because you like to travel light. We're exactly alike. I've got my red coat that's too short, so I'm wet from my waist to my boot tops, but not for long since there's no place for all that water to go but down, into the boots. You won't wear anything on your head, because you are that way, so it looks as if you're wearing a wreath of mist, with your nose and cheeks all pink. Even though I'm supposed to be seducing you, I admit you look very pretty. I have my hood up, with the visor, to cause water to fall down the front of my face and double the appearance of rain. It's raining.”

“That's what I want.”

“I mean it's really raining. Let me run out and bring in my stuff. Don't go away,” I said.

“Hurry.”

The paintings from earlier that afternoon were already pinned upstairs in the hallway. It was only the last one, with water trailing from its oil as if off a duck's back, that I had to bring in, along with the knapsack I used to carry paint, and my collapsible easel.

I picked up the phone again and Julia said, “I'm wet enough. We're going in now. When it rains like this, we might as well be at sea. We just got in and left our boots inside the dining-room door from the garden. Leave the door open. I want to see out. It's cold everywhere, and the good thing is there's a fire I can stand in front of to give me a career, to warm my front until my backside can't stand the cold, and then turn around until my front can't stand it. Everything in the garden is crusted with lichen and crumbling apart. I love the cypress trees you hate, that even the goats can't hurt. You're wrong about those trees. You're wrong about a lot, Nick.”

“It's so much work. It's going to be so much work,” I said.

“Don't interrupt me,” Julia said. “I am raining. It looks, this rain we're having, as if it's come out of Deauville, out of that ocean they have there—which is cloudy, almost milky, and which you walk out into forever and can't get up to your waist, where the grannies and children wade together, the children naked, the old ladies with their black dresses tucked up into the leg elastics of their underpants. I'm in front of the fire and I can't stand how cold it's going to be, getting from the fireplace into the cold bed and those horrible linen sheets.”

“No, no,” I broke in. “I got the good sheets back. We have the wash-and-wear cotton now. Yvette Turquétil brought them.”

“Who's Yvette Turkeywhateveryousaid?”

“A lady who came,” I said. “Very nice. Very pretty. What can I say? She turned up, bringing sheets. I had to let her in. I wanted to kiss her all over.”

“I thought you were seducing me?”

“Don't you want sheets?”

Julia coughed. “According to an article I read, about now, what with the days getting longer, one of us is supposed to be developing a restless urge to fly thousands of miles and mate. It isn't me.”

“It must be me, then,” I said.

“Good. Because when you get back, some noises from the basement sound like your cider starting to explode. I'm not going down to look; you'll be here soon enough. Oh, and I mentioned to my mother we were thinking of buying the place in Normandy, and she said, ‘Oh, good night!'”

I said, “I have to tell you—”

“Everyone says you're crazy,” Julia went on. “Except the men. Then everyone says, ‘When can we visit? How can we help?'”

“I did start a responsible list of responsible points to consider responsibly,” I said. “But I think I'd better leave it here.”

“While we're thinking about it,” Julia said, “why don't you bring those shabby, flimsy curtains from the dining room that I always hated, and that ruffle thing off the mantelpiece to keep the dining room from blackening as fast as it wants to with smoke. I'll wash them and see if there's a way to fix them or replace them—I don't know which is worse.… Do you still have that duffel bag, the one you used to carry the rugs and bedspreads and tablecloths to France?”

“I thought I'd travel light, coming home,” I said.

Frances and Stellita Stapleton amongst the flock, 1924.

“You may never travel light again. And as long as you're packing the curtains from the dining room, bring those big lined ones from your mother's bedroom upstairs, the pink ones; they're impossible, but I might as well see what I can do—while we're thinking over this idea of yours.…”

Also by Nicholas Kilmer

Man with a Squirrel

Harmony in Flesh and Black

Henry Holt and Company, Inc.

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Copyright © 1997 by Nicholas Kilmer

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Published in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Ltd., 195 Allstate Parkway, Markham, Ontario L3R 4T8.

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ISBN 0-8050-3930-9

ISBN 0-8050-5532-0 (An Owl Book: pbk.)

First Owl Book Edition—1997

eISBN 9781466871991

First eBook edition: April 2014