Beautiful Americans (31 page)

Thomas doesn’t break his gaze. “Olivia . . .” he says quietly.

“You’ve had a lot to drink,” I say. “We should get back to the apartment. It’s late.”

Thomas slaps twenty euros onto the bar as we leave. In the elevator back up to the apartment, I tell him thanks. Thomas nods. “Anytime.”

I have a lump in my throat that keeps me from saying anything else. There’s so much between us, and yet what can I say?
I’m afraid to say your name because it makes me feel so vulnerable that you even exist. I can’t be with you; I can’t even stay in your city. My family is my whole life.

Yeah, right.

As he reaches for the front door, Thomas drunkenly trips and falls forward, banging against the door comically. In spite of myself, I burst out laughing. Thomas looks at me, his face red, and then explodes into embarrassed laughter himself.

“You idiot,” I say, unlocking the door myself. “You drunkard!” Thomas laughs. “
Oh, mademoiselle
, I am so very sorry. Please forgive me for all the whiskeys I drank to celebrate your newfound fame! We aren’t all as disciplined as you are,” he kids me.

I unwind my scarf from around my neck and smack him with it.

“Shut up,” I say, grinning. He grabs the end of the scarf and pulls it, tug of war style, to him. I fall forward, right to his face.

“Olivia,” he says, doing that thing to my name that makes me melt, and the next thing I know, we’re kissing, even more passionately than when we were on the balcony at PJ’s party, and we’re fumbling at each others clothes as we stumble toward the little bedroom that’s sort of mine, sort of his.

“You are . . . so beautiful . . .” Thomas tells me as he slips me out of my dress and tights. All those times Vince had said those same words earlier tonight, they’d never sounded like this.

I can’t respond. I just slowly unbutton his shirt, exposing his smooth chest. It feels like a dream when we fall back onto the bed—his bed, my bed.

 

Even when it’s over, we can’t stop touching each other. I’m still so entranced by everything about him. I laugh out loud. “Wow,” I say, for lack of a better word. Lying next to him, I feel like a whole different person, like when I get up and turn on the light, I’m going to see that I now look different. There’s no way that this could have happened and I will go back to being me.

“
Tu m’étonnes,
” Thomas says. “I’ve never felt this way before.” He still has his arms around me. I never thought I’d be in this moment with him, and not Vince, but it feels perfect. I did really fall out of love with Vince this fall. How did that happen without me even realizing it?

I stop laughing. “I have to tell you something,” I finally tell him. “I’m leaving. I’m going back to California at the end of this term.” I gesture at the open suitcases all over my floor, half packed already. “I’m not coming back to Paris. I’m not taking the position with the dance troupe.”

“
Quoi
?” Thomas asks. “Why not?”

“My family needs me,” I say. “I just have to go back.”

“Do you
want
to go back to California?”

I shake my head, admitting to myself for the first time that I really, really don’t want to.

“But you’re going anyway?”

“Yes,” I say, though I feel like I can barely speak.

“You’re a very brave girl, Olivia, walking away from an opportunity like that,” Thomas says, cradling me in his arms.

“Brave? I don’t think so.” I didn’t know it was possible to feel so happy, and so confused, and so vulnerable all at once.

“You’re brave to walk away from your ego like that,” Thomas says with a tender kiss on my forehead. “Would it be okay if I asked you something?”

“What?”

“Is it me?” Thomas says. “Are you running from me? Because of how we feel about each other?”

I look at him and think about that for a long time. Finally, I wrap myself in my pink bathrobe and get up to get a glass of water. I fill up a mug without turning on the light and take a long gulp of tap water. In the dark, I let my tears finally fall where Thomas can’t see them. Because then he would know that he’s right.

You Never Can Tell

T
he annual Christmas Eve gala benefit for L’Orchestre de Paris is not to be missed by any member of Paris society. Mme Marquet spends all day on Christmas Eve preparing for the event, while M. Marquet spends all day at his club playing squash.

Her face slathered in a thick sea foam green mask, Mme Marquet pops into the kitchen in the mid afternoon for a cup of tea. Topping it off with a bit of brandy, she doesn’t see me come in and sit down until she’s turned to walk back into her bedroom.

“
Mon Dieu!
” she exclaims, pressing one of her thin, bony hands against her bare décolletage in shock. She’s wearing silk pajamas with a silk coverlet, obviously de rigueur attire for a day of pampering like this one. “Penelope! You frightened me.”

“Sorry,” I apologize hastily. “How’s it going?”

Mme Marquet ignores my question and heads for the master suite with her tea.

“Madame?” I say, following her. “Can I come in?”

“What is it, Penelope?” she says.

Impetuously, I sit down on her bed, watching her reflection in her vanity mirror. She begins to remove the green cream with a soft white washcloth and a small dish of toner, careful not to get any of the residue onto her clothes.

“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry I made you mad last weekend,” I tell her quickly without making eye contact. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Mme Marquet lets out a barbed peal of unhappy laughter. “Ha! You don’t upset me, child. You could never upset me.”

Confused, I stare at the back of her blonde head. “But you were so angry at me,” I say. “I thought I offended you . . .”

“Penelope,
arrête
!” Mme Marquet says. “Don’t kiss up to me. I’ve already called Mme Cuchon and arranged for you to stay with us over the break. After all, it would be such a shame to send you back now—people would wonder why. No, no,” she says, smiling strangely. “We’ll leave for the Dordogne tomorrow morning and have Christmas with the Lafontants.”

“
Les Lafontants!
” I exclaim. “But what about . . .”

“We’ve already been through this,” Mme Marquet says with impatience. “
Tout le monde a ses secrets.
Even you, Penelope. Everyone. Why can’t you let a sleeping dog lie?”

“I just wanted to tell you the truth,” I say, unable to rid my mind of the grotesque image of M. Marquet heaving above Mme Marquet’s friend on the table. “I thought you should know. You don’t have to just stand by and watch things like that happen. . . .”

Mme Marquet flips around and bores her bright blue eyes right into mine. “You want to start telling the truth?”

Mme Marquet walks toward her closet and flings open the heavy doors leading to the racks of her expensive clothes. “Tell the truth about this, PJ! Tell the truth about the things you’ve been stealing from me, the Alexander McQueen dress you ‘borrowed.’ Tell me the truth about the
underwear
, of all ghastly things, that you stole from me!”

I jump up defensively. “Underwear! What are you talking about?” I think of leaving Alex alone in the closet and groan inwardly. I should have known.

“Save it for Mme Cuchon,” Mme Marquet says coldly, her face contorting with anger and meanness. I realize that Mme Marquet is not
jolie-laide
like I at first thought. She is just plain ugly. “If you really want everyone to start telling the truth, Penelope, you are going to end up right back in her office. And from there you’ll go straight back to the United States! And I know you don’t have a home to go to.”

“No!” I cry, as much at her threat as for the heavy silver paddle hairbrush she picks up off the vanity table and throws across the room, just barely missing a framed antique photograph of some long dead Marquet relative. With an unsatisfied shriek, she picks up her tea and flings the china cup at me, splashing the hot brown liquid all over my white thermal T-shirt. I scream as it scalds my stomach.

“What the hell is going on in here?” M. Marquet, his gray hair still damp from his shower at the club, bursts into the room in his navy warm-ups. “What are you doing to my wife?” he demands of me.

“
Rien
!” I defend myself. “I’ve done absolutely
nothing
to either of you! All I wanted was for you to like me!” I run from their bedroom.

 

I lock myself in my room all night. Even after I hear the Marquets leave for the benefit I don’t come out. Late into the night, I speculate darkly on the nature of secrets. My parents had a secret, and it tore my family apart. Annabel was good at keeping secrets, good at hiding her fear. Even Olivia, who I thought was so sweet and pure, had a secret. I guess no one is as innocent as I ever thought they were.

The Marquets have found out my secret somehow. I suppose it must not have been hard—if you knew to look. I tried so hard to keep it from them, for fear they’d send me back home. And yet, that isn’t even the problem now. The problem is far worse. They’d planned to hold my secret over my head, control my every move.

There’s a scaly red mark on my stomach where the tea burned me. I finger the ridged skin, wondering how to make it right with them. My living situation with the Marquets has never been ideal, but now it’s a nightmare.

A knock on my door at close to 4 A.M. jars me from the light slumber I’ve fallen into. I’m still wearing the stained T-shirt and my jeans. I get up, pull my Grandpa sweater around me and go to the door, finding M. Marquet leaning against the door frame in his tuxedo.

“May I?” he asks, gesturing to come in.

“
Oui
,” I say reluctantly.

M. Marquet motions for me to sit next to him on my bed, which I do. With a heavy sigh, he loosens his bowtie and undoes his collar. “Ah,” he breathes. “That’s better.”

“Penelope,
cherie
,” he says affectionately. “Things have not been easy for you in France, have they?”

I sigh. “Nope,” I admit. “They haven’t.”

“And why have we gotten off to such a terrible start?” he asks plaintively. “Have Mme Marquet and I not provided a good home for you here? Have you been unhappy with our apartment? With our château?”

I shake my head. “Oh, no, the apartment—the château—it’s all great,” I say truthfully. “I’m lucky to be here.”

“So what then?” he says softly. “You were upset by what you saw? It frightened you?” He brushes my long hair out of my eyes. It feels too intimate to be fatherly, but I don’t want to be rude. And the French have different ways of showing affection.

M. Marquet is speaking so softly I can barely hear him. His face hovers near mine. I can feel the breathy whisper of his voice on my cheek and the light tickling of his graying hair on my forehead. He reaches out his finger and lightly traces the inside of my elbow.

“My wife is a bitch,” he says, just as quietly. “Adele drinks too much. She doesn’t know what she’s saying half the time. She knows about Mme Lafontant; you did not have to tell her. And she knows how I feel about you. . . .”

“
Quoi?
” I say, not sure I understood him. The scent of him is suffocating, the close talking and breathing overwhelming my senses. The way he’s touching me gives me sickening chills.

“Oh, Penelope,” he exhales roughly. “Oh,
mon dieu . . .
”

M. Marquet leans toward me and licks my earlobe, ever so slightly. My body convulses in repulsion.

“What the hell are you doing?” I say, pushing him away. “That was disgusting! You are supposed to be my host father!”

With his right hand, he grips my waist firmly before I can jump off the bed and slips his left hand between my legs and tries to plant his mouth onto mine.

“Penelope . . .” he moans. “Don’t fight it. Just let it happen the way it’s supposed to.”

Taking advantage of his clumsy drunkenness, I shove him forcefully off of me, dart around him so that I am standing several feet away from him, near the door to my bedroom.

“Get out!” I hiss. “You’re a filthy old man! You’re sick!”

Thrown off balance, he falls toward the empty bed next to him but recovers quickly.

Jumping up, M. Marquet grabs me before I can scream. His hands on my collarbone, he hisses into my ear. “You just don’t get it, do you? This is how it’s done in France. You American. You Puritan.”

He lets me go, tossing me hard against the wall. I feel the wind get knocked out of me.

“You tell anyone about this, you’ll be on the next plane back to America,” he mutters in my face. I push him away, and he stumbles out my door and into the bathroom. I shove my feet into my Converse, on the floor by my bed, and grab my coat, heavy with the weight of my wallet in the pocket, off the back of my desk chair. Before I dash to the front door, I grab
Madame Bovary
off my desk.

I gasp when I reach the empty Place de Ternes. It’s so cold, so calm. I pull my coat more snugly around me, cursing the swift cold spell that everyone had been hoping for, wishing for a white Christmas.

I look southwest, toward the lit up Arc de Triomphe, the traffic around the circle light and spare. The Champs Elysées in the distance is strangely empty as well. Even the restaurants and bars are now closed. The Parc Monceau is to the east, the tall gates locked for the night. Where can I go? It’s Christmas. Most of my program has flown back to the U.S. for the break, like Sara-Louise and Mary did, or went on vacation with their host families. The ones who remain in Paris are fast asleep.

I tried to do this on my own and I failed. The burn on my skin, the gash on my knee, the memory of the ripped bodice of my blue dress as I was escorted from the Lafontants’ ball. M. Marquet’s slimy tongue on my ear, his brutal hands striking me when he did not get what he wanted.