The Light of Paris (9 page)

“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.

My mother drove us to the genteelly aging hotel where the Ladies Association met, and I chewed another batch of antacids before summoning up the strength to go inside. Despite the stream of women heading into the ballroom, Ashley Hathaway spotted me immediately. “Madeleine,” she said in a breathy voice as she approached, as though my presence had literally knocked the wind out of her. “Why, I haven't seen you for ages. Don't you look just the same?”

“You look exactly the same too,” I said, unsure whether either of us meant it as a compliment. Ashley was wearing a twinset and little pearl earrings to match her pearly white teeth, and her hair was a perfect pale bob, exactly like my mother's. She leaned forward and slipped her arm around me as she brushed an air kiss toward each of my cheeks. I awkwardly returned the gesture. I wasn't a good hugger. Graduating from college had been a relief for all sorts of reasons, including not having to endure the frequent hugging all my sorority sisters seemed to do on a whim, as though they had magnets implanted in their bellies and couldn't keep away from each other. Those hugs always made me feel uncomfortably large and self-aware, my hand on the back of someone like Ashley, delicate as a bird.

“Where have you been? I don't think I've seen you since your wedding! How's that handsome husband of yours?”

The mention of Phillip made me feel queasy, and I clenched my left hand with its bare fingers, sliding it behind my back. “Oh, you know,” I said, which didn't really answer anything. “How are you?”

“Absolutely run off my feet. Grayson and Hunter are in fourth grade, if you can believe that! And Graham's practice is just exploding.” She made a face of pretend exhaustion that made me feel exhausted for real.

“That's great!” I said, wondering why I was congratulating her on her schedule.

“So you're in town visiting your mother? Aren't you the sweetest?” I narrowed my eyes at her. What was this? Was this an act? She looked at me with those wide blue eyes, as if her entire happiness hinged on my answer.

“She's getting ready to sell the house. I thought I'd help her get it ready.” I had thought no such thing until right that moment, but it made me sound altruistic, and I found I rather liked the idea. It made me feel like I had a purpose other than avoiding my own life.

“She did mention it,” Ashley said, putting her hand over her heart as though the news had wounded her. Ashley had known about my mother's selling the house before I did? “Poor Simone, and she's already so busy. Well, bless your heart for coming to help. Come in and say hello! There are so many Country Day girls here!”

Following Ashley into the ballroom, I endured a series of air kisses and half hugs from women I did indeed remember from school. Of course all of them were here. Our mothers had been in the Ladies Association together, and now they were in the Ladies Association together. Their children were going to the schools we had gone to, would take piano from Mrs. Miner and ballet at Miss Patty's Academy of Dance as we had, would learn to waltz at the Magnolia Blossom Cotillion and debut at the country club, and then they would repeat the process with their own children.

Three other former classmates, Emma Fischer, Ellen O'Connor, and Audrey Alexander, followed Ashley like a sorority Secret Service, a
bouquet of thirtysomething perfection in matching sweater sets. We had all been friends in school, I was sure of it, but I couldn't remember doing anything with them that felt friendly. I could picture myself at Emma's birthday party and standing behind Audrey during our debutante ball, waiting to be presented, but I couldn't remember any conversations between us, any secrets shared, any real connection. Had I spent my entire life without any real friends?

Before I had gotten married, I had seen these women all the time, been in their weddings, attended their housewarming parties, endured their baby showers. As I sat in the chilly ballroom, looking around me at the women hovering and chatting between the tables, I felt like a visitor from another planet. They had all managed to perfect the look I never could, until they were one undifferentiated mass: untanned white skin, smooth, chin-length hair, sweater sets and slim skirts. We all worked so hard to look exactly like each other, and though no one ever would have spoken the words, it was clear that anyone different—in race, religion, taste, opinion—was Not Allowed.

Being around them, I felt a little shabbier, a little chunkier, a little frizzier. This was the way it had always been with those girls and me—especially Ashley. I couldn't even blame her, or resent her, really—it was nothing she did. It was just that she was a litany of all the things I wasn't—petite and pretty and well put together and efficient and so very normal, and I had always been galumphing and sloppy and uncomfortably different. Maybe if I had gone to public school, or if my mother hadn't been so wedded to the Garden Society and the country club and all the markers of polite society, I could have been different. I could have found a group of friends whose presence didn't make me think less of myself, didn't make me ache to be someone else, coating me with a thin layer of self-loathing that made my skin greasy in the humid summers. It seemed so unfair to have been born into this life and not have been given the tools to mine it properly.

“If I can have your attention.” Ashley was standing on the stage, tapping the microphone with one French-manicured finger. A spray of forsythia behind her set off her yellow sweater perfectly. “Attention, ladies. Thank you so much for coming today.”

Ashley gave a smoothly polite introduction to the speaker, a local author who took the podium and droned endlessly. There's something about ballrooms that sucks the personality out of everyone at a microphone. As she spoke, the servers darted in silently with our salads, the dressing in tiny silver cups on the side, of course. I picked out the dried cranberries and contemplated flicking them at Ellen O'Connor, who was wearing an angora sweater the exact color of the berries and might not even have noticed their addition.

“Jesus, what a bunch of bullshit,” Sharon whispered loudly, walking up from behind us and throwing herself into the empty chair next to mine. She tossed her purse underneath the table, making it shudder. I rescued the coffee cup I had balanced at the edge only to have it spray three tiny, perfect, milky drops across the hemline of my dress. Of course.

“Hi,” I whispered back, stilling the table and putting my coffee cup back. Sharon handed me her glass of water and I dabbed some on my skirt. “I didn't know you were in the Ladies Association.”

“Occupational hazard. These ladies have houses to buy and sell, and they are rich. What's your excuse? You don't even live here.”

“Peer pressure.”

“Yeah, well, if I were on vacation I certainly wouldn't be spending my time dealing with these bitches,” Sharon said. She turned to the table of our classmates and flashed them a hundred-watt smile, as though she hadn't just called them all bitches, and then folded her arms and turned toward the speaker, slouching in her chair like we were back in geometry class and she was daring the teacher to call on her.

I looked over at the table where the women from Country Day were sitting, at Ashley and Ellen and Emma and Audrey. I'd gone to dances
and on school trips with them. We'd worked on school projects together. We'd been in the same sorority in college, and after graduation we'd attended one another's weddings and met up for brunch in groups.

And now, looking at them, I felt—emotionless. I wasn't angry, I held no childhood grudges, I didn't think they were bitches. They were perfectly nice, most of them. Instead, as I watched Ashley and Audrey sip at their unsweetened iced tea and dip just the tips of their forks into the salad dressing before spearing a single, wretched lettuce leaf, I felt an unfamiliar surge of sympathy. I had always been focused on the litany of ways I didn't meet the demands being forced on me. But I had never stopped to consider that every other woman in this room was being asked to fit the same mold, and just because they made it look easy on the outside didn't say anything about how it felt on the inside.

And it broke my heart that we would never be able to talk about it, that none of us would ever be able to break through the rules and traditions and ossification in order to have an honest conversation. The thought gave me a heavy ache in my heart, and I wanted to stand up, to burst through the ballroom doors and run out into the sunlight, break free of every tender silk ribbon holding all of us prisoner to some outdated, uncomfortable set of values I couldn't imagine any of us agreeing to. But I couldn't do that. It wouldn't look right. Turning toward my own plate, I lifted my fork and dipped the tines into the dressing.

The ship was leaving from New York City, so Margie and her mother and an unwieldy collection of luggage all took a train up and stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria for a few nights while visiting with Evelyn and her family. It had been a whirlwind few weeks, and Margie's mother had been forced to compromise on all sorts of things—the number of new dresses that could be fitted and made, the purchase of a new coat, how many books Margie was allowed to take. But Margie suspected her mother's greatest disappointment was that she hadn't had time to create an entirely different daughter before shipping her off.

Aunt Edith, Evelyn's mother, gave them a lengthy list of sites and museums to visit, though she had never actually been to Europe. Margie thought, looking at her aunt across the dinner table, her gown cut a little too low, her hair bobbed (a woman of her age, if you can imagine!), the lights of the room low to allow the candles to take over, that Aunt Edith's heart was breaking, not over saying goodbye to her daughter, but over not to be going herself, not to be nineteen again with her whole life ahead of her.

Margie, who had spent the afternoon with Evelyn, supposedly shopping for gloves but really sitting and reading in a tearoom while Evelyn smoked and talked to the ten million people who stopped by the table,
wanted to tell Evelyn's mother she was welcome to go in her stead. She was feeling particularly mean about Evelyn, who, when they had come back without gloves, had lied and announced that they hadn't been able to find any because Margie's hands were so terribly large. Margie had to fight the urge to use one of her terribly large hands to land a terribly enthusiastic punch on Evelyn's terribly lying face. Perhaps the worst part of it was, Margie realized, as her mother poked her under the table repeatedly while they discussed Evelyn's beaux and plans for the trip and, upon her return, how grand her debut ball would be, that she was being sent on this trip as much to learn from Evelyn as to keep her out of trouble. And Margie wondered, given Evelyn's behavior the moment she was out of sight of any adult, how she was going to do that.

Their mothers installed them in their stateroom, the trunks and baggage having been delivered the day before by porter. Standing on the dock, staring up at the immense ship, my grandmother felt a shiver of anticipation pass through her. She didn't think about the endless, inevitable conflict with Evelyn lying ahead, and she didn't think about Mr. Chapman or the disappointment lying behind her. She was going to Europe. She was going to explore the Tower of London and write a story in a café in Paris and see the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and she was going to be someone different, someone adventurous and glamorous. They stood on the deck of the ship underneath a brilliant blue sky, all the promise of summer before them, all the promise of a continent filled with treasures and history and stories to be discovered, all the promise of people who didn't know dull, plain Margie Pearce, and she shivered with delight.

That delight lasted for approximately two hours. Because once they had waved goodbye to their mothers, who stood on the pier as the ship gave a long, mournful wail of its horns and a groan of its steel sidings and pulled away from the dock, two tugboats escorting them out toward the ocean like tiny bridesmaids at a wedding, Evelyn turned to Margie with a hard, mean look in her eye. Around them, most people were drifting
away from the railings, some of them heading to the top deck for a better view of their departure, the city spreading out behind them, wider and wider, others heading to their staterooms to settle in, some looking for entertainment. Evelyn dug into her handbag and pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and turned her head slightly to exhale, so the smoke brushed against Margie's cheek as it drifted away. “Here's the situation, Margie. I let you come along because I knew it was the only way Mother would allow me to go to Europe. But I intend to have a truly fabulous time on this trip, and I don't want you ruining it.”

Margie hadn't suffered any delusions about what her relationship with Evelyn on this trip might be like. Neither of them were the type to giggle girlishly together through castles and moors, and Margie hadn't pictured them gossiping about dates over
café crème
at Café de la Paix, but she'd thought Evelyn might be willing to compromise. Margie had imagined she'd have to drag Evelyn through the Uffizi Gallery and the Louvre, and wake her after she fell asleep during an opera at La Scala, that Evelyn would smoke and make eyes at the porters and would have to be rescued from a couple of nightclubs before the trip was over. But Margie had never predicted an open rebellion.

“So I'm going to do what I want to do, and you're going to do whatever it is you . . . do,” Evelyn said, casting a doubtful glance at Margie's sturdy traveling dress, “and we'll not get in each other's way, all right?”

With that, Evelyn glanced over Margie's shoulder meaningfully, and she turned around to see a group of young people, somewhere between her age and Evelyn's, she guessed. Two women and five men. The women were sipping champagne from glasses, but two of the men had gotten hold of bottles and were drinking straight from them, as though they were common rummies. She'd known alcohol was legal on the ship, but she'd thought there might be a formality, waiting until some invisible border line were crossed. “What will I do?” Margie asked.

“Why don't you read a book or something? Isn't that what girls like
you do?” Evelyn asked. She checked her reflection in a newly shined brass finial on the nearest rail, and then, without so much as saying goodbye, she slid past as though Margie were a ghost, all air and no substance, and joined the group, laughing and talking. One of the girls produced another champagne glass, but Evelyn saucily took the bottle and drank straight from it, to their cheers and applause. When had she met them? Maybe they had just known one another on sight, people like Evelyn and those other girls, beautiful and confident, made for this strange new world where women had jobs and wore short skirts to their debuts and smoked openly.

The group drifted away, and Margie stayed, alone on the deck, looking over the railing at the shipyards until they passed beyond the fingers of land that made up New York, and then, after a time, she moved to the back of the ship, looking off to the side where the Statue of Liberty stood, her torch raised high. Margie saluted her, watching the land recede into the distance. As the tugboats split off, making their slow way back to land, Margie faced the empty blue ocean ahead.

So much for glamor and adventure. Turning back, she looked at the blank space behind them that had been the city, the ship now picking up steam at an amazing rate, the smokestacks bellowing black into the air. There was a little twinge of homesickness in her belly, and her throat closed up behind a swell of tears.

“Enough,” Margie said aloud. She threw her shoulders back, blinked her eyes rapidly. Homesickness. Of all things. What on earth did she have to be homesick for? Hadn't she spent years wishing for something, anything (other than Mr. Chapman) to take her out of her parents' house, to set her free? Hadn't she read a hundred novels about women having adventures and pictured herself in their stead: traveling through time, falling in love with a seemingly dastardly but actually quite charming pirate, solving thefts of art in Milan, exploring the Nile? And now here she was, with a paid ticket—a whole series of them, actually—to
adventure, and she was weeping on the deck and wishing she could go back to the mother she'd been wishing to get away from. “Be a heroine, Margie,” she said aloud, and strode off down the deck to explore the ship.

Somehow, the hours passed and the week went by. Margie walked on the wind-whipped open decks, and she read in a window seat in the ship's library overlooking the bow of the ship, cutting through the endless sea. At night she dressed for dinner and ate next to Evelyn's empty chair, and she made polite conversation with the older couples at the table, all of whom seemed to wonder what she was doing there but none of whom were impolite enough to ask. She went to lectures and one night walked out with the astronomy club, looking at the spray of stars across the sky, shining through the night like a lost message from centuries ago. She found an alcove in a little-used lounge where she could write undisturbed, and she took her notebooks there and filled page after page, settling into the flow of the words, never having to keep an ear cocked for the tread of her mother's feet on the stairs, prepared to jump up and shove her notebook into a drawer, to hide her ink-stained hands guiltily.

Here and there she saw Evelyn and her group. The ship, which had seemed immense the first day when she had walked it from stem to stern, going into every room and club and restaurant, admiring the gleam of the wood and the shine of the windows, now felt small and well trod. The night she had gone out with the astronomers, she had come back, her eyes sparkling with the refracted light of a thousand stars, her mind full of stories and wishes and daydreams and myths, and had passed Evelyn and the crowd of them, drunk and laughing down the hallway, here and there colliding with one of the stateroom doors, careless of the people sleeping inside.

Each night, a small ensemble played in the conservatory, and the ship's staff set up a tiny dance floor over the carpet, where the bridge tables stood during the day. One night as Margie passed through on her way to her stateroom, she saw Evelyn and one of the men in the center of the
floor, dancing close and slow in the dim light. Evelyn's hands were draped casually over the man's shoulders, and she held a champagne glass loosely between her fingers, as though she had only interrupted her drink for a moment. Their friends were gathered on a cluster of chairs in the corner, leaning together like the stones of an elegant ruin, exploding occasionally with laughter. The next morning, Margie had sat there with her tea in the same chairs and tried to capture the feel of them, had leaned close to the cushions to catch the scent of the girls' perfume, but all she could smell was stale smoke and the pale memory of magic. It wasn't the room; it was the people in it. And Margie feared she held no magic in her at all.

As the ship came closer and closer to Cherbourg, Margie began to grow nervous. It was fine to let Evelyn roam around the ship with that crowd. It was a contained space, and short of falling overboard, what could happen to her? But in Europe, she would be Margie's responsibility again.

Still, when the ship docked, surely the young men and women with whom Evelyn had allied herself would take off to wherever they were bound, and she and Evelyn would be alone. And they had an itinerary. They had tickets, and their mothers had written and wired ahead for hotel reservations. It would all be fine, she told herself, quelling the nervousness in her belly.

On the morning of their arrival, Margie got up early to see the ship's docking, the comforting sight of land instead of the endless flow of ocean, the scurry of activity on the dock below, the huge ship pulling alongside the pier and the ramps being set up. Breakfast was served early, and she ate in silence with the other sleepy-eyed passengers, caught between exhaustion and excitement. She paused on the deck on the way back to the room, watching the people disembarking below, lifting their heads to smell the air, to look at the sun, the porters scurrying about, loading luggage onto trolleys to take to the train station.

Evelyn, of course, hadn't been back to the room the night before, and
Margie was feeling more and more anxious. But when she returned to the stateroom after breakfast, there was Evelyn, packing her trunk. Or, more precisely, there was Evelyn, sitting among the wreckage of her belongings, the trunk taking up nearly all the empty space on the stateroom floor, while Evelyn herself lounged on her bed in her dressing gown, flipping through a magazine. “Oh, hello.” She seemed entirely unsurprised to see Margie, as though she hadn't been purposely avoiding her all week long. “Isn't packing dreadful?”

“I suppose it is, yes,” Margie said tentatively, quashing her irritation, wondering if this casual conversation indicated some thaw in Evelyn's demeanor. She hoped when they got off the ship, when it was just the two of them again, Evelyn would calm down, express an interest in helping to choose the museums and monuments they were to visit. After all, how could she not be excited at what lay ahead of them? They were to spend the next two weeks in Paris, and Margie wondered how they were possibly to see it all: the museums and the boulevards, the shops and the cafés. All week long, Margie had been dreaming of the adventures they might have. And the management of the trip had been given to her—their money, their passports, their hotel reservations, and the list of educational things they were to do, not that Margie felt entirely bound to those plans. Why, if Evelyn wanted to spend an afternoon shopping, or if they decided to take a day trip to Versailles, there was no harm in it. Freedom, glorious, delicious freedom, stretched out in front of her like a promise. And even though Evelyn had expressed no interest in Paris, other than to ask in which hotel they were staying, Margie was certain she would come around once she saw it.