The Runaway Wife (2 page)

Clio shot Helene a look. A yodeler launched into an encore in the corner of the room.

Ambrose stood and raised his glass. “To yearning and yodeling through life.”

“To yodeling,” the sisters repeated with uplifted chins: those delicate yet sharp chins! Clio was expressionless, Thalia's smile looked forced, and Helene looked gloomy.

“And here's to toasting, a tradition that originated in France,” continued Ambrose, glass still raised.

“Is that true?” asked Thalia.

“It was a French wedding tradition,” said Ambrose, addressing Jim, “to drop a piece of toast into a couple's Champagne to ensure a healthy life. The couple would lift their glasses to raise the toast! I raise a toast to you three graces.”

“However generous it might seem for us to have treated you to this bottle of wine—not a bad year, actually,” Thalia noted, looking skeptically at the label—“it
does
have a price tag.”

Was that another wink from Thalia? Sitting so close to her at the small table, Jim could smell her perfume, some flower that he'd known in another time but couldn't identify.

“
Aha!
” laughed Ambrose. “Never a free lunch, nor bottle of wine, not even in this remote region of the Alps.”

“You have to forgive my sister, she is always playing a game,” said Clio. “The challenge is to know when the game ends and reality begins, eh, Thalia?”

“That's what actors are
supposed
to do.” Thalia pushed out her chair, stood, and curtsied to Jim and Ambrose. “Make you think and feel that you're watching
life
, so that you forget you're in a theater.”

“If you couldn't already tell,” said Clio, “Thalia is the actress of the family.”

“Actor,” Thalia said.

Clio rolled her eyes.

“While Thalia is the act
or
of the family,” Clio continued, then looked at Helene, “Helene is—”

“I can speak for myself,” Helene interrupted. “Really, Clio, it's not as if you're an anchor on the morning news. I'm an editor at Gallimard.”

“Gallimard?” Jim looked at Ambrose for a translation.

“Major publishing house in Paris,” said Ambrose.

“Don't look so self-important,” Thalia said, facing Helene. “It's not as if Papa didn't help you get the job.”

“Thalia!” said Clio.

“Excuse me,” said Helene, “did he not help you get your last role by introducing you to Gérard Depardieu's producer?”

Eyes flashing, the two sisters began speaking in rapid French.

“Enough! Let's not forget why—” Clio tilted her head in Jim's direction. “Just before we sat down, I overheard someone say that there's one death in the Alps every single day of the year!”

“That's not possible!” said Helene.

“I don't know if it's true,” said Clio. “The Aussies over there were talking about it.”

“What a horrid thought,” said Thalia. She stood and lifted the knapsack that was slung over her chair, and threw it over her shoulder.

“I'm feeling claustrophobic in here,” she said, and left the table.

“Nice excuse,” Helene said when she was gone. “She's sneaking a cigarette.”

“She's smoking too much,” said Clio.

“Clio, say something to her. You're the only one she'll listen to.”

Jim watched Thalia walk to the door, her hips swaying smoothly and loosely, as if to a song that she was singing to herself. He leaned back in his chair and sipped his wine.

Full of soft yellow light from the battery-run lamps on the tables and the glow from the crackling fire, the hushed voices of Helene, Ambrose, and Clio now engaged in conversation in French, and the occasional bursts of laughter at the tables nearby, every corner of the place brimmed with what Jim, in his limited experience, considered a comforting and warm humanity.

T
HEY WERE SILENT WITHOUT THE RESTLESS
Thalia in the room. Jim gazed at the fire and thought of Sally and wished she were next to him, her warm, freckled arm resting on his. Clio reminded him of Sally in her neat, organized body, the way her jawbone lined up with her collarbone. Sally was safety for him. And he for Sally. They had both been dumped by their previous “others,” as Sally called them. What she and Jim had created together was close to a pact between two nation-states that agree not to disappoint each other. Their romantic little NATO. Sally would joke with Jim that she was attracted to him because he was handsome, tall, and strong, but what she loved him for most was his earnestness and integrity. He'd heard from mutual friends that his replacement was charismatic, the life
of the party. Maybe Jim was too earnest? Whatever the case, how weak their little NATO had proved.

“I met someone else,” she'd told him over the phone during the half hour he took for lunch at his desk. He heard a loud grinding sound in the background; he pictured her standing by the paper shredder.

“You
what
?” he'd asked.

“I'm so sorry, Jim. I found someone else,” she'd said.

It was as casual an admission as if she'd located an article of clothing or an umbrella that had gone missing. They'd been a couple for five years. Sally worked in client relations at an asset-management firm where the hours were as predictable as her daily maintenance routine: her shower, her “Whaat?” through the noise of the blow-dryer when she thought Jim was talking to her but he wasn't, her application of moisturizing cream, her makeup session, the donning of her final accoutrement: her red-framed eyeglasses.

Three days before she delivered her news (“This is a breakup. Drop your weapons and place your hands behind your head. You will now be entirely vulnerable, and I will crush you”), Jim had turned thirty years old.

Jim caught Helene looking at him, her head tilted toward him, her neck long and swanlike.

“Did you enjoy your hike today?” Clio asked, interrupting his brief eye contact with her sister.

“Despite my poor, sore feet, it was magnificent. The Alps are awe inspiring. Thanks to Ambrose's persistence,
this is my first vacation—sandwiched between years of accumulated and future slavery.”

“Slavery?” asked Helene.

“Jim is an investment banker,” explained Ambrose.

A few years ago, Jim would have characterized himself as the master of his universe, not a slave. After Princeton, he had attended Harvard Business School and then nailed a job at KKT; he'd even bought an apartment in Tribeca. But truth be told, he still felt like a kid from out of town.

“He's a slave to his blind ambition,” said Ambrose. “Some of us are quick to exchange our freedom for money and power. I can't wait until Jim makes his first hundred million so that he can do what he was meant to do on this earth.”

“And you know what that is?” Jim asked.

“You'll change the world for the better, of course,” said Ambrose.

Helene asked Ambrose about his work.

“Art dealer, married to a lawyer. We have two children, a son who is six and a daughter who is four.”

“He's also a loyal friend who continues to rescue me from myself,” Jim added, laughing.

Thalia returned with the fresh air and the smell of cigarette smoke on her breath, and Jim rose to welcome her back to her chair. When she leaned toward him, Jim identified her scent: Underneath her cigarette breath she smelled like summertime roses, like the ones on Mrs. Day's fence. The
peach-colored ones that Mrs. Day, whose lawn he mowed, had asked him to cut. How sweet they had smelled. Like sugar. He hadn't thought of them in years.

“It's chilly out there!” Thalia said, hugging herself as she sat down.

“Oh, maman . . .” said Helene.

A worried glance passed from one sister to the next.

The yodelers had formed a line for the buffet and were heaping their plates high with stew, gravy, and potatoes.

“They will clear away the buffet if we don't go now,” Clio interrupted.

JIM ASKED ABOUT CLIO'S WORK AS THE FIVE OF THEM
moved along in the line. She was a commercial artist and the mother of two young sons. Thalia told them about her role in a film coming out in the next few weeks.

“Have you heard of
Le dernier rendez-vous
or
Savage
?” she asked, turning to them.

The men shook their heads.

She pouted. “You've missed out!”

“Stop boasting, Thalia,” said Helene.

“I also work in theater groups, some commercials . . .”

“Does one act in a commercial?” asked Helene. “I always think of one ‘appearing'—”

“What accomplishment in a family,” interrupted Ambrose.

“Maman is the most accomplished of us all,” said Helene of the brown-blue-green eyes.

They returned to the table, plates full.

“She is everything we are and more,” Helene continued, taking her seat. “She embodies us—is that the right word?—and surpasses us. Sometimes I have to shake her out of me—that's how close she is to us, isn't that right?” She looked at Clio and Thalia. “To Maman.” She lifted her glass. “To Maman, wherever you are right now.”

Jim noticed that the sisters, even the fitful Thalia, had frozen. Helene placed her wineglass carefully onto the table and lifted her red-and-white gingham napkin to her eye. Clio and Thalia raised their glasses in silence. The moment passed.

“Have you been in these Alps before?” Helene asked, gazing at Jim, then Ambrose.

“Are you experienced hikers?” Clio added before they could respond. From flirtation to interview.

“I've been hiking the Alps since I was a child,” said Ambrose, “but this is my first time on the Wildhorn. During the summers when I was a teenager, my father woke me daily to hike to the summit of Chamechaude in the Chartreuse Alps before breakfast.”

“And you?” Clio's eyes attacked Jim. Helene gazed down at her plate. Everything was hanging on his answer, it seemed.

“This is Jim's first visit to Europe,” Thalia said. “I discovered that over our first glass of wine.”

His intuition was correct: the mood at the table deflated instantly.

Clio furrowed her brow and began scanning the center of the room, where a few Italians were leaning back in their chairs, laughing loudly.

Thalia ran her fingers through her hair. “Helene stop kicking me! Helene wants me to tell you— Have they had enough wine?” Thalia interrupted herself to ask her sisters.

“It's growing colder outside by the minute,” said Helene.

“Jim, Ambrose,” Thalia began. “We've decided in the short time since we met you—actually, before we met you, to be honest: when we first saw you. It was your height, Jim, I suppose, and your sturdy build, and maybe it was because you are both handsome, too—”

“Thalia!” interrupted Clio. “She can't help herself—”

“That you would be . . .” Thalia hesitated and looked at Clio. “. . . suitable for a job we cannot do by ourselves. This is Helene's idea. Why aren't
you
doing the asking? I still think we should contact the Swiss Air Ambulance . . . They are experienced with life-threatening mountain emergencies . . .”

Jim noticed color appear in Helene's cheeks, a red bloom that looked soft enough to blow away.

Ambrose, about to bring his wineglass to his lips, paused with his glass in midair.

A small group of yodelers gathered not far from their table.

“Before they start their yodeling again, hurry, Thalia,” prodded Helene.

“We'd like you to help us find our mother,” Thalia said.

The man in the corner picked up an accordion and another man began to yodel softly, as if accompanying the sisters' request.

Thalia continued, “According to the guest records of this cabin, our mother stayed here for one night on June 21, and we think—”

“
You
think,” interrupted Helene.

Thalia glared at her sister. “Some of us think she departed the next morning toward the Col du Brochet, one of the highest mountain passes in this region, and Monsieur Acolas' guest records confirm this. The trail starts above this hutte and is the only route we know of that leads up to the Col du Brochet and back down. Helene thinks she's in the Lower Alps, that she wrote the Col du Brochet as her destination in the guest ledger to dodge father. But for the last two weeks, we've hiked to all her favorite Lower Alpine haunts and still have no clue where she is.”

Thalia's lips moved the way she walked, smoothly but self-consciously. He imagined her watching herself speak in front of the mirror.

“We thought we'd have found her by now, that we'd be on our way home.” Clio jumped in, her pointed elbows on the table. “The only places we haven't checked are the mountain trails above here. Thalia and I think she must be camping out near the Col du Brochet, a two-day hike from here. She
has
to be there.”

Helene inhaled deeply. Jim didn't hear her exhale.
Thalia's eyes filled with tears, and for a moment Jim wondered whether the tears were part of the act.

“So we thought—” continued Thalia, “that there'd be some hikers heading in that direction who could keep an eye out for her—”

“And if, on their
descent
,” interrupted Helene, “those hikers found her, they could accompany her down the mountain and let us know that she was safe.”

“We three would hike this last part,” added Clio, “but we've been up here for two weeks and we have to get back to our lives. My kids are about to start school; Helene has a thousand books to edit at Gallimard and rehearsals start on Tuesday for a play that Thalia has the lead in. Within the week the entrance to the Col du Brochet will be blocked off or if it's not blocked, it could be impassable by the early snow that is forecast. And this hutte . . . Who knows when Monsieur Acolas will decide to shut it down for the season.”

She was already scanning the room for her next target. Her eyes settled on a bearded man whose belly hung over his belt. He would be on Jim's list, too. He was even wearing suspenders.

“According to Monsieur Acolas,” Clio continued, “only one person stays up this high during the winter, and it's a female hermit. Monsieur calls her the hermitess. He says she's gone mad up in the mountains. I've been asking everyone I meet about this hermitess, because it would be just like Maman to take care of this woman and bring her food.”

“They say that before she became a hermitess,” volunteered Helene, puckering her lips as she spoke, “she was a shepherdess in the low Alps who talked to her sheep—you know, to comfort them. When wolves ate her sheep, the story goes, she came up here to live in a cave as a young woman and vowed never to speak to another living being again. And she didn't, unless Maman has found her and inspired her to sing, which is highly likely. Apparently, she was sighted a year ago.”

“There she goes with her stories,” said Thalia. “While I like to act, Helene likes to make things up.”

“Can you imagine?” said Helene, settling her large hazel eyes on Jim. “Being alone for years—let alone one year? Do you think you'd unlearn how to speak, actually forget how to form words with your lips?”

Jim thought Helene seemed to have a pretty difficult time already forming English words with her French accent.

“But this hermitess, if there is one,” said Ambrose, “could be living in any one of the thousands of caves in the Bernese mountain range.”

“True,” said Thalia, sinking into her chair. “But the point is—”

“The point is,” interrupted Clio, clearly impatient, “it's freezing up there, and getting colder.”

“I agree with Clio. This hermitess could be a clue to Maman's whereabouts,” added Helene, perched at the edge of her chair. “Maman
would
feel an affinity to someone who
wished to be so true to herself that she couldn't live in the world.”

“Enough of the hermitess,” pronounced Thalia, tossing her head dramatically. “Wasn't Clio just telling us that someone dies every day up here in these Alps? I would have thought that Monsieur Acolas or
someone
up here would have tried to dissuade Maman from climbing to the Col all by herself.”

“How would they have stopped her? She's not
that
old, Thalia,” said Helene. “She's forty-nine, but she's really fit, and it was early summer when she left, so the days were longer. And about the daily death in the Alps—I don't believe it either. I won't.”

“I'll look it up,” said Thalia. She dipped her hand into her jacket pocket to retrieve her phone. “
Merde
. Forgot, no service up here.”

Ambrose reached for the wine bottle. “I've heard the same statistic,” he said softly. “We
are
talking about the Wildhorn in the Bernese, the most glaciated region of the Alps. And to find someone—”

“Every year two of us hike to this hutte in mid-August to retrieve our mother,” interrupted Thalia, “and it takes us a few days to convince her to come back with us. This year has been especially stressful for her.” She shot a glance at Clio. “Which is why we think she's settled farther away and why she will cling especially fiercely to the mountains.”

“It's not necessary to tell,” Clio said, her voice clipped. “Remember, Papa—”

“They need to know,” said Helene. “The more information they have, the better.”

“And it's not as if it's private anymore, Clio!” said Thalia, pushing her plate away. “The whole world knows about it.” Thalia frowned as she looked from Jim to Ambrose. “Before her trip this summer, our mother learned many things about her husband, our father, that she hadn't known before: that he has had a series—is that the word? sequence, succession?—of women. The way some men collect butterflies, fine wines, whatever—Papa collected women. They call it ‘serial adulterer' in English. I read the expression in an English newspaper last week. It's disgusting.” Shaking her head, Thalia rose from the table, removed one of her boots, and pulled her socked foot underneath her as she sat back down.