Chadbourne too bought items of decor, seemingly unrelated in their theme: pennants from American high schools, tin wastebaskets, a doll carriage. Some of the things seemed strange to Anne-Sophie, but Chadbourne said they were for Monsieur Cray, for the film.
“Is there a recession?” Anne-Sophie asked, looking at the vacant stalls.
“I think they’ve heard about Gabriel,” Delia said.
“Everybody looks just like in the films of Clint Eastwood,” exclaimed Anne-Sophie, only half joking. She was surfing the television in their room the first night as they got ready for dinner. In her excitement she failed to notice that Tim was worried about poor Mrs. Holly and the things he had seen that afternoon. Her home invaded, her toothbrush gone, a woman in her seventies, with the police alerted, and messages going out on their radio.
“Ravissants. In their parkas and boots. The men here so handsome, just like Bruce Willis. Just like Teem! Now I find you are a regular American man, nothing special—you are all très beaux.
“What lovely sense of humors Americans have—the programs are so various and so silly, it’s delightful.”
After the Antiques Barn, while Tim and Cray dealt with the problem of Mrs. Holly, Anne-Sophie had spent the rest of the day looking at other things with Chadbourne and Delia. She had seen a supermarket and a Tower Records store choked with CDs and tapes of an unimaginable cheapness. Now Tim became irritated with her enthusiasms, implying, it seemed to him, some rather patronizing assumptions, for instance that the abundance of packaged food was magnificent for a nation of ladies well known not to cook. Such large, capacious vehicles—considering that Americans have to flounder in the rutted roads of their picturesque frontier and cover such inconvenient huge distances and have no trains.
“They have an enormous camion in the parking of the supermarket, called the Recycling, and people bring not only their bottles, as we do, but also their paper bags and tin cans! It is so virtuous! The French could learn from that.”
Tim had never had a strong feeling of nationality. Though his passport declared him unequivocally American, he had never felt the need for deciding whether he was American at heart or really European, and he thought that the whole subject of nationality was arbitrary and divisive. But as Anne-Sophie praised just the things about Oregon that he himself found disgusting, paradoxically this reinforced his sense of Americanness. Instead of feeling alienated, he found himself feeling angry and involved at the wrongheadedness of strip malls and the vast cement shopping centers and freeways. Far from being politically correct food, it was a riot of junk food here, and Anne-Sophie claimed to love it, or maybe did love it. Or she was managing him, playing the wife of the typically obtuse and incompetent television dad who would believe anything his woman told him.
By dinnertime in Oregon it was too late to call Clara again, five in the morning in France, and they were bleary and ready for bed themselves. Insisting they stay up until ten, Cray took them to dinner. He invited the Sadlers and Delia as well, and they went to what was reputed to be the best restaurant in Lake Oswego, there to eat Pacific salmon, boiled potatoes, and cole slaw (“... filet of Pacific salmon, we leave the skin on and it’s cooked on one side only, with a reduction of balsamic vinegar, lightly seasoned with chervil and shallot, served with small Washington Duke red potatoes, salt-roasted with a little olive oil, and a puree of red pepper, on a bed of cabbage ...”) As for the wine, “The Lorne Cellars is more oakey than the Knickerbocker Farm. Do you like the big buttery, or the flinty?” asked the waitress of the Chardonnay.
Tim watched Anne-Sophie pityingly as she struggled to peel the tiny potatoes in the French fashion. She had not noticed that the rest of them did not peel theirs. Certain transactions challenged her English: her brows knitted when the waitress asked, “Do you want me to touch up your water?” But her admiration was enormous. “Saumon à l‘unilatéral, the cooking here is very advanced!” She did not in the least mind having to go to the foyer to smoke, she expected this. Chadbourne came with her.
As they drooped sleepily over their decaf, they discussed the day to follow, when Tim, Cray, and the police would continue to try to find Mrs. Holly and meet various followers of the various ideologies known to Delia. Anne-Sophie and Chadbourne would continue their sightseeing.
While they ate, the temperature outside dropped suddenly and the wind rose, turning a desultory rain into a blizzard that, this early in the season, shocked the people in the restaurant and rather excited the visitors from Paris. The local people hesitated in the doorway before dashing for their cars. Cray and his party walked quickly the short distance to the TualatInn with their coats over their heads.
Once back in their room, Tim and Anne-Sophie huddled in bed and watched television until they dropped off to sleep. The weather forecast was announced in the reverent tones always used for predicting disaster, but it seemed cozy in the TualatInn.
“Tomorrow I want to go to Taco Bell,” Anne-Sophie sighed as she kissed Tim good night. “It is as if we are having our honeymoon before the wedding. If only we could go to Las Vegas ...”
They woke at four, the heure blanche of jet lag. They could hear the wind whistling across the lake and, from somewhere, the sharp report, like gunfire, of an awning or a sail flapping. On her way to the bathroom, Anne-Sophie pulled aside the shade to look out. The world outside was white, and glittered in the moonlight; snow mounted on the sills and railings of the deck, and obscured the windowpane. How was it possible that nature had arranged such violent change in only a few hours? Tim got up to look, then they crawled back into the bed, wakeful and disoriented in faraway Oregon, listening to a storm that seemed to grow in ferocity as they lay there. It seemed like too much trouble to make love.
50
Guinevere Worries
Waking in the morning, Clara fell into a panic, knowing that her mother was going to die because of what she, Clara, had done with Antoine de Persand. She conquered this irrational but horribly present fear, and lay in bed trying to think about Lars, and her mother, but for the hundredth time she thought about making love with Antoine. She thought of all the legendary instances of husbands away from home: King Mark, was that in Tristan and Isolde? King Arthur too had been away, off looking for, was it the Grail? Or the sword in the stone? Both of these seemed not bad metaphors for Serge’s trip to America, and for what had happened to her, too. She wondered what Antoine thought had happened to him. Was he up yet? Was he thinking about her at all?
She thought about sex in general, how mysterious it was. Her experience of it was not vast. There had been a couple of boys in high school, then there was Serge and marriage, and it had been okay, but for yesterday afternoon she had no adjectives. It had opened her eyes, had explained finally those rapturous passages in books, had elucidated sin and its eternal attractions, and why people went to hell for it. Decided on purpose to go to hell for the sake of sexual passion. Of course she didn’t really believe in hell! Her whole notions of pleasure had to be reorganized; you had to have an attitude to pleasure, and to see how it was good and made you a better person. She thought of passages from the works of D. H. Lawrence that she may have once derided and that now made sense. Even those silly flower garlands ... How to bear the wild vacillation between happiness and her conviction that she had killed her mother?
She got up; she would have to speak to Senhora Alvares, and she hadn’t decided whether to make up an innocent explanation, or bribe her.
51
Snowbound
At six in Oregon, when Clara was well into her day, Tim and Anne-Sophie got up and turned on the television. The screen was already filled with images of stuck vehicles, officers in yellow slickers, highway machines, people standing around stamping their feet.
“It is so well organized, they give you the news immediately. In France you would go out and get stuck,” Anne-Sophie said. Tim did not point out that in Paris you wouldn’t have to drive out in a snowstorm.
They found coffee i
n the lobby at seven. As Tim was wondering if it was too early to wake up Cray, Cray appeared, looking apprehensive.
“Mr. Cray, I am such an admirer of your films,” said Mr. Barrater, coming in with logs in a canvas sling. Since Cray had registered under the name of Carson, he glared at the man and made no answer.
“Assuming the roads are okay, Anne-Sophie and I can go to the antiques place and try to find if anyone knows where Cristal’s daughter is,” Tim suggested. They had discussed this last night.
Cray snorted. “She’s not going to be there. They will have heard the police are looking for Clara’s mother.”
“I am looking forward to an American petit déjeuner,” Anne-Sophie said.
“Hope you aren’t planning to go far today,” Mrs. Barrater said. “It’s an ice storm. That’s our local specialty.” As if to illustrate the significance of this, the lights went out and the computer behind her desk, which had already been up and humming, and the television went black. “The lines go down,” she said. “It happens every year and it always catches them by surprise.”
By nine it had grown light and Mrs. Barrater had produced an elaborate Englishy breakfast of scones and clotted cream and Oregon Olalaberry jam (“Ooh la la,” said Anne-Sophie). The lights had not gone back on. Mrs. Barrater called the power company but could not get through. “At least we got the phone and the gas stove,” she said. “Storm mode.” The TualatInn began to be chilly, then cold, and Mr. Barrater came in with more wood to build fires in the rooms.
“Is one safe in a structure of wood?” Anne-Sophie wondered.
The telephone rang. It was the police, saying they would pick up Cray and Nolinger; they were not to drive themselves with the roads in this condition. And they said that guns were not the only thing they had found at Mrs. Holly’s residence; there was also twenty ounces of Semtex. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms had been called in.
Though Anne-Sophie had been told that downtown Lake Oswego was within walking distance, there seemed to be nowhere to go, no obvious destination; there was a gas station, a cleaners, a pair of shops—both closed—and no warm haven of commerce in view. Anne-Sophie had never seen streets like this, sheeted with solid ice in which were imprisoned all the pebbles and litter as if preserved for all time like mammoths in permafrost. In Paris the streets were usually warm, radiant from the underground metro. No one could walk on this ice, yet the big Explorers and Tahoes and Broncos came creeping along, their wheels spinning with effort. Ice hung from the power lines, which sagged low over the street, and it built up on the roofs and railings, and broke branches and bushes, evenly glazing everything. Trees leaned against houses, limbs lay on roofs. She and Chadbourne stepped and slid. She grabbed Chadbourne, who grabbed the doorknob of a storefront dentist’s office.
“Jesus Christ, what a place,” he said.
Anne-Sophie in her little Parisian manteau looked tiny and cold in contrast to the few adventurous Americans in their puffy down jackets, stumping cautiously along, chipping at car windows with improvised implements, slapping their hands against the bitter cold.
“The bloody Jeeps are the only thing that get around,” Chadbourne said. “Shall we carry on?”
“Mais oui.” They crept toward the stop lights. A police car passed them and parked at the TualatInn, perhaps to fetch Tim and Cray. From the chimneys of the houses they passed, sometimes, whiffs of smoke drifted, indicating the more resourceful householders. No lights or neon signs, nothing electrical worked. They worried, looking in at the window of the pet shop, that the owner hadn’t been able to get there to feed a litter of young puppies, probably Labradors, who yipped beseechingly at the faces at the window.
“What if there is not heat in there?” Anne-Sophie wondered. “What shall we do?”
“Those dogs are Labradors, get it?” Chadbourne said.
They turned up the main street. Here was a Safeway, open and warm enough, though dark. They wandered the aisles, Anne-Sophie marvelling at the abundance, though admitting there was something to Chadbourne’s “You wouldn’t want to bloody eat any of it.” She also thought privately that an Englishman had no cause to talk about terrible food, though you heard that English food had picked up tremendously now, since French chefs had begun going to London. They discussed such matters, and bought sandwich fixings—the local pain de mie and cheese oddly sliced and wrapped in little packets, and a quite okay-looking pâté from a reassuringly French-sounding maker. Cheerful Americans told them details of the ice storm: power was out from here to Gresham, and would likely not come on for days, a seven-car crash on the Hood highway, rescue operations for rounding up the sick and elderly and taking them to warm places. Four teenagers found frozen to death in a hut on Mount Hood. Poor Clara Holly, thought Anne-Sophie, she must be hearing this and worrying even more about her mother. She herself worried about the puppies.
“In five days I’m getting married!” she said several times, carcely·able to believe it.
At nine-thirty Tim and Cray went with two officers in a four-wheel-drive police vehicle that seemed no better than the other cars against the amazing ice that now coated the exterior world. They were to check several addresses contributed by people at the Sweet Home Antiques Barn: SuAnn’s house, a summer cabin on the Beaverton Highway, a place out toward Mount Hood. Cristal and Mrs. Holly were in the third of these. As they had stopped for burgers at noon, it was already late afternoon, as dark as night, when they pulled into the driveway of a single-walled little frame house with a porch, set back from the road, with some dishrags and aprons frozen stiff on the clothesline. Tim noticed that the officers had their hands on their guns as they knocked and called out for Cristal Wilson.
“Police,” they said.
“Coming,” said a voice. A woman warily opened the door.
“Cristal Wilson? Is Cynthia Holly here?”
“Yeah. Why? Has something happened?”
“We’ve been looking for her. Someone reported her missing.”
Cristal opened the door wider. A stringy woman in her forties, in jeans and a parka. “She’s here. Why shouldn’t she be?”
The house was cold. She led them into the kitchen. The stove burners were on, and inverted clay flowerpots were placed over the burners, radiating a little heat. Near the stove a thin little woman, presumably Mrs. Holly, sat on a chair under a pile of blankets, and next to her a child, similarly bundled, sat on another chair, knees curled up, staring blankly at the little visible heat waves emitted by the flowerpots.
“We aren’t doing nothing wrong, we came up here, we didn’t expect the storm, obviously,” Cristal said.
“We went to Mrs. Holly’s house,” the senior police officer said.
“Yeah?”
“Found the guns.”
Cristal had an air of innocent unconcern. “That’s nothing of mine, or of Cynthia Holly’s. Don’t ask me what they put in there. They just pushed us out. They made us leave. They promised not to take anything of Mrs. Holly’s. SuAnn’s guru.” She sneered, not convincingly, a scared woman.
“Mrs. Holly, are you all right? ” the officer said.
She was looking at Serge. “That’s Clara’s husband, isn’t it? Where is she? Is something wrong?” Her voice was querulous, and she was not too clean-looking.
“Yes, it’s Serge, Clara is fine,” Cray said, the tenderness of his tone surprising Tim.
“We should have called, I told you,” Mrs. Holly said to Cristal.
“Okay, Thelma and Louise,” the officer said. “You can’t stay up here, it’s looking like another few days of this freeze.”
“We’re happy to leave, believe me,” Cristal said.
“Who are they, that came in to your house, Mrs. Holly?” the officer asked.
“I don’t know which ones.” Mrs. Holly began to cry, little meek tears that appeared to annoy Cristal.
“She’s on medication, you know, and sometimes I can’t convince her of things,” Cristal said.
; “Who’s the child?”
“This is my granddaughter Tammi, SuAnn’s. Something set those people off about a week ago, and that’s when they wanted to put their stuff in our house,” Cristal said. “Nothing to do with us. They just come in and made us leave. They’re always reading signs and omens, I can’t keep up with it.”
“Well, come on, get your stuff together, you can’t stay up here,” the officer said.
“Look at the rocking chair and the old Arvin radio,” Cray said to Tim. “I’d like to get a picture of that stove arrangement, and the stuff on the clothesline.”
“We’ll get Mrs. Holly to the hospital,” said the officer. This, he explained to Cray, was not so much because she was ill, though she seemed frail, as because the hospital had emergency generators and was warm. A number of elderly people had been taken there, and the Red Cross was bringing in some cots. Meantime the police would impourid the stuff in Mrs. Holly’s house, and Cray could arrange to have the place cleaned up for her return. Cray wasn’t sure she ought to go back to her own house—he’d discuss it with his wife when he got back to the TualatInn and could call her.
Cristal and the little girl got their clothes, stuffed them in paper sacks, and walked out to Cristal’s old Civic. They seemed dazed, but perhaps were only so cold they were slowed down.
“Where will you go?” Tim asked, carrying a box for Cristal. It seemed to have mason jars and shoes in it.
“I guess SuAnn‘s,” Cristal said. He found chilling her indifference to the kindness he meant to convey in his tone. It was the flatness of someone who expected no kindness.
Le Mariage Page 28
