Crossroads

by Belva Plain

  “You hated him.” Gwen shot the accusation across the table.

  “Do you blame me?”

  That was when Gwen started to sob. And then she started to run.

  * * *

  Gwen would have done anything not to cry. And the last thing she wanted to do was race out of the stupid little café like a bad child and run through the streets of Paris like a bad cliché until she reached their hotel. But she did just that. Then she ran through the lobby and into the elevator, just another crazy American—well, the staff was used to those—and into her room in the suite she shared with her mother. And she kept on crying. Because she was so angry at herself. And at Cassandra. And at life. I knew I shouldn’t have told her I knew about my father. If she just hadn’t brought up Madame de Pompadour . . . no, be honest, I was looking for an excuse to throw it in her face.

  Her mother had entered the other room; had she run through the streets? No, Cassandra would have found a taxi. And now she was opening the door that separated the two bedrooms. Why the hell didn’t I think to lock it?

  “Gwen, I shouldn’t have said all that.” Cassandra was searching for words. “Your father was very charming . . . and he could be witty . . . people liked him. . . .”

  “And you hated him.”

  “I didn’t—” Cassandra stopped herself. “Hate is a strong word,” she said.

  But it was what you felt, Gwen wanted to shout. You still do. When I did something that reminded you of him—and there must have been times when I did—did you hate me?

  “Gwendolyn, please stop crying,” her mother said. “It won’t help.”

  And for Cassandra Wright, descendant of generations of stoic Wrights, probably it wouldn’t. But it was helping Gwen to cry—big gulping sobs with her eyes and nose running and her face getting all blotchy and red. It was like being sick; you didn’t exactly enjoy the process, but you knew you were going to feel better after you’d finished. Maybe that knowledge was Gwen’s legacy from the woman her father had picked up while he was slumming.

  “It doesn’t matter what your father was,” her mother went on. “That has nothing to do with who you are.”

  But it does, because I am a part of him. And I am a part of the barmaid who may have needed to cry as I do. I had a right to know about them years ago. And you should have been the one to tell me.

  And her mother seemed to be thinking the same thing because she said, “This is not the way I wanted you to find out. I was going to tell you myself, while we were here in Paris.”

  You were going to tell me at your convenience—when you were in control. And this is one of the few times I’ve seen you when you haven’t been. Maybe I owe Jewel something after all.

  “I wanted this to be such a good time for us. I wanted us to . . . Gwen, I’ll do whatever you’d like. If you want to cancel the rest of our trip and go home, just say the word. But there’s no point in trying to continue if we’re going to be angry at each other.” There was a pleading note in her mother’s voice now. To her surprise, Gwen stopped crying and looked at her. Every hair was in place, of course, and her face wasn’t even pale. But the expression in her eyes . . . had she ever looked so vulnerable? So scared? She’s afraid I’ll take her up on it, Gwen realized. She can’t ask me to forgive her, but she’s afraid I won’t. And that will hurt her . . . she’s afraid of how much it will hurt. And for a moment, Gwen wanted to do it—to hurt Cassandra as much as she’d been hurt herself. But then she looked again at those frightened, vulnerable eyes.

  “No, Mother,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to cancel the trip.”

  “This has been so awful, because it happened in the wrong way.” Cassandra was trying to regain control now, and Gwen didn’t stop her. “I think perhaps we should put it aside for now and talk about it again when we are less . . . heated.”

  That means we never will, Gwen thought.

  But because they were civilized, and because Cassandra was a Wright, and Gwen—in spite of everything—was her daughter, they put it aside. They patched up their . . . what should it be called? The word “quarrel” was too simple; “fight” was too violent. Gwen had a vision of a piece of fragile silk cloth, thin as a membrane, being stretched until it ripped, and then it was darned. The darning thread would always show, there would always be wrinkles where the fabric had been pulled together to mend the tear—but it was patched up.

  * * *

  Gwen and Cassandra began their Paris stay in earnest. They went to Versailles and they saw the Petit Trianon. In the following days, they ate at the sixth-floor tearoom in Au Printemps, at a fabulously expensive restaurant in the Eiffel Tower, and at a little brasserie on the Ile Saint-Louis. They drank café au lait at the Café Marly and looked out the window at the Pyramid entrance to the Louvre. They toured the Louvre, the Musée Rodin, and the Musee d’Orsay; they stood in awe in front of the Mona Lisa and The Thinker . They explored the tourist attractions because, as Cassandra said, they were tourists and it would be silly not to admit it. Besides, one could not leave Paris without seeing Notre Dame Cathedral and the Ile de la Cité, the Arc de Triomphe, the Place de la Concorde, the Opéra Garnier, the Obélisque, and what seemed to Gwen to be a million fountains. They window-shopped on the Champs-Elysées and, corny as it was, took a ride on the Seine in a bateau-mouche. They wandered through the green metal stalls of the bouquinistes along the banks of the Seine and watched the fishermen drop their lines on the waterfront of the Ile Saint-Louis. And garden lovers both, they reveled in the beauty of the Jardin des Tuileries, the Jardin du Carrousel, and most of all the Jardin du Luxembourg.

  They didn’t have time to talk about fathers or birth mothers or secrets kept too long. If you saw them soaking up Paris together you would have thought that whatever differences they had, had been patched up.

  On the plane going home, Cassandra said, “I’m going to fire Jewel Fairchild. I just wanted you to know.”

  Jewel’s beautiful face with the ruby red lips and the extraordinary blue eyes floated in front of Gwen, and in those extraordinary blue eyes she saw once again the little gleam of triumph as Jewel told Gwen the devastating news. For a moment Gwen wanted to cheer her mother on. But then she looked at Cassandra sitting next to her, serene in her conviction that punishing Jewel would make everything all right.

  “Why do you want to do that?” she demanded. “All Jewel did was tell me the truth.”

  There was a certain kind of tear that could never be patched up. Not really.

  Chapter Twelve

  Times Past (“We sell gently used vintage couture,” said the ad in the phone book) was located in a small shopping center about a quarter of a mile north of the Algonquin Mall on the highway. The rent in the Plaza Shopping Center wasn’t as high as it was in the Algonquin Mall and the address wasn’t as prestigious. But it was close enough to attract the overflow from its more elegant neighbor. At least that was what Times Past’s owner, Patsy Allen, believed.

  “We appeal to the woman who isn’t impressed by the trendy clothes at Sofia’s,” she liked to say. “She leaves the Algonquin Mall unsatisfied and here we are, practically next door, ready to show her the unique classic pieces she’s been craving.”

  If by “unique” and “classic” you meant “old” and “dated,”Jewel thought, then Patsy was absolutely right. Although, of course, Jewel would never say that. Patsy was her boss, and Jewel had a new motto when it came to bosses: Never say anything they—or their daughters—don’t want to hear.

  She could still remember the day, six months ago, when her supervisor at Wright Glass works had told her she was fired. The order had come from Mrs. Wright personally—it was the first thing she had done when she came back from her vacation in Paris. “I don’t know what you did to make her mad, but she didn’t even bother to take off her coat before she told me to can you,” said the supervisor.

  Of course, Jewel knew what she’d done. She’d told Cassandra Wright’s dull daughter the truth about her father.
Obviously, Gwen had gone crying to Mommy, and Jewel’s punishment for those few seconds of satisfaction had been the loss of her weekly paycheck, followed by three months of panic while she tried to find work and her meager savings ran out. Without a college education and only the minimal computer skills she’d been able to pick up in her one course at night school, the pickings had been slim. By the time she’d landed the job as salesgirl at Times Past her landlord was threatening to evict her. So even though the pay was less than she’d made at the glass works, and she had to spend eight hours a day on her feet in a store that was only air-conditioned in the front section where the customers browsed, she wasn’t going to make waves. No, sir.

  “Now, this dress is absolutely divine!” Patsy said, as she pulled a white lace garment out of the tissue paper in which it had been lovingly packed. She’d just come back from a buying trip and she liked to show Jewel her “finds.”

  “Can you imagine?” she’d crow over a gown. “An original Pucci and they let it go for a song!” Or, “A Donald Brooks! Just locked away in a closet before I rescued it.”

  And Jewel would ooh and aah because it made Patsy happy. So now, when Patsy held out the lace dress and said, “Look at the workmanship, Jewel; they just don’t make things like this anymore,” Jewel nodded reverently, and said, “I love the bolero jacket. You’re amazing, the way you uncover these treasures.”

  Privately, she thought, she wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress that looked like something someone’s grandmother would wear. Although, she’d actually bought a few items from Times Past herself. The clothes were classy—they reminded her of the suits and silk dresses Cassandra Wright brought back from her trips to Paris—and there was no other way Jewel was going to own a cashmere sweater. Even with her generous employee’s discount from Patsy, her few purchases had stretched her budget. But the truth was, she really didn’t enjoy wearing them. No matter how pretty an outfit was, or how much it had cost originally, Jewel simply couldn’t forget she was wearing secondhand clothing—someone else’s leavings. Like the secondhand furniture in her apartment. Someday I’ll be able to go shopping and buy everything I want—all of it brand-new! I don’t know how, but I’ll do it.

  “Whoo, it’s warm!” Patsy said and she fanned herself with an invoice sheet. It was going to be a scorcher of a day and they were unpacking the clothes in the back workroom where the air-conditioning did not penetrate. “Let’s go out front for a minute and sit.” She started out of the workroom. “Don’t bring the white lace out,” she said over her shoulder. “Hang it here in the back. It’s delicate and I don’t want people handling it. We’ll show it when we have the right buyer.”

  It took Jewel a couple of seconds to find one of the special padded hangers they used for the clothes that were especially fragile, and by the time she left the workroom, Patsy was already perched on one of the stools that had been placed next to the counter in front of the cash register. She’d been leafing through the Wrightstown Gazette—Jewel had suggested that they keep a copy for the customers to look at—and now she bent a page back and handed it to Jewel.

  “I’d kill to be invited to that party.” She indicated the lead story on the page. “I’d wear the Armani—you know, the purple satin from the spring collection in ’82—and I swear, it wouldn’t take me more than twenty minutes to have all those fancy women dying to come here to do their shopping. That’s the thing about selling, all you have to do is show people. . . .”

  But Jewel had stopped listening. Because there was a picture accompanying the magazine story and Jewel had recognized the subject. It was Gwen Wright, looking as dull as ever. She began skimming the story, which was all about the party Cassandra Wright was throwing for her daughter’s birthday—the daughter who had been responsible for Jewel being fired.

  The party was scheduled for that evening, and, according to the newspaper, it was going to be huge, with tents on the front lawn and a lighting system installed especially for the occasion. The caterer—the best one in the area—had been working on the entrée for three days, and the florist was quoted as saying he hadn’t had any sleep for the last two nights. The governor had been invited and he had accepted, as had two state senators—and, Jewel had no doubt, all the eligible young men Cassandra Wright had rounded up to meet her daughter. That was the way the parents of rich girls made sure their daughters stayed rich; by introducing them to the sons of the rich. Jewel’s pop had always said wealthy people protected their kids by sending them to expensive colleges where they made friends who gave them six- and seven-figure jobs—networking, he called it. And maybe that was true for boys, but Jewel knew it was different for girls. No matter how many women became lawyers or doctors or heads of companies, the best bet for a girl was still to marry a rich man. But first she had to meet one. That was why Gwen would belong to all the right clubs, and she’d go on vacation to all the right places, and lavish parties with all the right people would be held in her honor. Because sooner or later some rich boy would be attracted to her—the glass works she’d inherit one day would help—and he would marry her and they would combine their fortunes and have children who were even richer than they had been. The tight little world of the rich would go on for another generation. And no outsider, no matter how pretty or charming she was, was ever going to break into it. That was what was so unfair—there was no way for a girl like Jewel Fairchild to get a chance at the rich boys who would attend a party like this.

  Jewel looked down and realized that she was gripping the magazine so hard she had crumpled it. She put it down carefully. “I’m all cooled off,” she told Patsy. “I think I’ll go back to the workroom and finish unpacking.”

  “It’s got to be a hundred degrees back there!” Patsy protested.

  But Jewel needed to be busy so she’d stop thinking.

  Gwen’s probably picked out her jewelry already—I’d wear that gold and diamond bracelet if it was me. There will be a hairdresser coming to the house and someone to do her nails and her makeup and—Jewel stopped herself.

  “It’s not that bad in the workroom,” she told Patsy with a cheery smile. “I’ll turn on the fan.” And she hurried to the back of the store. Anything, including hundred-degree heat, was better than sitting around imagining how Gwen was preparing for her big night.

  * * *

  According to the thermometer, it was ninety degrees in the shade. Gwen looked out through the kitchen window, where a man was hanging electrified lanterns on the new posts that had just been installed between the house and the hill. Along with the lanterns, there was a large white tent at one end of the back lawn, and round tables covered with white cloths dotting the other end. Huge, flowery umbrellas had come with the tables to shade them from the sun, but the crew that was setting up the party had taken them down. They wouldn’t be of any practical use after dark. Cassie—for some reason, now that she knew her father’s identity Gwen had started thinking of Cassandra as Cassie—had purchased the umbrellas and the tables because she had assumed Gwen would be entertaining regularly. That was part of the social life that a nice young girl should be enjoying.

  But at this particular moment, Gwen was wondering, as she often did wonder, what someone who wasn’t a part of her social world, say, someone like the young workman who was stringing up lights, might be thinking about all these elaborate preparations.

  He was interesting-looking rather than classically handsome, she decided. His dark hair was a little too long so it kept falling in his eyes and he had to push it aside. His features were strong, and his eyes were brown. As Gwen watched him through the window she thought they looked light, almost hazel. But that could have been a trick of the sunlight. He moved easily—the way people who do physical jobs tend to move—and there was a surety in the way he worked. He knew what he was doing.

  Right now, he had stooped to pick up a bottle of water, but apparently finding it empty, had laid it down again on the grass. Gwen scanned the lawn; the workmen who had just finished
putting up the tent had taken a break for lunch and the place was deserted. Wouldn’t it be nice to give the young man with the unruly hair some of the lemonade that she had just taken out of the refrigerator? She filled a small pitcher, placed it on a tray with a glass, and went outside with it.

  “I thought you must be thirsty in this heat,” she said.

  “Oh, this is so nice of you!” His eyes were hazel, it hadn’t been the sunshine.

  She saw that he was unsure whether he ought to stand up in the blazing sun while he drank, or move under the trees where there were lacy, wrought-iron chairs in the shade. Of course, Cassie would say—and most men would agree—that a man wasn’t supposed to sit down while a woman was still standing. So perhaps Gwen ought to go back into the house and let him drink in peace. But how, after a few polite words, does a person simply turn around and walk away? Wouldn’t that seem odd? Or rude? The lacy iron chairs were just a few feet away. She walked over to them and so did he. But then after they’d both sat down, neither one of them seemed to know what to say. It occurred to her that perhaps he was waiting for her to speak first, but the only thoughts that came to her mind were the kind of shallow questions people asked at social gatherings when they didn’t care about the answers. She didn’t want him to think she was like that. On the other hand, it was getting embarrassing sitting and listening to the silence.

  “Do you live here in town?” she finally asked.

  “Yes, I have for a while now. Originally, I was planning to go to New York to work with a cousin, but I changed my mind.”

  “But it would’ve been nice to work with your cousin, wouldn’t it?”

  Shallow, she thought. Shallow chitchat. But he looked like he was considering the question seriously.