Dreaming of Manderley

by Leah Marie Brown

  “Tough. I do not have the resilience to withstand the many agonies and ecstasies associated with professional writing.”

  “Perhaps you underestimate yourself.”

  I think of everything that has happened in the last year—the freak boating accident that claimed the lives of my father and beloved aunt, the IRS investigating and seizing my father’s assets—and hot, salty tears scald my eyes. Truthfully, I don’t have enough energy to juggle another ball.

  “No, I am not underestimating myself,” I say, my voice trembling. “I am not as tough as Olivia or as buoyant as my sisters.”

  “Yet you described yourself as a life preserver, an object which is, by nature, durable and buoyant.”

  He maneuvers the car across three lanes of traffic, weaving around vehicles, and takes the exit ramp.

  “So,” he says, stopping at a traffic light. “You work as an assistant, helping someone else achieve their dreams instead of achieving your own.”

  “Olivia is my dearest friend. She needed me.”

  “Are you always so eager to sacrifice your happiness for those you love?”

  I frown. “I am not sure I would put it that way.”

  “How would you put it?” he snaps.

  “Helping those I love brings me happiness. Is that such a bad thing?”

  He turns to look at me and his hard expression softens slightly—so slightly I wonder if I imagined it. Then, he does something completely unexpected. He reaches out and puts his wide hand on my face, staring into my eyes. I can’t look away. I am like a deer mesmerized, yet terrified, by the lights of an oncoming car.

  “Non, ma bichette.” He strokes my cheek with his thumb. “There is nothing wrong with being generous of spirit and heart. The world needs more selfless people. I hope you remain this way forever, even when you are an ancient, thirty-six-year-old Neanderthal.”

  The driver in the car behind us beeps his horn, but Xavier continues to stare at me. He removes his hand from my face, presses his fingertips to his lips, and touches the kiss to my forehead. It is the sweetest, most tender gesture a man has ever made to me.

  Xavier starts driving again, but I don’t hear the rev of the engine, the whine of passing traffic. I hear a romantic symphony of harps and violins playing in my head. It’s silly, I know, but I am becoming dangerously infatuated with Xavier.

  “Hollywood. Cannes. They aren’t the most Zen-like settings, are they? Have you always longed for a quiet life or is it a consequence of your career choice?”

  “I grew up with two outgoing, boisterous sisters who surrounded themselves with a giggling, squealing, chatty coterie. Believe me, I have always longed for quiet and solitude.”

  “What about your father? Is he sociable like your sisters, or quiet, like you?”

  A lance of pain spears my heart and I inhale sharply. “I lost my father in a boating accident fifty-nine days ago.” I haven’t been able to talk about my father’s death with anyone other than Olivia and my sisters, but I feel unusually compelled to share my grief with Xavier. He makes me feel safe. “It seems like a horrid nightmare, like maybe I will wake and discover I am sitting on the veranda with him watching the sun dip below the marsh, listening to the breeze rattle the magnolia leaves.”

  He takes his eyes off the road for a split second, just long enough to fix me with a breathtakingly sympathetic gaze.

  “Je suis désolé, ma bichette.”

  His gentle voice wraps around me like a cashmere sweater and I want to pull it close, let it thaw the chill that invaded my heart upon hearing of the accident.

  “You were thinking about your father the day we met on the cliff, weren’t you?”

  I nod. “I cannot bring myself to the realization that my father is really gone. I get up each morning, move through the day as if in a fog, and climb back into bed. It is only then, as I am lying in bed, the fog lifts a little and I am able to see my world clearly, my new world without my father.” I draw in a jagged breath. “Some nights, I worry I will forget him. I lie awake recalling as many details as I can, cataloguing them in my memory. How the aroma of his cigars would fill the house at night, the cocoa-and espresso-scented cloud would drift from the sitting room up to my room. The way he insisted on wearing a bow tie and blazer even with chinos. How he went to an old barbershop off King Street twice a week for an old-fashioned blade shave. The way his face always lit up when he talked about my mother. His daily ritual of reading the Faith and Values section in the Post and Courier while eating biscuits and jam . . .”

  I smile at the last memory. Daddy loved his biscuits and peach jam. Well, he loved Beulah’s biscuits and peach jam. Beulah was our cook. Daddy used to say she could burn a bowl of cold cereal, but she made the most delicious peach jam and the fluffiest biscuits in the Carolinas. She’s keeping me as fat as a tick with jam and bread!

  Poor old Beulah. When the IRS seized Daddy’s assets, including our home, Beulah was tossed out on the street with a suitcase of aprons and peach jam. I tracked her to her niece’s house on Kiawah Island and promised to help her find a new employer, but she said she was sick of making biscuits and jam. I’ve been busier than a moth in a mitten for as long as I can recall. I am ready to rest my tired old bones.

  “Go on, then,” Xavier says, placing his hand on my knee. “You have suffered a terrible loss, ma bichette, and it will take you time to find your way through the grief, but talking about your father will help you keep his memory alive.”

  A wave of shame washes over me. I am a Southern woman, by birth and behavior. Southern women keep conversations interesting and light. They do not share personal problems with strangers or burden others with their problems.

  “Do not worry about me,” I say, crossing my legs so Xavier is forced to remove his hand. “I will be fine. I worry about my sisters, though.”

  Xavier respects my conversational barrier. He doesn’t try to crawl under it or push through it the way others might, and it makes me like him even more.

  “Tell me about your sisters. Are they older or younger than you?”

  “Tara is twenty-five and Emma Lee is twenty-three. Tara works for a news station in Charleston, filming segments about local restaurants and recipes. She loves to cook and talk, so it is the perfect job for her. She makes friends easily and thrives on her connections. She is relaxed and easygoing. She is the peacemaker, the people-pleaser. She is also extremely sensitive. I worry that she cares what others think too much.”

  “And Emma Lee?”

  “Emma Lee,” I say, sighing. “How do I begin to explain the marvelous, maddening Emma Lee Maxwell? She’s the baby. Our mother died shortly after Emma Lee’s birth and my father compensated by coddling and spoiling her. She learned early on how to manipulate people to get what she wants and she can be extremely self-centered.”

  A memory of Emma Lee curling her bottom lip and batting her long blond eyelashes at our father pops into my brain. But Daddy, Annabelle Ashland’s momma is letting her go to New York to pick out a dress for the debutante ball. If I had a momma, she would be helping me choose a gown. Please, Daddy, please let me go to New York with Annabelle.

  “It sounds as if you don’t care for your sister much.”

  “What?” I blink and the memory disappears. “Does it? I am sorry then. I didn’t mean to paint her with such an unflattering brush, truly. I love Emma Lee. She’s is a whirlwind of fun and energy. She is charming, confident, outgoing, and audacious. Everything I am not.”

  “You are not audacious?”

  “Me?” I snort and push my glasses up my nose. “I do not have an audacious bone in my body. I am too anxious and responsible to take bold risks, though I admire people who do.”

  “What is the most audacious thing you have ever done?”

  I frown. What is the most audacious thing I have ever done? Think. Think.

  Xavier turns off the paved road onto a narrow dirt track lined with tall plane trees, their leaves uniting to create a beautiful gre
en canopy.

  “I used to wait until everyone was in bed and then sneak down to the kitchen to steal cookies from the cookie jar. I kept a library book once. Just didn’t return it and then fibbed and said I thought I had. Oh, and when the maid wasn’t looking yesterday, I took two bottles of the Majestic’s divine scented bath wash from her cart.” I sound pathetic. “Goodness, those stories make me sound dreadfully boring, don’t they?”

  Xavier chuckles. “I wouldn’t say that. They do hint at a predilection for larceny, though.”

  I laugh.

  My text tone chimes. Once. Twice. Three times. Four times. I reach into my purse and remove my phone.

  “Do you mind?” I ask. “It might be Olivia.”

  “Not at all.”

  I open my text app. Four texts and all of them are from Emma Lee. Right on cue.

  Text from Emma Lee Maxwell:

  Did you get my text about the dealership repossessing my car? What am I going to do, Mandy?

  Text from Emma Lee Maxwell:

  Hello?

  Text from Emma Lee Maxwell:

  I hope you are having a fab time in Cannes, rubbing elbows with sexy celebs, going to VIP clubs, riding in limousines. Meanwhile, your baby sister is stranded in Charleston. Mobility challenged. On the brink of being evicted. Destined to spend her nights sleeping on a park bench in White Point Garden.

  An image of Emma Lee curled up on a bench using her bright pink leather Esteban Cortázar jacket as a blanket and her Balenciaga city bag as a pillow flickers in my brain and have to stifle a laugh. Why Emma Lee has never entertained a theatrical career is beyond me.

  Text from Emma Lee Maxwell:

  Why aren’t you answering my texts?

  I open my Notes app and enter a reminder to talk to my sister about pursuing a career on the stage or in front of the camera.

  Text to Emma Lee Maxwell:

  You won’t ever be homeless, Em. Why don’t you come and stay with me in Los Angeles? I will help you find a job and cosign a loan for a leased car.

  Exhaling, I slip my phone back into my purse. Emma Lee might be the baby, but it is high time she grew up. The only job she has ever had was social chair for her sorority—and that was a volunteer position.

  “Another person clinging to you?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “No, but thank you for offering.”

  Xavier pulls to a stop. “We’re here.”

  I look out the window at a grand rustic stone house with a terracotta roof and faded French gray shutters. Fields of gray bushes with small white flowers stretch as far as I can see.

  “Where exactly is here?”

  “The essential oil used to manufacture some of the world’s most exclusive scents—Chanel No. 5, Roja Dove, Guerlain Le Bouquet de la Mariée—is manufactured here, in Grasse, using the flowers growing in these fields.” He reaches over me to pull an envelope out of the glove compartment, his hand brushing my bare knee. “I needed to drop off some paperwork for Thierry Lambert, the owner of this farm, and thought you might like to take some photographs of the fields.”

  “Are you in the perfume business, then?”

  “What?” He chuckles. “No, I am most definitely not in the perfume business.”

  Sliding the envelope into his inside jacket pocket, he climbs out of the car and closes the door. A moment later, he opens my door and holds out his hand. The sultry afternoon air is heavy with the sweet, heady scent of tuberoses. I accept Xavier’s hand and climb out of the car, inhaling deeply, trying to steady the wild thump-thump-thump of my heart.

  “Thank you.”

  “Please excuse me,” he says, smiling. “I will be back as soon as I drop these papers off and then we can take a stroll through the fields, if you would like.”

  “Of course.”

  He disappears into the stone building. I take my glasses off and slip on a pair of prescription Oliver Goldsmith “Grace” sunglasses. The cat-eye shaped sunglasses are modeled after a pair Grace Kelly wore while filming To Catch a Thief. Olivia bought us each a pair as a pre-Cannes “prezzie.” We are going to Cannes, which means we need to channel Grace, darling.

  Walking around the car, I lift my camera to my face, focus on the tree-lined drive, and snap a picture of golden sunlight filtering through the leaves. I wander over to the side of the building, to a row of shiny pink rain boots lined up beside a scarred wooden door, and snap another picture. I am focusing my lens on a pile of faded wicker baskets when Xavier returns with an older, silver-haired gentleman wearing a slightly rumpled summer suit and a slouchy beret.

  “Thierry Lambert,” Xavier says, “allow me to introduce Mademoiselle Maxwell.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Monsieur Lambert,” I say, holding out my hand.

  He lifts my hand to his lips, pressing a kiss on the back and murmuring, “Enchanté, mademoiselle.”

  The sparkling eyes, infectious grin, and red scarf knotted at his neck remind me of Maurice Chevalier’s character in Gigi and I half expect him to burst into the French rendition of “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.”

  “I hope you don’t mind, but when Xavier told me he was accompanied today by a pretty American girl”—he holds out his arms and shrugs in an unapologetic, yet charming gesture–“pfft . . . every man has his . . .” He looks at Xavier and frowns. “Comment dit-on ‘la faiblesse’ en anglais?”

  “Weakness,” Xavier offers.

  “La! Mais bien sûr! Sometimes my old brain struggles to recall the simplest of words.” He sighs heavily and then returns his gaze to me, watery gray eyes twinkling. “Every man has his weakness, ma chérie, and mine, much to the dismay of Madame Lambert, is pretty American girls.”

  I doubt Xavier described me as pretty—plain, passable, perhaps—but not pretty. Monsieur Lambert is being kind. Still, I thank him for the compliment and try to ignore the tingling sensation moving up the back of my neck and across my cheeks.

  Monsieur Lambert chuckles. “Your face is as pink as the roses climbing up the side of my barn. My, but you are charmante.”

  I fiddle with my camera strap, adjusting the buckle even though it doesn’t need adjusting. Monsieur Lambert chuckles again. My palms suddenly feel slick with perspiration. I can feel Xavier’s gaze on the back of my neck.

  “Do you have time for a tour?”

  “Yes,” Xavier answers.

  Monsieur Lambert heads for the field to the right of where we are standing.

  “Stop fidgeting,” Xavier whispers, taking my elbow. “It was only a compliment.”

  I stop fiddling with my camera strap and follow along. We walk between two rows of green bushes with tight white buds not yet blossomed. Monsieur Lambert stops walking and faces us, lifting his arms and opening them wide.

  “These fields have been in my family for fourteen generations,” Monsieur Lambert says, lowering his arms. “My ancestor, Guillaume Baptiste Lambert, an enterprising young man, began cultivating flowers in these fields during the reign of the Sun King. He developed a revolutionary method for extracting essential oils and partnered with a local tradesman. Together, they began selling perfumed leather gloves. It wasn’t long before they expanded their line to include perfumed sweet bags, which were essentially small, embroidered square purses carried by ladies of substance, pomanders, casks of scented water, and even bibles with perfumed leather covers.”

  While Monsieur Lambert shares the history of his land, I quietly snap his portrait. With his hands pressed together solemnly, hooked, aquiline nose, and thick, bushy eyebrows below the wool brim of his beret, he is the quintessential Frenchman. I continue taking photographs of the fields and the unfurled buds.

  Monsieur Lambert bends down, groaning a little. He plucks a bud off a bush and gently rolls it between his fingers.

  “What do you smell?” he asks, holding his hand out.

  I close my eyes and inhale the hauntingly familiar scent of jasmine and am transporte
d back to my birthplace, back to South Carolina. To a place where Spanish moss hangs like a pirate’s beard from the branches of ancient trees and the tea is so sweet it makes your teeth ache. When I open my eyes, both Monsieur Lambert and Xavier are staring at me. I blink several times to clear the haze of nostalgia before my eyes.

  “Jasmine,” I whisper, my eyes prickling with tears.

  “Brava!” Monsieur Lambert claps his hands. “How do you feel when you smell jasmine?”

  Xavier narrows his gaze—giving me that full-body-scan stare—and my spine seems to melt inside my body. My shoulders roll forward. “Melancholy.”

  Monsieur Lambert raises a bushy brow.

  “I am from South Carolina. The yellow jasmine is our state flower. The aroma reminds me of home and how much I miss it.” I blink back tears. “It’s funny how a scent can do that, isn’t it? Transport you to another time and place, evoke emotions hidden somewhere deep down.”

  I catch Xavier studying me and quickly look away, embarrassed for him to see my vulnerabilities and raw emotion displayed so openly—again. He must think me a silly, overwrought American girl, weeping with every floral-scented breeze and mention of home.

  Monsieur Lambert smiles and pats my shoulder.

  “That is the Proust phenomenon, ma chérie.”

  “As in Marcel Proust?”

  “Oui! You are familiar with Marcel Proust?”

  “Mademoiselle Maxwell is a writer,” Xavier says, his voice as warm as the sun heating my cheeks and bare shoulders.

  “Is that so?” Monsieur Lambert clucks. “Merveilleux! The French revere writers, you know, far more than the Americans or the Brits.”

  He spits the last word.

  I consider telling him that I am not a writer, that I am the assistant to a screenwriter, but don’t want to sound churlish. Xavier was being encouraging.

  “The Proust phenomenon?” I say, prodding our guide back onto a more comfortable conversational path.