“So is she very close to her mother-in-law?” I asked. “It sounded like she was pretty upset about her decline.” I hoped it wasn’t obvious how fervently I’d listened to Alex’s every word.
“With Virginie? No, no. Not close so much, just locked into this stubborn dynamic, I suppose. I think they enjoyed resenting each other, but you can’t keep hating a sick, old woman. Anyway, Alex will be back soon to help, as he said. He has always been her favorite, and he is a good grandson to come home. It is a sacrifice for him, to be back here. I cannot imagine coming back to Nantes after Paris and with all of that with his mother . . .” She didn’t finish the thought.
“But I like Nantes,” I said, although having only seen a glimpse of Paris while traveling from the airport to the train station, it was all simply enchanted France to me.
“Yes, but it’s provincial. Particularly when you’ve grown up here, it feels very small. Our family has been here for no one knows how many generations. Our other grandmother hated Virginie; she was the beauty of her time and I think she was nasty to everyone. You come to know everyone in Nantes who is more or less your age, you see. Like with Thomas, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know him.”
We glanced over to where Sophie and Thomas were sitting. Sophie was staring down at her hands as she spoke, perhaps to avoid the intensity of Thomas’s gaze, which was trained on her unabashedly.
“He looks like he might eat her,” I said without thinking, then briefly panicked that my comment would offend Véronique, but she only laughed.
“Poor Thomas, your friend is so beautiful and he doesn’t know quite how to talk to beautiful women. He was very small when we were growing up,” she said as though it explained everything.
“He looks normal-size to me.” I stole another surreptitious glance. My caution was unnecessary, though, since a bonfire could have sprung up next to him and it wouldn’t have distracted him from Sophie.
“Yes, fortunately. But in his head he is still the same tiny boy. Maybe he will get past it someday. I hope he’s not making your friend uncomfortable.”
“No, I don’t think so.” I didn’t add that I thought Sophie liked the attention, regardless of what she thought of Thomas. It would have made me uncomfortable, but then I wasn’t gorgeous like Sophie. When people stared at me, it only made me worry that I had something in my teeth or hair. I had known Sophie for long enough to know that there had likely never been a time when she wouldn’t have known why people were looking at her. She lived in a parallel universe.
“You are good friends with Sophie, non?”
I nodded.
“She is indeed lovely, and she speaks French so perfectly,” Véronique said. Her words had a tone of suspicion, and I felt sure that she was used to being one of the prettiest girls in the room, perhaps even in town. She didn’t extend her compliment to include me, as an American girl would automatically have felt compelled to do, which I found refreshing; let’s not pretend we’re all equal. And yet . . .
“She’s like that with everything,” I said.
Véronique smiled. “How nice for her.”
I didn’t want her to dislike Sophie. I feared that we came as a package deal.
“Does all of your family still live in Nantes?” I asked after a pause to change the subject. Véronique ran her fingers through her hair, tossing it over her shoulder absentmindedly.
“Ah, oui. My parents, all my aunts, my brothers and sister. So many of them never left and they don’t want me to either. I don’t how people can do that, stay in one town their whole lives.”
“I could never stay where I grew up. I’ll go back to visit my mom but never to live.”
“You’re going to move somewhere wonderful, like New York, or maybe Paris?”
“Maybe.”
Véronique and I were kindred spirits. We were both just waiting for our real lives to begin, fully formed and waiting for us just over the horizon.
THE HOLIDAYS came and went. Those who could afford to, including Sophie, flew home for Christmas, and those of us who couldn’t were at the mercy of our nantais families. Sad as I was not to be with my mother—whom I was starting to really miss after the several months I’d been gone—I was happy to be staying. I didn’t want to leave and risk breaking the spell of being abroad.
I was rewarded with the opulent spectacle of Nantes at Christmastime. The place du Commerce and the place Royale, city squares that had been the backdrop of my time in France, were transformed into the largest Christmas market in the region. Dozens and dozens of small wooden cottages took over the city, featuring handmade toys, intricate decorations, and exotic treats from Morocco to Madagascar. On Christmas Eve we attended a somber midnight Mass in the Roman cathedral in the city center. I was awestruck to be taking part in a service there; I had previously seen it only through the eyes of a visitor. Members of the Dubois family packed every corner of their house, and we ate roasted chestnuts and drank copious amounts of wine over the several days of celebration. I was shocked to discover that I loved pâté.
Christmas was just as magical for children in France as it was in the United States. Max was eager to inform me about all of their traditions—leaving shoes by the fireplace, the bûche de Noël, a sweet roulade fashioned to look like a yule log—and asked me what Christmas was like where I was from. When I told him about stockings and letters to Santa Claus, he seemed vindicated to know that Santa appeared in such a far-flung place as California. The Duboises had insisted I not buy them anything but had purchased several gifts for me, including a purple scarf and a notebook that Max was quick to point out had been his idea. “For your stories,” he said conspiratorially. Max and I had occasionally chatted in the kitchen in the mornings, and one day when he had asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I mentioned my dreams of becoming a writer. I was so touched by these gifts I found myself fighting back tears.
Sophie returned a few days into the New Year. I met her at the train station, and when she stepped off the train from Paris, she threw her arms around me as if I were a long-lost love.
“It’s so good to see you.” Relief was palpable in her voice, as though she’d been worried that I might not be here when she arrived. I was just as glad to see her. In America I’d barely known her, but in France I wasn’t whole without her.
“How was your trip?” I asked as we went to board the local tram to the city center. There had been a light snowfall the day before—the first we’d seen in Nantes—and the city looked enchanted as we passed through, both subdued in the hush of fresh snow and festive with the leftover decorations from the Christmas and New Year’s celebrations.
Sophie let out a long sigh. “It was fine,” she said, switching to English.
“Just fine? Was it strange to go back?”
“Honestly, I wish I’d stayed here with you. My parents were stressing me out the whole time.”
“About what?”
“About everything!” She closed her eyes as though trying to forget the whole episode. I let it lie for a moment.
“Grades,” she said finally. I nodded. My grades hadn’t been good during my first term in France either. My spoken-language skills had greatly improved and I had aced my grammar class, given how easy it was, but any other schoolwork that required effort hardly seemed worth doing.
“And they want me to go back on this medication I was taking before, try to hook up with a therapist here.” Sophie stared out the window.
“Do you think you should?” I asked cautiously. I was alarmed by her parents’ reaction. French Sophie was the only Sophie I’d really known; what if I was missing the signs that she was backsliding ?
She looked at me and I worried she was angry, but then her face softened. “They just worry too much. I’m doing fine, better than fine. I’m having the experience of a lifetime here.” She smiled at me in a way that was meant to be reassuring. But the mention of medication worried me and the way she was brushing it off even more so. Still, I s
ensed that the conversation was over. I told her about my holidays and let her know that we were meeting Véronique for un pot later. She brightened at that news.
Strangely, considering that it was a Saturday night, the bar was deserted when we arrived, save for a group of loud Irishmen in the corner and a couple furiously kissing and groping by the window.
Sophie and I ordered chardonnay.
“God, it’s so nice to be able to order a glass of wine like a goddamn grown-up,” Sophie said. “It was so awkward whenever I was out to eat with my parents; it just seemed so unreasonable that I couldn’t drink.”
“Well, not too long until we’re twenty-one.”
“It’s not that.” Sophie took her hair down from her ponytail and shook it out, then wound it around her fingers with an agitated, nervous energy as she talked. “Or it’s not just that. Being back in the States, you realize how fucking puritanical everything is. All the prissiness about booze and sex, all the low-fat cheese, it’s just bullshit.”
I laughed. “Low-fat cheese is kind of an abomination.”
“I’m serious. And it only gets worse. Imagine having two weeks of vacation a year. Imagine living like that! Here they barely go to work in the summer.”
I nodded. I did understand. Before this we had never fully realized that there was any way but our own to live; there were bound to be some consequences. It was hard to imagine Sophie wanting to get out of her life back home as much as I did, but that understanding only made me feel closer to her.
“All the more reason to enjoy our time here,” I said.
“I don’t think we should leave.” She took a swift sip from her wine as soon as the bartender put it down in front of her. “I’m not kidding.”
Before I had a chance to respond, Véronique appeared in the doorway. “Coucou!” She was wearing a bright red wool coat that I hadn’t seen before, her dark hair splashed across her shoulders and dramatically silhouetted against the vivid color.
We said enthusiastic hellos as though we were old friends greeting each other after a long absence. As we told stories of our holidays, I noticed that Sophie’s story of her trip home included no echoes of what she’d said to me earlier. But this was understandable, I supposed.
When Sophie went to the bathroom for a moment, Véronique leaned over and grasped my arm excitedly. “I have a surprise for you, chérie.”
“What is it?”
She shrugged and took a sip of her water. Her nails were a glossy, candy-apple red.
I asked again, persisting. But of course I suspected. Nonetheless, when he walked through the door, I had to stop myself from swooning.
He had a scarf bundled so completely around his neck that only his nose and eyes peeked above it. I felt as if I were seeing someone recognizable but not exactly someone I knew. It was as though he were a celebrity that I was trying to place.
Véronique beamed at him and kissed him three times on the cheek. “Mon cher cousin, I’ve missed you.”
“What a nice surprise,” he said, coming over to kiss me. “I didn’t know that you would still be here.”
We chatted for a few moments about our Christmas holidays. Sophie returned from the bathroom and said her hellos.
“I was sorry I couldn’t make it home to celebrate with you,” Alex said, making a pleading face at Véronique, “I had so much going on in Paris.”
“But you’re back now, Alex,” Véronique said with a tinge of admonishment.
“Yes, I want to work on my new project. No more fashion bullshit in Paris for a while.”
“It must be hard on you,” Sophie said teasingly, “spending time with all those models.”
Alex made a sound of disgust. “I hate being around models. They are barely humans. It’s what happens when you turn people into commodities, they neglect the rest of themselves so completely that they begin to disappear. They are lifeless facsimiles of women.”
Véronique laughed. “And yet you’ve managed to bring yourself to date a few of them somehow.”
“Exactly,” Alex said, not smiling, “that’s how I know. It’s a temptation a man has to face down in his life; he must have it and reject it to know it’s not worth having. And then he will be free to search for real beauty in the world.”
With this his eyes flickered over—certainly unintentionally—to meet mine. My heart almost stopped.
“I don’t know, Alex,” I said, smiling, “you’re saying you don’t find models sexy? I’m incredulous.”
“Ah, sexy least of all. You see,” he continued, addressing our confusion, “sexy isn’t a question of looks.”
“Oh, no?” I asked. “What is it a question of ?”
“It’s a question of mastery of oneself, mastery of one’s instruments. And most of these girls don’t have an ounce of that. They’re like marionettes; people just pull their poor strings all day long.”
“People like you,” Sophie said, “the photographers who work with them, photographers who dehumanize them for their own ends.”
At long last Alex smiled. “You weren’t listening, chérie, it isn’t me who dehumanizes them.”
“So it’s their own fault? You have no part in it?” Sophie asked.
What was happening? I wanted them to get along, I didn’t want the dynamic to be disrupted by the tension I could suddenly feel between the two of them.
“Perhaps I’m not completely innocent, as you say,” Alex said, a tiny smirk playing at the corner of his mouth, “but I’m an artist trying to make a living. Anyway, it’s behind me, I’m done with it. I can now focus on my real work for a while.”
“So are you going to tell us about your new project?” Véronique asked brightly, turning the attention away from a peeved-looking Sophie. “Or are you going to make us beg?”
“No begging, but I can’t tell you. I only barely know myself.”
The waitress meandered over to ask if we wanted anything else to drink. Véronique ordered chinon for her and for Alex.
“I can’t stay too long, les filles,” Alex said. “I have to get settled back in at the house.”
“One drink,” Véronique said. “Don’t be so boring, Alex!”
“It’s this cold. It makes me want to stay in bed until it’s warm again.”
“You’re so spoiled—too many years of being able to run off to the south whenever you want. It’s made you soft.”
“This could be true.” He took a sip of the wine that had just arrived, then leaned his back onto the bar so that he was between Sophie and me. “So, girls, your French is much improved since I saw you last. You have been studying hard, non?”
“Don’t know about that,” I said, “but thank you anyway.”
“It’s marvelous to learn another language, isn’t it? Then you can start to really be yourself again. It’s important to be able to speak your mind.” As he said this, he smiled pointedly at Sophie, who made a frustrated little grimace, though I could see she was barely concealing a smile. She was not immune to his charms, I thought, however she pretended.
“So what will you do now that you’re back?” I asked.
“Well, tomorrow I am spending the day with my grandmother. That reminds me, Véronique, will you please come over for tea? Virginie loves you.” It seemed odd that he would refer to her by her first name.
“Of course,” Véronique said, “with pleasure. We should bring Sophie and Brooke as well!”
Alex looked at us thoughtfully. He seemed amused by the suggestion, perhaps encouraged by Sophie’s lively debate skills.
“Not if it’s an imposition,” I said quickly.
“Of course it’s not,” Alex said. “No, that would be wonderful. What a novelty that would be for her, two young American girls in her salon. Alors, toutes les filles. Tomorrow at four o’clock ça marche ?”
He took Véronique’s face in his hands and pulled her in for his usual three kisses, then repeated this with Sophie and me. I took a deep breath at the opportune moment. His sc
ent was now in my memory from the first night, and it brought with it an automatic rush of desire.
Soon after, I left to meet up with my host family for dinner. Nicole had asked whether I would be joining them that morning and I had impulsively said yes. I had renewed my dedication to spending more time with them after the holidays. I was growing especially attached to little Max, and his face flooded with delight whenever I joined them at the table.
Nicole’s cooking was tasty, and this night she served a roasted chicken with leeks and asparagus. I told them that they would be horrified at the way most American families eat dinner every night, grabbing something microwaved, eaten over the sink or in the car. The kind of meals they had each night here most Americans had at best once a week on Sundays. They were predictably and gleefully aghast at this—all except for Max, who thought this would give him more chances at the frozen fish fingers that Nicole served him once a month when she had dinner with her book group.
And how were my studies? they asked. Was I reading good French writers?
“Well,” I confessed, “I am taking a wonderful theater class at the institute where we are reading Ionesco, Corneille, and Molière, but on my own I’m afraid what I have been reading is a bit shameful: translations of Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts.”
Nicole gamely let out a mock gasp. “Who are these writers?” Monsieur asked, and Nicole explained. “Alors,” he said, his broad, smiling face making me think of all fathers everywhere, of what I might have missed, “pas Baudelaire ou Flaubert, ma chère?”
The kids all groaned in unison at the rhyme. Dad humor was the same everywhere.
“But you’ll be happy to hear that I am reading The Stranger in English and that I plan to read it in French afterward.”
They nodded approvingly.
The cheese-and-yogurt course lasted longer than usual as Max performed a version of “Oh My Darling Clementine” that he was learning for school, sending me into such hysterics that I could hardly explain to the family where the song had come from. I thought of my first few nights with them, how I was terrified to answer a simple question, much less tell a story or a joke. How far I had come.
Losing the Light Page 10
