by Nancy Thayer
While waiting to board the jet, she discovered three other classmates also going to Kimberly’s wedding. Their squeals of delight at seeing Catherine made her feel young again. She was aware of the other passengers noticing them: four pretty girls in pastels full of high spirits, on their way to a wedding. It was like drinking champagne, inhaling perfume, to be so lucky, so lovely. With earnest, profuse professions of gratitude, the girls charmed other passengers into trading seats so they could all sit together, and the flight was passed in an orgy of gossip, memories, and laughter. Hours later the four women arrived in France sleepy and silly.
A stoic chauffeur met them. It was his task to deliver them to the Croces’ country house two hours from Paris. In the privacy and quiet of the smooth, luxurious limousine, the young women fell asleep and missed seeing the change in the landscape as the city gave way to small stony towns and sun-dappled green fields.
They awoke to find the limo entering high, wrought-iron gates that led to the grounds of the Croce estate. The massive, honey-colored stone château was set formally in the middle of manicured gardens, symmetrical paths, and graveled drives. After the long flight and the brief nap, Catherine felt as if she were moving inside a dream as she walked up the wide stone steps and through the great doors into the château.
Inside, the vaulted, tapestry-hung entrance hall echoed as the Miss Brill’s girls were all reunited. Leslie came running down the long curving staircase, arms wide, chattering and laughing. Her father, who was a friend of Monsieur Croce, greeted Catherine more decorously. While their luggage was taken to their rooms, the four new arrivals were led into a small salon for refreshments. Leslie ate heartily of the hot anchovy canapés and tiny crepes filled with chicken liver and mushrooms, but Catherine felt stuporous. It was all she could do to remember enough French to converse with the bridegroom and his parents. Finally, after a polite hour of the requisite courtesies, the four travelers were shown to their rooms to rest. There would be a banquet and ball that evening; the wedding was the next day.
Leslie took Catherine to the room she had arranged for them to share.
“We’re up on the third floor,” Leslie whispered, her arm linked through Catherine’s. “Family members, the maid of honor, and the bridesmaids get the posh rooms on the second floor. You’ll have to come down later and see Kimberly’s room—it looks like a brothel!”
Their room was small and sparsely furnished, with white plaster walls, a shining oak floor, two narrow beds, and an enormous, ornately carved armoire with mirrors on the doors. The large open window looked out onto the long reflecting pool and the statue-adorned paths through the gardens.
“Don’t you love all this?” Leslie babbled. “Decadence. Yum. But do you know what? There are only two toilets and two bathtubs on this floor. We’ll have to share with everyone else. There’s no shower anywhere I can see. I don’t know how I’ll wash my hair. You look exhausted. How was the flight? I promise I won’t talk forever. You have to get some sleep so you can be ready for tonight. It’s going to be an amazing party.”
“The flight was fine,” Catherine said. “It was fun talking to Anne and Robin and Melonie, but you know, Leslie, it’s just like when we were at school—they’re still as interchangeable as ever. They dress the same way, they study the same stuff at college, they think the same way. I think they could marry each other’s fiancés and the men wouldn’t even notice.”
“You’re so wicked and critical.” Leslie laughed. “And I’m so glad! Never mind them, tell me about you! Did you bring pictures?”
“Umm,” Catherine said. She jumped off the bed, dug through her luggage, and came over to sit next to Leslie with her packet. “Here,” she said. “This is it.”
She handed Leslie the first photograph: a picture of a small shop with a pink-and-white-striped awning and, in gold script on the door, the words Vanderveld Flowers.
“It’s pretty, Catherine. Smaller than I thought from all you’d written me.”
Catherine laughed. She looked lovingly at the photograph.
“Yes, I’m sure of that. It’s changed my life so much it should be as big as a church or a university … but even as a flower shop it’s too small. Far too small. Unfortunately the Vandervelds don’t have the money for expansion.…” Her voice trailed off as she remembered all the financial problems the Vandervelds were facing, problems that might change her future.
“Look at all those daffodils!” Leslie said, taking the next photo, which was a closer shot of the shop window. “And the tulips. I love tulips.”
“Mmm,” Catherine agreed. “You know, I didn’t realize it when I took it last month, but the window in this photo looks just like it did when I first saw the store. This is Mr. and Mrs. Vanderveld. They look like trolls, don’t they?”
“Who’s this?” Leslie interrupted. “You didn’t tell me about him.”
Catherine looked at the photograph, which was supposed to show Leslie what the back of the shop looked like but in which Catherine had inadvertently included a dark young man with his arms full of cardboard box flats.
“Oh, that’s Piet. Their nephew.”
“Ye-es. Go on.”
“That’s all.”
“That’s all? You work with a man who looks like that, and you tell me that’s all? Catherine, come on. I don’t believe that for a minute.”
Catherine pushed herself off Leslie’s bed and threw herself across her own. “Oh, give me a break, Leslie. God, I’m bushed. It’s five o’clock in the morning my time. I’ve got to go to sleep.”
“You’re trying to get out of telling me something! That’s not fair! I gave you my apartment, Catherine—you owe me.”
“Owe you what?”
“Everything. Your soul. At least all your secrets. So tell.”
Catherine opened her eyes. “I swear I’m not involved with him. Leslie, I’ve been working so hard now, at the shop in the day and classes at night, I haven’t had time for men at all. I promise. Don’t look that way. I’m not lying. Listen, let me sleep and I’ll tell you everything when I wake up.”
“Everything?” Leslie said threateningly, squinching up her eyes.
“Everything. And believe me, it will take about five seconds.”
“All right,” Leslie said sulkily. “I’m going on down to see who else is here. I’ll wake you in time to get ready for the party.”
Catherine closed her eyes and pulled the covers up to her neck. Her brain seemed filled with fuzz. Her body was disoriented after the transatlantic flight and the excitement of seeing old friends again. She wanted to sleep and to rush around seeing everyone, not missing a second, all at the same time.
It was so odd being with Leslie again, feeling young again—feeling rich. She tossed and turned on the soft, duvet-covered bed, suddenly sinking into an ocean of sleep. In this French country house, far away from New York and the Vandervelds, Catherine dreamed of Piet. Her body filled with warmth, a delicious bloodred-rose warmth that relaxed her, and yet a dizzying warmth, like Burgundy wine drunk before a winter fire.
All her life, Catherine thought, she had lived by grasping at anything that caught her eye, because she didn’t know where to go. Piet was different. He knew exactly what he wanted. He was centered, his mind, body, and desires so powerfully contained and compressed that they formed a dark axis, a black pole around which his world turned. She always resisted the power of that magnetism, because she was afraid.
She twisted on the bed, toward him, away, moaning.
* * *
“Catherine! Wake up!”
Catherine opened her eyes. Leslie was seated on the bed next to her with a tray in her hands.
“Sorry, honey, but we’ve got to get you awake. I know how hard it is to wake up after an ocean crossing. But you’ve had five hours of sleep, and it’s the first few minutes that are the hardest. Here, I brought you some coffee and bread, butter, and strawberry confiture. Touch the bread. It’s still hot. Smell it. And the coffee—yum!
Milk? Sugar?”
As Leslie spoke, Catherine pulled herself up into a sitting position, propped herself against some pillows, and let Leslie busy around with the tray. Her head was still filled with fuzz, her body with a voluptuous heaviness.
“I have to have a bath,” she said after sipping some of the rich café au lait from a cup the size of a soup bowl.
“Good luck. Everyone’s using the bathtubs. I doubt if there’ll be enough hot water, but never mind, the cold will wake you up. Eat something first and drink your coffee—Oh! You have to tell me which dress you want to wear tonight. The maids are coming around to collect things that need ironing. Which one—this? Well, la-de-da, Miss Catherine, how swanky. Where did you get it? I thought you were pinching pennies.”
Catherine grinned and stretched. “I stole it. From my mother’s closet. She’ll never know.”
“You stole it! Good Lord, I didn’t know you had it in you! I’m so proud of you, my dear. The beginnings of a life of crime. How did you manage it?”
“Easily. They invited me home to the Park Avenue apartment for Ann’s birthday party. I came in with a huge satchel full of presents, and left with the same satchel stuffed with the dress—and some suitable jewelry. Oh, don’t look at me that way. You know Mother will never miss it. It wasn’t even in the closet in her room. It was back in the closet in the storage room. She’ll never fit into this again anyway, it’s sizes and sizes too small. Besides, if she does miss it, she’ll just think she ruined it in one of her drunken moments. Believe me, she won’t want to embarrass herself by asking. God, I feel like I’ve been poached in these clothes. I’ve got to bathe.”
Grabbing up her robe and bath things, Catherine headed down the hall in the direction Leslie had pointed. She hated the French system of putting the toilet and sink in their own little room and the bathtub in another. Fortunately the bathtub was free, and she hurriedly bathed off the flight and her exhaustion and returned to her room refreshed.
“All right,” Leslie said the moment Catherine entered the room. “I’ve been patient. So tell.”
“About what?” Catherine sat on the edge of her bed and hungrily wolfed down her café au lait and bread, liberally slathered with strawberry jam.
“Your love life! You can start with that Arabian knight, or Russian prince, or whatever he is. The dark stranger in the photo.”
“He’s Dutch. I’ve told you. Piet Vanderveld. He works with the Vandervelds, sometimes in Amsterdam, sometimes in New York, wherever they need him. He’s very helpful because he’s multilingual.…”
“Catherine! I swear I will not be your friend one second longer if you don’t stop fooling around and tell me.”
Catherine looked at Leslie.
Leslie stared back at Catherine. “Well, it’s only fair! I’ve told you everything. You know every single detail about every man I’ve slept with, all my broken hearts … Come on, Catherine. Aren’t I your best friend anymore?”
Catherine bent her head. She tore off a piece of baguette and rolled it between her fingers. “It’s just that I’m embarrassed,” she said quietly. “You probably won’t believe me. Leslie”—she was now sculpting the warm bread into a work of art—“I’m still a virgin.”
Leslie whooped. “I don’t believe it! My God. Catherine! Why? Or do I mean why not?”
Catherine played with the bread in silence. Finally she tossed it onto the plate and looked up at her friend. “I’m not apologizing,” she said. “I’m not ashamed of it. I’m not like you.”
“I know you’re not. That’s one of the reasons we’ve been best friends for so long. I’m not making fun of you. But Catherine, you are twenty-one.”
“I know. I’m twenty-one and I know what I want in life and it’s not to be swept off my feet by love! I just don’t have time for love now, Leslie—or romance, or sex, or any of that. I have to make my own way.”
“Oh, Catherine. You’re so hopeless. You take everything too seriously. You can fall in love with someone, go to bed with a man, without changing your entire life! I do it all the time! Where are your hormones? Don’t tell me you haven’t wanted to go to bed with that Dutch nephew! I want to go to bed with him, and I’ve only seen him in a photograph!”
Catherine grinned. “I suppose I do want to go to bed with him, Leslie, in my own way. But … first of all, I have to work with him, and I can’t afford to offend the Vandervelds. Besides, Piet’s not around all that much. He’s in Europe for months at a time. Also …” She hesitated. “I don’t know how to say this. I am attracted to Piet. Very attracted. I … I dream of him. But something about him scares me.”
Leslie studied Catherine. “Baby,” she said at last, sympathetically. Then, with a rush of enthusiasm, she jumped up from her bed. “Oh, well, it’s not the end of the world. Now you’re in France, maybe you’ll get lucky. There are absolutely mobs of gorgeous men downstairs. Come on, let’s get beautiful. Maybe we’ll both get lucky tonight.”
* * *
“I feel like Grace Kelly at the least,” Leslie whispered to Catherine as they descended the winding stairs to the ground floor of the château.
“I feel like Eliza Doolittle,” Catherine whispered back.
The last time she had been so dressed up had been at a friend’s graduation party in Newport. Tonight she had real jewels on and a turquoise gown that must have cost her mother more than several months’ worth of Catherine’s salary. After three years of working in the flower shop, she had forgotten how expansive the world of the wealthy could be, making time itself relax and drape and lounge and linger.
“Yeah, you’re a real poverty-stricken flower girl!” Leslie said.
Catherine grinned. She wished Leslie could see how she looked during any normal working day.
Her work gave a depth to everything she experienced that made her both proud and irritated. She knew the basement side of the world, the alley and back room side, the harsh smelly frantic side where leaves were savagely ripped from stems so the blooms would have all the water and nourishment. She was glad that she had learned all that. She prided herself on knowing secrets. At the same time, she wished she could forget it all and drift in the same dreamy world her friends inhabited—just for this one night.
“It’s gorgeous!” Leslie said, linking arms with Catherine and pulling her close.
They were entering the grand salon, where cocktails and hors d’oeuvres were being served to a glittering assembly of elegant people in formal dress. Various languages—French, Spanish, German, Dutch—flickered around them like colorful butterflies. Silks and satins and taffetas rustled, perfumes and laughter drifted through the air, and Leslie and Catherine took flutes of champagne from a silver tray.
Catherine looked at the room. It was much grander even than Everly. The marble fireplace was intricately carved with garlands and figures and flowers. Along the melon silk walls hung vast oil paintings of former Croces playfully dressed as shepherds or nymphs. Enormous faience vases lushly packed with roses, lilies, delphiniums, stock, and greens were set about on antique tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ebony and rosewood.
“Don’t you dare rearrange those flowers!” Leslie whispered in Catherine’s ear, making her laugh.
“I wasn’t planning to! I was just toting up the cost in my head.”
“How vulgar you’ve gotten, my dear!” Leslie said in her best Miss Brill’s voice. “Really, darling, can’t you let it drop for one night?”
“All right, I will. I promise. I know I should. It’s been a long time since I’ve just enjoyed myself.”
“Drink your champagne,” Leslie ordered. “I’m putting a spell on you. The past three years have been erased from your life. The only thing you know how to do is be beautiful and charming at parties.”
“I think I can manage that.”
They joined a group of American friends. Lifted away into a mist of pleasure by their chatter and the bubbling champagne, Catherine relaxed. She let go. Now, tonight, was all that ma
ttered, a world complete in itself, glittering, golden, dreamy, as free from the real world as a balloon cut free from its tie to the earth, to drift above spires, mountains, clouds.
* * *
The Croce family and the Weyland family and those in the wedding party dined in the formal dining room. The others ate in the library, at tables for eight covered with elaborately embroidered white tablecloths and set with the family’s gold-rimmed white china, platinum-rimmed crystal, and heavy elaborate silver.
Catherine was so taken with the food, she could scarcely concentrate on the conversation. The first course was a fresh whole salmon with an elaborate herb sauce for each table; next a galantine of duck, an elaborate dish of cold ground pressed duck, pork, truffles, pistachio nuts, and ham, decorated with truffles and sparkling cubes of golden aspic; then a saddle of lamb with vegetables that had been shaped and sculpted into miniature works of art; then a leafy green salad. Each course was served with the appropriate wine, and finally, with the château’s own champagne, came the pêches cardinal, poached peaches coated with thick raspberry sauce and whipped cream, decorated with fresh whole raspberries.
Satiated, Catherine sat back in her chair, looking at the gold-embossed spines of the books behind the glass doors of the library. Surely she was incapable of doing anything else for the rest of the night, or perhaps for the rest of her life. She felt as though she’d never eaten so much before. But courtesy demanded that she respond when the pleasant French gentleman who had been seated next to her asked if he could escort her into the ballroom, so she rose and took his arm.
Four sets of high wooden doors had been pulled open at the end of the grand salon to reveal the ballroom, which had been decorated especially for the wedding festivities. The ceiling, which arched three stories above the dancers, was painted in mythical Greek scenes of love, hunting, and feasting. Like the long French windows that opened onto the terrace, and the high mirrors on the opposite walls, the ceiling gleamed with gilt.
