A Perfect Stranger

by Roxana Robinson

  “Well, you won,” I said.

  Brad squeezed my elbow. “Of course we won,” he said. “Of course we won. Dartmouth,” he said, “couldn’t come out on top in its own wet dream.” His voice was loud and euphoric, and I felt a tiny jolt of shock and excitement, to hear that kind of talk out in the open. This was the world I’d been looking for—wild, unpredictable, dangerous in an unnamed way. Brad steered me through the crowd, his hand firm and manly. I felt taken care of, taken charge of, on my way to some unknown and adult destination. I didn’t know where we were going; I hoped Karen knew where the parking lot was. The crowd was thick around us, everyone pressing mindlessly ahead. Once I hung suddenly back, to avoid running into the man ahead of me, and Brad’s grip tightened on me deliciously.

  The boys took us across another field, which they said was a shortcut. We stopped behind one of the athletic buildings and leaned against the brick wall, and the boys took their bottles out of the paper bags and offered us more swallows. I leaned my head boldly back, all the way. The bourbon tasted hot again.

  “Woof!” Brad said, watching me. “Go, baby!”

  Karen took only a small sip, as though she were merely being polite. We stood and talked, and I watched Brad’s dark eyes, the way they fixed on mine. They seemed electric, brazen, filled with some kind of power. How did he dare do that, stare straight into me? It was wonderful. Emboldened, I stared straight back. He was leaning close to me, I could feel how close his whole body was. I could feel the rough grid of the bricks against my back.

  Karen pinched me in the ribs again, through the thick wool of my suit jacket.

  “We have to go,” she said, “they’ll get mad.”

  “Okay,” I said, though I did not turn to her.

  Brad was smiling at me and talking in a low voice. “I can’t believe how shiny your hair is,” he said. He sounded truly amazed, and I felt proud: all that preparation was paying off. And he was right: my hair was, I knew, shiny. It was the cream rinse.

  But Karen was pushing at me. “We have to go,” she said again.

  “Okay,” I said again. Karen turned to Brad.

  “We’re leaving,” she said. “We have to meet my parents.”

  “We’ll walk you over,” Jack offered.

  The four of us moved again through the crowd, now thinning. Brad’s hand was on my elbow again, and I hung back deliberately, to feel its presence. Karen and Jack, I saw, walked separately from each other; she was ahead, moving fast.

  When we reached the parking field, the car was the last one left in the row. The field was mostly empty, green again, and from the long slanting of the light we could suddenly see that it was late. Mr. McArdle was leaning against the car, his arms crossed on his chest. Mrs. McArdle was inside, in the passenger seat. Mr. McArdle watched us as we approached.

  “Hi,” Karen said as we came up to them. Her father stared at her.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  Karen waved behind her. “We were walking around with our friends.”

  Her father stared at her stonily. “Why were you doing that?” “Daddy, we were just talking,” Karen said. The boys were still holding the bottles in the crumpled paper bags. I had slid my elbow out of Brad’s grasp, and now I shifted my weight where I stood, so that there was a discernible distance between us. Mrs. McArdle got out of the car and started around to where we were.

  “Why did you go off, knowing that your mother and I were here waiting for you?” Mr. McArdle asked. At the end of each sentence his mouth closed like a bulldog’s, the lips turned down, the lower jaw thrust forward. He did not look once at the boys.

  Karen rolled her eyes, but carefully, and one corner of her mouth hitched up in exasperation. “Daddy, don’t make such a big deal out of it,” she said.

  “I’LL DECIDE WHAT I MAKE A BIG DEAL OUT OF,” her father suddenly shouted. A car in a nearby row started up and drove away, leaving us more alone in the field.

  Mrs. McArdle had reached her husband. “Now, Sam,” she said, coming next to him, “this isn’t actually so terrible.” She put her hand on his sleeve, but he pulled his arm away from her with a tearing motion.

  “You think it’s fine that Karen goes off for the whole afternoon with these clowns?” he demanded. His voice was still raised, his eyes were still on Karen. He had not once looked at the boys, and not once at me.

  “Clowns?” Brad spoke up, and my heart sank. There was a hostile pause. “I don’t think that’s very correct nomenclature, sir,” he said belligerently. “I would call that significantly rude, myself.” He had trouble with some of the syllables in significantly, but he kept going.

  Mr. McArdle stood up straight and took a step toward him. He moved almost eagerly. “I don’t think I was talking to you, was I,” he said to Brad. There was a pause. “Was I.”

  “Daddy,” Karen said, and he swung around on her.

  “I was talking to you,” he said, his chin pushing out. “I was asking you where you have been, all afternoon, with these clowns.”

  Now Jack spoke up, allying himself with Brad. “I don’t think you’re anyone to call us clowns,” he said insultingly.

  Mr. McArdle now seemed to jump forward. His hands had turned into small pale fists that were held up in front of his chest. His chin thrust stiffly out, he said angrily, “What’s that?” He was leaning strangely forward as though he were in a strong wind, and then he moved sickeningly toward Brad, whose heavy shoulders towered over him. It was terrible to see the two bodies so close. Brad stepped forward, too, and at the same time Mrs. McArdle moved toward her husband. But it was Karen who reached her father first.

  “Daddy,” she said again, and from her voice you could hear that she was beginning to break. She rushed straight into him, pushing against his chest. He never looked at her, his little fists still raised at Brad. He twisted sideways, dodging away from her, and ran again at Brad. Brad was leaning forward, and his own hands were now raised, made into fists. Mrs. McArdle put herself in between the two men; Jack was to one side, outraged, uncertain.

  “Stop it,” said Mrs. McArdle, her voice high, and Karen closed in again, pushing with both hands on her father’s narrow chest. Her father seemed now unbearably small, his limbs shrunken with age, next to Brad, his ruddy, glowing body.

  “Stop it, Daddy, stop it.” Karen was crying and grappling with her father, who was pushing at her arms. She turned to the two boys. “Get out of here,” she cried, “leave him alone.”

  But Mr. McArdle had somehow gotten too close to Brad, and had touched him or shoved him, and now Brad surged dangerously on the other side of Karen.

  “Who are you calling clown, old man?” he said.

  “Get out of here,” Karen cried again, her voice deep and breaking. “Daddy, stop it. Stop it, Daddy.”

  Mrs. McArdle, too, stepped in between the two men, and though Mr. McArdle bobbed between them, trying to shake them off like a bear with terriers, they would not let him pass. They kept pushing at him, blocking him, and Karen was now weeping loudly, the sobs coming up in her chest, as her father glared furiously past them at the two boys.

  “Old man!” Brad jeered, again. Now he was leaning heavily forward too, his head lowered, his fists ready. His tie swung loose in the air.

  I stood there motionless, in my bright wool suit.

  I could not imagine what to do: all this was my fault. It had been my fault from the start. It was I who had first spoken to Brad, I who had let my elbow stay in the grasp of his hand, I who had taken the biggest swigs from the bottle, I who had ignored Karen’s signal to leave. I could not bear to imagine my father when he heard how I had behaved: the way his face would fill with contempt, the way his eyebrows would lower and knit, the way his mouth would draw down at the corners with distaste, the way his eyes would rest on me with blame.

  And I could see that I had not understood anything. About what the McArdles were like, about my reading of the simple message of their family, their voices lifted be
fore the meal. I could see that I knew nothing about the larger, seductive world, or what boys and men were really like. I knew now that they held in them something frightening: unstoppable violence, rage and hostility, belligerence.

  But I could also see that the same unnamed thing—what I felt when I saw my father sweep his hair despairingly away from his face, what I felt when I saw his anguished black brushstrokes— was there in the rest of the world, the world I had thought was so normal and so calm. It was right here, right now, I could feel it in the terrible sound of the boys calling Mr. McArdle old man, in the sight of his pale little fists held up against his chest. It was in the feeling that came over me as we stood there on the abandoned field, covered with long blue shadows and the chill of late afternoon.

  I could see that Karen and Mrs. McArdle pushing and pulling, Mr. McArdle struggling fiercely against them, was another kind of harmonizing, that they were each taking parts in their own dark, sad, private melody, and I could see that Karen was caught up in the same net of intimacy and pain that held me to my father.

  I saw that I had had no idea of what a family was, really, or what the normal world was like. I could see now that it was much larger than I had imagined, more complicated; that it was more dangerous and beautiful, that it was immanent with love and sorrow.

  Pilgrimage

  Who knows how these things start? An idea comes over you, it casts a spell. You find yourself in the grip of a passion, something private and secretive, one which you would not happily admit to, over which you have no control.

  I don’t remember when I first heard the name Madeleine Castaing. I think it was years ago, from a decorator friend. He told me that she was a legendary French antiques dealer, with an extraordinary eye. Her shop was on the Left Bank, and famously eccentric. So, apparently, was she: she wore a thick dead-brown wig, which was tied with a string under her chin. No one mentioned this, he said.

  But she didn’t interest me then. I didn’t go often to Paris, and anyway, my decorator friend knew a lot of grand people who meant little to me. I saw an article, later, that showed her in the famous wig and in the legendary shop, but still I wasn’t smitten. Still later, I read that she’d died, and that the eccentric shop was still there, on a narrow street near the Seine.

  Then what happened? Somehow, Madeleine Castaing started slowly to infiltrate my consciousness. I began to read about her whenever I saw her name. I began to pore over photographs. I tried to understand her aesthetic, I tried to catch a furtive glimpse of the string under her chin. She had a strong, handsome face, dark eyes, wide mouth, and a commanding manner. Her taste was, apparently, unlike anyone else’s and was always described by the writers in worshipful but imprecise language. It seemed that her style was ineffable, it was somehow in a realm beyond the power of words: I was more and more intrigued. Castaing began to seem like a character out of Henry James, the mysterious Madame Merle, perhaps—elegant, imperious, and unknowable, the possessor of certain shadowy secrets that were never to be shared. I became entranced by Madeleine Castaing, by everything about her.

  So, when my husband said he had to go to Paris on business and asked if I’d like to go, I did. I told him that there was an antiques shop I wanted to visit. I tried awkwardly to explain my fascination; I told him about the legend, the brown wig tied under the owner’s chin. But what sort of things are in the shop? he asked. I tried to remember the photographs, though I could only summon up the atmosphere: somber, raffinée, and slightly decadent. But what had it looked like? I didn’t know, I admitted, but I was certain it was fabulous: charming, outrageous, and incredibly sophisticated.

  Before I left, I’d meant to get the shop’s address. By then my own friend had died, too, but his business was being run by his daughter. I meant to ask her, but I forgot. Actually, I didn’t think it would matter: Castaing was famous. Our hotel was in the same quartier, and I’d get the address from them. By now, my mind was so imbued with the idea of Madeleine Castaing’s breathtaking, spellbinding presence that I assumed everyone else’s was as well.

  At our hotel, I asked the pleasant concierge for the address.

  “Comment?” she asked. “How do you spell it?”

  I wrote it down. She frowned and pulled out the directory. After a moment she looked up and shook her head.

  “No Madeleine Castaing,” she said.

  I stared at her. “No Madeleine Castaing?” It was not possible.

  “No. But there is a Madeleine SomebodyElse, and a Frédéric Castaing. Would you like their addresses?”

  “Would you give me the Frédéric?” Perhaps it was a relative, running the shop.

  The address was not too far off, in the Rue de Fürstemberg. I took my Indispensable and set out on the cobbled streets. But the Rue de Fürstemberg was elusive, and for nearly an hour I toiled up and down the narrow cobbled streets of the Left Bank, searching for it. When I finally found the street, I discovered that the shop owners had discreetly declined to display their numbers. Now footsore, I walked up and down, too shy to go in and ask. Finally I deduced which was number three: a brand-new and very modern fabric house. There was no Castaing. I couldn’t believe it. My search was at an end. My pilgrimage had failed.

  Back at the hotel I told my husband. “I should have gotten the address before we left,” I said ruefully.

  “Well, it may be out of business by now,” he said. “It may have closed.”

  “It must have closed,” I said. “I should have gone when I first heard about her. I should have gone years ago. Now she’s dead and the shop’s closed.” Now the shop seemed to me like the most important place in Paris, dense and fumy with the rich ethers of Madeleine Castaing’s existence. I couldn’t believe my foolishness. I’d missed it, I’d missed my visit to the shrine, out of sheer carelessness.

  The next afternoon, my husband and I set out for a lecture at the Louvre. On a narrow street near the Seine we saw a small shop with a slightly shabby white awning, bearing the discreet black initials “MC.”

  “Look,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Do you think it might be? It’s the right neighborhood. The right initials.” We peered through the window into a dim room, full of furniture.

  “Let’s go in,” my husband said.

  We were greeted by a pleasant blond woman of a certain age, wearing a sleek sweater and skirt. She had a pointed nose and humorous eyes; she was elegant but not icy.

  “Bonjour,” she said, smiling at us.

  “Bonjour,” I said and asked, in my best French, the name of the shop.

  “Madeleine Castaing,” the woman said.

  I could hardly speak. “It is?”

  I explained my journey, my attempts to find it, my disappointment.

  The woman shook her head, smiling. “No, it has never been in the telephone book. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it is.”

  Frédéric, she explained, was the son. He was on the Rue de Fürstemberg, but upstairs. And he sold autographs, not antiques. This explained the confusion, though none of it mattered now. I was here, at the shrine.

  I stared at the room, trying to absorb it, to memorize it. The walls were faded green, pale apple green, with a black classical frieze beneath the ceiling. The paint was unapologetically peeling off in many places. Near the door was a small card table covered in bottle green baize. Its legs were made of antlers; on the baize were five or six cards, faces up, glued to the fabric. On the table was a lamp with a deep green glass shade, slightly askew. Small exquisite painted chairs stood about the black-patterned carpet.

  “Would you like to see upstairs?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” I breathed, “please.”

  With a smile and a tilt of the head, the woman led the way up a tiny curving staircase carpeted in black plaid, a bit tattered. At the top of the stairs were two tiny rooms, a salon and a bedroom.

  “These were hers,” said the woman. “This was where she lived.”

  Where she lived!

  By now you
would think that for my whole life I had thought only of Madeleine Castaing, that I had spent years and years studying her. There was nothing else in my head. It was like being on some powerful, dangerous, chemical rush: I was alone with my obsession. I was overwhelmed by the atmosphere, by the mesmerizing sense of her rich and complex presence. Standing in the inner sanctum, I was rapt, staring at the tiny spaces full of extraordinary objects, trying to memorize it all.

  What did she have? What were the objects? It’s hard to say. There was some Regency bamboo furniture, some lacquered things, some inlaid mother-of-pearl, some tortoiseshell. A small black shoemaker’s last, very elegant. Many black things, all very elegant and many of them rather battered, which lent them great fascination. There was something about her eye. There was something about the juxtaposition of all these objects that made them, together, brilliant. I had never seen such sophisticated taste. It was beyond me. I was humbled, and even more adoring. I could never have seen these things, separately, and known to bring them together like this. I could not have done it.

  The bedroom was tiny. There was a minuscule low bed, with white lace hangings and a white crocheted spread. A small silver dressing table stood against the wall, holding an odd assortment of things, some ivory, some silver. The curtains were tacked up, literally, with thumbtacks. Everything was falling to bits, everything was astonishingly chic, everything was part of a magically coherent whole. I stared, unable to stop my gaze anywhere, unable to take it all in, unable to make sense of it. I could not speak.

  We came back downstairs. There was a photograph on the woman’s desk. “That was her,” she said, pointing to a beautiful dark-haired young woman, stylish but very natural, leaning against an outdoor wall.

  “Comme elle est jolie,” I said rapturously.

  “And here she is an hour before she died,” the woman said, holding up another photograph. There was an elderly woman holding herself very straight, sitting on a bed. She had thick glossy black hair.

  “One hour before she died,” I repeated. It seemed unlikely, in fact it seemed, really, impossible, but like the wig, this was something that would not be discussed.