Whispering in French

by Sophia Nash

  My mother, whose scarves were always infused with Eau de Joy, had just dashed, laughing—cigarette between long painted red fingernails—out the door, to supposedly join a group of friends going to San Sebastian for their annual trip to buy leather goods.

  We never spoke of this secret again, but the sin of my birth was now exposed, and then covered up by the faded blue satin damask in my mind. It was one of the last summers I would spend under the plane trees, playing with Magdali.

  Just how many secrets had unfolded in Madeleine Marie and then been pushed into the dark, damp corners to molder?

  And yet . . . it all just didn’t really matter. Less than a generation from now, my own secrets would be lacquered and sealed beneath beautiful new sheets of wallpaper and paint. Or perhaps they’d tear down this ivy-covered monstrosity.

  Sometimes it was better to start from scratch.

  Chapter Eight

  From: Anne Berger, Head of School, Miss Chesterfield’s School

  Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2016, 11:08 AM

  To: Hamilton, Kate A., PhD

  Subject: Update Lily Hamilton Auermander

  Dear Mrs. Hamilton,

  I’m pleased to report this month Lily has made significant progress academically and has almost caught up to her classmates. All her teachers report she has become less introverted, and participates more frequently.

  She has a very nice small circle of friends here. She is closest to her roommate, Sarah Goodman, according to the resident teacher on her floor. Indeed, they are both enrolled in the three-day-a-week after-school photography spring module while the other girls play field hockey.

  Her arm and shoulder have healed, per the specialist in Boston, who she has seen once a month following your request. He insists there is no need to see her again until six months’ time. I shall forward X-ray discs. She continues to see our school counselor twice a week.

  During our meeting this morning, Lily finally chose a plan for the summer after reviewing the options. She agreed to spend all or almost all of the summer with you. She understands you are in France presently, but that you may return to Connecticut at some future point. She is willing to go to France, and in fact, I understood she prefers to go there, likely to avoid any physical reminders from last year. She’s also been invited by her roommate’s parents to spend a week or two with them on the Cape late August. I’ve taken the liberty of forwarding your email address to the Goodmans.

  While Lily has agreed to all of this, she reiterated that she preferred to continue no contact with any member of the family through the end of the term.

  Please forward airline ticketing information so we may coordinate appropriate transport to Boston/Logan airport between June 13 and 15.

  I strongly urge you to e-sign the reenrollment documents sent last month. Your daughter is quite happy and thriving here.

  Best wishes,

  Anne Berger

  The words on the screen blurred on my laptop sitting on my makeshift desk in the bedroom. Oh God, she was coming. She was coming. She wanted to see me. I mentally counted the days. Fifteen or so.

  My head felt heavy in my hands as my fingers dug into my scalp. Pushing back the heartbreak of hope, I was determined not to count on anything ever again. Because she could change her mind. Her father’s family could attempt to change her mind. But no matter how hard I tried to stop it, happiness crept in. I didn’t want happiness. It would be too painful if something prevented her from coming. I swallowed and opened my eyes to reread the email.

  She wanted to come here. Not to her roommate’s house as had been planned. Not Connecticut. Not home to her. The image of the redbrick colonial floated in my mind and my gut froze. That house was not home. It had never been a home. It was a trophy house in the suburbs where the husbands took trains to Manhattan and almost every wife stayed behind to coordinate and implement a complex social life that revolved around country clubs, tennis ladders, horses, manicures, and gourmet cooking by housekeepers in immaculate, open-concept kitchens. Gin and tonics, and whiskey served promptly to guests at seven. False gaiety and posturing throughout dinner. If it was done correctly, husbands and wives and children never had to have serious conversations. All fury and pain boiled under a tightly held veil of secrecy. It was thus, and where, a reign of intermittent, iron-fisted tyranny amid a silent siege had held court, inside that house of brick. There’d been no way out. No choice but to play the court jester and serve the eighteen-year sentence until it was safe to leave with my daughter, whom I’d supervised like a hawk. I’d never guessed Lily would trump my carefully planned move by bolting before everything was ready.

  I’d never fit in there. Not in the neighborhood and not with the other wives. I didn’t play tennis, didn’t do lunch, and I certainly didn’t get manicures. After dropping Lily to school, work was my escape just like all the husbands. My only true friends were an eclectic group of fellow doctors and scientists, especially Alice, a vet with a vicious sense of humor who specialized in pigs.

  My ex-husband had fit in perfectly. Darien was the pinnacle of success. Soho had been my version of paradise before pregnancy had upended plans. Darien was supposedly a more suitable place to raise a child. Except it wasn’t.

  I wrote a quick reply to the headmistress, could not stomach the reenrollment forms until I saw Lily, booked her flight, and chucked off espadrilles to get ready for dinner.

  Then again, I’d never really fit in anywhere, if I was honest.

  My mother, who’d insisted I call her Antoinette the day I turned sixteen, said my father and she had always wondered where I had come from as I was so different from both of them. I’d taken it as yet another personal failure for a long while, and then realized it was the opposite after Psychology 101 at university. I’d never liked golf, country clubs, risky ventures, and the social scene. And they didn’t like what I loved: books, stories, animals, hiking, swimming, being alone, and trying to figure out people.

  Apparently, I was the only person on both sides of the family who was not born with a golf club in one hand and a tennis racquet in the other. I was neither a Hamilton nor a du Roque.

  My uncle was dead set on proving my theory right.

  He appeared unannounced half an hour before dinner. Actually, it was his ten-year-old Mercedes that announced his arrival. There was something about the sound of tires on pea gravel that always sent a wave of foreboding.

  After a jovial welcome by Jean, and a hurried request to Magdali to set another place at the table, I offered my uncle a Chivas neat, his preferred drink.

  Jean-Michel du Roque was every inch a Frenchman. His thinning gray hair slicked back like a bathing cap, his impeccable blue suit, white shirt, and muted Hermès tie and gold Santos de Cartier watch were all perfectly coordinated right down to his polished brown Oxfords. He was the epitome of taste and style. He was a man who oozed charm and knew how to get his way and make others happy to do it. He was a man who children did not like.

  Decades ago, I’d been equally fascinated and disgusted by his potent brew of servile flattery and condescending manipulation. His followers in the familial cult had been sucked in like moths to a flame.

  Jean-Michel took great pains to come around the oval mahogany table to pull out my chair and properly seat me before assuming the chair opposite his father.

  “Alors, Kate. How good it is to see you. And how wonderful that you have come to visit us.” He held his knife and fork like a skillful surgeon going right for the heart. “I spoke to Antoinette last evening and when she said you were here, well, naturellement, I knew I should immediately come down from Paris to see you. And, voilà, here I am.”

  “Here you are, indeed, Jean-Michel.”

  “Oh, please, chérie, you must call me Oncle. I take such great pride and honor in being uncle to such a brilliant and beautiful niece.”

  See what I mean?

  “Well, since Jean and Antoinette don’t want to be reminded that we’re all a hell of a lot older,
I figured you might not either. But, forgive me? I apologize for making that assumption, Uncle John-Michael.”

  He choked on a sliver of baguette.

  “D’accord,” he acquiesced with a pained look.

  Score one for the outnumbered American team.

  Magdali served a roast with green beans and potatoes before decamping to the comfort of the kitchen. I wished I could go with her. It’s funny how if a child forms a strong opinion of someone, it is very difficult to change that view as an adult. I knew my uncle had some excellent qualities, but my dislike ran so deep, it was almost impossible to see glimmers of them. I tried again.

  “How are you faring, Uncle?”

  “Happy to see you all grown up actually,” Jean-Michel said, sipping a nice little Brouilly I’d bought.

  I searched for a polite answer.

  “Still shy, I see,” he murmured with a smile. “What an interesting coiffure. Très naturelle.”

  I used my napkin. “Still making unkind comments disguised as polite conversation, I see.”

  “Kate!” Jean’s fork clattered to the plate in a heretofore never-seen clumsiness at the table.

  “What?” I stopped eating. “What is the point? I’ve never seen a reason to beat around the bush. Why are you here, Jean-Michel? What do you want?” Learning how to be direct, the opposite of the last twenty years of my life, was actually becoming a little too much fun.

  My uncle laughed. “Not so shy after all. Chérie, really, this must wait. We must go around the tree, as you say, because it is never a good idea to ruin a perfectly cooked blanquette de veau with unpleasant conversation.” He smiled again, revealing classic subpar French dental work. “Why are you here?”

  “Antoinette didn’t tell you? How keeping in tradition.”

  “Kate is here to try to convince me that I need another nurse or a retirement home,” Jean inserted.

  “Papa,” Jean-Michel said. “There is no question you will remain here. This is the house you were born in and the house you will die in—like your father and his father before him and so on and so forth. Naturellement.”

  “Naturellement,” I repeated.

  “Yes,” my uncle said very quietly. “Naturellement. Unlike Americans who throw their grandparents in the poubelle—the trash.”

  “Your respect for the blanquette de veau is slipping, Jean-Michel. Pass the salt,” I said. “Please.”

  “Kate!” Jean pleaded.

  The silent intermission provided ample time for rearmament.

  “Bon,” Jean continued. “How long are you here, Jean-Mich? Magdali will prepare your room, of course.”

  “Not long,” Jean-Michel replied. “I must return to Paris and then to Chantilly pour le week-end. There is a petit tournoi de golf and the horses will run.”

  “Ah,” Jean said. “How I wish I could go with you and see it. It’s been so long since—” He abruptly stopped after glancing at his son’s expression.

  Jean-Michel’s ascension to the head of the du Roque guild was obvious. I almost pitied Jean until I remembered his own brutal oligarchy and his attempt at a coup to assume control of my parents. Americans always win, thank God.

  “And how is my dearest grand-niece? Antoinette hinted Liliane is at a strange pension—boarder school, you say?”

  When would I learn to stop expecting anything but betrayal from my mother? The only real question was who was the grand master of the marionettes—brother or sister? I was willing to bet my last sou on Antoinette. “Lily is happy, thank you.”

  Jean-Michel opened his mouth and I interceded. “And she will come here the second week in June and stay until I return to the States.” I looked at my grandfather. “If you agree, of course.”

  “Mais bien sûr! Of course. Finally, I shall see this famous great-grandchild of mine!” A smile, rare as a day without three battling weather elements here, lit up his lined face.

  Jean-Michel’s showed not a hint of emotion. “I shall, of course, come back when she arrives. And I—”

  “Please don’t,” I interrupted. “She requires peace and quiet.”

  “Why, I’m hurt to think you would—”

  “I would, and I will.”

  “How long will both of you stay?” Jean-Michel carefully placed his fork and knife side by side at an angle on top of the plate.

  “Long enough,” I replied. “What have you come here to take back to Paris? I noticed a lot of the family paintings are gone.”

  “Someone has to provide for the family.”

  I glanced at his gold watch and Hermès tie. “I’m happy to take over the role for the time being.”

  Jean cleared his throat. “Kate, I don’t think you know how much your uncle has—”

  “I know exactly how much he has done. He’s selling all the silver, and the artwork.”

  “And why would I be selling my future inheritance unless there was other recourse? I’m the future owner of our familial home after all.”

  “Technically, Antoinette owns a future half.” I stared him down. “So the things you are taking are actually half your sister’s.”

  “The things I am selling are our father’s. You should be ashamed of thinking anything else!”

  “Kate,” my grandfather’s voice sounded so old. So tired. “I asked him to sell these things. It’s needed to pay our bills.”

  “Perfect. Let’s see the sale receipts.”

  “Are you suggesting—” Jean-Michel began.

  “I am.”

  “I’ll not sit here and listen to—”

  “Two of those paintings—the Picasso Biarritz beach scenes—should have brought enough cash to keep the villa going for a decade and maybe even replace the roof. I did the research.” Blood was singing in my veins. The same blood as my tiny, feisty, hot-blooded Peruvian great-grandmother who’d ruled the roost during the German occupation. The one who’d protected it when the Nazis had appropriated it. She’d refused to move out, instead squeezing the family into the now lichen-filled basement for eighteen months, and serving the officers vichyssoise tainted with hints of foxglove, watered-down rat poison, arsenic, or anything she could get her little hands on.

  Jean-Michel rose and took on a faintly hilarious Napoleonic air of bruised pride. He probably practiced the pose in the long mirrors, which were losing flakes of silver on the backside. He was going to say something boring and clichéd, but for once he did not. Instead, he turned and crossed the long swath of floor toward the gilded French doors without another word.

  “Jean-Michel,” Jean called out. He tapped his cane but Uncle would not turn around.

  He kept walking, straight to the doors, which he exited and slammed shut.

  “You must apologize,” Jean said.

  “I won’t. He should apologize to you for not showing you receipts.”

  “Children and parents rarely live up to one another’s expectations, Kate.”

  Finally a rational answer for how our family functioned.

  STILLNESS SHIMMERED THE thin air, broken only by the grateful songs of birds breaking their fast. Palest pink clouds looked like faded patches of ancient wallpaper covering a flat blue early sky. Edward Soames took the lead on the trail toward Santiago de Compostela, a sacred burial site of saints eight hundred kilometers away from the Pyrenees rising from the Bay of Biscay. The littoral had borne the sins and secrets of the millions of pilgrims who had walked or crawled on their knees to finally worship the distant hallowed grounds. It would take a miracle before any secrets were unearthed from Edward Soames, who walked faster than most people jogged. His head was bent forward like a dog on a hunt.

  For a military man, he certainly had zero respect for the quality or quantity of the clothes he wore. Today’s number was blindingly atrocious—a wooly blue plaid shirt that looked as if it had seen finer days during the Paleolithic period. Apparently, his view of my yoga wear was equally unimpressed.

  “You don’t have proper hiking gear,” he stated, not looking be
hind.

  “Your concern is duly noted.”

  “You should wear hiking boots next time.”

  “Next time? Let’s see if we can get through this morning before we talk about a next time.”

  “I didn’t realize therapists were so brutal. In my experience they are far more kind initially—luring you in with false empathy and empty promises of a rosy future.”

  “Yes, we’re kind of like spiders. We spin this invisible, inviting web and then, when someone flies into our sticky space, we strap you to our couches and suck you dry.”

  “About right,” he said, and stopped at the top of a rise. His hand shaded his brow as he gazed below. He moved toward an outcropping of rock and lay down. It had been a long, hard slog to the top.

  The fingers of a deeply blue lake caressed the feet of the mountains. Toward the sea to the right, a few stunted, gnarled trees struggled to survive the harsh weather; their western profiles bent from the brutal winds. Wildflowers, yellow and violet, blossomed within pockets of bracken and gorse dotted with ferns. I glanced at the major, who had settled into a snooze, his post-traumatic stress at bay. Beyond his crossed arms and feet lay the geography of my childhood.

  It had been my mooring in the cyclone of George and Antoinette’s ever-changing lives. During the year at Miss Chesterfield’s and their divorce, a period of abject silence ensued on both sides. My roommate, Elle, had often commented on it.

  “They’re always so busy,” she had said.

  I had watched her put aside a small stack of letters from her parents and two brothers and then reach for a geometry textbook. “Yup.”

  “Look at the bright side. They’re so oblivious, you could get away with murder here.”