The Light of Paris

Margie’s heart quickened again, thinking of Elsie and that man kissing passionately, of the couple in the bedroom, a flash of bare arms and legs entwined before she had closed the door. “I hear Europeans are scandalously free these days,” she said, trying to sound worldly, like she went to parties like this all the time, as he apparently did.

Instead of laughing at her, Robert simply nodded. “They are. But you can’t blame them. They’ve been through a lot. It’s a miracle there’s anyone left, isn’t it? Between the war and the ’flu?”

“Why didn’t you go?” Margie asked tentatively. “To the war?”

Instead of answering, he stared into the fire silently for a few moments. “Money,” he said finally, “has all sorts of privileges. My father bought my way out.”

“Oh.” The idea that he had avoided service on purpose made her feel embarrassed for him. She scrambled for a conciliatory remark. “Of course you’re important to the company. It’s right you should have stayed home, or who would take over the business from your father if you …” she trailed off, realizing she was about to suggest Robert’s tragic demise.

He didn’t seem to notice. He was still watching the fire, and then, abruptly, he pulled himself out of his trance and slipped a hearty smile back onto his face. “Quite right, quite right. Shall I get us a drink?” he asked, but didn’t wait for a reply. He pushed himself up from the chair and was out of the room before Margie could say anything.

It wasn’t until he was gone that she really took in that she was sitting alone in a bedroom with a man. She’d never been in such a circumstance before, hadn’t even countenanced the idea that it might happen before she was married. Was it terrible she didn’t feel it was so wrong?

She knew what she should do, of course. She should leave this party and all its shocking business behind and go downstairs and get her coat from the check before it closed and her mother’s fur went into whatever purgatorial limbo happened to coats in the coat check past closing time. The hotel doorman would get her a taxicab and she would say her address loudly and confidently, as if she traveled by herself in the middle of the night all the time, “3241 R Street,” and she’d go home and ring the bell and her father would pay the taxi and she could be safe in her own bed in an hour, her dress hanging on the wardrobe door and this night nothing more than a beautiful dream with a queer ending.

But she didn’t. She sat by the fire wrapped in the coverlet, and in a few moments Robert came back carrying a champagne bucket in one hand and a pair of glasses between his fingers. She heard a rush of music and conversation when the door opened, which stilled again when he closed it.

“I hope you like champagne. There’s gin, but that’s an acquired taste.” He put the champagne bucket on the end table and pulled out the bottle, sweating and chilled from its ice bath, and used a napkin to gently tug out the cork. It sprang free with a sharp pop, and Margie could hear the fizz as he poured her a glass.

“I do like champagne,” Margie said, although she felt sure she had been on a roller coaster of it all night and it was long past time for her to get off. Still, when he handed it to her, she took it, sipping at it gently, letting the bubbles pop against the roof of her mouth, savoring the sweetness on her tongue.

“You don’t want to be out there? At the party?” she asked. Robert poured himself a drink and then, to her surprise, clinked his glass against hers as he sat down on the sofa, so close she could feel the warmth of him. Though she had touched him a dozen times that night—when he had walked her down the stairs, when they had danced, his hand against the small of her back—this felt blushingly intimate.

“Not tonight. Those girls are tiring. All they do is gossip and talk about dresses and marriage. I’d rather talk to you, Margie.”

“Thank you,” Margie said, dazzled by the compliment, small as it was.

“So did you enjoy the ball?”

“Very much so,” Margie said with a smile, and it all came back to her. The discomfort she had felt at the shock of the party had faded, the light-headedness from the alcohol was blurring into something quieter, a buoyant contentment, and when she stretched her feet out, she could see the roses marching down the front of her dress and the toes of her pretty satin slippers. And even if Robert were simply biding his time with her, she could pretend it was something else, and no one would ever have to know.

“When do you go back to school?”

“Not for ages and ages,” Margie said. She lifted her arms over her head and stretched. The fire and the champagne were making her toasty, and she let the coverlet slip down into her lap.

“I’m leaving for Europe right after the New Year.”

“Oh? Is it for work?”

“God, no,” Robert said, and took an enormous slug of his drink. “I am on a quest, Margie, to avoid that particular responsibility for as long as possible.”

“You don’t want to take over the business?”

“Not even a little bit. What about you? You aren’t in some God-awful rush to get married and start popping out children and turn into your mother, are you?”

“Goodness, no,” Margie said with a shudder, and took a large swig of her champagne in imitation of Robert, who laughed charmingly. “My mother is the last person I want to turn into.” And then, a little ashamed of herself for speaking ill of her mother aloud, she turned to him frantically. “You won’t tell her I said that, will you?”

He smiled, his teeth blindingly white, and gave her a slow, raffish wink. “Not as long as you promise not to tell my father I’d rather die than take over the helm of Walsh Shipping. Right now they’re so grateful I’m not pushing up poppies in Flanders Fields, they’re letting it lie, as long as I do little services like this and keep the family name clean. But eventually they’ll ask, Margie. Eventually they’ll demand it.” He was growing sadder and more morose as he talked. “We’re doomed, you know. Doomed to turn into our parents.”

“No!” Margie stood up, throwing off the coverlet and stamping her foot. “I won’t do it. I’m going to be different, you’ll see. I’m going to be a writer, and I’m going to live in Europe, and I’m never going to get married—I’m going to fall in love again and again, and no one can stop me.”

Robert looked up at her as though he were deciding something, and then he drained his own drink, stood up, and, to Margie’s complete surprise, slipped his arms around her as though they were going to begin a waltz. “Of course you are,” he said, and the sadness in his face was gone again, so far gone Margie wondered if she had only imagined his gloomy prophecies. “You’re going to live in Paris and drink champagne from a shoe and write books like no one has ever read before,” he said, and he swept her around the room as though they were back on the ballroom floor, guiding her expertly between the furniture without even seeming to look at it. Margie laughed, tilting her head back and watching the ceiling spin above her as they danced in the quiet room, the crackle of the fire and the pale thumps of the party outside their only music. “And I’m going to go to Italy and live as a marquis, and never, ever think about cargo or shipping or tariffs or any kind of freight at all.” Margie laughed again, and then he abruptly spun to a stop.

“Whoops!” She was still laughing, her eyes closed. When she opened them, Robert was looking at her intently, searching her face for something.

“Margie,” he said, low and quiet.

“Yes?”

He didn’t say anything; he simply pulled his hand from hers where their arms had been extended and slipped it around her waist, pulling her close, far closer than they had been on the dance floor, as close as the dancers had been in the living room of the suite, the roses of her gown crushed against his stiff white vest, and then, as though she had been doing it all her life and knew what was coming, her eyes fluttered closed as he kissed her.

It seemed impossible someone else’s lips could be so soft, and she wondered at so many sensations at once, at the smell of him, the warmth of his body against hers, his hands firm and strong against her back, the quiet movements of his mouth and then his tongue, at first shocking and then, when she opened her lips, both natural and incredibly arousing. Her body rose to meet his, and when he moved his mouth from hers and trailed a line of kisses down her neck, breathing in the scent of her perfume and her skin, one hand moving up, his fingers playing dangerously at the edge of her neckline, she didn’t stop him, didn’t want to stop him, because the voice inside her telling her she shouldn’t, this wasn’t something a lady, a proper girl, did, that voice belonged to her mother and this night was hers and hers alone, to do with as she wished.

They kissed until her lips were swollen and the dizziness of the champagne had been exchanged for the dizziness of desire, and they lay down on the bed together and they didn’t stop kissing, and her hands were as bold on him as his were on her. They fell asleep together, their mouths close, hands claiming a confident intimacy, his body warming hers, her mind whirling with the fulfillment of all her romantic fantasies.

In the morning when she woke, the dream was over. He was gone, and she didn’t see Robert Walsh again for almost five years.

three
MADELEINE
1999

Phillip hadn’t stuck around to see how his threat had affected me. He had taken his drink and stalked off to the study. I stood in the kitchen, stunned, and then stumbled into the bedroom, grabbing for some antacids to calm my stomach.

His side of the bed had stayed empty while I tossed and turned, unable to get warm despite the extra blankets I had wrapped myself in.

Finally, I had drifted off to sleep in the gray gruel of morning, woke up groggy and disoriented. Padding across the condo, I quietly opened the door to the study, but Phillip was gone. His keys and wallet weren’t by the front door. It was a weekend, but maybe he had gone to the office. Maybe he had left just to avoid me.

I had to talk to him, had to apologize, had to make it right again. No matter how much I complained, when it came down to it, I couldn’t actually get divorced. I couldn’t. It would be an admission that I was a failure, unlovable, that I hadn’t been good enough for him after all. I would be buried by the shame. My mother would be humiliated. I couldn’t.

I dialed Phillip’s mobile number again and again. His office phone. Nothing.

What if he had really meant it? What if it really were over? I lifted my hand to my throat as if I could physically unstop the breath that had caught there.

And what would I do? If there were no more Phillip, who would I be? No one else would marry me. I’d have to leave the Stabler. I’d have to leave Chicago, leave the rows of art galleries in River North where I could stroll for hours and see a dozen pieces that changed everything. I’d have to go back to my hometown. Back to Magnolia, to my mother, to the Ladies Association and humid summers, to walk among my ruins and stew in my failures.

Magnolia. The fight had eclipsed my dread over my impending peacekeeping trip to see my mother, but in three hours, I was supposed to be on a plane. But I couldn’t go now, could I? I had to stay and make things right with Phillip. Except he clearly didn’t want to see me. Didn’t want to talk to me.

But maybe if I went, maybe if I went and left Phillip alone for a while, he’d calm down. I’d just been upset the night before, drunk on the foolish idea of painting again, trapped in a too-tight dress (Phillip had been right about the cookies, he was always right), irritated by Dimpy Stockton’s cheerful entitlement. And he’d calm down, just as I had. Phillip was endlessly mercurial, and horribly spoiled, and sometimes the best thing to do, I’d found, was to leave him to it. Eventually he got bored of his own drama and would emerge from it as though it had never happened. And I wouldn’t say a word of it to my mother. She and Phillip adored each other, and if she knew I had screwed this up …

Well. I wasn’t going to think about that. Because it was going to be fine. Pulling my suitcase out of my closet, I packed in silence. I’d be gone for a week and by the time I came back, everything would be fine. He’d have forgotten all about a divorce. I’d have forgotten the anger that had swollen inside me, the resentment at the way he treated me, the sick certainty I felt when he pushed at the issue of a baby. The weather would be warm in Magnolia. I could take shorts, sleeveless shirts, not that anyone wanted to see my bare, chubby arms. There would be so much pollen in the air I wouldn’t be able to breathe, and my mother and I would be at each other’s throats within twenty-four hours, but it wouldn’t be here. I took the nearly empty bottle of antacids and ground them into a fine powder against my tongue on the way to the airport, feeling the twist in my stomach as it pulled angrily against itself.

Ostensibly, my parents had settled in Magnolia because it was in between Memphis and Little Rock, and my father had begun investing in real estate in both cities, but I think they chose it because it was equally inconvenient for both of their families to visit. My mother said she liked it because it was small, barely a city. “Memphis without all the fuss,” she called it, as though Memphis were a latter-day Gotham, all crime-fighting superheroes and threatening skylines. But Magnolia was a Goldilocks city—just large enough to have the cultural amenities my mother enjoyed, just small enough that she could run its social scene with her tiny, well-moisturized fist, just Southern enough for the charm without too much culture shock for my Northern parents, just Northern enough to cool off during the winter months without doing too much damage to my mother’s garden. As much as I complained about it, I’d been in no hurry to escape; it had held me in its slow, sticky thrall until Phillip and I had moved to Chicago.

I took a taxi to my mother’s house, the driver listening to hypnotically aggressive sports talk radio. He left me there, standing in the circular driveway. My parents had bought this house, an old brick colonial with black shutters and a gabled roof over the front door, when they had married in 1945—my mother only twenty years old, my father a few years older, back from a thankfully bland service in the war. They had periodically remodeled the interior, but the outside looked the same as it had since I was a child. I could smell the honeysuckle and wisteria growing along the side of the house, and the summery, green scent of damp soil. The hedges surrounding the property bore tiny white buds that would explode in a few weeks and flower profusely, covering the sidewalk with sticky yellow dust, until they had sown their wild oats and retreated into orderly decency, marking the edge of the property in a military-tight formation.

My mother’s house was in Briar Hill, where the enormous homes near the country club faded into family neighborhoods and trendy stores. The house next door was even older, the original farmhouse for the land that had turned into this wealthy neighborhood, and for years it had been owned by the Schulers, who were descendants of the family who had built it. My mother preferred that sort of thing, neighborhoods with history and old houses and families who had lived in them for years. The Schulers’ children had already been in high school when I was born, so over the years it had seemed emptier and emptier as they moved out, and the only times it came to life were Christmas and Easter, when everyone streamed home with their own families in tow, or the occasional summer Sunday dinner, when they played croquet in the back yard and ate on the porch while the children chased fireflies in the gathering dark.

But now it looked like there was a full-on party happening over there. Standing outside my mother’s silent house, I could hear conversation and laughter drifting over the fence, and people moving back and forth inside. Maybe I should go there instead, I thought. It sounded like much more fun.

Before I could make a break for it, the front door swung open and the familiar scent rushed up at me, dust and old books, wood polish and something floral from the arrangement on the table in the front hall, and under it all, the pale, faint traces of my father’s cigars. Even though he had died soon after Phillip and I were married, it still felt painful to think of it. I took a long, slow breath, inhaling the comforting smell of him. My anger and panic had burned away during the trip and now I was left with a slow, sad burn in my stomach that made the smell of my parents’ house seem comforting.

However, the person standing at the door was not my mother, but a woman about my age, her hair blown out into an appropriate bob, her makeup perfect, wearing a conservative navy suit with a white shell and pearls, straight out of the Magnolia Ladies Association Central Casting.

“Well, well, well. Madeleine Bowers. Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”

I squinted at her suspiciously. “It’s Madeleine Spencer, now, actually. Do I … ah … know you?”

She looked at me with a surprised expression and laughed. “You don’t recognize me? I don’t know whether to take that as a compliment or not! Honey, it’s Sharon Baker. From Country Day?”

“Oh. Wow.” This woman standing here with her French-manicured nails and her spotless outfit was Sharon Baker? In high school, Sharon had been the closest thing Magnolia Country Day had to a bad girl. Most of us had been together since nursery school, but Sharon had blown in at the beginning of ninth grade (the rumor, which she did nothing to dispel, was that she had been kicked out of three other private schools before she had come to ours). She smoked, and dated boys from public school, and her uniform skirt was always too short, and she had wild, loose, curly hair she never seemed to brush.

I’d always been both a little in awe and a little afraid of her, mostly because she didn’t seem to care what anyone else thought. I’d sat next to her during class elections the first year, and when we were supposed to hand our ballots in, I turned to take hers and pass it down, but her hands were empty. “That shit is on the floor where it belongs,” she had said. It had never even occurred to me that was an option. I had voted for Ashley Hathaway, the same way I had voted for her every year since the fifth grade.

“Hardly recognize me, huh? I went all respectable.” Turning toward the mirror by the door, she shook her hair into place, needlessly tugging her jacket straight. “I know. I hardly recognize me too.” She sighed, as though she were a disappointment to herself. “Don’t worry,” she said, turning her cheer back on. “I’m still rotten deep down at the core. How the hell are you?”

“I’m good,” I said, a little timorously. I was still reeling from the great reinvention of Sharon Baker, and a little bit wondering why she was there. My mother and I had never been the best of friends, but I thought getting a new daughter seemed a bit extreme, and Sharon would have been a … surprising choice, even cleaned up as she was.

“And what brings you back to this shit hole?” she asked cheerfully. She was still looking in the mirror, now reapplying her lipstick, a pearlescent pink that shimmered when she popped her lips at the end. It was strange—she looked so perfect and pure, but she still had a mouth like a sailor.

“I’m just in town for a visit.” I had been standing in the doorway, but I finally stepped in. “Not to be rude, but what are you doing here?”

Sharon stopped primping and turned to me, squinting slightly. “Your mother hasn’t told you?”

“Hasn’t told me what? Did she adopt you? Have I been disowned?”

Sharon laughed, a pleasantly rough-edged stone of a sound. Covering her lipstick, she stuck it back in her purse. “You’d better talk to Simone.”

“I’m here, I’m here,” my mother said, rushing downstairs. “I’m so sorry; I was terribly delayed. Have you been waiting long?” she asked Sharon solicitously, and then, noticing me, started and put her hand on her chest. “Well, goodness, Madeleine, are you arriving today?”

I looked down at myself and my luggage. “It appears I already have.”

“I’m sorry, it completely slipped my mind. Your clothes are all wrinkled.”

“I’ve been on a plane.” I’m sure my mother got off planes looking fresh as a daisy, but I, like most mere mortals, was wrinkle-prone. She sighed at me as though it were a personal failing.

“Aren’t you going to close the door?”

“It was on my to-do list. Nice to see you too.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m all aflutter.” She came forward and gave me a brittle hug. My mother was tiny and delicate and beautiful, like so many of the women in my life. She wore essentially the same thing every day—a pair of slacks, a cardigan, and a scarf tied around her neck. She had pearl earrings and a once-a-week hairdo and if you saw her at the grocery store you would pretty much know exactly the kind of person she was, which might be a terrible thing to say but is one hundred percent the truth.

Beauty, in my family, seems to skip a generation. I was not beautiful in the same way my grandmother hadn’t been beautiful—the body that had been unpopular in the 1920s was equally unpopular now, and I don’t think it ever had a heyday at any point in between. We were too tall to be average, but not tall enough to be interesting; we had broad shoulders and breasts that interfered with everyday activities and hips that belonged on a Soviet propaganda poster. When I looked in the mirror, I could see her features looking back at me—one eyebrow higher than the other, wide, milky brown eyes, a forgettable nose, a thin, poutless mouth.

But my grandmother, when I had known her, had possessed a certain elegance. She wore Chanel suits and she always had a glass of wine in her hand, and she never laughed too loud, and when she walked out of a room, you could tell she had been there from the trail of perfume she left behind, as though the room had recently been abandoned by a spirit with a preference for Shalimar. I had none of that ease: I had spent my entire life trying (and failing) to fit my uncooperative body into someone else’s mold. Every ten weeks, I went to a salon where they poured chemicals over my hair to calm it into smooth submission, and in between, I regularly flat-ironed it, the smell of heat and burnt hair filling my nose. I ate as little as possible, especially in public, leaving half my anemic salad on my plate at luncheons. When I remembered all the desserts I had pushed away—the rich cheesecakes, the delicate stacks of fruit and cream, the whirls of ganache—I wanted to weep. It had worked—to an extent—I was thin, but that did not make my shoulders any smaller, my calves any less like the trunks of sturdy young trees.

My mother, on the other hand, was beautiful, a clear genetic anomaly sandwiched between my grandmother and me, with delicate features, fine bones, and hair like champagne and corn silk. She had tried to raise me in her own image, but I was never able to match her easy elegance. I sweated through my gloves at cotillion, and though I followed her instructions on hair brushing to the letter, what made her hair smooth and sleek as a thoroughbred’s mane only seemed to leave mine fluffy and floating, as though I had disobeyed on purpose. I wore the clothes she bought me, though they never seemed to fit right, the shirts riding up no matter how much I tugged at them, the outfits that looked so perfect in the pages of Seventeen somehow losing their allure on me, making me look lumpy, as though I were smuggling packets of flour taped to my sides.

“How was your flight?” my mother asked as she released me, leaving a pale cloud of L’Air du Temps behind.

“Fine. What’s going on next door? It looks like they’re having a party.”

“It’s awful, isn’t it? The Schulers sold the house and the man who bought it has turned it into a restaurant. A restaurant! In this neighborhood! Can you believe it?”

Actually, I could. My parents’ neighborhood had been getting hipper and hipper for years, but my mother would have been unhappy with any change at all.

“Is it any good?”

“How would I know? They’ve turned my front lawn into a parking lot. I’m certainly not going to eat there.”

“To be fair, it’s not really your front lawn. It’s his.”

“It’s close enough. And the noise! Trucks backing in with that dreadful beeping sound, all hours of the day and night. They’ve turned the Schulers’ lovely back deck into a seating area and there’s just the most appalling racket from the garden.”

“So, like, people eating and drinking and being happy? I can see how that would be a major bummer to have around.”

“Don’t be sarcastic.”

“Sarcasm’s all I’ve got, Mother.” I had slept on the plane, but I was tired and my emotions were still jagged and thin.

“Well, it’s nice of you to come. Isn’t Phillip missing you?”

I neatly sidestepped the question. “Phillip has a business trip to New York this week.” This was true, but not the whole truth.

“Why didn’t you go with him? You could have gone shopping while he was working! That’s what I always used to do when your father had business in New York.” My mother clasped her hands together joyfully, like a little girl who had been given a new doll. I should have sent her to New York with Phillip. The two of them had always liked each other better than either of them seemed to like me.

“Well, there’s the fact that I hate shopping.” The idea of being stuck in a store—or, even worse, a mall—for hours at a time, with nothing to do other than try on clothes made me want to gnaw my own arm off. When I’d been younger and my mother had made me go shopping for clothes, I’d always taken a book, and while she swanned around the Juniors department, I’d crawl under a clothes rack and read until she’d reached critical dressing room mass and I had to go try things on so she could criticize me in public, the way Mother Nature had intended.

“So you’re staying the whole week?”

“That was the plan,” I said. Unless Phillip had been serious, and we really were getting a divorce. A fist twisted my guts at the thought. But I wasn’t going to get into that now. I clumsily changed the subject. “Sharon said you have something to tell me?”

“Well, I have some news.” Way-ull. Two syllables. Though she had been born and raised in Washington, D.C., a Southern accent had grown on her like wisteria. I had excised mine when I moved, taking on the bland, regionless diction of a newscaster, tired of people, including my husband, mentally docking me two dozen IQ points whenever they heard me speak.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Madeleine. You are so dramatic. I just wanted to tell you I’ve decided to sell the house.”

Sharon had been gracefully backing away into the front room, and when I turned to her quickly, my eyes wide open, she all but bolted like a rabbit. I whirled back to my mother. “This house? Our house?”

“Of course this house. Who else’s house would I sell? It’s too big for me, really. Lydia Endicott has the loveliest condominium not far from here, and something like that would be so much easier to take care of.”

Because my mother never admitted to any weakness, I was instantly on alert. She woke up every morning and had dry toast and coffee for breakfast, while torturing whichever housekeeper was unfortunate enough to be in her employ at that time. She dressed (perfectly), she gardened (beautifully), she went to some luncheon function (elegantly), she played bridge (competitively), she had dinner at the club with a single glass of wine (socially), and she came home and went to bed. Her skin was luminous, probably due to the truly staggering amount of money she spent on moisturizers and facials and the vague promises of rejuvenating treatments, and though she was almost seventy-five, she didn’t look a day over sixty. Not even a silver hair on her head, though that may have been due to the ministrations of her hairdresser and not entirely to genetics.

“Are you okay?” I asked, bracing myself for some admission of illness.

She sighed in irritation, turned to the floral arrangement on the front table, and began to fuss with it. “Didn’t I already tell you I was fine?”

“You did, it’s just … what about … your garden?” I asked. It wasn’t the most intelligent question, but the idea of my mother moving someplace where she couldn’t have a garden was strange. She had always had a garden. Multiple gardens, in fact: the front garden, the herb garden, the rose garden, the back garden, the ornamental garden, and the side garden. Oh, and the kitchen garden, for the growing of vegetables she never seemed to eat. And there was also what was affectionately known as “the orchard,” which was actually a somewhat confusing collection of two apple trees, a pear tree, a plum tree, and a handful of raspberry bushes that had lost their way.

“There’s a community garden. Lydia has a plot. And I can have window boxes and planters on the balcony, of course. I mean, I’ll be left off the garden tour, but if it means I don’t have to manage three floors by myself, it will be worth it. I’ve been run off my feet with no housekeeper since Renata left. Honestly. Who gets married during planting season? That girl doesn’t have the sense God gave little green apples.”