Chez Cordelia (27 page)

“Which is …?”

I clammed up, as I always did. “You'll see,” I said, and looked out the window, stonier than Juliet.

The rest of the ride we were silent. My mother blew her nose twice. Juliet sighed and moaned once, and my mother put an arm around her and Juliet sank her head down on my mother's lap. I edged as close to the window as I could and watched Route 95 speed by, wondering how I was going to get back to New Haven. I didn't relish paying a cab to go all that distance—my mother was paying the cab driver twenty-five dollars for the trip. I'd take the bus back, I decided. I'd take the bus to downtown New Haven and treat myself to a nice dinner, and then walk back to the apartment and get some groceries and throw out all the Alan-food and read the want ads and maybe arrange to rent a television for a couple of weeks.

My mother had the cabbie stop at the supermarket on Route 1 outside the village and sent me inside with a list: pumpernickel bread, sweet butter, olives and pickles, English wholemeal biscuits, herring snacks, tea, lemons, and Brie—the essentials of life, according to my mother. Then we drove out to the house.

I expected to be thrilled and moved by this homecoming with my mother and sister. I wanted to feel that way. Instead, the house looked shabby and neglected, too large, too closed-up. Inevitably, I recalled how it used to oppress me, how I had always been a foreigner there, just as out of it as if I'd been among one of the obscure tribes whose language my mother had mastered. If the house alone hadn't brought it all back, my mother, in her well-meaning way, would have when, as we went up the front walk, she put a hand on my arm, and said, “Think about what I said, Cordelia. I promise I won't nag. But think about it. For Daddy and me.”

If that's not nagging, I don't know what is, I said to myself, perhaps unreasonably. To my mother, I said, “I have other things to think about,” which I know was rude, but I didn't want to give her any false hope. Wild bulls couldn't drag me off to college in California.

I stayed long enough to get the beds made and Juliet into one of them, and to have some bread and herring and tea. I pulled down the screens and swept the porch and put out towels and dusted furniture, munching on wholemeal biscuits. I worked hard for two hours while my mother hovered around Juliet, trying to tempt her to eat (and failing), and then I took a shower, put on a clean old dress (too short) I found in my old room, and left to get the bus.

“If you wait, Phoebe or I could drive you home,” my mother said. “She'll be here any time now.”

Juliet had gone to sleep, and my mother was drinking tea on the porch. She looked extremely tired, my old mother—still pretty and delicate-looking, with no hint of a California tan, but with signs of strain in her face and little dry, crinkly pouches under her eyes. I felt sorry for her, with a daughter like Juliet on her hands. I knew I should stay and help. I would have liked to see my aunt. But I wanted to start arranging my unsettled life.

“I've got to get back and get organized.”

She smiled at me timidly. “You could start in a week, Cordelia.”

“I've only got two weeks,” I protested, misunderstanding.

“I mean school. You could be on a plane next week and on your way to California. You'd love it out there, honey. So warm all winter, and such a breeze in summer, and the ocean. And it's just swarming with young people.”

I pride myself on my control. I stood up and said, “I'd better get going. There used to be a four o'clock bus, there probably still is.”

“Oh, Cordelia, your father will be so disappointed.”

“He should be used to it,” I said, but I hugged my mother anyway, even though in my anger I could have broken all the windows and knocked over the woodpile. I suppose that was dishonest, the hug was a lie, but my passion for honesty doesn't mean honesty at all costs—not really. I couldn't hurt my mother any worse than I was already doing, and she knew the hug didn't mean capitulation, or even apology. It meant I loved her. I did love her, but I couldn't wait to get out of there. I was sick of seeing all the pampered understanding dished out to Juliet.

I walked to the bus stop, lugging my coin collection, retrieved from the attic, in a shopping bag. I couldn't wait to dive into it again and see how everything looked after all this time and figure out how much the coins had appreciated.

The bag was heavy—I had two large cardboard albums full of coins—and the day was hot. I must have been crazy not to wait for a ride, but I trudged along to the village Green, where the bus stops. It wasn't until I was actually there, in front of it, that I remembered Hector's Market.

It was a shock. I knew, of course, that George and Claire had sold it to the Uncle Jody's Country Crackerbarrel chain, but I had never visualized the change, the way that the dark, pleasantly smelly inside would be lit with a garish light and infested with the stink of scented candles. I had time, and I went in, out of the same fascination with which, I suppose, you'd spy on an old lover with his new wife, if you got the chance. I knew it would be horrible in there, but what surprised me was that the horribleness passed off almost right away, and the transformation took me over completely. The rough-hewn barrels full of kitchen gadgets, bins of soap in the shape of fruits, penny candy for two cents in glass jars, cheap wooden toys, racks of cat cards, and a suspicious storekeeper in a striped apron and collarless shirt—it all looked
right
in there. Within a minute or two, I hardly remembered the old Hector's. I've heard people say, when someone dies, that they don't want to see them dead, they're afraid they'll forget them as they were when they were alive. That's just how it was.

I didn't linger. I bought some penny candy and a little note pad with a village scene (not our village, but similar) on the cover. The bus came then, and I just got a quick look up at the diamond-paned windows before we took off: they were exactly as I remembered, glittering in the sun. I sucked on a jawbreaker that tasted of soap and made a frantic list of everything I could remember about Hector's as I knew it: crowded aisles, dim light, magic … I tucked it safely away to transcribe into my List Notebook. (I've used it in writing this, to recall the old Hector's. The list brought it all back—and here I must admit that words do have some power, though photographs would have been even better.) But I felt real panic that afternoon when Hector's as I had loved it receded from me.

Back in New Haven, I lugged all my stuff, as if by an instinct for solace, straight to Grand'mère. I went in the front door, sat down at my favorite table, settled my shopping bag on the floor beside me, looked up, and there was Paul.

“May I sit down?” he asked me. I nodded, of course, and he continued, parking himself across from me, “I came to catch you as you got out of work, but the waitress told me you hadn't been in today. I was just about to get your number and find a pay phone and call you.”

He was the same—the little glasses, the beautiful mouth, the graying hair. It was too good to be true that he was sitting across from me, in a blue shirt, at Grand'mère, with the yellow light from one of the brass lanterns falling on his glasses. He looked like a god, an angel, a movie star. Seeing him was so wonderful, after Juliet and Alan and my mother and Hector's —and the crazy fear that I'd made him up—that I just sat and looked at him while he talked.

“I had to see you,” he said, knotting his hands together on the table between us. I studied his hands, small and strong like himself, with fine black hairs on the backs, and suppressed a desire to cover them with my own. “For one thing, I've been deputized by my wife—by Martha …” Here his hands became still, flattened out on the tabletop. I couldn't imagine what he was going to say. “To offer you a job.”

“A job?”

I don't know what I expected—I suppose for him to declare a passion for me as powerful as mine for him. I had no doubt he felt it, even as he sat there sober-faced and spoke on behalf of his wife. I remembered how it had shimmered around us on the lawn; it was there now, buried beneath his anxiety. But a job?

He explained that Martha had decided she wanted to hire a mother's helper, and when my face fell he said, “What she really wants is a cook. Martha is a first-class cook, but she …” He paused while I waited, looking from his face to his spread-out hands on the checked tablecloth, wondering at the unexpected turns our conversation was taking. Why are we talking about Martha? I thought.

“She doesn't feel she has time to cook, she has so many other activities. So she wants to teach you to cook. She thinks it would be fun for both of you. And then you could take it over.”

I suppose I still looked dubious and let down. I said, “But nobody has a cook!” Of all the possible replies I could have made, it was the first that I got out.

“Martha's parents do,” Paul said. “So does her grandmother. A cook-housekeeper. Her parents have a cook and a maid. Martha feels she needs one, too—a cook, not a maid,” he added hastily. “Though I should explain that she also wants help with the kids. She has a cleaning woman for the house, but she says it's the cooking and the kids that take up all her time. She has her own money—I mean from her family. She—we can well afford a cook.”

“Does Martha work?” I asked hesitantly. I couldn't help wondering what Paul's wife did with her time.

“Officially, we're partners in the business,” Paul said. “She helps me catalogue and price.” I could tell he was trying to be fair and honest, both at once, and he was having trouble. “And then she also—well, she runs. And she takes weaving lessons. She's a very good weaver. Also, she goes antique hunting, she does a little buying and selling. I don't mean to say she doesn't need to get away from the house and the kids. I don't mean she should be a drudge.” He didn't say what he did mean. He stopped there, and Crystal, who had been hovering, came over and asked me if we wanted dinner. “Eventually,” I told her, Paul confirming this with a nod, and we ordered a carafe of the house Chablis. Crystal raised her eyebrows at Paul and gave me a quizzical look, but I didn't respond, and she raised her eyebrows again and went to get our wine and report to Cynthia, behind the bar.

“I'm sorry,” I said finally to Paul. I don't know what I was feeling, I had never felt so many different ways at once: disappointed, hurt, insulted, frustrated, in love. But I knew I didn't feel wild elation at the prospect of being cook and baby-sitter for Martha Lamberti. I'd had enough of drudging for other people living with Juliet and Alan. “I don't think it's the job for me. But I thank you for thinking of me. I thank Martha, I mean.” I must have sounded cold, though I didn't mean to—or maybe I did mean to. What a day it had been, after all. I've been through the wringer, I thought—something Danny's mother used to say after a busy Friday in the store.

Paul looked stricken at my words, and then I did put my hands over his. But before I could speak again, he said, “Let me just tell you everything before you decide.” I realized he was pleading with me, and the knowledge that he did love me—that strange, impossible, secure fact—caused me to smile at him. He didn't smile back, but he turned his hands up and held mine. He was so earnest I could have kissed him. I had a great longing to kiss him.

“The kids are both in school,” he said. “Megan is in first grade, Ian goes to nursery school all day. They usually hang around the shop with me after school, but in the evenings I have people coming in a lot of the time—clients. Martha wants someone to give the kids their baths and all that. They go to bed at eight-thirty …”

His voice trailed away. He must have seen that these domestic details were not winning me over, and he looked apologetic. I unlinked our hands and ceased to smile. I wanted to know
him
. I wanted his wife and kids to remain invisible. His recital forced me to look at them—the dear little children in their sleepers, the jolly clients streaming in to buy Daddy's books, Paul and Martha walled in behind all their years together, the romping dogs … Ozzie and Harriet and the kids. I felt left out, as usual, the outsider looking in.

Paul and I stared at each other. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, as he had on the lawn. I remembered how he'd looked then, like a picture we'd had in school of Jesus ascending to heaven in a sunset just like the one we'd shared. There he was, all rosy and glowing and lovable, going up, out of reach.

“Forgive me,” he said. “It's not for you. Of course it isn't. You can do better.”

He kept his hands over his eyes. His glasses, on the tabletop, were dusty and spotted. I picked them up tenderly, breathed on each lens, and wiped them on the edge of the tablecloth.

“There.” He looked up at me and at the cleaned glasses I offered him. “Tell me about the cooking part,” I said, smiling.

He began to laugh. It was the first time I'd ever heard him laugh. He has a wonderful, abandoned way of collapsing into it; his face softens, his eyes half close, and he lets out good, strong “Ha ha's”—it's the laugh of a much larger person.

I waited for him to finish. I didn't know what was so funny, but I sensed that something important was happening, something was snapping in him and something else tightening up. Finally he stopped—it wasn't that long, maybe half a minute of his laughing and our looking at each other—and drew a deep breath and put on his glasses again.

“Well,” he resumed. “The cooking.” His hilarity was gone, but so was his anxiety. “There's not that much, really. Mainly dinner. We wouldn't expect you to fix breakfast, and Martha isn't usually home for lunch. You'd have to pack a lunch for Ian, and then weekends …” He kept pausing, to see the effect of his recital on me. I was fine; the specter of Ozzie and Harriet had disappeared with his laughter. “Sometimes I have a client in around lunchtime. I suppose you might make us some sandwiches or something. Martha usually does if she's around, if she has time.” I pictured him among his books eating a peanut butter sandwich supplied by a grudging Martha in a running suit.