Privileged (25 page)
“Perish the thought.” I winked at him. He was one of the aspects of Palm Beach I would miss the most.
“The menu, Marco?” Laurel queried.
“Very
campagne.
You’ll begin with pâté de foie gras. The main course will be cassoulet, followed by a peasant salad of field greens, flowers, goat cheese, and pine nuts. The wine, true French plonk,
le pinard
like the peasants drink. And for dessert, my petite doughnuts.”
Laurel leaned toward me confidentially. “I don’t allow him to make them very often. They are so fantastic that I simply cannot resist.”
“Each has a different filling—hazelnut crème, dark chocolate orange peel, Grand Marnier, et cetera.” Marco kissed the tips of his fingers and left to get the first course.
“The twins will join us for dessert.” Laurel broke off a small hunk of the baguette.
“They didn’t mention that.”
“I’ve asked Mr. Anderson to summon them. But I wanted to talk to you first.” She stopped as if deciding exactly what she wanted to say. “Eight weeks ago I created . . . I suppose you could call it a trial for my granddaughters. Now that your work is done, surely you have questions about it.”
Once a journalist, always a journalist. She was about to give me the inside scoop. I could feel it. Even if I wasn’t going to write my article, at least my curiosity would be satisfied.
Marco brought in the pâté. Laurel spread some of it on a chunk of baguette, then waited for him to depart before she spoke again.
“The worst thing in the world is to have your child die before you,” Laurel continued. “You cannot imagine it, and I hope that you never experience it. Two years before I lost my daughter, my husband died after a sudden
crise cardiaque
.” She sighed. “Loss changes a person. You don’t know that, cannot know that, unless you are forced to live through it.”
I nodded and waited for her to go on.
“When the twins came to me, I am afraid I was quite unready to care for them. I was too deep in my own grief.” She gave the smallest of shrugs. “I have so many regrets. But we cannot go backward. We have only to move forward.” She drank a healthy swallow of her wine. “By the time I was ready for them, they had put up a wall that I did not know how to climb. Then I saw that execrable magazine story about them, and the truth of who they had become—the result of what I had
failed
to do—was staring me in the face.”
She looked into her glass as if the wine were some kind of oracle. “That is why I came up with this
défi
—this test—where their beauty would not help them and where they would have to depend on each other. I hoped and prayed that this would lead them back to the girls they would have been had tragedy not so deeply touched their lives. And that, my dear, led me to you.”
There were so many questions that the writer in me wanted to ask. For starters, had it never occurred to her that she and the girls were a family therapist’s dream? Why was her grief an excuse for neglecting her own granddaughters? And how about: Once she realized that she’d made a mistake,
why didn’t she just tell them the truth?
Me. Me! Wondering why someone else didn’t just tell the truth. I’ll pause here while you laugh your ass off.
Here’s all I did ask. “Sage and Rose—did you want them to hate you?”
“No. But if they needed to hate me to learn to love themselves and each other, then so be it.”
Marco returned, took the appetizers’ dishes, and set redolent plates of mouthwatering cassoulet in front of us. As we ate, Laurel recounted stories from her childhood—there’d been an uncle who lived in the Morvan district between Autun and Nevers and cared for the Charolais cattle of a wealthy landowner. His patron had rewarded him with a small stone cottage whose kitchen looked very much like this room.
“And so I re-created it here. It is why we are drinking this rough wine and eating this cassoulet. It is his recipe. I bring few guests to this room.”
I smiled. “Thank you, Madame.” I wasn’t sure what else to say.
“So, Megan. What will you do when you return to New York?”
Talk about an appetite killer. I put down my fork and wiped my mouth with the rough muslin napkin. I hoped that the twins would get in to Duke and my college debts would be gone. I wouldn’t know that until the SAT scores were reported online two weeks after the test. Other than that, I had no idea.
“Look for a job, I guess.”
“Like the one you had before at Debra’s magazine?” She smiled, and I realized that Debra must have told her about the fit between
Scoop
and me. That is, nonexistent.
“I hope for something . . . more substantial,” I suggested.
“Perhaps I can help you to realize your lofty ambitions. I know several people in the publishing world. Some of them are at . . .
substantial
magazines. I can make some calls on your behalf. And in the meantime . . .” She reached into a pocket of her sheath dress and extracted a small envelope. “For you.”
I opened the envelope. Inside was a business check for seventy-five thousand dollars. “Your bonus,” Laurel explained. “You worked hard, Megan. You have prepared the girls. There is not another thing you could do.”
I stared at the money. The right thing to do would be to protest, to say that I hadn’t earned it until the twins were admitted to Duke.
Oh,
please
, of course I took it. What am I, a saint? “I wanted to offer you another observation,” Laurel said. “It makes more sense in French than in English, if you’ll allow me.
Tu es une jeune femme très débrouillarde
.”
I blushed. In French, the word
débrouillard
is about as high a compliment as one can pay. It means a combination of smart, thoughtful, practical, and above all, resourceful.
“Thank you. Really.”
“When I was just starting out in Paris, it was not easy. Few salons were willing to try the new beauty products of a French girl with an address in the
dix-huitième arrondissement
. I mixed these products in the sink of the common bathroom of our building—though I did not share that at the time. It took every penny I could beg, borrow, or steal.” She entwined her elegant fingers. “So from time to time it was incumbent on me to embellish the truth a bit. A generous backer bought me an expensive gown, and I wore it when I made my sales calls so they would think I was an upper-class girl. It was a means to an end.”
Her eyes twinkled as she looked at me. And then I knew that she knew.
“I’m sorry,” I managed.
She waved her hand dismissively. “The Main Line of Philadelphia story was your means to an end,” she said with a half-smile. “In a way, you were emulating me without even knowing it.”
“I’ll tell the girls the truth,” I volunteered. “After they take their test tomorrow.”
Laurel nodded. “That sounds like the right timing.”
I looked down again at the check in my hand. “This is so generous of you—”
“What’s generous?” Sage asked. She and Rose were standing in the entryway.
“Mon dieu,”
Laurel exclaimed. “Rose, what have you done?”
Rose grinned, then twirled. “Do you like it?”
She’d cut off her glorious hair. It was now nape-of-the-neck short with choppy bangs that drew attention to her enormous eyes.
“I love it!” I exclaimed, not only because that was the truth, but because the sparkle in Rose’s eyes made it clear that she loved it. She didn’t look like an imitation of Sage anymore. She looked like herself.
“It’s . . . a departure,” Sage allowed.
“Jean Seberg,
À Bout de Souffle
,” Laurel observed as Marco brought in a carafe of coffee and a platter of his tiny doughnuts. “
Breathless
. With Belmondo. You must see it sometime. Yes, Rose, I quite like it. Sit down, girls. It is time for dessert. And for me to congratulate you on a job well done.”
Sage lowered herself slowly into a chair, staring at her grandmother as if she’d just grown horns. “Did you just say something nice to us?”
“Yes, Sage,” Laurel confirmed. “I did. I think you have worked very hard. But what is more important is that
you
now see you are capable of working very hard. And when you work hard, there is success in the effort. That is why, whether or not you succeed tomorrow—”
“You’re giving us our money anyway!” Sage squealed. She jumped up and began a happy dance. “It’s my birthday, it’s my birthday, not really, party anyway—”
Laurel held up a palm. “
No.
Nothing motivates like motivation. Sit.”
Sage slunk back to her seat.
“Your incentive to do your very best tomorrow remains,” Laurel decreed. “However, Megan’s debt has been retired. In full. I think all three of us can agree that she more than earned it. Yes?”
“Yes,” Rose agreed.
“Definitely,” Sage conceded.
“Very good,” Laurel approved. “Girls, your grandmother is proud of you. Megan, I think you’ve done everything you could.”
“I don’t,” Rose said softly. “There’s something else she could do if she really wanted to.”
Laurel frowned. “What is that?”
I saw tears well up in Rose’s kohl-rimmed eyes. “She could
not
go back to New York. She could stay.”
“Everyone must move forward, my dear,” Laurel explained. It made my heart ache. “Megan. You girls. Even me.” She raised her eyebrows at me. “A small toast would be appropriate? With something special?”
“Small,” I cautioned her. “Very small.”
“Some thimblefuls. I have cognac, from my great-uncle, in my office. Camus jubilee. Very special occasions only. I’ll get it.”
She departed, leaving me with the twins. Of course, knowing what I did about her now, I understood that she could have called any one of a dozen minions to fetch it for her. She was getting it herself to leave Sage, Rose, and me alone together.
“I just want to say—” I began.
“Don’t even
think
about vocabulary,” Sage warned.
“I won’t. You’re ready. No more work, I told you.”
“You really like the hair?” Rose asked me.
“I really do,” I assured her.
Sage pulled out her new cell phone from the back pocket of her jeans. “While I’m thinking about it, give me your parents’ number in Gladwyne.”
I gulped the rough red wine to bide for time. What parents’ number in Philadelphia? I didn’t even know the area code for Philadelphia.
“Why?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “You’ve got my cell.”
“In case you move or you go to Europe or something,” Sage explained. “Your parents will always know where you are. So what is it?”
It was one of those life-passing-before-your-eyes moments. And then I was saved by fate.
“Oh, shit, it’s not charged,” Sage groused. “Remind me to get it later.”
“Sure,” I quickly agreed.
Tomorrow
, I told myself.
Tomorrow after the test. You’ll tell them the truth
.
I was limp with relief when Laurel came back with the Camus jubilee.
“To tomorrow,” she toasted.
I had seventy-five thousand dollars in my pocket, which made me feel fantastic, but there was a niggling feeling underneath. Eight short weeks ago, I’d hated these girls, and rightly so. But the hate was long gone. They were so much more than they’d seemed at first blush. However, I was so different from the person they thought they knew. How had it happened that they’d grown brave enough to be honest with each other and with me, yet I was still light-years from being honest with them?
“To tomorrow,” I agreed. Those two words had special meaning now. The next day, right after they took the SAT, I’d tell the twins everything. “
Chin chin
.”
Choose the pair of words that most closely resembles the following analogy:
MOONLIGHT : CHAMPAGNE
(a) strawberries : champagne
(b) puppies : cuteness
(c) one-night stand : tequila
(d) suntanning : wrinkles
(e) mascara : eyelashes
O
ne last night in paradise. One last walk on the beach.
The cool sand squished between my naked toes. I stared out at the endless expanse of deep purple that was the ocean under a sliver moon. After feasting on Marco’s petite doughnuts—trust me, no human, not even the Baker twins, could resist them—the three of us waddled back to their house. I double-checked their alarm clocks, joked about putting them to bed like little kids, and gave them both massive hugs. We’d have breakfast together in the morning, and I would take them to the test center in West Palm. I tried not to think about whether they would hate me when I told them the truth. I held on to this: Once I had a chance to explain, they would understand.
The night was cool and breezy. I pulled my True Religion jean jacket closer and watched the waves crest against the shore. Once I was back in the concreteness of New York, would I be able to conjure up the colors, relive the bracing bite of the salt air, remember the heady aroma of the flowers that perfumed the air of Les Anges? Would I be able to close my eyes and see how a cruise ship looked, outlined in lights, out at sea? Recall how the faint strains of its orchestra, playing music from a bygone era, wafted all the way to shore?
Starting tomorrow night, all this would be gone from my life. Palm Beach wasn’t my home—it was as far from home as I could imagine a place being—but I was sad to leave it all the same. Why is it that for everything you gain in life, something is always lost?
I found myself walking south, toward Barbados. I couldn’t say Will was something I’d lost, really, since I’d never had him in the first place. Whatever I felt—
had
felt—for him that day at Lake Okeechobee seemed so long ago and far away, like a dream.
I crossed the nautical rope between Les Anges and Will’s family’s property. Maybe a thousand feet in front of me was a small structure I’d never noticed before, illuminated by gaslight torches. There was no one else on the beach, so I went to investigate. As I got closer, I saw that the structure was a thatched-roof pavilion with a bar and a few tables randomly scattered across a plank deck. The things Palm Beachers did to re-create a place where the gross national product didn’t equal one Palm Beach family’s fortune were simply too ironic for words.