Secrets of Paris (19 page)

Lydie’s head turned fast. Kelly knew then that Lydie realized exactly what she was after. She watched Lydie, generally so soft-looking, with her pretty reddish hair and white skin, even whiter with sickness, and thought she looked shrewd, even a little hard. Kelly felt afraid.

“Oh, I wish I could help you,” Lydie said.

“You do? You do?” Kelly asked.

“But how can I, Kelly? This is between you and Patrice. If I brought you to the States, I would be taking you away from her.”

Kelly had expected her to say that. It only strengthened her will. She used the levers to lower her feet to the ground, raise her head up straight. Now she felt she was in a chair of power, as substantial as a throne. “I would never want to hurt Patrice,” she said. “She has done so much for me. It is
she
who most wants me to get to the United States. She has been teaching me the computer, to give me a skill. She has told me about the Filipino community in Queens …”

Lydie moved her mouth without speaking, as though she feared the next words would be painful. “I know she started off doing that, but I believe she feels too attached to you. It’s just a sense I have—she hasn’t said anything to me. But I think she would miss you terribly if you left.”

“And I would miss her.”

“Please understand, Kelly. I want you to get to the United States. But I can’t go against the wishes of my friend.”

Kelly grinned. She could scarcely conceal her triumph. “She tried to get her mother to take me with her.”

“She did? She didn’t tell me that.” Lydie looked astonished.

“Yes, but Mrs. Spofford already employs a person she is devoted to. Patrice was very disappointed, even though Mrs. Spofford promised to talk to her congressman.”

Lydie frowned a little. She pulled a loose thread on the sleeve of her robe. The hem of the sleeve was coming down. “I can fix that for you,” Kelly said. She rose from the Barcalounger, smiling at Lydie.

“That’s okay,” Lydie said. “I can sew …”

“Please,” Kelly said.

Lydie had confusion in her face. It derived from more than Kelly’s proposal, Kelly felt sure. “It’s awfully nice of you,” Lydie said. She handed Kelly a tin box which held needles and thread. Kelly glanced at the robe, a pale shade of yellow, and began matching the thread. Lydie took off the robe, laid it on the Barcalounger. She had a T-shirt on underneath. “I’ll be right back,” she said.

When she returned, she was wearing a maroon silk robe that could only be her husband’s. “Isn’t it very hard to get a visa, even if an American is sponsoring you?” she asked.

Kelly stitched busily. “Yes, it is difficult. But they say it is easier if the American says you can do a special job.”

“Maid’s work is not a special job,” Lydie said. “What else can you do?”

“In the Philippines I was an accountant,” Kelly said, not looking up from her work. She had finished the drooping sleeve. She tied a neat knot, bit off the thread, and began to strengthen the hem of the other sleeve.

“I do have my own business in New York, but I don’t have enough work to keep an accountant busy,” Lydie said.

“I want to open a fish market,” Kelly said. “My family owned a fish pond in the Philippines, and I know all about fish.”

“Fish?” Lydie asked, sounding dazed.

“Yes,” Kelly said. She finished the second sleeve. She feared looking into Lydie’s face. She felt that she had never been so close to making her dream come true. Her palms were very sweaty. Her fingers trembled.

“Kelly, listen,” Lydie said. “I’m sick today. I don’t know what to think. I have to talk this over with Michael and Patrice.”

Kelly, who believed that all would be lost if Lydie talked with Patrice before making up her mind, looked at her. She looked straight into Lydie’s hazel eyes. “What about your mother?” she asked.

“My mother?”

“Did you not tell me that she immigrated to the United States? That you talked to her about me and that she said I should try to go also?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Do you believe that your mother had help along the way? That someone helped her to get there?”

“Many people helped her. I know what you’re saying, and I appreciate it. I do. Let me think about it.” Some of the confusion had left her face, and Kelly knew that she had won.

“Thank you so much, Lydie,” Kelly said. “No matter what you decide, thank you for thinking about it. Will you let me do something for you now? I could go to the market for you, or do your laundry. I could go to the pharmacy …”

“No,” Lydie said, sounding tired. “There’s nothing at all. Maybe I’ll just take a rest now.”

And so they said good-bye.

That night Michael came home with ice cream from Berthillon. It had melted in the heat; the package had sprung a leak, and his hands were sticky. He dumped a pile of contractors’ reports on the counter and washed his hands at the kitchen sink while Lydie poured liquid double-chocolate into soup bowls. She felt better after her nap, no longer feverish. She wore a fresh white nightgown, knowing that Michael preferred it to the T-shirt.

“I have the most interesting thing to tell you,” Lydie said. “I had a visitor today. Kelly Merida—you know, Patrice’s cleaning lady?”

“Should we leave it in the freezer for a few minutes, to get it cold?” he asked.

“Let’s eat it just like this. It seems more sinful,” she said. She wanted to sound lighthearted, wicked. She wanted to erase whatever had turned bad between them.

“I brought it home to cool you off, for your fever …”

“My fever is gone. I’m fine,” Lydie said.

“Ah,” he said. He stared at her. He didn’t touch her. His look was steady, nearly expressionless, but it chilled Lydie, and only someone who knew him as well as she did could understand what it meant. She knew that they were about to have a conversation, and she knew what the conversation would be about. It would not be about Kelly. She put one hand over her eyes, then took it down.

“I love you,” she said.

“Not enough,” he said.

“What are you talking about? What’s bothering you?” She felt a little frantic. She glanced around for the kitchen chairs, but Michael seemed to want to stand.

“Lydie.” He placed his hands on her shoulders, guided her to the sideboard and propped her against it. It reminded her of the
time, in their kitchen in New York, when he had told her that her father was dead. The overhead light was harsh and yellow; the loudspeaker of one of the tour boats broadcast a distorted message.

“How can you say I don’t love you enough?” Lydie asked.

“Because I don’t feel it. I haven’t felt it for a while. Since before we came to Paris.”

“You’re the one who’s different, Michael,” she said. “You’ve acted strange ever since we got here, and I can’t blame you. Your project was up in the air for so long … Is there another hitch at work?”

“This isn’t about work.” His voice rose, his anger freeing something in Lydie. She hit his chest with the heel of her hand.

“God, if I had known this when I agreed to come to Paris—” she said.

“That’s right—you ‘agreed’ to come to Paris. Funny, I’d always imagined my wife would
love
to come to Paris with me. Some people think Paris is the most romantic city in the world.”

“I think it’s romantic—I love it here.” Lydie felt shocked by what he was saying. But she found herself trying to remember the last time they had had sex.

“You don’t seem to love me, or at least
being
with me, if there’s a difference. You know what stands out in my mind about our time here?”

“What?”

“That time on the quai, when you kissed me. It seemed so nice, so unusual.”

Lydie remembered; they had been walking to the Comédie Française that early summer night.

“I felt more like coming home to bed instead of going to the performance,” she said.

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. Because we had tickets.”

Michael grabbed a contractor’s report and tore it in half. “This is what I would have done with the tickets,” he said.

“That’s really great, ripping up your report,” she shrieked.

“Why should you care about my fucking report if I don’t?” Michael threw the pages down; they skidded across the sideboard into the wall.

“When did this start? How long have you felt this way? Can you tell me exactly?” Her ears rang, making the words echo.

“I think it hit me when we got to Paris. Back in New York I just blamed it on your family. I thought you were giving them everything you should have been giving me.”

“Like what?” Lydie asked.

Michael leaned toward her, grabbed her upper arms so hard she gasped. “Words, Lydie. Your mother’s the one you call to talk about your father. I loved him too—do you ever think of that? When he died …” Michael closed his eyes and stepped back. He swallowed hard.

“What?” Lydie asked, suddenly terrified.

“When your father died, all I wanted was to comfort you, to help you through it.”

“But you did, Michael.”

“I wanted the same from you. Remember how he used to say I was like the son he never had? We were close too, Lydie—apart from you. But you were the one who brought us together.”

“He loved you,” Lydie said, reaching out to stop a tear from rolling off Michael’s cheek.

“That ride we took? The day before he died? I saw how unhappy he was. I should have known. I’ve always believed that—that he was trying to tell me what he was going to do.”

“You couldn’t have stopped him,” Lydie said.

“No?” Michael asked, looking at her. “You know, you’ve never said that to me before.”

Because we don’t talk about it, Lydie wanted to say but couldn’t. She held her face in her hands and wept.

“You always turned to your mother,” Michael said. “I understood that, or I tried to. At least at first. You two were always together; you left me out of it. You didn’t care how I felt, and you never let me take care of you.”

“That’s not true,” Lydie whispered, knowing as she said it that it was.

“It is,” Michael said. “It is.” Having said that, he let out a long sigh that sounded to Lydie like relief.

“Then what happened?” Lydie asked, dreading to hear.

“Well, we moved to Paris. And over here you have Patrice.”

“That’s different,” Lydie said.

Michael stared at her. “You don’t even know. This is coming as a big shock to you, isn’t it?”

Suddenly his tone was tender. Lydie nodded, and tears filled her eyes again. “You’re talking about togetherness?”

“I’ve been thinking of it as—I don’t know. Romance.”

Romance, Lydie thought. Wasn’t it ironic that her greatest fear before marrying Michael was that marriage, years of it, would dull romance? The heart-in-the-throat sort she had felt while courting? Then, after marrying him, she discovered that what she had called “romance” was, in many ways, fear. Fear that he wouldn’t call. Fear that he would love someone else. Fear that he would leave. Marriage had taken all that away.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, the clear realization spreading like an anesthetic. It gave her strength and made her mean. “Are you saying you want to fix it or you want to end it?”

Michael stared at her. “I don’t know,” he said.

Then it came to her: his sun-lightened hair, his absences, everything. “Are you having an affair?” she asked.

“I care about someone,” he said.

“Michael,” Lydie said. She had always believed, even before knowing Michael, that her husband would always be faithful, that she would leave him if he were not. She would do what her mother should have done: leave the bastard before it was too late. She gazed into his eyes, which were sad, full of pain. “Brown eyes” did not begin to cover them. Their color was so warm, chestnut or sienna, flecked with black and gold. They made all his expressions seem more dramatic. His excitement appeared more vivid than other people’s, his sadness hurt more. “How did it happen?” Lydie asked, hesitant, the way she had inquired about the details of her father’s accident.

“I fell in love with her,” Michael said.

It was the worst thing he could have said. When she heard the word “love,” Lydie imagined she had lost him. She turned her back, walked out of the kitchen. She heard Michael coming after her, his footsteps right behind her. She was remembering the day he had fallen in love with her. It was Easter, eight years ago. They had been working together a few weeks when they were sent to Washington, to study the Hirshhorn sculpture garden.

They had stayed at a little hotel in Foggy Bottom. Separate rooms. She remembered the cherry trees blooming outside. She had lain in bed, smelling the blossoms, propped up on one elbow to look down the Potomac at planes in their landing pattern for National Airport. After a while she had calculated: one plane per minute. She remembered being disappointed that the sculpture garden had too much direct sun, that it was often too hot, that the main shade came from the shadow of the museum, not from trees. After two days of study they were supposed to return to New York, in time for Easter.

“Would you like to stay one more night?” Michael had asked. “Would you like to see Mount Vernon?”