Three Weeks in Paris (12 page)

Fabrizio got up, walked over to the sofa, and said, “Come and sit here with me, let’s talk this out, little one.”

He gave her an encouraging smile, and she smiled back, although the smile instantly wavered as she rose.

Once she had joined him on the sofa, he took her hand in his and looked into her eyes lovingly. “Since you do want to go so badly, there is a way. However, it is going to be tough.”

“What do you mean?”

“First of all, let’s talk about your love of cooking. It is an enjoyable hobby, I know, but you do it because you are frustrated about many things.”

“But I cook for you,” she protested.

“That is true, but you also cook for yourself. You comfort yourself with food, Maria.”

She did not say a word.

Fabrizio continued: “If you’re going to go to Paris, then I suggest you lose some weight. You have a good three months to do that. You will look so much better, and you will feel better.”

“Diets don’t really work for me,” she mumbled.

“They would if you really stuck to them,” he shot back swiftly, giving her a penetrating stare. “You have to stop all of this cooking.
Immediately
. Cooking for me, for your friends, and most important, you’ve got to stop cooking for yourself.”

“Do you think I could stick with a diet, Fab?” she asked, sounding suddenly hopeful.

“I certainly do. I will take you to a diet doctor tomorrow, and she will put you on a regime that is suitable for you. Then you can enroll at my gym and start working out every day. Quite aside from your trip to Paris, and getting in shape to meet old friends, your health will benefit.”

She almost visibly shrank back against the sofa and gaped at him, her eyes wide, her expression fearful. “I
don’t think I could cope with everything all at once,

Fabrizio.… ”

He shook his head impatiently. “Oh, Maria, you
can
. I know you can.”

Tears gathered in her eyes and she began to weep. “It’s too hard for me to diet and work out. And diet and work out. It’s so monotonous, and I’m always hungry.”

“Then I suggest you cancel your trip to Paris, because you won’t enjoy the trip looking the way you do.”

————

LATER, AFTER FABRIZIO
had left, Maria stood in front of the full-length mirror, staring at herself through self-appraising eyes.

For the first time in several years she saw herself as she truly was. The blinders were off, and she faced reality. And finally she admitted that her brother was right. She had put on a lot of weight in the last few years.

Yes, I’m fat, she said to herself. No, not just fat. Very fat.

Staring at her body totally naked, she saw that she was huge, her arms thick from the shoulders down, her thighs wide, like the great hams hanging in her grandmother’s winter larder.

She blinked several times as tears welled, and turned away from the mirror, filled with self-loathing. Reaching for her silk robe, she drew it on quickly and went and lay on her bed, pushing her face into the pillow.

She let the tears flow, sobbing as though her heart would break, until finally there were no tears left in her. Exhausted, she lay there on the damp pillow, consumed by her longing to go to Anya’s party, her weight problem, and her current plight. What to do? What to do? she asked herself repeatedly.

Fabrizio was correct. The ideal thing would be to
utilize the next few months to get the weight off, but she was so afraid of failure and of the hardship of exercise and dieting, she was ultimately paralyzed. And she was aware that she would feel exactly the same tomorrow. She always gave up before she even started.

Riccardo, she suddenly thought. It all began when they pushed Riccardo Martinelli out of my life. Closing her eyes, Maria looked back into the past, as if down a long, dark tunnel, seeing him standing at the end of it. How she had loved him, and he her, but her parents had considered him to be unsuitable, and they had broken up the love affair. He had gone away and she had never seen him again. Four years ago it had happened.

That was when she had started to put on weight, after Riccardo had exited her life. One thing was true, she
did
eat for comfort and consolation. She pampered herself with food because she had lost him, because her parents and grandparents were domineering, always trying to control her, and also because she was desperately lonely. She hated her job, was sick and tired of designing textiles, found the whole experience constraining.

Escape.

That was what she really wanted.

Permanent escape from Milan. From her family. From her job.

But you can’t escape from yourself, Maria, she reminded herself, sitting up, pushing her hair away from her face. You have a big, terribly fat body that is ugly and ungainly, and no man is going to love you with your elephantine shape. You can’t blame the family for your eating, at least only indirectly. You and only you are responsible for what you put into your mouth.

She thought of this over and over again as she sat propped up against the pillows, and then after a while she
left her bed and went to sit at her Venetian-mirrored dressing table, staring intently in the looking glass.

She saw herself as she really was; it was a beautiful face staring back at her. If only she did not have this awful body … all hideous rolls of fat. Everywhere.

You
can
do it, she insisted in her head. You
can
lose weight. You have great motivation now. Going to Paris … to see Anya … to make friends again with Jessica, Alexandra, and Kay. And maybe if you get thin enough you can go and see Riccardo. She knew where he was, what he was doing; she knew he was not married.

Perhaps her lover still yearned for her as she yearned for him. She wondered about this for a few minutes, then she got up, threw off her robe, and went again to stare at herself in the full-length mirror. She was gross. What man would want you with a body like this? she asked herself.

Turning away in disgust, she wrapped herself in the robe and went through into the kitchen. Snapping on the light, she opened the refrigerator door; her hand reached in for the large slab of cheese. Instantly, she withdrew her hand, closed the door, turned away empty-handed.

Slowly she walked back to her bedroom, vowing to herself that she would
try
to lose weight.

ANYA SEDGWICK WAS SO STARTLED, SHE SAT BACK ON THE
sofa and stared at her visitor seated opposite. There was a questioning look in her eyes, and her surprise was evident.

After adjusting her back against the antique needlepoint pillows, she frowned slightly and asked, “But whatever made you do it so … so … 
impetuously
?” She shook her head. “It’s not like you.… ” Her voice trailed off; her eyes remained fixed on his handsome face.

Nicholas Sedgwick cleared his throat several times. “Please don’t be angry with me, Anya.”

“Good heavens, Nicky, I’m not angry.” She gave him the benefit of a warm smile, wanting to reassure him, to know that he was still in her good graces. He was her favorite in the family, and although he was not her child, not even of her blood, she thought of him as a son. He was very special to her.

“All right,” she continued. “You’re giving me a birthday party, and you’ve already sent out lots of invitations, which perhaps precludes canceling it. So you’d better tell me about it. Come along, I’m all ears.”

“I wanted to do something really special for your birthday,

Anya,” he replied, leaning forward with an eagerness that brought a boyish look to his face. “I know how much you enjoy Ledoyen, so that was my restaurant of choice. I went to see them and I’ve booked the entire restaurant for the evening. There’s going to be a cocktail period, then supper, and dancing afterward. And a few surprises as well, along the way.”

“I’m sure there are lots of surprises in the works, knowing you,” she laughed.

“So far I’ve invited seventy-five people, but we can have a lot more, double that amount, if you wish.”

“Seventy-five already sounds a few too many!” she exclaimed, but immediately smiled at him when she saw his crestfallen expression. “I’m only teasing, Nicky. Continue, darling.”

“After I visited the restaurant, did a tour of it, I was filled with all kinds of ideas for the party, and I suppose I got overly enthusiastic, very excited. I went ahead and created an invitation, which I had printed, and I had the calligrapher address the envelopes. Once they were ready, I posted them. But I panicked the day I put them in the mail. It struck me that I had preempted the rest of the family, that I took control, so to speak.”

“As you usually do,” she asserted in a mild tone.

He nodded; he was relieved she sounded so benign. She was obviously surprised by his actions but definitely not annoyed with him.

“Anyway, Anya, I was going to phone you in Provence that day, but I decided against it. Sometimes speaking on the phone is very unsatisfactory.” Nicky lifted his hands in a helpless gesture, and finished: “So, here I am, telling you now, and hoping you won’t want me to cancel it.”

“I don’t know.” She gazed across at him, shaking her head. “I really don’t know, Nicky.”

“You
must
have a celebration for your eighty-fifth birthday. It’s such a milestone … and you should be surrounded by everyone you care about.”

“Do I care about so many … 
seventy-five
people?” She frowned, screwed up her mouth, looking reflective.

“Let me rephrase that, Anya. I’ve tried to include those who love you, and the people who have been special in your life in one way or another.”

“Well, there are quite a few of those still alive,” she conceded, her reflective expression intensifying. “Did you bring the invitation list?”

“Yes, I did.” He smiled wryly as he added, “I’m afraid I was sneaky. I had Laure take most of the addresses from your files.” Not waiting for a comment from her, he rushed on. “Here’s the list.” Pulling it out of his jacket pocket, he rose and went to join her on the sofa.

————

AFTER LUNCH, WHEN
Nicky had finally left, Anya went back to her upstairs sitting room. It was a room she had continually gravitated to ever since she had come to live here over half a century ago now, a place to entertain family and friends, relax and read when she was alone, or listen to the music she loved so much.

And, just as important, it was her preferred place to work, surrounded by comfort, her beloved photographs, books, and possessions gathered over a lifetime and so meaningful to her. The large antique desk piled with papers, which stood in one corner, was testimony to her lifetime ethic of disciplined hard work.

Walking briskly across the floor, Anya paused briefly at the window, staring down into the yard below, thinking how bleak her garden looked on this cold February afternoon.

A painting in grisaille, she murmured under her breath, as usual thinking in terms of art. All those grays and silvers mingling …

The trees were skeletal, bereft of leaves, were dark etchings against the pale gray but luminous Paris sky. And the wet cobblestones in the yard gleamed with a silvery sheen after the recent downpour.

Mature sycamores and lime trees encircled the house, and there was a lovely old cherry tree in the middle of the courtyard that dominated the scene. Now its spreading bare branches cast an intricate pattern of gray shadows across the yard. But in spring it bloomed softly pink, its branches heavy with cascades of luscious blossoms; in the heat of summer its cool, leafy canopy offered welcome shade.

As bleak as the garden was today, Anya was well aware that in a month or two it would be glowing green with verdant grass and banks of ferns, dotted with the variegated pinks of the cherry blossoms and the little impatiens set in borders around the lawn.

By then, the picket fence enclosing the lawn and garden at one end of the courtyard would be gleaming with fresh white paint, as would the many planters and the ancient wrought-iron garden furniture. A sudden transformation took place every spring, just as it had for as long as she could recall. She had been here in the summer of 1936, when she was twenty years old, witnessing it for the first time.

Now Anya’s glance took in the tall ivy-covered wall, which, along with the many trees, made the garden and house so secluded and private, shielded as it was from its neighbors. She had always been enchanted by the garden, the quaint courtyard, and the picturesque house with its black-and-white half-timbered façade. It was a house that looked as if it had been picked up lock, stock, and barrel in Normandy and deposited right here in the middle of Paris.

It stood just a stone’s throw away from the busy Boulevard des Invalides, and around the corner was the rue de l’Université, where her now-famous school was located.

Anya smiled inwardly, thinking of the surprise most people had when they came in from the street through the great wooden doors and confronted the courtyard. The ancient house, which had stood there for over a hundred years, and the bucolic setting so reminiscent of Calvados country, usually took everyone’s breath away.

As it had hers when she had first visited this house the day she was celebrating her twentieth birthday … so many years ago now … sixty-five years to be exact.

She had come here with Michel Lacoste. To meet his mother. He had been the great love of her youth, her first husband, the father of her two children, Dimitri and Olga.

This house had belonged to his mother, Catherine Lacoste, and to Michel after his mother died. Michel and she had begun to raise a family here … and then the house had become hers when Michel died.

Too young to die, she muttered under her breath as she turned away from the window.

Of late, so many memories and recollections of the past were constantly assailing her. It was as if her whole life were being played out for her on a reel of film, one that passed before her eyes at very frequent intervals. Perhaps that was part of growing old, remembering so many things that had happened long ago. And not remembering the events of yesterday.