Mistral's Daughter (76 page)

"Oh,
I don't think I like the sound of that."

"I
think Ben and I are what people call good for each other," Fauve said with
a wicked smile.

"If
you'd said he was impossible, crazy, unpredictable, and you couldn't understand
why you were so wildly in love with him...
 
maybe."

"Maybe...
 
maybe not.
 
Even that wouldn't guarantee anything."

"Nothing
guarantees anything, Fauve," Falk said gently.
 
"It's all a crapshoot."

"Isn't
there any way to be sure, any way to nail things down so that they happen under
your control?
 
If you're very, very
careful?" Fauve asked wistfully.

"Not
if you're going to risk making a change.
 
Change just can't be shaped and organized and molded before it
happens.
 
The nature of change is that it
takes you somewhere else than where you are now.
 
You grow, that's the only thing you can
really be sure of, growth.
 
But any
change has its share of surprises."

"I've
never been all that fond of surprises," Fauve said with a shadowy look of
such sadness on her face that Falk's heart contracted.

"Do
you think the chicken is ready?" he asked.
 
"It smells ready."

"I'll
investigate.
 
How will I know if it's
ready?"

"When
the leg moves easily in the socket.
 
Also, take a long cooking fork, stick it in and see if the juice that
comes out is clear
—
stick it into the thigh, not the breast."

"How
do you know?"

"How
many wives have I had?"

"Only
three."

"One
of them must have taught me, but I can't remember which.
 
It's good to know that sort of thing even if
it's wrong.
 
It's called folk
wisdom."

Carrying
a platter, Fauve emerged from the kitchen, beaming.
 
"It looks quite good, if looks mean
anything."

The
chicken was good, the rice was good, the string beans, French-cut and
flash-frozen, were good, and the paprika-laced sour cream lifted everything
into a realm in which sheer greed became a virtue, for not to eat it ravenously
would have been a sin of omission.

When
dinner was over, Fauve and Falk sat drinking brandy in front of the fireplace
where the votive lights still winked.
 
Fauve fell silent, pensive.
 
After
a long, comfortable silence she looked up and said, "All the most
important people in my life, Magali, Darcy
—
and even Lally Longbridge,
who's like an aunt really, and you, especially you, Melvin, with whom I can
speak with more freedom than with anyone else
—
none of you will talk to
me about my mother.
 
I wonder why?"

"I've
always thought...
 
that Maggy had told
you all about her...
 
nothing's been
hidden," Melvin answered, uneasily.

"Oh,
the outline of her life, yes.
 
The basic
details, the things I have to be told.
 
I've looked at so many photos for so many hours
—
there's a
complete library of old magazines at the office and between 1947 and 1952 there
are literally thousands of pictures of Teddy Lunel, but they can't tell me the
things I want to know, no matter how long I stare into her eyes."

"What
sort of things?" Falk asked, his heart beating heavily.
 
"I'm only a few years younger than she
was when she died.
 
Would I have loved
her?
 
What would she have told me to do
about Ben?
 
What did she care about most
in the world?
 
Why didn't she marry
you?"

"You
know about that?
 
Who told
you?"
 
He put his brandy snifter
down with a sudden, startled movement.

"Oh,
I guessed a long time ago.
 
There's
something about your face when you look at me.
 
I know you were in love with her.
 
Were you lovers, the two of you?" Fauve asked softly, seriously.

"I
was...
 
I was the first boy who ever told
her she was beautiful, I asked her out on her first date, I gave her her first
kiss, I was the first man who ever made love to her
—
the only thing I
wasn't, was the first man whose heart she broke."

"I'm
sorry...
 
I'm so sorry, Melvin, I wish
she hadn't broken your heart."

"She
didn't want to, she couldn't help it, she just couldn't
quite
fall in
love with me...
 
she was looking for
something else, something...
 
some
other
thing."

"Did
she have many lovers?"

Falk
hesitated.
 
Did he have a right to
answer?
 
Did Fauve have a right to ask?

"You
see?" Fauve said.
 
"That's
exactly what I mean.
 
If she were alive
I'd say,
 
'Mother, did you have a lot of
lovers when you were my age?' and she'd have to tell me something, even if it
was just to mind my own business.
 
But I
can't ask Magali, obviously, and now you get all closed off.
 
What would she have told me?"

"I
think she'd have told you anything you wanted to know.
 
I'm not sure that she would have given you
sensible advice, being sensible wasn't a priority with Teddy
—
but I
think she would have been frank with you."

"Well?"

"I
told you she was looking for some
other
thing.
 
She looked for a long time and whenever she
realized that she hadn't found what she wanted...
 
whatever it was...
 
she looked somewhere else...
 
so, she had a number of lovers.
 
I don't know what 'many' means exactly, but
perhaps she had one lover for every hundred men who wanted her
—
every
two hundred
—
"

"But
she cared about them?"

"Each
one, until she stopped caring and started looking again.
 
And then, she found your father and he was
what she wanted, God help her."

"Am
I being unfair to you?" Fauve asked suddenly.
 
"Luring you up here with my divine
chicken and then asking you about things you don't want to discuss?"

"No!
God, no.
 
I think we've all been terribly
unfair to you, not, telling you more, not talking about Teddy because it was
too painful.
 
Her death changed all the
people who were left behind. None of us has ever been the same since."

"Isn't
that true whenever somebody young dies?"

"Perhaps.
 
But your mother was...
 
she was..."

"Different?
 
Special?"
 
Fauve's voice trembled in its yearning need
to know.

"I
wish I could even begin to explain her charm
—
I used to read e. e.
cummings
—
everyone my age read e. e. cummings
—
and I'd always
think of her
—
'the musical white spring'
—
no, I'd have to be a
poet to convey even a tenth of Teddy.
 
And yes, you would have loved her so very, very much and she would have
loved you more than anything in the world...
 
that's the saddest part of it all."
 
He stood up and went to where Fauve sat curled up in her chair and
hugged her.

"Just
remember one thing, your mother finally did find what she'd wanted for so long
and she was marvelously happy until the very last second of her life."

"Can
I give you a little more brandy, Melvin?" Fauve asked, standing up so
abruptly that she knocked over a big folder that lay on a table next to her
chair.
 
It fell on the floor and papers
scattered all over.
 
Fauve darted to pick
them up and Falk bent to help her.
 
The
papers slid around on the varnished surface and after he'd accumulated a small
pile of them he stopped to see what they were.
 
He looked casually, peered again through his glasses, and then took the
papers away from the dimness in which they had been sitting, and thrust them
under the light of a lamp.

"They're
nothing," said Fauve.
 
"Just
give them to me."

"Like
hell I will.
 
Like hell I will."

"They're
just doodles, Melvin.
 
Come on, don't
make me mad.
 
That's private."
 
She stuffed the papers she had picked up back
into the folder and tried to pull the rest of the papers out of his grasp.
 

"Don't
tear them!" he threatened, backing away.

"So?
 
What if I do?"

"Fauve,
you've been drawing, you've been working...
 
how long has this been going on?
 
Do you have any idea of how good you are, you dumb, dumb girl?"

"I
just...
 
I get a kind of nervous need to
draw things...
 
it's like a tic
—
please don't make a big number out of it, Melvin.
 
You know how I feel about art
—
this
is just a minor little, unimportant thing, not even a hobby.
 
Everybody doodles, show me one person who
doesn't doodle."

"Jesus,
Fauve, who do you think you're talking to?
 
Somebody who doesn't know the difference?
 
These are fucking superb!
 
Are you painting too?
 
Fauve, tell me!"

"There's
absolutely nothing to tell.
 
Okay
—
so I draw a little
—
I admit it
—
I don't paint at all...
 
I'm telling the truth...
 
no paints, you'd smell them if they were in
the apartment."
 
Fauve flung her
arms out in a gesture of innocence.
 
"There's no law against drawing, it's never been considered a
vice.
 
Come on, Melvin, stop looking at
me like that.
 
It's embarrassing.
 
And give me back my drawings."

He
handed them back to her and shrugged.
 
"If that's the way you want to go, baby, there's nothing I can
say.
 
If you should ever decide that
you'd like to give me a birthday present or a Valentine's Day present or just a
present...
 
give me one of your
doodles.
 
Don't even bother to frame it.
 
You've found your line
—
your own
distinctive style, and it has nothing to do with your father or any other
artist!
 
Do you understand what that
means?
 
No?
 
Never mind, stupid.
 
I think I'll take that brandy you
offered.
 
I never needed it more."

Marte
Pollison, in her seventies now, had never wavered in her long devotion to
Nadine.
 
In her eyes Nadine was still the
miraculously beautiful little daughter she could never have had. Nadine, who
knew that Marte adored her blindly, had always shamelessly and instinctively
appealed to the sentimental side of the crusty peasant woman, running to her
for sympathy when she had a bump or scratch that was so minor that Kate would
have laughed it away; sitting with her in the kitchen listening to her chatter
about the village life for hours at a time, waiting for the delicious sweets
that Marte made especially for her.
 
After Nadine left home for boarding school, she forgot about Marte
entirely until she came home for vacations and then the old, satisfying
relationship was immediately resumed, Marte growing more worshipful every
year.
 
After Kate's death, Marte became
Nadine's only contact with the world of
La Tourrello
for Mistral had
been blunt about not welcoming her.

"Your
life is a farce, your husband is worthless and I'm too busy to be
interrupted.
 
You're not welcome here,
Madame Dalmas," he had said unpleasantly the last time she had suggested
coming to Félice for a weekend and from that time on, a period of almost four
years, Nadine had prudently decided to remain in touch with Mistral through an
occasional phone call to Marte.

Oh,
how many times had she heard that dreary, unvarying, infuriating report, given
in Marte's cracked old voice.
 
"He's
just the same,
ma petite
chérie.
 
He gets up, he has breakfast, he shuts himself
up in his studio all day, he has dinner and goes to bed.
 
No, he's in good health, he never says
anything to me except to warn me to keep strangers away, as if I didn't know.
What does he do all day?
 
He keeps the
studio locked and I've never been one to pry.
 
It's been a quiet, lonely time since your mother died.
 
He's let the land go, he fired the men, the
machinery has all rusted, the vineyards and the olive groves are the shame of
the neighborhood, but he doesn't care, not he.
 
If it weren't for me, he'd probably starve to death, and not even notice.
 
I only stay on because of you and in memory
of your poor mother."