The Last Life (40 page)

"The belle of the ball needs a ball, does she not?" he jested, with a flicker of his fading bonhomie.

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, last summer it seemed as though we couldn't get you to come home; this summer, you're loath to leave it. I know you've had your nose to the grindstone, but all work and no play makes Jill a dull girl."

I shrugged, spearing a lone green pea only after great effort. When I looked up, it was past my father, at the gilded torment on the wall behind him. "Suffering breeds character. We learned it, at school."

My father chuckled. "Good, very good. Why did the man beat his head against the wall?"

It was an old joke in our house. "Because it felt so good when he stopped." I kept my tone flat.

"So, what say you give your head a rest?"

"What would you suggest, exactly?"

"A date. Your old dad is asking you out on a date."

I sniffed. "As if."

"Come off it, Sagesse," my mother interjected, with more animation than was now usual at our dinner table. "I think it's a great idea. You can't spend every day moping around the house."

"And why not?"

"Because you know it isn't healthy. Your father's right. You need to get out—and he's a great one for a good time. He'll show you."

"Because he's already been everywhere without us?"

My mother stiffened. "Because he's your father, and he has invited you, you little minx."

My father, during this exchange, had turned almost tenderly back to his food. He was piling his plate with a second helping of slick little roasted potatoes, and the corners of his mouth glistened with a matching oil. He looked as Etienne looked when tucked up in his bed, about to be abandoned, with no recourse. My mother made a face at me, a "Go on" face, her brows furrowed and her nose narrowed, with a light, ducklike dipping of the head.

"When did you have in mind?" I asked, spotting a stray gleam on my father's chin.

He looked up.

"Your chin," I said, patting with my napkin at my own.

"So it's a date with my nanny is it?" he smiled as he wiped, resolutely buoyant.

"It's your idea."

"Only if you promise not to treat me the way that girl treats your brother." We all looked at Etienne, who appeared to try to wave. "How about Saturday, then? I should be able to get away in good time."

"Whatever. I'm just here, you know."

It was agreed.

"Where will we go?"

"That would spoil the surprise, my dear. Always take a woman by surprise."

"You ought to know."

He glanced at me then, from beneath his lids, as he resumed feeding, plying two large potato chunks into his mouth, and his eyes were almost triumphant.

On that mid-August Saturday, as he had left for the hotel before I drifted down from my room, and made no sign of life all day, I bitterly assured myself that he had forgotten, that at seven, or eight, the phone would ring and he would announce, with no trace of guilt, that he had last-minute business to attend to. I did not allow myself to hope; although already, the day before, I had had Fadéla iron my favorite dress, a cream polished cotton with cap sleeves and an unwieldy shawl collar, acquired the previous summer before all the trouble, that fell in a mousse of gathers over my dimpled knees and made me feel like Marilyn Monroe. ("It's the very devil, this dress," Fadéla had complained. "A laundress's nightmare. What do you need it for?" "I just need it," I'd snapped, unwilling even with the maid to let my anticipation show.)

At seven, with still no word, I retreated to my room and shut the door, flopped upon my bed in my salty T-shirt and pretended to sleep. I told myself I had been right to despise him, that he treated my mother and me alike, fed us false promises and kept his gifts for strangers. I told myself he was disgusting, reviled the image of his plump and oily chin, the dapper roll of his nape with its shiny, wisping tendrils that had formerly been a site of my particular childish affection. I loathed his hairy knuckles, the thick wedding band, the press of his belly against his starched shirts, the curl of his lashes and the curl, too, of his ears, those dainty close-to-the-head appendages which I had inherited and was generally proud of. I boiled in my fury, and boiled him in it, as if he were one of the damned on the dining room wall, and I satisfied my rage by leaking hot tears onto my pillow and into the roots of my hair. "Oh Etienne," I said, to my brother—who was far away, being fed in the kitchen by the stout and unsmiling nurse—"You're so lucky, not to know that he's evil. An evil monster. And I wish he'd just disappear." Which was, of course, the very antithesis of my desire.

At eight, or shortly past, I heard the muffled sounds of arrival, the faint flute of my mother's voice in the hall and my father's oboe in reply; then steps upon the stairs (I sat up); then a knock, but timorous, on my door (I brushed my cheeks and blinked, and ran my fingers through the tangle of my hair).

"Yes?"

My mother, outside, crooned, "Sweetheart, are you ready to go?"

"Where?"

"You didn't forget? Your father's waiting."

"But he's so late."

"He's here now, chickadee. How long till you're ready?"

I opened the door and presented my crumpled, sweaty self to my mother's scrutiny. "A little while. I've got to take a shower. I didn't think—"

"Of course he didn't forget," she chided, with such conviction that I knew she, like me, had expected the worst of him.

"Will he be cross?"

"I don't think so. Just hop in the bathroom and get going. It's what women do, you know: keep men waiting. It's not such a bad idea."

I got ready, with as much care as if Thibaud stood in the front hall below. I surveyed my hair and, upon consideration, left it unwashed, because I didn't want it to drip on my dress. I soaped my boils carefully, without scrubbing, so that they wouldn't seep. I powdered my armpits and scented my neck. I put on a hairband and took it off again, tried instead to tousle my shorn locks. I chose my newest bra, lacy, with a bow between my breasts. I buttoned the dress carefully, adjusting the collar in the mirror several times when I was done. I fastened at my neck a pink quartz necklace of my mother's, and applied a sheen of baby-pink lipstick. A crease in my cheek remained from where I had lain, and my left eye was puffy, but I could do nothing about these flaws. In the gloom of my unlit bedroom, I hesitated over my shoes; I wondered about carrying a purse. My mother came to check on me.

"Now," she said, "be ready, or he might be annoyed. It's a quarter to nine, you know."

I dithered.

"These shoes," she said, holding up a pair of pink ballet flats. "No purse."

"But those shoes are—they're a kid's."

"And you're a kid. Come on. You look lovely."

I followed her downstairs, as nervous as if indeed on my way to a ball, patting at my lined cheek in the hope the mark might fade. My father stood in the living room, swaying to jazz from the stereo, a scotch and soda fizzing in his hand.

"Hey, gorgeous," he grinned, suddenly handsome to me again, in his sober suit with his greying curls and his brown-skinned solidity. "Your mother's got you in training, I see: keep 'em waiting. Well, it was worth it."

I smiled, unbelieving, shy. "The shoes look dumb."

"The shoes are just fine. The dress is—what's the word I'm looking for, Carol?"

"How about 'divine'?"

"The dress is divine. Quite right. Etienne," my father called to my brother, who was about to be wheeled up for his bath, and who jerked his head sleepily as my father gripped his shoulder, "have a look at your beautiful sister! My sister never looked so good, I'll tell you that!" He put down his drink. "Hang on a minute—" he headed for the kitchen "—I've got something for you."

I looked at my mother, who smiled, a genuine smile.

"Was this your idea?" I asked, suddenly sure it had been.

"His very own."

Another panic beset me, clamming my palms. "What will we talk about? Maman?" I tried in vain to remember a time I had spent alone with my father, and could think only of that dishevelled January afternoon. "We've got nothing to talk about!"

"Don't be silly! He's your father. You're just having date anxiety. Perfectly normal."

I wanted to scream: surely it was not perfectly normal, to know one's father so little. Becky could never feel such anxiety about Ron, I thought; and then it struck me that Becky and Ron would never do such a thing, risk an evening without Rachel and Eleanor, an evening out; Ron, of the nervous laugh, who permitted so much, would never allow it. I raced through possible topics as I stood, marooned, in the middle of the
salon:
all seemed dangerous: the hotel, my grandparents, my mother, his mistresses...

My father returned bearing what looked like a cake box, the size of a pastry. "For my date."

"We're starting with dessert?" I broke the seal with a chewed forefinger. Inside, on a crinkly bed of tissue, lay a single glorious gardenia, yellow, each matte petal moistly spread before me, precise and perfect. Its perfume rose from the box like a vapor.

"Let me pin it on." My father leaned over me, his fingers fumbling slightly (I wondered if he was nervous too), and chose a spot on the wide swathe of my collar. I could feel his exhalations on my throat, and eyed the medusa sheen of his crown beneath my chin. He pressed the flower to the cloth and worked a glass-headed pin around its stem, close to the bud, so that the gardenia floated there, seemed to breathe upon my breastbone, above my heart, and bathed me in its scent.

"Now let's look." He put his hands, warm, on my shoulders, and stepped back. "Beautiful."

Any vestigial resistance evaporated (I had thought it a well and found it but a puddle): I felt beautiful for the first time in almost a year, in the liquid embrace of his gaze, and I was grateful. "Shall we go?"

In the car, my fingers against the buttery leather, my dress glowing over my knees in the blue dusk, the roof open to the first, admiring stars, we did not speak. Music (it could have been the fateful Debussy) rolled over us with the breeze and the hum of the engine: my father smirked at the road ahead, and occasionally, from the corner of his eye, at me. I—like so many faceless others, I was aware—felt the power of his enchantment, and willingly succumbed.

He took me to a restaurant in a village by the water, not far away. The evening streets were quiet, but the
auberge
was bright, the dwarf trees outside it decked with winking fairy lights and the blaze from within its windows as radiant and yellow as my flower. The maitre d'hotel seemed to know my father and ushered us, with exaggerated deference, to a table from which we would see the garden and feel, through the open casement, the whisper of the night air. My father ordered for me, while I admired the oil paintings on the wall, the stiff napery, the silver flute of orchids, and leaned my head to the quiet chatter of the prosperous, in couples and small gatherings around us. Our waiter was a crimped-haired youth with pimples along his chin, and an impervious calm, whose whisking, steady gestures and quiet nods could only have been the result of emphatic training. Feeling lovely, I half expected him to note my beauty, to smile conspiratorially, admiringly, as I was, in the room, closest to him in age; but whether from education or actual indifference, he seemed not even to see me, slipping artful delicacies before my eyes with an impersonal stealth, and I was left to bask in my fathers, and only my fathers, attentions.

Conversation proved effortless. In my sudden apprehension I had disregarded the fact that at this, at least, my father was a master, a paragon of charm, here in his element, who averted all discussion of his own psyche as efficiently as the waiter served our food, and discoursed instead upon the restaurant and its chef, upon the art around us that I so openly admired, and upon the seventy-five-year-old Russian exile who had painted it, setting up his easel on this adopted coast and capturing its light; upon the lessons my father had observed in the Bellevue kitchens, which led to such wonders as the platters before us—the lobster ravioli in its pinkish scallop broth, the lamb chops with their dainty wings of bone and succulent medallions, the mold of ratatouille that perched on the
jus
like a little fortress by the sea. He alerted me to the origins of the wine, from vineyards around Avignon as old as the French popes: I clasped my ruby-washed glass and observed its colors dancing in the light, saw that it made my fingers, through the liquid, stretch into bones finer and more elegant than they were, a glorious illusion of adulthood. And when my head was swimming with images of swarthy peasants plucking the ancient vines with their gnarled hands; and of the Russian in his smock, spilling ash on his palette while he worked; and of the white-hatted young chefs-in-training beating sauces—in sum, with the heady wealth of life that blossomed around us in that very room, he asked me, it seemed for the first time, about my dreams for my future—uncertain as they yet were, but predicated on my recent, feverish studiousness—and wondered whether I might care, eventually, to study abroad, in the United States, perhaps. Which led to a discussion, mellifluously guarded, about my mother and the hopes she entertained, he claimed, for my American heritage, of which I had not been aware.

Fortified by the surroundings, by the rich taste of tannin in my throat, by the sophisticated odor of the burgeoning gardenia, I wanted, suddenly, to ask my father questions in return, to ask about the stories—my mother's and my grandmother's—through which his life had been constructed for me ... and yet the very thought of asking brought a fluttering in my chest, a faint breathlessness, and I postponed the moment again and again, through the almond soufflé and the bitter sludge of coffee, which he chased with cognac in its domed glass, until the moment was past. That, the one moment when he was all mine, as I wished him, slipped away unexploited because I was afraid to find, yet again, that my ideals were mere misconstructions.

We walked after supper in the full night, to the end of the block, where the sailboats clattered at their moorings like restive horses and the moon rose over the sea. From the lone café along the waterfront emerged strains of band music, the jaunty overtones of an accordion, and my father, suddenly, clasped me to him and broke into a dance, my bosom pressed against his chest, the flower crushed between us as we waltzed up and down the pavement. I could only throw back my head and laugh as I was spun, vaguely aware of my white skirt ballooning at my knees and of the pressure of the asphalt through my soles, conscious of his guiding pressure at the base of my spine and of the warm, liquorish cloud of his breath. He was laughing, too; he wanted this too. We were both eager, and free, and as we slowed and gasped and I giggled, still, I was simultaneously aware of being—so briefly—in love with him; that this was all he wanted of me; of any woman; and all he knew how to do; and aware of being duped, of being—for all the beauty of my dress and the particularity of my flower, for all that he had made me and could see on my head his own fine, small ears—as faceless as a mannequin, as readily replaceable. But I did not want to see this latter truth, as my mother had not, as no woman could want to; and resigned myself to his illusion as swiftly, surely, as did all his conquests, so that as we ambled, still slightly breathless, back to the car, his arm over my shoulder emanating heat and reassurance, I screwed my eyes shut and stepped blind alongside him, willing myself to remember this dream, to know in every darkness, when my mother railed and wished against him, and when I did myself, that this, too, was my father, and a gift.