Элеонора Браун – The Light of Paris (страница 10)
I’d always been both a little in awe and a little afraid of her, mostly because she didn’t seem to care what anyone else thought. I’d sat next to her during class elections the first year, and when we were supposed to hand our ballots in, I turned to take hers and pass it down, but her hands were empty. “That shit is on the floor where it belongs,” she had said. It had never even occurred to me that was an option. I had voted for Ashley Hathaway, the same way I had voted for her every year since the fifth grade.
“Hardly recognize me, huh? I went all respectable.” Turning toward the mirror by the door, she shook her hair into place, needlessly tugging her jacket straight. “I know. I hardly recognize me too.” She sighed, as though she were a disappointment to herself. “Don’t worry,” she said, turning her cheer back on. “I’m still rotten deep down at the core. How the hell are you?”
“I’m good,” I said, a little timorously. I was still reeling from the great reinvention of Sharon Baker, and a little bit wondering why she was there. My mother and I had never been the best of friends, but I thought getting a new daughter seemed a bit extreme, and Sharon would have been a … surprising choice, even cleaned up as she was.
“And what brings you back to this shit hole?” she asked cheerfully. She was still looking in the mirror, now reapplying her lipstick, a pearlescent pink that shimmered when she popped her lips at the end. It was strange—she looked so perfect and pure, but she still had a mouth like a sailor.
“I’m just in town for a visit.” I had been standing in the doorway, but I finally stepped in. “Not to be rude, but what are you doing here?”
Sharon stopped primping and turned to me, squinting slightly. “Your mother hasn’t told you?”
“Hasn’t told me what? Did she adopt you? Have I been disowned?”
Sharon laughed, a pleasantly rough-edged stone of a sound. Covering her lipstick, she stuck it back in her purse. “You’d better talk to Simone.”
“I’m here, I’m here,” my mother said, rushing downstairs. “I’m so sorry; I was terribly delayed. Have you been waiting long?” she asked Sharon solicitously, and then, noticing me, started and put her hand on her chest. “Well, goodness, Madeleine, are you arriving today?”
I looked down at myself and my luggage. “It appears I already have.”
“I’m sorry, it completely slipped my mind. Your clothes are all wrinkled.”
“I’ve been on a plane.” I’m sure my mother got off planes looking fresh as a daisy, but I, like most mere mortals, was wrinkle-prone. She sighed at me as though it were a personal failing.
“Aren’t you going to close the door?”
“It was on my to-do list. Nice to see you too.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m all aflutter.” She came forward and gave me a brittle hug. My mother was tiny and delicate and beautiful, like so many of the women in my life. She wore essentially the same thing every day—a pair of slacks, a cardigan, and a scarf tied around her neck. She had pearl earrings and a once-a-week hairdo and if you saw her at the grocery store you would pretty much know exactly the kind of person she was, which might be a terrible thing to say but is one hundred percent the truth.
Beauty, in my family, seems to skip a generation. I was not beautiful in the same way my grandmother hadn’t been beautiful—the body that had been unpopular in the 1920s was equally unpopular now, and I don’t think it ever had a heyday at any point in between. We were too tall to be average, but not tall enough to be interesting; we had broad shoulders and breasts that interfered with everyday activities and hips that belonged on a Soviet propaganda poster. When I looked in the mirror, I could see her features looking back at me—one eyebrow higher than the other, wide, milky brown eyes, a forgettable nose, a thin, poutless mouth.
But my grandmother, when I had known her, had possessed a certain elegance. She wore Chanel suits and she always had a glass of wine in her hand, and she never laughed too loud, and when she walked out of a room, you could tell she had been there from the trail of perfume she left behind, as though the room had recently been abandoned by a spirit with a preference for Shalimar. I had none of that ease: I had spent my entire life trying (and failing) to fit my uncooperative body into someone else’s mold. Every ten weeks, I went to a salon where they poured chemicals over my hair to calm it into smooth submission, and in between, I regularly flat-ironed it, the smell of heat and burnt hair filling my nose. I ate as little as possible, especially in public, leaving half my anemic salad on my plate at luncheons. When I remembered all the desserts I had pushed away—the rich cheesecakes, the delicate stacks of fruit and cream, the whirls of ganache—I wanted to weep. It had worked—to an extent—I was thin, but that did not make my shoulders any smaller, my calves any less like the trunks of sturdy young trees.
My mother, on the other hand, was beautiful, a clear genetic anomaly sandwiched between my grandmother and me, with delicate features, fine bones, and hair like champagne and corn silk. She had tried to raise me in her own image, but I was never able to match her easy elegance. I sweated through my gloves at cotillion, and though I followed her instructions on hair brushing to the letter, what made her hair smooth and sleek as a thoroughbred’s mane only seemed to leave mine fluffy and floating, as though I had disobeyed on purpose. I wore the clothes she bought me, though they never seemed to fit right, the shirts riding up no matter how much I tugged at them, the outfits that looked so perfect in the pages of
“How was your flight?” my mother asked as she released me, leaving a pale cloud of L’Air du Temps behind.
“Fine. What’s going on next door? It looks like they’re having a party.”
“It’s awful, isn’t it? The Schulers sold the house and the man who bought it has turned it into a restaurant. A restaurant! In this neighborhood! Can you believe it?”
Actually, I could. My parents’ neighborhood had been getting hipper and hipper for years, but my mother would have been unhappy with any change at all.
“Is it any good?”
“How would I know? They’ve turned my front lawn into a parking lot. I’m certainly not going to eat there.”
“To be fair, it’s not really your front lawn. It’s his.”
“It’s close enough. And the noise! Trucks backing in with that dreadful beeping sound, all hours of the day and night. They’ve turned the Schulers’ lovely back deck into a seating area and there’s just the most appalling racket from the garden.”
“So, like, people eating and drinking and being happy? I can see how that would be a major bummer to have around.”
“Don’t be sarcastic.”
“Sarcasm’s all I’ve got, Mother.” I had slept on the plane, but I was tired and my emotions were still jagged and thin.
“Well, it’s nice of you to come. Isn’t Phillip missing you?”
I neatly sidestepped the question. “Phillip has a business trip to New York this week.” This was true, but not the whole truth.
“Why didn’t you go with him? You could have gone shopping while he was working! That’s what I always used to do when your father had business in New York.” My mother clasped her hands together joyfully, like a little girl who had been given a new doll. I should have sent her to New York with Phillip. The two of them had always liked each other better than either of them seemed to like me.
“Well, there’s the fact that I hate shopping.” The idea of being stuck in a store—or, even worse, a mall—for hours at a time, with nothing to do other than try on clothes made me want to gnaw my own arm off. When I’d been younger and my mother had made me go shopping for clothes, I’d always taken a book, and while she swanned around the Juniors department, I’d crawl under a clothes rack and read until she’d reached critical dressing room mass and I had to go try things on so she could criticize me in public, the way Mother Nature had intended.
“So you’re staying the whole week?”
“That was the plan,” I said. Unless Phillip had been serious, and we really were getting a divorce. A fist twisted my guts at the thought. But I wasn’t going to get into that now. I clumsily changed the subject. “Sharon said you have something to tell me?”
“Well, I have some news.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, Madeleine. You are so dramatic. I just wanted to tell you I’ve decided to sell the house.”
Sharon had been gracefully backing away into the front room, and when I turned to her quickly, my eyes wide open, she all but bolted like a rabbit. I whirled back to my mother. “This house? Our house?”