’Twas the night before chemo and there Bridget was, traversing the back roads of New Falls, having waited until Randall and Aimée were sound asleep, having sneaked from the house and into the garage. She’d put the transmission of Randall’s S–600 into reverse and quietly rolled it out to the sloping driveway, then down to the road, without turning on the engine or even the headlights. And now she was headed to Dana’s, so they could tiptoe into the city and find Bridget’s lover, or rather the man Bridget had once slept with and had made love with and now only wished were her lover.
God, she thought, I am pathetic.
Dana was standing at the foot of her driveway, wrapped in her long red down coat, because Dana had become such an animal lover lately that she wouldn’t even wear faux, though for some oxymoronic reason, she saw no problem donning the down. How that irritated Caroline! Not to mention the local furrier, who still did a brisk business in New Falls.
“Talk about the car being a beacon,” Bridget said as Dana climbed in. “Your coat can be seen from here to Long Island.”
“It’s freezing out. It’s midnight.”
“We’ll stop and get coffee.” She paused while Dana buckled her seat belt. “You’re a good friend to do this, Dana.”
Dana rolled her eyes. “Well, I couldn’t have you going off and getting into trouble. It seems I have enough friends there already.”
Between New Falls and the Upper East Side, Dana filled Bridget in on Caroline’s hit man and Kitty’s supposed insurance windfall. (They didn’t discuss Lauren and Vincent because that was old news by now.) Then Dana told her what Sam had said about Chloe’s broken engagement, and Bridget told her what Lauren had said. It wasn’t until they’d merged onto FDR Drive that Bridget revealed their destination.
“We’re going to the Pierre,” she said, sipping the last of her Dunkin’ Donuts coffee that had cooled off in the forty-minute trip. “I need to see my first husband.”
Late night traffic slipped by them. It always amazed Bridget that so many people here in the States always had somewhere to go, day or night.
“I didn’t know you had a first husband,” Dana said quietly.
“Non,” Bridget replied. “No one does. Not even Randall.”
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Dana asked after the valet took the Mercedes and they went into the lobby.
“I must see him one last time,” Bridget replied. “I want to tell him in person about my cancer.” She’d already told Dana that she and Luc had been childhood sweethearts, that they’d married too young, that they’d divorced. She did not tell her about Alain (to speak his name would be too painful) or that she still loved Luc, that she’d never stopped loving him, all these years (not that Dana wouldn’t figure out that part by herself). As they stepped up to the front desk, Bridget said, “Luc’s my last link to my home. I’m sure you know what I mean.”
Dana said she didn’t know much of anything lately, except that her friends seemed to be having lives far more interesting than hers.
A clerk promptly appeared.
“Monsieur LaBrecque,” Bridget said, “Monsieur Luc LaBrecque.”
“One moment please.”
Bridget tapped her foot in time with the tap-tap of the clerk’s fingernails on the computer keyboard. Dana still clutched her coat as if it were January and New York were Fairbanks. Together they resembled two spoiled housewives on a dubious mission.
“I’ll ring him now,” the desk clerk finally said.
Bridget grasped her new Kooba handbag in one hand, Dana’s arm in the other. She hoped Dana couldn’t tell she was holding her breath.
The clerk turned his head and said a few words into the phone, then a few more.
They waited.
He spoke again.
They waited some more.
Then he turned back and, with a small smile, said, “Mr. LaBrecque will be down momentarily. The Pierre bar closes at one, so may I suggest you wait in the lobby?”
“Bridget.”
The sound of his voice—the sound of his voice saying her name—brought tears to her tired eyes.
“Luc,” she replied. When she’d seen him last fall it had been years. He’d been thinner, older, yet then—as now—she had still seen the boy who had ridden the white horses alongside her father, who had woven a wreath of flowers for her hair on the day they were wed, who had proudly held their son on the day he was born.
Luc.
He always seemed like the happy, vibrant boy who did not need a wheelchair.
From the corner of her eye, Bridget saw Dana blanch. Right, she thought. I forgot to mention the wheelchair.
“This is my friend Dana Fulton.” Dana said hello, then discreetly excused herself and crossed the trompe l’oeil muraled lobby, where she sat out of earshot, friend that she was.
“Bridget,” Luc said as he rolled next to her. “Why are you here? Is everything all right? It is so late.”
He was so close to her now, his heat and his being and his body that she once had so loved, that her tears could not stop, her tears could not stop.
“Come,” he said, “asseyez-vous. Sit.”
She followed his lead as she always had. He guided her to a chair in a dimly lit corner. She sat.
He touched her arm. “Mon dieu,” he whispered. “Quel est erroné? What’s wrong?”
“Mon coeur,” she said, touching her chest. “It breaks when I see you. Je suis désolé.”
He leaned toward her; she leaned toward him. He held her; she cried softly.
“You look wonderful, chérie.” Then he pulled away. “And yet you are…sad.”
“Non, not sad,” she said. “I am happy to see you. I will always be happy when I see you.”
He touched her cheek. “I was going to telephone tomorrow when my business is finished. Why have you come tonight?”
“We need to talk,” she said. “Aimée is not going back to school in France. I’m afraid I will never see you again.”
“She told me her plans,” he said, lowering his voice. “It is for the best. Your home is here, Bridget. It has been for years.”
“My home is with you, Luc.”
“Non.”
“Je t’aime,” she said.
He put his fingers to his lips. “Non,” he said. “It would not work. I have a different life now. I love my wife.”
There is a certain sensation that comes with loss that Bridget remembered from the day Alain died. It begins in your throat as a soft, gentle puff, a “lump,” people called it, though nothing was there. Whatever it was, it was in her throat again now and had started to travel to her head and her heart.
I love my wife. Could he have been more clear?
“But…” she said, “but I have cancer.”
He blinked. “What?”
She didn’t respond, which she supposed was mean, but he had rejected her, so did it matter?
“Bridget,” he said, touching her arm. “Is it bad? Is it true?”
Her eyes dried; her ache lessened. “Tomorrow I begin chemotherapy. I only wanted you to know. Just in case. Because if I do not survive, there will be no one to put wildflowers on the graves of my family, the grave of our son.”
Then she stood up.
“Bridget,” he said, “Non. Ce n’est pas possible.”
“Oui,” she said, then turned to look for Dana. The word “cancer” had certainly gained his attention, but suddenly it did not feel so well, she did not feel so well. She had wanted his love; she did not want his pity.
“Then is this the reason?”
“Reason?” she asked. “What reason?”
“Is this why that man came to my home asking many questions? Bothering my wife? Bothering my daughter?”
She stood still, perfectly still. “A man?” she asked. “What man? What questions?”
“He asked questions about you. About when we were young. Does it have anything to do with you having cancer?”
A wave of dread rose like a groundswell. It was cold and damp and a shiver ran through her. She swallowed air. “You should have called me,” she said.
“I am sorry.”
Sorry? She doubted he was sorry. He’d obviously been more concerned about them, his wife, his daughter. She closed her eyes. “What did the man look like?”
“It was a month ago. Maybe more. He was an American.”
“Was he old? Was he young?”
“He wore one of those stupide baseball hats Americans love. I don’t know which team. But he had gray hair. And a mole. Yes. He had a mole right here.” He pointed to the side of his nose. “He frightened my daughter. I warned him not to return.”
She pulled her coat more closely around her. “If he comes back,” she said, “tell him I said to contact me.” Then she closed off her pride and her emotion, said au revoir, and went to find Dana.
“All these years I have thought I still loved him,” Bridget said when they were back in the silver Mercedes, heading north.
“But you stayed here with Randall?”
“When I tried going back, Luc had another.”
“I’m sorry,” Dana said.
“It was my fault. He was my life and I let him go.”
“Perhaps it was not meant to be. Perhaps you were both meant to be with other people.”
“Perhaps,” Bridget said, and then they rode in silence back to New Falls, her love and her thoughts all tangled together like the brush in the marshes back home in Provence.