Chapter 16
Sunday, June 22
At church the next morning, Char and her sisters witnessed a revelation.
Though they sat in their usual spot toward the left front, the rows around them were desolate. Only the few faithful who presumably hadn’t seen last night’s TV coverage of Ryder McBride, movie-star-slash-fireman, were in their corner.
Most everyone else was jammed into the rear of the sanctuary, toward the right.
It was amazing how quickly the tide had turned. He’d only been back in town a couple of weeks, and wham, everyone had Ryder fever.
Meri raised an eyebrow at Char. “Looks like we’re no longer the cool kids,” she whispered.
“Sometimes you get what you pray for,” Char replied.
For years, this was what she thought she had wanted. The simple gift of sitting in public, in her hometown, and being treated like just another citizen.
And now that she’d received that gift, she had strangely mixed feelings about it.
The girls had always lived with a schizophrenic combination of attention and neglect. They were still dealing with their abandonment, in varying degrees. The day Maman had left had been the defining moment of their childhood.
When the gospel reading was finished, Char settled in for the sermon. But as hard as she tried to concentrate on Father Ed, her mind kept going back to that terrible time.
It wasn’t all that bad. That was the psychological Band-Aid she used when she allowed the memories to surface. It was her best defense against the feelings of resentment and loss that accompanied the flashbacks.
Maman, sitting at her dressing table in a cloud of the bespoke rose perfume formulated for her and her alone, at a tiny boutique on the Champs-Élysées.
Maman. How many times, late at night in the grip of homesickness, had Char’s dorm mates begged her to describe what it had been like growing up with a famous actress for a mother?
A mental snapshot of Savvy, tottering around on Maman’s heels, while Char and Meri took turns with her silk bathrobe came to mind. They’d been pretending they were going to the awards ceremony, too . . . crowding around Maman in her white satin gown, who touched their noses with her powder puff and rouged their baby-smooth cheeks.
“Maintenant, vous êtes très jolie. There. Now, you are pretty.”
Char would try to explain that Maman was the same evocative combination of warm and cool, push and pull in private that she was on-screen, but that never satisfied them. Yet that was what made Lily, Lily: the aloof mystique that had won her millions of fans. She was like a promise for the future that inspired hope, but never came true.
Up until the fatal crash days later, the girls hadn’t even been aware that she’d run away.
At first, all they heard was a low rumbling among the staff.
“Madame est parti avec l’Argentin,” whispered Jeanne, the cook.
“It was the Argentine who took her,” the head housekeeper was overheard telling the au pair who had introduced them to this church where Char now sat—who’d in turn broken the bad news to the girls.
Because Papa was off who-knew-where.
Years later, from the safe distance of her school, Char pulled up the newspaper accounts on the Internet. She read that Xavier St. Pierre was initially “overcome with grief.” Apparently, too overcome even to tell his daughters that Maman was dead.
How could he? she’d rationalized. The French didn’t subscribe to warm, fuzzy American ideas of child rearing. He’d never established a rapport with them to begin with. How could he be expected to start then—explaining the adultery and death of his beloved Lily—when he was in the throes of his own intense suffering?
She knew it was ridiculous—the excuses left over from childhood that she still used to justify her parents’ behavior. They were the excuses of a little girl struggling to make sense of her world. Still, she couldn’t let go of them.
While researching her father, Char also had found out that Lily d’Amboise had been a well-known French actress way before she’d gone to Hollywood. She’d been accustomed to being worshipped, catered to . . . adored. Within four short years, she migrated to a strange country, married, and produced three daughters in quick succession.
Maman must have missed acting and all that went with it, because she wasted no time going right back to it. Never really even took a break except during the later parts of her pregnancies.
People took care of Lily, not the other way around. Who could fault poor Maman for her lack of mothering skills?
And while being thrust onto a plane with one suitcase apiece was initially terrifying, with hindsight it was probably a good thing Char and her sisters had been sent east. Papa wasn’t emotionally equipped to take care of them. And who knew how they’d have coped if they’d had to deal with the abrupt swing of the valley’s spotlight from their mother onto them—mere kids, still in mourning?
As it was, they’d been immersed into highly structured—if separate—environments, far from the prying eyes of Hollywood and the wine coast. With hindsight, anonymity and some excellent guidance counselors had probably been their salvation.
Not that it had been easy—far from it. Char recalled the “pleasures” of Hollyhurst Academy: tiny rooms; living by the bells, from the seven o’clock wake up to lights out; communal bathrooms. And above all, the loneliness of having to grow up without her sisters.
But now they were together again. The chance to reunite was what had pulled the three back to the Napa mansion, to try to reclaim some semblance of family from whatever shreds were left.
Char blinked and tossed her head. She’d just spent the entire Nicene Creed and the Lord’s Prayer reminiscing. Now Father Ed was calling them up to communion.
When she returned from the altar, she watched intently as the rear rows trickled forward, waiting with everyone else to stare at Napa’s newest phenom.
A core group surrounded him. An ordinary-looking middle-aged woman in a nondescript dress led, followed by a pixie-faced brown-haired girl—twelve, if her guess was right. Ryder must’ve looked just like that, once upon a time. And a pair of gangly teenage boys, obviously twins . . . tall, like Ryder, but still adjusting to their height.
Ryder guided his little sister toward the priest, his hands resting lightly but protectively on her shoulders.
Probably headed home to their one-story ranch to sit down to Sunday dinner, Char imagined. With a stab of envy, she could almost smell the aroma of roasting chicken greeting them as they walked in the front door. Add a father figure, and it was the kind of family she had always dreamed of.
When it was Ryder’s turn, he crossed himself and sipped from the chalice. It was a cinch to read the thoughts of those communing after him. While they were still in the church parking lot, they’d be online, bragging about drinking from the same cup as Ryder McBride. It might even be enough to bring them back again next Sunday. That made her happy for Father Ed. God knew, he needed the numbers.
On his way back to his seat, Ryder sought her eyes. Letting down her guard, she gave him an empathetic smile.
So often, people lost sight of the humanity of celebrities. They became these icons of perfection that were either envied or vilified out of all proportion.
Like Maman.