ÎLE SAINT-LOUIS
PARIS
NOVEMBER 2001
“So they left right after reading the will?” Annie asked as Jamie pulled a long glass dish from the oven.
Meat on the bottom, mashed potatoes on the top: Parisian cooking wasn’t so snobby. Or maybe Jamie shared her pedestrian tastes. He was the untitled brother, Annie thought with a smirk.
“Yes’m, that’s when they left,” Jamie said and refilled her wineglass. “They read the will and then Mrs. Spencer kicked them out in the middle of the night.”
“Guess they didn’t need to borrow your luggage after all. So, why was Mrs. Spencer trying to get rid of them so urgently?”
“She had her reasons.”
“Which were?”
“My dear, we’ve not approached that part of the story.”
“You’re as bad as your brother,” Annie groused.
“An insult, but I won’t protest,” Jamie said with a grin. “For now, let’s just say Mrs. Spencer had great foresight. She understood Win and she understood your mum.”
“Well, that makes one of us. I barely recognize her from the story. It’s like she left every ounce of romance and whimsy back at the Grange. Or in Paris.”
“It was the time,” Jamie said. “The era. Things were more fluid then, the people more adventurous, even those who weren’t by nature. It’s why your mum absconded to Paris with my brother, threat of immigration charges and all. She wasn’t convinced Gads could keep Mrs. Spencer out of the loony bin, but at least a visa violation and its ensuing jail time would impress her old Berkeley chums, or so she joked.”
“It’s hard to picture my mom at Berkeley. To me she’s all headbands, collared shirts, and Wellesley.”
“People change. Or they try to anyway.”
“So everything was in the apartment?” Annie said, her stomach grumbling.
When, exactly, did Jamie plan to serve the food?
“The entire collection was in your house?” she asked.
“Was it ever,” Jamie said and blew back his hair. “You would not believe the scene. Somehow the old bird crammed eight large crates of artwork into that bedroom. Tom was obviously involved. How or when, though, we never knew. I was working and Laurel and Win were so inexorably … how do I phrase this?”
“In love? Wrapped up with each other? Heads lodged up their asses?”
“Yes! Ha!” Jamie snapped his fingers. “The last one. Now you’re getting it.”
He pulled a spatula from the drawer.
“What happened to the artwork?” Annie asked.
“It stayed in my damned flat for six years. My then-fiancée-now-wife thought I was some kind of nutter when she accidentally stumbled upon it.” Jamie cleared his throat. “‘Yes, dear, just holding on to priceless art for a duchess until she finally kicks it! And then it’s into the hands of my wastrel of a brother and the peculiar American fairy-nymph he adores.’ It’s a wonder she didn’t ditch me on the spot.”
“And after Mrs. Spencer died? Did Win—Gus—and my mom take possession of their requisite pieces?”
Annie thought of their farm in Virginia and its uninspired décor, the excessively ordinary art hanging on the walls. She couldn’t recall a single piece that didn’t feature a horse jumping over something.
“Yes, they did,” Jamie said. “The two nabbed their chosen pieces, donated the rest, and proceeded on their not-so-merry ways.”
“I wonder which ones my mom chose, and where they went. They’re definitely not in our house.”
“You’d have to ask her,” he said with a shrug. “According to Gads, he ended up needing to invoke the ‘Trustee has the final say’ clause.”
“They argued?” Annie crinkled her face. “Over art? That does not sound like my mother.”
That did not sound like Win either, she nearly added.
“Quite the opposite,” Jamie said. “They wouldn’t decide.” He pulled a salad bowl from the cabinet. “So Gads picked for them. A real pain in the backside, those two. Do you like anchovies?”
“No, thanks,” Annie said, fiddling with a napkin.
Jamie placed the salad tongs on a paper towel and paused. He glared into the bowl as if trying to find meaning in the lettuce.
“I have to ask,” he said. “Is your mum still married?”
“My mom? God no. She has been extremely unmarried for my entire life. It’s absurd for me to even imagine her as anyone’s bride.”
“So she didn’t stay with your father?”
“I’ve never even met the guy. And he’s dead now. Apparently.”
Jamie blanched.
“He is?”
“That’s what I’ve been told. It’s not why the marriage ended, though she left him when she was pregnant with me. But, like I said, he’s dead now.”
“Which was…?”
“Which was what?”
“When were you born?” Jamie asked and set two salad plates on the table.
“Nineteen seventy-nine,” Annie said.
“Interesting.”
“Why is that interesting?”
She glanced up. Jamie looked apprehensive, as though she’d caught him committing a minor crime.
“Oh. Well,” he stuttered, and retrieved two more plates. “It’s hard to explain. And it’s not really my place…”
All of a sudden they heard the click of a key in a hundred-year-old lock, followed by the creak of the door.
“Do you…” Annie started. “Guests? Your wife?”
“Well, Miss Haley,” Jamie said, and handed her a blue and white dish piled high with meat. “Here’s your hachis Parmentier. And that, I believe, is the sound of my brother.”