And so there was icing.
Winnie, Solange, Mlle Lefebvre, Lily, and I liberally spread it all over the thirty cakes the baker prepared for Magdali and Youssef’s wedding eight weeks later. The kitchen had expanded into the garden, where a long row of prep tables held the fruits of three local chefs, two bakers, one butcher, and the local wine merchant. All had worked nonstop for three days to prepare for the nuptials of one of their own.
“Alors, here you all are! Some welcome.” I knew that voice all too well. I couldn’t believe she’d actually come.
Antoinette tugged at the fingertips of her chic black gloves one at a time to extract them from her hands. “Ah, bonjour Mlle Lefebvre. Comment allez-vous?” She kissed each of the older lady’s cheeks elegantly. “Oh, and my beautiful Lily. How you’ve grown! And dear Kate, of course.”
Mom. God old Mom. The opposite of every other mom of my friends from childhood. While other mothers were getting manicures, going to PTA meetings, playing tennis, or baking cupcakes, my mother had divorced my father and then built a business all while immaculately dressed in haute couture with never one hair out of place. I suddenly thought how incredibly strong but lonely she must have been. So different from all the other mothers, so completely a fish out of water in America. I finally understood, and in that moment, my heart melted.
“Thank you for coming,” I said simply and gave her an immense American hug, refusing to let her give me two pecks on the cheeks.
“Mon Dieu,” she said, “what has gotten into you, Kate?”
“Absolutely everything,” I said, hugging her again.
Lily towered over my mother when she too gave her an American hug. Antoinette now seemed frailer and thinner than I remembered.
“Where is Paolo?” Lily wondered.
“Pretending to be a gaucho on an Argentinean horse,” Antoinette replied. “Baf, you know how these men must be macho from time to time. And where is my dearest Magdali?”
Arranging a last little bouquet of white roses in an old silver pitcher, I held it up to examine it better. “She’s upstairs, packing for her honeymoon. Come let’s go up together. She’ll be so happy to see you.”
“Perfect. Will someone please take my luggage to my room?”
I grabbed the ancient Louis Vuitton suitcase, and Lily led the way up the long staircase.
Max Mulroney and Heather exited one of the bedrooms as we entered the long upper hallway. Their surprise arrival three days ago had stretched the villa’s occupancy to the limit. Apparently, I had my daughter to thank for their invitation to the wedding, and their immediate acceptance.
A flurry of introductions ensued. Antoinette was completely nonplused by the Hollywood contingent. The same could not be said for Max, who was in his element, using his three-week French Berlitzolian efforts to much comedic relief.
“Madame, quelle pleasure to make votre acquaintance,” he said with exaggerated flourish. A red Basque beret hung at a precarious angle and matched his red espadrilles. The only thing missing was a navy and white striped shirt and a rope of piments d’Espelette, the famed red peppers of the region, to complete the portrait of casual Gallic perfection.
“Hi, Antoinette,” added Heather, in her typical yoga gear and wonderfully oblivious to the formality that was before her, i.e., my dear mother.
“Enchantée,” Antoinette replied with her nose tilted at an angle that suggested she felt the opposite.
“Hey, Lily,” Max said, “have you seen Russ? He promised to take us to watch the surfing at that spot, Parle-whatever.”
“Parlementia,” Lily corrected. “Yeah, I think he’s waiting for you in his VW bus with the million surfboards on it.”
“You’re leaving?” I asked.
“Oui, oui, Katie-girl,” he replied. “But we’ll be back in time for the wedding. It’s in three hours, right-o? We’re going house hunting after.”
God help me if they became neighbors. Then again, the Pays Basque was one part old-world aristocracy and three parts foreign mutt. They’d fit right in. And Jojo was Max’s new best friend. It was a well-known fact that legend suggested there was an American living in every French village. I would happily relinquish my role.
Max tousled Lily’s hair. “God, you’re gorgeous. And so tall! Had no idea when we Skyped. Okay, you’ve got to come to Hollywood as soon as you graduate, deal? I’m going to set you up with some people I know at ICM. Have you ever taken any acting lessons? You would be a natural.”
Max the dog came bounding up the stairs with Winnie at his heels.
“Whatever is this?” Antoinette said.
Lily burst out laughing. “That’s Max.”
Antoinette leaned down and scratched his ear, but with a look that suggested he would regret it if he dared jump up on her.
“They named him after moi,” Max said proudly.
“Why?” Antoinette gave a last pat to the dog and straightened.
“Because he’s really sweet even if he’s scruffy and he likes to sleep under the covers with anybody,” I replied.
“Exactly,” Max said, and then beamed. “I liked him from the get-go. Okay, off we go. See ya later, Antoinette.”
My mother sighed as she watched them descend the staircase. She looked at me and said in melodic French, “Are these the sorts of people you have for friends these days? Barely civilized.”
“They are precisely the type of people who are my friends these days,” I replied. “And no, they are completely uncivilized. Just like me.”
She made a classic French half gurgle, half exasperation noise in the back of her throat. “And you put them in my room.”
“I didn’t know you were coming.”
“Never mind. I shall take the room across from you.”
“Um, that’s taken too,” I stated. Winnie was hiding behind me in awe of my mother. “By this young lady’s father, Major Edward Soames. You can meet him later. Come, you can stay in the room at the end of the hall.”
“But that’s the nursery.”
“Yup,” I replied. “Last empty room in the villa. Has the same excellent quality horsehair bed as the one in my room. In other words, incredibly lumpy.” I picked up Antoinette’s luggage and continued walking, choosing not to see my mother’s jaw drop.
I could barely hear her hurried steps behind me. “But why are there so many people staying here?”
“As I told you, there are very few hotels reopened since the storm. I’ve been letting them out to people who were stranded. Even the mayor is using one of the salons as his office.”
“Joel Boudin is here?” Antoinette said, with no shortage of shock.
“Yup. Jojo is my new bestie.” I deposited her suitcase just inside the nursery. “Ceremony starts in three hours. Do you want me to bring you some tea or are you going to take a nap now?”
“I shall take a lie-down,” my mother said with that hint of a British accent imparted on her by all the English nannies she’d endured.
I kissed her on the cheek and headed down the hall before she could ask me to unpack for her. At the last moment I knocked on Soames’s door.
“Come,” he commanded.
A blast of sound—of metal against rock—drowned out conversation for long seconds after I entered.
“I thought you said they were giving it a rest today,” Edward said from the chaise longue we’d moved to his room. He was able to sit for much longer periods now, so much so that he was leaving for London tonight, along with his children.
“No,” I replied. “They’re only stopping at noon. Half a day. You know the bride. My sister wouldn’t have it any other way. She is a maniac.”
“She is, indeed, exactly like you.”
I shook my head, but smiled nonetheless.
“We haven’t had a chance to speak much lately, other than about this damn spring of yours. Are you excited to be at the helm of this new venture, or do you think you’d prefer to have a company buy you out in the end?”
“It’s too early to say, Edward, as I told you. But I think I really want this joint venture with Magdali and maybe with Lily, if she decides she wants to be involved after university or later in life after she’s lived a little. It’s exactly what I never knew I wanted. A family business in France. It will take years to get French degrees to be able to practice psychotherapy here. But now I have a great luxury. I have options.”
“And the people here will love you for it. Think of the jobs Du Roque Spring Water will create.”
“The only thing that mars my joy is the amount of pipeline construction required, and the hours of French bureaucracy it will take, but I refuse to complain. Okay, only a little. It is you, and I know you love it when I complain.”
He shook his head. “I wish I was going to be here to see you and Magdali tied up in red tape for the next decade.”
“Red, white, and blue tape, and every document in quadruplicate with notary seals,” I paused to straighten the duvet on his bed nearby. “Just don’t forget the offer Magdali made. There will always be a need for top-notch engineers here. Or someone in London to work on export to the English-speaking world if this spring is as great as Jojo’s experts suggest.”
Edward looked at me, but said not a word. His face was like a blank slate—as it was the day I’d first met him over chocolate biscuits and unsipped tea.
“What’s going on in that thick head of yours?” I murmured.
“You’re one to talk,” he said quietly, finally. “How are things progressing with Russ?”
“You’re changing the subject. I thought we’d stopped doing that.”
“I told you, I’d think about it, but I’d prefer to figure out my next steps on my own,” he said. “But if I can help you, I will.”
“Got it.”
“Your turn. Answer my question,” he said. “Please.”
I looked at him and sighed. “Everything is fine. Russ agreed to lend us his best production manager from his surfing corporation to work with us the next six months. And Phillip has promised to find us the best professionals. You know that.”
“Why isn’t Russ offering to stay here?”
“I didn’t take him up on the offer. And he should go back to Australia anyway. He’s got some important deals coming up, and he misses his family, and the waves are better in—”
“Kate, what’s really going on? What’s wrong?”
I walked to the chaise and sat on the end. “Look, I’m a tiny bit stupid and scared in this department, okay?”
“You don’t look scared. What are you scared of?”
Why not just say it? I couldn’t say it to anyone else. And he was leaving. “That no man will ever really know or love me,” I said so quietly he had to lean forward. “The real me—the one before I was married. The person before everything went so wrong. The one I was as a child here before I wasn’t allowed to come back. There are moments I sometimes don’t know who I am, Edward. And you know, I’m just fine alone but surrounded by my family.”
“Why are you worried about this? Honestly. You think far too much.”
“Your compassion and empathy is touching. As always.”
“You don’t need compassion. You’re bloody strong and don’t need some namby-pamby cuddly talk.”
“Don’t worry. I know I’ll not get that from you.”
“Then just who are you, Kate? How can you not know? I do.”
“I don’t know. I used to know a long time ago, but now sometimes I don’t.”
“You’re fooling yourself,” he said. “You know exactly who you are. That’s not your problem.”
“Really? Then what is my problem?” I didn’t know if I was getting angrier or more interested. This was going to be good, I was sure. I was even more sure that whatever he said was going to be his own core root issue, not mine.
“The problem is you don’t trust people enough to show the real person under the mask.”
“Perhaps I’m not the one wearing the mask here. You are.”
“You don’t trust me, do you Kate? Even now, after all we discussed and aired grotesquely. Are you ever going to trust anyone ever again?”
“I do trust you. Shocking, isn’t it? I trust you with every fiber of my being. The problem is that you don’t trust yourself. But here’s the thing of it. You just have to find a new purpose. A reason to get up every day. And a way to stop numbing the pain. That’s the first step. Loving someone, your children, and always having something to look forward to, are the last two key ingredients to happiness. And then things will fall into place eventually and start making sense again. And damn it, Soames, I’m counting on you to do it. To inspire me as you always do. Because you deserve happiness more than anyone else I know.”
He shook his head.
“Stop it,” I said.
He looked at me questioningly. “I didn’t say a bloody, fucking thing, Hamilton. What has gotten into you?”
“Listen to me. You. Deserve. Happiness. Now go to it.”
“There are times I think you need to change professions. Don’t you know anything about therapy? You’re supposed to let me draw my own conclusions.”
“Edward Soames, you are sometimes the absolutely most impossibly blind idiot. You were never a client. You were my friend, and still are.”
He reached out his hand and I placed my own in his. “Best friend, actually.”
I swallowed against the tightness growing in the back of my throat, but could do nothing about the tears starting to balance on my eyelashes. So I nodded instead.
“Oh God,” he said with exasperation.
“What?”
“You might need to reconsider joining the business world.”
I reached for a tissue and blew my nose very indelicately. “Why?”
“There’s no bloody crying in business,” he said. “Only in therapy.”
“You just told me to take off my mask. Now you’re telling me to put it back on. Make up your bloody mind.”
“I knew you’d finally learn how to curse properly if I stayed here long enough. Perfect. My job is done. Go on then. One of the Aussies is coming any minute to help me dress.”
I stood and brushed the wrinkles from the apron covering my jeans. “I should start too.”
“Kate?”
“Yes?”
“I’m no good at good-byes.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m not either.”
“So I’m not going to say good-bye when I leave later this afternoon.”
“All right.”
“But I want to thank you. And I,”—he paused and looked aside for a moment before continuing—“want to say some important things to you, but I’m not in a position to say them at this time. So I will just say farewell, Kate Hamilton. Until we meet again.”
I bent over and placed a hand on the side of his face to lean in and kiss the top of his head. “Yes. Until we meet again.”
And then, I was out the door to the comfort of my room, where I could cry a few tears in peace.
MAGDALI WAS THE most beautiful bride I had ever seen. Her gown was made of a long length of pale pink gossamer fabric, wound around her body and ending in a long train-like stretch of fabric flowing behind her. To show her love of Lily, sprigs of lilies of the valley threaded the tight bun of her hair. To show her love for her daughter, Solange was the only attendant. Granddaddy and I served as the required witnesses.
Jojo conducted the civil ceremony with great pomp and circumstance, of course, and Pierrot made the first toast during the feast.
Russ, whose chair was back-to-back with mine at the next table, leaned over to say something. “I finally got through to that ridiculously inept insurance company this morning.”
“And?”
“They gave the usual bureaucratic pathetic excuses, but yes, they’re on the hook. Apparently someone has been sending the yearly payments from an American bank. That’s all I could get out of them. Bottom line? You’re covered.”
I watched my mother wending her way to the table. “Of course. It was Antoinette.”
“Your mother is something else. And I say that in the nicest possible way,” he said and then laughed.
“I know. She’s impossible to categorize.”
“Unlike you. You are easy to categorize. One part ingeniously French, and three parts fearless American.”
“Russ, how am I ever going to thank you? For all you’ve done for us.”
“Maybe by giving me a good price on my room at Madeleine Marie next summer?”
I smiled. “Of course.”
“And letting me teach you how to surf when I come back. You do know it’s done standing up, right?”
I liked him. Everyone liked Russ. How could one not? “Absolutely.”
“I’m for Sydney day after tomorrow. You will answer my emails when I write to you? You know, the nonbusiness-related ones?”
“Of course, I will.” I laughed.
“Good. Perfect. Wonderful. There is going to be dancing today, right? Will you give me the first dance?”
I nodded, and he tipped back his chair slightly to kiss my cheek. “Excellent.”
I turned to survey the room.
Antoinette had been remarkably quiet, lost in the crowd of more than eighty friends and villagers who had descended into Madeleine Marie’s vast gardens, awash with tables dressed in white linen and flowers of every sort imaginable—white roses, sunflowers, lilies, roses, and hydrangeas.
It was autumn, and Mother Nature, in her fickle way, had decided to grace us with a lovely, hot Indian Summer sort of day.
And as everyone carefully navigated their way through a five-course lunch, culminating in wedding cake and a groom’s cake of chocolate gateau Basque, Magdali rose from her seat between Youssef and me and addressed the crowd.
“Mesdames et messieurs,” she said. “I am honored you came to celebrate this day. I am proud to be a member of this village, and to be a member of this family. I would like to thank three people particularly. First, M. du Roque, for his kindness to my mother, me, and Solange. Second, Mme Antoinette du Roque, for her gift of a honeymoon to the country of my mother’s birth, Namibia. And lastly, Kate Hamilton, for she has given me the most precious gift of all—the gift of sisterhood in the past, an equal partnership for the future, and love always. And to all, I give this Namibian proverb: If you want to travel fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, travel together. Youssef?”
“Yes, my beautiful wife?” He was so handsome in his morning suit.
“Thank you for choosing me with whom to travel.”
He kissed her, bending her nearly backward in his passion, and the crowd stood and roared its approval.
Antoinette came up behind me and leaned in. “Chérie, what a scar. Perhaps a dress with longer sleeves would have been a better choice? That’s the sort of scar that only a man can pull off well. Mon Dieu. Does it hurt?”
Grasping her arm, I steered her to the edge of the crowd and then beyond, toward the bed of lilies near the old, stone potting house. “Mom?”
She nearly reeled from the shock of me calling her Mom instead of Antoinette. “Oui?” She eyed me suspiciously. “Why have you dragged me away from the party? I was just having the most fascinating conversation with M. Landuran.”
“Well, when you go back, do you think you can sweet-talk him into processing our new loan a bit faster? It appears love moves mountains here in France instead of cold, hard business facts.”
“Mais bien sûr. Is there another way?”
“Well, that brings me to my main question.”
Her eyes rounded. “I do not like answering questions.”
“I know. Trust me, I know. Forty-something years with you has proven that many times over.”
“I can’t imagine what you mean,” she said indignantly.
“Did you have any idea when you harangued me into coming here a few months ago that I would end up staying? Actually making a new life in France?”
Her smile began slowly, beguilingly, vivaciously, as her slightly slanted, impossibly mysterious aquamarine eyes studied me. “What do you think?”
My mother was one of the most stunningly beautiful women I’d ever known—apart from my daughter, who looked just like her. It was easy to see why half the men in Biarritz were in love with her. The other half were farsighted. And she reveled in the attention. I wouldn’t let her sidetrack me. “Come on, alors, tell me. Why did you really ask me to come here and sort out Madeleine Marie? This is your villa really . . . not mine. You’re next in line.”
“Chérie, it was never mine. Far too many horrid war memories. It was always meant for you. Consider it a little divorce gift. I do like them so much more than wedding gifts, don’t you? Always a fifty-fifty chance that someone will need one. This one is yours. You deserve it after a decade and a half of hard labor.”
She would never admit it. It just wasn’t her way. Just like she would probably never tell me or any other woman that she loved them. But she did it the real way. She showed love through her actions.
It had just taken me too damn long to figure that out. Just like everything else in life.
“And giving Magdali and Youssef that trip to Namibia was just about the nicest thing I can imagine.”
She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows in that insouciant fashion that pretended indifference. “Enough of that. All right then . . . Paolo is going to cause a frightful scene, but I suppose I must give you a bridge loan until dear M. Landuran approves le cash for the business in full. But I will require the business loan back within a twelve-month period. I am not that generous, you see.”
I pulled her stiff form into my arms, partially against her will, to be sure. I just didn’t care anymore. She was going to have to feel the love whether she liked it or not. She finally relaxed. “Maman,” I whispered in French, “je t’aime. I couldn’t have gotten through it without you. I was starting to lose my mind.”
She pulled back. “You only thought you were. I knew you weren’t. Du Roque women do not ever lose their minds. We don’t have that luxury, which is really too bad. But it seems history has always felt the need to challenge us. But, ma chérie, aren’t you secretly a little glad for the trials and tribulations life tosses our way? It makes us better, don’t you think?” She broke away completely from my embrace, and tried to brush out the wrinkles in her immaculate blue linen Chanel suit. “Do you think you could refrain from that dreadful American habit in the future?”
“Which one?”
“The one where you feel the need to crush my clothes? Even the barbaric English know the art of restraint. Agreed?”
“Nope.”
“Ah. Well, then, whatever.”
Aside from French and British English, my mother had the most unusual grasp of Americanese, using the choicest cutting-edge terminology found only on college campuses or in Urban Dictionary.
Last Whispers from the Garden . . .
“Don’t get any ideas, Quilly,” Yowler whispered to me whilst we crouched behind the potting house.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t ever think we should embrasser like the humans do. It’s just crass.”
“Crass? What does that mean?”
“Tasteless and unrefined.” She stretched out a hind leg and did that cleaning thing that made me want to yak.
I was too polite to ask her to curtail that awful habit. If you love a friend, sometimes you just have to put up with some of their less attractive qualities. Although, as far as I could tell, Yowler didn’t really enjoy putting up with my eccentricities. But I was good at putting up with the fact that she didn’t like putting up with anything. I guess that was one of the parts of me that she liked best. What I liked best was her grit, her sense of adventure, her fearlessness, and how she pretended she didn’t like me as much as I liked her. Deep down inside, I knew she adored me—an odd thing in our world. And now that we were best friends, it was funny . . . the thing that I had first been infatuated about—her scent? It just wasn’t as important anymore. It was lovely, still, of course. But it wasn’t as wonderful as everything that was Yowler, the most beautiful, orangiest, softest, most brilliant cat with too many names in the world. Oh, you didn’t know cats have three completely separate names? Well, there once was a famous Two-Legged author on the other side of the pond who wrote all about that.
“Quilly?”
“Um, yes?”
“Is your head in the clouds again? I was talking to you.” “Right. Sorry. What can I do for you, my dearest, darling Yowler?”
“I was just saying that perhaps you might start trying to like sardines. It’s so much more amusante to skulk around the port in Guéthary, and slink into the boats in search of a lost little fish.”
“As opposed to?”
“Sniffing the leaves in this garden, hunting those horribly slimy creatures.”
See? I told you she didn’t like all the parts of me. “Yowler?”
“Yes?”
“I would be happy to go to the port with you. Besides, I am worried that the little Two-Legged with the red ribbons in her hair is going to change her mind and try to take me back to that horrible life of the light switches and the indoor running wheel that goes nowhere.”
“Well, I think it was very smart of the humans in the villa to suggest a trade: you for that pathetic excuse for a canine, Max.”
“Don’t say that. I sort of liked him. He never tried to bite me.”
“That’s only because he was too busy sleeping the day away inside. The opposite of a moron if you ask me.”
Yowler lowered her head to mine. And for a moment, her eyes seemed to glow and soften.
“What?”
“Nothing. I just thought you might be hungry. Come on, let’s go back to the lily patch. Forget the sardines.”
See? I told you she loved me.