Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [12]
For Didier’s family and French friends she usually served provincial dishes, the way they themselves did. Sausage and potatoes, pot-au-feu, roast chicken. Didier had known his two best friends since boyhood; his sister Clothilde lived half a mile away. At first they had seemed to embrace her without reservation—telling her all the old stories, making sure she knew where to find the best dry cleaner in Paris, giving her the best seat at their regular tables at Taillevant, La Coupole, Chez Georges. That had tipped her off—the way they always treated her with a certain politesse. Just last week Patrice had discovered a funky little salon de thé in the Place Dauphine, but when she invited Clothilde, Clothilde had insisted they go to her usual spot full of bourgeois matrons in the Rue Royale. Where, of course, she had insisted that Patrice take the seat with the best view.
Patrice had high hopes for Lydie. Although people said Patrice spoke French impeccably, it wasn’t the same as speaking your own language: the tongue was only part of it. She looked forward to talking to a married woman her own age, from the eastern United States, with an interesting career. She wondered whether Lydie would find her life frivolous; Patrice lived the life of a housewife and she knew it. In Boston she had managed an art gallery on Newberry Street. Although she had enjoyed meeting the artists, selling their work to appreciative collectors, Patrice had felt happy to give it up. Living in France, Patrice tried to experience everything as the French did—she felt grateful to Didier’s friends and sister for showing her the way, even if she also, simultaneously, resented them for it.
Patrice was drawn to things romantic, feminine, and venerable, and for those reasons alone, France suited her. She pulled the tufted chaise closer to the glass doors overlooking the cobbled courtyard, and she settled down to read Three Women of the Marais. It was a scholarly work by Anne Dumas, in French, over a thousand pages long, about three noblewomen of the seventeenth century who had lived in the Marais, the quarter of Paris where the Place des Vosges was located, in houses that still stood.
When Patrice read about Madame de Sévigné, Ninon de Lenclos, and the Marquise de Brinvilliers, she left the twentieth century, literally left it: she went back three hundred years. She had the feeling that if a malady happened to strike her while immersed in Three Women of the Marais, no modern cure could help her. She couldn’t remember ever hearing the telephone ring while she was reading it; if it did, she could imagine the sound being as alien to her as it would to Madame de Sévigné. These were three fabulous women. They knew kings, ministers, and cardinals, and they managed their resources at a time when women rarely did. Telling their stories, which were racy, poignant, and brave, Anne Dumas illustrated the history of Paris at that time. Reading the book, Patrice had come to feel like the fourth woman of the Marais.
Kelly entered the room. She nodded and smiled without saying anything, not wanting to interrupt Patrice. Her silence seemed greater than a courtesy, and it really moved Patrice. She lowered her book. How many people could coexist the way they did? They knew how to stay out of each other’s way, yet they also enjoyed talking together. Patrice had found herself relying too strongly on Kelly’s companionship lately, another reason she felt glad Lydie McBride was coming over.
“I think I’ll go outside for a while,” Patrice said.
She was sitting in the Place, reading her book and sunning herself, when she saw Lydie pull up to her building in a car full of what appeared to be high school students. “Yoohoo!” Patrice called, provoking stares from proper French matrons also taking the sun.
Lydie spied her, waved, walked toward her.
“So, how was the malt shop?” Patrice asked.
Lydie grinned. “Aren’t they young? They’re models and an up-and-coming fashion designer.”
“I’m in a