Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [17]
“Mom, I think that’s normal,” Lydie said. “You’ve been through a shock.” Sometimes she wished her mother wouldn’t make her worry when she was so far away, but she knew Julia had to talk to someone.
“Are you still homesick?”
Lydie smiled because what came through in that question was Julia’s fervent wish that homesickness would overcome Lydie and send her straight back to New York. “Just a little. I met a really nice woman.”
Julia Fallon took the news with predictable silence. “That’s wonderful,” she said after a moment. “I’m sure that makes all the difference.”
Lydie knew Julia had little use for friends outside the family, a fairly understandable policy considering all the Fallon and O’Neill relatives who lived in New York. Why should Julia make friends when her sister, brother-in-law, nephews, cousins, and great-aunt all lived within a two-block radius? For Lydie, an only child, that logic didn’t apply.
“Is she French?” Julia asked.
“No, American. She’s married to a Frenchman and lives here permanently. Can you imagine that?”
“Of course I can imagine it. I left Ireland for good at the age of twenty. On the other hand, I had your father and my sisters with me. I’ve always needed my family.”
Lydie suddenly thought of Kelly, Patrice’s housekeeper. Kelly leaving the Philippines reminded Lydie of her mother leaving Ireland: with other members of her family, in search of a better life. While Patrice could be called an expatriate, with all the word’s implicit glamour and adventure, Kelly could only be called an immigrant.
“Well, Patrice has no family over here,” Lydie said. “But she has a housekeeper she’s very close to. I think she considers her a …” Lydie groped for the word. “Sister,” with its boundless loyalties and resentments, seemed closer than “friend.”
“It sounds good for both of them,” Julia said, and Lydie supposed she was thinking of herself and the cardinal.
“Kelly wants to go to America.”
Julia chuckled. “I can already tell you’re thinking of a way to help her.”
“No I’m not,” Lydie said, surprised.
“Well, you will be soon. That’s just the way you are. And America is the place for her to come. It’s the only place in the world where the poor can get rich. Whatever else they say about your father, they can’t say he wasn’t willing to work.”
“I know, Mom,” Lydie said.
“We’re coming up on his anniversary. Can you believe it’s been a year?”
“No.”
“I still can’t get over it. Sometimes I don’t believe he’s gone,” Julia said. Lydie could see her sitting there, that vacant look in her eyes. “Go to church and light a candle for him, will you, honey?”
“I can’t do that,” Lydie said.
“Oh, Lydie,” Julia said, sounding ragged and desperate. “He was your father. Don’t you ever forget that.”
“I can’t forget that, but I can’t pray for him either.”
“Why not? If I can forgive him, you should be able to.”
“I don’t see how you can,” Lydie said. She was losing her voice. In a moment she wouldn’t be able to speak at all.
“I’ll tell you how you can. Remember him as he was, before he … went out of his head.”
Lydie knew the family theory of how her father had lost his mind, had killed the woman and himself out of guilt for infidelity. In a way, she wanted to believe that. That his last thought had been for Julia and Lydie. That his last act was meant to punish himself and to spare them.
“I remember him,” Lydie said.
“Tell me one of your happy memories, honey,” Julia urged.
Lydie didn’t have to search far. “Oh, I remember school nights in late June, when it was too hot to study,” she said, trying to sound offhand. “We’d take a picnic to Central Park, and Dad would play baseball with me and whoever else was around.”
“You were such a tomboy!” Julia said, laughing merrily. “Your father said you could hit the ball a mile, and how you’d dive after the ball when it was your turn to go into the outfield. Oh, he was so furious they wouldn’t let you play in Little League. Girls do, nowadays.”
Tears rolled down Lydie’s cheeks as she remembered the sound of cicadas in