Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [29]
Michael shrugged. “Maybe about some things, but I wasn’t categorizing Lydie. I was just trying to give you an idea of how everyone felt when she went off to college with a backpack and hiking boots and came home with style.”
“Maybe you didn’t mean for that to come out the way it did,” Lydie said, laughing nervously.
Michael gazed at her, a troubled expression in his brown eyes, but Didier was nodding. “Now I have your point. We know the old story about an ugly little duck who grows up to be a swan. In any case, Lydie, I want to suggest a collaboration with you. Would you come to my office next week?”
“I’d love to,” Lydie said, smiling, staying in her place as long as it took to be polite. Then, rising, she asked to be excused.
“The bathroom is that way,” Patrice said, pointing down the hall. “All the way to the end, on your left. I assume you want the bathroom? Or are you looking for a telephone to call your lover?”
“He lives in New York,” Lydie said. “I’ll reverse the charges.”
“Don’t bother, honey,” Patrice said in her burlesque voice. “We girls have to stick together.”
In the bathroom Lydie leaned against the black marble sink and reflected on Didier’s ideal: a woman complete with compassion, athletic skills, and a sensitivity to beauty. She believed in the accuracy of what Michael had said: that she had been transformed. But Didier’s swan metaphor was so much lovelier than the idea that she, Lydie, had gone off to college one sort of woman and come back another.
All along she had just been trying things out. Born and raised a city girl, Catholic to boot, she didn’t think it strange that as a teenager she would tutor kids in Harlem. Back in the early seventies when the Woodstock legacy had yielded things like Earth Day and Common Cause, Lydie and her friends had cared about working to make things better—praying for special intentions and sending money to children in Bangladesh never felt real, while teaching Miguel Torres, Reggie Davis, and Zenita Hawkins to read did. Half the time they’d sit around talking instead of reading from Prose and Poetry, and Father Griffin, the young priest who’d administered the program, never cared.
She’d talk about boys with Zenita, flirt with the boys and impress them with her knowledge of cars, and talk about Father Griffin with all of them in the lovestruck way of someone whose greatest pleasure comes from contriving to discuss her beloved.
In college she had lost touch with Father Griffin and those kids. But just because she became an art major and started auto racing didn’t mean she had really changed. Standing in Patrice’s bathroom, Lydie considered that she had just broadened her horizons.
Michael’s talking about transformation scared her, because it meant transforming was on his mind. Everything around them was transforming: the language they now spoke most of each day, her family, their marriage. She believed he was falling out of love with her in stages. Unsteadily, she brushed her hair and walked out of the bathroom.
“Well, here you are,” Patrice said, coming down the hall, handing Lydie a glass of wine. “I thought you’d hightailed it to New York. To meet him.”
“Sorry I took so long,” Lydie said.
“Don’t worry—the boys have adjourned to the salon. We thought we’d take a little rest before dessert.” She paused, looking straight into Lydie’s eyes. “Is something wrong?”
The question was so direct and Patrice looked so concerned, Lydie could imagine actually telling her the truth. Standing there in the d’Orignys’ baronial hall, Patrice would be expecting Lydie to say she had her period, and Lydie would give her an earful about murder and lost love. The drama of it made her smile. “Everything’s fine,” she said.
“I thought maybe Didier had upset you with that spiel about the Louvre.”
“No, not at all,” Lydie said, startled. “And I was really happy to hear he liked my work.”
“Wait’ll you hear about his new project. You’re going to love it. I have to say, though, when