Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [37]
“Twenty-seven.”
“I mentioned you to my mother,” Lydie said. “She immigrated to the United States a long time ago.”
“Did she arrive with nothing? Does she live there still?” Kelly asked, seeming to hang on every word.
“She arrived with nothing and she lives there still,” Lydie said.
“Did she marry an American?”
“No. My father was Irish. Why do you want to get there so badly? Are the Philippines that bad?”
An expression so devout that it could have been a prayer-book illustration of a child in thrall to a vision had crossed Kelly’s face. “The Philippines are terrible, but they are our home. So we love them. But everyone wants to get to the States.”
“Why? If everyone loves the Philippines so much?”
“The States are the only place you can make money. Filipinos are ambitious. Filipinos dream of a house, fully furnished, a refrigerator, and a freezer full of foods.”
“Is your family very poor?” Lydie asked.
“Oh, yes,” Kelly said.
They stood there for another minute, but Lydie suddenly felt awkward. “Well, keep trying. At least Patrice is teaching you the computer, so you’ll have a skill when you get there.”
“Oh, thank you, Mum,” Kelly said.
“Why don’t you call me ‘Lydie’?” Lydie said.
Patrice found Lydie waiting in the living room. She felt keyed up, exactly in the mood to talk. The timing of this visit was just perfect. She wore her black hair swept back with silver combs and a thin cotton caftan instead of her usual shorts or jeans, as if she had had a premonition of this visit.
“Surprise, surprise!” she said.
“I was in the neighborhood,” Lydie said.
“This is so great! I was just wishing to see you, and you appear. Didier already called, to tell me he hired you.”
“It’s fantastic,” Lydie said. “I already have ideas …”
“Fill me in?”
Lydie shook her head, smiling shyly. “Not quite yet,” she said. “On a project like this, I like to keep them to myself at first … I’m really thrilled. He gave me absolutely no restrictions.”
“That’s my Didier,” Patrice said. “Patron to the artists, a regular Lorenzo de Medici. He does the same thing with his jewelry designers. Well, I have something to tell you. Today is T minus six and counting.”
“What?”
“ ‘T’ means ‘Tyrant,’ alias ‘Mother.’ She arrives in six days.”
“It’s that bad?” Lydie asked.
“You’ll meet her soon enough,” Patrice said, sipping her iced tea. “I suppose you get along great with your mother.”
“We have our ups and downs,” Lydie said. “But yes, in general.”
“Did she give you a hard time about coming to Paris?”
“Not really,” Lydie said. “She’d prefer for me to be in New York but she didn’t make a fuss.”
“God, she sounds eminently reasonable. See, my mother can only understand events in relation to herself. Like, I didn’t get married and move to Paris. I left her.”
“I’m the one who didn’t want to come to Paris,” Lydie said. “My mother didn’t have anything to do with it directly.”
Patrice didn’t say anything. This was as close as Lydie had ever gotten to telling her anything really personal. She was afraid of saying the wrong thing, spooking Lydie back into privacy.
“I didn’t want to leave New York because of … a tragedy.”
Patrice had never actually heard someone refer to a personal event as a “tragedy” without sounding pompous or maudlin, but she could believe a tragedy had happened to Lydie, who sat across the room, gripping her glass, trying very hard to keep her voice steady and well modulated.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Patrice asked.
“My father killed himself. And someone else.”
“Oh, Lydie!” Patrice said.
“It came as a big shock,” Lydie said. “We were never a dramatic family, in any way. I never heard my parents fight. My father went off to work every morning and came home every night.”
“Do you know why he did it?” Patrice asked, fascinated and horrified.
“Well, she was his lover,” Lydie said. “Much younger, married herself.