Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [38]
“When?” Patrice said.
“A year ago. It just … changed everything. Poor Michael. He’s married to a zombie.”
“You? You’re not a zombie.”
Lydie shook her head. “You don’t really know me. I’m different around you—it’s easy to be. But Michael knows everything. He’s been through it all with me. He and my father were very close.”
“Well …” Patrice said, not knowing what to say.
“I can’t make sense of what happened. Michael wants me to. Things have gotten pretty bad between us.” She paused, took a breath. “Michael was wonderful to me at the time. Well, he still is. My parents loved him, and he loved them. Michael was the only person my father ever told … about the woman.”
“Did Michael know what your father planned to do?”
Lydie shook her head.
“What’s gotten so bad between you? I thought everything seemed fine when you came for dinner that night,” she said, lying. Afterward she had mentioned to Didier how tense Lydie and Michael had seemed toward each other.
“I let it get in the way of everything. I feel numb all the time. I look at Michael and it all comes back to me. I hear my mother’s voice on the telephone and I feel guilty for leaving her and for feeling glad I left her.”
“Doesn’t she have friends? Family?”
“Everyone handles this differently,” Lydie said. “Her sisters can’t quite bear to talk about it.”
“Michael is your family too,” Patrice said. “He needs you.”
“I know,” Lydie said, her expression blank. “Isn’t it awful? I can take care of my mother, make allowances for her behavior, and I want Michael to do that for me. If I don’t feel like going to bed with him, I expect him to understand it’s because I’m feeling sad. Or depressed. Or scared.”
“I’m sure he does understand,” Patrice said.
“I hope so,” Lydie said, smiling for the first time since the conversation had begun. “It’s a relief to talk about this.”
Patrice felt surprised by how happy she felt that Lydie would confide in her. She herself was an only child; only children grew up without anyone to talk to, with barriers of privacy intact without even knowing they existed. So she understood what it took for Lydie to spill such a terrible secret. She wondered whether Lydie had worshiped her father the way Patrice had worshiped hers. Not that he had deserved it: he had left Patrice and her mother when Patrice was four, leaving Eliza hurt and eventually bitter. Patrice knew she gave her mother a bad rap. But when she thought of her father she thought of presents and hugs, and when she thought of her mother she saw a frown. Just a frown, hanging in the air. Like the Cheshire Cat, only upside down and without teeth.
“I feel better,” Lydie said.
“I still feel rotten,” Patrice said. “It’s still T minus six, and counting.”
“Maybe things will go wonderfully.”
“Let’s face it: they never do,” Patrice said, full of warmth toward Lydie. It felt so comfortable, talking to her. Was this how it felt to have a sister? That thought just popped into her mind. It must be all this talk about families, she thought.
One goes completely naked into a small subterranean chamber where there is a pipe of hot water controlled by a woman who directs the flow to whatever part of the body you wish.
—TO FRANÇOISE-MARGUERITE, MAY 1675
MICHAEL SWAM THREE times before he saw Anne Dumas at the Piscine Deligny. On his fourth visit he sat in a folding chair reading Le Monde; the sun, startlingly hot for such an early hour, warmed his thighs. His bathing suit was baggy, a red tartan bought by Lydie at the Tog Shop one summer on Nantucket. The other men at the nearly deserted pool wore tight spandex suits in glittery colors: lavender, orange, red. The suits left nothing to the imagination, and Michael wondered whether his cock would look so impressive in a suit like that. Michael thought them vulgar, too obvious, like the mating plumage on peacocks or the scarlet rumps of great apes. Did women find the style attractive? Only two women were at the pool so far this morning, both wearing scanty bikinis. The narrow strips of fabric were a tease, but alluring,