Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [48]
Patrice thought of Lydie and her mother, of the great devotion they had for each other. Then she thought of Madame de Sévigné, of the true sorrow she had felt when Françoise-Marguerite had married Count de Grignan and moved to Provence. Patrice found many of the letters written by mother to daughter unreadable: too sad, too sweet, too raw. Now, recalling those letters, facing her own mother, made her realize what they, Patrice and Eliza, did not have. And she despised Eliza for it.
“I think I’m going to go home,” Eliza said in a shaky voice.
“Oh, that’s predictable,” Patrice said. “I’m such an ogre. I’m so mean to my mother. Am I supposed to beg you to stay?”
“Where did you get the idea that I’m so horrible?” Eliza asked, rising from her chair, holding out her hands. “What did I do to deserve it? I came all the way to Paris to see you …”
Patrice started to feel uneasy. Her mother sounded dreadful. Her voice broke; it sounded like the voice of an old woman.
“Listen, I really am sorry,” Patrice said. “Please stay.”
“I don’t know,” Eliza said. Sun streaming through the tall windows lit her from behind; it shined through the diaphanous green silk caftan she wore. Her body, in silhouette, looked incredibly thin and young. “I’m tired. Maybe it’s jet lag—I don’t recover from travel the way I once did. I think I’ll lie down.”
“Would you like Kelly to bring you something? Some tea, maybe?”
“No, thank you.” But she stopped at the door, turning to face Patrice. She was smiling. “On second thought, I’d like some aspirin. That fizzy kind that dissolves, the kind you can only get in Europe.”
“I’ll get you some,” Patrice said.
On her way to the pharmacy, she considered the innuendo. On the one hand, her mother might have been making a concession to Patrice’s decision to live in France, to her Frenchness, by asking for a specifically French brand of aspirin. On the other hand, it signified that Patrice had given her a headache.
“Aspirine Upsa,” Patrice said to the clerk. She dropped the green box into her bag and headed home. The sun blazed; she wished she were already lying on a beach in Saint-Tropez, working on her tan, her head empty. She was tired of second-guessing, of analyzing every exchange she had with her mother. She remembered how, as a child, she would hear her mother reply to her father’s inquiries about her well-being in any situation: her position at a restaurant table; the number of ice cubes in her glass; her reaction the time she had to cancel her trip to visit her sister in Cleveland because Patrice had contracted mumps. “I’m perfectly fine,” Eliza would say, in a way that made it crystal clear that she was not. The woman was impossible to please; she was a martyr to her own cause.
When Patrice arrived home, she knocked gently on her mother’s door. Hearing no reply, she pushed it open. Eliza sat on the edge of her bed, her back straight, talking on the telephone. She was inquiring about flights to Boston. Patrice placed the green box on the bedside table and, leaving the room, quietly closed the door behind her.
She found Kelly in the kitchen. Kelly, wearing the black uniform she had been instructed to wear for the duration of Eliza’s visit, stood at the sink, shelling peas.
“You may not believe this now,” Patrice said, eating a raw pea, “but you are lucky