Secrets of Paris_ A Novel - Luanne Rice [62]
“How do you know he’s a doctor?”
“Because he has doctor plates on his car. It’s that little red Mini down there. Also, he used to see patients. I’d watch him examining them in his library, which was then a consulting room. They had the most terrible ailments! Shingles, liver tumors, hemorrhoids.”
“What did you do? Watch with binoculars?”
Anne’s mouth thinned. Michael’s joke did not amuse her. “No. It was obvious from their spots, and from the way he palpated their bodies. Sometimes I would see the patients in the rue Jacob, and I could tell what was wrong by the way they walked.”
“Don’t get mad,” Michael said, “but you do have an active imagination.”
“I know you intend that as a compliment,” Anne said, beaming.
“I do.” Just then he remembered George Reed predicting that Michael would find a mistress in Paris. “All men do it,” George, who knew Lydie well, had said. “It’s the national pastime.” The memory was unpleasant.
“I don’t like to ask this,” Anne said. “But what will your wife think about last night? Did she not expect you to come home?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Michael said, feeling protective of Lydie. He would never discuss her with Anne.
“I liked her,” Anne said. “That time I met her. And I feel funny telling you this, but I have gotten several letters from that friend of hers. The wife of that friend you introduced me to at the Louvre.”
“Patrice?” Michael asked, hiding his shock.
“Patrice d’Origny. She has read Three Women of the Marais.”
“Have you written back?” Michael asked. This information made him dislike Patrice, instead of just feeling jealous of her. Patrice corresponding with Anne seemed disloyal to Lydie. He realized, of course, that he was being unreasonable; how could Patrice know about Anne and him, since even Lydie didn’t know Anne’s identity? And if Patrice didn’t know, why shouldn’t she write to Anne?
“Yes. I always answer my fan mail. And her letters were, I don’t know … different. Sort of dreamy.” Anne looked dreamy herself, remembering Patrice’s letters. “She really lost herself in the material. I can well understand how that can happen, considering she lives on the Place des Vosges. You know that Marie de Sévigné was born in a house there, don’t you? Her grandfather made a fortune collecting the salt tax …”
“Patrice’s husband makes a fortune selling jewelry,” Michael said, wanting to bring Anne back to the present day.
“D’Origny Bijoutiers. I know it well. It is the house where my family has always bought commemorative jewelry. For example, my grandfather acquired a rough diamond in South Africa and had it cut and set by d’Origny—my grandmother’s engagement ring. Those particular grandparents were terribly Anglicized. All the silver timbales given by my family to newborn babies come from there. Also, the diamond earrings my father gave to me when I turned eighteen.”
Anne had never previously spoken of her family. In fact, Michael realized, she usually treated the people she researched with the familiarity accorded to one’s family. Now she was talking about her real family as if they were rich, somehow noble. He thought of applying words like “Anglicized” to his own family or Lydie’s: it didn’t work. “Immigrant Irish,” “middle class,” and “New Yorkers” came closer. The McBrides, like the Fallons, were a close Catholic family. The highest praise they could bestow was to call someone “down to earth.” He thought of their professions: firemen, police officers, small-business owners, plant managers, teachers, maids. He was the first architect in either family, and all four parents had been so proud. He knew that Julia, and Cornelius before his death, loved him like their own son, and that his parents loved Lydie like one of their daughters. What would the parents think if he left Lydie? If he came home with Anne?
Or if he never went home, lived in Paris for the rest of his life?
“Why do you look so grave?” Anne asked. “What are you thinking?”
“We’re going to be late for work,” Michael said.
“We are our own bosses,”