Isn't It Romantic? (6 page)

Natalie had never seen
Gigi
before and was caught up in the final chapters of the plot. Without turning, she flatly said, “We cooked dinner.”

“And she did the dishes afterwards,” Mrs. Christiansen said. “Without my beseeching, I might add.”

Opal called to Natalie, “Have you noticed how nice your hands feel?”

Natalie frowned quizzically at her, then at her hands. They did feel softer, creamier, even childlike. “Yes!”

Opal was trying to wedge in a puzzle piece. “We feel like that all the time here. The healing properties of Frenchman's Creek ought to be a science project. Of course, it isn't exactly Lourdes, but we aren't so high and mighty as you people over there in Europe.” She fiercely pounded a puzzle piece and the card table jumped.

Mrs. Christiansen cautioned, “Opal! Would you try to be friendly to one of our houseguests for once?”

“I just won't speak then,” Opal said, and she made a zipper motion over her lips. She blankly stared at the television. Heading into the final triumphant scene of
Gigi
, Hermione Gingold said, “Thank Heaven . . .”

And Maurice Chevalier fell into song: “. . . for little girls.”

Opal listened to the song for a minute, a silence which seemed to her almost impolitely protracted. She could go no longer without talking. “Oh, if a man would just once croon to me like he does.”

Mrs. Christiansen said, “We hope in vain, Opal.”

“Are you having a hard time following this picture show?”

“I haven't been paying attention.”

She called, “Natalie, what's happening in the picture show?”

Natalie was heading into the kitchen for a soda. “
Elle va se marier
,” she said.

Mrs. Christiansen translated, “She's getting married.”

“Oh, so that's why she's here!” Opal said.

Mrs. Christiansen glanced up in puzzlement. “Who?”

Opal pointed to the kitchen. “She is. She's getting married here.”

Mrs. Christiansen said, “I had no idea!”

“Well, looks like I'm one up on
you
for once.”

Mrs. Christiansen considered the situation. “Why
here
, do you suppose?” And when Natalie walked back in with a waterglass fizzing with Coca-Cola, Marvyl asked, “
Pourquoi êtes-vous venue ici?
” (Why did you come here?)

Natalie indifferently said, “Pierre,” and fell back onto the sofa.

Opal hissed discreetly, “She said Pierre chose us.” She placidly held up an ill-fitting puzzle piece and trimmed a third of it with her scissors.

Mrs. Christiansen turned to Natalie. “Have you thought about your shower, dear?”

“
Pardon, Madame?
”

“Won't you have it here?”

She began to doubt her freshness. “If you like.”

Opal asked in a hushed tone, “Question her as to when this wedding is supposed to take place.”

Mrs. Christiansen asked, “Was it to be this weekend, Natalie?”

“Excuse me?”

Opal said, “
I
could have asked in English. I thought you were going to speak French.”

Mrs. Christiansen flapped a hand disdainfully at Opal and continued, “You and Pierre. This weekend?”

Natalie was surprised she knew about their deadline, but uncertainly nodded. “
Oui, Madame
. Saturday. Noon.”

“Oh, I'm so
excited
,” Mrs. Christiansen said. “I haven't known you but a few hours and I already think of you as family.”

Natalie watched in mystery as Mrs. Christiansen went upstairs.

Gigi
ended and the videoplayer chirred into Rewind.

With fists squishing her cheeks and her elbows propped on the card table, Opal judged the wrecked puzzle. The left kitten looked like a handsickle now, and its playmate, she was forced to admit, was distinctly ogreish. She skeptically considered Natalie. “You play checkers, missy?”

Natalie shook her head. A soft breeze billowed the window curtains and she noticed the fragrance of clean air and watered lawns like a long-sought invitation quietly slipped under a door. “
Il fait beau
,” she said, meaning the weather was fine, and she got up from the sofa and walked outside as Opal squinnied her cautious eyes with suspicion.

She strolled into a stately night that was silent but for a few crickets and the hints of music and excited children at the fairgrounds a half-mile away. She could see noiseless semis on the highway, the house and yard lights of a far-off farm, the haze of the Milky Way in a vast society of stars. And then she heard the truck door slam shut at Owen's gas station and she held a hand in front of her face as its headlights turned on.

Opal was tilted half out of her chair to watch Natalie when Iona came up from the basement in her tight one-piece workout suit, the Tae Bo tape in her hand. Immediately Opal got into an upright sitting position and shifted her focus to a stern perusal of Iona's scanty and revealing outfit. She said, “You girls today seem intent on giving mankind anatomy lessons.”

“You told me that yesterday, too.”

“Well, it bore repeating.”

Iona patted her face with a towel as she looked into the kitchen. “Where'd Natalie go?”

Opal pretended to wedge in a puzzle piece. “She said something in French about her beau. That's a boyfriend, right? She probably just had to see him.”

Iona went to the screened front door and saw a red pickup truck idling in the middle of Main Street, its headlights on, and Dick Tupper happily leaning out his truck window to simper and chat with Natalie. She was giggling. Worried and in shock, Iona looked to Opal. “Are they
together
?”

Opal got out her scissors again and feigned disinterest by refusing to take a gander outside. “Well, of course they are,” she said.

“How'd they meet?”

“Who knows? Maybe through one of those newspaper pages where girls with no sense say come and get it.”

Iona hopelessly gazed out the front door again, a hand pressing her towel to her mouth as she watched. She sagged a little when she saw Natalie's fingers lightly graze the truck's chrome door handle. She said, “I have had a crush on him for so long. Ever since I was a little girl.”

She'd lost Opal on that turn. “On
him
?” she asked. “That's impossible!”

Iona sighed. “I know it is. But you can dream.”

“Owen and Pierre lurched out of the gas station bungalow with Falstaffs in every hand and failed to notice Natalie as they tilted against each other and howled “I Can't Help Falling in Love with You” in an imitation of Elvis in
Blue Hawaii
.”

Meanwhile, Mrs. Christiansen was hurrying down from upstairs with a glamorous white Empire dress hanging over both arms. She gushed from the landing, “Won't she look gorgeous in this?”

Opal frantically waved her hands. She made hushing gestures. She pretended to cut her throat with her thumb.

Iona turned to Mrs. Christiansen. “Who will? When?”

Mrs. Christiansen thought. “Onetta. She so rarely wears dresses.”

And Opal lamely said, “When she goes to the hardware store.”

11

S
unrise in the Main Street Café. Wearing a spare pink waitress dress, Natalie helped Iona serve coffee and farmer's breakfasts to a crowd of thirty or more fulminating men. She'd found a pair of squarish, dark-framed eyeglasses that made her resemble the singer Nana Mouskouri, so the farmers and truckers were mostly at bay, but still she was a little overwhelmed by the shocking noise of yelled jokes, banging mugs, clacking plates, and the hollered chat of morning larks in overalls who all seemed hard of hearing. Plus, a way-turned-up radio voice was giving farm commodities prices from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

She was surprised by a tip left behind, but folded it into her apron pocket and withdrew with an empty coffeepot to the four-beaker coffee machine behind the counter. The din and commotion had quelled some and Iona took the opportunity for a respite, leaning on the pink Formica countertop and sipping a café au lait as she inspected the various species of maleness in the room. When Natalie rested on her elbows beside her, Iona said, “Look at my choices. Micah's gotten hitched about twice too often. Orville's homely and married. And Carlo Bacon is not exactly the sensible image of the Infinite.”

Natalie was taken aback.

“Quote I learned in junior college,” Iona said flatly. She considered a counter stool. “The Reverend's handsome, but he's a whatayacallit?”

“
Un célibataire?
”

“Right, a celebrate.” She sipped some more coffee and panned the room. “Too old. Too fat. Just a kid. Way too ugly. Way too stuck on himself. Blah. Another blah. And him? Maybe if I get drunk enough.” She sighed. “My town, Natalie. Party, party.”

The dull radio voice was saying, “Corn futures down a quarter. Wheat staying even. Soybeans falling fifteen cents .
.
.” as Owen and Pierre grandly entered.

“
Bonjour mes amis!
” Owen shouted.

Hearty greetings were exchanged, hands roughly shaken, guffaws forced, and Pierre eyed Natalie in a plum happy way, for he felt spruce and superior in his borrowed motorcycle boots and green mechanic's coveralls with the name “Harvey” stitched over the pocket. When he noticed Natalie's forbidding eyeglasses, he gleamed momentarily, then glanced away.

Owen said to Cecil,
“Permettez-moi de vous presenter Monsieur Pierre Smith
.”

Onlookers were stunned. Cecil asked, “What the hell was that?”

Owen answered, “I could
not
tell ya. Said it nice though, didn't I?” Owen slid into a booth and Pierre imitated him just as a good boy might his father. And then Dick nonchalantly sashayed in and the male greeting ritual was repeated until he slid into the booth next to Pierre.

Iona watched her rival watch Dick's entrance and then she watched the booth as Natalie went over with a handful of hooked cups and a round glass beaker of fresh coffee. Owen and Dick smiled up at the French waitress and seemed to exchange pleasantries, but Pierre stared at the salt and pepper shakers as if they would soon be his food. And Iona found herself transfixed by Pierre, for in those work-man's clothes the Frenchman did not seem so rich and conceited as he first did to Iona, but like the wrongfully accused fugitive from the jailhouse who in dreams stole into her room at night and smelled of motor oil and sweat as he reclined on the mattress beside her and held his hand to her mouth and whispered, “Don't scream,” as the sheriff searched the house in vain. And Dick Tupper was the opposite, no outlaw in him, no shame in his past, but upright, respectable, widely admired, a man who would not squander a fortune, lose his head, or fall in love with the little girl who carried Mason jars of lemonade to him way back when he was still married and the September harvest was hot.

She watched Natalie Clairvaux walk into the kitchen.

Carlo hastily hid a
Modern Bride
magazine under some dish towels and took the breakfast orders Natalie handed him. While perusing them, he said in a nonchalant way, “Quick as weeds are Cupid's arrows.”

She stalled. “
Pardon?
”

Carlo swashed corn oil across the griddle with a house-painting brush as he said, “Tender feelings. Infatuation. Some call it love.” The oil sizzled and popped until he poured a ladle of blueberry pancake mix. “We are sooner led by our hearts than our heads.”

“Who?”

His Dick Tracy mustache rocked up on one side in his smirk. “Oh, no one. Empty speculation. And it could be he just wants to make you jealous.”

“Pierre?”

“So you've noticed.”

She felt she was being toyed with. “Food for thought,” she said and went out to the dining room, wiping an ice water ring from the Formica counter as she watched a shy and smiling Iona return from Owen's boisterous booth.

Iona instantly told her, as if she were hiding a secret, “They needed cream,” and then she hurried past Natalie into the kitchen.

Carlo grinned so widely at Iona it seemed insanity was just minutes away.

“Well, I made contact,” she said.

Even as his foot began tapping, Carlo tried to act blithe by flipping a blueberry pancake with his spatula. “Was it like I told you?”

“Well, not really. Dick was a perfect gentleman, and Owen was Owen, but the French guy never said a peep.”

Carlo seemed to ponder that as he flipped another pancake. “And weren't you just a little more interested in why he wasn't noticing you?”

She gave it some thought. “I guess.”

“Well, there you go then. The French practically invented seduction; and you, my pretty one, are being seduced.”

“Huh,” Iona said.

Carlo tried to still his jittery leg by holding it firmly against the oven door, but it just made a thumping noise like a happy spaniel's tail. Iona gave him an inquisitive look. “Tell you what,” he said. “We'll go out together for fun in the sun. You and me and Owen and him. See if he doesn't scope you out.”

She was fixing her hair in a toaster's reflection. “Well, jeez,” she said. “He's male, isn't he?”

But Carlo was lost in a prurient stare, confirming her assumptions.

Natalie was wringing out a hand towel in the sink as Iona exited from the kitchen and halted to lean casually on the Formica counter and stare across the dining room. She heard Iona say, “You got yourself a catch, girl.” And though Iona meant Dick Tupper, Natalie presumed she meant Pierre, and she found herself watching her fiancé with other eyes until he and Dick and Owen finally left the café. She was hurt that Pierre ignored her.

12

A
t noon on Thursday Mrs. Christiansen took Natalie to the fairgrounds. Wearied from the first night of The Revels, Marvyl sportily hummed along beside her on a motorized sort of tricycle as Natalie meandered through the crowds past the various outdoor booths of The Revels: a French Foreign Legion shooting gallery with Algerian rifles and tin camels for targets; a miniature Eiffel Tower ring toss booth; a place where you could dunk a quite dry musketeer in a cow watering tank if you pitched a softball into a tin target with impossible speed and accuracy. Girlish screaming was issuing from a gloomy Bastille that was stocked full of hall-ways that headed nowhere, scarecrows and mannequins that hurled themselves at trespassers, and funhouse mirrors that so horribly misshaped a person that she might think unwillingly of the buttocks on her Aunt Dolly.