Queen of Babble (25 page)

“It’s so beautiful!” I cry. Because it is. A sun-dappled, gently flowing river, with wide, grassy banks, over which tall oak trees tower, their leafy branches providing bathers and rafters with welcome shade.

“The Dordogne,” Luke explains. “I used to go rafting on it when I was a kid. Although that makes it sounds like there are rapids, which there aren’t, really. We’d go down it on inflatable tires. It’s a nice, lazy ride.”

Impressed by so much natural beauty, I shake my head. “Luke, I don’t get how you can go back to Houston when you have all this.”

Luke laughs and says, “Well, much as I love my dad, I don’t exactly want to live with him.”

“No,” I say mournfully. “Neither does your mom, I guess.”

“He drives her crazy,” Luke agrees. “She thinks all he cares about is his wine. When he’s here, all he does is fuss over his vines, and when he’s back in Texas, with her, all he ever did was worry about them.”

“But he loves her so much,” I say. “I mean, can’t she tell that? He can barely take his eyes off her.”

“I guess she needs more than that,” Luke says. “Some kind of proof that when she’s not around, he thinks about her, too. And not just his grapes.”

I’m mulling this over when we turn a corner and I see the Laurents’ millhouse—with Madame Laurent outside, watering the explosion of blossoms in her arbored garden.

“Oh!” I cry. “It’s Agnès’s mom!” I wave.“Bonjour! Bonjour, madame!”

Madame Laurent looks up from her flowers and waves back, smiling, as we whiz past.

“Well,” Luke says, glancing at me with a grin, “you’re certainly in a good mood this morning.”

“Oh,” I say, sinking back into my seat in embarrassment over my excitement at seeing the Château Mirac cook in her own habitat. “This place is so beautiful. And I’m just. So happy. To be here.”

With you,I almost add. But for once, I manage to shut my mouth before it runs away with me.

“I suspect,” Luke says, making a turn toward the high-walled city I’d seen perched up on a cliff the night I’d arrived, “that you’re the kind of person who’s in a good mood wherever you are. Except when you’ve just discovered your boyfriend is a welfare cheat,” he adds with a wink.

I smile a little queasily back at him, still feeling mortified. Of all the people I had to open my big mouth to about my romantic problems, why did it have to behim ?

But a second later, as we enter the city of Sarlat, I forget my chagrin at the sight of all the red geraniums spilling down from window boxes above my head; the narrow cobblestoned streets; the villagers, hurrying along to the open-air market with their baskets filled with baguettes and vegetables. It’s like a movie-set version of a French medieval village—only it isn’t a movie set. It’s a real medieval village!

And I’m right in the middle of it!

Luke pulls up in front of a quaint old shop with the wordboulangerie written in gold on the large front window and from which the smell of freshly baked bread wafts, causing my stomach to growl hungrily.

“Do you mind waiting in the car?” Luke asks. “That way I don’t have to find a parking space. It’ll just take a second, I already phoned in the order. I just have to pick it up.”

“Pas un problème,”I say, which I think means “Not a problem.” I guess I’m right since Luke smiles and hurries inside.

Still, my grasp of French is put to the test a second later when a carefully dressed old woman approaches the car and begins babbling to me a mile a minute. The name “Jean-Luc” is the only word I recognize.

“Je suis désolée, madame,”I begin to say, which means “I’m sorry.” I think.“Mais je ne parle pas français —”

Before the words are all the way out of my mouth, the old woman is saying, in French-accented English, looking scandalized, “But I understood Jean-Luc’spetite amie was French!”

At least I know what the wordspetite amie mean.

“Oh, I’m not Jean-Luc’s girlfriend,” I say hastily. “I’m just a friend. I’m staying at Mirac for a little while.

He’s inside picking up some croissants—”

The old woman looks infinitely relieved. “Oh!” she says, laughing. “I recognized the car, you see, and I just assumed…you must forgive me. That was quite a shock. For Jean-Luc not to marry a Frenchwoman…it would be quite a scandal!”

I take in the woman’s carefully knotted scarf—obviously Hermès—and light wool suit (she must be broiling in this heat) and say, “You must be a friend of Monsieur de Villiers, then?”

“Oh, I have known Guillaume for years. It was very shocking to all of us whenhe married that woman from Texas. Tell me”—the old woman narrows her perfectly made-up eyes—“is she there now?

Madame de Villiers? At Château Mirac? I heard a rumor she was…”

“Um,” I say. “Well, yes. Her niece is getting married there tomorrow, and—”

“Madame Castille,” Luke says as he comes out of the bakery with two large paper bags in his arms.

“What a pleasure.” His smile, though, doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Oh, Jean-Luc,” the old woman says, beaming with pleasure at the sight of him (well, who wouldn’t?).

And then she launches into a torrent of French against which Luke, I can tell, feels defenseless. Which is why I say, when Madame Castille pauses for breath, “Uh, Luke? Hadn’t we better get back? People are going to be waking up and wanting their breakfast.”

“Right,” Luke says quickly. “We have to go, madame. It was lovely seeing you. I’ll give my father your best, don’t worry.”

It isn’t until we’ve pulled away that Luke gives a mighty exhalation and says, “Thanks for that. I thought she was going to talk all day.”

“She’s a big fan of yours,” I say with cautious nonchalance. “She thought I was your girlfriend and she about had a heart attack that I wasn’t French. She said it will be a big scandal if you don’t marry a French girl. It was a big scandal when your dad married your mom, apparently.”

Luke throws the car into gear with more force than is strictly necessary. “The only person who was scandalized was her. She’s been after my dad since they were kids. Now that he and my mom are on the rocks, she can’t wait for the chance to sink her claws into him.”

“But it won’t work,” I say, “because your dad still loves your mom. Right?”

“Right,” Luke says. “Although I could see the old guy marrying that witch just to get her off his back.

Oh, here. I got you something.” He pokes the bag of heavenly scented croissants that sits between us.

“A croissant?” I ask, opening up the bag. A wave of yeasty steam hits me. They’re still warm from the oven. “Thanks!” I decide not to mention anything about my carb-free diet. I’ve pretty much given up on that since those rolls on the train down here, anyway.

“Not that bag,” Luke says, looking at me like I’m crazy. “The other one.”

I notice a smaller bag behind the one containing the croissants and open it.

And my eyes nearly pop out of my head.

“Wha—” I gasp. I am, for only the second time in my life, speechless. “How—how did you know?”

“Chaz said something about it,” Luke says.

I pull the six-pack—glistening with moisture—from the bag and stare at it.

“They’re…they’re still cold,” I say wonderingly.

“Well,” Luke says a little dryly, “yes. I know Sarlat looks old, but they do have refrigeration.”

I know it’s ridiculous. But my eyes have actually filled with tears. I do my best to blink them away. I don’t want him to know that I’m crying with joy over the fact that he’s given me a six-pack of diet Coke.

Because I’m not. It’s the gesture, not the beverage.

“Th-thank you,” I say. I know I need to keep the conversation short, or he’ll hear the tremor in my voice. “D-do you want one?”

“You’re welcome,” Luke says. “And no, thank you. I prefer to get my caffeine the old-fashioned way, with a Colombian drip. So. What have you decided?”

I’ve taken one of the cans from the plastic holder and am about to crack it open. “Decided?”

“About what you’re going to do,” Luke says. “When you get back to the States. Are you going to stay in Ann Arbor? Or move to New York?”

“Oh.” I crack open the can. The sharp hiss of carbonation is every bit as musical to my ears as the burble of the river to my left. “I don’t know. I want to move to New York. You know, with Shari. But what would I do there?”

“In New York?”

“Right. I mean, let’s face it. It turns out there’s not a whole lot you can do with an individualized major in history of fashion. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Oh,” Luke says with a mysterious smile, “I’m pretty sure you’ll figure something out.”

“Right,” I say—very sarcastically. I mean, for me, anyway. “And then there’s the small fact that I haven’t exactly graduated yet. How can I find a job if I don’t even have my B.A. yet?”

“Well,” Luke says, “I think that depends on the job.”

“I don’t know,” I say. And take a sip of my diet Coke. The bubbles from the carbonation tickle my tongue. God, I’ve missed this. “It might just be simpler to stay in Ann Arbor for one last semester.”

“Right,” Luke says. “And see if you can patch things up with what’s-his-name.”

I am so shocked by this I nearly spit out the diet Coke I’ve just swallowed. Yes! Nearly one of sixteenth
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of one my six precious cans!

“WHAT?” I cry after I swallow. “Patch things up with—what are you TALKING about?”

“Just checking,” Luke says. “I mean, you say you want to stay in Ann Arbor…and he’ll be in Ann Arbor. Right?”

“Well, yeah,” I say. “But that’s not why. I mean, at least in Ann Arbor I still have my job at the shop. I could live at home and save up my money, then join Shari in January.” If she hasn’t already found another roommate.

“That,” Luke says as he turns the car up the driveway to Mirac, “doesn’t sound much like the girl I met on the train the other day, the one who took off for France without even knowing if she’d have a place to stay when she got there.”

“I knew I’d have a place to stay,” I say. “I mean, I knew Shari was heresomewhere . I knew I wouldn’t be alone.”

“Just like you wouldn’t be alone in New York,” Luke says.

I laugh. “Oh, you’re one to talk,” I say. “Why aren’tyou moving to New York? You told me you got into NYU.”

“Yeah,” Luke says as we bounce along the steep driveway. “But I don’t know if that’s really what I want to do. I mean, give up my six-figure salary for five more years of school?”

“Oh, you’d rather help rich people figure out how to make more money than save lives?”

“Ouch,” Luke says with a grin.

I shrug. Or as best I can when I’m being jounced around so much and am also trying to protect the precious elixir in the can I’m holding. “I’m just saying. I mean, managing stock portfolios is important. But if it turns out what you’re actually good at is healing sick people, isn’t it kind of a waste not to do that instead?”

“But that’s just it,” Luke says. “I don’t know if I am. Good at healing sick people, I mean.”

“Just like I don’t know if there’s anything I’m good at that someone in New York will actually pay me to do.”

“But,” he says, “as a certain person keeps telling me, you’ll never know if you don’t even give it a try.”

Then we’re bursting out of the trees again and onto the circular drive that leads to the house. It’s even more impressive, it turns out, in daylight than it is at nighttime.

Not that Luke seems to notice. I guess because he’s seen it so many times already.

“That’s different,” I say. “I mean, you already know there’s something you can do. Someone’s paying you a six-figure salary to do it. You know how much I get paid? I get eight bucks an hour at Vintage to Vavoom. You know how far eight bucks an hour goes in New York City? Well, I don’t, either. But I’m guessing not very far.”

Luke, I notice when I glance nervously his way to see what he thinks of my admission, is grinning more broadly than ever.

“Is this how you are with everybody?” he wants to know. “Or am I just lucky because, in a moment of weakness, you revealed all your deepest secrets to me?”

“You promised not to tell anyone about those,” I remind him. “Especially Shari, about the thesis—”

“Hey,” Luke says, pulling up in front of the château. His gaze is steady on mine. He’s not smiling anymore. “I said I wouldn’t tell. Remember? And I’m not going to. You can trust me.”

And for a second—while we sit there looking at each other across the bag of croissants—I can swear that something…happens…between us.

I don’t know what. But it’s different from all the times I thought he was going to kiss me. There’s nothing sexual about what happens there in the car. It’s more like some sort of…mutual understanding. Some sort of acknowledgment that we are spiritual kin. Some sort of magnetic pull—

Or maybe it’s just the smell of the croissants. It’s been a really long time since I’ve had any kind of pastry.

Whatever it is that’s going on between Luke and me—if anything—it’s over a second later when the door to the château is thrown open and Vicky, standing there in a pale blue kimono, says, “God, what took you so long? We’re allstarving . You know I get hypoglycemic if I don’t eat first thing in the morning.”

And the moment between Luke and me—whatever it was—is gone.

“Got your cure for hypoglycemia right here,” Luke says cheerfully, grabbing the bag of croissants.

Then, when Vicky stomps back into the house, Luke turns to me and winks.

“Look at that,” he says. “I’m healing people already.”

The dawn of the twentieth century is often referred to as “la Belle Époque,” or “the beautiful age.”

Certainly the fashions of the age were beautiful, featuring, as they did, big hair, low décolletage, and tons and tons of lace (see: Winslet, Kate,Titanic, and Kidman, Nicole,Moulin Rouge ). Achieving the look of a Gibson girl (created by a popular artist of the same name) became the rage, with even President Roosevelt’s vivacious daughter, “Princess” Alice, wearing her hair in the Gibson girl’s pompadour style—a look very hard to maintain while “motoring,” Alice’s favorite hobby.

History of Fashion

SENIOR THESIS BY ELIZABETH NICHOLS