Guy realized he’d always been afraid of his father and now he tensed up, which was absurd faced with this pallid, skinny copy of his heavy-drinking parent, this shrunken facsimile smiling his sketchy little smile. “Bonjour, Papa,” Guy said in a low voice the way he imagined Robert must sound. (His voice had always been much lower than Guy’s; when they were teenagers Guy could hear him in the next room talking to himself, forcing his voice down a few notes.) His father reached with his nearly transparent hand for Guy’s — something he’d never done before.
He realized that he always thought of Robert when he thought of his father. He’d always been jealous of the way they sat out Sunday morning mass while he attended with his mother and Tiphaine — the men and the women. His father had never been proud of his good grades and usually hadn’t even glanced at his report card, though he’d been there at every soccer game Robert played, even some of the practice sessions, despite the fact that Robert had been a very mediocre player. If Robert took a girl out to the movies, his father, even if he always claimed to be broke (fauché), could usually find a blue folded note of fifty francs in his pocket. When his father was so drunk he couldn’t get up the stairs to bed, it was Robert who took off his shoes and propped him up, dragging him along and whispering sweet nothings in his father’s ear, while Guy and his mother, pretending to read, sat rigid and unsmiling under the bright floor lamp, almost embarrassed to be witnessing out of the corner of an eye such a tender, intimate, shameful moment.
But now his dying father had opened his eyes wide and was trying to say something. Guy bent down so that his ear was next to his father’s lips, which were whispering, “Water.” Guy held up his father’s head with the matted white hair and looked at his long white nose hairs and tilted a glass to his papery lips. Guy was embarrassed by his expensive Creed eau de cologne, but he was sure his father couldn’t identify it. Tiphaine, who’d been napping in her room, came down the stairs, plumper than before, her hair crushed on one side, her cheap dress ill-fitting. She whispered, “Guy,” and kissed him on both cheeks, but for some reason she was smiling at this little drama of filial piety, as if she knew how insincere and out-of-character it was. Guy resented her smile but overcame his surge of hostility toward her.
Guy’s mother heated up a daube and spooned it out for her children. It wasn’t half bad, Guy said to himself, and then hated himself for even noticing. This was hardly a moment to be handing out stars for cuisine. Robert came home after they’d been served and spent fifteen minutes washing grease from his hands and arms and lingered five minutes looking at his sleeping father. He said he had a kayak and spent a lot of time boating and paddling. He checked out Guy’s wasp waist and muttered his teenage nickname, Sec (“Dry”). Robert’s neck, however, was cross-hatched with tiny squares — the sun, no doubt. Real men don’t moisturize.
While their mother was in the kitchen fetching the dessert, Robert said, “You seem to be prospering.”
“Can’t complain.”
“You know, at the garage I have a chance to get a good price on an ’82 Opel. Mom needs a new car.”
Guy said, “Sure.” He felt guilty because he hadn’t thought about her car; New Yorkers weren’t part of car culture, though he had his Mercedes. “How much is it?”
“I think I can get it for thirty-two hundred francs.”
“Thank you for arranging it.”
“What do you drive?”
“Mercedes SEL.”
Robert winced, the way he always had. “I’m sorry I haven’t been contributing my part to help Mom. But at the garage … and with three kids …” (gosses, he said, a word Guy had almost forgotten). “And I make all the repairs around here. You’re never here.”
Oh, dear, Guy thought. “That’s our deal,” he said smoothly. “You look in on Mother”—he glanced at Tiphaine—“and you do, too. Money is the easy part. I’m so grateful to both of you.” He didn’t want to sound hypocritical; they had never been this polite, this deferential around each other before. He smiled forbearingly at his siblings with a look that pleaded, he hoped, for sympathy and, if he’d somehow offended them, for forgiveness.
“What’s this, what’s this?” their mother sang out in a forced, cheerful voice as she brought in the chocolate mousse. It was his favorite, at least according to family legend, though he hadn’t eaten a dessert in twenty years. But he’d heard her whipping the cream in the kitchen and he knew he couldn’t refuse it.
“We’re going to give you a new-old car, an Opel,” Guy said. “Robert’s arranging it.”
“But that’s too extravagant,” their mother cried. “The old one—”
“Robert’s getting it at a good price. And he’ll make sure it runs well.”
Guy worried that Robert would resent this last assertion, that Guy was being a busybody, but Robert was smiling and saying Guy would pay for it out of his New World riches. “And I’ll wash it and vacuum it once a month,” Tiphaine threw in lightheartedly.
Their mother seemed overwhelmed. She had tears in her eyes and looked at Guy. “You already do so much for me. How did I deserve such a loving son? If I’d economized better—”
Guy held a finger to his lips and shushed her. “No one else could make so little money go so far. I’m the one at fault, I’ve been thoughtless. I haven’t taken into account that the dollar’s been getting weaker. I will double your allowance and buy the car if Robert will be so kind as to handle the transaction and do the maintenance — that’s the hard part.”
As was her nature, their mother cleared the dishes before everyone was done. When she came back in she said, “How is that nice … Baron Édouard?” she asked, uncomfortable with his title but fearing, no doubt, that a simple “monsieur” would be rude or sound presumptuous. Tiphaine and Robert exchanged glances and a smirk, as if they were privy to a private joke.
“Oh, Édouard?” Guy said lazily. “He’s always the same, never changes. I guess rich people don’t change as much as the rest of us; we have to hustle. Except now he’s crazy about antiques and is pawing through everyone’s attic or barn, looking for a treasure. He asks after you … often.” Seeing that his brother and sister were still smirking, he hoped to defuse their satire by asking, “Do you think he’s a real baron? Or a Jew ennobled by the prince of Lichtenstein for making a big loan? Or do businessmen just use titles for prestige? I read that one quarter of all titles in Europe are fake.”
“Fake? Fake?” their mother shrieked, horrified as if he’d questioned the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. “He seemed to me authentic and a charming, generous man.”
Guy wondered if she’d think him so charming if she could see him naked and barking.
Robert at least had stopped sneering. “I guess you must meet a lot of phonies in the fashion industry?”
Guy wondered how he could respond calmly to this remark. “I suppose all worlds have their fakes. Even garage mechanics. But strictly speaking Édouard isn’t in fashion. He’s a brewer.”
Robert nodded solemnly. Their mother muttered, “In any event a very charming man, truly elegant.”
At that moment they heard their father — whose bed had been moved downstairs into the salon — groan, and their mother rushed to his side and the three children followed her slowly, timidly. “We’re here, my darling,” their mother cooed. “We’re right here, chéri, your whole family, your three children and me, you’re not alone,” but Guy thought that was a lie, you’re never so alone as at the moment of your death.