“I’m sure Paris was a father’s nightmare,” said Mary Frances. “My father was a fan of boarding schools when I was young.”
Mrs. Parrish nodded. “I wanted desperately to see Paris before taking my place at home. Paris at the end of the century! Of course, now I understand that was something special. Then, Paris was enough.”
Mary Frances took out her notebook.
“Are you writing that down, my dear? So unnerving, these habits of writers.”
“I’m sorry,” Mary Frances said. “It’s just that your story reminded me of something else.”
She could feel Mrs. Parrish looking over her shoulder as she wrote. She marked her place in the book with her thumb.
“I look forward to reading your book, Mary Frances. Tim speaks so highly of your talent.”
“His help has been a godsend.”
“He has no doubt you will be published to wide acclaim. I think, when you find yourself in the public eye, careful comportment makes all the difference.”
Mary Frances laughed. “It’s a very little book. I don’t imagine we need to worry about the public eye.”
“You must always be careful how you present yourself. For instance, I know you to be the devoted wife of Tim’s best friend. I like knowing that about you, and I imagine I would find that reflected in the things you’ve chosen to write about. There might be other things about you I wouldn’t like to know, and they would change my feelings about your book.”
She spoke evenly, with the same instructive ease she’d spoken about chaperones and escorts, dinner table conversation and correspondence. “I don’t want to read about what I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what I don’t want to know, for that matter.”
“I appreciate that,” Mary Frances said, matching her tone. “I will remember that.”
Tim turned on the buckboard. “Are you warm enough, my dears? Another fur? A little nip of brandy? Mother?”
But Mrs. Parrish was looking out over the lake and didn’t seem to hear him. She reached forward and placed a gloved hand on the back of the driver.
“Once around again, please.” She said it in English, but the driver understood.
* * *
That night Mrs. Parrish suggested Mary Frances would go ahead to Dijon, and she and Tim follow a few days later.
“You and Al must have friends there, people you’d like to see,” Mrs. Parrish said. “And I’m sure Timmy can manage our train.”
“I have done it before,” Tim said. “No one’s gotten hurt.”
“It’s not necessary, Mrs. Parrish. I’m happy to stay with you.”
“I insist.”
“Well.” She looked at Tim. “Thank you.”
“Yes, Mother.” Tim sighed. “That’s very kind.”
Mary Frances bent to her coffee. Her conversation with Mrs. Parrish in the carriage suddenly seemed far more consequential than she’d thought, yet the woman remained personable, chatty, herself. She was a mother, after all. She was capable of many different tacks at once.
“I’m hoping you and Al will come to visit when we return,” she said. “I think I should meet him at last.”
“You should. He’s very curious about you. And grateful.”
Mrs. Parrish touched her hand, and that seemed to settle it. “It has been my pleasure.”
After his mother said good night and Tim walked Mary Frances to her rooms, unlocked her door, and pushed her up against the papered wall, his hand drawing up beneath her corselette, the thick resistant fabric and belts, her legs opening for him, after they’d made love on the carpet, finally reaching the bed, she told him what his mother had said in the park.
He laughed. “It’s nothing compared to what she said to me.”
“Oh god, Tim. Really?”
“Something about what happens on a ship is one thing, everybody packed in like sardines together, but she expects a return to my senses, post haste.”
Tim rolled away from her, found his pants on the floor, and extracted his cigarette case from the pocket. Their time together would be over soon, and she could not imagine what would come next, how anything could come next. They would certainly never get another chance like this.
“Shouldn’t you be getting back to your own room?” she said, looking at Tim, the smoke from his cigarette rising lazily.
He traced a slow line along her collarbone. “Post haste.”
* * *
She checked into the Hôtel de la Cloche and left her bags, the day bright and cold, the rooftops sending their wood smoke into the blue sky. She went first and stood in the street at Crespin’s, the oysterman still there with his craggy fingers, the gnarled shells. She tipped back a half-dozen oysters with a short cold beer for lunch, the rattle of Dijonnaise around her like the beat of wings in a coop. This was not Paris or Provence but dark gray France, musty and cobbled and muddy and rich. Behind her, she could hear the clock chiming at the Nôtre-Dame.
This was the place she’d first learned to pay attention to the particular way she noticed things, her perspective, to pay attention as a writer. If these were their last days together, she wanted Tim to know this city as she did, so that something between them might be complete.
She took the narrow stairs to the second floor at Aux Trois Faisons, the narrow hallway to Ribaudot’s office, still the short balding man, brusque and pacing, a lit cigarette between his teeth as he yelled into the telephone.
He pretended to remember her. “Yes, of course. Madame Fisher. You look well.”
“Thank you. I would like a table for Thursday night. A special table, please, a very special meal. Shall I order it now?”
“Of course, Madame.”
Perhaps he did remember. But the lingering feeling of unease followed her to the street, in and out of shops, through the empty rooms in the house on Petit Potet, where she and Al had first lived, and Madame, now poor and alone. Everything was changed. She’d pressed money into Madame’s hand as she left, then wandered the quarter, embarrassed, sad, the scent of gingerbread adrift.
When Tim and his mother arrived in Dijon, Mrs. Parrish seemed to need him constantly. She had letters to write and gifts to buy, she was too cold, too hot, too tired — would Tim read to her in their rooms? Mary Frances had other things to do, she was sure.
The one night she shared with Tim was their dinner at Aux Trois Faisons.
There was her table, the menu she’d ordered typewritten on a nice white card. There was the old man who ate with his dog, the four widows in their weeds, the young tourists much like herself and Al. There was her waiter, Charles, with his delicate waxed mustache. Old now, shrunken, his hands fumbled and shook, chasing his tools across the buffet. The Dubonnet ran a purple stain on the white cloth. He was obviously drunk. Mary Frances glanced at Tim, feeling somehow responsible, but he was looking at the swirl in his glass, the lovely deep color there, then at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “And somehow ashamed.”
Tim laughed. “Ashamed?”
“I’ve talked and talked about this restaurant.” She gestured at the purple stain, the pool of soup in his saucer.
“My dear,” he said. “What does it matter, where we are?”
And with that, the evening took up its slack. Course by course, the meal became the thing she’d hoped it would be: intricate and subtle and lovely and long, and none of that had to do with the place, which was ancient, or the food, which was perfectly prepared to her specifications, or the service, which somehow improved the more they asked of Charles, his skill finally rising to the surface. It was Tim. He made her laugh, he made her think, they lingered in the restaurant long past hours; the boy with the mop on the edge of their light, sweeping the long hall to the stairs.