The Shadows of Foxworth Read online

  She stared a moment. “Did he tell you that?”

  “He said he used to draw caricatures, used to do that in New York City, and that was how Jean-Paul discovered him.”

  “Yes, that was how it was.”

  “And he was doing those funny pictures on the sidewalk in Charlottesville. So did he do one of you?”

  She nodded.

  “Something like that. Let’s go. You know how hungry your father and Jean-Paul can be, especially after they have a few aperitifs. I’ll have hors d’oeuvres for them. I’m just finishing that.”

  I went into the kitchen and said hello to Anne, who was sitting at the table working on string beans. She had long, spidery fingers that seemed to be moving totally on their own. It was obvious to me that she had been a very pretty woman when she was younger, because she had held on to her dainty facial features and youthful light-green eyes. Unlike other women her age, she didn’t expand at the hips like a balloon as if some invisible hand was pressing down on her head, turning her into a squash. She had a soft, friendly smile, and her light-brown hair still battled the gray strands. She was quite fond of Yvon and me. She called herself our godmother just because Jean-Paul was our godfather. Neither of us ever contradicted her when she introduced herself to people that way.

  “If I don’t see Marlena for two days, I think I’m meeting a new girl,” she told my mother. “She’s growing that fast.”

  Mama looked at me as if she hadn’t noticed, but she didn’t smile as I was anticipating.

  “Yes, she is growing quickly. Some women leave their childhood as if they are escaping from it. They don’t realize what they’ve lost until it’s too late,” Mama said.

  Her expression made me feel guilty of something.

  “I can’t help growing up, Mama,” I protested, maybe too hard. They both laughed.

  “That’s the tragedy of it,” she said, and Anne nodded.

  “Not to me,” I insisted. “What was so bad about your leaving childhood, Mama? What did you lose?”

  Her smile evaporated so quickly that it couldn’t be remembered.

  “Just start on the mashed potatoes,” she said. She turned away from me and began talking about the new work being done on the port and how more tourists would be coming to our quiet little village.

  We heard Papa drive up with Jean-Paul. Yvon went out to help bring him into the house. They sat in the living room, where Papa poured them all an aperitif. Mama sent Anne out to join them, refusing to let her do any more work on dinner preparations. I began to set the table. Mama brought them all a tray of caramelized-onion tarts with olives and anchovies. It was actually something Anne had taught her to make.

  Papa described the merchant-ship captain and what he had told us about Norway and the farmhouse back there.

  “I think the one you used in the painting originally might have been built by a man from Norway, Beau,” Jean-Paul said. “Maybe you sensed the captain was coming and painted the landscape just for him.”

  “I’m as good as a gypsy fortune-teller, huh?” Papa said.

  “Every artist has a little clairvoyance in his soul,” Jean-Paul insisted.

  For some reason, Papa looked quickly at me when Jean-Paul said that.

  “Well, you did when you looked at my early attempts, old friend.”

  “That didn’t take much clairvoyance. Anyone with an ounce of talent and an eye for it could recognize what it was in you to become.”

  “And what’s that exactly?” Papa asked.

  “More famous than me, for sure,” Jean-Paul said. Everyone but Yvon laughed. Sometimes I thought he loved Jean-Paul as much as he loved Papa and never wanted to hear a negative thing about him. I smiled because it was such a generous and selfless thing for Jean-Paul to say. He was still far more famous.

  Papa loved the hors d’oeuvres, and Anne said Mama had made them better than she could. Jean-Paul disagreed, and Anne said he was still flattering her to keep her faithful. Even Yvon laughed at that and especially at how Jean-Paul protested.

  “You see, Yvon,” Jean-Paul said. “You can never win with a woman, and even if you do, you lose, because they make you feel so terrible that you’ve won.”

  Yvon smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “And never disagree with any woman I like.”

  “Bon chance with that,” Jean-Paul said.

  “Some things are not left to chance,” Yvon said. “And even if they are, it’s what you’ve made of it.”

  Jean-Paul and Anne laughed.

  “So much wisdom packed in so young a body,” Jean-Paul said.

  Papa looked proud at how well Yvon could hold a conversation. Jean-Paul was right. Yvon was so much older than any other boy his age. There wasn’t a man in the village who didn’t respect him as a man. My brother, I thought, will always fill me with confidence. Was it unnatural to love him so?

  I went back into the kitchen with Mama to get our dinner ready to serve. She glanced at me and looked very sad for a moment.

  “Anything wrong, Mama?”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you out of your childhood, Marlena,” Mama said. “These are just such precious moments for you.”

  “But they weren’t for you?”

  “Sometimes they were, but I was in far too much of a rush to become a femme fatale.”

  “What?”

  Hearing her say such a thing about herself was quite shocking. My mother? A femme fatale? I knew what that was from listening in on Anne and her conversations about other village women. And when I mentioned it to Yvon, he went into a long explanation, as if it proved something he always believed. He even said, “All women have a little of that in them,” which by implication meant me, too.

  But he surely didn’t mean Mama, I thought. Now she was admitting to it.

  “I was very competitive and very determined to be one. But thankfully, your father came along and saved me.”

  “When? How? Were you as young as me? Where exactly?” I fired my questions almost in a frenzy.

  “Slow down, Marlena.”

  “I just want to know more. I’m old enough now, aren’t I, Mama?”

  “Yes, but you should learn everything slowly. Just as it’s not wise to rush into your future, it’s not wise to rush back to your past. Sometimes that can be tragic,” she added. “Let’s get this food out before they eat the table,” she said. I was disappointed. How could a return to the past be tragic?

  “Nevertheless, you will tell me everything about how you fell in love with Papa, won’t you, Mama?”

  “Of course,” she said, then brushed back my hair and kissed me. “But don’t expect a fairy tale. It wasn’t all that different from how other people fall in love.”

  I was still excited. No matter how simple the story was, it would be a fairy tale to me. It had to be. How could my parents not be magical?

  At dinner, Jean-Paul, who heard about the captain mistaking me for my mother in the landscape, suggested my father might now consider me for some of his future works. I looked at my mother first and then my father. They seemed to have the same expression… sadness.

  “Perhaps,” my father replied cautiously, eyeing my mother. Mama said nothing. Why was my growing up so painful for them to take?

  “You’re a lucky man to have such beauty available. I remember when I had to talk to some pretty women, convince them to spend the time standing still and—”

  “Oh, you had such a hard time,” Anne said, shaking her head and clicking her tongue. She looked at us, especially Yvon and me. “Your godfather created the concept of a flirt. I hear that men making movies have the same line he used when they approach a young woman these days.”

  “What’s that?” Yvon asked.

  “Did anyone ever tell you that you ought to be in pictures?”

  Jean-Paul assumed the expression of someone insulted, and then he laughed. “Well, it used to work,” he confessed. “It worked with you, mon amour.”

  She slapped him playfull
y on the arm. “I only pretended it did to make you feel better about yourself,” she said. “Men and their egos.”

  We all laughed.

  How could my childhood have been any better than this? I thought, and then looked at my mother, who was staring at me. She looked terribly sad, as if she was the one with clairvoyance and not Papa the artist. Maybe she was right to be sad. My childhood was dissolving, and with it all the pretend and magic. How many times had Mama told me that adults don’t have time to dance among the stars? Did I push her too hard? Did I wish for something I would regret?

  Later that night, after Mama, Anne, and I cleaned up, Papa took Jean-Paul back to his house, and Yvon, being a gentleman, escorted Anne down the hill. I was unaware that Mama had slipped out of the house. I went looking for her and saw her standing on the side of the path to the crest of the hill near our house. She had her arms folded across her waist.

  It was a moonless night, with scattered thick clouds, and a little cooler than usual for this time of year. I went back in and fetched Mama’s light-blue shawl, slipped on my pink cardigan sweater, and hurried out, but she wasn’t there. For a few moments, I thought she might have gone around and reentered the house from the front, but then I saw her silhouette moving toward the crest of the hill. I ran after her.

  “Mama!”

  She turned and waited for me. I handed her the shawl.

  “Thank you, sweetheart,” she said.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just getting some air. It always seems a little stuffy after we have a big meal and drink a bit too much wine.”

  She turned and continued to walk toward the crest with her head down. Her voice seemed different, sadder. After having such a good time and Papa making money on his picture, why would there be any sadness?

  “Are you all right?” I asked, catching up.

  “Oh, yes.” She smiled.

  “Something made you sad,” I insisted.

  She nodded.

  “What?”

  “Seeing you grow up so soon. Sometimes you can’t help but wish everyone you love would stay the way they are forever, especially your little girl,” she said.

  “Did your mother wish that for you?”

  She laughed. “Oh, yes. My mother was not in favor of me becoming a woman. She was quite Victorian.”

  “What was that?”

  “Stuffy, prudish. I thought she was afraid of life. She was unable to explain a woman’s monthlies to me and hired a nurse to do it. Don’t worry. I’ll never be a Victorian when it comes to you. Now that I see how much you’ve grown and how wise you are, you don’t have to be afraid to ask me anything when it comes to sex or boys, anything, Marlena.”

  I nodded. For some reason, hearing her so willing to talk about such things frightened me a bit. Maybe I was growing up too fast.

  “Is that why you don’t like talking about her very much?”

  “I don’t have pleasant memories of my childhood and my mother, so I don’t like thinking about her. I’d rather imagine I was born on that beach down there,” she said. “I grew instantly into a young woman, and the first person I saw was your father. He had been waiting for me, like in a dream.”

  “Well, what about your father?” I asked, now that she had been this revealing.

  “He was a man solely consumed with his banking business. Well, not always that way, but again, I’d rather not think about it. I don’t want to relive the pain and disappointment, and I certainly don’t want to visit any of it upon you or Yvon.”

  Pain and disappointment in your father? I couldn’t imagine such a thing happening to me.

  “What did he do?”

  “Hey!” we heard, and looked back at the house. Papa had dropped off Jean-Paul and probably stopped on his way back to get Yvon, who was also on his way back up the hill.

  Mama waved.

  “We’re coming down!” she shouted, so they wouldn’t start walking up.

  I was disappointed. I wished my father and brother would have stayed away just a while longer. Despite her reluctance, I sensed I could have learned a lot more about her family, her childhood.

  “Come,” she said, and took my hand. She probably could feel my disappointment. “Let’s talk only about happier things, Marlena. Happiness makes us strong.”

  The moment we returned to the house, we could see that Papa couldn’t contain the excitement he had locked away during our dinner celebrating his great sale. He already had been thinking about his next painting, and contrary to his usual secrecy and mystery, he wanted us all to experience his new vision as perfectly as he did. It was going to be that special.

  There was a view from the medieval city of Eze that Papa had fixed on. It was high up, and he said he could capture the seaside from our village to Nice and beyond. He had some ideas for how he wanted Mama to stand looking out and down. He surprised us all, but especially Mama, by bringing out a woman’s medieval dress, a black Ameline peasant dress with a bodice laced with brace grommets. The skirt was split to show the muslin underdress.

  “I thought it would be fun to imagine and create the landscape with you back hundreds of years. So much of the original Eze is there. What do you think?” he asked her, and held up the dress like a bullfighter tempting the bull. “People will think the painting is that old, an original. I’ll mix the paint especially to achieve that sense.”

  “You kept that dress hidden so well?” she asked, surprised.

  He just smiled.

  “Let me see,” she said, and went to put on the dress. When she came out, we all thought she looked quite beautiful.

  “Yes, beautiful and interesting,” Papa added. “N’est-ce pas, Yvon?”

  “Yes, Papa, but she’ll need medieval shoes, too, unless you won’t paint her feet.”

  Papa laughed. “Yvon told me that Monsieur Dufloit has something in his collection, a pair of low black leather boots that will fit your mother,” Papa said.

  “How long have you been planning this picture?” Mama asked.

  Papa looked at Yvon. “Since Yvon and I took a ride up to Eze. About two weeks ago, eh, Yvon?”

  “Yes, but it was a very slow ride with all those turns.”

  “Worth it,” Papa insisted. “We’ll just start early in the morning. You’ll do the preparations for dinner so we don’t have to rush back, Marlena. Corrine?”

  “Oh, she’s quite capable, Beau. I’m sure Yvon will help as well.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “I’ll get the boots tomorrow, and we’ll begin. Jean-Paul is jealous. He’s always meant to do a landscape from that height, but the trip up was too taxing, or it was before I got our roadster. He actually gave me the idea. I drove us up there to see if I agreed. What did you think of the view, Yvon?”

  “One of the best, for sure, Papa.”

  Papa looked at me. “One day, I’ll take you up to see it,” he promised.

  “Your father’s mind is always somewhere in the clouds,” Mama said. “I’m not surprised he wants to do this.”

  I was excited about having new responsibilities. Mama left it up to me to decide what we would eat, what I should buy. I didn’t even confirm it with Yvon, but no one complained the entire first week.

  The work was energizing for both Papa and Mama. Every evening, they returned excited, raving about the scenery and someone or something they had seen during the day. It didn’t surprise me that they attracted attention, especially Mama in her medieval dress.

  I did more than look after our dinners. I cleaned the house and washed and dried clothes. Sometimes Yvon would come home earlier and do some work around the house. Papa had wanted to paint the wall surrounding our front steps, so Yvon decided to surprise him when he and Mama returned one day. Jean-Paul and Anne came to our dinners on the weekends, Jean-Paul eager to hear about the landscape picture. However, Papa never showed anyone his work now before he was satisfied it was done, not even Jean-Paul.

  Being so busy made me happier f
or another reason. Yvon went into his dark moods far less often. He was even more talkative and had good stories about the customers who came to the shop and the way Monsieur Dufloit treated some of the women he called beldams, women who had whittled their husbands down to baby lambs. His imitation of some of them and Monsieur Dufloit had both Mama and Papa in hysterics. Yvon was so different, looking even older and more mature.

  It was his idea to surprise Jean-Paul with a birthday dinner before his birthday, “because he wouldn’t approve of it.” He had declared he was not going to celebrate anymore. They reminded him too much of his age. No one believed him, but Yvon loved the idea of a surprise. I wasn’t as confident of my baking abilities; however, Yvon encouraged me and promised to be right beside me while I worked. We were so involved in it and the coq au vin, a wine and chicken dish I was preparing, that neither of us realized the time until Anne had arrived. She obviously had anticipated Papa driving down to pick up Jean-Paul.

  The sight of her shocked us. Mama and Papa knew we were making this special dinner. Papa had said they’d be back much earlier. For a moment, Yvon and I just stared at her standing there.

  “Where are your parents?” she asked. “Not back yet?”

  She would have seen Papa going down the hill to pick up Jean-Paul, I thought. She knew the answer.

  I looked at Yvon, and he put down the spoon he had been using to stir the sauce. He shook his head.

  “Artists,” Anne said, smiling and shaking her head. “They live in a different time zone. Their clocks have no hands.”

  I wiped my hands on a towel. Without speaking, Yvon and I looked at each other and then walked past Anne and out to the front of the house. Darkness was in a downpour. The only thing deeper was the silence.

  Neither of us spoke, perhaps both afraid of those first few words of fear and concern.

  And then, suddenly, I could hear the sound of those horses in my nightmares being driven into a pace so fast their eyes were bulging.

  3

  There was thunder even though it was a cloudless sky, with stars coming up like air bubbles out of the darkness. They seemed to be rushing in from everywhere, as if they wanted to witness this night. Papa used to call it “a thousand eyes of God opening up to peer down at us.”