Chapter Eight
I let myself in through the side door so Mimi doesn’t have to get to her feet.
“Good morning,” I call.
“I’m here,” Mimi says. “Not dead yet.”
My parents’ place is a good size, but the Big House makes it look like a hovel.
The original structure is a lovely two-story stone farmhouse, but Mimi and her late husband, the great Edward Saint James, added three wings.
There are six fireplaces, a library, and a ballroom with French doors that open onto the back terrace.
Mimi’s listening to something dramatic and classical—from a ballet, no doubt. I put the fried rice in the fridge and follow the orchestra to the bright sitting room at the back of the house.
She’s smoking a skinny cigarette and flipping through Vogue, dressed in a black caftan and one of her wigs.
This one has short, raven curls that are stark against her paper-thin skin.
Before she met George’s grandfather, Mimi was a principal dancer in Montreal’s Les Grands Ballets Canadiens.
I imagine she was considered a strange creature out here in North Kawartha long before my brothers and I thought she was a witch.
“You’re supposed to be quitting,” I say, kissing the cheek she offers me.
“You’re supposed to be married.”
“For two months,” I respond, sitting across from her and placing Mom’s tin of muffins on the coffee table.
“Rebecca’s chocolate-chip cookies?” she asks. Her voice is as dry as parchment.
“Blueberry muffins.”
“Pas mal.”
Mimi and George are both bilingual. My French is atrocious, but I get pas mal. Not bad.
She takes a long drag of her cigarette before stubbing it out.
“There’s fried rice for you in the fridge,” I say.
“Gorgeous girl. How are you feeling?” she asks, her dark blue eyes fastened on me in a way that reminds me of her grandson. Mimi no longer has a ballerina’s upright spine—hers curls inward like a fern frond—but there’s something about her that feels regal.
“That’s not the first time I’ve been asked that question today.”
“George?” she asks.
“My mom.”
“Well, it’s a big day. You had a vision for what your life would look like, and things turned out very differently. I know how that feels.”
Mimi thought she’d be married to ballet but then she fell in love with a lumber baron who preferred quiet to the city.
“I’m okay,” I say. “Although sometimes it feels like my whole life has fallen apart.”
The bad days from the last two months flash before my eyes.
The note on blue stationery. The nights spent tallying my faults. My credit card statement. The obliterating waves of loneliness.
“C’est bête,” Mimi says. “One day at a time. Keep your head up, shoulders proud, and breathe, Francesca. Remember what I used to say in class: Breathe from your belly.”
A laugh honks out of me.
“What’s so funny?” she asks.
“Ballet.”
Mimi chortles.
For a few years, Mimi held ballet lessons for local children in the ballroom. She said she was bored. My mother signed me up, but Mimi kicked me out after three lessons. I can still hear her telling my mom, “Francesca struggles to control her breathing, and she’s rude to the other girls.”
For some reason, it was always easier to dance with George.
“This, too, shall pass,” Mimi says. “Everything does. Besides, I never thought he was the man for you.”
“That opinion seems to run in the Saint James family.”
“Few people know you better than me and George.”
It’s true. When we were kids, George and I usually found ourselves here after school.
Mimi let us have grape pop with our afternoon snack and then George and I would run upstairs to play.
She had closets full of outlandish clothes and trunks full of old wigs, hats, and other fodder for costumes. The Big House was our castle.
“No one knows me better than George,” I say now.
Mimi lights another cigarette. “At one time, yes, but I’m not sure that’s the case anymore. Your engagement was quite the surprise.”
She stares at me as she takes a long drag.
“I wish we could go back to the way we were,” I say quietly. “Why can’t things stay the same?”
“You can never go back, ma chère. You can only go forward. You’re adults now, not children running around in bare feet, spitting watermelon seeds at each other.
” She waves her cigarette at me. “But who’s to say what the future will bring?
I spent years holed up in here, mourning my husband, my estranged son, and the grandson I barely knew. ”
“And then George moved in,” I say.
She nods. “And I came back to life.”
The grounds of the Big House did, too. Neglected gardens were tended, rosebushes pruned, and lawns manicured. And my brothers and I stopped referring to Mimi as the witch.
“Do you miss him?”
“I miss him as much as you do,” says Mimi.
“So all the time?”
“Every minute of the day.”
“I wish he’d come home for good.”
But I know there’ll always be another assignment to lure George away. Being his friend means accepting him for who he is, including his refusal to be attached to anyone, anywhere.
Mimi tuts. “George needed to stretch his wings, to find his own place in the world. Same as you.”
“And yet I’m right back where I started.” My wings have been clipped.
“I’ve found that going back to the beginning is sometimes the only way to move forward,” Mimi says. “Besides, I think things are about to look up.”
“Oh? Is Leo coming to give the pool a bonus cleaning?”
Leo is the brawny young man who services the pool every Wednesday. On Leo days, Mimi and I position ourselves on the patio with iced tea and crack jokes under our breath about what else Leo could service. It’s the only action either of us gets around here.
She offers me a sly smile. “Better.”