Chapter 17 #2
“It’s just over there.” Stella points to the horizon. “You can see it from around the curve in the shore. We’ll have a quick ride.”
A quick but bumpy ride. I cling to the bags and the railing at the same time. Stella smokes the entire way. By the time we reach the shadowy far shore, Stella, the captain, and Lucie are engaged in a rollicking discussion of the merits of Camille Paglia that would only ever happen in France.
“I agree that men must be educated, refined, and ethically persuaded away from their tendency toward anarchy and brutishness,” the captain grumbles as he steers us into the island’s harbor. “But it has to be done gently. No man wants to be told what to do.”
“Oh, that’s exactly what some of them want,” Lucie scoffs.
“I have found the same,” Stella says. “Are you married?”
“Not anymore,” the captain grunts. “Because she was always telling me what to do.” We laugh at that, and he adds, “But now I miss it.”
Stella places a hand on his mottled forearm. “Of course you do.” To us, she motions toward a low hill. “The house isn’t too far. We’ll walk.”
“What other option is there?” I ask.
“Sometimes there’s a taxi, but not tonight. Too late.”
A row of sweet fishing cottages lines the coastline, soft light emanating from one or two windows. Not a soul in sight.
Our way is lit only by the moon and a flashlight procured from our captain. A small animal, maybe a cat or a fox, scurries across the path, startling all of us and causing us to giggle uncontrollably at our nerves.
We walk along a sandy path for about fifteen minutes, most of it uphill.
Stella’s breath comes in harsh, whispering gasps.
Finally, a humble one-story cottage comes into view.
It’s surrounded by low stone walls and towering cypress trees.
The door’s unlocked, a fire already burning in the hearth.
On the rustic kitchen table there’s a crusty baguette, surrounded by both soft and hard cheeses and a smattering of fruit and nuts.
“The owner lives on the other side of the island and she was expecting us,” Stella says happily.
“What if we hadn’t come?”
“I didn’t think that was an option,” Stella says curtly, unwinding the scarf from her head.
She sits at the table and pops a grape in her mouth.
“I wasn’t planning for you to say no. There are four bedrooms. All itty-bitty, but at least everyone will have their own space.
We can regroup in the morning after a good sleep.
In the meantime, unpack our masterpiece and hang her somewhere we can enjoy her.
She won’t be ours for much longer and I want to spend as much time with her as we can. ”
I wake up to find Stella perched on the edge of my twin bed watching me while I sleep. A soft rain patters on the clay-shingled roof. Morning light filters in through sweet red gingham curtains. I’m wrapped in a thick quilt that smells like pine needles and burnt leaves.
“You were crying in your sleep,” she says. When I turn my head, my pillow is wet.
“Bad dreams. I never remember them. I probably don’t want to.”
But I do remember what I dreamed last night. It was a memory, a terrible one.
I was in Paris for six months when I got the call from Philadelphia.
I didn’t even manage a hello before the scream nearly shattered my eardrum. “Let go of me. Get your hands off me. How dare you?” Another scream, this one more desperate than the last.
“Mom?” I managed, unsure if she could hear me. The line went dead, and my insides fragmented.
When my phone rang again, a woman was on the line. “This is Officer Santos,” she said.
“Hello, Officer,” I said politely. Politeness mattered most of all in these situations. “Could you please tell me what’s going on?”
“The neighbors reported a smell coming out of the apartment. Said they hadn’t seen the tenant in weeks.
They were worried she was dead and asked us to come check on her.
She didn’t answer the door and we had to break the lock.
When we got through she charged at us with a baseball bat.
” The cop said all of this calmly, carefully. Just the facts.
“She was nude. And she has not bathed in some time. She was covered with both blood and feces. She looks extremely malnourished. Does she live here alone?”
“Yes,” I whispered through my shame of abandoning her even though she had been doing so well when I left. I should have known better.
“Are you nearby? We’ll be taking her in for a psych eval. Can you meet us at the hospital?”
“I can’t. I’m in Paris.”
“Paris?” She laughed like it was the craziest of jokes even as I heard my mother shrieking in the background.
It was a mistake admitting where I was. I knew it the second it came out of my mouth.
I should have said I was anywhere else but Paris.
Who the hell was I? An ungrateful daughter who jetted off to France to leave her mentally ill mother to fend for herself.
Maybe. But there was much more to the story that I couldn’t explain to this exhausted and overworked police officer who was trying to wrangle my violent mom into an ambulance.
“For work,” I muttered. That was true. What I was doing was my work; going to school was my job so that I could eventually get commissions and sell my art.
Lucie and Colette were constantly reminding me of that.
I also came to escape and hide and reinvent myself.
All these things could also be true, but I couldn’t justify myself to a stranger judging me from across an ocean.
“Is there anyone else I can call?” The officer’s tone had become less friendly.
“Someone who isn’t on vacation in Europe?
” And the answer was going to disappoint her.
We didn’t have anyone else. It had always been just the two of us.
I thought about the home aide I had hired who had her own young children.
I couldn’t bother her in the middle of the night.
“No. But I can make arrangements to come home. Where is she being taken so I can reach out?”
“I won’t let you take me,” Mom screamed again. And then she wailed my name. “Emmmmmmmmy, don’t let them do this to me.”
“We’re taking her to Belmont,” the cop said. “If we can manage to get her in this ambulance. I don’t know what they’ll do with her once she gets there. You need to come home.”
The line went dead.
After the episode I went home for a week. Lucie lent me thousands of dollars even though we’d only known one another for six months.
“I’ll make more,” she’d said. I organized doctors, fought with Medicaid, and had my mother committed to an inpatient facility, financed mostly on credit cards.
And then I left again, the guilt a stone constantly lodged in my gut.
Last night I dreamed of the call and her screams. My mother is safe now.
She’s still in a facility, but she’s deteriorating, and I blame myself for that every day.
But I won’t say that to Stella, not now.
“I never remember my dreams. How did you sleep?” I ask her.
“Spectacularly. I always do when I’m by the sea. Let’s open your windows so you can smell it. There’s coffee on. The others are up. Lucie’s already been for a swim. She collected an entire jar of snails and has been drawing them for hours.”
“It must be freezing!”
“She’s very hearty. Peasant stock. We have that in common. Get dressed. I’ll be in the other room with the girls.” The girls! As if they are already hers.
Outside the sky is a delicate silver-gray, the color of faded denim. Through the window I spy a path carved into the cliffside leading to a rocky beach. I pull on the warmest sweater I brought with me and some wool socks to protect my feet from the rough-hewn wooden floorboards.
“I don’t see it at all.” I hear Lucie giggle from the great room in the front of the house.
“Photographs will never do him justice, my dear,” Stella says. “But let me try to find a better one.”
She’s huddled on the couch with my roommates flanking her on either side.
All three of them are wearing silk kimonos in a kaleidoscope of colors, no doubt procured from one of Stella’s massive suitcases.
A moth-eaten hand-crocheted afghan is spread over their legs, and on top of that is a large photo album.
“We’re taking a stroll down memory lane,” Stella explains as she nods for me to sit down.
“Is that your album?”
“It is. I brought it along. One of the things I stashed before my untimely death.”
“And the sword?”
“Of course.”
“And these fashionable robes,” I add, pouring myself some coffee.
“Aren’t they a wonder?” Stella says.
“What else did you manage to rescue?”
“My favorite Diors, but I left all of the McQueens. At least I got these photographs. These are irreplaceable.”
“I was just telling Stella that I don’t see the allure of Maxwell at all,” Lucie says. “At best I would say he looks like a strangely attractive gnome.”
Her comment makes Stella snort indelicately. “He did, didn’t he? That’s really so true. He would have loved that description. A strangely attractive gnome. Too good. But, Lucie, you of all people understand how alluring a brilliant and powerful man can be.”
“I do,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “It’s in inverse correlation to how attractive, brilliant, and powerful women are perceived.”
“Touché.”
“I’ll never be able to explain it to you girls, but that man had charisma seeping out of every single pore. He was dashing and funny. Thrilling, even on his worst days. And the most generous lover I ever had.”
“You’re such a smoke show here.” Lucie hands Stella a picture of her behind the wheel of a sleek wooden motorboat next to an absurdly handsome bronzed Adonis in the smallest bathing suit I’ve ever seen on a man.
It left absolutely nothing to the imagination and he was clearly willing to show it all off.