Patrice started to feel uneasy. Her mother sounded dreadful. Her voice broke; it sounded like the voice of an old woman.

"Listen, I really am sorry," Patrice said. "Please stay."

"I don't know," Eliza said. Sun streaming through the tall windows lit her from behind; it s.h.i.+ned through the diaphanous green silk caftan she wore. Her body, in silhouette, looked incredibly thin and young. "I'm tired. Maybe it's jet lag-I don't recover from travel the way I once did. I think I'll lie down."

"Would you like Kelly to bring you something? Some tea, maybe?"

"No, thank you." But she stopped at the door, turning to face Patrice. She was smiling. "On second thought, I'd like some aspirin. That fizzy kind that dissolves, the kind you can only get in Europe."

"I'll get you some," Patrice said.

On her way to the pharmacy, she considered the innuendo. On the one hand, her mother might have been making a concession to Patrice's decision to live in France, to her Frenchness, by asking for a specifically French brand of aspirin. On the other hand, it signified that Patrice had given her a headache.

"Aspirine Upsa," Patrice said to the clerk. She dropped the green box into her bag and headed home. The sun blazed; she wished she were already lying on a beach in Saint-Tropez, working on her tan, her head empty. She was tired of second-guessing, of a.n.a.lyzing every exchange she had with her mother. She remembered how, as a child, she would hear her mother reply to her father's inquiries about her well-being in any situation: her position at a restaurant table; the number of ice cubes in her gla.s.s; her reaction the time she had to cancel her trip to visit her sister in Cleveland because Patrice had contracted mumps. "I'm perfectly fine," Eliza would say, in a way that made it crystal clear that she was not. The woman was impossible to please; she was a martyr to her own cause.

When Patrice arrived home, she knocked gently on her mother's door. Hearing no reply, she pushed it open. Eliza sat on the edge of her bed, her back straight, talking on the telephone. She was inquiring about flights to Boston. Patrice placed the green box on the bedside table and, leaving the room, quietly closed the door behind her.

She found Kelly in the kitchen. Kelly, wearing the black uniform she had been instructed to wear for the duration of Eliza's visit, stood at the sink, sh.e.l.ling peas.

"You may not believe this now," Patrice said, eating a raw pea, "but you are lucky your mother lives halfway around the world."

Kelly said nothing, but smiled.

"Did you buy salmon for dinner?" Patrice asked.

"Yes, Mum. It will be such a pretty meal, with pink salmon and bright green peas. I hope your mother will like it."

"I'm not sure whether I care about that." Patrice felt her eyes fill with tears.

"What is it?" Kelly asked, sounding alarmed. "What is wrong, Mum?"

Kelly's voice was so kind, so concerned, that Patrice began to cry. She covered her eyes with her hands and sobbed, and she felt Kelly touch her shoulder.

"Everything will be all right," Kelly said. "You haven't seen your mother in such a long time. When I finally see my mother I know we will have to get used to each other again."

"She is so difficult," Patrice said. "No one can please her."

"She is very far from her home."

"You've been so nice to her," Patrice said, sniffling. "I really appreciate it."

"It is my pleasure. She is so nice to me! Yesterday she told me all the places your relatives live in the United States. Boston, Cleveland, Palm Beach, and Farmington."

Listening to Kelly gush, Patrice felt sorry for her. Eliza had made a fool of her, telling her a few pitiful facts about the United States while holding her in contempt. It reminded Patrice of the loyalty she had felt for Lydie at lunch, listening to Lydie talk on about her job, about Michael's, as though Eliza actually took her seriously. Knowing that Eliza would dismiss Lydie from memory ten minutes after leaving the restaurant, Patrice had felt protective of her friend.

Eliza valued people from families of good social standing, preferably from Boston's North Sh.o.r.e, certainly not maids or second-generation Irish from New York. The two ironies, of which Patrice was dimly aware, were that Eliza herself came from a nonexalted background, from a family who had owned a small textile mill in Fall River, and that Patrice, in spite of her democratic taste in women friends, had inherited her mother's respect for old-line names and anything prestigious. Still, in spite of that, Patrice knew she was quite different from her mother. She could appreciate any fine, decent person regardless of background. Wasn't she standing in her kitchen, spilling her guts to Kelly?

"Do you feel better now, Mum?" Kelly asked.

"A little."

"h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo," Eliza said, shaking the box of aspirin. "I've come for a gla.s.s of water."

In one swift motion, Kelly reached for a gla.s.s, filled it with Evian water from the refrigerator, and handed it to Eliza. "You're so efficient, dear," Eliza said.

"Are your travel plans set?" Patrice asked. She felt peculiar. She felt like crying, shouting, belting, and hugging her mother all at once.

"Now, don't be hurt, Patsy, but I think it is best that I leave a little early. We've had this lovely week in Paris. I've had such a good time. You know I don't care too much for the Riviera, and this way I can get back to Boston and you and Didier can have a nice vacation alone together."

"The trouble is, we'll always remember this. That you came for a month and left after a week because we couldn't stand each other." Patrice remembered what Lydie had said the other day: "Be nice to your mother, it's only a month out of your life."

"That's not true," Eliza said. "I not only can stand you, I love you. I simply want to give you and Didier a nice time alone together. Don't forget, your father was a businessman; I know how hard those men work, how they need their time off. And he is just so in love with you!"

And Patrice knew that Eliza had deemed that tale to become the reality. Eliza was expert at reinvention; it would go down in history that Eliza had left France early not because mother and daughter hated each other but because Eliza did not want to intrude on Patrice and Didier's vacation. On their little love nest in Saint-Tropez. Patrice tried to feel relieved. Wasn't this exactly what she wanted? Instead, she felt sick.

Eliza dropped two aspirin tablets in the water, and the three women stood silent, listening to them dissolve. "Why they don't market this stuff in America is beyond me," Eliza said.

"The aspirin in America is very different?" Kelly asked after a moment. Patrice thought it brave of her; she knew it was one thing for Kelly to have a conversation with her, quite another to give Eliza the impression that she considered herself an equal part of their trio. But such was the strength of Kelly's desire to know everything, no matter how minute, about the United States.

"Oh, in America they have these horse pills, impossible things to swallow." Eliza sipped her aspirin as if it were a c.o.c.ktail. "You are a very lucky girl, dear, to have Patsy as your employer."

"Yes, Mum. I know," Kelly said.

"She is so concerned for your future, she has been trying to recruit me to take you home with me."

Kelly gasped, beamed at Eliza, then Patrice. "Oh, really? Really?"

"I tried," Patrice said.

"I'm sorry to say, it won't be possible right now," Eliza said. "For one thing, I employ a girl whom I am absolutely devoted to. And for another, I don't understand all the red tape. But let me send a letter to my congressman, he's a good friend, and maybe sometime in the future..."

"Your congressman! Thank you, thank you," Kelly said, twisting her hands.

G.o.d, it's pathetic, Patrice thought. The lie cost Eliza nothing at all, and it made Kelly so happy. It gave Kelly hope, and it made Patrice a hero. Kelly wore an expression of pure grat.i.tude. Doesn't this solve everything? Patrice thought. Eliza would feel she had helped Patrice out; Kelly would idolize Patrice for her efforts. If only Patrice had her mother's talent for reinvention. Then she could stop feeling guilty. She could convince herself that she had truly, vigorously helped Kelly fulfill her dream of getting to the United States.

You probably know about our defeat at Gigeri, and how those who gave the advice now seek to throw the blame on those who carried it out.

-TO P POMPONNE, NOVEMBER 1664 IT SURPRISED L LYDIE to realize how much she missed Patrice. Daily things would occur, and she would wish she could call Patrice to tell her about them. Small things, really, such as the discovery of a new restaurant with a quiet, shady terrace; the infernal humidity; the frustration Lydie was feeling about Michael's late hours. Yes, the construction of his project had finally started, and each day brought new milestones of inept.i.tude: a door incorrectly hung, a batch of new mortar that didn't match the old. If Patrice were in Paris, Lydie believed she wouldn't feel so abandoned. She would have someone to call; she and Patrice could have lunch or tea together. In New York she had confided in Julia, but over here she had Patrice. to realize how much she missed Patrice. Daily things would occur, and she would wish she could call Patrice to tell her about them. Small things, really, such as the discovery of a new restaurant with a quiet, shady terrace; the infernal humidity; the frustration Lydie was feeling about Michael's late hours. Yes, the construction of his project had finally started, and each day brought new milestones of inept.i.tude: a door incorrectly hung, a batch of new mortar that didn't match the old. If Patrice were in Paris, Lydie believed she wouldn't feel so abandoned. She would have someone to call; she and Patrice could have lunch or tea together. In New York she had confided in Julia, but over here she had Patrice.

Postcards arrived from Saint-Tropez. Lydie felt a little surprised, a little thrilled by the vulgarity of Patrice's cards. Many were s.e.xual, all featured b.r.e.a.s.t.s, as if Saint-Tropez's greatest feature were its well-endowed female inhabitants. But Patrice's messages were serious, kind. It seemed she missed Lydie as much as Lydie missed her. "I haven't spoken a word of English since arriving," she wrote. "All of Didier's friends are French with a vengeance." On another she wrote: "When are you coming? Get down here, and fast! You are my only American."

That phrase, "my only American," struck Lydie. In writing it, Patrice had named something Lydie had been trying to define. What would happen to Patrice when Lydie returned to the United States? Lydie had grown so fond of her. She had a private store of memories based on that luncheon with Patrice and her mother and on the time Lydie told Patrice everything about her father and Michael. Lydie couldn't help seeing herself and Patrice with poignant overtones: two only children in a foreign country.

When Lydie told Michael about it that night, he laughed.

"Patrice can fend for herself," he said. "I think she's a tough cookie."

"She gives the impression of being tough," Lydie said. "But a lot of it is an act. You should have seen her with her mother-the combination of bulldozer and baby. She wanted to act so competent, make sure the visit ran like clockwork. But when she'd look at her mother her eyes would get all anxious, because she was afraid her mother wasn't having a good time. Which she obviously wasn't."

"It's a long way to come to have a bad time," Michael said.

Lydie picked up on something in his voice. She looked at him for a long time without speaking. She had the feeling he was talking about her, Lydie-not Patrice's mother. It didn't seem to matter to Michael that she felt better, was working hard on the d'Origny project. "Why don't you say what's on your mind?" she asked.

"The phone bill is on my mind. How often do you have to call Julia?"

"I hardly ever call her more than once a week!" Lydie said. "I thought staying in touch with her was part of the bargain."

"I guess so," Michael said. "But when you put it that way, you make it sound as if you and I are on opposite sides. That I dragged you here against your will."

"I don't feel that way," Lydie said, taking Michael's hand. He squeezed hers back, but he wasn't smiling. This was a perfect example of how Lydie missed Patrice. She wished she could talk with her friend about Michael's distance. She was in the mood to trade crabby husband stories with Patrice, but Patrice was on vacation.

Lydie crossed the days of August off the calendar. As the days fell away, a warehouse in Neuilly filled with objects for the ball. Every day Lydie walked miles, searching for props. Her outings took her up the funicular to Montmartre; through covered pa.s.sages, all frosted gla.s.s, wrought iron, and tile, off the rue des Pet.i.ts-Champs; into the leafy village square behind the Pantheon; along the crowded market streets of Mouffetard and Cite Berryer. So many shops were closed for August, the facades blank with lowered steel shutters.

An air of laziness pervaded Paris; Lydie noticed but did not feel it. She walked fast, urgently, as though the next destination was the most important one. She tried to keep the ball in mind. She thought of the countryside and pictured guests dancing to an orchestra outdoors. She saw the ball as a play, herself as the director. In this vision, she stood off to the side, not dancing. She was watching everyone, even Michael, whirl across gra.s.s wet with the night's dew.

She felt uneasiness coming from Michael. Sometimes she caught him watching her. Quiet, holding something back, as though he had a secret or a gripe and was waiting for her to wheedle it out of him.

Stopping in her apartment between forays to the warehouse she would relax. She would sit on her terrace, tilt her face toward the sun, drink a gla.s.s of iced tea. She would think of her frenzy of activity, wonder what she wanted it to obscure.

"We haven't even gone away for a weekend," she said to Michael when he came home one night. It was late; work had kept him at the Louvre and they had eaten separately.

"This is my busiest time-yours too," Michael said.

"Somehow I had thought our summer in France would be a little more fun," Lydie said. "We bought all those guidebooks back in New York, and we've hardly even used them."

Michael laughed.

"What?" Lydie asked, her feelings hurt.

"It just sounds funny-as if we can't have fun without a guidebook. I can just see us, on a train through France, reading about, I don't know, World War II battles, instead of looking out the window."

"I didn't mean it that way," Lydie said, and she thought Michael's comment was strange, coming from a man who went through museums reading the information cards tacked to the wall before standing back to look at the paintings. "You sound grouchy," she said. "Are you mad at me?"

"No."

"That's all you have to say? 'No'?"

"I'm not mad."

"But you don't seem exactly happy."

"I'm fine, Lydie," Michael said in a tone that infuriated her. She imagined that he sounded amused that she would be so worked up over, apparently, nothing. She stared at him, reading some report. His brown hair looked lighter, as though it had been bleached by the sun. When had that happened? she wondered. She looked away, blinded by the halogen lights of a pa.s.sing tour boat.

"Patrice keeps inviting us to Saint-Tropez," Lydie said.

"I know-Didier sent a note to my office."

"You didn't tell me!"

Michael smiled at her. "I just received it. I'm telling you now."

And suddenly Lydie had the terrible, electric feeling that she was not only nagging him, but turning into a nag: nag: a harpy with a perpetually downturned mouth, with frown lines between the brows, with a caw instead of a voice. a harpy with a perpetually downturned mouth, with frown lines between the brows, with a caw instead of a voice.

"Let's go to Saint-Tropez," she said, lowering her voice an octave. "I'll go topless on the beach."

"You don't have to," Michael said. Lydie, who had so far been too modest to bare her b.r.e.a.s.t.s or even wear a bikini at any French beach, suddenly smiled and began to slowly roll up her T-s.h.i.+rt. They lived on the top floor; who besides Michael could possibly see her? She walked around the table toward him and sat facing him on his lap. Michael held her away, so he could look down at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Then his hands covered them and he kissed her lips. Lydie began to s.h.i.+ver. His kiss was soft and lazy, off to a slow start, and his arms went around her as Lydie began to unb.u.t.ton his s.h.i.+rt.

He was pressing against her so hard she couldn't move her fingers. The kiss stopped; they rested their heads on each other's shoulders. It took some time for Lydie to realize that they were no longer hugging, but clutching each other. Michael whispered "Lydie," but he didn't seem to want her to reply.

The atmosphere in Paris turned close, unstable. Every morning the sky was white, and nothing relieved the heat until late afternoon when thunder would rumble east from Brittany, rain would pour down, and lightning twice struck the Eiffel Tower. Lydie caught a summer cold. She spent two days sitting in her living room, a washcloth and a bowl of ice water on the floor beside her, watching the weather change. The tableau of blank sky replaced by violet storm clouds seemed malevolent, biblical, like an Old Testament scene painted by Gericault.

Michael would call to see if she was okay. "I'm fine," she would say, and that was all, even when her fever was 104. Something had pa.s.sed between them, that night on the terrace, and now his solicitous inquiries for her health reminded her of a man calling his ailing ex-wife: it cost him little and meant nothing.

Or was she delirious? She didn't really know. Her throat was parched, her skin dry. She didn't have the energy to get to the bottom of anything. She was a cool, uncurious observer. Lying on her back she let herself drift into a trance where she and Michael didn't love each other. What was "falling out of love," anyway, but a mystical phrase for something painfully mundane: you stop caring about each other. You no longer ache for each other. You don't mind being alone; perhaps you prefer it. Falling out of love: it didn't happen overnight.

Then the shock of the notion roused her from her trance. Do you really have to work so late? Why don't we make love? Why had she never asked the questions? She knew why: Lydie did not want to hear the true story. She had been raised in a house where you kept your troubles, no matter how awful, to yourself, where you were told to stop crying, where things, bad and even sometimes good, were willfully ignored until they went away or blew up in your face.

Patrice called. The sound of her voice made Lydie cry, but she did not let Patrice know.

"In less than an hour someone will appear at your door bearing gifts," Patrice said.

"What are you, the Delphic Oracle?" Lydie asked.

"No, I'm a fortune cookie. How are you?"

"Sick. I have a cold."

"You poor thing! I must have gotten vibes, because I'm having Kelly bring you a little something."

"Really? What?"

"You'll see."

"Well, thanks in advance. How's the beach?"

"Fantastic. I'm tan, and I mean all over all over. No bikini lines. Why haven't you and Michael come yet?"

"Work. They've started construction at the Louvre. Michael is thrilled."

"I'm very proud of him," Patrice said. "Why don't you come alone?"

Lydie didn't answer for a second. "I'm busy too. Getting everything ready for the ball. By the way, I had invitations printed. Will you ask Didier to send me his guest list?"