Fleur De Lies Page 5

  “Non! You tell them, Ozmund Chelsvig! If not for you, my mama and papa would have died at zee hands of zee Germans.” Her voice grew sharp. “I would have died!”

  “Hey, folks,” Cal called out from the front window, “looks like the bus is here to pick us up.”

  “But I still have room on my memory card for five hundred and forty-four more pictures of myself,” whined Bernice.

  “If you do not tell them, Ozmund, I will,” threatened Solange. She skewered him with a fierce look. “Well?”

  He responded with a stubborn snort. “All right, all right.”

  My mom and dad had standoffs like this all the time, but it was usually over an issue that was even more vital to marriages than trust and fidelity: control of the TV remote.

  “Solange’s parents hid me in a secret room they’d built under their front staircase, but the day after I showed up, so did the Germans. Three of them came knocking, and it wasn’t a social visit. They knew about the secret room and the family’s involvement in the Underground, so they arrived to voice their objection.” He thrust out his bottom lip and shrugged. “That’s about it.”

  I frowned. “That can’t be it. You can’t end a story like that.”

  “Why not?”

  Tilly rolled her eyes. “You’ve given us the exposition and the conflict, but you’ve left out the resolution. Without a resolution, we’re dealing with random plot points that go nowhere. So you need an ending, accompanied by a satisfying denouement, if you can manage it.”

  “Confound it.” Sucking in a lungful of air, he burst out with, “So the Germans barged into the house with their threats and guns, and I made sure they never left. Is that resolution enough for you?”

  I looked at Tilly. Tilly looked at me. We both looked at Solange.

  “Zee three men shot their way into Ozmund’s room, but he was waiting for them, barricaded behind pillows, flat on his back, with his broken leg bound in splints. He returned fire, and when zee shooting stopped, it was Ozmund who proved to be zee better marksman. My brave little chee-ken man.”

  “Mesdames, messieurs, your tour director is waiting for you by the front gate.” Madeleine strolled around the room, herding guests toward the doorway.

  “Chicken man?” I stared at Osmond, baffled. “I—uh, I don’t get it.”

  “He wore a chee-ken on his shoulder,” said Solange. “A little screaming chee-ken.”

  “Chicken?” Tilly straightened her spine. “On a military badge? I seriously doubt it was a fowl. More likely it was an eagle. A screaming eagle … which just happens to be the emblem of the 101st Airborne Infantry.” She regarded Osmond with a look bordering on awe. “You belonged to the 101st?”

  He gave his head a nod. “Yup. I was one of the fellas who wore a screaming chee-ken on his shoulder sleeve.” He smiled impishly and squeezed Solange’s hand as he sidled a glance at her.

  “When he’s very naughty and pokes fun of my accent, I ignore him,” she announced, nose in the air, head tilted at a coy angle, gaze averted, as if she were a young ingénue fending off a suitor whose advances she desperately wanted. And in that instant I could see them as they might have been decades ago, snatching moments of intimate pleasure from a secret look, a shared touch, in a world that had gone completely mad.

  “The 101st Airborne was only the most celebrated, the most illustrious, the most battle-hardened division in the entire army,” chattered Tilly. “They led the charge on D-Day. They held the line at the Battle of the Bulge. They—”

  “Grandmama?” Madeleine came up behind Solange and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Monsieur Osmond must leave us now. His coach is waiting outside.”

  “Leave? But he just arrived.”

  “Thank you for your hospitality.” Virginia Martin bobbed her head at Madeleine as she guided her husband past the sofa. “I’m sure you did the best you could under the circumstances.”

  Victor halted his steps and jerked his hand away from his wife’s arm, irritation causing his facial muscles to grow rigid. “My dear young woman”—he shuffled his feet slightly to face Madeleine—“I’ve heard rumors that my wife was once an engaging and gracious creature, but I’ve never had the good fortune of bearing witness to it myself. You are beautiful and kind, and I thank you for opening your home to us.” He tipped his head politely and shifted his gaze to Solange. “And Mrs. Ducat, permit me to say that you are as lovely today as you were—”

  He paused suddenly, as if his brain realized what was about to come out of his mouth and closed his windpipe to avoid disaster. He stiffened with panic for a brief second before he assumed a calmer demeanor, his brain and mouth apparently on the same page again. “You’re as lovely today as I imagine you were when Mr. Chelsvig first met you.” He inhaled a deep, wheezy breath. “Your eyes are quite haunting, my dear. A man could never forget a woman with your eyes.”

  Virginia elevated her hand to admire the jewels bedecking her fingers. “Do you know the only thing worse than a fool, Victor?”

  “I expect you’re about to tell me.”

  “An old fool.”

  He pivoted slowly toward her. His voice became gruff. “Help me out to the bus.”

  “Thanks for everything, Madeleine.” Cal offered a brief valedictory wave. “I’m going to pick up some of that Calvados. Good stuff!”

  Taking my cue from Cal, I stood up. “I guess we should be leaving, too. Don’t want to keep the coach driver waiting.”

  “Non.” Solange clutched Osmond’s hand. “Not yet. There’s …

  there’s much I should tell you.”

  Woody Jolly maneuvered around my chair to sketch a valiant, if arthritic, bow before the sofa. “Ladies, thank you for the conversation and refreshments. The obnoxious drunk I could have done without.” He extended his hand, palm up, to Solange. “May I?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Solange placed her palm atop his, smiling shyly when he pressed his lips to the back of her hand.

  “I don’t know if that’s the way you French do it,” he blurted out with enthusiasm, “but it sure works for me. I’ve wanted to do that all my life. ‘Course, if I tried it with a woman in the States, I’d get my face slapped.”

  He released her hand but continued to linger, apparently not at all worried that his dawdling might earn him the dreaded status of last person on the bus. “You’re such a beautiful woman, Solange, but like me and Osmond here, you’re getting up there in age. Do you mind my asking if you’ve made advanced funeral plans yet? For a nominal fee, Jolly Funeral Home offers an online consulting service to help you decide exactly what arrangements will best suit your needs. And it doesn’t matter that you live here and I live in the States. We’re all connected now through the Internet, and we accept all major credit cards.”

  Solange stared at him, looking too speechless to respond.

  “I brought a brochure with me. How about I leave it with you, and if you’re interested, you can contact me through our website. You have a computer, don’t you?” He slapped the numerous zippered pockets of his jacket in search of the missing document. “Can’t remember which pocket I stuffed it in.”

  Madeleine waved him off. “Please, monsieur, it is not necessary. We—”

  “Sure it’s necessary. Folks in your grandmother’s and my generation don’t want to spend the afterlife cooped up in a jar the size of a flour canister. We want to be able to stretch out in a cheerful casket that’s lined with tufted satin and rest our heads on a pillow made of one hundred percent breathable cotton. Aha! Paydirt.” He unzipped a long, vertical pocket and slid his hand into—

  “Mon Dieu,” cried Solange, eyes wild, mouth contorted. “MON DIEU!”

  Woody froze, brochure in hand. “Was it something I said?”

  Solange hurled a barrage of rapid-fire French at him, her voice rising to a crescendo, the cords in her neck st
raining so violently against her flesh, they looked as if they might burst.

  “What is it, cherie?” Madeleine darted around the sofa and sat down. “What is wrong?”

  Solange’s hands flew into the air. Her voice grew shrill. Her words spilled out of her mouth so quickly, even Madeleine looked baffled.

  “Please, Grandmama. Lentement. I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

  Cal poked his head in the door. “Sorry to break up your farewells, folks, but I’ve just been told by the head honcho that if you’re not on the bus in three minutes flat, our schedule is going to be seriously screwed up. You hear me, Dad?”

  Osmond threw me a pleading look. “Emily, please, I can’t leave Solange like this.”

  “Well, you can’t stay here,” said Tilly as she pulled him unceremoniously to his feet. “And you know you can’t.”

  Woody backpedaled away from the sofa, a sheepish look on his face. “How about I leave the brochure here for you?” he suggested, dropping it on the coffee table in his hasty retreat. “Maybe you can check it out when you’re in a better frame of mind.”

  Solange stabbed a damning finger at him as he rushed out the door. “C’est toi!” she scolded in a high-pitched shriek that bristled with venom. “C’est toi!”

  The bus horn blared long and loudly, causing a wave of panic to ripple down my spine. “C’mon, Osmond.” I grabbed his arm. “We’ve gotta go. I can guarantee you won’t want to be anywhere around me if I have to walk back to the boat in five-inch wedges.”

  “Solange?” He reached out his knobby fingers to touch her, but she was collapsed in Madeleine’s arms, seemingly inconsolable as she broke out in anguished tears, the sounds of her tormented wails filling the room. He took a step back, bowing his head with a remembered sadness. “She cried just like that the day she found her brother.” He tried to catch Madeleine’s eye, but she was so fixated on soothing her grandmother that she no longer seemed aware of the presence of other people in the room.

  “I guess maybe we should go,” he rasped, looking utterly bereft.

  Once outside, we hurried down the front path in a footrace to the waiting coach.

  “What was wrong with her?” Osmond puzzled. “What was she yelling at him? Does anyone know what say twah means?”

  “It means, ‘it’s you,’” I said, dredging up a few remnants of my high school French. Solange had screamed It’s you as if in that moment she had somehow recognized him.

  five

  “My suggestion about the makeup demonstration was such a hit.” Jackie sat at the mirrored vanity in my cabin, applying gloss with a Mona Michelle lipstick wand. “If we could figure out a way to have more home visits, I’d make a killing. And you know what that would mean. Hel-looo, pink Porsche.”

  I slid into the strappy heels that elevated my little black dress to dinnerwear status. “Goes to show what I know. I take back what I said about your idea being tacky.”

  “You’re forgiven. I don’t expect someone who specializes in old people to know anything about product testing on upwardly mobile target groups.”

  Our boat was moored in a tidal estuary of the Seine, tied up alongside a granite quay in the river port of Honfleur, a picturesque town whose architectural design illustrated the passage of time from the Middle Ages—with its half-timber houses, cobbled lanes, and cramped alleyways—to the Renaissance, with its tall, slate-fronted tenements shouldered rooftop to rooftop around an inner harbor that had been “newly” excavated a brief four hundred years ago. My balcony faced Honfleur’s main boulevard—a long stretch of road flanked by upscale wood and brick apartments on one side, a grassy esplanade on the other, and a noisy stream of horn-tooting traffic in between.

  “So what products did you showcase in your demonstration?” I asked, surprised that the toothsome trio had given their blessing to anything Jackie had suggested.

  “Everything! We did makeovers. Complete makeovers! When our hostess found out what the four of us did for a living, she begged us to share our expertise with her family, so we gave all the Roussel women miracle makeovers. Really, Emily, properly applied face powder can make all the difference in a woman’s life.”

  It took me a moment to peel back the layers of what she’d just said to understand the gist of what had actually happened. “So the four of you didn’t charge through the door with Mona Michelle concealer sticks in hand, all prepped to turn eager faces from ordinary to extraordinary? Your hostess had to sweet-talk you into it?”

  She stared at my reflected image in the mirror, eyes thoughtful. “Ewww. Very nice. Turning a face from ordinary to extraordinary. Can I borrow that?”

  “You can have it if you’ll answer my question.”

  She swiveled around on her stool, looking a bit twitchy and awkward. “Okay. The girls threw major hissy fits that I was inviting them to actually work during our home visit, and they hated my idea about an international arm of Mona Michelle. They think domestic sales is where the action is. To quote Krystal, ‘If it ain’t broke, it’s not broken.’”

  Actually, considering the source, that was pretty profound.

  “So they nixed my suggestion about makeup demonstrations for the host family, but after Mrs. Roussel came up with the very same idea, they were totally on board! I was so touched, Emily. Believe me, it takes a lot of character to execute a complete one-eighty in the space of an hour. Not everyone can do it with such style, but the girls are so anxious to please, they made it look easy.”

  She cast puppy dog eyes on me. “You’re one of my best friends, Emily, so don’t take this the wrong way, but Bobbi, Krystal, and Dawna? They’re like … the sisters I never had.”

  A chorus of digital dings chimed overhead before a man’s voice floated out from the cabin intercom. “Ladies and gentleman, the restaurant doors are now open.”

  As if on cue, we heard a host of doors slam in the corridor. A low rumble of voices. High-pitched laughter.

  Jackie capped her lipstick wand and sprang to her feet. “Hey, the boat’s moving.”

  As she hurried onto my balcony to watch the boat ease away from the quay, I crossed the floor to check my hair and makeup in the vanity mirror. “So how many makeovers did you end up doing?”

  “Three. Bobbi and Krystal grabbed the two Roussel daughters and Dawna took charge of Mrs. Roussel.”

  “So … who did you work on?”

  “I didn’t have anyone to work on. I supervised.”

  “But … if it was your idea to begin with, shouldn’t you have gotten first dibs on which family member you wanted to remake?”

  She stepped back into the cabin and closed the sliding glass door. “This may come as a shock to you, but I don’t mind taking a back seat so others can assume their rightful spots in the limelight.”

  “Since when?”

  She fisted her hand on her hip and drilled me with a fierce look. “You know, Emily, you don’t really appreciate how selfless I am. But the girls have seen it firsthand. Laugh if you must, but I fully expect they’ll be singing my praises to Victor so loudly, I’m going to be shame-faced with embarrassment.”

  I regarded her, deadpan. “Right.” Grabbing my clutch, I turned off the overhead lights and motioned Jackie out the door in front of me.

  At the far end of the corridor, guests were clogged together at the entrance of the restaurant like gumballs waiting to funnel through the mouth of a narrow-necked bottle. The Renoir carried only sixty passengers, housed in outside cabins on a single deck, but from the looks of things, every last one of them was in line ahead of us, pushing their way through the congestion to the dining room.

  “Do we have assigned seating?” asked Jackie as we took our place at the back of the scrum.

  “Nope. We get to sit wherever we want.”

  She cleared her throat and lowered her voice. “The girls will naturally want m
e to sit with them, so if there’s only one seat at their table, you don’t mind if I take it, do you?”

  “Knock yourself out. I’m sure I’ll find an open seat somewhere. There’s lots of new people to meet.”

  “Thank you!” She flung her arms around me, crushing me against her as if I were a nut in need of cracking. “I’m so relieved. That’s what I love about you Emily. You’d happily forgo an opportunity to shmooze with the big wigs at the Mona Michelle table in order to share a lackluster meal with a bunch of dotty strangers. You are so evolved.”

  Retrieving a mirrored compact from her pocketbook, she rechecked the gloss on her lips. “So, now that we have that out of the way … did anything happen on your home visit that’s worth mentioning?”

  “Uhh—A guy in our group was hammered out of his head, we barely escaped having to buy advanced funeral plans, and Osmund was reunited with a woman who helped save his life during World War II.”

  She snapped her compact shut. “So, nothing out of the ordinary.”

  The bottleneck at the entrance to the dining room suddenly broke up, allowing guests to stampede through the doors like shoppers at a blowout sale. We exchanged “Bon soirs” with the official greeter at the door, sanitized our hands with a squirt of gel from the stationary dispenser, then angled off to our right, circling around the food station that occupied the center of the room.

  Guests were loitering behind chairs, waving their arms to friends, flashing the number of seats still available, sitting down, standing up, bumping into the guests standing at the chairs behind them. Tables were set up to accommodate four, six, or eight guests, and each table abutted a sparkling clean, floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the river and its traffic. What could be more thrilling than the prospect of oohing and ahhing over the spectacular views of the Seine while we dined?

  Well, one thing might be more thrilling.

  Finding an empty seat. Why were all the tables full?