“We’re going to stay with my uncle Alain and see old relatives but then go to shows and dinners and do some of the fun tourist things. We’re going to be like real sisters traveling together, and since we both can speak and understand French, we should have a great time, don’t you think? Money is certainly not a problem.”
I saw how I had overwhelmed her. She was practically speechless, chanting, “Wow, that’s great,” after almost everything I said. Then I told her that when I returned from Paris, I might be able to invite her up to the apartment.
“Really?”
“Yes, but only you. Unless, of course, your parents wouldn’t want you to have anything to do with me now.”
“Oh, no. They’ve never said that. Besides, why do they have to know anything?”
I laughed to myself. Chastity was as easy to look through as an open window.
“We’ll see,” I said, but it was enough to get her very excited.
I shouldn’t be toying with her like this, I thought. The Emmie Wilcox who was best friends with her not that long ago wouldn’t be so cruel and conniving, but I couldn’t help myself. She and the others had been so quick to condemn me, so eager to prove that they were better.
When I turned her loose on the other girls, she was eager to describe how exciting and wonderful things had become for me. The words exploded from her lips like tiny firecrackers, and her hands went everywhere with dramatic flair. I was sure she embellished everything to make it sound as if I had finally confided in her and told her the most secret and forbidden things.
They all looked my way. The depressed, forlorn, and pitiful Emmie Wilcox they had grown used to seeing, the girl they had beaten down with their remarks and disapproving looks, was suddenly more cheerful and happier than they were. I could see the confusion on their faces and almost hear the debate going on in their soft ice-cream brains. Should they become friends with me again? Was it worth the risk? Could they still be contaminated? Suddenly, they looked willing to risk it in order to hear about this illicit and dangerous world.
Sorry. It’s too late for you all, I thought. I’ll be leaving this school and probably not setting eyes on any of you again. But I wasn’t leaving with a tail of shame between my legs. I was leaving even more confident and stronger. After what I had been through, no challenges or obstacles lying in my path would frighten me.
At least, that was what I hoped.
24
I was both excited and sad when Roxy and I were driven to the airport to fly to Paris. It had been so long since I had gone to France, and I had been so young, that my memories were vague. It was exciting because everything would be like new, seen for the first time. Also, I was looking forward to spending quality sister time with Roxy. Even though I had been sharing her apartment with her, we saw little of each other from day to day because she was out and often busy at night. Until now, there was a thick veil of secrecy hanging between us. After the candid talk we had the morning after she was beaten, I felt there was a rip in the veil. What she did, whom she saw, all of it, had been on a need-to-know basis. I had to be careful about what I said and what I asked. Maybe that was about to change.
Despite the act I had put on for Chastity and the others to make my life seem glamorous and fun, living in a hotel, even in an apartment in that hotel, still felt strange and uncomfortable to me. I had trouble calling it home, even in my own thoughts. I would think, It’s time to get back to the hotel or I’d better get back to the hotel, never I’d better get back home.
The desk clerks and bellboys all had gotten used to seeing me, but I never failed to detect some lustful thought hiding behind their nods and smiles. I imagined they believed that either I, too, was in Mrs. Brittany’s employ or I was being trained by her, soon to be one of her own. No matter when I entered the lobby, I felt I was running the gauntlet of lewd stares and comments. They undressed me in their minds and groped me in their dreams. Maybe that was why the first thing I usually did when I returned from school was to take a shower. By the time I had reached the elevators, I imagined their saliva and their eye prints stuck on my skin.
This trip that Roxy and I were taking was the first time in a very long time that I had left the city. I loved New York, just as Papa and Mama had, but escaping from the sad memories and getting away from the school and the hotel were like opening the windows in a house after a fresh rain. Maybe it was because of my French heritage, but I thought of France as home, too. I had family there. I knew the language and the customs almost as well as I knew my American customs and language. I was confident that none of it would feel strange or terribly different for me.
But I was also melancholy and wistful. This had been a trip that Mama and I were going to take. We had talked about it often. I knew she had been looking forward so much to seeing her family again. Now that I was older and could appreciate everything more, she had been eager to show me places and things she loved. She often said seeing something again through the eyes of your daughter was like seeing it anew. She had wanted to share in my wonder, my pleasure and excitement.
To ease the sadness and the pain, I told myself that I was taking her with me. She was inside me and always would be. Maybe when loved ones died, they didn’t go off to another world but instead slipped inside you and curled up, waiting to be remembered or to do just what Mama wanted to do, live life through your eyes.
I was eager to know if Roxy had any of these thoughts and feelings. When I spoke about some of it on the plane, she became a little melancholy herself and revealed that she had been to Paris a few times but always on a trip with a client and therefore unable to make contact with any of our family. She said it especially bothered her that she couldn’t call or see Uncle Alain, but it was just not possible.
I wanted to ask why it wasn’t possible, but I knew. It was because she didn’t want him to know how she had gotten there, whom she was with, and what she was doing. She hated saying it, probably even thinking it, but despite the face she put on, she was ashamed. Right now, I could see that remembering that made her sad.
However, she also remembered places and things Mama had loved. She admitted going to the Left Bank on one of her trips to search for a particular café Mama had described to her when she was just a few years younger than I was and still living with our parents.
“I found it, and I was able to spend an hour there, sipping coffee and watching people and thinking of Mama sitting there just as I was. We’ll go there,” she promised.
Perhaps it was wishful thinking or just my overworking imagination, but as we traveled farther and farther from America, from New York in particular, I thought I felt a change in Roxy, a softening. She looked more like someone who was escaping than I did. I could see it in her smile and hear it in her voice when she spoke to flight attendants and to me.
Was it possible? Could we erase all of the ugly and nasty things that had happened to us simply by taking this trip together? Was it our own private pilgrimage, our religious journey, that would cleanse us and renew us? Were we like visitors to Lourdes or some similar holy place looking for miracles? Perhaps it was wrong to put too much weight and pressure on a two-week vacation, but I could at least tell myself that it was a transition to something better.
We had already decided before we left that even though I had only two and a half months remaining in the school year, I would transfer to a public school when we returned. She promised me that I wouldn’t even have to go back to my old school for one day. She would take care of it all.
“I’ll deal with your Dr. Sevenson,” she said, obviously eager to confront her.
She told me that she had someone working on the arrangements and paperwork for us while we were away.
Roxy always seemed to have someone in some high place doing things for her. The lawyer she had hired to handle Mama’s estate and the sale of the town house was very efficient. The town house had been sold two weeks before our trip, and the proceeds were placed along with my other inheritance in funds and accounts that would earn interest and provide for all of my needs and my college education. Roxy was determined that I go further in education than she had and have a profession.
“You need to be able to support yourself. It’s only when you are dependent on others that you are forced to make compromises you later regret,” she said in a very pensive moment. “That was one of Papa’s lessons that I refused to learn, and I suffered for it. Make something of yourself, and whatever you do, don’t put all your hopes on a man.”