The Romance Reader's Guide to Life Page 3

  Electra’s mother had moved them by now into a more acceptably fashionable address on Île de la Cité. From their windows they could see the river parting as it reached the island. They could see the falcon family that waited patiently beneath the roof balustrades of Notre Dame, see them carry up the rats and pigeons they hunted and delivered to their young. Electra watched them dismember the rodents, shredding them into pieces small enough for their fledglings.

  “They keep the city rid of vermin,” her mother would say when Electra grieved the little animals’ deaths, imagining their terror and pain as they were carried upward in the falcon talons. “All things die. All things must hunt to live. If you did not learn this lesson during our time in the country, you will learn it here in the city.”

  Perhaps. Already she was finding similarities between some of the people she encountered in this sophisticated city and the falcons that had made Notre Dame their home. Already she was vowing to herself that she would be carried in no raptor’s talons.

  And now in this Parisian drawing room she once again turned to find Basil Le Cherche’s dark eyes upon her. She met them, straight-on, and was shocked to see that this made him smile. So forward and rude! She knew enough of both London and Paris etiquette to feel that she was being tested as well as assessed, and she resented it. When she and her mother arrived home at last she found herself in a most unsettled mood.

  “I will not be ogled,” she whispered to herself. “Not by anyone!”

  Who was this dark creature whose presence made the rest of the world so much less important? Why did he distract her so? Was what she felt anger?

  Her mother noticed none of this shift in her daughter. She was taken up entirely with preparations for the Grand Ball, which was only a week away. On this night young women were shown to the world in hopes of attracting a bidder who could offer the girl’s weight in gold. Marriages to the most powerful men in Europe had begun in evenings such as this.

  Electra’s mother had endeavored to discover all there was to know about a certain Monsieur X. Did he prefer women in modest gowns or daring ones? Upswept severe hair or something looser and more flirtatious? What topics did he most enjoy discussing? And Monsieur Y, worth ten thousand a year—did his attention run more to breasts or ankles, either of which could be safely exposed without severe judgment? Electra mocked her mother gently at first when she pressed these topics, and then, rebuked, sighed and did what good young women did: practiced certain topics for discussion and traveled from the tenth arrondissement to the Île and back in search of the right shoes.

  “Mother, surely shoes will not determine the course of a lifetime,” she said as she sighed from her seat at yet another shopkeeper’s establishment.

  “Do not patronize me with your naïve romanticism,” her mother said drily. “Your future lies entirely in the hands of the man who chooses you. The rest of your life could depend upon this night,” she insisted as she pressed a beautiful frock against Electra’s lithe form to test its effect. “The sooner you understand that, the better.”

  Electra had followed her mother from shop to shop, taken lessons in dance and locution, agreed—sometimes with nothing but her silence—with her parent’s strategies and perspectives. But something happened between the day her mother selected a dress for her to wear to the ball and the date of the ball itself: Basil Le Cherche.

  From the moment she had turned to see if Viscount Le Cherche was still in that crowded drawing room and found him seeking her eyes, she was changed. The silent, obedient daughter was still visible, but so, if an observer cared to look closer, was something less predictable. Brazen man, she thought to herself. Disrespectful ogler! And his dark clothing, his distant hooded assessment of the others in the room—as if he watched them from a cool and bottomless distance—a raptor’s gaze. Well, she was no passive dove waiting for the talons. Perhaps she had talons of her own.

  She came home from that initial meeting and held the dress her mother had chosen for her against her perfect breasts, swirling before a mirror and letting the reflection take its time with her, letting her own feelings about what she saw take shape. Electra knew that its clustered roses and cool paleness showed her freshest features to advantage—the firm, creamy skin, the mirrorlike eyes, the thick tumble of silky, pale hair. Yes, she was what Paris fashion regarded as lovely. But was it the kind of loveliness that appealed to Monsieur X, Monsieur Y, or Monsieur Le Cherche? The anger that had had its origin, she believed, in her reaction to the Viscount Le Cherche spilled over and into her cool gaze in the mirror. She would not be forced to be a particular kind of woman by anyone—not her mother, not Monsieur X, not the harpies who clustered around Madame de Lac. She would not be costumed for their regard. If Monsieur X and Y disliked what they saw, that would only leave her freer to go her own way. And Electra Gates suddenly, unaccountably, wanted to be free.

  She threw the gown her mother had chosen aside. She went, alone, into the city. When she finally found the reflected image she’d sought in a tiny alley in the Marais, she felt a kind of excitement that was entirely foreign to her. The deeply cut bodice exposed her breasts almost to the nipple. The waist was tightly cinched, the skirt full of movement, almost diaphanous—and when she was still the material lay on her thighs like a caress. Perhaps most satisfying to her was an uneasy glittering feeling marbled through this new mood—the mood of a huntress who, at the same moment that she understood herself to be engaged in a blood sport, felt that she was the hunted as well as the hunter.

  Six days now to the ball.

  * * *

  I set the book down, startled to find myself still in my closet. I looked up at a green winter coat that Lilly had passed on to me the winter before and I knew right then that I wasn’t going to return this book to its shelf the next time I went to Mrs. Daniels’s house.

  The grown-up world, from what I could see on these pages, wasn’t exactly what I’d thought it was. How could glittering feelings and raptor talons have anything to do with my mother or my father, or Mrs. Daniels? Either I didn’t understand anything, or their world was even stranger than I’d imagined. I climbed out of the closet, jammed The Pirate Lover under my mattress, and told myself, again, that Mrs. Daniels wouldn’t miss one book from those crowded shelves if I kept it just a bit longer, which could possibly mean forever.

  She didn’t seem to miss it at all. She set me to a few pages in The Odyssey the next Wednesday afternoon. On and on I went, listening to Telemachus whine about how he was too little and weak to fight the suitors and how his dad was maybe dead and who was going to help him blahblahblah. When Athena finally told him to get off his rear end and go have an adventure, I’d already decided he wasn’t worth my attention. Mrs. Daniels sensed my mood and took the book back, flipping to another section: Odysseus—stranded on Calypso’s island and kept prisoner as her lover. I perked right up. “Is he in love with Calypso?” I asked.

  “I sincerely doubt it. They amuse one another, but his destiny is elsewhere. He must return to his home.”

  “Because he’s in love with his wife?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But that’s what he says, Mrs. Daniels.”

  “In his world, little girl, being able to lie well is a desirable skill. And he lies very well. All the most attractive characters in this story are accomplished liars. It’s a good skill in a dangerous world. Wait until you meet the woman he hopes to return to—she is his match in every way. She is a particularly gifted liar.”

  “They read this book in school but not until ninth grade.”

  “Are you saying it’s too hard for you to read?”

  “Oh, no.” I straightened up and got my face looking like it belonged to somebody who could read anything a ninth-grader could read. I could even read stuff I didn’t understand. That was my job and I was going to do it.

  “Good.” She took the book from me and flipped through. “Perhaps I should have taken you to Circe’s island. I suspect Circe would amuse
you.”

  “What happens on Circe’s island?”

  “She turns all the men into pigs.”

  I must have looked stunned, because she shook her head a little bit at me. “Don’t worry. She turns them all back into men in the end.”

  “Why did she do that to them?”

  “Because she could, I imagine.”

  “The ladies in these stories don’t like men.”

  “Which ladies?”

  “The Sirens sing songs that make the sailors come so close they crash into the rocks and die. Circe turns them into pigs. And you told me that General Agamemnon’s wife and her new boyfriend clubbed him to death when he got home from Troy.”

  “Keep in mind that the stories are made up by men, for men, about men. What they have to say about the ladies is perhaps not entirely unprejudiced. And we do not have the ladies’ perspective. Would you like a cookie, child?”

  Yes. I would like a cookie. And I decided, mid-cookie, that when I got home I was not going to think about the Sirens or Circe or any of it. But I couldn’t help myself. I did anyhow.

  LILLY

  Where She Is Now

  Neave thinks that Snyder and I didn’t know she squirreled herself in the back of the closet with those books she stole from Mrs. Daniels. Of course we knew. We didn’t tattle because it would irritate Mom, who would try to make her quit it, and then they’d fight. When she and Mom fought, everybody’s concentration went to hell and dinner ended up burned.

  Neave would tell you straight-faced that she’s reasonable, but that’s not even within screaming distance of the truth. If she feels pushed around it’s easy to accidentally jab an elbow into her dignity because it sticks out in all directions. I liked that about her, but maybe I could enjoy the vinegary side of my sister because I was her Lilly. She loved Jane and Boppit and I guess even Snyder, but she loved me most. I say that as simple fact, nothing I earned or did anything special to get.

  The way Neave is made hasn’t always served her so well. She’s stubborn. She gets mad pretty regularly. To be fair, when she does get mad it’s usually for a good reason, but she doesn’t try very hard to tamp it down. This is a mistake on her part. She never learned to just look thoughtful and nod if somebody was irritating her. She didn’t know how to let whatever Mom or Snyder were saying just bounce off her while she paid no attention to them and considered whether or not she should go to that Filene’s sale and stand in line for stockings. That’s what I did and it always worked for me. Neave would have been a happier woman if she’d been more interested in, say, Chanel, than the stuff she found on Mrs. Daniels’s shelves. Books can get you in more trouble than a little black dress can. You always know where you stand with a good suit, and Vera Maxwell was enough of a guiding light for me, though she never satisfied Neave.

  You love according to your nature and when I was there, alive, my nature wasn’t that solid, steady thing that Neave’s is. The way I loved Neave was more flexible, less dogged, more shiny than the way she loved me. My kind of love could catch a breeze and blow away in a fight over a burnt pork chop, blow right back in at the other end of a pretty box from Tiffany’s or a little joke. That, according to my dog companion who was here to greet me when I got Where I Am Now, sums up my limitations as a mother as well as a sister. I wasn’t gifted in the parenting department, a lot of which involves just being there, which is boring. I loved my Annie, but I couldn’t stand being bored.

  Neave and Janey made it easy for me to be a mediocre mother. There they were, always at the ready. “Oh, I’ll take her for an overnight!” or “Lilly, there’s a cartoon reel this Friday at the Hollywood Cinema. Why don’t I take Annie?” Annie adored them and they did the same right back at her.

  Neave’s love was immovable in hurricane, flood, or fire, as steady as a line of mountains. She would throw herself between Annie and a pack of feral dogs any day of the week. And the way she felt about me? I knew I could do whatever I wanted, even if she hated it, and I’d always be forgiven. She forgave me for not being the best mother in the world, and she loved my little girl like she was her own. She forgave me for Ricky Luhrmann, which shows you that I could do anything at all and still stay in Neave’s good graces.

  Ricky: she hated that man almost as much as he thought she did. I can’t change what happened between me and him, even for her, because nobody on Earth had ever made me feel as powerful as Ricky Luhrmann made me feel, or as helpless. My future was shackled and bound to him as soon as he followed me to the ladies’ that night at the Ritz and got my telephone number. We had business together, and we played it out right to the bitter end. Even if I’d been able to see everything that was going to happen, I bet I still would have given him my number.

  Oh, well.

  Right up until the end I felt so confident, so completely safe. I was an idiot. I could blame some of that inaccurate view of myself on Neavie, though that’s unfair. She treated me like I was the most beautiful, capable, powerful woman on Earth, and I ask you, why would I disagree? I didn’t know anybody more honest or smart than Neave. If she said I was that woman, I was. I felt equal to any man, any moment, any chance. It made me reckless. Isn’t it a joke on us that the power she gave me might have been what attracted Ricky.

  Who is now looking her way.

  Like I said, Neave. I’m so sorry.

  NEAVE

  Monsters in the Movies

  Early on in his life, comic books got Snyder Terhune by the throat and he never even struggled. We often don’t, when the thing we love finds us.

  My brother’s favorite magazine was Monsters in the Movies. In 1938, Mr. James Moses, writer and publisher of Monsters in the Movies, put an announcement on its back page: Looking for local clubs to host me on my coast-to-coast tour! Right then and there Snyder Terhune, ninth grade social outcast and friend to no one, determined to create a local fan club and host Mr. James Moses on his tour. He sat down, wrote to Mr. Moses, and let him know the Lynn, Massachusetts, club would be pleased to host him. He dropped it in a mailbox and set out to create a Lynn, Massachusetts, club. He didn’t ask our mom if it was okay. By the end of two weeks he had found six other kids who thought Monsters in the Movies was the country’s most important publication and they headed to our basement to puzzle out some secret handshakes. Members ranged in age from Snyder (just barely fifteen) to Billy Upton (thirteen but big for his age). Snyder was their leader but fourteen-year-old Arnold Strato was their strategist. The pack of them trooping down into our basement looked as serious as if they were heading off to dismantle a bomb. Only Arnold Strato seemed to have any sense of humor about the whole thing. The first meeting they had, he was the only one who even glanced my way to see me sulking at the head of the stairs (I wasn’t allowed to go down there or bother the boys in any way) and he threw me a wink and grinned. I liked Arnold. He didn’t have any of those dominating habits that older boys tended to exercise around younger ones. His own inclinations and his large family had given him diplomatic skills that came in handy for groups like this one. By the end of the meeting he and Snyder seemed to be sharing presidential duties and honors, Snyder deadly serious and Arnold looking like he’d found an interesting game and was happy to play it for a while.

  The club had surprised our mom but pleased her. It looked like a big social breakthrough for Snyder, that’s for sure. The boys pooled their money and ordered member buttons and a member whistling coffin. The instructions in the magazine for club formation suggested that all meetings begin with the coffin opening and a reading of club rules. From my perch on the stairs I heard the first suggestions for rules lean toward bloody bonding rituals that were sure to send somebody home crying if not to a doctor. Then Arnold suggested musical armpit fart combinations to start every meeting and that set them in a safer direction. By the time of Mr. Moses’s visit in June, five other boys had joined them, all friends of Arnold’s. Even in this fanatic subgroup of the still-gangly boy population, only Snyder had a budding fantasy comic co
llection. Only Snyder invested in an untouchable backup copy of every comic he loved. Scantily clothed Martian women with interesting radioactive parts hung all over his walls. The alien women in his pictures pursued men with lassos and Radiation Project Heat Ray guns or stood over them from craggy moonscapes, their balloon-like breasts and tremendous thighs either beckoning or threatening. Maybe both. Sometimes they fell in love with handsome scientists in white coats. Sometimes they became slaves or admiring colleagues of Earth Men.

  But back to Mr. Moses, who wrote to Snyder to say that if the host group was amenable, he’d be there on June 14. He would love to meet with the local fan club, and appreciated the offer of a place to rest his head that night. Mom wanted it to be a success for Snyder. She hated visitors, and hated spending money, but she loved Snyder and she suffered when he was unhappy. She bought a roast in the middle of the week, which meant something in our house, and baked what looked like hundreds of cookies—an impulse that only Christmas itself had summoned before that afternoon.

  Mr. Moses had called from his last stop (Hartford, Connecticut) to say he expected to be at our house around four, and by two o’clock most of the members of the Lynn, Massachusetts, Monsters in the Movies Fan Club were standing in our driveway, staring down the road. Also me. Janey was too young to be interested. Lilly stood around in the front yard for a while and imitated them, craning her neck and making mummy noises, but when they paid no attention to her she drifted off. I was the only non-club person keeping watch and staying as close to Arnold Strato as I could. Mom came out after about an hour to give us lemonade and encouragement—I think she doubted Mr. Moses and was starting to dread what it was going to feel like when he never showed up.

  Every minute past four o’clock was agony. At five fifteen, when the dusty Ford station wagon holding Mr. Moses and half a ton of back copies of Monsters in the Movies turned the corner, the little group went off like a bunch of sparklers. The man had to force his car door open against the bodies pressing up against it, but when he got out and onto his own two feet, his manners were perfection. He greeted the jiggling club members like they were the reason he’d been born, which they probably were. He asked to be taken to the grown-ups in exactly the same tone an arriving alien would say he wanted to be escorted to their leader, and they pulled him into the kitchen. Mr. Moses swept my mother’s hand to his lips and thanked her for her hospitality. It’s a cliché gesture, a little piece of melodramatic trash, but it’s amazingly effective if you can get just the slightest hint of irony in it, which Mr. Moses managed. He was a smart man even if he did make his living by writing a magazine about movie monsters. She smiled and told him there was roast beef for dinner, and he said, “Superb.”