“I know. He’s forbidden me to do it. He says he wants me to have someone with me who can also drive.”
“There’s always Franklin.”
“Not Franklin! He’s Uncle Ben’s spy.”
I could see the white Aurora parked down by the gates.
“I suppose I’m supposed to sit in the car and cool my heels while you call Marten in France.”
“Do you have something against pheromones?” She dangled the car keys at me.
From the doorway, my mother called out, “Go ahead, Lang! Hello, Huguette. I’m Lang’s mother.”
I liked Huguette for saying, “Hello, Mrs. Penner.” (Nevada always referred to her as Lucy.) “Wouldn’t it be a big help to you, too, if he had the use of a car?”
Like a lot of people who live their lives in New York, my mother didn’t drive.
“A big, big help!” my mother agreed.
“It doesn’t mean I’m going to become your personal chauffeur,” I grumbled at Huguette.
She said, “What makes you think I’d want you for my personal chauffeur? You’ve got such a big face!”
“A big head!” I said, following her down toward the Aurora.
EIGHTEEN
“I NEVER KNEW CALI,” she said. “Phoenix Haun is my legal name. The Roshans always call me Huguette. They’re my family, just as Aniane is my home.”
It was her idea to take a picnic lunch days I went driving with her. We’d stop somewhere and she’d put a blanket down, and a blue-and-white-checked cloth on the ground. We’d feast on cheese and pâté and fruit: her choices. I would have packed tunafish sandwiches and Oreos.
“Uncle Ben tells me that Cali was the love of his life, but she was only with him four years. That’s so sad.”
That day we were down by the Nature Preserve, where there were ducks that would have chosen sandwich scraps over pâté too.
They padded around us as we sat there talking. There were more in the stream near us; there were all sorts of colored birds in the trees above us. People strolled by feeding the ducks, pointing at the birds, studying them with binoculars.
I don’t remember how she started on the subject of Cali. I know I didn’t bring it up. We didn’t probe; we didn’t ask leading questions. That was what I liked about our times together…that, and something else I’d noticed a few times when I was someplace with Brittany. There was not the self-conscious feeling I sometimes had when Alex and I went places together. Put a boy and a girl on a blanket in the sun and the whole world smiled at you. Put two fags there and the smiles turned crooked, the eyebrows raised, you held your breath waiting for the wisecracks.
“Tell me something,” I said. “Why did your mother always say ‘Pain over’ when she sang? Do you know?”
“Call her Cali, not my mother. My aunt is my mother,” Huguette said. “It wasn’t ‘pain over.’ Cali said, ‘Paint over it.’ It’s from a song Uncle Ben wrote. It was Cali’s favorite of all his songs. Mother said Uncle Ben never liked it, never released it.”
“What does it mean?”
“The real title is ‘How to Refurbish a Chair or a Broken Heart.’ Someday I’ll play it for you. Uncle Ben has it at Roundelay…. It isn’t about Cali, either.”
“What is it about?”
“It’s about continuing, putting the past behind you. It’s about his childhood: the death of his mother when he was very young…. He wrote it for his father.”
“The accompanist.”
“Yes. Armand Nevada was an accompanist. But he was a brilliant musician. A classical musician. He was educated, not like Uncle Ben, who pores over Harriett’s quotations so he can pretend he’s well read. ‘Paint Over It’ was the first song Uncle Ben ever wrote for his father, but the old man hated it. He called it ‘sentimental rock slop.’ My mother said it nearly killed Uncle Ben.”
“He got even with ‘Dad’s Advice.’”
“Yes. With nearly every song after that, too.”
“The old man never approved of Nevada, hmm?”
“It must have been hard to approve of Uncle Ben back then. Or Cali. They were always on drugs. I have her diary in Aniane. Part of my inheritance.” She let out a scornful laugh. “She’d write things like ‘Smoked bowls and did acid.’ That would be one day’s entry. She finally ended up in a place called Hazeldon, for rehab.”
“A lot of them did.”
“Uncle Ben and Cali got success too soon. I don’t think much of success, do you?”
“I haven’t had a taste of it.”
“I haven’t either. I don’t have any wish for it. It brings you unhappiness. Martin says happiness is a vineyard, good weather, and enough help to get the job done.”
“Where do you come in?”
“I share it with him, no?”
“So you’d settle for a life in Aniane?”
“Settle? You should see Aniane. You should see Martin. Cali settled when she got rescued by Leonard Haun. Mother says there was no way Cali could have loved a pint-sized insurance executive with an ulcer, whose idea of a good time was a round of bridge. My biological father! Cali was desperate for security!”
She looked at her watch suddenly. “Mon dieu! Look at the time, Lang! I said I’d be back by four to play tennis with Uncle Ben!”
That week, our lunches got later and later as we lingered talking.
Alex complained that I saw more of her than I did of him. Sometimes I would get back to the cottage too late to call him before he left for the theater. That had never happened until she came into my life.
Nevada was waiting for us when we arrived at Roundelay. He was sitting in the old Ford down by the gates as we pulled in.
He called out his car window, “I was going to look for you except I didn’t know where to look! It’s five o’clock, Huguette! I was worried about you!”
“You know I’m with Lang,” she answered. “No need to worry.”
“Drive on,” he told her.
