Mavis Gallant - The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant

“I could find out,” said Ray.

“I think they don’t want anybody around.”

“What did you eat for lunch?” said her mother.

“Some kind of cold soup. Some kind of cold meat. A fruit salad. Iced tea. The men drank beer. There was no bread on the table.”

“Pass Nora the peanut butter,” said Ray.

“Did you meet Mr. Fenton because of Ninette,” said Nora, “or did you know him first? Did you know Dr. Marchand first, or Mr. Fenton?”

“It’s a small world,” said her father. “Anyways, I’ve got some money for you.”

“How much?” said Nora. “No, never mind. I’ll ask if I ever need it.”

“You’ll never need anything,” he said. “Not as long as your old dad’s around.”

“You know that Mrs. Clopstock?” said Nora. “She’s the first person I’ve ever met from Toronto. I didn’t stare at her, but I took a good look. Maman, how can you tell real pearls?”

“They wouldn’t be real,” said Ray. “The real ones would be on deposit. Rosalie had a string of pearls.”

“They had to sell them on account of Ninette,” said her mother.

“Maybe you could find out the name of the hospital,” Nora said. “He might like to see me. He knows me.”

“He’s already forgotten you,” her mother said.

“I wouldn’t swear to that,” said Ray. “I can remember somebody bending over my baby buggy. I don’t know who it was, though.”

He will remember that I picked him up, Nora decided. He will remember the smell of the incense. He will remember the front door and moving into the dark hall. I’ll try to remember him. It’s the best I can do.

She said to Ray, “What’s the exact truth? Just what’s on paper?”

“Nora,” said her mother. “Look at me. Look me right in the face. Forget that child. He isn’t yours. If you want children, get married. All right?”

“All right,” her father answered for her. “Why don’t you put on some clothes and I’ll take you both to a movie.” He began to whistle, not “Don’t Let It Bother You,” but some other thing just as easy.

B y the time they decided what Carol would wear for her wedding (white with white flowers), it was the end of the afternoon. Madame Germaine removed the sketchbooks, the scraps of net and satin, the stacks of Vogue; she had, already, a professional look of anxiety, as if it could not possibly come out well. One foresaw seams ripped open, extra fittings, even Carol’s tears.

Odile, Carol’s friend, seemed disappointed. “White isn’t original,” she said. “If it were me, I would certainly not be married in all that rubbish of lace, like a First Communion.” She picked threads from her skirt fastidiously, as if to remove herself completely from Carol and her unoriginal plans.

I wonder if anyone has ever asked Odile to marry him, Carol thought, placidly looking out the window. As her wedding approached, she had more and more the engaged girl’s air of dissociation: Nothing mattered until the wedding, and she could not see clearly beyond it. She was sorry for all the single girls of the world, particularly those who were, like Odile, past thirty. Odile looked sallow and pathetic, huddled into a sweater and coat, turning over samples of lace with a disapproving air. She seemed all of a piece with the day’s weather and the chilly air of the dressmaker’s flat. Outside, the street was still damp from a rain earlier in the day. There were no trees in sight, no flowers, no comforting glimpse of park. No one in this part of Paris would have known it was spring.

“Even blue,” said Odile. But there was evidently no conversation to be had with Carol, who had begun to hum, so she said to the dressmaker, “Just imagine! Miss Frazier came to Paris to work last autumn, and fell in love with the head of her department.”

“Non!” Madame Germaine recoiled, as if no other client had ever brought off such an extraordinary thing.

“Fell in love with Mr. Mitchell,” said Odile, nodding. “At first sight, le coup de foudre.”

“At first sight?” said the dressmaker. She looked fondly at Carol.

“Something no one would have expected,” said Odile. “Although Mr. Mitchell is charming. Charming.”

“I think we ought to go,” said Carol.

Odile looked regretfully, as if she had more to say. Carol made an appointment for the following day, and the two left the flat together, Odile’s sturdy heels making a clatter as they went down the staircase.

“Why were you so funny just then?” Odile said. “I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true, and you know how women like that love to hear about weddings and love and everything. And it’s such a wonderful story about you and Mr. Mitchell. I tell it to everyone.”

This, Carol thought, could not be true, for Odile was rarely interested in anyone but herself, and had never shown the least curiosity about Carol’s plans, other than offering to find a dressmaker.

“It was terribly romantic,” Odile said, “whether you admit it or not. You and Mr. Mitchell. Our Mr. Mitchell.”

It penetrated at last that Odile was making fun of her.

People had assured Carol so often that her engagement was romantic, and she had become so accustomed to the word, that Odile’s slight irony was perplexing. If anyone had asked Carol at what precise moment she fell in love, or where Howard Mitchell proposed to her, she would have imagined, quite sincerely, a scene that involved all at once the Seine, moonlight, barrows of violets, acacias in flower, and a confused, misty background of the Eiffel Tower and little crooked streets. This was what everyone expected, and she had nearly come to believe it herself.

Actually, he had proposed at lunch, over a tuna-fish salad. He and Carol had known each other less than three weeks, and their conversation until then had been limited to their office — an American government agency — and the people in it. Carol was twenty-two; no one had proposed to her before, except an unsuitable medical student with no money and eight years’ training still to go. She was under the illusion that in a short time she would be so old no one would ask her again. She accepted at once, and Howard celebrated by ordering an extra bottle of wine. Both would have liked champagne, as a more emphatic symbol of the unusual, but each was too diffident to suggest it.

The fact that Carol was not in love with Howard Mitchell did not dismay her in the least. From a series of helpful college lectures on marriage she had learned that a common interest, such as a liking for Irish setters, was the true basis for happiness, and that the illusion of love was a blight imposed by the film industry, and almost entirely responsible for the high rate of divorce. Similar economic backgrounds, financial security, belonging to the same church — these were the pillars of the married union. By an astonishing coincidence, the fathers of Carol and Howard were both attorneys and both had been defeated in their one attempt to get elected a judge. Carol and Howard were both vaguely Protestant, although a serious discussion of religious beliefs would have gravely embarrassed them. And Howard, best of all, was sober, old enough to know his own mind, and absolutely reliable. He was an economist who had had sense enough to attach himself to a corporation that continued to pay his salary during his loan to the government. There was no reason for the engagement or the marriage to fail.

Carol, with great efficiency, nearly at once set about the business of falling in love. Love required only the right conditions, like a geranium. It would wither exposed to bad weather or in dismal surroundings; indeed, Carol rated the chances of love in a cottage or a furnished room at zero. Given a good climate, enough money, and a pair of good-natured, intelligent (her college lectures had stressed this) people, one had only to sit back and watch it grow. All winter, then, she looked for these right conditions in Paris. When, at first, nothing happened, she blamed it on the weather. She was often convinced she would fall deeply in love with Howard if only it would stop raining. Undaunted, she waited for better times.