Mavis Gallant - The Cost of Living - Early and Uncollected Stories

“In Nadine’s ideal future there will be no need for holidays,” said her grandmother.

“Or life will be one long holiday and the word will fall into disuse,” said Jérôme. “If I could start my life over from the beginning, I would think along those lines.” Lucie opened her mouth; stared; but before she could speak, he said under his breath, “Stop watching me!”

“And how are you, Jérôme?” said Henriette Arrieu. She seemed to mean something more than an ordinary greeting.

“He gets a little tired sometimes,” said Lucie. It was not her fault — the words were out before she could stop and think about them. It was a bad habit, yes, but who had given her the habit? This time she met his eyes straight on. Why, I could hate him, she thought.

“I am all right,” he said. “As much as anyone is.”

“Oh, are you all right?” said Lucie. “What do you mean by all right? What about telling Nadine you wanted to buy a house here? What about last night, when you sat on your bed tearing paper? What about that other time, when the sun came out with Latin inscriptions in eighteenth-century lettering? One day you saw the sun with a perfect eye in its center — eyelashes, everything. When you saw the eyelashes again you called me and said, There, you can see them. You held your dark glasses at arm’s length and looked out the window. But I had left the iron connected. There must have been a short circuit. The cord, the socket, everything began to smoke. I started to cry but you did the right thing, turned off the meter, disconnected the iron. How long are you going to keep insisting you’re all right? Who else sees the sun with an eye and eyelashes? You can’t even take an Equanil if I’m not there to remind you. Suppose I have to start taking your medicine too? Then where will we be?”

“Was there thunder in Paris?” said Nadine to her grandmother. “Did you hear thunder last night?”

Lucie understood that somehow, unheard, in a private family message code, Nadine was warning her grandmother: Be careful. The Girards do nothing but quarrel with each other and Lucie Girard may even be a little mad.

Ah, but why be angry? said Lucie. Why blame Jérôme? Anyone would think he owed me something. Perhaps there is a large unpaid debt and that is the paper he keeps tearing. Perhaps he had a bill he is too kind to present me with.

“Jérôme is fine,” she said. “There are men worse than Jérôme. Oh, much worse. My brother-in-law held a knife to my sister’s throat all one night. In the morning he went to the office as if nothing had happened. My sister thought it over and decided not to leave him. He had never done it before and might never again. Also, they hadn’t finished paying for their house. Jérôme has only one thing the matter. He does not quite understand the effect he has on other people. Jérôme has had a superior education and he does not care what other people think.”

“Did you pay Pierrette for the strawberries, Nadine?” said Madame Arrieu. “What about the key?”

Lucie turned and looked back at the town. Something was missing; once, during a long train journey in childhood, she had been disturbed to find the restaurant car had disappeared during the night. That is the way I feel now, she said. Forces are at work in the dark. We ought to reject sleep. Stay awake. Try to hear. Avoid being caught unawares. Jérôme is right when he walks up and down in the dark and refuses a sleeping pill. He would be right even to keep away from me; but he can’t.

5

“Do you want to take all those strawberries to Paris?” said Gilles. The seat next to Gilles was piled with fruit and flowers. The dog had been forced to lie on the floor. Jérôme and Lucie sat together; Lucie leaned forward so that she and Gilles could talk. “There was plenty to eat in Dijon, but nothing worth buying,” said Gilles. “Imagine a world with nothing to eat and nothing to buy. That would be hell. It’s probably the future, if anyone cares.”

“Jérôme nearly bought a house,” said Lucie.

Gilles repressed saying, With what money? He went on, “Saturday we had the damndest thing to eat — sauerkraut. In Dijon. It was supposed to be exotic. The Japanese buyers didn’t only eat it, they asked for the recipe. I found out about your Madame Arrieu. Funny that I hadn’t heard about her. Laure would know, of course. He was famous.”

“He took cyanide,” said Lucie. “He was very fair, he could have passed for a German. He did, in fact, and they caught him.”

“They’re friends of Jérôme ? Are you sure?”

“We’ve been invited to go on a cruise next year with the whole family,” said Lucie. “But not around any fascist state.”

“Saturday they gave us the sauerkraut,” said Gilles. “Sunday we had salmon. I could have sworn it was frozen. Then capon with a Beaujolais sauce. The sauce was gray. I think there was flour in it. Laure would have sent the whole thing back. Today we had shoulder of lamb. It was called à la Washington and basted in whiskey. That was to impress the American buyers, but there were complaints. Then we had soufflé Hiroshima for the sake of the Japanese. Do you know what soufflé Hiroshima is? Vanilla ice cream in an orange with a paper parasol. You don’t eat the parasol. Why am I so interested in menus, I wonder? I should be writing cookbooks.”

“Because you’re a bachelor,” said Jérôme. This was the first thing he had ever said to Gilles directly.

There, said Lucie to herself. He is making a contact. She hoped that Gilles understood and appreciated Jérôme’s progress.

“Yes, a bachelor,” Jérôme went on. “You are a bachelor with three children and whatever her name is. Laure. You’ll end up shuffling around that New Haven house counting your medieval saints and testing the door locks. Wondering what you’ll have to eat tomorrow and trying to recall yesterday’s pudding. You will be wearing old tennis sneakers and the dog will trail along carrying a third shoe even more disgusting than those you will have on your feet. When you come to Paris on your annual bachelor visit, Laure will hear you in the hall and say, ‘Is that you, darling?’ because she will have forgotten your name and what part you play in the family, but she will have finally recognized the little bachelor shuffle.”

“This weekend was good for Jérôme,” said Lucie. “Though in my opinion he is still behind with his sleep.”

Gilles reached over the pile of fruit and flowers to grope for the radio. “Shut up,” he said to the silent dog. He was remembering his brief glimpse of the Girards with narrowed faces, as unpredictable as animals, and he said to himself, I’ve got two killers there in the back of the car.

“Be sure you turn on the right Haydn,” Lucie said.

Between collar and cap, Gilles felt the coldest touch he had ever imagined. He gripped the wheel. It was a matter of keeping the car steady. But when he stole a look at them in the mirror he saw they had gone to sleep. He was alone in the world with something soothing — Vivaldi. No need to worry about the right one because there never had been another. He was not in any great danger, for the moment; the essential Gilles was not yet slumped, shot, hacked, with a dunce cap crowning the remains, though it seemed that nothing less than a murder could round off the Burgundy weekend. Why had he invited them into his car to begin with? If it was a matter of company, even the dog would have been better.

One of them stirred, sighed, leaned forward.

“Lucie?”

“Yes.”

Like all the poor, they were ungrateful. Like all the ignorant, they were unconcerned with knowledge. Like all of the past, they were filled with danger. “Is Jérôme all right?” he finally said.