Anne Korkeakivi - An Unexpected Guest

Husbands and wives were teams in the Foreign Service, although only one got to wear a mantle, and a spouse’s ability to put on a good dinner was a crucial part of the package. No one at the Foreign Office would soon forget France’s President Chirac pronouncing food from Finland the only thing worse than British cooking. If humoring Mathilde’s conviction that she was the most important personage in the Residence kept the kitchen working smoothly, Clare was happy to oblige.

Mathilde rubbed a thick arm. “Spring weather’s murder on my rheumatism. All that air moving around. And me in here by the cooker.” She marched over and closed the window. Then she came and took back the apron.

“I’ll stop in the pharmacy and see if I can’t find something for you,” Clare promised.

In the front hall, Amélie was balanced on a step stool, polishing the crystal chandelier. The glass glistened in the sun streaming in from the study, splashing prisms of light all over Amélie’s sturdy calves. She peeked down at Clare questioningly, and Clare nodded. Crisis averted.

“Behn…,” Amélie said.

“Mmmm…,” Clare said. She felt inside the Regency console in the foyer, where she always stored her handbag, taking in the marine landscape by Turner that hung above it. An early watercolor of breaking dawn, the Turner was even more precious to her than its pedigree might warrant, for reasons she’d never been able to pinpoint; she hung it by the door wherever they lived so it would be the first or last thing she saw as she exited or entered. “I shall be going out now. While I’m gone, can you go through the liquor cabinet, please, and make sure there’s Somerset Brandy and at least twenty-five choices of whiskey? If there isn’t, call Jane in housekeeping at the embassy and ask that a car bring them over.”

“Ze Zomerzet Brandy and twenty-five whiskey.”

“Exactly. I have a few quick errands to run. Unless something unexpected comes up, I will be back within a couple hours.” To make certain Amélie had understood, she repeated, slowly: “I-will-come-back-soon. Nothing-will-happen-when-I-am-out.”

Amélie’s English skills left much room for improvement, but Amélie was keen to improve them and Clare felt she had to support her in the effort, even at moments as critical as this. Maybe, to build her confidence, especially at moments like this.

Amélie squinted at her from above. Clare refrained from repeating herself one last time, in French. It would be so nice to feel sure she’d been understood. “And, if ze new Madame Conseiller does not speak French so well as you? She will cut me!” Amélie had burst out a few months ago, anticipating the end to Clare’s time in Paris. They’d already been there three years, and regardless of whether or not Edward got an ambassadorship, they would be reposted somewhere new soon. That’s how it was in the Foreign Service: never too long anywhere. Amélie knew the score.

“Not cut. Not cut, Amélie.”

“I must make better my English,” Amélie had announced, nodding. “Now, I speak only English. C’est bien? ”

So, Clare left the English words hanging between them and hoped Amélie had understood everything. The door to the apartment thumped shut behind her; there was the twang of the elevator cage, starting its way up. She set her wicker shopping basket down on the inlaid tile of the landing and loosened the thick silk scarf she’d knotted over her sweater as she waited for its arrival. Today was a beautiful April day in Paris, filled with promise. Jamie was in trouble yet again, but she’d accomplished what she’d needed for right now. The silver would all shine. Bread dough would soon begin rising in a basket. Fresh herbs would be cut and pounded into a pesto.

She wouldn’t think about where all these dinner preparations might propel her. She had to believe everything was going to be fine.

Composure was a quality like gold in the diplomatic world, and she had built a reputation for having it in spades. She wouldn’t let it now fail her.

Clare stepped out into the gated courtyard that separated the Residence’s building from the pale stone-lined walks of the neighborhood and swung her shopping basket into the crook of her arm.

“Bonjour, Madame,” she said to the woman polishing the front door handle.

“Bonjour, Madame.” The woman stepped to one side and nodded. Clare stopped to button up her cardigan and tried not to feel the woman’s eyes taking in every garment she was wearing, noting that Clare hadn’t had her hair done this week.

Hairdresser—4 p.m. She had it on her to-do list.

Running a diplomatic residence was easy, but living in it was harder. In addition to the loss of privacy was the shortage of free will — so many things that had to be said and done each day, no matter how she might feel about them. Then, the constant menace of relocation and the conservation of a pristine public image. Not to forget the security issues — always be on guard, a fellow ex-pat wife had told her during the Cairo posting, stirring a spoonful of sugar into her coffee cup. A few years after, Clare had picked up the morning paper to see the same woman’s face staring back at her from beneath the fold; she was being held for an undisclosed ransom by kidnappers in Venezuela. The kidnappers had gotten the wife by mistake when she’d picked up her husband’s car after a routine check at the garage.

“My God, Edward,” she’d said, holding up the paper to show him.

“They weren’t Foreign Service. They were oil,” he had pointed out, after taking the paper and studying the article. “Much more money.”

Still, Jamie had had to be sent away, to someplace with gates, someplace culturally welcoming. While the chances were greater that one of them would get hurt falling down stairs in a crumbling building in Paris than that one of them would be kidnapped, the peril of terrorism seemed all the greater for its intimacy and immensity. Nine eleven had changed everything, throwing the already fragile balance between estranged worlds into both disorder and relief. She overheard the hostility in both the tabacs and from well-dressed professionals at multinational cocktail parties. “Americaine?” a key cutter had asked the day before, lifting an eyebrow in a way that conveyed a thousand words of disapproval. There’d been sympathy for a while, but the war in Iraq had changed that.

The joyous wave of wisteria against the building’s facade caught her eye. Yet, she had to consider herself lucky. Paris was beautiful. The creditability of Edward’s work made hers feel like a treat rather than a duty. And, in the end, what was the use in worrying, particularly on days like this one, when the sun’s rays were borne lightly about by a spring wind and even the plane trees outside their apartment building seemed to be dancing? The breeze caught in her hair and caressed her cheek, coaxing a younger Clare to step out from her middle-aged shell. She could almost feel a heavy braid swing against her back as it had during the days when she was a student at Radcliffe, and for a moment she allowed herself to revel in the phantom sensation. At Harvard, she’d padded her long frame with woven Aran sweaters in honor of her Irish heritage, played Ultimate Frisbee on the campus quad barefoot, and pulled overnighters with her roommate during exam periods. Never one to proclaim her views loudly, she’d nonetheless emptied her pockets for any worthy-seeming cause, offered her floor to anyone visiting the campus for a valid-seeming protest. She’d believed the world could be better. Only after she’d met Niall had she learned to be suspicious, and that was the real reason for her innate apprehension; she was expecting the past to raise its angry head, hoary and covered with the cobwebs of recrimination, to point its finger at her. Neither 9/11 nor Edward and the lifestyle he’d brought her was to blame. If anything, that was why she’d married Edward. She had hoped the profundity of his decency might shield her.