Ashley Warlick - The Arrangement

A last sip of marc, they settled the bill, and Charles was gone.

They ducked past the boy sweeping up. Mary Frances knew where the coats were hung, but passing Ribaudot’s office, he called out to them, “Madame, how was your meal?”

“It was wonderful, wonderful. Thank you.”

“I am so happy you remembered us.”

“But everyone remembers Ribaudot’s. And Charles. Charles was wonderful.”

He shook his head. “These days it is hard to say who remembers what. And Charles, I am glad he was able to be here. Yours was his last service.”

“Last?”

“He is probably already headed south by now.”

“But why?”

It was a horrible question, none of her business, but she couldn’t help herself.

Ribaudot drew a small polite smile. “Why, Madame, his family is from the south. And the weather there…” He stopped. “Charles is old, intemperate, and now he is gone.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ribaudot shrugged. “So am I.”

Tim took her hand and led her down the narrow stairs, and once they were in the courtyard, the full starlight above, Ribaudot threw the switch, and Aux Trois Faisons went dark. Mary Frances was crying.

Tim gathered her in his arms, pressing her cheek to his. “My dear. It’s okay.”

“It’s not.”

“It was a lovely dinner, a perfect dinner. I am so happy to be with you here.”

“But, Tim. I wanted this so much. And now there’s nothing.”

“Everything passes,” he said. “Everything changes.”

She put her forehead to his shoulder, but she turned her face up, out, away.

“Look,” he said. “All those beautiful tiled roofs. The moonlight, Dijon…”

But all that was what she was crying for now, big hopeless tears that come effortlessly, that she did not try to wipe away.

This dinner would become the centerpiece of her book, the story the reviews all focused on, Tim as Chexbres, as he would always be called in her books to come. In her telling, they spark and flirt, they indulge themselves at the table, and at the end of “The Standing and the Waiting,” they weep for what they will never have. But most important, Chexbres is not Al, who appears in stories before and stories after, Al who is clearly her husband. Dijon had belonged to them. That she would have this dinner, write about this dinner, and then show it to the world is the most complete betrayal of her marriage she could make.

* * *

“I don’t think people realize how significant a meal can be,” says the librarian, and she has to laugh.

This is one of the things she likes to talk about these days, how people eat in their cars and don’t enjoy actual plates or food or company as they much as they should. He’s been a good librarian, read her latest interviews. Or maybe he shares her thinking too: she can tell by the way he uses his thumbs against the breastplate, the way he plucks only a few quills at a time, that he knows his way around a game bird. She looks hard at him: a hunter or a cook? She wishes she could blame her glasses.

“God no,” she says. “Which is why there’s much to be said for dining alone.”

He pauses and looks out at the vineyard, the coming darkness. “I guess there is,” but he looks unconvinced.

She’s not certain she believes it herself anymore. But she’s written about the pleasures of traveling alone, dining alone, cooking for one, and she feels beholden to the time he’s taken and the distance he’s come to hear her say what she always says. She has been alone for quite some time now, and the solitary meals, the big bed, the day that insists on being filled lend an intensity to her smallest conversations. Of course, Norah is here, but that is not the type of companion she means.

She offers the librarian a bag for the feathers and takes the still downy necks of the quail he’s finished back to her kitchen. She fills their cavities with lemons, the bay and sage from the pots on the balcony. She trusses the birds, butters their skins. All of it makes for a familiar ceremony, the hundreds of times she’s trussed birds, pleased guests, held forth on the significance of daily things.

Then suddenly, he’s there behind her with two more birds, his hand to her shoulder, a man accustomed to communicating silently. Suddenly, she wonders about his life back east in Boston, the last woman he touched, the last time he could not keep silent.

“Thank you,” she says, and the evening seems new again.

* * *

By the time they got to Switzerland, Mrs. Parrish had caught a cold. She wanted Mary Frances to stay with her in Vevey while Tim went to check his property above Lac Léman.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine, Mother. We’ll only be gone for the day.”

Mrs. Parrish blew her nose into her handkerchief and looked at Mary Frances.

“I can stay,” she said. “I can go to the pharmacy. It’s not a problem.”

“I hate for you to change your plans, dear. It’s just that I feel rather out of sorts here, and it’s not like Paris. I can’t understand a word they’re saying.”

“Of course. It’s not a problem.”

Tim turned from the window. He pushed his white cuff up his forearm to check his watch, and Mary Frances realized she had not worn her own in weeks. She rubbed the empty spot on her wrist, wondering if she’d even brought it.

“The weather is just too spectacular, Mother. I’ll be back in a half hour with the car. You can come with us, or you can stay here and we’ll return this evening.”

“Oh, Timmy,” she said. “I just can’t.”

“That’s fine, then. And you’ll be fine. But Mary Frances and I will be going.”

Mrs. Parrish redistributed the blankets over her legs. She studied her son, his face even and calm. This was not a standoff, but merely Tim’s patience in waiting for her to understand. Finally, she put her head back to the stack of pillows and coughed.

“Perhaps if I can just have a bit of tea sent up,” she said, but Tim was already out the door.

Mary Frances picked up the phone to order the tea, lemon, and honey, a plate of sandwiches. She asked if there was anything else, and Mrs. Parrish pretended not to hear her.

“Some brandy, perhaps?”

Mrs. Parrish only shook her head. She looked fragile, her eyes mouse-pink and wet, and Mary Frances felt a stab of guilt. What would Edith do to see her behave this way, Rex, any of them? She sank into the bedside chair.

“You truly are sick, aren’t you,” she said.

“Well, yes.”

She reached a hand to feel her forehead, and Mrs. Parrish pulled away, startled.

“This is beyond my understanding,” Mrs. Parrish said. “Really.”

Mary Frances let her hand fall to her lap. She was embarrassed to be so obvious, but not so embarrassed that she could stop herself. And what would it matter, to stop herself now? Suddenly the room felt hot, her own face feverish, but Mary Frances kept her seat until the bellman’s knock at the door with the tea tray, and then she slipped away.

* * *

They drove along the lake, the winding Haute Corniche between Lausanne and Vevey, the Alps still capped with snow. Tim was talking even faster than he drove, his white hair downy in the wind.

“I’ve wanted you to see this place from the moment we found it. Really. I thought of you immediately.”

“You did?”

“I think this place saved my life. Buying this place with Claire, thinking of you, here, this moment we are about to arrive at—” He began laughing. “I think that was it.”

They had not really talked about the winter before last, how bad he seemed when he left Los Angeles and what had taken place since then, not in any kind of solid terms. What would be the point in tracing back, what he had done, what she had done to get here? The vineyards terraced up from the lakeshore, and in the meadows between she could see small stone houses built into the hillsides, wending paths, sheep and their herder, a boy and a dog. Tim was talking about the cheeses, the brandy and eau de vie, the summers, the meadows filled with flowers, and Mary Frances rolled the window down to feel the breeze on her face and hear the bells from the sheep as they tripped along. And to be alone with Tim, moving. This was as solid a thing as she could ever ask for.