French Exit Read online

  She took advantage of Malcolm’s captivity to catalog certain of her vast and multifaceted romantic excursions. “There was Raoul,” she said. “The central casting Latin Lover. He used to always ask me, ‘Will you remember this forever?’ He was after immortality, I guess. He never did propose; he didn’t want to spend forever with me. He only wanted me to recall him after he’d disappeared, which is what I’m doing now, of course—you’re welcome, Raoul.” She shrugged. “Then there was Kenneth, WASP wonder boy. We were involved in the premarriage courting ritual when he died in a car accident in Long Island. There’s something about a person met with tragic death; you recall their living moments in a kinder light. We tell ourselves we knew on the psychic level they were going to die, but I didn’t know, no. Joan was the one to tell me and it’s true I cried but it felt forced and later I lay awake surprised at how little I cared. It’s a shame he died that way, but I’m glad we never married. He wanted to tamp my spirit and he might have succeeded. But he was a beautiful boy—beautiful.

  “Just on the heels of this came Charles, who was, unfortunately, Kenneth’s married uncle. He cornered me at the wake; it was important that we speak, he told me. He took my wrist in his hand and I remember admiring his watch, a Rolex, and wondering at his hand’s tan-ness. ‘What are you doing in June?’ he asked. He telephoned me the next morning with instructions to meet him on the first of the month at an airstrip outside New Jersey. ‘Bring a passport, a swimsuit, and a good, long book,’ he said. Being dutiful, I wrote these things down on a pad of paper. I taxied out and there was Charles, standing waiting beside the barb-wire fence walling in the tarmac. He wore short sleeves, sunglasses, and was smoking I swear to God a pipe. He took my bag and we walked toward the prop plane. ‘How are you at keeping secrets?’ he wanted to know. ‘Fair,’ I said. He thought I was being witty. When we returned, fourteen days later, I was more tan than he was, and he gave me his watch, along with a friendly chuck on the chin. He was thinking there’d be tears but my heart wasn’t anywhere near broken. I’d read that good, long book twice through, and not because I found it worthy of revisiting. When the cabbie asked me where I’d been, I told him, ‘Nowhere special,’ and I gave him the Rolex as a tip. He thought it was a fake and I didn’t bother to correct him. Everyone in Manhattan heard about the affair because I told them. Charles’s marriage crumbled and he came around to chastise me, but also to ask if I’d run away with him. I said I wouldn’t, and he vanished clear off the face of the earth. After this I became semi-infamous and was sought out by those hopeful for a suggestion of danger. My first sip of scandal. I can’t claim to have disliked it. And it prepared me for what came later.”

  Malcolm sat up and retched into the trash can but nothing came. He settled back into his bed.

  Frances said, “I ran from one brightly burning disaster to the next, pal. That’s the way I was. Possibly you won’t like to think of your mother as one who lived, but I’ll tell you something: it’s fun to run from one brightly burning disaster to the next.”

  Pointing to the cat, Malcolm said, “Tell me about him.”

  Frances stood and carried Small Frank to the door. She let him into the hall and returned, sitting and watching Malcolm with a patient expression.

  “Tell me about your first date.”

  “The first date he took me to Tavern on the Green. He ate his cupcake with a fork and knife, and I thought, Who could love this man?”

  Malcolm said, “I can’t imagine cupcakes at Tavern on the Green.”

  “That’s a banal observation, Malcolm, but just to see the thought through, yes, they did for a time serve chocolate cupcakes at Tavern on the Green. He was nervous but hid it admirably. I liked that he wasn’t afraid of silence.” Frances became silent herself.

  “Keep talking about him,” said Malcolm.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “But did you love him?”

  She was surprised by the question. She considered the answer. It seemed correct to respond honestly. “I did, then I didn’t, then I did, then I really didn’t.”

  A pause, and Malcolm began to vomit loudly into the trash can. Frances took this as her cue to retire. Some hours later, her telephone rang. Malcolm had found his sea legs, he said, and had scouted out the entire ship. “Did you know there’s a medium on board? They’ve set her up in a little tent across from the buffet. Want to come visit her with me?”

  Frances was unnerved by the idea of any sort of future-gazing, and said she wouldn’t go; but she asked for a full report afterward, and Malcolm rang off, seeking out the medium abovedecks.

  Approaching the tent, he thought he heard, then was sure he heard, the sound of someone in emotional distress. Peering into the moon-shaped window hole he saw two women, one young, one older. They sat facing each other before a low table crowded with candles and stone fruit and incense and tarot cards. The older woman was weeping; the young woman was not. “I’m sorry,” said the latter. “I’m so sorry.” The older woman seemed not to hear the words; soon she stood and rushed from the tent, fairly wailing, now. The young woman remained; she closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, speaking inaudibly to herself.

  In studying her, Malcolm found her features favorable, and the atmosphere—the smoke, the dimness of the tent, the silky, soft-edged furnishing—felt intimate. She opened her eyes and, upon seeing Malcolm staring in at her, startled and shrieked. He hurried away, back down the stairs and to his room. Five minutes later a note shot under the door. Thinking it a rebuke from the medium, he was uneasy as he opened it. But it was only Frances writing with instructions for the evening.

  9.

  At the appointed time of eight P.M. Malcolm appeared in the dining hall wearing a tuxedo. He sat to the right of Frances, who was wearing a gown. In the chair to her left sat Small Frank, looking out the window at the black sky and blacker ocean. Frances also was staring; their heads were propped at the same degree of tilt. Malcolm asked her if she was all right and she answered, “I overheard a man say it was five miles to the bottom of the sea.”

  “Yes?” he said, sitting.

  “Well, I wish I didn’t know it. What a stupid thing to say on a cruise ship.”

  A waiter came to the table, a compactly handsome young man, thick black hair fixed in place. Pointing to Small Frank he asked, “Excuse me, whose cat is this?” When neither Malcolm nor Frances answered, he took Small Frank away. The cat hung limply in the waiter’s hands and seemed bored by the fact of his removal. A moment passed when Frances suffered a guilt, or what passed for a guilt with her, and she went off to track the waiter down.

  Malcolm fell to studying the dance floor, filled as it was with a game if aged crowd. They spun and jerked about to a surprisingly facile trio pumping out big-band tunes one on top of the other—which was strange when Malcolm considered that the seniors before him were twenty or thirty years too young to have taken part in the dance crazes they were now emulating with such relish. The older woman who’d been crying in the medium’s tent had retrieved her cheer and was stepping through the crowd throwing fistfuls of confetti into the air. She looked perfectly enchanted to be doing this, as though it were all she’d ever wanted, to march about in a pink gown tossing confetti over the heads of strangers. The throng ate her up but Malcolm still could make out the occasional blast of confetti shot upward from the far side of the room. He was fishing a cherry from the bottom of Frances’s drink when he saw the medium passing by. He hailed her; she approached and stood before him. “I’m Malcolm,” he explained. When she didn’t reply, he asked, “Will you tell me your name?”

  “Madeleine.”

  “Madeleine, will you have a drink with me?”

  “No.”

  “Just one drink, Madeleine?”

  “No.”

  Frances returned, carrying Small Frank under her arm like a football. With the arrival of the cat, Madeleine’s attitude completely changed. Dropping to a knee, she held his head in her hands and peered deeply i
nto his eyes. Looking up at Frances, she said, “Interesting animal you’ve got here.”

  Frances asked Malcolm, “Who is this person?”

  “Madeleine the medium.”

  “What’s she doing?”

  “I’m not sure. What are you doing, Madeleine?”

  Madeleine stood. “Sorry.” Pointing to Small Frank, she asked, “Do you not know?”

  “We know,” said Frances.

  The handsome waiter returned. He was giving Madeleine a disapproving look; she in turn regarded him defiantly. She sat, pulling her chair close to Malcolm. “I think I will have that drink, actually.” Addressing the waiter she said, “Dry gin martini.”

  “You know you’re not supposed to sit here,” the waiter told her.

  “Don’t be tedious, Salvatore.”

  “I’m not going to serve you.”

  Frances moved to stand before the waiter, Salvatore. “I’m sorry, good evening, hello,” she said. “Is there some sort of problem?”

  Salvatore blanched. “Good evening, ma’am. Yes, I’m afraid I can’t serve the young lady in the dining area.”

  “And why is that?” she asked innocently.

  “Since she works with us here, ma’am. It’s company policy.”

  “A policy of segregation?”

  “I don’t know that segregation is the word.”

  “I think it is. Oh, but it’s an ugly word, isn’t it?”

  “There’s a very nice canteen for the ship’s employees, ma’am.”

  Frances looked at Madeleine. Madeleine said, “It’s dark and stinks of grease.”

  Frances studied Salvatore with her best unkind expression. “It was a dry gin martini, I believe,” she said.

  Salvatore was no match for Frances; he went away to fetch the drink. Madeleine said, “Hey, thanks,” and Frances took up Small Frank’s paw and made him salute. To Malcolm she said, “We’re going to lie down.”

  “What about your dinner?”

  “I’ll order in. Will you come and see us later?”

  Malcolm agreed, and Frances departed. After she’d gone Madeleine said, “She’s neat. What’s she paying you?”

  “Paying me?”

  “Aren’t you her gigolo?”

  “Oh my God,” said Malcolm. “That’s my mother.”

  Madeleine held up her hand. “Excuse me. But you’d be surprised at how common it is.”

  Salvatore soon returned to deliver Madeleine’s drink. “You’re a real fucking gentleman, Sally, you know that?” she said. She drank her first martini in under five minutes, then ordered and drank a second, then a third. The gin soothed her, and she became friendly, curious. When she asked after the specifics of Malcolm’s life, he explained about Susan and his mother. “The town wasn’t big enough for the two of them,” he said.

  “Which town is this?”

  “New York City.”

  “But you’re still engaged?”

  “Technically. Does that bother you?”

  “How could it?”

  Malcolm asked her why the old woman in the tent had been crying and Madeleine said, “A quarter of the people on board this ship are in the presence of death. But if I say a single word about it? Off I go.”

  “You told the woman she’s dying?”

  “Yes, because she is.”

  “She seemed healthy enough last time I saw her.” Here Malcolm explained about the woman’s confetti performance on the dance floor. Madeleine listened with minimal interest. “She’ll never see land again,” she said.

  Malcolm too was drinking, and the alcohol brought about a temporary mutual fondness, which led to an invitation to Madeleine’s cabin, a cramped, airless space littered with dirty laundry and snack trash. The moment the door was shut behind them Madeleine pulled her gypsy dress over her head. She crawled into bed and Malcolm followed after. He knew the stimulation that accompanies unforeseen escapade; peeling off his socks, he said, “I won’t be needing these!” Together, they experienced unremarkable intercourse. After, Madeleine’s attitude soured. “I should be getting to sleep now,” she said. Malcolm agreed, and laid his head on the pillow.

  “I was asking you to leave,” Madeleine told him.

  Malcolm dressed and was reaching for the doorknob when there came a discreet tapping from the other side. He looked at Madeleine, but she had no reaction; she lay in her bunk looking vacantly upward. The knock reoccurred, louder, now. Malcolm felt certain it was a lover paying Madeleine a call: Salvatore? It was three o’clock in the morning and Malcolm’s flesh was burning with fatigue. He knew he couldn’t face whoever stood in the hall, but neither could he return to lie beside Madeleine. He closed his eyes standing up, feeling the slow sway of water beneath his feet. Five miles—what a terrible fact of nature it was. He thought of the subsumed ship gliding nose-first all that way in darkness, and of the eventual slow-motion collision with the sandy ocean floor.

  10.

  Frances was in her bed, in her indigo robe, hair upswept, studying herself in a palm mirror and talking to Small Frank, who was sitting beside her and listening with what could be interpreted as interest. “It’s like a retirement, in a way,” she explained. “Though, no, I’ve never worked, and so what mantle is being retired, even. And then, who retires after the money’s all gone.” She made a face describing a shrug. She lowered her mirror and looked at Small Frank. “I’m not sure how we’re going to get you into Europe,” she said. She raised her mirror and sucked in her cheeks. “All that lovely money.” She observed a moment of silence before turning the bedside light off.

  11.

  Days passed. Nothing happened. The ocean was larger than Frances had imagined, and she wished the ship would go faster. On the last night of the cruise she and Malcolm were invited to dine at the captain’s table. The captain was in his middle sixties, traditionally handsome, full head of silver hair. He ordered his steak bloody and drank Scotch on ice and was enamored of Frances from the moment he saw her; quip after quip passed his lips for her benefit but she offered him not even fleeting eye contact. She wasn’t ignoring him intentionally, it was only that she was lost in a meandering mental phase and hadn’t registered his existence. When a dish broke in the kitchen, she stirred and surveyed the table. The captain was watching her expectantly. “I’m moving to Paris,” she told him.

  “Yes, that was my understanding. Are you very excited?”

  “I suppose I should be.”

  “I admire you for carving out a second act for yourself.” He raised a glass in her direction. “Bravo.”

  “Thank you,” said Frances. “But it’s the third act if we’re to be honest. Or the coda, if you’d rather.”

  The captain appeared troubled. He leaned over and whispered in the ear of the young man sitting next to him. This person was the captain’s underling, and the resemblance was such they could have been related. The underling listened intently, and once the comment or instruction was completed he left the table. The captain resumed his conversation with Frances:

  “And your son is coming along with you, isn’t that right?”

  “Of course,” she said. She patted Malcolm’s hand, and he looked generally in her direction but said nothing. He was thinking of Madeleine the medium. He hadn’t seen her since their dalliance; the day before he’d sought her out in her tent, but an off-duty sign hung over the entrance. And he’d knocked on her cabin door before dinner—no answer. Salvatore was working the far side of the dining hall and Malcolm waved to him but he didn’t wave back.

  “I find it refreshing to see a child so devoted,” the captain continued. “It’s all I can do to get my daughter to speak with me on the phone.” Quietly, as though it were half a secret, he said, “I was close with my mother, too.”

  “I despised mine,” said Frances.

  “Did you?”

  “Despised.”

  Aiming for tact, the captain said, “The burden of motherhood can be a strain.”

  “She was a demon.
And if such a place as hell exists then that’s where she collects her mail.” Frances signaled the waiter for another drink.

  The captain was unsure how to respond, and so sat in silence, watching his steak and wondering if Frances was crazy, and furthermore if that made a difference. Frances’s drink was delivered and she took a sip. Recalling the daunting fact she had learned the day before, she asked, “Is it true that it’s five miles to the bottom of the sea?”

  The captain could hardly think of something he would rather have been asked, and he all but leapt up to answer. “At its deepest it’s still shy of that, but just. We’re talking about the Mariana Trench, here. That’s in the western Pacific—far enough away that it might not exist so far as we’re concerned. Five miles is an uncommon depth, however. Where we are now, it’s more along the line of two miles.”

  The news was a balm for Frances, and the aggregate gin was having its effect. To her own surprise she suddenly found the captain physically attractive. He was a buffoon and she knew it but what was there to lose, at this late date, in straightforward fun? The captain deduced she thought him winning and lit up, inhabiting his most rakish persona. They leaned in close to each other, their voices husky and low.

  “Have you many compatriot seamen?” Frances asked.

  “A good number.”

  “Have any been swallowed up by the Deep?”