The Suitors

The Suitors - By Cecile David-Weill



Spring 2007



It was a Sunday like any other. My son, Felix, was with his father. My sister and I always arranged to have dinner at least once a month with our parents, and now that May was almost over, the weather was becoming pleasant, so our conversation that night would inevitably focus on our plans for the summer. I must have been really bored given that I was looking forward to an evening I had already been through year after year, like clockwork! I felt a twinge of melancholy; my life was decidedly uneventful. I had Felix’s well-being and my patients’ anxieties to keep me busy, but no passions of my own. I felt empty. In the end, though, I convinced myself that there was nothing wrong with taking pleasure in a family ritual I knew completely by heart.

I could see it all in detail: Marie and I would meet in the courtyard at five to nine to compliment each other on our outfits before braving the indifference of our mother, who never seemed to notice our efforts to meet with her sartorial approval. Sunday dinners were a contest of couture: we had to appear both stylish and relaxed, in a gently tailored suit, for example, or some chic sportswear. It was a game at which my sister was an acknowledged champion.

We would troop to the kitchen to fetch the light supper the cook had left for us on his day off, and then the table conversation would naturally turn to the approaching summer.

“Always the same guests!” my father would complain with a sigh.

My mother, her chestnut hair in a chignon, elegantly thin in a smart housecoat (that old-fashioned garment halfway between a robe and an evening gown), would protest that she was doing her very best. Wasn’t she working hard enough as it was to bring fresh faces to the usual cast of characters? It was much more difficult than it looked to come up, year after year, with people who were well mannered, interesting, clever conversationalists, but not freeloaders. Then my mother would pause, pretending to surrender.

“After all, you’re right. Still, I don’t know … My latest attempts … Remember Joy, Moïra, Samuel … The graft didn’t … didn’t take. They seemed charming, and then … disaster.”

Marie and I would simply look at each other to make sure we weren’t imagining things. Since no one else ever seemed to notice whenever our mother fumbled, disconcertingly, for words, any comments my sister and I might have made would have sounded mean, bringing a sour note to the pleasure of discussing our summer house.

Because for us, L’Agapanthe was a haven of happiness.

Sheltered from time, it was a world of its own, one of luxury and lighthearted enjoyment. We spoke of it with pride, the way other people talk about the family eccentric or some colorful character they feel privileged to know. L’Agapanthe was not the ordinary summer-house of rose-colored childhood, conjuring nostalgia and memories out of bread and jam, French toast, and skinned knees. No. During the summer months, just like an ocean liner, the house required birds of passage and a large staff. In short, it was what is properly referred to as a “bonne maison.”

This shameless, snobbish understatement referred to the handful of houses around the world on that same grand scale, combining luxury, perfect taste, and a refined way of life. In the same way they would have said “grandes familles” or “grands hôtels,” the servants in such houses referred to them as “grandes maisons,” and without describing them or defining what they had in common, these experts could have rattled off a list on Corsica, in Mexico, in Tuscany, or on Corfu, an inventory far more private than the host of palatial European hotels touted everywhere in travel guides and magazines.

These houses always had:

Dumbwaiters

Walk-in cold rooms

Bell boards for the upstairs rooms

Vans for grocery shopping

Cupboards for breakfast trays

A kitchen (for the cooks)

A pantry (for the butlers)

A laundry room with linen closets

A room with a copper sink for arranging flowers and storing vases

Cellars

Storerooms

And extensive servants’ quarters



From these houses were banished all dishwashers, microwave ovens, televisions in lounges, TV dinners, easygoing informality, and any form of casual attire.

One of the chief criteria of a “good house” was the beauty of the place, from which the patina of time must have effaced all triviality, a requirement that disqualified even the grandest of modern houses. Not even historical monuments were allowed into the fold, those stately homes whose owners, rarely wealthy, often found themselves the guardians of traditions it was their duty to uphold, even at the cost of bankruptcy. For unlike a chatelain, the master of a “good house” devoted his culture, his fortune, and his savoir vivre to the pleasure he offered his guests. His objective? To make them forget all material cares and thus freely enjoy the beauty of his house, his works of art, his bountiful table, and sprightly conversation in good company.

Plainly put, in a “good house,” chambermaids unpacked and repacked—with a great flurry of tissue paper—the suitcases of guests, who found their rooms provided with pretty sheets, mineral water, fruit, flowers, and a safe, as well as matches, pencils, and writing paper all embossed with the name of the house. But most important, the guests were not obliged to do anything—not to play sports, or go sightseeing, even though all that and more was available and easily arranged, should anyone wish it. The only compulsory ritual was mealtime, like prayers at a lay convent where one’s thoughts were otherwise free to roam at will.

And L’Agapanthe clearly fit this long and curious definition of a “good house,” so handsomely did this magical place succeed in halting the passage of time, which hung suspended in a bygone age of breathtaking yet unpretentious luxury.

During our family discussions at the dinner table about potential houseguests for the summer, if Marie or I ever dared agree with our father’s gentle criticism, our mother, like the sensitive soul she really was, would immediately go on the attack, pointing out that at L’Agapanthe, she had to be more like the manager of a luxury hotel than merely the mistress of the house.

Once again, Marie and I would be relieved to find that when it came to running her house, she spoke with her usual commanding confidence. Then we’d flatter her shamelessly, to satisfy her thirst for recognition and bring us at last to our favorite headache: Casting the Guests.

Increasingly dispirited by the lackluster impression left by our last few summers, my father would finally sound sincere when he asked us to suggest ideas for new table companions.

For if my mother was reluctant to go looking for new faces, it was probably to avoid admitting to herself that she had no idea how to go about it. She would have had to accept that even she had aged, and that it was increasingly difficult for her to “do her shopping” within her generation. Not that her peers were keeling over left and right, no, but the increasing ravages of old age were turning more and more of them into embittered cranks, self-righteous prigs, snobs obsessed with honors and distinctions, or blowhards puffed up with self-importance. Yet turning to the younger generation for fresh blood, she feared, would leave her as vulnerable and intimidated as a new kid in a schoolyard.

“But Flokie,” my father would ask impatiently, “how do others manage?”

“Others?”

“Yes, the people we know.”

This is where Marie and I would intervene, reminding our parents that they traveled so much that they no longer had the opportunity to make new acquaintances at dinner parties in town. We’d explain to them that most of their friends simply picked up their phones to invite whomever they felt like seeing: a writer in vogue, a powerful government official, an up-and-coming scientist, or a greedy financier—celebrities whose dazzling, sexy, and prestigious presence would reflect brilliantly on their hosts.

My parents would gape with astonishment to learn that people in their circle were now behaving like television personalities preparing the guest lists for their talk shows, a tactic that would never have occurred to them.

For they had no idea, either, how many people would have given anything to receive an invitation to L’Agapanthe, and if Marie and I had told them the names of people who we knew for a fact were dying to come, they would still have only half believed us. Since they themselves went no farther than identifying and avoiding the more obvious social climbers, they seldom noticed the discreet nudges and subtle maneuvers of aspirants who craved such an invitation, and as they personally had never yearned to belong to any “in crowd,” of course they couldn’t imagine why others would feel that way about them.

My parents had been brought up with the idea that they represented the pinnacle of chic. The tranquil arrogance of their modesty was proof of that. They were completely unaware, however, that their acquaintances saw them in such a light. Did other people even exist sufficiently in my parents’ eyes for them to notice this? Blissfully ignorant of the insecurity that drives human beings to study their reflections in the eyes of others, my parents simply weren’t observant enough to imagine that anyone might fantasize about them.

Too honest and intelligent to let themselves succumb to narcissism, my parents had decided to pay no attention to the illusion of success or the thrill of having one’s picture in the papers. And so, far from being the caricatures of art and business moguls that they had become in the press, my parents thought of themselves as timid people, courteous and ill suited to the excessive familiarity in vogue with fashionable folk.

And this was part of their charm. It was not celebrities they invited but people chosen for their conversation, their beauty, their culture, or because they were jolly, kind, inspired sympathy, or were simply owed a return invitation. Sometimes my parents just wanted to offer a week of luxury to a friend in the doldrums or a cousin in dire financial straits. Their principles, however, could affect their decisions: they would refuse to invite a minister then in office or anyone basking in the glory of a career at its zenith, while they made it a point of honor to have those same people over when they faced dark times.

In any case, to the great surprise of the rare newcomers invited to L’Agapanthe, my parents’ hospitality was genuine. Puzzled by such unselfishness, some guests wondered why they had been invited at all, but in the end, lulled by the old-fashioned and candid sense of propriety that clearly reigned in the house, they relaxed and realized that they had been chosen simply for themselves.

Well, that was the romantic version of the facts. But L’Agapanthe really did have a strange effect on a surprising number of people, changing some, while revealing the true nature of others. Impressed by the house, the quieter guests worried that they might not appear sufficiently elegant or cultured, and some would begin to talk loudly or laugh at every turn to boost their self-confidence, whereas a frivolous creature might suddenly start pontificating on politics and the economy, hoping to be taken for an intellectual. Unfortunate shortcomings came occasionally to light: I once caught a populist politician bullying the servants, and one of France’s grandest dukes stuffing his pockets with the Havana cigars set out for guests.

So it’s not surprising, really, that my parents were cautious with their invitations.

“Why don’t you invite Claude Lévi-Strauss or Martin Scorsese? That could be interesting,” Marie would quip.

She knew as well as I did that we were really there to amuse our parents, not to give them ideas, since neither of them was ready to relinquish any of their prerogatives as hosts. Quite the opposite: they needed us to witness their powers of decision so as to reinforce their own sense of authority. Not that we minded, for these sessions strengthened our family bonds in the name of certain values, which, because of our constant fear of seeming pompous or pretentious, we simply called “our kind of beauty.”

Although unspoken, the selective criteria for these values were many and precise. Good manners topped the list. The formality of life in L’Agapanthe required a comfortable command of conventions, which naturally closed the door to anyone unfamiliar with such standards. Houseguests were well advised to be accustomed to servants and possess a sure mastery of table manners and household protocol—the proper usage of finger bowls and salad plates, and the correct distribution of tips—even though this knowledge of etiquette served our guests chiefly by allowing them to flout the rules with the necessary knowledgeable flair.

To tell the truth, we were particularly amused by outdated yet still picturesque fashion precepts such as the Brits’ No yellow shoes after six, or the strict injunction No velvet after Easter, which only my mother still respected. We likened the Americans’ outrage at the wearing of light-colored pants after Labor Day to the British restriction of port drinking to months with an r (like the French and oysters, only from September to April), and the wearing of blazers to months without an r (May to August). In other words, a man in a blazer drinking port would be a lost cause.

All else paled, however, before our devotion to the most basic politeness, which demanded tactful and attentive behavior toward others. We would never have put up with a guest rudely interrupting someone, or entering a room before an elderly person, or—if he were a man—remaining seated when a woman joined our company.

Although we relied on such conventions in judging the quality of people’s upbringing and character, we really judged our guests only according to their practice of understatement. This discipline, at which Marie and I excelled thanks to extensive training and observation, implied a certain modesty of tone and attitude. For example, we were reprimanded as children whenever we called the château where we spent our weekends anything other than a house, or the two-hundred-foot yacht on which we occasionally cruised anything fancier than a boat. We noticed that our grandmother ordered her sable coats shaved to make them look like mink and that our parents seated their guests on patio furniture without announcing that it had been designed by Sol LeWitt, and served them dinner on plates they never mentioned had been created by Picasso.

At the end of our Sunday evening, Marie and I would make one last effort: “What about Moumouche de Ganay? Gary Shoenberg? Or Perla de Cambray?”

“Now that’s a good idea,” our parents would murmur. “We really should think about that.”

But we already knew they would ignore our advice completely, because they’d never intended to take it in the first place. As usual, they would do as they pleased. And we would have to wait until we arrived at L’Agapanthe to find out whom they had cast as their guests for this summer and to discover that, in spite of all their precautions and the vaunted qualities of their visitors, the assembly would include, as everywhere else, its share of hypocrites, boors, and spongers.





That Sunday, however, nothing happened as expected, although my father did open the proceedings by complaining. Visibly depressed, my mother then bluntly declared that perhaps they were getting too old for the demands of such hospitality, so my father felt obliged to crack a joke.

“Do you know what the English say about the calamities of old age? Consider the alternative!”

Marie and I looked at each other: this was the first time our parents had ever revealed their vulnerable side. The first time they’d ever seemed to simply give up in front of us, in front of those whose role was supposedly to push them into their graves and take their places. We both hoped they hadn’t really thought about what they’d just said and wouldn’t take the shocking implications to heart.

For some time, now, we had been careful not to draw attention to the fact that we had grown up. Our friends, our lovers, our patients, our bosses had now become cabinet ministers, ambassadors, film directors, writers, CEOs of giant companies. In other words, we were sought-after young women, and they were getting old. We had done our best to let them stay in the spotlight, and Marie, who worked as an interpreter for the President of the Republic, was even careful not to let them know that she was privy to the results of national elections before the official announcement.

There was something odd, though, something disquieting about our parents’ behavior. It was as if there were a kind of faint haze between us. To my surprise, I found myself offering to provide them with new guests, home-delivered like a box of chocolates.

“Why don’t you just invite the usual suspects, and we’ll bring along the new ones? That way you won’t have to deal with any of it.”

My father agreed.

“That’s a good idea,” he said solemnly. And as I sat stunned by the enormity of what he had just said, he continued: “Avery good idea indeed. Particularly since we’re feeling less enthusiastic this year … because … you see, girls, we’ve decided to put L’Agapanthe up for sale.”

“What?” my sister and I exclaimed.

“Are you in some kind of financial trouble?” Marie blurted out, crossing in an instant a line we had always respected, the quid pro quo we honored in exchange for our parents’ tacit assurance of financial support.

“No.”

“Well, then, why?” I demanded, almost shouting.

“Come now, girls. It’s the only responsible thing to do, because no matter what you say, I don’t think either of you can afford to spend the millions necessary to maintain the place.”

That was a low blow, because he knew the state of our finances better than anyone else. Aside from my salary as a psychotherapist and Marie’s paycheck as an interpreter, our income came from him.

The verdict had been delivered. Contesting his decision was useless. Was my father hiding money problems from us? Or, thinking rationally but unfeelingly, did he consider it absurd to have us bear such a burden when he would no longer be there to foot the bill? Having been taught never to contradict a man, or even openly question the validity of his decisions, we said nothing further.

We needed time to learn more about the family’s finances, assess the situation, and plan a counterattack.

Before getting into her car to drive home that evening, Marie turned to me, exhausted.

“We’ll talk soon,” she said sadly.





The first person I called the next day, however, was Frédéric, the uncle I would have loved to have. Ever since I was a child, he’s been telling me, “You, you’ve got that sparkle in your eye!”—although he also used to say he found me very serious for my age, probably his way of letting me know he thought I looked bullied and unhappy. He was on my side and made no bones about showing his preference for me by making me laugh and giving me the affection I craved.

“I don’t understand a thing you’re saying.” He sighed into the phone. “You’re talking too fast and I’m too hungry to think. Meet me at one o’clock at the Relais Plaza. You know their escalopes de veau viennoise are—”

“To die for, yes, I know. Thank you, Frédéric. I’ll see you later.”

Arriving a trifle early, I sat at his usual table across from the bar. He walked in looking dapper: oatmeal-colored suit, lilac handkerchief in his breast pocket, cashmere sweater draped across his shoulders, because he is always cold, even in midsummer. He’s an old man, now. More soigné than affected, he might seem sad and frail, but he’s a mischievous little devil.

“Monsieur Hottin!” cried Serge, the maître d’, rushing to greet him.

“Bonjour, Monsieur,” added the cloakroom lady, brightening into a smile.

It’s undeniable: Frédéric is fantastically popular. First of all, he’s a celebrity. In fact, he and his late sidekick, Brady, are to the world of variety theater what Ben and Jerry are to American ice cream: a gold standard. He is also very generous, particularly with the staff, whom he tips royally even though he isn’t rich (although he does live comfortably off copyrights since Brady’s death). And breaking every rule in the book with the naughty insouciance of an old man who’s nobody’s fool, he treats duchesses and chambermaids exactly alike, refusing to take anyone seriously, especially himself. He has even become something of a cult figure among trendy young authors, TV stars, culture vultures of all kinds, and nostalgic souls yearning for a Paris of cabarets and flash parties. They endlessly repeat his best lines and make a fuss over him in clubs where reality TV stars have taken over from the band of buddies he once formed with Françoise Sagan, the painter Bernard Buffet and his wife the actress Annabel, a society columnist named Chazot, and a few actors and comedians.

“Darling, bring me a bullshot with lots of ice, will you?” he asked the waiter. “So tell me. What’s all this about L’Agapanthe?”

I summed up the situation; Frédéric understood perfectly. He was one of the habitués at L’Agapanthe, a “pillar” of the house, my parents would have said, since they classified their guests according to their level of familiarity and seniority at the villa, and even treated them accordingly, like frequent flyers whose memberships vary in prestige and worth, depending on the regularity of their journeys.

Frédéric was at the apex of this hierarchy, as was Gay Wallingford, his nearest and dearest friend for over thirty years, and the family had more or less adopted this picturesque couple. Then came the regulars of the house. The term might seem dismissive, yet it referred to the happy few who were invited each year and had their designated rooms. Their role? To guarantee the basic ballast of visitors required to stabilize the villa on its cruise through the summer, and to mentor novice guests, whose very novelty was meant to spice up our season.

Then came the luncheon crowd known as the “cafeteria club”: neighbors who were writers, museum curators, artists, golfers, more often than not single or down on their luck, who came for lunch every day, attracted by the quality of the food and the company. Last came those run-of-the-mill arrivals who rolled in for lunch from Monaco, inland, or Saint-Tropez, and who—not being handpicked like our overnight guests—brought an eccentric midday fauna of rich Texan dames pumped full of Botox, drug-fiend photographers and gallery owners, demimondaines, artists in floppy hats, and self-made men tanned to within an inch of their lives, whose sole redeeming feature was their ability to animate the conversation.

“Could our parents possibly have money problems?” I asked Frédéric.

After looking thoughtful for a moment, he replied, out of the blue, “Tell me about your love life.”

“Excuse me?”

“No, I mean it, I’m interested,” he said in an insinuating tone I found irresistible.

“Well, it’s a catastrophe.”

“Oh, come now. When was your divorce?”

“Three years ago.”

“And then nothing, nobody?”

“No. Or, not exactly. You really want to know? I scare men away. It’s unbelievable. There isn’t one who’ll dare pin me down on a sofa or hop into bed with me for the night. Before they even kiss me they’re already wondering if they’d be willing to leave their wives or marry me. That she’s-the-daughter-of thing, albeit a social plus, is toxic. I am too chic, too independent, and probably too smart, because I’ll spare you what happens when I confess that I’m a shrink. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that the world is awash in men who aren’t meant for me. Actually, not meant for us, because ditto for Marie.”

“No!”

“Well, sort of. She does have more lovers than I do, seeing as she’s got more choices, what with all those security and secret service guys she works with.”

“Who?”

“You know, the ones with earpieces who are in charge of security whenever world leaders have those summits—she hangs around with them all day. They haven’t a clue who she is and wouldn’t give a damn if they did, because they’re tough guys, right? But as for finding a lover with whom she might actually like to live, Marie’s in the same spot I am: nowhere. And for the same reasons. Even though she does her absolute best not to scare them away. Listen, on the phone she’ll tell them that she’s in Limoges for a radiologists’ convention when in fact she’s in Davos or Rio—with the president!”

“This is ridiculous. You’re both young, beautiful, rich …”

Serge brought the order to the table.

“… Ah! My escalope viennoise. Do you know it’s the best in Paris? Look at these little condiments they give you on the side, what a lovely presentation!”

“Lovely,” I repeated, gently sarcastic.

“Sorry, you were saying?”

“I was telling you that the closer men get to us socially, the farther away from us they stay. What can I tell you! That’s just the way it is. What about you? Still crazy about François?”

“Right, go on, make fun of me …” He blushed, as he did whenever I mentioned his heartthrobs. The current candidate was an understudy whose career he was trying to launch.

Despite having been married three times and having lived with at least as many boyfriends, including a well-known transsexual, Frédéric was the least liberated of men: reserved, old-fashioned, and he simply hated talking about sex. I changed the subject.

“And what about Gay? How is she?”

Gay is Frédéric’s great friend. It was she who introduced Frédéric to my parents and smuggled him into the family like a fox spirited into a henhouse. Indeed, who would ever have imagined that one day this night bird, this court jester, the intimate of lowlifes and drag queens, would even meet my parents, let alone get them to like him! Gay and Frédéric each have an apartment in the same building and are inseparable. Calling her several times a day and taking her everywhere, he brings fantasy and gaiety to her life, while she pampers him like a mother, trying to protect him from himself with a few moral lectures she trots out for form’s sake, and which he promptly forgets, rushing off to the casino at Enghien or the racetracks at Longchamps. In short, this charming and discreet couple keep their personal worries and ailments to themselves, sharing with each other only the best of their moods and lives. And they have a ball party hopping through the hottest spots, where they slip in among the young and beautiful to watch the show, on which they comment conspiratorially to their hearts’ content.

Gay was fine, said Frédéric, but he seemed more interested in the dessert cart, which he was examining with great care, requesting a description of every cake before finally announcing, “No, I don’t really have much of a sweet tooth. But perhaps you could bring us a small plate of petits fours?”

“So, Frédéric, what’s your big idea?” I asked impatiently.

“My idea?”

“Yes, your idea about L’Agapanthe going on the market and how we could prevent that.”

“Listen. Your father’s a true gem, but he’s always had trouble reading other people and the effect he has on them. Is this because he’s so modest? So preoccupied with his own concerns? So self-involved? I don’t know. In any case, he probably couldn’t begin to imagine how attached you are to the house, just as he doesn’t have any idea how much you girls love him.”

“And?”

“And so you have to show him how you feel, because you know how useless it would be to argue with him in the hope that he’ll change his mind.”

“Fine, but how do we do that?”

Frédéric’s idea was outrageous: he suggested that Marie and I look for a sugar daddy willing to foot the bills for L’Agapanthe and the lifestyle it deserved!

“And your next step would be to pitch the deal to your father.”

“Deal? What deal?”

“Well, ‘Either you leave us the house, or we’ll each marry a Mr. Moneybags who will buy it for us.’ I’ll bet you anything your father will be furious and humiliated that you’d been driven to behave like common gold diggers. So: he’ll be furious—but convinced that you mean business. And he’ll keep the house for you.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then you’ll just have to marry those Mr. Moneybags. So be careful to pick nice ones.”

I was laughing hysterically. “This is some sort of joke,” I said at last and then nervously ate up the petits fours, one after the other.

“Simply organize some tryouts. Invite a few candidates to L’Agapanthe this summer for an audition. Say, one per weekend. Just like those people I knew who used to do this in August. During the week, it was the family, period. They only had guests on the weekend. They always planned separate weekends for golfing, poker, and the crème de la crème. Why don’t you do the same with a CEO, a film star, an heir to a fortune …?”

“But I don’t know any.”

“Oh, please. As if that were a problem.”

Frédéric was right. There was no need to know a person to invite him or her to L’Agapanthe. All I needed was to know someone who knew that person.

“Think of Laszlo and the Démazures,” he added, referring to Laszlo Schwartz, who’d been introduced to my parents by a couple who were now regular guests at L’Agapanthe.

Henri Démazure was an insipid international lawyer, Polyséna Démazure a dull Italian who mangled every language she spoke, and they bored the pants off my poor father. Yet they came to L’Agapanthe every summer because they had introduced my parents to Laszlo Schwartz, a gallery icon whom my mother admired and whose paintings, acquired by museums throughout the world, were worth a fortune. The Démazures, however, were total pills, and now my mother was stuck with them.

“Well, thanks a bunch, but I’d rather not! They came to dinner and never left!”

The problem was that my mother had had to invite the Démazures to L’Agapanthe in order to ask the artist to come: it was a question of manners, as elementary as not seating engaged couples and newlyweds separately at a dinner party. The Démazures accepted eagerly, but without bringing along Laszlo Schwartz, who was busy in Japan with a show. My mother persevered and renewed her invitation the following year, when Laszlo did come along with the Démazures. The third year, relieved of her obligations toward this couple, whose vapid personalities were now only too obvious, my mother tried to think of a way to keep inviting Schwartz but without the Démazures. This was risky, because she didn’t want to offend either them or Laszlo, who might decide to stop coming. But when Henri Démazure lost his job that year, it became impossible for my mother to drop him after such a blow. And so the Démazures notched up another summer. Then, when it was finally acceptable to get rid of them, they called my mother to whine about their straitened circumstances, beating around the bush before finally saying what a joy it would be for them to return to L’Agapanthe. Embarrassed, my mother let them have their way. This had been going on for years now, and I’d eventually realized that unless they committed some unforgivable faux pas, the Démazures could count on their heavenly holiday for the next twenty summers.

“No, no,” Frédéric said with a laugh, “it doesn’t have to be that complicated. You can even invite your candidates sight unseen, without knowing them. I’m sure they would come.”

Frédéric was right. Knowing people can mean so many things. It’s like books: there are plenty of gradations between the books one has read and those one hasn’t. There are the books one has heard of, those with a plot or style we already know by heart, those we can tell by their cover, those whose jacket copy we’ve read. Those we want to read and those we never will. One can also read a book and forget it—in fact, that’s my specialty—or just skim through it. It’s the same with people.

Can I say that I know the guests I’ve seen summer after summer at L’Agapanthe for all these years? Their political opinions and literary tastes are familiar to me, of course, and I know whether they’re funny or wearisome companions, chatty, timid, or reserved. I have an informal relationship with them. And yet I hardly know them. What are their characters like? Are they happy? What kind of childhood did they have? What do they think of one another? I haven’t the foggiest. At L’Agapanthe, the courtesy de rigueur in a “good house” encourages us all to keep up the finest of fronts, thus preventing anyone from speaking from the heart, just as our luxurious life in the villa shields us from those petty details of day-to-day existence that inevitably reveal our deepest natures in their failings and virtues alike: thoughtlessness, fussiness, generosity, stinginess, devotion, silliness, or lazy self-indulgence.

Sometimes this paradoxical intimacy plays tricks on me. Unable to say much of importance about any of these often prestigious people with whom I’ve been superficially acquainted since forever, I rarely mention that I know them from L’Agapanthe. If I happen to run into one of them anywhere else, my real friends are then surprised when I say hello.

“You know So-and-so?”

“Yes, a little.”

And the next second, So-and-so calls out gaily, “Laure, dear heart! How’s your backhand? And how are your loonies? Don’t cure them too much, or you’ll do yourself out of a job. Don’t you think I’ve slimmed down?”

So right away I look like the modest little hypocrite who pretends she can barely stand up on skis, until, having dazzled her companions on the slopes, she confesses that she’s the all-around champion of France. And my friends, wrongly assuming that my discretion stems from my loathing of name-dropping or my professional habit of keeping secrets, remind me that not saying anything can be just as annoying as boasting.

Eyeing Frédéric, who was leaving an astronomical tip on the table, I remarked fondly, “I gather that you’ll be perched in a box seat at L’Agapanthe, eager to critique any dramatic developments.”

“Precisely.”





“What do you mean, a rich husband?”

Marie had actually gasped in disbelief when I suggested Frédéric’s solution on the phone the next day.

“Why not?” I countered.

Wasn’t that the oldest game in the book? Women from Paris to Moscow and on to New York went husband hunting! All right: the idea would never have occurred to me before my conversation with Frédéric, because I’d always considered this sport something reserved for women who were flat broke, which I wasn’t. So joining the hunt, I’d felt, would be immoral, a ploy as unthinkable as my applying to get my health expenses reimbursed from the Sécurité sociale.

“Why not? Because we already are.”

“Are what?”

“Rich, dummy!”

Marie was right. We were rich. At least on paper. We were shareholders in companies that didn’t pay dividends, but we were still good catches.

“And so what?”

“But … how would we get started?” Marie insisted.

Ironically, unlike true gold diggers, we were used to being courted ourselves by people dazzled by money, and we could smell them a mile away.

Romantic idealists, my sister and I were interested only in love and friendship. Money turned out to be a most inconvenient advantage, attracting fortune hunters while often driving everyone else away. Few decent men even dared approach us if they weren’t well-off, and if they were, they couldn’t quite stomach the fact that we frankly didn’t need them to get by. It was the same thing with friendship. How could we invite people on holiday or to a restaurant if they couldn’t return the favor? It was equally complicated for us to give our friends gifts without unintentionally making them feel obligated to us.

“No arrogance, no ostentation”: the mantra of our childhood. As if we’d needed that! Because we were so miserably conscious of our wealth that we had always tried obsessively to hide it from our friends.

Sometimes that was easy. We never mentioned our trips on private jets or those endless afternoons in the changing rooms of couture houses with our mother, the couturier, and his head seamstress. And we hardly risked bumping into our little pals chez Givenchy, Saint-Laurent, Ungaro, or on the tarmac at Le Bourget, Teterboro, or Biggin Hill.

Our predicament turned dicey when we had to convert our nanny into an English granny, or the driver picking us up at school into a family friend. It became frankly hair-raising when we had to keep coming up with the appropriate traffic jams to explain being late for school on Monday morning after a round-trip to New York on the Concorde.

Our house betrayed us. Rare were the friends Marie and I dared invite home. We’d tell them that our town house was just an ordinary apartment building sheltering many families. Already puzzled by the maze of service stairs we climbed to reach our floor (thus avoiding our imposing front door, which would have given the game away), our guests invariably wondered why there was no kitchen and no bedroom for our parents. So we’d casually refer to our “duplex” to reassure them, as well as to account for the dumbwaiter that delivered our meals, which were revolting, actually, because our chef, no doubt considering himself too distinguished to feed mere children, handed this chore off to a kitchen boy.

Later, during those tough internships when our father decided to introduce us to the real world, Marie and I continued honing our skills in the art of dissimulation. At one point I was a lowly employee in the accounting department of a construction and public works firm where I wasn’t allowed to leave the building without permission from my boss, a truly odious bully. I used to slip quietly away, however, to the office of the CEO (a living god accessible only to department heads), who just happened to be a friend of my parents and welcomed me with piping hot coffee and a game of chess. One day my creepy little boss discovered the scam. Drenched in sweat and worry, he buttonholed me in a hall to apologize while begging me to put in a good word for him. His obsequious flip-flopping disgusted me, but I was chiefly relieved that my colleagues, who had taken me under their wing (and for whom I surreptitiously punched in every other day), did not suspect a thing. Otherwise, they might have felt like fools, and in a way, they would have been right, since I had never really been one of them and thus had never needed their protection, which my visits with the CEO would have made cruelly clear.

I’d been a coward, behaving like someone safely ensconced in a cushy position. In my defense, though, I should say that at that time, the wealthy were all considered a*sholes. And it didn’t help that most people I met flaunted their “political consciousness” mainly by posing as enemies of the rich, a situation that would reverse itself ten years later, when heirs and heiresses would be welcomed to parade around in magazines like movie stars. Deep down, though, nothing had changed, because money, having neither reputation nor personality of its own, is a constant magnet for fantasies and projections, and will always channel its share of bitterness and dreams.

“As for knowing how to hunt down a rich husband,” I finally admitted to Marie, “you’re right, we’re probably not up to this. And I’m only attracted to weirdos. I like trying to fix problem men, I can’t help it.”

“Yes, so I’ve noticed,” said my sister slyly, alluding to my two years of nightmare wedlock to a man I’d found irresistible and who’d proved mad as a hatter. “But why couldn’t you fix up a rich weirdo?”

Good point. I laughed. “Shall we give it a try?”

“You bet!”

“But how do we find these Prince Charmings?”

“Oh, please!”





Marie and I are very close. I’m thirty years old, she’s thirty-two. We live a few blocks from each other. At the local café we’re known as “the sisters,” even if we go there separately, I with my son and Marie with her lovers. Our close relationship hasn’t always been obvious because we are quite different, almost opposites. My sister looks Swedish, while I could be Brazilian. She has our father’s blond coloring and the svelte silhouette of our mother, a brunette like me, and I got my solid, down-to-earth looks from our father. Marie is always impeccably turned out, whereas I seem to be at loose ends, my curly hair and curvy figure creating an impression of undisciplined excess, the way words can sometimes outrun thoughts.

When we were children, though, we had even more reason to feel different from each other. Taking her lead from our nanny, Miss Ross, our mother had declared that Marie was the pretty one and I the smart one, insisting all the while that she simply doted on both daughters, a charming affirmation we learned to periodically reinterpret as time went by. In fact, our mother never quite knew what to do with us or, what’s more, what to make of us. Beginning with our conception. What if pregnancy spoiled her figure? True, she was a beauty. A tall, whippet-thin brunette with superb cheekbones, she had glowing skin, an aristocratic nose, slightly almond-shaped black eyes, and she carried herself like a dancer, as truly beautiful women so often do. Her anxiety over losing her figure soon gave way to that of losing her marriage, and she resigned herself to pregnancy only under pressure from a husband so resolute that he threatened her with divorce. She was determined, however, never to become one of those “loving and frumpy mothers who devote themselves to their children and give up trying to look attractive,” as she put it. So she hired an Englishwoman in her sixties to take charge of our upbringing, an undertaking with which our mother was most careful not to interfere.