Off the Wild Coast of Brittany Page 6

  “Well, you know what Dad would say,” Alex said with a barely-there smile. “She could serve as backup dinner, in a pinch.”

  Over my dead body, Natalie thought. “Speaking of dinner, are you hungry?”

  “Getting there.”

  “The kitchen’s pretty torn up, so I’d rather not cook.”

  “That’s fine. I’ve got energy bars in my bag,” said Alex.

  “I was thinking of something more typical of the region. Let me take you to dinner.”

  Alex gaped at Natalie as if she had suggested they get drunk with a bunch of sailors and go skinny-dipping in the harbor.

  “Dinner,” Alex said after a beat.

  Natalie nodded.

  “In a restaurant.”

  Natalie couldn’t help but smile. Alex’s response was so typical of her family, and so atypical of anyone she had met in France.

  “Yes.” She stepped on the newly repaired step, appreciating its solidity. “It’s early yet for dinner in France; people here sometimes don’t eat until nine, or even later. But it’s high season, and I want to be sure we get a table.”

  After a beat, Alex said, “Sure, okay. I’m losing the light anyway.”

  “Oh, really? Good.” Back in the day, Alex would have insisted on working until full dark. “Why don’t we wash up and meet in the parlor, and then I’ll take you to the best dinner the Île de Feme has to offer? Just . . . don’t get your hopes up. This area isn’t known for its cuisine. We’re not in Paris anymore.”

  “I skipped Paris,” said Alex. “Came straight here.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Natalie, feeling unbearably sad but unable to articulate, even to herself, why. “A lot of people like it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Alex

  Alex mounted the two flights of stairs and washed up in the bath at the end of the hall.

  She was already formulating a to-do list in her mind, addressing only the most obvious cosmetic issues in this ramshackle guesthouse. A thorough inspection, from cellar to attic, might reveal deep-seated problems.

  Years ago, at the suggestion of a Realtor friend in Albuquerque, Alex had decided to supplement her pay at the dude ranch by becoming licensed as a home inspector. She was a natural: Alex relished crawling under houses, poking her head into the recesses of buildings, seeing what others too often did not, rooting out termite damage and cracked foundations and bowing beams.

  And while her practiced eye told her this house was well-built, it was also ancient. Could this be one huge seaside disaster waiting to unfold? What had Nat gotten herself into? And more important, why had she gotten herself into it? A big old place like this should belong to someone with the skill and the willingness to work on it constantly, to fight the unrelenting ravages of time and storms and the salty sea air.

  Someone like Alex. Or like the person Alex used to be.

  Maybe Nat’s boyfriend was the handy one. But it didn’t look as if he had done anything recently. The front window project, for example, appeared to have been abandoned halfway through, the new frame cut but not yet applied, which made no sense at all.

  More likely, Nat and her Frenchy Prince Charming were dreamers seduced by a romantic notion of a darling guesthouse with mellow stone walls and multipaned bay windows, ocean views, and a quaint garden, but without the vaguest idea how much the renovation would cost or how long it would take. As a home inspector, Alex had met many such buyers who fell in love with a house and refused to be dissuaded despite the laundry list of expensive repairs her rigorous inspection had revealed.

  She always warned them. They rarely listened.

  After taking a quick shower, Alex wiped the fog from the bathroom mirror and squinted at her reflection. She had whapped her head on a cabinet door a few days before leaving Albuquerque, and the bruise on her temple had turned an ugly jaundice green. Her hair lay flat and was an unmemorable shade of brown; her face was deeply tanned, narrow, and pinched. Her dark brown eyes appeared dull and tired. Is that really what I look like?

  If Alex was surprised by her reflection, it was because she noticed it so seldom.

  As she slipped a clean cotton T-shirt over her head, Alex thought about how, on top of everything else that had to be done to renovate the Bag-Noz, Nat and the Frenchy planned to open a restaurant. Wasn’t the failure rate of restaurants something like eighty percent? Had they researched the market, spoken with potential suppliers, run a cost-benefit analysis?

  But then again, this was France, where people apparently went out to eat without giving a thought to the cost or the fact that they could eat perfectly well at home.

  Alex stood at the window for a few moments, watching the colors of the ocean shift and evolve along the horizon as the day grew late: slate gray, blue, green, violet. Was that subtle spectrum of colors really there, or was she imagining it? Alex had been a teenager the first time she had seen the ocean, when their mother took the girls for a rare trip without their father. They drove along endless twisty mountain roads, across the Trinity Alps, all the way to the crashing waves of the Pacific. Alex still had a visceral reaction to it, so vast, so inscrutable, so terrifying and magnificent.

  But dusk was hard. Alex had looked it up and was slightly mollified to discover that her reaction wasn’t uncommon: The light ceding to darkness signaled a shift that was felt by plants and animals, even fungi, and was essential to their circadian rhythms. Dementia patients were often particularly sensitive to the late-afternoon change in light, resulting in an intensified disorientation known as “sundowning.”

  Alex pushed the thought away. She grabbed her sweater and descended the stairs, noting how the banister wobbled beneath her hand. Put that item on the to-do list, stat.

  When she reached the downstairs hall, she heard the sound of a shower running.

  Cleaning up after a hard day’s toil, Alex thought, then chided herself. Writing was work, too.

  And who had had the last laugh, after all? Nat had probably made more from that one book than Alex had earned in all her years of physical labor. Their father used to say that honest labor wasn’t respected the way it used to be, the way it should be, the way it would be after The Change.

  But things didn’t change. Not in the ways you prophesied, Dad, Alex thought as she meandered into the parlor.

  The large space appeared to be the most finished room in the house, with a couch and comfortable-looking wing chairs surrounding a coffee table in front of the fireplace, two small café tables with chairs, a broad desk under a window, an ancient-looking upright piano, and a small nook with a window seat full of cardboard boxes. On the walls were various sepia-toned photographs of the island, and over the mantel hung a large oil painting of a lighthouse upon a lone rock being buffeted by violent waves. An octagonal box on a side table was splayed open, revealing a charming heart and flowers made up of what looked like hundreds of tiny shells, and the country name spelled out in a shell arc: Barbados.

  Alex trailed her fingers along the piano’s ivory keys, sending out discordant notes. Does Nat play? When they were kids Nat had delighted them all with the tunes she played on her little wooden recorder, and their mother had had a beautiful voice. They had spent the evenings huddled together around the fire, playing and singing, sewing and whittling, temporarily released from the incessant search for food.

  Nat hadn’t mentioned that in her memoir. The happy times. When the Morgens relaxed together, played together. There were such moments, weren’t there?

  Unlike Nat, Alex hadn’t experienced their childhood deprivation as particularly traumatic. Alex had basked in their father’s attention, learning woodworking skills and basic mechanics, how to hunt and fish. Preparing, always, for the frightening, unknowable future. Alex had found great satisfaction in knowing she could take care of herself, that she wasn’t dependent on anyone.

  Until now.

/>   Alex wandered over to a built-in bookshelf. About half of the books were in French, a few were in German and Spanish, and the rest were in English. Most seemed to keep to the theme of the house, referencing the sea, or lighthouses, or sailor lore. Tilting her head this way and that, she read the spines, noting that while the English titles ran from the top of the spine to the bottom, the French titles were reversed.

  As a child, Alex had suffered through her mother’s attempt at homeschooling. Subjects like poetry and literature, even history and mathematics, seemed inconsequential, given the future they were facing. The future she thought they were facing. She would fidget at the rough pine table in their big kitchen, her mind ticking off so many more important things she could be doing: The traps needed checking, and she wanted to perfect her skills with the bow, shooting over and over until the arc and trajectory of the arrow became second nature so she wouldn’t miss when presented with actual prey—or a human threat.

  It wasn’t until after she moved to the ranch in New Mexico that Alex learned to enjoy reading. There was no real work to do when she was off the clock, which left her evenings disconcertingly empty. At first she tried joining the rest of the crew watching television in the bunkhouse lounge, but she didn’t understand most of the pop culture references, so she didn’t find funny the things the others roared at. A drama about the plucky survivors of a zombie apocalypse initially intrigued her, but their consistently inane choices drove home just how bad most people would be at surviving a real disaster—with or without zombies—and she left the room in disgust.

  One day, while cleaning a guest room, Alex had found a battered volume of Hans Christian Andersen tales. She had seen Disney’s The Little Mermaid at one of the ranch’s family movie nights, but as she perused Andersen’s original story, she realized it had little in common with the Hollywood version. Alex’s imagination was captured by the image of the mermaid giving up her voice, being spurned by her human lover, and ultimately becoming sea-foam upon the waves.

  There were no volumes of fairy tales on Nat’s bookshelf, so Alex chose To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Maybe it would tell her more about the island.

  Alex peered toward the hallway. Still no Nat.

  How long does it take a person to get ready for dinner?

  Curious, she opened the flaps of one of the cardboard boxes stacked in the nook, hoping to find bathroom or lighting fixtures ready to be installed. Instead, she found more musty-smelling books, along with a few knickknacks: a small tarnished silver tray, a set of tiny forks—for appetizers, maybe?—and, underneath everything else, a dark brown leather-bound photo album.

  Alex sank onto the window seat and opened the album, carefully turning the big matte black pages, the paper so old it crumbled at the edges. Some of the photographs had slipped out of their black corner tabs, so Alex stacked them neatly on the bench beside her. There were sepia-toned images of the sea, a grinning dog with a dark-spotted face, a few cats silhouetted in the windows. One photograph portrayed two girls in old-fashioned frilly white dresses standing on a rock with a wrecked ship sticking halfway out of the water behind them. Underneath was written: Rachelle, 17 ans; Violette, 9 ans, naufrage du navire Hélène, 1929 . . .

  Alex flipped through more pages, fascinated by snapshots from the World War II era, including one of two men wearing the puffy jodhpurs and belted coats of the German army. They were walking along the quay, with a trio of women in black outfits behind them, their heads bent together, as though gossiping.

  Finally, her eye came to rest on a photograph of two women clad similarly in black, from their winged headdresses to their boots, posing in the front courtyard of the guesthouse, where Alex had found Natalie this afternoon. The house and yard looked well tended, with jumbles of flowers spilling out of pots, lace curtains in the windows, and a big painted sign: Bag-Noz. Alex made a mental note to ask Nat what the name meant—“Bag-Noz” didn’t sound French.

  One of the women was slim and stood with a calico cat in her arms, one hand resting affectionately on the shoulder of a larger woman who sat on the steps. Their faces were blurry, but they both wore huge natural smiles, as if they had been caught laughing.

  Below the photograph, written in vivid white ink against the black page, was Notre maison. Our house.

  “Hey,” said Nat as she entered the parlor.

  Alex let out a little yelp of surprise.

  Nat slowed her step. “Sorry. Did I startle you?”

  Alex never used to startle at things; to cover her embarrassment she said: “You look nice.”

  Nat had changed into a gauzy summer dress and applied a little makeup.

  “Am I dressed okay?” Alex asked. “I didn’t bring anything fancy.”

  “You look fine. It’s casual here on the island.” Nat frowned, coming closer to look at the album in Alex’s hands. “Where did you find that?”

  “Right here, at the bottom of the box.”

  “Seriously? I thought there were only books in there,” said Natalie, taking the album from her. “I haven’t gotten around to going through them yet.”

  “Are those the people who used to live here?” Alex asked, looking over her shoulder.

  “I think they must be,” Nat said with a nod. “Two sisters were the last people to run the guesthouse. I’ve been trying to dig up some stories about them, and photographs to decorate the place with, but haven’t had much luck.” Carefully, she flipped through a few pages, then looked up at Alex. “And then you arrive and, voilà, just like that, you find a photo album.”

  “Just lucky, I guess. Or maybe nosy.”

  “This is great. I’ll have to show it to the relatives, see if they can help me identify the people in the photos. Thanks, Alex.”

  “No problem. Nat . . . I could help you unpack these boxes and clean up. I’m sure taking on a project like this seems overwhelming, but it wouldn’t take that much—”

  “Thanks,” her sister cut her off. “For now let’s go eat.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Violette

  I knew I could control Marc. It sounds awful to say it so plainly, so baldly, but it is the truth. Unlike the dark, knowing eyes of his brother, Marc’s eyes were as blue as a June sky, and just as uncomplicated. Looking at him reminded me of looking into a mirror: The simplicity of my countenance reflected back to me. But just as when I looked in a mirror, it was a surface image, not the real me.

  When Marc gazed at me with adoration, I knew I could make him do what I wanted him to do.

  My mother concurred.

  “It’s best that way,” Maman said as she stirred the fish stew and checked the farz, while I perched on a stool, peeling potatoes with a knife. “It’s best that a man love a woman more upon marriage. Over time, a woman’s love grows.”

  “And a man’s?” I asked her.

  “Men love what they love,” she said with a shrug. “But their devotion doesn’t grow with familiarity the way it does with women. Men are attracted to the unknown, to the depths. That’s why they’re drawn to sea, while we remain on the island.”

  At the age of fifty-three, my father was one of the older men planning on leaving for England. Papa was a gruff man of few words who gave his time and attention to my brother and rarely acknowledged my sister or me. Papa was gone so much that he hardly seemed to be a part of our family, leaving before dawn to pilot his trawler out to sea in the never-ending search for fish. Upon returning to port he might come home to wash up a bit and eat dinner, but afterward he always left again, to play pétanque or drink with his friends at the café.

  Like most island wives, Maman spent her time in the company of women: They came together to gather the seaweed called goémon, tended the gardens and the animals, cared for the children and the sick, went to church, and gossiped over endless cups of tea, their hands perpetually occupied by knitting or sewing or cooking.

&nbs
p; Papa and Maman’s relationship was typical; here on the island men and women live in separate spheres, reuniting only over meals, or to sleep.

  Is that why I’ve never fit in? I asked myself. Because I, too, was drawn to the unknown. Not to the sea, though. I had a native islander’s respect for la mer, had seen the wreckage of too many ships, had seen too many bodies—and parts of bodies—wash up on our rocky shores. I understood its awful power.

  I was drawn to the unknown of the mainland: of fantastical-sounding cities like Brest, Nantes, or even Paris. I had been to Audierne, of course, hopping a ride on the mail ferry or whatever shuttle was headed to the mainland to fetch supplies. Though not a big city, Audierne was bewildering: It had two butchers, and a patisserie that sent heavenly sugary scents wafting down the cobblestone alleys.

  And my own personal heaven: the bookstore, which smelled of leather and must and ink, and a very old man who shuffled this way and that, shelving books and Tut-tutting when children with sticky fingers came into his shop. Monsieur Saint-Just was gruff at first, but eventually my love of reading won him over. His furrowed brow relaxed, and he began to suggest titles he thought would interest me: Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Courrier sud, or a thick tome of Greek mythology that included my favorite tale: that of Circe, from L’Odyssée. She always reminded me of our very own Gallizenae.

  I could rarely afford to buy anything, but I saved up to purchase Colette’s Claudine à l’école for myself on my eighteenth birthday. But when I took my bag of carefully hoarded coins into the shop, Monsieur Saint-Just refused to accept them and gave the book to me as a gift.

  Books seemed to me to be magical portals, as bewitching as Mamm-gozh’s collection of feathers and stone, birds’ nests and bone.

  The more I read, the more I yearned to venture farther than my island’s rocky shores: to Paris to visit Victor Hugo’s gargoyles atop Notre-Dame, to see the lacy steel of the tour Eiffel with my own eyes. I longed to visit the Louvre and view its treasures, but also dreamed of simpler things: to walk along unfamiliar streets and see unfamiliar faces, to mingle with strangers who hid within their hearts and minds stories of the strange, the foreign, the new.