Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина - Харрис Джоанн

Pistache gave me a quelling look.

“Maman, I don’t know why you want to go telling her that kind of thing,” she said reproachfully. “You want her to have nightmares and wet the bed?”

“I don’t wet the bed!” protested Prune. She looked at me expectantly, tugging at my hand. “Mémée, did you ever see Old Mother? Did you? Did you?”

Suddenly I felt cold, wishing I had told her another story. Pistache gave me a sharp look and made as if to lift Prune off my knee.

“Prunette, you just leave Mémée, alone now. It’s nearly bedtime, and you haven’t even brushed your teeth or-”

“Please, Mémée, did you? Did you see her?”

I hugged my granddaughter, and the coldness receded a little.

“Sweetheart, I fished for her during one entire summer. All that time I tried to catch her, with nets and line and pots and traps. I fixed them every day, checked them twice a day and more if I could.”

Prune looked at me with solemn eyes.

“You must really have wanted that wish, him?”

I nodded. “I suppose I must have.”

“And did you catch her?”

Her face glowed like a peony. She smelt of biscuit and cut grass, the wonderful warm, sweet scent of youth. Old people need to have youth about them, you know, to remember.

I smiled. “I did catch her.”

Her eyes were wide with excitement. She dropped her voice to a whisper.

“And what did you wish?”

“I didn’t make a wish, sweetheart,” I told her quietly.

“You mean she got away?”

I shook my head.

“No, I caught her all right.”

Pistache was watching me now, her face in shadow. Prune put her small plump hands on my face. Impatiently:

“What then?”

I looked at her for a moment.

“I didn’t throw her back,” I told her. “I caught her at last, but I didn’t let her go.”

Except that wasn’t quite right, I told myself then. Not quite true. And then I kissed my granddaughter and told her I’d tell her the rest later, that I didn’t know why I was telling her a load of old fishing stories anyway, and in spite of her protests, between coaxing and nonsense, we finally got her to bed. I thought about it that night, long after the others were asleep. I never had much trouble sleeping, but this time it seemed like hours before I could find any peace, and even then I dreamed of Old Mother down in the black water, and myself pulling, pulled, pulling, as if neither of us could bear ever to let go…

Anyway, it was soon after that they came. To the restaurant to begin with, almost humbly, like ordinary customers. They had the brochet angevin and the tourteau fromage. I watched them covertly from my post in the kitchen, but they behaved well and caused no trouble. They spoke to each other in low voices, made no unreasonable demands on the wine cellar, and for once refrained from calling me Mamie. Laure was charming, Yannick hearty; both were eager to please and to be pleased. I was somewhat relieved to see that they no longer touched and kissed each other so often in public, and I even unbent enough to talk to them for a while over coffee and petits fours.

Laure had aged in four years. She had lost weight-it may be the fashion, but it didn’t suit her at all-and her hair was a sleek copper helmet. She seemed edgy too, with a habit of rubbing her abdomen as if she had a pain there. As far as I could see, Yannick hadn’t changed at all.

The restaurant was doing well, he declared cheerfully. Plenty of money in the bank. They were planning a trip to the Bahamas in spring; they hadn’t had a holiday together in years. They spoke of Cassis with affection and-I thought-genuine regret.

I began to think I’d judged them too harshly.

I was wrong.

Later that week they called at the farm, when Pistache was about to put the children to bed. They brought presents for us all, sweets for Prune and Ricot, flowers for Pistache. My daughter looked at them with that expression of vacant sweetness which I know to be dislike, and which they no doubt took for stupidity. Laure watched the children with a curious insistence that I found unsettling; her eyes flicked constantly toward Prune, playing with some pine cones on the floor.

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Yannick settled himself in an armchair by the fire. I was very conscious of Pistache sitting quietly nearby, and hoped my uninvited guests would leave soon. However, neither of them showed any desire to do so.

“The meal was simply wonderful,” said Yannick lazily. “That brochet-I don’t know what you did with it, but it was absolutely marvelous.”

“Sewage,” I told him pleasantly. “There’s so much of it pours into the river nowadays that the fish practically feed on nothing but. Loire caviar, we call it. Very rich in minerals.”

Laure looked at me, startled. Then Yannick gave his little laugh-hé, hé, hé-and she joined him.

“Mamie likes her joke, hé, hé. Loire caviar. You really are a tease, darling.”

But I noticed they never ordered pike again.

When Pistache had put the children to bed, Yannick and Laure began to talk about Cassis. Harmless stuff at first-how Papa would have loved to see his niece and her children.

“He was always saying how much he wanted us to have children,” said Yannick. “But at that stage in Laure’s career-”

Laure interrupted him.

“There’ll be plenty of time for that,” she said, almost harshly. “I’m not so old, am I?”

I shook my head.

“Of course not.”

“And of course, at that time there was the added expense of looking after Papa to think about. He had hardly anything left, Mamie,” said Yannick, biting into one of my sablés. “All he had came from us. Even his house.”

I could believe it. Cassis was never one to hoard wealth. He slid it through his fingers in smoke, or more often into his belly. Cassis was always his own best customer in the Paris days.

“Of course we wouldn’t think of begrudging him that.” Laure’s voice was soft. “We were very fond of poor Papa, weren’t we, chéri?”

Yannick nodded with more enthusiasm than sincerity.

“Oh, yes. Very fond. And of course… such a generous man. Never felt any resentment at all about… this house, or the inheritance, or anything. Extraordinary.”

He glanced at me then, a sharp ratty slice of a look.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I was up at once, almost spilling my coffee, still very conscious of Pistache sitting next to me, listening. I had never told my daughters about Reinette or Cassis. They never met. As far as they knew I was an only child. And I had never spoken a word about my mother.

Yannick looked sheepish.

“Well, Mamie, you know he was really supposed to inherit the house-”

“Not that we blame you-”

“But he was the eldest, and under your mother’s will-”

“Now wait a minute!” I tried to keep the shrillness from my voice but for a moment I sounded just like my mother, and I saw Pistache wince. “I paid Cassis good money for this house,” I said in a lower tone. “It was only a shell after the fire, anyway, all burnt out with the rafters poking through the slates. He could never have lived in it, wouldn’t have wanted to either. I paid good money, more than I could afford, and-”

“Shh. It’s all right.” Laure glared at her husband. “No one’s suggesting your agreement was in any way improper.”

Improper.

That’s a Laure word all right, plummy, self-satisfied and with just the right amount of skepticism. I could feel my hand tightening around the rim of my coffee cup, printing bright little points of burn on my fingertips.

“But you have to see it from our point of view.” That was Yannick, his broad face gleaming. “Our grandmother’s legacy…”

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I didn’t like the way the conversation was heading. I especially hated Pistache’s presence, her round eyes taking everything in.

“You never even knew my mother, any of you,” I interrupted harshly.

“That’s not the point, Mamie,” said Yannick quickly. “The point is that there were three of you. And the legacy was divided into three. That’s right, isn’t it?”