She shook her head and looked at Mrs. Pratt, who was in the office, too.
“She’ll have to live by our rules,” Mrs. Brittany said, showing me she was relenting.
“She will.”
“I’ll be there to make that clear myself.”
“Good.”
What I really wanted to say was that I wanted what was left of my family back. I wanted to be the older sister I never could be. Just as she had tried to hold on to some semblance of family through Sheena, I would through Emmie. But I didn’t mention any of that. I knew she would see it only as weakness and another portent of disaster.
In the beginning, I thought I actually would enjoy being M’s older sister, mother, and father wrapped up into one. I went to the school and met with the principal, who clearly wasn’t happy about M coming to live with me at the Beaux-Arts. It was clear that the rumor mill had been running full-time at the school, but I thought we could endure it, or at least she could. I tried to be as stern and unyielding as Papa at times, insisting that M keep up with her schoolwork. On the other hand, I also enjoyed being her older sister, showing her how to look prettier, fixing her hair, teaching her about makeup, and buying her more attractive clothes. Little did I know that everything I did only made things harder for her at school. Dirty rumors were circulated more openly because of the things I had done for her. They were saying that I was turning my sister into another prostitute.
I didn’t understand at first how this happened so quickly, and then M confessed and told me that before Papa’s death, she and one of her girlfriends had been spying on me. Her girlfriend knew too much and, out of jealousy or just plain meanness, began to spread rumors about her after she had moved in with me. It all came to a head when Mrs. Brittany arrived one day to reveal that somehow her telephone service was getting nuisance calls. She was furious about it, and I knew that my days as a Brittany girl were numbered as long as M remained with me.
We might have survived for quite a while, nevertheless, if it weren’t for a nightmare of mine coming to fruition. M was home, had just taken a shower, and, being upset with herself and everything else, poured herself a drink at my bar. She was sitting there in her robe when the door buzzer sounded, and unfortunately, she greeted a first-time client of mine who had arrived quite early. Things got out of hand, and he went after her, thinking she was another Brittany girl. She had locked herself in her bedroom by the time I arrived.
I managed to distract him, but he turned out to be my first and only vicious and despicable man. When I refused to bring my sister out for his sexual fantasy ménage à trois, he hit me. It was the only time any man had ever been violent, but it took only that one time to drive home the reality of what I was, what I was doing with my life, and where I would eventually end up.
Nothing reinforced my understanding more than Mrs. Brittany’s lack of sympathy or compassion. She blamed it all on me, of course, for taking M into my life in the first place, and then had the audacity to suggest that maybe I could turn it into an advantage. Her intentions were clear. She wanted me to develop M as a younger version of myself.
“You’ve exposed her to it. It’s the only way to solve the situation. I know she must look up to you now. She sees how well you live and must realize she could live just as well.”
I pretended to consider it, but I felt as if my father had returned from the dead, gotten into Mrs. Brittany, and wreaked his final revenge. I asked her for a little time off to think things over, and she gave me a few weeks. I told M we were going to have a vacation in Paris and called Uncle Alain immediately. He understood exactly what I was intending and was more than willing to take on the responsibility.
Ironically, M and I had never been closer than we were during those days in Paris. She loved Uncle Alain and his partner, Maurice, and they took to her immediately, too. I saw how comfortable she was with them and felt encouraged. I could leave her there and feel I had done the right thing. I didn’t tell her my plan. I really didn’t know how I would finally arrange it, but thankfully Uncle Alain was way ahead of me about it all, proposing a new school for her.
I had been back to Paris many times since I had begun working for Mrs. Brittany, but it never touched me or opened itself to me as much as it did when M and I toured it together, sat in cafés, listened to music, or just walked along the Seine. She tried many times to get me to give her more details about what my life was like. I held her off with promises to reveal more in time, but my intention was never to tell her any of it if I could help it.
I knew that when it came time for me to reveal what Uncle Alain had agreed to do—become M’s guardian and take her in for her final high school years—she would resist and refuse. I really didn’t know what I was going to do with myself, except that I would not return to Mrs. Brittany.
And then, late one afternoon, when I was alone at a café, musing about my future and all that had happened in my life, I felt his presence before I tu
rned to look up and see him standing there.
“Bonjour,” he said.
I was speechless for a moment. “How did you find me?” I asked him.
“You think your Mrs. Brittany is the only one with powerful friends?”
I kept looking at him, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t dreaming. He laughed and sat next to me, ordering a café au lait and then taking my hand.
“Norbert,” I said, nodding and realizing what had happened. “He must have had something to do with this.”
“Mais oui. What are good friends for?”
“Do you have business here in Paris?” I asked him.
“Always, but that’s not what brought me this time.”
“Ah,” I said. “Another free weekend?”
“All my weekends are free now.”
“What are you saying?”
“The merger has dissolved,” he replied with a smile. “The marriage one, I mean. Do you think there is any chance for us to pick up where we left off, to pretend that only a day or so has passed?”