Susan Phillips - Glitter Baby

The boys of Châtillon-sur-Seine discovered Fleur the summer before her sixteenth birthday. “Salut, poupée!” they called out as she emerged from the boulangerie.

She looked up, a smear of chocolate dotting her chin, and saw three boys lounging in the doorway of the pharmacie next door. They were smoking cigarettes and listening to “Crocodile Rock” on a portable radio. One boy stubbed out his cigarette. “Hé poupée, irons voir par ici.” He made a beckoning gesture with his head.

Fleur glanced around to see which of her classmates he was talking to.

The boys laughed. One nudged his friend and pointed at her legs. “Regardez-moi ces jambes!”

Fleur looked down to see what was wrong, and another dab of chocolate from her éclair dripped onto the blue leather strap of her Dr. Scholl’s sandals. The taller of the boys winked, and she realized they were admiring her legs. Hers!

“Qu’est-ce que tu dirais d’un rendezvous?”

A date. He was asking her for a date! She dropped the éclair and ran up the street to the bridge where the girls were meeting. Her streaky blond hair flew behind her like a horse’s mane. The boys laughed and whistled.

When she got back to the couvent, she dashed to her room and stared at herself in the mirror. Those same boys used to call her l’épouvantail, the scarecrow. What had happened? Her face looked the same: thick, marking-pen eyebrows, green eyes set too far apart, mouth spread all over. She’d finally stopped growing, but not until she’d reached five feet, eleven and a half inches. The braces were gone now. Maybe that was it.

By the time August arrived, Fleur was nearly sick with excitement. A whole month to be with her mother. And on Mykonos, her favorite of all the Greek islands. The first morning as they walked along the beach in the dazzling white sunlight, she couldn’t stop talking about everything she’d been saving up.

“It’s creepy the way those boys keep calling out at me. Why would they do something like that? I think it’s because I got rid of my braces.” Fleur tugged on the oversized T-shirt she’d pulled on top of the apple-green bikini Belinda had bought to surprise her. She loved the color, but its skimpy cut embarrassed her. Belinda wore an oatmeal striped tunic and a chrome Galanos slave bracelet. Both of them had bare feet, but Belinda’s toenails were painted burnt umber.

Her mother sipped from the Bloody Mary she’d brought along. Belinda drank a lot more than she should, but Fleur didn’t know how to get her to stop.

“Poor baby,” Belinda said, “it’s hard not being the ugly duckling anymore. Especially when you’ve been so dedicated to the idea.” She slipped her free arm around Fleur’s waist, and her hipbone brushed the top of her daughter’s thigh. “I’ve been telling you for years the only problem with your face is that you hadn’t grown into it, but you’re stubborn.”

The way Belinda said it made Fleur feel as though that was something to be proud of. She hugged her mother, then flopped down on the sand. “I couldn’t ever have sex. I mean it, Belinda. I am never getting married. I don’t even like men.”

“You don’t know any men, darling,” Belinda said dryly. “Once you’ve gotten away from that godforsaken convent, you’ll feel differently.”

“I won’t. Can I have a cigarette?”

“No. And men are wonderful, baby. The right men, of course. Powerful ones. When you walk into a restaurant on the arm of an important man, everyone looks at you, and you see admiration in their eyes. They know you’re very special.”

Fleur frowned and picked at the bandage on her toe. “Is that why you won’t get divorced from Alexi? Because he’s important?”

Belinda sighed and tilted her face into the sun. “I’ve told you, baby. It’s money. I don’t have the skills to support us.”

But Fleur would have the skills. She already excelled in math. She spoke French, English, Italian, and German, even a little Spanish. She knew history and literature, she could type, and when she went to the university, she’d learn even more. Before long, she’d be able to support them both. Then she and Belinda could live together forever and never be separated again.

Two days later, one of Belinda’s Parisian acquaintances arrived on Mykonos. Belinda introduced Fleur as her niece, something she always did on the rare occasions when they ran into a person she knew. Each time it happened, Fleur felt sick inside, but Belinda said she had to do it or Alexi would cancel their trips.

The woman was Madame Phillipe Jacques Duverge, but Belinda said she’d once been Bunny Groben, from White Plains, New York. She’d also been a famous model during the sixties, and she kept pointing her camera at Fleur. “Just for fun,” she said,

Fleur hated having her picture taken, and she kept running into the water.

Madame Duverge followed, clicking away.

As one white-hot Mykonos day gave way to another, Fleur discovered the young men who roamed the sandy Greek beaches were no different from the boys of Châtillon-sur-Seine. She told Belinda they were making her so nervous she couldn’t enjoy her new snorkeling mask. “Why do they have to act so stupid?”

Belinda took a sip of her gin and tonic. “Ignore them. They’re not important.”

When Fleur returned to the couvent for her final year, she had no way of knowing her life was about to change forever. In October, shortly after her sixteenth birthday, a fire broke out in the dormitory, and all the girls were forced to evacuate. A photographer for the local newspaper rushed out and caught the daughters of France’s most exclusive families standing by the blazing building in their pajamas. Although the dormitory was badly damaged, no one was hurt, but because of the notoriety of the families involved, several of the photos made their way into Le Monde, including a close-up of the nearly forgotten daughter of Alexi Savagar.

Alexi was too intelligent to keep Fleur’s existence a secret. Instead he’d simply look pensive whenever her name was mentioned, and people assumed his daughter was handicapped, perhaps mentally retarded. But the astonishingly beautiful young woman with the wide mouth and startled eyes could never be mistaken for anybody’s closet skeleton.

Alexi was furious that the newspaper had identified her, but it was too late. People began asking questions. To make it worse, Solange Savagar picked that particular time to die. Alexi couldn’t tolerate the vulgar speculation that would grow even worse if the obviously healthy granddaughter who’d been so recently photographed was absent from her grandmother’s funeral.

He ordered Belinda to send for her bastard.

I’m going to meet my father today. The words tumbled through Fleur’s head as she followed a maid down the silent, forbidding hallway of the gray stone mansion on the Rue de la Bienfaisance. When they reached a small salon with a pilaster-framed doorway, the maid turned the knob, then slipped away.

“Baby!” Liquor splashed over the edge of Belinda’s glass as she shot up from the silk damask couch. She abandoned her glass and held out her arms.

Fleur rushed forward, only to stumble on the Persian carpet and nearly fall. They hugged each other, and, as she inhaled her mother’s Shalimar, Fleur felt a little better.

Belinda looked pale and elegant in a black Dior suit and low-heeled pumps with pear-shaped openings at the toes. Fleur couldn’t bear having him think she was trying to impress, so she’d dressed in her black wool slacks, cowl-necked sweater, and an old tweed blazer with a black velvet collar. Her friends Jen and Helene had told her to put up her hair so she’d look more sophisticated, but she’d refused. The barrettes on each side of her head weren’t an exact match, but they were close enough. Finally she’d tucked her silver horseshoe stickpin in her lapel for confidence. So far, it wasn’t working.

Belinda cupped Fleur’s cheek. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Fleur saw the shadows under her mother’s eyes, the drink on the table, and hugged her more tightly. “I missed you so much.”

Belinda grasped her shoulders. “It’s not going to be easy, baby. Stay out of Alexi’s way, and we’ll hope for the best.”

“I’m not afraid of him.”

Belinda waved off Fleur’s bravado with a trembling hand. “He’s been impossible ever since Solange got sick. I’m glad the old bitch is dead. She was getting to be a trial, even for him. Michel is the only one who’s sorry to see her go.”

Michel. Her brother was fifteen now, a year younger than she. She’d known he’d be here, but she hadn’t let herself think about it.

The door behind them gave a soft click. “Belinda, did you telephone the Baron de Chambray as I asked? He was especially fond of Mother.”

His voice was low and deep, filled with authority. The kind of voice that never had to be raised to be obeyed.

He can’t do anything more to me, Fleur thought. Nothing. Slowly she turned to face her father.

He was surgically well groomed, his hands and fingernails immaculate, his thin, steel-gray hair impeccably neat. He wore a necktie the color of old sherry and a dark vested suit. Next to Pompidou, he was said to be the most powerful man in France. He gave a short, elegant snort as she saw her. “So, Belinda, this is your daughter. She dresses like a peasant.”

Fleur wanted to cry, but somehow she managed to lift her chin and look down at him. She spoke English deliberately. American English. Strong and clear. “The nuns taught me that good manners are more important than clothes. I guess things are different in Paris.”

She heard Belinda’s quick intake of breath, but the only reaction Alexi showed to Fleur’s impertinence was in his eyes. They drifted slowly over her, searching for the flaws she knew he’d find in abundance. She’d never felt bigger, uglier, more awkward, but she matched him stare for stare.

Standing off to the side, Belinda watched the duel taking place between Alexi and Fleur. A rush of pride swelled inside her. This was her daughter-strong, full of spirit, achingly beautiful. Let Alexi compare Fleur with his weakling son. Belinda sensed the exact moment when he saw the resemblance, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, she felt calm in his presence. When he finally looked her way, she gave him a small, triumphant smile.

It was Flynn’s face Alexi saw in Fleur, the young, unblemished Flynn, with his features softened and transformed, made beautiful for his daughter. Fleur’s face had the same strong nose and wide, elegant mouth, the same high forehead. Even her eyes bore his mark in their shape and generous spacing. Only the green-gold irises were Fleur’s own.

Alexi turned on his heel and left the salon.

Fleur stood at the window of her mother’s bedroom while Belinda napped. She watched Alexi pull away from the house in a chauffeured Rolls. The silver car glided down the drive and through the great iron gates onto the Rue de la Bienfaisance. The Street of Charity. What a stupid name. There was no charity in this house, just a horrible man who hated his own flesh and blood. Maybe if she’d been tiny and pretty…But weren’t fathers supposed to love their daughters no matter how they looked?

She was too old for the baby tears she wanted to shed, so she slipped into her loafers and set out to explore. She found a back staircase leading into a garden where mathematically straight paths delineated geometric beds of ugly shrubbery. She told herself she was lucky to have been sent away from this horrible place. At the couvent, petunias flopped over the borders and cats could sleep in the flower beds.

She swiped her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. Some small, stupid part of her had wanted to believe her father would have a change of heart when he saw her. That he’d realize how wrong he’d been to abandon her. Stupid. Stupid.

She took in a T-shaped, one-story building sitting at the back of the grounds. Like the house, it was constructed of gray stone, but it had no windows. When she found the side door unlocked, she turned the knob and stepped into a jewel box.

Black watered silk covered the walls, and gleaming ebony marble floors stretched before her. Small, recessed spotlights shone down from the ceiling in starry clusters like a Van Gogh night sky, each cluster lighting an antique automobile. Their polished finishes reminded her of gemstones-rubies, emeralds, amethysts, and sapphires. Some of the automobiles rested on the marble floor, but many sat on platforms, so they seemed to be suspended in the air like a handful of jewels flung into the night.