Forbidden French

Royce Saunders sits on the bench opposite mine, alone. I sit beside my grandmother. We’re having afternoon tea in the backyard garden, and the unbearable silence is threatening to send me over the edge. He’s only been here twenty minutes and it seems like we’ve exhausted every line of questioning.

The Red Sox are doing well this season, the rain clouds will part, winter might be a tough one this year, and no, he wouldn’t like another cookie.

Royce is in his early forties and bald, though in that handsome way some men can pull off. His facial hair helps to sharpen his otherwise baby face. He dresses stylishly and is incredibly polite. There’s a lot to admire about him: his easy smile, his steady demeanor, the kindness he shares equally among anyone. A stranger, a driver, a state official—he treats them all the same.

He comes from a well-established Boston family and his money is old, though he doesn’t let that stop him from running a successful consulting firm. I’m not sure exactly who he consults. I know it’s something to do with technology and politics, though how the two combine I can’t be totally sure. It’s embarrassing, I know, to not know what your fiancé does for a living.

My grandmother was the one to set up the match. On my twenty-fifth birthday, in lieu of a gift, she called me in for breakfast in the dining room and explained that she had something she wished to discuss with me.

My betrothal.

At the precise moment she said those heavy words, I was in the process of feeding myself a bite of eggs Benedict. I was startled, as anyone might be, and ended up missing my mouth entirely. Canadian bacon, poached egg, and hollandaise sauce rained down onto her prized 17^th-century Persian carpet, and I gasped in horror. There was a big to-do. Three maids were on their hands and knees, combing over that carpet with gloved hands, ensuring they got every last drop (not that it mattered—my grandmother sent it out to be professionally cleaned later that day), and by the time the ordeal was all over, it seemed like our conversation was of little importance. She sat me back down and sighed as if she was sick of having to deal with me for the day.

My grandmother can be like that, and it’s not just because of her age. She’s an introvert and gets overstimulated easily. She hates crowds and disorder, and you can imagine how fun it was to be a small girl living in her house. My toys had to be cleaned up and neatly organized before I was allowed to come down for dinner. She had this sprawling three-story dollhouse commissioned for my playroom, but I was never allowed to touch it because she said it was too much of a hassle to “put back to rights”.

The betrothal already seemed set in stone.

“He’s a fine man,” she told me, staring at the carpet with her sharp brown eyes, looking for residual stains. “His parents have an impeccable reputation. I’ve dug deep and found not even a speck of anything untoward about them. Generations you can go back—the lineage holds.”

She expected me to be impressed by this, so I widened my eyes and made a noise of appreciation.

Beyond the mishap with my eggs, my reaction to her announcement of my betrothal was shockingly calm. I’d already known something like this was coming, and I’d had time to make peace with it.

A few weeks prior, I’d overheard my grandmother having a private conversation with Margaret. I’d just returned from a walk—one of those If I don’t get out of this house right now, I might lose my mind moments, which have become fairly common. I have days where the balcony doesn’t cut it. My anxiety gets the better of me, and I feel this overwhelming sense of urgency. When that happens, I have no choice but to take myself for a long walk. It helps to get out and explore the neighborhood. I like walking by people and guessing details about their life. I like the endorphins and the exertion and usually, by the time I make it back home, all seems right with the world again.

That night, Margaret and my grandmother must not have realized I’d come home, or maybe they assumed I had better sense than to eavesdrop on their conversation because they hadn’t bothered to close the door to my grandmother’s room and they didn’t stop talking as I edged my way closer, listening only because I heard them utter my name as I was about to move past.

I peeked in to see my grandmother sitting at her ornate oversized vanity. It’s the only spot in the house that still enthralls me. It’s always filled to the brim with jewelry carefully displayed, lipsticks lined up in a row, perfumes on silver trays—I can still remember every time I snuck into her room as a child, desperate to try on her jewels, and each of the scoldings that followed.

My grandmother didn’t look like herself, at least not the version she likes to present to the world. She sat on her backless vanity chair in a blue cotton robe and slippers. Her shoulders were slumped, her spine curved forward, her white hair frizzy and limp. Her face was washed and pale, every tender wrinkle and age spot visible in her reflection. She suddenly seemed susceptible to life’s battles in a way I’d never realized, mortal in a way I was careful to never admit to myself.

“And what will become of her when I’m gone? I’m healthy now, but what about tomorrow? She must marry, and soon.”

“She seems happy here,” Margaret protested.

“She cannot remain here forever.”

“I would care for her.”

“That’s not the answer, Margaret. I want her settled with an honorable man, someone to help further dilute that bad blood.”

The bad blood she was referring to comes from my mother, the great villain of my grandmother’s life.

To hear her tell it, my father, James Davenport, was going places. He was a graduate of St. John’s just like me. He continued his studies at Princeton and graduated with honors. He was an investment banker and chairman of two non-profits. He was one of the most sought-after bachelors in Boston when one day he wandered into a café for lunch and laid eyes on my mother working behind the counter.

According to my grandmother, he never stood a chance.

It didn’t matter that she was the child of Brazilian working-class immigrants or that her childhood was a far cry from the posh milieu my father was accustomed to. My mother had something money can’t buy: enchanting beauty.

My grandmother claims my dad was trapped in my mother’s web from the start, and the story that follows could bring Lana Del Rey to her knees. My mother played hard to get at first. My father begged for a chance. Once he was granted the first date, he was so eager to impress, he whisked my mother off to Milan on their second. I was conceived only a few short weeks later. A hasty marriage followed even though my grandmother begged my father to reconsider. There were red flags even then, ups and downs that didn’t seem sustainable. Their relationship was never peaceful, so it wasn’t all that surprising that the addition of a wailing newborn only exacerbated matters. By this point, what was left of their honeymoon phase abruptly ended. Small arguments grew into screaming matches. They butted heads at every opportunity. From what I’ve been told, my mother felt smothered by my father, and her need for freedom only succeeded in triggering him. He sought control. He wanted the three of us to be happy, to live a life he saw fit. After I was born, he bought a house in Boston, and when that didn’t solve their problems, he bought a second house, bigger this time. Still my mother wasn’t happy. More gifts, more furniture, more travel. My father would have done anything to feel deserving of this woman he loved so desperately.

Their fights continued to grow nastier, both sides spitting venom. Once, during a particularly rough patch, my mother left my father and me for two weeks and went to stay with her parents. My grandmother assumed that was it, the end, surely, but they soon reconciled and rekindled their romance right where they left off, seemingly happier than ever. A few months later, it all happened again.

Perhaps there was genuine happiness sprinkled into those beginning years. I have blips in my memory of us together at the zoo, laughing in front of the zebras, my father carrying me up on his shoulders while my mother took our picture. Another time, she let me have a sip of soda, the carbonation made me sneeze, and some of the soda came out of my nose. I remember collapsing into a fit of giggles.

Unfortunately, those fleeting memories don’t sustain me. They can’t eclipse the nightmare of what their relationship eventually devolved into. Cheating, lies, and public scandals—nothing seemed off limits. My mother slept with my father’s best friend for a year before he found out. He didn’t leave her. Next, it was his business partner. My father grew angry and resentful, but still, he didn’t leave. To cope, he started drinking heavily. My grandmother grew more and more concerned, but my parents pushed her away and kept her at arm’s length because it was easier than bringing her into the chaos. My mother knew Fay Davenport hated her, and she didn’t want to be around my grandmother, which meant my father saw very little of his mother during this time as well.

One terrible vice seemed to lead indirectly into another. The drinking and the cheating and the fighting weren’t enough. To win my mother’s affections, to keep her interest, my father would spend outrageously, generating immense debt in pursuit of pleasure. Anything to keep her happy, anything to use as a balm upon the festering wound of dysfunction.

By this point, I was already attending St. John’s as an elementary school student, and when I had holidays, I was with my grandmother. We would travel anywhere we could, tour the Louvre, sunbathe in Fiji, safari in South Africa. Their neglect was really a kindness at the end of the day, she’s quick to remind me. Allowing my grandmother to step in and raise me when they so clearly weren’t up to the task themselves might have been the least selfish thing either of them ever did, and quite frankly, at the time, I didn’t realize anything was amiss, not when I was really young. I thought it was normal to be away from my parents most of the time. Most kids at St. John’s saw their family sparingly at best. Busy people leading busy lives seemed to be the norm within our elite boarding school world.

Things might have continued on like that forever. The endless cycle of madness would have endured had my mother not died in a car crash, an accident caused by one of her lovers racing through a red light.

After her death, my father hit rock bottom, fell into a drunken chasm and never found his way out. The end for him came from the barrel of a gun.

I was twelve years old when they died.

I can’t stand to think about them.

In fact, I try not to, but my grandmother brings them up every now and then as a cautionary reminder. The last time she spoke of them, she took me by the chin and tilted my face so my eyes captured the light streaming in through the windows.

“Your mother was a beauty.” My grandmother sighed. “And you have too much of her in you.”