Free Family Pictures by Jane Green Page B

takes a deep breath, for this is something she doesn’t generally talk about, knowing that her American friends will not, as a rule, understand. “There was infidelity from the beginning.”
    Angie nods. “Aah. Now I get it. Of course you’re going to feel that way if your dad had affairs. At least that explains why Clothilde’s such a bitch. She probably had it pent up for years.”
    Sylvie cannot help a burst of laughter. “It wasn’t my father. It was my mother.”
    Angie’s hands fly to her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I should never have said that.”
    “Don’t be. Clothilde’s a total bitch. Even I know that. What I’ve never been able to figure out,” Sylvie says sadly, “is why my father stayed. She was so vicious to him, and she’d leave him every summer to go and live with her lover. Can you imagine?”
    “He knew?”
    “Yup. But he refused to talk about it with me. I have no idea if he put up with it because he didn’t want to split the marriage up to protect me, or because he loved her. I think it was probably a bit of both.”
    “That’s hard,” Angie says. “How did you find out?”
    “I haven’t thought about this for years.” Sylvie takes a sip from her cup, casts her mind back all those years. “My mother was in France for the summer. I was sixteen, and alone in the house while my dad was at work. I loved being alone in the house; I was fascinated by everything of my mother’s because it was all so different from everyone else’s, and I used to snoop through her stuff, especially her clothes, which were so beautiful.
    “And of course, in the back of her lingerie drawer, cliché of clichés, there was the stack of handwritten envelopes.”
    Angie’s eyes are wide. “Did they smell of perfume?”
    “No, Angie. Felipe isn’t a woman.”
    “Ah yes. Good point.”
    Sylvie laughs. “It was obviously from someone in France, and I ran downstairs to grab the huge old French dictionary, and spent the next five hours translating the entire collection.”
    “Did you speak any French? And what did the letters say?”
    “Yes, I spoke French but not nearly well enough to read the letters properly. They were from her lover. He lived in an apartment in Neuilly-sur-Seine, and shipped his wife and children off to their home in the hills below Grasse for the summer, where he would visit them on weekends, squiring his elegant mistress, Clothilde, around the hot spots of Paris during the week.
    “He sounded rich. And fun. And exciting. He sounded like everything my dad wasn’t, and I just felt … sick. I understood why my mother took off, but I wished I didn’t. I remember wishing I’d just left well enough alone. It was information I didn’t want to have.
    “Did you talk to either of them about it?”
    “How could I? I wanted to protect my father, and my mother would have flown into one of her rages. I was terrified of her; I would never have dared confront her.”
    “Didn’t you just hate her?”
    “I did, but I hated her before that. And I loved her too,” she says sadly. “I was so torn with all these different feelings. Mostly, I think, I wanted her to love me. I’m not sure my mother has ever truly been capable of love. She can love on a superficial basis, if you’re beautiful, and clever, and a perfect reflection of her, but show any independence, contradict her in any way, and her love swiftly turns to hate.”
    “Not really hate.” Angie is shocked.
    “Oh yes. She has told me she hates me just as much as she has told me she loves me. Possibly more. I spent my childhood wanting her to love me, trying so hard just for her to love me.”
    “God, Sylvie. That’s horrible.”
    “It sounds horrible, but it just was it was. I didn’t know any different.”
    “So … what happened to Felipe?”
    “This went on every year for the next twenty years. When Felipe died, my mother flew to Paris to pay her respects to his wife and children. Can you imagine? They knew! Apparently