Hotel Vendome

Chapter 18

THEY BOTH HIT the ground running when they got to New York. Hugues was handling the usual dicey situations at the hotel, employee disputes, threatened lawsuits, labor unions, arriving important guests. And Heloise was on duty at the front desk the night they got home. Her diploma was still in her suitcase, but it made no difference here. She had to help an arriving guest with lost luggage deal with the airline, find a change of rooms for a complaining guest who hated the suite she had, which was hard to believe since it was one of the new ones, but the guest in question said that the color green made her anxious and gave her migraines and there were green tassels on the drapes. And miraculously Heloise was able to switch suites with a guest who hadn’t arrived yet. She had to call a doctor after midnight for a guest whose five-year-old had a high fever, and she had to get security to deal with a domestic argument between two drunks on the fourth floor, without calling the police if at all possible so they didn’t wind up on Page Six of the New York Post. And she had to scold room service several times at two A.M. for not answering their phone, and explain to another guest why the concierge desk was not open at five A.M. She finished work at seven, and was dead on her feet when she got to her father’s apartment and saw that Natalie was there. She hadn’t seen her since she got home the day before, and she was so tired she didn’t care. They were having breakfast as Heloise walked past them to her room with a cursory hello. She hated the look in her father’s eyes when he looked at Natalie. He looked like he was about to melt into a puddle on the floor. Heloise thought it looked ridiculous for a man his age to be so lovesick, but she tried not to notice as she headed to her room.

“How’d it go last night?” he asked as she went by.

“Okay. We had a nasty situation on the fourth floor. The Morettis got into a fight, and both rooms on either side wanted to call the police.”

“What did you do?” He looked concerned, and she seemed mildly sheepish as she answered.

“I sent Dom Perignon to all the people who complained. Bruce spent about an hour with the Morettis. Apparently he had made insulting comments about her mother, and Bruce sat with them until they were so tired and so drunk that Mr. Moretti went to bed, and we gave Mrs. Moretti a complimentary room on another floor. I didn’t know what else to do. And I got a doctor for six-nineteen at two A.M. Her kid had strep, and an ear infection.”

“You did all the right things,” her father praised her. She had learned more than ever in the past two years that hotelry was as much about diplomacy and ingenuity as about service, and you had to think on your feet. She was good at it and had the correct instincts.

“The Morettis need a shrink,” she said with a grin, as she took off her uniform jacket and threw it on a chair. She had kicked off her shoes at the front door. She glanced at Natalie then. The wedding was in less than four weeks and her own party in a few days. “How’s the wedding coming?”

Natalie grinned and then sighed. “My sister-in-law broke her ankle Rollerblading last week. Both my nieces have mono and may not be able to come. There’s a threatened air strike in Holland so we’re not sure about the flowers. We haven’t set the menu yet, and your father doesn’t want a wedding cake. And three of my clients want their installations that week while they’re away. Other than that, it’s fine.” Heloise couldn’t help laughing at what she’d said. She seemed a little mellower now that she had her degree and had spent three days alone with her father in Lausanne. Natalie was glad she hadn’t gone, and with all she had to do, she couldn’t have anyway. And she knew that Heloise would have viewed her as an intruder if she had.

“That sounds about right for three weeks to D-day. Most of that stuff usually happens a few days before. You’re ahead of the game,” Heloise said, as she spoke to her more pleasantly than she had in months, and her father smiled. Their time together at the graduation in Lausanne had done her good.

“I’m not sure that reassures me.” Natalie looked nervous and as though she had lost weight, but she seemed happy when she gazed at Hugues. Her future stepdaughter still scared her, but she was being friendlier than she had all year. Maybe she was just tired from a long night and the flight the day before and didn’t have the energy to be nasty to her. Natalie wasn’t sure. She didn’t trust her yet after her fury of the previous months.

“Sally will help you work it all out. She’s great. She can pull anything off!” Heloise said easily. “She found a rabbi once in half an hour when the one they had didn’t show up. He was on his honeymoon in the hotel, and she got him out of bed to do the wedding, and she called a cantor that she knew. It went off perfectly. And why don’t you want a cake?” she asked, looking at her father disapprovingly.

“I feel silly. Maybe I’ve seen too many weddings. Besides I never like them. I want a decent dessert,” he complained.

“You have to have a wedding cake. You can order dessert from room service, but you should have a cake,” she scolded him as she grabbed a muffin off their breakfast table and ate it as she headed to her bedroom. She was so tired, she could hardly think. “I have to be back on duty at three o’clock. The front desk schedule sucks,” she said over her shoulder as she walked into her room and closed the door, but at least she didn’t slam it this time. Natalie looked at Hugues with a surprised expression once the door was closed.

“Better?” she asked him. It certainly looked that way.

“Maybe,” he said softly, so Heloise didn’t hear him. He was wondering if she was going to move to her new apartment after the wedding. He would have liked more time alone with Natalie, especially if Heloise was going to be difficult about her, but so far she showed no sign of moving out, maybe just to annoy her. “I think she’s afraid to lose me,” he whispered. “I told her that couldn’t happen. You can’t steal me from her, and I know you don’t want to. Thanks to her mother, I’m all she has, for now anyway, and for the past seventeen years. It makes you a much bigger threat than you would be otherwise.” Natalie nodded. They had talked about it before, and she understood better than Heloise realized, which was why she had tried to be understanding, although Heloise’s behavior had been beyond the pale for six months. She hoped she was calming down and was happy that it looked that way now. She had lost hope of their ever being friends.

“Her mother wasn’t at the graduation?”

“Of course not. She was on vacation with Greg in Vietnam, although she had a year’s notice of the date. She would have missed it for a hair appointment or a new tattoo,” he said angrily.

“That’s hard for Heloise. You can’t explain to yourself why your parents aren’t there when they could be. If they’re dead, at least you can understand. If they’re alive and don’t show up, all it tells you is that they don’t give a damn. It’s hard to feel loved by anyone after that. Your parents can really do a job on you,” she said with a knowing look.

“I tried to make up for it for all these years, and I was always there for her. But Miriam never has been. Sometimes I think the absentee parent does more harm than the present parent can do good.” Natalie nodded, and then she mentioned the wedding cake again and reminded him of what his daughter had said.

“All right, all right. Wedding cake. You pick it. I’ll order something else. I think they’re tacky and embarrassing. And I won’t do that ridiculous thing where you shove it in my mouth and smear it all over my face.” He was too European for that, and it was a custom he detested and had never understood. “You can feed it to me with a fork.”

“I promise.” she said, looking pleased. She wanted all the customs and traditions and little superstitions. Something borrowed, something blue. She had a garter trimmed in blue lace, and even a penny for her shoe. She had waited forty-one years for this and given up all hope of getting married and had stopped caring until he came along. Now she was going to enjoy it to the hilt. He knew that and was touched, and had humored her in all of it except the cake.

“Just don’t ask me to sample fourteen of them in the kitchen like every other bride. You order what you want.” She already knew she wanted a chocolate mousse interior with ivory-colored buttercream icing, marzipan ribbons decorating it, and fresh flowers. She had shown the baker a photograph of exactly what she wanted. This was her dream wedding, and she planned to have only one in her lifetime, so she was going all out. And she loved her dress. It didn’t look ridiculous for someone her age. It was simple and elegant, and she wanted Hugues to be swept off his feet. She knew he had seen a lot of weddings and brides at the hotel. She wanted to be the most beautiful one he had ever seen.

An hour later they both left for their day. Natalie was seeing new clients. She had promised to look at one of the hotel rooms that had had a leak, which was a good opportunity to redo it. And Hugues had a dozen meetings back to back, and a meeting of the Hotel Association to attend. He had been the chairperson several times over the years. And it was always a useful way to maintain good relations with the owners and managers of other hotels. Heloise was back at the front desk at three and had promised to cover for one of the concierges for two hours.

The days afterward were equally insane. Heloise barely had time to get ready for her party, and Sally handled all the details, although Heloise had gone over everything with her again the day before. It was going to be a grand celebration of her birthday and graduation. The room was all decorated in white and gold with white flowers on every table and gold balloons hanging from the ceiling. And her father had hired a fantastic band, and let her friends stay till four A.M. After that they served breakfast in a smaller room. Heloise said it was the best party she’d ever been to, and she had a ball. Her father wanted to reward her for her work at the École Hôtelière, and he had also wanted her to feel special and not pushed out of place by their wedding.

Hugues and Natalie disappeared discreetly around eleven and left the young people to have their fun. As it turned out, it was a happy prelude to their wedding, Natalie enjoyed it, and Heloise had definitely been nicer to her since they came back from her graduation. She was being more mature about it and was clearly less angry at her father and even his future wife. It was as though she had finally understood that she wouldn’t lose him. She wasn’t happy about his marriage to Natalie, but she was no longer on a mission to make her life a living hell. And she was a little embarrassed now by how angry she had been. She had admitted it to Jennifer when she got back from Lausanne.

Natalie was spending the weeks before the wedding struggling with the seating at the reception, and in spite of the holiday weekend, they were expecting just over two hundred guests. But so far everything was going according to plan, although Natalie was visibly nervous about it and had never organized such a major event in her life. She found it much harder to keep track of than designing an apartment or a house, or keeping all the orders straight. This wasn’t her thing at all, and she was relying on the hotel staff to guide her and give her advice, and trying not to disturb Hugues about it. He had enough to do running the hotel, and she wanted him to be surprised.

They were having a rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding, for family and people from out of town. The only family she had were her brother, his wife, and their children, and Hugues had none at all except Heloise. But they were still expecting sixty guests at the rehearsal dinner and holding it in a room they used as a private dining room upstairs. There would be no music and no dancing, so it was a simpler event to plan. But they still needed flowers, and had to decide about the menus and the wines, and the calligrapher had to do place cards and seating charts. Natalie felt as though she were running a war, with charts and lists everywhere, and she carried a radio so Sally could communicate with her at all times. Natalie had left Heloise out of the arrangements in deference to her, but she had invited her to her bachelorette dinner, which Heloise declined, saying she had to work, which was true. But she also didn’t want to celebrate the fact that her father was marrying her. It would have been hypocritical and sounded embarrassing to her to watch middle-aged women give her sexy underwear to seduce her father. Natalie was doing fine as it was.

The male employees of the hotel had given Hugues a surprise bachelor dinner the month before, with Moroccan food and belly dancers, but in spite of that it was a pretty tame event. They had also invited his few friends, all of whom worked or ran other hotels. Given the amount of time he spent working, it was hard for him to maintain friendships with anyone, which was the nature of the business. The hotel and the people in it became your life and left you time for no one else. But the bachelor party had been fun, and Hugues had danced with several of the girls, but no one had done anything embarrassing or gotten out of line, which wasn’t always the case with other bachelor dinners they’d had at the hotel, where hookers were often involved and paid for by one of the guests. No one would have dared do that to Hugues, he wasn’t that kind of man, and it was all good fun.

By the day before the wedding, Natalie was a nervous wreck. She had taken a room on another floor to hang her wedding dress and where she would get her hair and makeup done the day of the wedding. And her brother and sister-in-law were staying at the hotel. Only their two boys had come; their twin sisters were still too sick with mono. And the day before the wedding, Natalie had booked a massage and a manicure and pedicure. Heloise saw her at the hairdresser that afternoon, wearing a masque. She stopped in to say hello, and Natalie opened her eyes when she heard her voice. She had hardly seen her in days.

“How’s it going?” Heloise asked politely.

“Terrible,” Natalie said, trying not to move her mouth too much so she didn’t crack the masque, which looked like green clay. She felt like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. “My face is breaking out. My stomach is upset. The singer for the band is stuck in Las Vegas and isn’t coming. And I wish we’d eloped.” She looked like she was about to cry.

“It’ll be fine,” Heloise reassured her. “Just try to relax.” And then, with a sigh, she conceded silently. She knew a lot more about these things than her future stepmother, and she had done nothing to help so far. “Do you want me to talk to Sally?” she asked softly. Natalie stared at her and nodded.

“Would you mind? I have no idea what I’m doing, and I’m so nervous I feel nuts.” And she was taking medication that made her feel more so, but she didn’t tell Heloise that. Hugues was aware of it and trying to do all he could to calm her down. But the medication, coupled with the normal stresses of planning a wedding, was overwhelming her, and she looked it.

“I’ll go up to her office in a few minutes when I have a break,” Heloise promised with a smile. “Just concentrate on your hair and nails. Leave the rest to us. And take a nap.” Natalie nodded and watched her leave the hair salon. She had the feeling the war might finally be over. She wasn’t sure that it had ended, but she hadn’t heard gunfire since Heloise and Hugues had returned from Lausanne.

Half an hour later Heloise was upstairs with Sally, going over the details of the wedding. Most of it was under control, and she and the very competent catering manager discussed what wasn’t and made a few changes that no one would notice, about placement of tables, and the size of tabletops. Someone had ordered the wrong chairs, and Heloise asked for the best ones. The flow of guests, the timing, seating charts, where to place the ceremony so everyone could see it-they were subtle changes, but they made a difference. Together she and Sally corrected it all. And Sally said it was nice of her to do it.

There was supposed to be a rehearsal, but it had been canceled because her relatives were coming in too late and there was no time before the rehearsal dinner. And Heloise told Sally to have all the flowers for Natalie and her sister-in-law, for Natalie’s hair and both bouquets, sent up to the suite that Natalie was using for her dress. And the sprig of lily of the valley for Hugues’s lapel should go to his room, not hers. Suddenly it no longer made Heloise feel sick to think about the wedding. She had made her peace with it and wanted to help.

“What about you?” Sally asked her cautiously. There had been no flowers ordered for her. “Are you carrying a bouquet?” She hadn’t dared ask Heloise anything about the wedding until then. Now she seemed to be on board.

“I’m not in the wedding,” Heloise said quietly, looking a little sheepish.

“You’re not?” Sally looked surprised, and realized she had never discussed it with the bride. She didn’t ask Heloise why. She knew. And so did everyone in the hotel. Heloise had made no secret of how much she disapproved of the marriage since it was announced.

“My father asked me to be his witness, instead of a best man.” It was more of a European tradition, but she had never confirmed it to him, and he hadn’t pressed the point. He was just going to be grateful if she came to the wedding, without expecting more. And even that hadn’t been sure. She had threatened not to many times. She thought about it then as she looked at Sally, and they were old friends, since she’d been a child. “You’d better make a sprig of lily of the valley for me, and I’ll pin it to my dress.” It identified her with the groom, not the bride, and was what a best man would have worn in her place, or a small white rose, but she preferred lily of the valley, which had been her favorite flower all her life. She loved it when brides used it in their bouquets. Natalie was carrying white Phalaenopsis orchids, which she said would work well with her dress and were more sophisticated.

Heloise finished up the details with Sally then, and both of them were satisfied. They had tied up a lot of loose ends that Natalie had been unsure of, and Sally didn’t want to make the decisions for her. Now Heloise had it all in good control and had made excellent choices. She loved weddings and was great at details.

And then she went upstairs to their apartment. She was on her lunch break from the desk. Natalie had just walked in and was lying on the couch, looking sick.

“Are you okay?” Heloise asked solicitously, happy with the subtle improvements she and Sally had made to the wedding.

“No. I’m a wreck. Did you see Sally?” She looked panicked, as Heloise smiled.

“Everything is under control. Don’t even think about it now. Just coast from here to tomorrow. What are you wearing tonight?” Heloise hadn’t even thought about it yet herself. She had never gone shopping for the wedding since she wasn’t sure she would go.

“A blue satin dress,” Natalie answered. “The flowers on the tables are blue too.”

“I know. I just reviewed everything.” She smiled. “Do you want a cup of tea?”

Natalie nodded, looking anxious, and smiled gratefully when Heloise handed her a cup of Earl Grey a few minutes later. Heloise was like a different person now and Natalie was impressed. Hugues had been right. Heloise had calmed down.

“I think this is what mothers are for,” Natalie said, after sipping the tea, which seemed to help. “Although mine never was. I had one of those uptight Main Line mothers who acted like we were strangers and had never taken her clothes off long enough to have sex or give birth. She was ice cold.” Heloise smiled at the description and thought of her own with her rock star life. “My father died when I was twelve. She put me in boarding school then, and I hardly ever saw her again. She moved to Europe, and had me over for a couple of weeks a year with my brother, whom I never got to see either. And she died when I was in college. It was like going to a stranger’s funeral. I never really knew her, and she had no interest in knowing me. I barely knew my brother till I was out of college, and now we’re good friends. He’s ten years older than I am, so he was older when my father died, but our mother was a total mystery to both of us. She should never have had children, but did because it was the right thing to do. And as soon as my father died, she got rid of me, and my brother had already been in boarding school for years, and I hardly saw him when he was in college. I have no idea what her life was like after my father died. I always wondered if she had a boyfriend. I hope so for her sake. All we ever talked about were the weather and good manners, and she played a lot of bridge. I was never on her radar screen except for a few weeks a year. So she wouldn’t be helping me do this wedding either, if she were still alive. Thanks for talking to Sally,” she said to Heloise, who looked pensive and was smiling at her. She was touched by what Natalie had shared.

“My mom is pretty weird too. She’s married to a rock star, I guess Dad told you. He does a lot of drugs and has a lot of crazy people hanging around. She loves it. She left my dad for him when I was four, had two new kids pretty quickly, and I was history after that. It’s kind of the same deal as your mother. She acts like I’m someone else’s kid and talks to me like a stranger when I see her. I hate going there. I see her about once a year, if it’s convenient for her, which it never is. I feel like she divorced me when she divorced my dad.” What she said was honest, and Natalie could see that it was painful for her, by the look in her eyes.

“That must hurt,” Natalie said sympathetically. It was the first time they had spoken to each other like human beings, and they shared an unexpected bond. The Crazy Mothers Club, as Natalie called it to her friends. Or maybe it should have been called the Lousy Mothers Club. There seemed to be a lot of those in the world. And they inflicted scars on every child they touched. Natalie had invested years in therapy to get over hers.

“It does hurt,” Heloise admitted to her, and, more important, to herself.

“I used to cry for weeks after I saw mine,” Natalie confessed. “It’s horrible to say, but it was easier for me after she died. She couldn’t disappoint me anymore. It’s worse when they’re alive and don’t want to see you, or do and act like they don’t remember who you are. I hated that.”

“I hate seeing mine too,” Heloise said. It was a relief to talk about it and admit the truth. She didn’t like talking about it with her father. Just hearing Miriam’s name upset him, and she felt disloyal to her mother when she told him how bad it was, so she rarely did. “It always hurts. And I always feel like the forgotten person when I’m there. Like I’m a houseguest or a stranger or someone she never knew. I don’t know how she could just walk away like that, but she did. She’s not so great with her other two kids either, they’re both brats,” she said with a smile.

“It’s all about who she is as a person,” Natalie explained to her, “not about something you did wrong or don’t have. It took me years to understand it, but people like that don’t have anything to give. To anyone. It’s only about them.”

“Yeah,” Heloise said as though a lightbulb had gone on while they were talking. Natalie understood it perfectly.

“I’ve always been afraid to have kids because I was afraid I’d be like her. And I don’t want to do to anyone what she did to me,” Natalie said honestly.

“I feel that way too,” Heloise said softly. “My dad was great, but it’s weird having only one parent when the other one is out there somewhere and doesn’t want you. I hated explaining that to my friends, although for a while they were impressed because of Greg. But he’s a jerk.”

“At least you had your dad,” Natalie reminded her, and Heloise nodded. And now she had to share him with her. But it didn’t seem quite so bad now. She could see why her father loved her. She was honest, sincere, and caring, and she tried hard. And Heloise also realized that Natalie had never lost her temper once in the past six months, no matter how badly Heloise behaved. It said something about her. “I hardly ever saw my father, and he was even colder than my mother,” Natalie added. “I think they both hated kids.”

“My dad is great,” Heloise confirmed. The two women looked at each other for a long moment and exchanged a smile.

“Thank you for helping me with the wedding. I’m really scared,” Natalie confessed. It made her seem so young and vulnerable that Heloise felt sorry for her. She didn’t seem like an ominous opponent anymore, just a lonely woman of very human scale who had mean parents and was grateful to have found Hugues. It was something Heloise could cope with, and not the Mata Hari she had feared.

“The wedding will be fine,” Heloise reassured her. “I promise. And if anything happens, I’ll take care of it.” And she was fully capable of doing so, with or without Sally’s help. She felt a bond with Natalie now after what they had shared. “You just relax and have fun. It’s your special day.”

“I had no idea weddings were so complicated and stressful to organize when I planned this. I’ve been in way over my head,” she admitted with a grin. “I never planned to have one, so I don’t know anything about all the details.”

“Weddings are not that hard,” Heloise said easily. “Decorating is much harder, and you’re great at that. This is just a lot of silly details. I love my apartment, by the way. You did a great job. All my friends are jealous of me.” She smiled, and Natalie looked pleased. They were getting a lot of housekeeping done that afternoon, throwing out the garbage, opening the shades, and letting the sunlight in.

“It was fun to do.” She got off the couch then and looked better than she had before. She would have liked to hug Heloise but didn’t want to overstep any boundaries. They had come far in the last two hours, and they both knew it. And she didn’t want to spoil it now by rushing Heloise or crowding her.

“I’ve got to go back to work. See you at the dinner tonight,” Heloise said as she put her uniform jacket back on and her shoes. “And remember, all you have to do is look pretty and have fun. Leave the rest to us. You don’t need to be scared, or worry about a thing.”

“Thank you.” Natalie smiled and looked touched, and a minute later Heloise left to go back to the front desk. Five minutes after that Hugues walked into the apartment and had missed Heloise completely.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, surprised to see Natalie there at that hour, looking a little dazed.

“Trying to catch my breath,” she said honestly. “I just had a really nice talk with Heloise,” she reported, and looked happy about it.

“What about?” He looked surprised and pleased as he sat down on the couch with his future wife. He loved the idea that she was going to be his wife and could hardly wait.

“Our mothers. Mine wasn’t such a sweetheart either. I told her about it. And she talked about hers. Different look and lifestyle, but same kind of people. Narcissists. Women who should never have had kids.” Hugues agreed. He had been making up for it ever since, and he was sure her other two children would turn out to be disasters, or on drugs like their father. “It was nice talking to her. She’s a really sweet kid. She’s helping me with the wedding,” Natalie said gratefully. “She was wonderful to me.” Tears sprang to her eyes as she said it. It was a huge relief. The past six months of being the object of Heloise’s hatred had been hard. She had gone back to her therapist about it.

“I’m glad she came around,” Hugues said, looking relieved too, and then he leaned over and kissed his bride. “You look gorgeous, by the way. What are you doing now?” he asked as he took off his jacket.

“Nothing. Why? I was going to have a nap before tonight. And I’m having a massage at five.”

“Perfect. My three o’clock just canceled. I have a haircut at six. And I need a nap too.” He looked at her mischievously, and she grinned. And they rushed into the bedroom like children. The Do Not Disturb was already on the door. Their clothes were off within seconds, and he slid into bed with her and they made love like two wild happy kids. And she loved knowing that in one more day she would be his forever.