I came across Mother's sheet, finally, and double-checked it. The private investigator had his facts correct, as far as I knew. Right address, and the dates she'd stayed on Monhegan seemed consistent with what Mother always related of her vacations on the island. High school and college data correct. And in the center of the report, the beginning and end dates of the two years she'd spent in Paris, living with Aunt Amelia, attending a French school, taking art and music lessons, and achieving a level of poise and sophistication I knew, even as a toddler, I'd never match.
I had sometimes wondered how different Mother's life (and mine) would be if when she was fifteen Grandfather hadn't finally given in to her pleas to see Paris. If instead he had, for instance, sent her to stay for a few months on Cousin Bathsheba's farm, learning to milk the cows and feed the chickens. That first trip to France was undoubtedly the watershed event in Mother's life.
So why had the private detective circled it in red? And printed five little exclamation points after it?
And why had the biographer clipped a Polaroid of Mother to the back of the page--the present-day Mother, stepping off the Monhegan ferry, wearing a scarf I'd given her three months ago?
I had a bad feeling about this.
"Michael," I said.
"Mmm?" he replied absently. I glanced up. He was lost in the manuscript.
"The biographer's style must be improving," I said.
"What's that?" he said, looking up with obvious reluctance.
"What's so fascinating? I thought it was a lousy book."
"Oh, it is! The writing anyway; but the contents--You've got to hear this. Wait a second; let me get back to the beginning of this chapter."
He flipped back several pages and began reading.
"'It was at this formative stage of his life that young Victor Resnick underwent an experience, the impact of which would last for the rest of his life, an experience that, while producing no outward change in his demeanor or his countenance, would nevertheless affect the sensitive young artist in the most profound and permanent fashion imaginable. Who could have predicted this event, at once so joyous and so tragic? Who can calculate the import this occurrence would present upon his life and art? Who can possibly discern…' Well, you get the idea. It goes on like that for about another page and then Jamie boy finally gets around to dropping a few actual facts. Apparently, young Victor fell in love."
"Don't tell me; I know what's coming. She told him to get lost."
"No, apparently the attraction was mutual."
"That's a little hard to buy."
"According to this, young Victor was quite a hunk and a rising star of the art world to boot."
"According to the biographer, who we already decided was telling Resnick's decidedly one-sided version of events."
"Well, I suppose," Michael said, running his finger down the page. "Here we go: 'She saw beneath his gruff exterior the sensitive artist whose soul had been blighted by calumny and neglect; she alone appreciated not only the force of his artistic genius but also the inner light that he had previously shown only through his brushes, and, bravely scorning the rigid strictures of her upbringing, daringly risking the calumnies and slings and arrows of outraged society that would be flung at her if discovered, she at last surrendered to their mutual passion.'"
"Ick," I said. "So she slept with him. I suppose there's someone for everyone, even Victor Resnick."
"And no matter what the boomers may think, sex wasn't invented with the pill. Anyway, we now have several pages about the progress of the affair, a little light on concrete details, but heavy with descriptions of things heaving and throbbing--the sort of stuff that might be mildly titillating if better written."
"Let me see that," I said, looking over his shoulder.
"Be my guest," Michael said. "And if you should find any of it inspirational…"
"You can forget the rerun of the From Here to Eternity surf scene," I said as I scanned the text. "It's vastly overrated, even on a tropical beach."
"You know this from experience?"
"I know this from common sense," I said. "And do you have any idea how rocky the Monhegan beach is, not to mention the subarctic temperature of the water?"
"So we won't be doing Burt and Debbie this trip?"
"More to the point, I doubt Victor Resnick and his lady love ever did."
"We take this passage with a grain of salt, then. Want to bet the writer learned his--or, more likely, her--trade writing romances?"
"No--most romances are far better written. And most romance writers have a better grasp of reality; that, for example, is anatomically impossible," I said, pointing to one particularly florid paragraph.