The Body In the Vestibule Read Free Page A

and other essentials. He careened recklessly from room to room. There was nothing to worry about: no furniture, no heirlooms, hardly any possessions at all. Faith filled the rooms with flowers from the market, arranged in some pitchers and vases from Mammouth. She covered the table in the dining room with a few yards of paisley fabric, from the Monday nonfood market, the marché d’affaires , and that was the extent of her decorating. She didn’t miss her home, the parsonage with all their things. The feelings possessions bring seemed to depend on immediacy. Or, as she put it to herself in her current euphoria, the whole place could sink into the earth and she’d merely say, “Too bad.”
    The first night, savoring the cheese course, still suffering from décalage horaire , jet lag, and feeling slightly drunk—Tom on the excellent Côte du Rhône he’d discovered he could buy in bulk at the vinoteque nearby and Faith on the grape juice she’d found at Malleval, a fancy épicerie
—they’d watched the sun set and asked themselves how they were ever going to be able to leave.
    And now after she put the food from the market away, this was how Faith started a long-overdue letter to her younger sister and only sibling, Hope. Their parents had stopped short at Charity. Hope was a newlywed, living and working in New York City with her husband, Quentin, and their yours, mine, and ours Filofaxes.

    I can’t remember ever being so happy. Tom says it’s my hormones, but he’s grinning, too. Even the job of switching from winter to summer clothes early—you know how boring that is, and in New England, you no sooner drag all the stuff out than the season has changed again. This year it was easy, because nothing fit Ben or me and I decided to wait to get things here. You must be wondering what it’s like in Lyon. Very different from Paris. No place is like Paris, but I think it’s more livable here. The Leblancs have been sweethearts. I liked them immediately. We’ve been there twice for meals en famille and sit and laugh and talk for hours. They have two children: Stéphanie, who’s thirteen and can seem thirty, as well as seven when she plays with Ben, and her nine-year-old brother, Pierre. He’s very solemn and like all these French children, so perfect in their long Bermudas and polo shirts, Chipie, the hot brand and very branché, of course. The small children in Benjamin’s school, the garderie , look as if they are going to a birthday party every day. But the marque with the greatest cachet for the preschool set is—Oshkosh! Very expensive and treated like gold.
    We’ve also met some of the other people in our building. The d’Amberts live directly below us and their apartment stretches from Place d’Albon to Place St. Nizier, so they look out at the church on one end and the river on the other. The Saône, that is. I’ve
finally gotten them straight. We’re in Presqu’île, the center of the city, which extends like a finger between the Saône and the Rhône. Lyon is a very walkable city and Ben and I go exploring every day. He’s changing so fast. You won’t recognize your grown-up nephew when you see him next, and I miss my little two-year-old. I think this is how kids get their parents to produce siblings for them to play with.
    It’s hard to describe our apartment’s location. Two buildings back onto and around a kind of courtyard, except no court—more like a large, open elevator shaft. Everyone uses the deep sills for plants, small laundry lines, and for cooling pots. The windows are all discreetly curtained, of course, but not always closed, and I’m becoming dangerously voyeuristic—or whatever it is when you eavesdrop, too. I can see the Saône if the windows in the apartment across from us are open and at the right angle. I can also see the photos of their ancestors