Mrs. Benton smelled sour. Vivien guessed that since her husband had had that tooth pulled two days ago, and come home looking ill and feeling, as Mrs. Benton said, “not quite right,” and gone to bed where he had died by suppertime, Marjorie Benton had not washed. She had cried and screamed and pulled her frightened children close to her. She had applied powder and lipstick without thinking because that was what a woman did when she went into town.
Now, she held Vivien close, pressed to her, for a long while. Vivien felt the sobs rising in Mrs. Benton’s chest, felt her shuddering. Finally, Vivien was released. She stepped back and took a deep breath, letting the soothing smell of lavender fill her. She kept dried lavender in small dishes placed all around the office. Lavender was known to calm and comfort. The people who came to her needed that. Vivien needed it too.
She walked her client to the door. For a moment she was afraid Mrs. Benton would hug her again, but instead the woman just pressed Vivien’s hands in her own soft ones before hurrying out.
Vivien stood in her small office, listening to the clock tick and breathing in the scent of lavender. She stood for some time, trying not to think about those three fatherless children in Monticello, or Mrs. Benton’s sour smell, or her own long-missing love. But as always, this last was impossible.
Vivien Lowe met David Gardner on an afternoon in May on Market Street in San Francisco. She was wearing an oversized, ridiculous blue hat that she had owned for exactly ten minutes. It was spring and she was twenty-two years old. She saw that hat in an expensive milliner’s shop and without thinking about it at all, she bought it. The hat made her feel foolish and sophisticated. She pretended she was a Frenchwoman, a Parisian, instead of an English teacher at the Field School, a private school for girls on Nob Hill. Lotte would laugh at the hat, Vivien knew that. She would laugh and then beg to borrow it. Lotte had been her best friend since they themselves were students at the very school where Vivien now taught. Both of them had been orphaned young, and this sad history had made them instant friends.
Catching her reflection in the window of the Emporium, Vivien smiled. Perhaps she would go inside and take the elevator to the fourth-floor tearoom and have a sandwich, pretending to be French. She would order her sandwich in a French accent, and pretend not to understand when the waitress in her pink and white uniform asked if she would like lemon or cream in her tea. Vivien giggled at the thought.
“I’ve never seen a woman who enjoyed herself quite so much as you do, mademoiselle,” a man said.
Vivien saw his reflection in the glass too. He was tall and broad-shouldered with golden hair. He was smirking.
“Je ne comprends pas,” Vivien said. She had always received A’s in French.
The man replied in such rapid French that Vivien turned away from their reflection to see him better.
He laughed at the look on her face.
“That is quite a magnificent hat,” he said.
Embarrassed, Vivien turned and continued down Market Street, wondering how he had known her fantasy of being a fancy Frenchwoman. She wondered what Lotte would say about this, if Vivien mentioned it. In three weeks, Lotte was getting married and it was hard to get her attention and keep it for any length of time these days.
Footsteps rushed up beside her. “Pardon me,” the man—that rude man—said. “I couldn’t resist teasing you.”
Vivien wished she had not bought the hat. Or that she could take it off now. Maybe she would just give it to Lotte, although her friend certainly wouldn’t be needing it up in that one-horse town she was moving to. In Napa, people grew fruit and made wine and had babies. The thought of losing her friend made Vivien’s eyes tear. They had been together forever, since they were six and wore the gray jumpers that all Field girls wore in the lower school. Now Lotte was moving a world away.
The man, whom Vivien had stopped noticing, touched her elbow. “I’ve upset you,” he said.
She shook her head. “I forgot you were here,” she said honestly, missing Lotte already.
They stopped walking. Vivien saw her streetcar approaching but did not move to catch it.
“What then?” he asked her.
She did not know how to articulate her loss. It seemed too large for words to capture it.
Without warning, the sky grew dark and large fat drops of rain began to fall hard and fast. The man took her elbow again and guided her into a small restaurant at the corner. Already, Vivien’s skirt was wet. The hat drooped.
A waiter rushed over to them and offered a table for two by the window. He pulled Vivien’s chair out for her, then slid it back to the table, handing her a large, heavy menu. It was, she noticed, all in French. The stranger was sitting too, ignoring his menu and staring at Vivien instead. Outside, rain lashed the window, which rattled from the wind.
“A storm,” Vivien said.
“Quite,” the man said.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I’m not in the habit of picking up strange men on the street and allowing them to take me into dim French restaurants.”
The man grinned at her. He was older than she, with fine lines at the corners of his green eyes.
“And I,” he said, “have never fallen immediately in love with a hat. Until now.”