The Love Season by Elin Hilderbrand Page B

Without the restaurant to worry about and with things as they were with Porter, Marguerite ate too much and she drank. She had bad dreams about Corsage Woman, the woman who sat next to Porter at Avery Fisher Hall. He held her hand, maybe; he bought her a white wine at intermission. She was slender; she wore perfume and a hat. There was no way to find out, no one to ask, except perhaps Porter’ssecretary. Marguerite gave up on Proust and started to read Salinger. An education makes you good company for yourself . Ha! Little had she known when Porter said those words how much time she would be spending alone. She considered taking up with other men—Dusty from the fish store, Damian Vix, her suave and handsome lawyer—but she knew they wouldn’t be able to replace Porter. Why this should be so she had no idea. Porter wasn’t even handsome. He was too skinny; he was losing his hair; he talked so much he drove people mad. He farted in bed; he used incredibly foul language when he hurt himself; he knew nothing about football like other men did. Many people thought he was gay. (No straight man was that educated about art, about literature, about Paris. No straight man wore pocket handkerchiefs or drank that much champagne or lost at tennis so consistently.) Porter wasn’t gay, Marguerite could attest to that, and yet he wasn’t a family man. He didn’t want children. What kind of man doesn’t want children? Marguerite asked herself. But it was no use. Marguerite was a country Porter had conquered; he was her colonist. She was oblivious to everyone but him.
    Porter, meanwhile, called her every week; he sent her restaurant reviews from The New York Times; he sent her one hundred daisies on Valentine’s Day. His attentions were just enough to sustain her. She would make up her mind to end the relationship, and then he would write her a funny love poem and go to the trouble to have it delivered by telegram. The message was clear: It’s going to work this way, Daisy . That was how it went the first winter, the second, the third, and so on. He promised her a trip each spring—to Italy or a return to Paris—but it never worked out. His schedule. The demands on him, he couldn’t handle one more thing. Sorry to disappoint you, Daisy. We still have summer .
    Yes. What got her through was the promise of summer. The summerwould never change; it was the love season. Porter rented the cottage on Polpis Road; he wanted Daisy with him every second she could spare. For years it was the same: nights in the rope bed, roses in the outdoor shower, kisses on the back of the neck as she sauteéd mushrooms in clarified butter. The first daylily bloom was always a cause for celebration, a glass of wine. “Cheers,” they said. “I love you.”
     
    Porter was private about his family, referring to his parents only when he was reminiscing about his childhood; Marguerite assumed they were dead. He did on one occasion mention that his father, Dr. Harris, a urological surgeon, had been married twice and had had a second set of children rather late in life, but Porter never referred to any siblings other than his brother Andre in California. Therefore, on the night that Porter walked into Les Parapluies with a young blond woman on his arm, Marguerite thought, It’s finally happened. He’s thrown me over for another woman .
    Marguerite had been in the dining room, lured out of the kitchen by the head waiter, Francesca, who said, “The Dicksons at Table Seven. They have a present for you.”
    It was the restaurant’s fourth summer. Yes, Marguerite was popular, but the phenomenon of gifts for her as the chef was novel, touching, and always surprising. The regulars had started showing up like the Three Wise Men with all kinds of treasures—scarves knit in Peru from the wool of baby alpacas, bottles of ice wine from Finland, a jar of fiery barbecue sauce from a smoke pit in Memphis. And on this day the Dicksons at Table Seven had brought