Page 131

Mychild will never find itself on a train to New York City, hoping for the best.
No way is this kid going to live like I have.
I feel so jittery by the time I catch up with the group that’s assembled for the house tour that I’m half-afraid that they’re not going to let me walk inside with them. I park and walk toward the assembled throng slowly, breathing in the sweet scent of flowers on the mild breeze. This is nothing like November in New York, dark and bitter. Here it’s a bright, blue day, the sun golden and warm. It has to be seventy degrees here in front of the grand, sprawling house.
Paradise,I think.
Maybe I would pretend I was someone else, too, so no one would chase me here.
When I reach the group I brace myself to be turned away, though that wouldn’t be a hardship here. We’re standing on a sloping lawn that stretches lazily toward a lake and a tangle of trees, and there are the sounds of happy bells in the distance. I have the odd thought that I could be happy here, too—
But that’s not why I’m here. And none of the other tourists really look at me, so it looks like I get to go inside.
I’ve gone to the trouble of haphazardly disguising myself, which wasn’t really any trouble at all. No masks or heavy stage makeup or prosthetics or any of the rest of the tools of my odd trade. But I have braided my hair on one side, which is unusual for me, and crammed a baseball cap with a sports team logo on it on top of my head, which is unheard of. I’m wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of sneakers, like any other American tourist.
Which is, I suppose, what I am today.
What I should not look like is the sharp, sophisticated Manhattan businesswoman he met just over four months ago.
Much less that wannabe Cinderella he took to a ball, and then left behind.
So I guess that makes me the shoe.
I stick to the back of the group, my mind going a thousand miles a minute as the docent leads us up to the grand, Moorish arch that rises at the front of the house, then beckons us to follow her into the grand courtyard that waits on the other side.
There is a fountain, and beyond it, a grand set of stairs, and that’s where we’re led. Then inside to a foyer that has clearly been created solely to impress.
And I’m indoors, something else seems to take me over, sweeping me up in a tight, hard grip that reminds me of his.
I know it’s not him. It’s this house.Hishouse.
I feel like Elizabeth Bennet when she first sees where Mr. Darcy lives.
It’s the inescapable weight of his history, and ancestry, and all the things it means to be theeighteenthof anything. All the generations that led to him. Much less a name like his, that according to the internet and our tour guide stretches back across time and marks him as a Grandee of Spain.
Whatever that is.
All I could tell is that it is a designation that is spoken in tones of reverence, at least here.
What I know for certain is thatmyfamily’s ancestry reaches back to a boat from somewhere far to the north of here. And not one of the boats with a name that’s taught in schools. Just any old boat, unremarkable and unremembered, that delivered a load of weathered peasants from one hardscrabble land to another.
And in all the time since, we might have pulled ourselves out of abject poverty but we would never, no matter what we did, turn intothis.
I thought the plane he took me to France on was pretty special. I thought that first villa was lovely and gracious in every regard. The house where the ball was held, on the other hand, was nothing short of remarkable. Extraordinary, even.
But this is not a house, grand or otherwise. This is apalace.
And even that is too tame a word to describe it.
I’m only catching snatches of the tour guide’s lectures on the art and history, issues and politics, that are intertwined with this family, this house, and the story of Spain itself. There are stories of kings and queens, court intrigue, political upheavals, and ancient scandals.
But what I can’t help thinking is that this is the kind of wealth and consequence that doesn’t have to shout. Because itisa shout. In and of itself.
Its continued existence is its own bullhorn, sounding down through the centuries.
The very fact of this place, built as a fortress and prettied up a bit more each generation. As a gift to this or that Marquess to his wife. Or as a mark of ego. Or simply because it was fashionable to have fewer battlements and more ballrooms.
At the end of the day, I realize, these grand old homes are record keepers. Storytellers, room by room, stone by stone. And they bear the marks of all the history they’ve weathered, just as they whisper of the futures they’ll contain.