Read Online Coq au Vin by Charlotte Carter - Free Book Online

to go home, you mean.”
    â€œMaybe. The strangest thing of all is why she would leave it all behind.”
    â€œBut you said she skipped on the bill.”
    â€œYeah, I know. But if you’re deliberately going to skip on the bill, wouldn’t you find a way to take a few things out, you know, one at a time in a shopping bag on your way out one morning and nobody would think anything of it. If you were really planning to escape without paying the weekly rent, you’d smuggle your clothes out somehow and just leave the empty suitcase—or something.
    â€œThis makes it seem like she left here on the run. Like she hadn’t planned to skip at all.”
    â€œCould be,” he said, picking up the hefty photo album. “Do you remember this?”
    â€œNo. I hadn’t seen her for a long time. I don’t know what kind of things she would have kept at home—wherever that was.”
    We opened the cover of the album to the first page of photographs.
    â€œThat’s my grandmother!”
    In truth, I had never met my father’s mother. She died young. But I recall this photograph of her; my father had a copy of it that used to adorn the chest of drawers in my parents’ bedroom.
    â€œGod, how strange,” I said. “It’s so weird seeing that picture again after all these years.”
    Andre leafed slowly through the book. “He looks like you. Is that your father?” He was pointing to a tall, serious-looking young man in cap and gown.
    â€œYeah. He looks like he’d rather be someplace else, doesn’t he? Like always.”
    â€œYou don’t get along with him?”
    â€œI don’t know if I’d put it that way. I don’t see him often enough to get along or not get along with him. I was never really sure how Pop felt about me. I was grown up when he left, but it was almost as if when he stopped loving my mother he stopped loving me, too.”
    â€œI don’t believe it works like that,” he said, lingering another minute before he turned the page. “Wow—is that you?”
    â€œWhere?”
    The little girl in pigtails was wearing a polka-dot playsuit, grinning at the camera.
    Lord, what a geek I was. I took control of the album and turned hurriedly past the next page or two lest we encounter any shots of me accepting spelling bee or good citizenship prizes.
    â€œThere’s Vivian!” I cried.
    She was wearing a white suit and matching pumps, and a bridal veil. A black man I did not recognize was the groom.
    â€œShe’s beautiful,” Andre said. “Who’s the man?”
    â€œUncle number one, I suppose. She’s awful young there. I don’t remember him.”
    â€œLook here,” said Andre. “Looks like another wedding.”
    Yes, it did. I instantly recognized City Hall in Lower Manhattan. Viv, in a scalloped-neck sheath, her hair teased to giddy heights, and a devilishly handsome man—with an Afro as big as the Ritz—holding up a copy of their marriage license on the steps of the courthouse. Him, I had a vague memory of.
    We continued to turn the pages.
    Hubby #3 looked familiar, too. Jerry, that’s what he was called. “The Cracker,” I believe, was my father’s pet name for him. Jerry was a musician from L.A. By the look of things, he and Viv had gone to Venice on their honeymoon. And here they were in swim clothes, on a hotel balcony, the Adriatic like a chip of sapphire behind them.
    We saw Viv in one of those jumpsuits at a table in some bar. A second-level Motown crooner from the sixties was pawing her. Andre put a name to the guy’s face: Chuck Wilson.
    There she was again, in a colorful African hat, receiving an autograph from a nice-looking black man, the chairs and tables of a cabaret visible in the background. “That’s Oscar Brown Jr.,” Andre pronounced.
    â€œYou know, I think you’re right,” I said. “Who’s