Valentine Tales

2/15/07

I passed Jay splitting wood for his woodstove day before yesterday, and he reminded me that the residents of the chateau were invited to he and Marie Paul’s rooms for a Valentine’s Day Party on the evening of the 14th. “And,” he said, “the only thing is, you have to bring a love story to tell.” So I spent the day thinking about what love story I would bring. My own have all ended unhappily, so they aren’t much fodder for Valentine’s Day. And, when you think of it, as heart-rending and giddy as love stories can be, on the whole, they either end happily or badly, and the way in which they are all alike (excluding Russian novels) could be considered pretty banal for an evening of story-telling.

In the early afternoon of the 14th, I called my sister to wish her a happy birthday, and managed to wake her up, even though it was the hour she would normally be out of bed and getting ready for work. The American mid-west was buried under a blizzard, and she was sleeping in, as her work was cancelled that day. I bade her to go back to sleep, put on my boots, and began combing the woods around Malérargues for elements with which to make a floral arrangement for the party. Imagine it; it wound up being a bed of moss, with two very large Cyprus of Lebanon pinecones as its base. The chinks of the pinecones and the moss were festooned with purple violets, fuchsia phlox, “snowball bush” flowers, and yellow wildflowers. I then built a vertical with some wood bark, and decorated the whole with dried seedpods: fox grass, “silver dollar” plant, burrs, and little seedpods that were shaped like tiny pears. I watered the moss and the pinecones, and hoped it would last for the party (it did).

Still, I hadn’t decided upon a love story.

Dinner was at 8:00. Marie Paul and I had spent the afternoon going to the Super U, the Hyper U, and the InterMarche supermarkets shopping for dinner and looking for Valentine’s gifts for the guests. (These stores are kind of like a combination of grocery/general stores, but have boulangeries and coffee/liquor bars within them as well. The InterMarche sold washing machines, too.) Here it was, the 14th, and the major stores had NO decorations, heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, or little candy hearts with “You’re 4 me” stamped on them (as IF the French would eat something like that!). Apparently Christmas here is very low key and non-commercial, too. We wound up buying boxer shorts for the men, and Valentine’s mugs with flower seeds packed inside for the women. We also bought packages of Roget chocolate/hazelnut candies and “Mon Cheri” chocolate covered cherries in liqueur for everyone.

Jay and Marie Paul’s beautiful flat was lively; it has a beautiful ceramic tiled fireplace, vaulted ceilings and an ancient, intricately patterned tile floor. At the table were Rossignol, Kaya, Robert, Ann Marie, me, David, and of course, Jay and Marie Paul. Beginning with French pink champagne (which is a Bordeaux and believe me, has no relation whatsoever to Andre’s), first course was “fish soup,” (a very pedantic name for a very good soup), and the entrée was roast pork, broiled endive, and mashed potatoes. We discussed the history of St. Valentine’s day and the French belief that you should begin a meal with champagne, move on to red wine, and finish with white. Some consider it unhealthy to do otherwise. I was flummoxed by the idea. In between the entrée and the dessert, the stories began.

I had finally decided that a thoroughly American tale might be in order for the occasion, so I called my father (who was digging out from under the same blizzard as my sister was) to remind me of the tale of my great-grandmother, Ada Reece.

Ada Reece was born some time in the 1860’s; my father told me that she remembered going to “Mr. Lincoln’s” funeral in 1865 as a young child in Springfield, Illinois. Ada’s father was a physician, and a descendant of the Baker’s, who according to McGee lore, fled Ireland in an open boat during a storm, due to some involvement with a revolutionary group that blew up a British police dispatchery (you see, my friends, as you will continue to see, that I come by my penchant for righteousness honestly). The Bakers and their descendants were all Irish Catholics, of course.

When Ada was a young teen, her father was hired as a physician to the workers in the silver mines of Eureka, Nevada. They probably took the train to somewhere in the Dakotas, then a stagecoach from there. Once in Nevada, Ada was sent another 800 miles or so by stagecoach to San Francisco, in order to attend what was then called “Finishing school,” an academy for young ladies of means to teach them how to be ladies of society.

Once returning to Eureka, at the age of fifteen, she met and married a man there, in a Catholic ceremony.

But this is not the love story, nor was this the marriage that propagated the McGee lineage.

Ada’s father, as physician to the mines, was treating a lot of men for syphilis, which at the time had no cure. He came to find that Ada’s new husband was “keeping a second woman,” who was a prostitute. Horrified and fearful for Ada’s health, her father whisked her back to Illinois and arranged a civil divorce. (Assume more stage coaches, more trains for the journey.)

Back in Illinois, Ada met and fell in love with Will McGee. They went to the local priest, who said that to be married in the Catholic Church, Ada would need an annulment from Rome to invalidate her first marriage. The priest didn’t think that was a problem, as her first husband clearly had no intentions of having a Catholic marriage, and since Ada was legally divorced in the civil court, the priest told them he’d go ahead and marry them in the interim, while Rome made the decision, which would clearly be in their favor.

Three children later, Rome’s answer arrived, and Rome did not approve the annulment. The priest went to Will and told him that he and Ada were living in sin, their children were bastards, and that he needed to leave them immediately. Will, an appropriate hero for a love story, immediately went to the local Episcopal Church, became an Episcopalian, and baptized his children in the Anglican Church. Apparently my grandfather Reece McGee (Will’s only son) had originally been baptized Catholic, but was then made an Anglican. This is the story of how the Reece-McGee clan became Protestants.

At dinner, more stories were told. Poetry was recited. Songs were sung. Bananas Foster was served. Photos were passed. Aperitifs were poured.

After dinner the sweets and presents were divvied out, and the continuing intrigue concerning “Jacques” was decried. Suffice it to say that the saga continues, including but not limited to Jacques’ sister lying to the police, the bank refusing to honor the Chateau’s insurance and return the stolen money, an accusation that the bank is colluding with Algerian contacts, and mounds and mounds and piles and piles of famous French bureaucratic paperwork. For example, even though Jacques left the chateau with an entire book of stolen checks that he later forged and cashed, the Theatre administration had to file formal paperwork to fire him and give him his last paycheck. Which they did, serving him his last paycheck while he was held in jail by the police.