Summertime Guests - Wendy Francis Page 0,3

as if something is off, the same feeling he gets when he has left the burner on or forgotten to lock the front door at night. When he pushes up out of bed, a sense of uneasiness pulls at him, and he tries to recall if the baby slept last night. A faint memory of Isabella crying and Marie going to hush her before Jean-Paul fell back asleep is what comes to him.

He realizes all too well that Marie is doing the heavy lifting with their three-month-old. Not only because Marie insists on breastfeeding (even bottles of breast milk are mysteriously verboten in their house) but also because Jean-Paul has spent most of the last several months at the Seafarer, overseeing the renovations and now tending to the swift uptick in reservations since it reopened in April. Being general manager of the prestigious hotel has turned out to be every bit as challenging and exhilarating as he’d hoped. He only wishes he didn’t feel so guilty about leaving in the morning and chagrined when he returns home, excited to tell Marie about a successful day, only to sense resentment jumping off her body like sound waves.

Marie has no idea what his job entails—how could she? Since they set foot in the States, nearly a year and a half ago, arriving on a red-eye from Paris, her days—at least before the baby—were largely spent exploring the city while Jean-Paul versed himself in Seafarer protocol. Occasionally, she’d stop by the hotel, poking her head into his office to say hello and tell him where she was headed—off to the Museum of Fine Arts, the Christian Science Monitor Building, the Institute of Contemporary Art. But more often than not, she’d set out as soon as Jean-Paul left for work only to burst through the door at dinnertime, brimming with news about the paintings she’d seen, the quirky people she’d met. One day she’d gotten lost in the South End for hours and had the most delightful time asking strangers for directions, laughing at their funny accents, their oddly dropped Rs.

Each day presented a fresh chance for his wife to explore, as if her new city were an elaborate set of nesting dolls to disassemble and admire. That she’d adjusted so well pleased him. He’d been afraid she’d long for her friends back home, maybe hunger for their Parisian cafés or miss her job as a motivational speaker. To the contrary, though, she’d been thrilled by the idea of Jean-Paul’s taking the Seafarer job from the very beginning.

“What an honor!” she’d exclaimed when the call came. “You must accept, yes? Out of a hundred candidates, they picked you!” Her eyes had gleamed with pride, and Jean-Paul allowed himself to bask in the accomplishment for a brief moment.

“You wouldn’t mind? Packing up and leaving behind our lives here?” Already he’d been promoted to assistant manager at Le Bistrol, one of Paris’s most opulent hotels. It was quite possible that one day he would ascend the ranks to manager; as his friends liked to say, no one left Le Bistrol willingly unless, perhaps, he were being wheeled out in a casket. But the Seafarer position held a particular sway over Jean-Paul, as if it were built into his muscle memory: ever since he was a young boy, his father, an international banker, would whisk the family away to Boston for a week, where they’d stay at the Seafarer.

For Jean-Paul, the Seafarer encapsulates everything magical about his childhood—having his parents all to himself for a week, being able to partake in the theaters and ballparks and boiled lobster. Even now, a Red Sox banner from Fenway, where he and his dad watched the Sox defeat the Yankees 3–2 in a nail-biter, hangs on the bedroom wall. He remembers jumping from his parents’ king-size bed to his own double in the hotel room, recalls sitting by the pool where waiters in crisp whites delivered meals to their lounge chairs and where Jean-Paul would unfailingly order a cheeseburger with fries and a Coca-Cola, the most American meal he could think of.

The opportunity to manage the hotel of his boyhood dreams, to bring it into the next century, as mandated by the board, had been too good to pass up, as intoxicating as the first scent of summer in the air.

“Mind? Mais non!” Marie said. “It’s the perfect opportunity for you. As for me, I can learn to speak American,” she teased. “At least, better than I do now.” She’d