"You said it at Thanksgiving."
In the end it was Doris Dumont who solved it, because in Coldwater, Vivienne would learn, it generally was. Doris was sixty-four and built like a mailbox, with copper-colored hair, and she had run the diner since 1959. She had a room upstairs that had been her son's before he went into the Navy, and she put Vivienne in it with a quilt and a hot water bottle, and would not hear of being paid.
"You're Luc's," she said, as if that settled it. "I mean, you're Luc's tow. Same thing. Supper's at six, you'll eat at the counter, I've got chicken pie."
So at six o'clock Vivienne Wainwright sat on a red vinyl stool at Doris's counter and ate chicken pie with a crust like a good argument, while the jukebox played "La Bamba" and then "I Think We're Alone Now" and then, because somebody had put money in for it twice, "La Bamba" again. Luc sat two stools down with his elbows on the counter. Georgie sat between them on her knees, which Doris said she was too old for and which she did anyway, and conducted an interrogation.
How many languages did Vivienne speak? Three properly, French and English and Italian, and two well enough to order dinner and apologize, which were German and Portuguese. Was it hard? Like patting your head and rubbing your stomach while someone shouts at you. Did she ever get it wrong? Once, early on, in a speech about agricultural subsidies, she had translated a Belgian delegate's "we must not put all our eggs in one basket" as "we must not put all our eggs in one coffin," and the American delegate had looked at his headphones and then at her booth and then laughed so hard he had to be helped out.
Georgie laughed so hard she slid off the stool.
"Why'd you only learn to drive now?" she said, climbing back on. "You're old."
"Georgie," said Luc.
"It's a true question."
"It's a rude question."
"It's both," said Vivienne, who found she did not mind. She turned her coffee cup around on its saucer. "I grew up in the city. Nobody in the city drives, much. You take the subway. And then I married a man who did drive, and who liked to, and who told me I'd get us both killed if I ever tried. So I didn't try. For eleven years." She looked at the cup. "And then we weren't married anymore. And one day in August I was standing on a corner in Queens, and there was a driving school there, with a sign in the window with a drawing of a little car on it, and I went in. I don't know why. I think I just wanted to go somewhere nobody was taking me."
There was a pause. Doris, who had been wiping the same patch of counter for some time, moved on to another.
"That," said Georgie at last, "is a really good answer."
"Thank you."