Hotel Vendome

“I used to dream about your running the hotel with me,” he said sadly. “But I want you to have a better life. You won’t have a life. You’ll never have time for a husband and children. Look at me, I work eighteen-hour days. I want more for you than that.”

“That’s all I want and what I love,” Heloise said emphatically and looked like she meant it as she gazed intently at her father. “I want to work with you, not just fooling around like I did as a kid. And I can take it over when you get old.” She had thought it all out and was completely sure that she wanted to work at the hotel, after what she’d seen that summer in Europe.

“I’m not that old yet, thank you very much,” he said, although he was touched. “And I want a better life for you than working eighteen-hour days for the rest of your life. You just want that now because it’s all you’ve ever known.” The hotel was familiar to her, but he wanted her to have a saner life than his own.

“No, I want it because I just saw every great hotel in Paris, and I love what you’ve done with the Vendome. Maybe together we can make it even better. I love living at the hotel and working there. It’s the only life I ever wanted.” As she said it, he felt acutely guilty for not getting her out of the hotel more often. He didn’t want her adult world confined to a small hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He spent the rest of the drive into the city trying to convince her she was wrong.

“Why are you saying that?” she questioned him finally. “Don’t you like what you do, Papa?”

“I love it for myself but not for you. I want you to have so much more.” And then as he said it, he heard himself saying all the same things his parents had said to him thirty years before. He was giving her all the same reasons they had given him, wanting him to be a banker or a doctor or a lawyer. They had done everything to dissuade him from the Ecole Hoteliere, just as he was doing to his own daughter now. He suddenly fell silent as he looked at her and realized that she had to make her own choices, and if this was what she loved and wanted to do with her life, he had no right to stand in her way and dissuade her.

“I don’t want you giving up your life for a hotel,” he said sadly. “I want you to have kids and a husband and a bigger life than mine.”

“Are you unhappy at the hotel?” she asked, as she watched him, and he shook his head.

“No, I love it,” he said honestly. He had found his niche early on, no matter what his parents thought about it.

“Then why won’t you let me do what I love? I’ve loved being in the hotel all my life. There’s nothing I could ever love doing more than that. It’s what you taught me and what I want to teach my children one day, to pass it on.”

Hugues laughed softly as she said it. “They’ll probably want to be doctors and lawyers.”

She smiled at him. “Well, I want to work with you till we both grow old.”

“And you’re telling me you want to leave me and go to school in Switzerland for two years,” he said sadly.

“You can come over and visit. I’ll come home for holidays and vacations, like Christmas and spring break.”

“You’d better,” he growled as he put an arm around her. A page had turned for her while she was in Paris, and they both knew it. She had stepped out of her childhood into adulthood, and the adult life she wanted was at his side, running the Hotel Vendome. “I never should have let you go to Europe this summer,” he grumbled good-naturedly, looking at her and seeing how much she had matured in two months. She looked terrific and seemed very sure of herself and the future she wanted, more than ever before.

“It would have happened anyway. I don’t want to go to NYU or Barnard. I want to go to hotel school. I’m proud of what we do, and I want to learn how to do it better so I can help you.”

“All right,” he sighed, as they pulled up in front of the hotel. He turned to his daughter with a resigned expression. “All right, you win. And welcome home.”

He followed her out of the car and into the lobby as all the bellmen, desk clerks, and concierges ran to greet her and welcome her back. He could see that the child she had been had vanished forever, and the woman she was becoming had returned. Somewhere between Paris, Bordeaux, and St. Tropez, a butterfly had been born.

Chapter 6

HELOISE BEGAN HER senior year at the Lycee with more self-assurance than she’d ever had before. She knew what she wanted to do now, and had established clear goals. She sent her application to the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne in October.