“Whatever you think is best,” I replied, feeling that it was right to let her take the lead. Victor hadn’t mentioned the slightest detail about our plans for the evening, but after our journey, I was hoping they involved a hot bath, a few stories with Lucie, and twelve hours’ sleep.
“This is best for your thin yellow hair, Madame Lesage,” Trieu said pleasantly. “It will make it look like there is more of it.”
“Oh,” I said, trying not to take offense. “I’m sure you know better than I do about these things.”
“No, Madame Lesage,” she said, positioning the wand in her hand. “But about the Officers’ Club etiquette, perhaps I do. I worked for the last mistress of the house before you. Madame van Dampierre. She also went to the Officers’ Club on her first night.”
“How long did the van Dampierres live here?” I asked, trying not to move my head. Trieu tilted my chin up, and I fixed my gaze above. In the living room there was an intricate pattern in the coffered ceiling, but in the master bedroom the ceiling was smooth, high, and painted a fresh white, adding to its airiness.
“Four years,” Trieu replied.
“I hope we will be here as long.” I paused and looked at my reflection in the mirror, thinking about how many times Louise van Dampierre had done the same thing. “Were they happy here?” I asked.
“They were very happy for a time,” she said thoughtfully. “And four years is not a short time in the colony. Many French women don’t last more than a year or so in Indochine. Some, much less. They say it’s too hot in summertime. They miss their food. They miss the European way of life. They want their children to grow up like they did. So they return.”
“I’m not French,” I said, pointing out what was obvious to the French but might not be to Trieu. “So I think I’ll quite like it here. Food, heat, and all.”
“Yes, Madame Lesage. I hope you do,” she said, gently lifting another strand of my hair.
Lesage. I liked the way she said it, so differently than the Parisians, who paused between the E and the S. Trieu strung the syllables together like Christmas lights.
I leaned back, quickly growing more comfortable in her presence as she spiraled my hair with the wand.
Before this year, I hadn’t thought much about our name. Not since my wedding day in 1925, when my last name was changed from Holland to Lesage. But on the boat ride over, Victor brought it up several times.
“Our last name is Lesage,” he’d said, “but in Hanoi everyone needs to know that my mother is a Michelin. That she is a close, though much younger cousin to my uncles Édouard and André, may he rest in peace. She isn’t Agathe Lesage. She is Agathe Michelin Lesage. Please remember to say her name that way.”
He had reminded me of this detail in Paris while we were packing our trunks, again on our journey over, when a sleeping Lucie was curled at my feet like a cat, and yet again when we saw the white shores of Siam, the sand as fine as sugar. I thought he had done enough reminding, but he had whispered, “Remember, Michelin,” when we were about to meet our household staff.
“They’ll respect us more if they hear the Michelin name,” he’d said as our new driver, Lanh, made his way through the narrow streets, our car gliding through patches of shadow and sunshine.
I was still shaken from the boat journey and too taken with the new world around me to care what my name was or wasn’t. But as we pulled up to the handsome house with its center turret, and I saw the row of young Annamite servants waiting outside, their faces beaming, I’d put my hand on Victor’s leg and said, “I think they’ll respect us most if we are nice and pay them well.”
“I’m always nice,” Lucie had chimed in, which was mostly true.
“And I always pay well,” Victor added. “I’m paying them all a quarter piastre more a day than the van Dampierres were. That’s what people expect from the Michelins. Even in a global depression.”
“What is the Officers’ Club like?” I asked Trieu now, thinking that she already seemed so different from the person I’d stared at as we pulled through the iron gate. “Is it really so important that we go on our first night? Doesn’t that seem a bit