April in Paris

by John J. Healey

  Before we each rolled toward opposite sides of the bed that suddenly seemed very large, the lights off, cricket noises coming through the screens, she said, “Look, I know you’re older than me and all that. You’ve had your own life. We’ve both had unsatisfying marriages and more or less unsatisfying relationships. We met. We liked each other. It’s grown into more than that, it’s been a high, for both of us.”

  “It has,” I said. “It is,” I said. “I’m in love with you. I would never do anything to hurt you.”

  “You can’t say that,” she said in the dark. “We’ve barely started. There’s still plenty of ways for you to hurt me, and for me to hurt you. And, you know, I know who I am, and I am devoted to what I do for a living. I’m a scientist. I’m very passionate about my work. When I met you, I was introduced to a museum curator and a professor of art history, a field I appreciate for all sorts of reasons and know too little about, a professor of art history who also happened to be very rich, and that was sort of fun and unexpected.”

  “But?”

  “But I feel I’ve been swallowed up since then. I probably didn’t need to know so much about your past so quickly. I’ve been immersed in it; the Bronx thing, your ex-wife, the houses you used to live in with her that, bizarrely, you’ve kept in pristine condition without getting rid of them or returning to them. I mean, there I was helping you get rid of your wife’s clothing five years after she died. Even the trip to Southampton that was so magical in many regards was emotionally exhausting. It would have been better if I’d met you when you were into a real academic year, exercising your vocation, if in fact that’s what it is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is it a vocation or just a hobby, something for you to do? I guess a problem for you is that you don’t have to do anything. Is it true you have four billion dollars? Forbes had you at three. Whatever it is, it’s kind of obscene. The life you led, that that nasty man described, was strange. And I didn’t know you can’t stand children.”

  I was starting to get angry and I knew that wasn’t good. I knew this late-night, wine-mediated reckoning might end up being important, even fatal. I did all I could to listen, to keep my mouth shut, breathe, and then speak as calmly as I could.

  “It’s not a hobby. It is a vocation. That guy is just a nasty, envious asshole. I enjoy teaching. I enjoy organizing exhibitions. I can’t help the fact you met me when I was on sabbatical, but I’m glad I was, because it brought about our meeting in Paris. I’m glad I was not in the midst of an academic semester, because I’ve had time to be with you. But I take my work seriously. I’m not the painter I wanted to be when I was young. I’m an appreciator, someone who feels that quality is important to pass along. I take my work as seriously as you do.”

  She didn’t say anything. The silence was maddening. I went on.

  “All right, perhaps the good timing that brought us together was also bad timing. I can see that now, and ‘bizarrely’ as you put it, it happened on the same day I had that dream, and all the dream has led to. I apologize for overwhelming you. I apologize for sitting on top of a fortune I haven’t earned. I’ve been so excited since meeting you. I’m in love with you. I’d given up all hope of something like this happening to me, and if it goes south now because I’ve been crowding you too much, unloading too much of my personal crap on you, I sorely regret it. Isn’t there some kind of reset button we can push?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Like a take two.”

  “We’ll see,” she said. “Is it true you can’t stand kids?”

  “What I can’t stand is the automatic worship of kids. What I can’t stand is people assuming you are just as fascinated by their parenting as they are.”

  I wasn’t sure where the kid thing was coming from. I went on. “I’m enthralled by you, in every way. I’ve never felt like this with anyone before. I know that’s not cool to say, and I know you don’t feel that way about me tonight, that’s for sure, but . . . I don’t know what else to say.”

  “You told me yourself you’re always the one who leaves so as not to be abandoned again,” she said.

  “So, is this the battle royale you mentioned in Paris?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I only know I don’t feel good tonight. Something feels off. I feel like I’ve been railroaded into this, most of that being my own fault.”

  “I can’t believe this,” I said. “Everything has been great until now.”

  “We’ll see,” she said again, this time in a gentler tone. “I need to sleep.”

  And she did soon after that, which amazed me. I was too upset. I stayed awake for hours. I picked Corru up and placed him next to me. What was also irritating was that I knew she was right. I’d gotten her too involved with my past, and after the initial novelty of it, she was taking another look and seeing a guy possibly too far along in life, too stuck in his ways, and too eccentric. With a lot of money—there was that—but maybe that was not as appealing now as it had seemed either. She had tenure, a good salary, her own place, and her own life that’d been going along perfectly well until I came along. Then, just as I fell asleep, she woke me up. It must have been around three.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  It sounded ominous. It was the last thing I wanted. I leaned over and took a sip of water.

  “All right.”

  “I need to tell you something,” she said.

  “Oh boy,” I said in the dark, as if preparing for the worst. “Just— please—don’t say anything drastic.”

  “It’s something I should have told you before, something I need to tell you now for sure, for both our sakes.”

  My heart started to race. I really didn’t want this.

  “Go ahead,” I said, like a man with his head on the block.

  “You remember the guy in Madrid, the one who you saw when we were at Casa Dani at the market?”

  I started to feel nauseated.

  “How could I forget him?” I said.

  “Like I’ve said from the start. It’s not what you think. His name is George and he’s my stepson.”

  “Your stepson.”

  “I told you my husband had two kids with a former wife, quite some time ago. The girl, who I never met, committed suicide when she was sixteen, and George is gay and about ten years younger than me.”

  This was a genuine surprise. It calmed me, just the smallest bit. For clearly there was more.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “It took him a while to come out of the closet. His mother was very conservative, and Matthew is actually one of those antediluvian shrinks who consider homosexuality a disease. So, George got married, somewhat in the way your Scarlett was married to the guy before you. He and his wife had a child, a little girl named Emily. She was born in Africa, in the bush in the Congo where George was working. He’s a physician, for Doctors Without Borders. Anyway, Emily’s mother, who had no family to speak of, died giving birth to her. It was awful. And it was after his wife died that he came out to the rest of the world. It made Matthew furious, which helped fire me up for the divorce. And now George has met someone, someone he’s serious about, a man I introduced him to in Madrid last year, and they want to get married.”

  I was feeling better and better.

  “But?” I said.

  “But Matthew, who disowned him, says that if George goes through with the marriage he’ll sue for custody of the little girl.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “Probably not. But George has a new job that will keep him traveling a lot during what would be her school year and he just feels she deserves a more stable kind of childhood.”

  She was sitting up now, her back against the pillows and the headboard, her arms wrapped about her knees.

  “He wants me to adopt her. He thinks a girl needs a mother and also, selfishly I think, he wants a fresh start with Paco, the Spanish fellow, who lives and works in London where George is going to live with hi
m. We’ve been discussing it, seriously, for the past two months.”

  “Ah.”

  “What does that ‘Ah’ mean?” she said very quickly, defensively.

  I remembered how she had wanted to have me adopt the dog.

  “How old is she?” I asked.

  “Eight.”

  “Does she know about this?”

  “Yes. She says she loves the idea. I’ve known her since she was quite little. She can see her father when she wants, and she likes the idea of moving to the United States.”

  “And you?” I said.

  “I’ve been all over the map with it, of course—which is why I’ve been reluctant to bring it up. I, like you, enjoy my life the way it is, and meeting you has added a whole new layer—of pleasure, I hope. But I love this little girl too, and I cannot leave her to be fought over between George and his father, and it may be the only opportunity I’ll ever have to be something like a mother.”

  “So, you’ve already decided,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Which is why we’re having this conversation. I can’t and shouldn’t keep it from you any longer. You need to know before we get into this any deeper.”

  “Right.”

  “I guess what we’ve been through of late, and then that creep tonight . . .”

  “Right.”

  I really did not know what to say. I didn’t know what I was feeling.

  “I’m glad you’ve told me,” I said. “It must have been hard for you to keep this bottled up these past few weeks.”

  I could see her nodding in affirmation. She was sniffling. I put my arm around her.

  “And this is why you’ve been so sensitive about how I feel about children,” I said.

  “That’s right,” she said, very quietly.

  She grabbed some tissue from a container next to her side of the bed and blew her nose. I raced through scenarios, with the kid, suddenly a trio, and without the kid, being back on my own again.

  “I don’t want you to say anything now,” she said, “especially something supportive, because I may not believe you. I just wanted to tell you, everything.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But it doesn’t change my feelings for you.”

  “We really don’t know that yet,” she said.

  When I woke later that morning, she was gone. There was a note on her pillow:

  Shaun,

  I’m sorry but I’m still upset and don’t have the energy to rehash things this morning. I need a break. And you need time to think about this. Knowing you have the other car here I’m driving your jeep to Cambridge. Hope you don’t mind. I’ll take good care of it. Let’s take a few days off and see where we are.

  xx C

  – 42 –

  Exercising steely self-control, I refrained from calling or texting her throughout that first day, or most of it anyway. I stayed in bed for a while, stewing in my juices. I took Corru for a walk and had a late breakfast in the dining room. I called my real estate agent and told her to put the Williamstown house on the market too. If this relationship was to have a chance of working out, I owed it to Carmen to start from scratch, with a place of our own, chosen by the two of us, or built from scratch if need be. I owed it to myself. I wondered if they taught art history at MIT. I thought about maybe trying to transfer to Harvard or, going down a notch, to BU so that we could live in Cambridge or Back Bay and she would be close to her lab. Trying to get hired by Harvard, even with my money, would be difficult at best. Around dinnertime I initiated the following exchange:

  Did you get home all right?

  Fine. The jeep is in a good garage.

  Use it however you wish.

  Got my own wheels.

  I’ve decided to sell the Williamstown house too, as a gesture of mental health.

  But you’ve loved that house.

  Love you more. And it’s the past. You’re now. I need to be now too.

  Makes sense, I guess. But don’t do it on my account. Don’t rush into something you may regret.

  Miss you.

  I’m off to dinner.

  And that was that. She didn’t respond to any of my other texts that night and when I tried to call before going to sleep it went into voice mail.

  She got back in touch the following day, by email:

  Shaun,

  Am going to London tomorrow for a conference and to visit with Emily, George, and Paco. Then Spain to see my mother.

  Xx C

  That was it. No emotional content. No suggestion of a possible when and where we might meet. No further comment about us. She was protecting herself and leaving the ball in my court. Or maybe she’d already determined I was a bad bet. I decided to use the time to go to Sweden. I wanted to see if I could find any further trace of Edwin. I wrote her back:

  Carmen,

  Are you all right? You say nothing about us. Are we over? I sincerely hope not. It seems crazy.

  Love and kisses,

  Shaun

  I should have deleted the crazy line, but I didn’t. She replied:

  Shaun,

  Are we over? I hope not too. But please, let me breathe. I’m not crazy. We both need time to think about this and see how we really feel. It’s a big commitment—for both of us—with risks—for the both of us, coming upon us too soon perhaps, but that’s how it is.

  Xx C

  It was something at least. But the old “I need some space” line didn’t feel good, especially with it being asked for so early in the romance. My natural instinct was to be impulsive, to declare myself, one way or the other. But I had to recognize she was right. She and I both knew that some of my ardor, maybe more than some, derived from my believing, up until then, that her condition in life was similar to mine, someone childless and unencumbered. It would have been foolish and cruel, for fear of losing her, to say something too quickly. It might very well be something I would later regret. But how was one to know how we might fare together caring for and raising a child, one that neither of us had made, without at least giving it a try? In any event, I knew it was not the time to insist on any immediate solution. It was time to respect her wavering and her doubts.

  Carmen,

  I will think about it with deep seriousness. Have a safe trip. You know how to reach me. I love you.

  Shaun

  I drove the Citroën to the Clark and went to my office. I worked on my syllabi for the graduate students I would have in the fall, had a coffee with a colleague, and then drove for a final time to the Cole Porter house. I walked the forty acres with Corru, went for a final swim in the pool—he didn’t bark this time—and took a last walk through the house. The place was a jumble of old and new architectures that had been pushed together over the years, unified more than anything by the old slate tiles covering its numerous peaked roofs. It exuded a melancholy air. Despite our problems, my infidelities and her illness, Scarlett and I had many good times there. It had felt like a real home. Solid. Ours. Impregnable. Life was terrifying that way, attempts at permanence and longevity so regularly and piteously mocked. A few weeks earlier Carmen had been there with me, the two of us mad for each other without a care in the world, or so it had seemed, when the place had acquired a whole new glow that was now extinguished. I called Corru. We got back in the car and drove off.

  I ordered a plane, packed at the Wheatleigh, and had dinner there. I used the hotel car service in the morning to get to the Pittsfield airport. I flew to Logan in a Cessna Citation and then in a Gulfstream to Stockholm. We landed around 8 a.m. the following day. I went straight to the Grand Hotel. It had, of course, been refurbished and redecorated since 1968 when Edwin and Caro had trysted there. I took a quick spin through the National Museum, had a nap, then a light lunch on the terrace of the Moderna Museet facing the Östermalm district. I ended the day walking around the old part of town with Corru and dined in my room. The next morning, I rented a car and drove north to Oppli, the little town that was the last place I knew where Edwin Anderson had live
d.

  I’d never been to Sweden and only knew it through Ingmar Bergman’s films and Scandinavian crime series. My mother’s grandmother emigrated from a seaside town south of Gothenburg, but that part of my ancestry was rarely mentioned as I grew up. What I saw those first few days was, alternately, better and more attractive, and then grimmer, than what I had imagined from afar. Many of the people were truly gorgeous, the immigrants as well as the locals. The architecture was functional, but cozy and inviting. The food was wonderful. I didn’t understand a word of Swedish but virtually everyone spoke good English. As I got out of the city it got bleaker, with dreary roadside restaurants, ugly filling stations, and stingy-looking people in shapeless clothing.

  Using GPS I found the one-story house where Edwin and his mother had lived, a run-down place in the woods painted the same Swedish red seen on so many houses and barns in the Berkshires. An elderly woman named Astrid was living there. She saved me a lot of time and trouble, what might have been a week of snooping around or maybe even hiring someone to do it for me. She told me that Elsa Anderson had died in 1970 and was buried in the local cemetery. The nurse who took care of Elsa during her final months was Astrid’s sister Sophie, who began a relationship with Edwin. After his mother’s death, Edwin returned with Sophie to Hudiksvall, where she lived and worked at a hospital. Edwin had given the house, bought with Caro’s money, to Astrid. She told me that Edwin was kind and generous. She said her sister Sophie died of cancer some ten years later. Edwin continued to live in the apartment in Hudiksvall until he was unable, at which point he moved to an old age home where he died of emphysema in 1986. She gave me the name of the old age home. We had coffee and dark bread with a kind of crème fraiche on it. She was unused to visitors and did all she could to hold me there. Her clothing smelled of naphthalene, but the house smelled clean, like old pine, and the coffee was delicious.