by Lily King
“She seems nice,” I said.
“Who?” But he knew who.
“The Austrian.”
“Ah,” he said, not agreeing.
“She speaks well.”
“Too well. I’m sure she already knows how to say toes.”
He looked straight ahead, into the glare of an oncoming stream of yellow headlights released from an intersection up ahead. I knew those two tight fists on the steering wheel and the slight protective curl of his shoulders. How many times had I seen this same posture from the back seat of this car?
We moved swiftly along the river across the city. The streetlamps in their fragile glass cases on wrought-iron stands seemed laid out exclusively for the course of my thoughts. I could still see Nicole lifting her eyes from her wrist to Marc and how her face had changed. Whether she was conscious of it or not, Nicole had watched me fall in love with her husband and then, in Spain, watched me perceive all of his qualities that enraged her. He had a terrible sense of direction. He had trouble making decisions and often suffered even after they were made. He was self-conscious and wouldn’t attempt a word of Spanish. He was defensive and thin-skinned. He had a small range of focus. He liked to be pampered and reassured. He had dark, sullen moods. I learned all these things, and still I loved him. And because I did, he’d stopped asking so much from Nicole and given her more room to love him. I saw that in the coatroom. She would be waiting up for him tonight.
I felt how I could complicate this good-bye. I could reach out and he would accept me still. I could tell him the words that were careening inside me, reopen what was closing between us. He sat waiting for this, in his slouched blend of accusation and self-pity, but he didn’t really want it. What he wanted was for his wife to love him. I clenched my heart and did not give him what he could never wholly receive.
He walked me to the train.
“Let me,” I said, reaching for my bags, but he insisted on carrying them, which left him no arms to touch me with. We stopped outside the door to my compartment. It was brightly lit, through the windows, but empty. No long-legged woman reading Chekhov, no small girl in a blue-and-yellow uniform.
Marc put down my bags. His mouth made a crooked attempt at a smile. He wanted to apologize, but I intercepted it with a shake of my head. We didn’t use the words love or if or always. Our parting, one slow kiss on the cheek, was grave and silent, tinged with the slightest anticipation of release. Afterward, he stood on the platform beneath my window with his hands deep in his coat pockets and his arms straight and tight to his body as if it were very cold in the station. I knew he was trembling like I was. I wasn’t sure how well I could be seen through the brown glass, but he was perfectly clear to me. I remembered Leslie saying he looked like Abraham Lincoln. I could see that now, and I laughed out loud. He smiled back at me. Had I never told him this? My body jerked forward, to leap up and run to the door that was just now closing. Then I stopped myself, for it was going to be like that from now on, and remained in my seat.
The train shuddered once, then pulled away gently, a needle extracted from an arm with routine tenderness. Within seconds he was quietly out of view, replaced by a long procession of abandoned trains lying on their sides. Sprayed onto many of the cars were fluorescent swastikas. I was alone in my compartment and reached to shut off the light.
We sped quickly out of Paris into darkness. Beads of light swarmed on a faraway hill. A piece of tinfoil squeaked across the compartment floor. We passed without stopping through station after station. I did not sleep.
Dawn, when it finally came, glistened on the red leather of the empty seats. Outside there were blue-green fields, with tiny pearls of mist popping and vanishing above them, and the woolly, slumbering shapes of hills beyond.
Midmorning, the sky held a hot sun. It beat down on my legs through the windshield of the truck I rode in. An old man who’d said my name at the station was driving. The roads were thin and twisted like the ones outside Paris in the d’Aubrys’ village. Up ahead, two boys rode girls’ bikes, slaloming. The man beeped once and they parted, staring into either side of the truck as it passed. Everyone waved but me. A tear of sweat traveled down the length of my stomach. As if he knew, the man said something about the heat. His accent seemed like an impediment, as if he had something jammed under his tongue. I could barely understand him. I nodded anyway. “Ouai.” Hearing my pronunciation, he muttered something nasty about Paris. I was rocked into a half sleep, then jolted awake by a child wailing in the back. I turned, but there were only my bags on the seat.
We veered onto a rough uphill road. The man whistled. At the crest there was a gauzy view of vineyards and orchards that stretched to dark blue hills. A lean old woman stood in the dirt ahead, then moved slowly into the driveway when she recognized the truck. Her long cardigan fluttered below her bent back. She pointed for the man, indicating where to park. I carried a heavy bag in each hand but the woman took my arm anyway. It had rained the night before, and we navigated the steaming brown puddles slowly toward the house.
Home
TO GET TO THE TRAIN STATION IN ALT FROM PLAIRE, YOU TAKE A RIGHT AT THE fork where Paco Paniagua’s brother was killed on a borrowed motorcycle. You pass the restaurant in Limne where Marcelle celebrated her sixteenth birthday, and then the field where Yvonne Nief was struck by lightning. On the outskirts of Alt is the prison where collaborators were held. Closer to town is Notre Dame de Nazareth. It is vacant as Henri and I drive by; school won’t be in session for another few weeks.
One large headlight can be seen down the tracks. For a long time it hovers there in the distance, quivering in the heat; then all at once it rushes at us, whistling before it crosses the intersection and whistling again just before it reaches the station. The front cars race past. Travelers hoist bags on shoulders and move closer, trying to guess a spot on the platform that might align with a door. It is always a moment of exhilaration and possibility, a train rushing by, loud and gusty, full of perpetual strangers. And then it slows and slows, its last cars whining to a halt before us. I am not ready. I hope with all my heart that Nicole will not be on this train.
But there she is, first off, accepting the aid of a uniformed arm and stepping down. She wears a fitted cranberry blazer and matching pants. She approaches us slowly, taking in the station not with the acute, discriminating glances with which she normally enters a room, but with a dull eye that seems unable to fasten onto anything, not even on the two people moving forward to greet her.
“Henri,” she says, dropping her suitcase. It is one of the green leather ones she took to Spain. Its brass bolts are the shiniest objects in Alt. “You’re an old man.”
“And you’re a fancy Parisian snob!” He laughs hard, his mouth open so wide I can see that he does have teeth, way in the back. Then he crushes the linen suit in his arms.
I feel her stiffen but Henri just keeps rocking her back and forth. “She’ll be so glad to see you,” he croons in her ear.
When he sets her free, Nicole turns to kiss me. She holds on to me as if for balance. “How is she?”
“Hanging in there.”
“Thank you for calling.”
We head toward the parking lot. “How was the trip down?” I ask.
“Fine.”
“Any Moroccans to play cards with?”
She shakes her head, not seeming to understand the allusion. If she’s come with recriminations, she clearly is in no shape to discuss them yet. This thought soothes me, and my pulse slows slightly.
In the truck, Henri chats away, listing for Nicole—who hasn’t asked a thing—all the fortunes and failures of the families in Plaire. Squashed between them, I want him to ask about Nicole’s family, but he doesn’t. I know it would be perfectly natural for me to ask myself, and even strange if I didn’t, but each time I practice the words, they sound rehearsed. If I ask about the kids, it will seem like I’m avoiding Marc, but I can’t ask about him first. And if I ask about everyone all at once—Ça va tout le monde?—
it will sound deliberately unspecific. Every sentence I try in my head feels like a confession.
Very loose attention is paid to Henri’s stories. I’ve heard them all already, told more compellingly by Lucie, and Nicole is distracted by what lies beyond the truck’s windows. The first part of the drive from Alt to Plaire is along a plateau that curves above fields of purple fans and taller golden stalks: lavender and wheat. Nicole rolls her window all the way down, flooding the cab with the sharp smell of the perfume distillery nearby. She shuts her eyes and breathes it in; I’m not sure what the smell of lavender oil reminds her of.
In Goulle, we drive along the deep ravine. Bright shorts of climbers splayed against the opposite rock face flicker through the trees. More climbers with belts and jangling clips walk on the side of the road into town. I’ve never been through Goulle without seeing them, but today the gear, the muscles, and the fluorescent clothes seem preposterous. I can feel Nicole’s contempt for their neon invasion. After Goulle, the road straightens out and we pick up speed. At the top of a rise, the towns of Bourne, Limne, and Plaire can all be seen, each clump of buildings blanched and clinging to its own hillside.
Henri pats my leg. “Anything we should stop for?”
“No, we’re all set. I’ve got enough till Tuesday at least.”
“Listen to you,” Nicole says, without turning from the window. “You’re a real Provençale now.”
It’s true. I no longer speak like a thirteen-year-old from Paris but like an old woman from Plaire. I dread Nicole’s scrupulousness—her judgments and labels. Everything will be changed by it; I will be changed.
At the house, I take the green suitcase to the downstairs room I’ve prepared for her while she lingers in the driveway. She isn’t looking out at what used to be her father’s land or at anything but the gravel in front of her. I watch her through the window, standing there with her hands in her blazer pockets, her arms straight, and her shoulders raised. She stands just as Marc stood on the platform in Paris, as if something might fall on her at any moment. I feel desperate for news of Marc. Has he lost Lola for good because of me? This is one thing I can never find a way to ask.
From the kitchen I can hear Nicole finally stepping into the house, then pausing again. Everything would be the same: the framed daisies, the low cherry table with the knot on one side, the empty green bowl, the sound of shoes on the flagstones, all the mingled smells.
I hope she’ll go straight upstairs to Lucie, who will have heard the truck in the driveway, but she doesn’t.
“Let me help you,” she says, stepping down into the kitchen.
“No, I’m just making a salad and reheating some soup.” I’m embarrassed by what we eat: soup and salad nearly every meal, most of the ingredients from the vegetable garden in back. It’s all we can afford. When I found out what little money Lucie received every month, I stopped accepting a salary. “Why don’t you go up and say hello?”
Nicole has already started slicing tomatoes. “Isn’t she sleeping?”
“Even if she is.”
“In a minute. These too?” She lifts a bowl of yesterday’s boiled potatoes. They are small and bruised, but if I’d tried to cut around the dark spots, there would have been no potato left.
“Yes, please.” The potatoes are also badly peeled. I’ve nearly forgotten the agony of working beside Nicole. But Nicole quarters the potatoes as if they are blemishless.
“Have you been all right here, Rosie?”
“Fine.”
“This can’t be much fun for you.”
It strikes me as odd that Nicole, who never took fun into consideration, not even as a child, would ask me this.
“But maybe you’ve made some friends?”
Nicole, who has no friends.
In place of an answer, I ask my question: “Ça va tout le monde?”
She looks up at me in sudden delight, as if she’d forgotten the four people in Paris we have in common. “They’re very well. And they all send you big kisses.”
Before she can go on, I say, “Go up now. I can do the rest.”
She sets down the knife but doesn’t move immediately. For Marc, most transitions—from car to house, kitchen to study—involved an idle moment or two, a reflective, regenerative pause. How many times did I watch him push back his chair from the table, then sit there still, hands stretched to the table’s edge, caught in a necessary realignment. It makes me miss him terribly, seeing these unexpected fragments of him in his wife’s body.
Nicole climbs the stairs and I’m glad to miss the reunion. I block out the noise of it by singing the song about the ladybug Lucie taught me and finishing the salad and bringing the soup to a boil. I wait for Nicole to come down for it. The vinaigrette grows a brown ring in its bowl and the soup a firm skin. The bruises on the potatoes darken. I set aside a plate for myself, then make up a tray for them and carry it up.
The door, which Lucie prefers shut, is propped open, and the windows have been lifted as high as they will go. A strong current of warm air sweeps through the room, flapping dust out of the curtains.
Nicole has left my chair empty, the chair I sat in most of every day and night for the past month, and pulled another around to the other side of the bed. She’s propped Lucie up with extra pillows and changed her nightgown. The old one, which I didn’t dare disturb her to remove, has been tossed near the door along with pillowcases.
They sit like lovers, with flushed faces and clasped hands. I place the tray on the arms of my empty chair, pick up the dirty laundry, and leave. They call after me to stay, but I keep moving down the stairs. I drop the linen in the kitchen and go out the back door.
The air is turning, finally. The leaves make a sharper sound when they rustle. Even the grass feels older and stiffer. Before France, I never felt the change of seasons, never paid attention. Today it’s inescapable: there is the same rattle in the trees, the same hot but exhausted sunlight as when, a year ago, I delivered my sister’s child. It has come back around. Will the end of summer always mean this now, for the rest of my life? He is a year old. Walking, maybe. Uttering a few words that only Sarah understands. For him there will be no memory, no season of loss. He will never ache for me as I will always ache for him.
I can hear Nicole inside, banging cabinets, taking charge.
“Rosie.” Nicole comes quickly to the back steps. “I can’t find the washtub. It isn’t under the sink anymore.”
“There’s a machine,” I tell her. “But I’ll do it.”
“No, you will not. You’ve been working here thirty hours a day as usual. And you haven’t touched your lunch.”
That evening Nicole and I share the foldout table I put beside Lucie’s bed, all of us crammed in at the far side of the bedroom as if on a heeling ship. We speak only of the present. Lucie’s curiosity about Nicole’s family in Paris is ravenous, and Nicole is far more willing to speak of them than anything else. Lucie listens with closed eyes and a temporarily sated smile, though she has not eaten anything on her plate.
There is no mention of her dying, not by Nicole or Henri or the doctor who stopped in this afternoon. I listened to his instructions about food, liquids, and dosages but asked for no information beyond that, not a name for her condition or a prognosis. And neither did Nicole.
Two days later, Nicole rises early—too early, is my guess, to do anything but catch a train back to Paris.
“I’ve asked Henri to come by around nine,” she says. “There’s some-place I’d like to go and I don’t want to go alone.” I wonder where she’ll take him. “I mean, if you wouldn’t mind, Rosie, I’d like you to come with me.”
She leads me out past Lucie’s five rows of table grapes, past the vegetable garden, over a small stone wall, and onto her father’s land, which was sold just after his death to a fruit company in Avignon. We ignore the men, who stop working to watch two women disappear into the overgrowth, and set out on the old path to the quarry.
Though we both knew it
had been drained, it is still a shock. The chasm is enormous. After a while, Nicole moves forward and stands at the edge. Then she climbs down the shallowest slope all the way into the basin. At the bottom there are crumpled cigarette packages and empty liquor bottles. It’s still a popular place for parties on summer nights. A few plastic cups, some half full, sit on a rock of coffee-table height. The quarry is a perfect outdoor living room. There are couches, recliners, love seats. A hat has been left hanging on a crag.
Nicole squats and brushes the loose dirt with her palm. “Even though I was told differently, I always thought it would be flat and smooth down here, with soft grasses, like a field. I don’t know why.” She speaks softly, but her voice carries straight up to me. She remains in that one place, her hair falling forward in two sharp triangles, her chin on one knee, stroking the ground. For the first time I see both the child and the woman as one uninterrupted being.
When she stands up, she raises her eyes to where the water once reached. I strain to see what she sees: the boy and the stone, Marie-Jo diving in on a dare, or Marcelle hesitating. I wish she’d get out of there. Something is strange. Sunlight spreads along the sides in long swaying fingers; the hat on the crag bobs slowly. It’s as if the quarry has never been drained at all. Nicole suddenly seems to feel it too. I have never seen her move so quickly. She falls twice, scrambling up the rocks. I put out a hand for her, but she shakes her head and goes past me toward the bushes. Halfway there, she throws up. When she’s through, she just hangs there, hands on her knees.
I remember how Sarah used to rub my back and wipe my face with a towel in the mornings.
Nicole hears my steps behind her and says, “I’ll be fine.” When I don’t stop, she says more sharply, “Please. Leave me.” But when I pass my hand lightly along the small bent frame, she lets out a long breath and says nothing more.
On Tuesday afternoon, she insists on walking into town with me.
“You two take your time. We’ll be fine here,” Henri says to me outside the bedroom door. “She seems better today, doesn’t she?”