Perfection

by Julie Metz

  As winter passed into spring, I was desperate to go somewhere away from my town. I hated watching myself rearrange my weekends to see Tomas, but without this companionship to anticipate during the week, my future life stretched out terrifyingly before me, the new monotony of my widowhood. I hated thinking about the future of Me. My mind traveled to frightening places as I paced in my house like a bored zoo animal.

  I arranged a meeting with Henry’s editor and agent to discuss trying to finish the book he had researched. I proposed completing the book myself, though I wasn’t sure how to write a book. I presented the idea of a trip to Paris to attend The White Dinner. I headed home on the train, giddy with the prospect of an adventure to plan.

  I booked plane tickets for Liza and myself. A male escort is required for every woman at The White Dinner, so I mailed a letter off to Jean, my decidedly low-tech old flame in France.

  I also sent an e-mail to Stefano, a friend in Italy, where, I thought, we might as well go after Paris, as we were traveling so far. Stefano e-mailed back. We would be able to stay in his family’s apartment in Florence. I hadn’t been to Paris or Florence in years, since before Liza was born. I knew my French was rusty, and I hoped I would still be able to remember some of my neglected Italian, though I was encouraged when I had a dream in which I was attending The White Dinner, speaking fluently en français.

  June arrived at last. The days had warmed, the flowering trees had leafed out, my blue Siberian iris had unfurled, the roses were in full explosion, and our bags were packed. I said good-bye to Tomas, wondering, uneasily, how things would be when I returned.

  I am no fan of plane travel. I have always been too skeptical of the physics of the phenomenon to ever be truly comfortable in an airplane. On the advice of the cheerful flight attendant, I was taking a moment to read the safety card in the seat pocket in front of me. I read every section of the safety card, including the part where we were instructed calmly to take off our shoes and slide out onto the inflatable raft. We’ll be bobbing in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (if we were lucky enough not to be ripped to bits), amid plane wreckage and dismembered bodies. Sharks circling the carnage. Twenty-foot waves. With my luck, a hurricane. Undeterred by its futility, the flight attendant continued her demonstration. It sounded somewhat more reassuring in a French accent.

  I glanced over at Liza, who adores plane travel. She was nestled cross-legged, a book cracked open on her lap, gazing and pointing as we broke through the clouds. Her immediate neighbor, a promisingly eccentric fellow, was ready to talk after determining that she was a reading—rather than a petulant, noisy, electronic-gadgeting—sort of American child. A colorful red and gold embroidered fez capped his graying, shoulder-length hair. His face was vertically lined, with features that suggested his New England origins, though I could tell he wanted me to think he was French.

  After the seat belt signs were turned off, our neighbor (his name was James, and he turned out to be very American) drank red wine and chatted for most of the flight. Since I am unable to sleep in planes, what with the pressurized air, the noise of the engines, and worrying about those life rafts, I was happy for the company. While Liza read, ate, watched a movie, then slept, he told me about his work (he was a translator returning home from a meeting with a New York publisher), his great apartment just near the Rodin Museum, and his girlfriend (younger, French). I figured she smoked as much as he did—his long, twitchy fingers and the clinging aroma of stale tobacco on his clothing betrayed his nicotine habit.

  “You must bring your daughter to the museum,” he said with patrician inflection, as he gave me his phone number. “There is the most marvelous little café right in the museum gardens.” I was entertained by the idea, though I doubted the meeting would come off. I jotted his name and number in the notebook I had begun for this trip. We would go to the museum on our first day, I decided, with or without James.

  Outside the baggage claim area, James, cigarette lit, gallantly hailed us a cab. He looked so suave with his cigarette that I wished I still smoked, like everyone in France, except that, like many ex-smokers, I felt immediately suffocated by the fumes. James smoked for the duration of our journey into central Paris, courteously holding his left hand outside the open car window as we cleared the airport and passed through the wretched outer industrial areas of the city. At last the familiar nineteenth-century rooftops appeared through the summer haze and we entered the city limits. James directed the taxi driver down the narrow street to the small hotel my brother had recommended in the seventh arrondissement.

  “Alors, à demain! We will go to the museum!” He waved earnestly as the taxi pulled away.

  In our hotel room, Liza and I undressed, exhausted, climbed into the crisp white sheets of the double bed, and drifted off, lulled by the sounds and smells of a midweek day in Paris: mopeds speeding down the narrow street, snippets of workday conversation, the clickety-click of elegant European shoe heels on ancient stone sidewalk, the faint aromas of baguette, melting butter, and someone’s freshly brewed café.

  “Happy birthday, Mama,” Liza murmured sleepily, taking my hand under the sheets. I was now forty-four years old. She was six and three-fourths. We were together and happy, a more than acceptable birthday present.

  Liza and I had walked all the way to the Place des Vosges, across the Pont du Carrousel. Along the Seine’s right embankment, we passed a large pet shop, where we stopped to look at bunnies and puppies eagerly pawing the windows. We continued down narrow side streets till at last we arrived at the ancient, small square where the grassy lawns around four grand, symmetrically positioned fountains were dotted with a hundred Parisians searching for relief from the heat of this unusually warm summer. We found a spot near one of the fountains, enjoying the gentle, cool mist. Liza took off her sandals and splashed water on her face and then at me. She considered a piece of plastic packaging from our lunch and set about making a small boat. The noise of the fountain and the people chattering drowned out her little voice, but I could tell from watching her lips that she was singing to herself. It was like watching a silent movie. Her self-absorbed contentment gave me a chance to take a relaxed look around.

  A Frenchman of my age, not especially good looking, just a regular guy, settled down on a spot of lawn. He had an expectant look, his gaze shifting this way and that along the angled paths.

  After a while Liza visited me for a drink and a snack. We both laughed as a toddler stripped her clothes off and climbed into the fountain wearing only her underwear. Then Liza returned with her plastic boat to the fountain and I turned back to the Frenchman on the grass. A woman had arrived, not pretty, but striking, with long dark hair and straight-cut bangs, a look that perhaps only French women can pull off without looking severe and over-determined. They lounged lovingly in the grass. A moment later they were madly making out.

  The French! My heart quickened with deep admiration and envy. I stared shamelessly. They were busy and did not notice me. I silently prayed that it would be me one day, lying in the arms of someone who was truly happy to be with me, just as I was—a forty-four-year-old mother with a wrinkled belly.

  I needed a real grown-up man who could love me, and my child. Liza and I were now a package deal, a two-for-one special. This man wouldn’t have to be pretty (maybe I was over that pretty thing now), but he would have to be kind, with a heart as big as my two-car garage back home.

  Jean, my old flame, arrived at our hotel riding a rusty bicycle that looked like it had weathered a decade or two of rainy Parisian winters. He was wearing a white shirt and tan trousers. He was too rebellious and frugal to fuss about things like white pants.

  We had met when I was twenty years old, on my junior year abroad from Smith. We were both working at a printmaking studio on the ground floor of a building in the fourteenth arrondissement, a neighborhood still inhabited then by artists, now by investment bankers.

  He was twenty-eight at the time, tall, underfed, with a mop of strawberry blon
d curls. There was something nineteenth century about him. When he took breaks from his work, he stood in the building’s inner courtyard smoking a pipe. I could not resist this archaic habit in a young man, or the engaging splay of his two front teeth, revealed when he removed the tooth-marked pipestem from his lips and smiled. When he wasn’t smoking or working, he bit his fingernails, down to the quick. For months I watched him, afraid to speak to him. He had an intimidating dedication to his work; my efforts felt childish by comparison, my French was still crude, and I wasn’t sure if he was comfortable speaking English.

  Marianne, the owner of the studio, liked assigning chores. She taught me my first new useful French words: la poubelle (garbage can) and balayer (to sweep). Marianne was an ample woman, with a corresponding voice and personality. I was la petite Américaine. She was autocratic, affectionate, insulted when I missed days, always insistent that I should eat more.

  “Tiens, tu dois déjeuner avec nous,” she urged as she led a group off to the nearby bistro at midday. I had little extra spending money, but one lunch hour, when I saw Jean heading off with the others, I impulsively joined them after discovering that I had twenty francs in my wallet. I ordered an omelet. “M’enfin, tu manges trop peu, ma petite, ça va pas!” Marianne harangued. She disapproved of such light midday eating, though for me this was a grand feast. They all tucked in to steak-frites. As we drank glasses of red wine, I saw that Jean spoke English fluently, with a soft and musical accent.

  From that afternoon on, Jean and I became friends. Unfortunately, however, I never felt any special attention from him, certainly nothing like the crush I had. I waited patiently for some sign, often lingering at the studio past my usual hours until he called it quits for the day.

  One spring afternoon, my crush at its peak, Jean rose to leave the studio. I waited a moment, put down my work, and walked with what I hoped was a casual gait out the door onto the street. He was twenty paces ahead of me. I broke into a jog to catch him before he reached the Métro stop at the end of the block.

  “Jean!”

  He stopped, surprised to see me, perhaps thinking he had left something behind. “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?”

  “Jean. May I speak to you in English?” I paused, but he did not seem rushed, so I took heart, caught my breath, and continued. “Would you consider a brief affair?”

  He laughed affectionately, and his two splayed front teeth winked at me. “What are you asking me? You know, my life is very com-pli-ca-ted.” He told me about his girlfriend in Holland and Gabrielle, his other girlfriend in Paris.

  “Well, I’ll be leaving soon, in May,” I replied. “I won’t complicate your life for too long.”

  “Alors”—he laughed—“on y pense.” He offered me the smile of one willing but wary and we parted. I returned to the studio and pretended to work for another hour. Marianne, no fool, cast a sharp and knowing look across the room.

  I was living for that school year in the home of a mysterious Madame de P., an elegant woman of the aristocracy in her sixties, a veteran of a wartime concentration camp, imprisoned for her involvement with the French Underground. She wore cream-colored silk Yves Saint Laurent blouses buttoned up her swanlike neck to the base of her white-haired French twist, slender pencil skirts, and Charles Jourdan high heels. Madame whisked an unseen lover in and out of her vast apartment in the elegant sixteenth arrondissement in the afternoons, while my friend Katie, the other student living in the apartment, had a brief but thrilling affair with Madame’s daughter—on other afternoons.

  Alors, I joined the grand adventure—sneaking Jean into the apartment, past the all-seeing eyes of Josepha, the Spanish maid, whom I feared and adored, covering the cage of annoying living room parakeets with a blanket so the endless chirping would not disturb our lovemaking. Josepha’s raised eyebrow at dinnertime told me she had found us out in spite of my efforts.

  After I returned to the States to complete my senior year at college, I looked forward to Jean’s large brown envelopes, addressed in an antique Spencerian script, adorned with festive stamps from Mali, Senegal, and Morocco, where he wintered. Two years later, I went back to see him. We made love on the floor of a friend’s apartment.

  We corresponded on and off over the years—sometimes just a letter a year. The friendship continued after I began my relationship with Henry. A few more visits, now chaste. He had married Gabrielle, the girlfriend in Paris, and now they were parents of a daughter.

  Jean was leaner; the curls of his hair had grayed to the color of cinnamon toast. His face was tanned, and deltas of wrinkles fanned out from his hazel eyes. His nose was sharper, his curved lips thinner. The years of pipe smoking had stained his teeth, though not the two front ones, their splay broadened, still charming and familiar to me.

  I looked much younger, I concluded, taking a mental inventory of the number of skin potions, tubes of whitening toothpaste, and boxes of hair color I had purchased since turning forty, my part of the American obsession with self-preservation and denial of old age and death.

  “Vous êtes tellement chic.” Jean admired our white outfits with amused irony. In our white dresses, Liza and I were ready for a Victorian tea party.

  My camera captured the scene in the cobbled square in front of the famous Panthéon: women’s hats and scarves floating against the twilight sky, a man dressed in a white 1920s suit and spats like Jay Gatsby come to life, the exuberant synchronized waving of white napkins as the meal progressed. The police showed up to cheering and jeering and more waving of white napkins. Amid the festivity, Liza played with a friendly dog under the table. I wondered if all the commotion and new people were overwhelming her, or if she was missing her father, who had often reminded me of a playful terrier and who, in affectionate moments, had sometimes even licked my face. I was glad to have Jean there; it was good to take his hand as the evening concluded and the tables emptied.

  At midnight, Jean walked us back to our hotel. We had made plans to meet at the Gare d’Austerlitz in the morning—we would spend our last weekend in France together in the country village where he lived with his daughter.

  As our train rushed through the flat countryside, Jean raged about the evils of city life, the Internet, cell phones, computers, and the abject materialism of modern society. I smiled, grateful that I had left my cell phone and laptop at home, amused that, compared with Jean, I was a paragon of modern-age wizardry, whereas at home I engaged in a love-hate relationship with my computer and all things technical. As he continued on and the landscape softened, I considered how completely unhappy we would have made each other if we had ever tried to be together. How much better was this—a twenty-year friendship, still respectful and loving.

  His house was a magical cottage, overgrown with ivy and flowering vines. His daughter’s room was welcoming, and soon, despite the language barrier, our girls found a way to play together. Jean took me around the back of the house and up a flight of wooden stairs to show me his studio, a perfect artist’s garret: a table with neatly arranged papers and notebooks, plant specimens, rocks and shells, a few examples of his work framed on the wall, a saggy but comfortable old sitting chair. A good place to spend life. That’s what I would need to find for myself.

  Gabrielle, Jean’s wife, met us at the train station upon our return to Paris. She had always remained here, in her small city apartment. The French have such interesting solutions to the problems of cohabitation and marriage. Petite with long dark hair and those straight-cut bangs, she was stylish and urban in a crisp white blouse and dark skirt, perched slightly above me on modern black platform sandals. We ate Parisian hot dogs in the nearby Jardin des Plantes, sweating in the stupor of the record heat wave burning all of Europe.

  I had never envied Gabrielle, though I understood the choices she had made, having made similar ones myself with Henry. She was alone for half the year, married to a man who placed his art above all other things, except his daughter. Another self-absorbed artist whom I had loved, indeed st
ill loved, because, like Tomas, he had always encouraged me to pursue my creative life.

  We parted on the blistering sidewalk, and Liza and I hailed a well-deserved taxi for the trip back to our hotel, where we packed up to leave for Italy the next morning.

  Stefano, a friend of many years, drove us from the airport in Pisa to his family’s apartment just outside the Porta Romana in Florence, where we would stay for the next week. Waking late in the morning to thick and heavy heat, Liza and I found relief at the local caffè-gelateria—homemade ice cream in at least twenty flavors. We couldn’t think of a good reason not to eat ice cream at ten in the morning.

  We left the hot streets to enter the Brancacci Chapel, site of famous frescoes by Fra Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, and Masaccio. In these paintings, one sees familiar faces: the man who just cut you a piece of parmigiano cheese, the friendly shopkeeper who sold you a pair of shoes. The gene pool seems unaltered since the Renaissance.

  During a visit years earlier, Henry and I had stepped into a caffè and remarked together on the face of the bartender. With his long dark hair, aquiline nose, and large dark eyes, he seemed a Fra Angelico portrait subject come to life. After drinking Campari cocktails in the bar, Henry and I had polished off a huge bistecca alla fiorentina and a bottle of red wine in a nearby restaurant, then made a drunken trip to a friend’s house on a motorcycle we had rented for the week. I hugged Henry’s waist while the engine buzzed and he navigated the cobbled streets. I felt like Claudia Cardinale in 81/2, young and glamorous.