by Gayle Forman
How can it be this hard to find someone? It occurs to me that maybe Céline intentionally gave me the wrong name.
But then I Google myself, “Allyson Healey,” and I don’t come up, either. You have to add the name of my college before you get my Facebook page.
I realize then it’s not enough to know what someone is called.
You have to know who they are.
Thirty-two
The next morning, Kelly and her friends ask me if I want to join them for a trip to the Rodin Museum, followed by some shopping. And I almost say yes. Because that’s what I would like. But there is still one more stop. It’s not even that I think I’ll find anything; it’s just that, if I’m facing down demons, I have go to there too.
I’m not sure where it is, exactly, but I do know the intersection where Ms. Foley had me picked up. It is seared into my brain. Avenue Simon Bolivar and Rue de l’Equerre, the cross streets of Humiliation and Defeat.
When I get out of the Metro, nothing seems familiar. Maybe because the last time I was here, I was flipping out in such a panic. But I know I didn’t run that far before finding the pay phone, so I know it can’t be that far to the art squat. I methodically go up one block. Down the next. Up and back. But nothing seems familiar. I attempt to ask directions, but how do you say “art squat” in French? Old building with artists? That doesn’t work. I remember the Chinese restaurants in the vicinity and ask for them. One young guy gets really excited and, I think, offers a recommendation to one supposedly good place across on Rue de Belleville. I find it. And from there, I find a sign for double happiness. It could be one of many, but I have a feeling it’s the one.
I wander around for fifteen more minutes and, on a quiet triangle of streets, find the squat. It has the same scaffolding, same distorted portraits, maybe a little more weather-beaten. I knock on the steel door. No one answers, but there are obviously people inside. Music wafts out from the open windows. I give the door a push. It creaks open. I push it farther. I walk inside. No one pays me any notice. I go up the creaking staircase, to the place where it all happened.
I see the clay first, bright white, yet at the same time, golden and warm. Inside, a man is working. He is petite, Asian, a study in contrasts: His hair white with black roots, his clothes all black and strangely antiquated, like he stepped out of a Charles Dickens novel, and all covered in the same white dust that covered me that night.
He is carving at a piece of clay with a scalpel, his attention so focused I’m afraid he’ll startle with the merest sound. I clear my throat and knock quietly on the door.
He looks up and rubs his eyes, which are bleary with concentration. “Oui.”
“Bonjour,” I begin. And then I sputter. My limited French is no match for what I need to explain to him. I crashed your squat, with a guy. I had the most intimate night of my life, and I woke up utterly alone. “Umm, I’m looking for a friend who I think you might know. Oh, I’m sorry—parlez-vous anglais?”
He lifts his head and nods, slightly, with the delicacy and control of a ballet dancer. “Yes,” he says.
“I’m looking for a friend of mine, and I wonder if you might know him. His name is Willem de Ruiter. He’s Dutch?” I watch his face for a flicker of recognition, but it remains impassive, as smooth as the clay sculptures that surround us.
“No? Well, he and I stayed here one night. Not exactly stayed here . . .” I trail off, looking around the studio, and it all comes back to me: the smell of the rain against the thirsty pavement, the swirl of dust, the smooth wood of his worktable pressing into my back. Willem towering over me.
“What did you say your name was?”
“Allyson,” I hear myself say as if from a distance away.
“Van,” he says, introducing himself while fingering an old pocket watch on a chain.
I’m staring at the table, remembering the intense sharpness of it against my back, the ease with which Willem hoisted me onto it. The table is, as it was then, meticulously clean, the neat pile of papers, the half-finished pieces in the corner, the mesh cup of charcoals, and pens. Wait, what? I grab for the pens.
“That’s my pen!”
“I’m sorry?” Van asks.
I reach over to grab the pen out of the cup. The Rollerball, inscribed BREATHE EASY WITH PULMOCLEAR. “This is my pen! From my dad’s practice.”
Van is looking at me, perplexed. But he doesn’t understand. The pen was in my bag. I never took it out. It just went missing. I had it on the barge. I wrote double happiness with it. And then the next day, when I was on the phone with Ms. Foley, it was gone.
“Last summer, my friend Willem and I, well, we came here hoping someone might put us up for the night. He said that squats will do that.” I pause. Van nods slightly. “But no one was here. Except a window was open. So we slept here, in your studio, and when I woke up the next morning, my friend, Willem, he was gone.”
I wait for Van to get upset about our trespassing, but he is looking at me, still trying to understand why I’m gripping the Pulmoclear pen in my hand like it’s a sword. “This pen was in my purse and then it was gone and now it’s here, and I’m wondering, maybe there was a note or something. . . .”
Van’s face remains blank, and I’m about to apologize, for trespassing before, and now again, but then I see something, like the faint glimmers of light before a sunrise, as some sort of recognition illuminates his face. He taps his index finger to the bridge of his nose.
“I did find something; I thought it was a shopping list.”
“A shopping list?”
“It said something about, about . . . I don’t recall, perhaps chocolate and bread?”
“Chocolate and bread?” Those were Willem’s staple foods. My heart starts to pound.
“I don’t remember. I thought it came in from the garbage. I had been away for holiday, and when I came back, everything was disarrayed. I disposed of it. I’m so sorry.” He looks stricken.
We snuck into his studio, made a mess of it, and he looks guilty.
“No, don’t be sorry. This is so helpful. Would there have been any reason for a shopping list to be in here? I mean, might you have written it?”
“No. And if I did, it would not have contained bread and chocolate.”
I smile at that. “Could the list have been, maybe, a note?”
“It is possible.”
“We were supposed to have bread and chocolate for breakfast. And my pen is here.”
“Please, take your pen.”
“No, you can have the pen,” I say, and out escapes a whoop of laughter. A note. Could he have left me a note?
I throw my arms around Van, who stiffens for a moment in surprise but then relaxes into my embrace and reaches around to hug me back. It feels good, and he smells nice, like oil paint and turpentine and dust and old wood—smells that, like everything from that day, are stitched into the fabric of me now. For the first time in a long time, this doesn’t seem like a curse.
_ _ _
When I leave Van, it’s mid-afternoon. The Oz crew is probably still at the Rodin Museum; I could meet up with them. But instead, I decide to try something else. I go to the nearest Metro station and close my eyes and spin around and then I pick a stop. I land on Jules Joffrin and then I figure out the series of trains that will take me there.
I wind up in a very Parisian-seeming neighborhood, lots of narrow, uphill streets and everyday shops: shoe stores, barbershops, little neighborhood bars. I meander a ways, no idea where I am, but surprisingly enjoying the feeling of being lost. Eventually, I come across a broad staircase, carved into the steep hillside, forming a little canyon between the apartment buildings and green foliage hanging down on either side. I have no idea where the stairs lead. I can practically hear Willem’s voice: All the more reason to take them.
So I do. And take them, and take them. No sooner do I reach one landing than I find another set of stairs. At the top of the stairs, I cross a small cobblestoned medieval street
and then, boom, it’s like I’m back in the world of the tour. There are idling coaches and sardine-packed cafés, and an accordion player doing Edith Piaf covers.
I follow the crowds around the corner, and at the end of a street full of cafés advertising menus in English, Spanish, French, and German is a huge white-domed cathedral.
“Excusez-moi, qu’est-ce que c’est?” I ask a man standing outside of one of the cafés.
He rolls his eyes. “C’est Sacré-Coeur!”
Oh, Sacré-Coeur. Of course. I walk closer and see three domes, two smaller ones flanking the big one the middle, reigning regal over the rooftops of Paris. In front of the cathedral, which is glowing golden in the afternoon sun, is a grassy hillside esplanade, bisected by marble staircases leading down the other side of the hill. There are people everywhere: the tourists with their video cameras rolling, backpackers lolling in the sun, artists with easels out, young couples leaning into each other, whispering secrets. Paris! Life!
At the end of the tour, I’d sworn off setting foot in another moldering old church. But for some reason, I follow the crowds inside. Even with the golden mosaics, looming statues and swelling crowds, it somehow still manages to feel like a neighborhood church, with people quietly praying, fingering rosaries, or just lost in thought.
There’s a stand of candles, and you can pay a few euros and light one yourself. I’m not Catholic, and I’m not entirely clear on this ritual, but I feel the need to commemorate this somehow. I hand over some change and am given a candle, and when I light it, it occurs to me that I should say a prayer. Should I pray for someone who’s died, like my grandfather? Or should I pray for Dee? For my mom? Should I pray to find Willem?
But none of that feels right. What feels right is just this. Being here. Again. By myself, this time. I’m not sure what the word for this is, but I say a prayer for it anyway.
I’m getting hungry, and the long twilight is starting. I decide to go down the back steps into that typical neighborhood and try to find an inexpensive bistro for dinner. But first, I need to get a macaron before all the patisseries close for the day.
At the base of the steps, I wander for a few blocks before I find a patisserie. At first I think it’s closed because a shade is drawn down the door, but I hear voices, lots and lots of voices, inside, so hesitantly, I push the door open.
It seems like a party is going on. The air is humid with so many people crammed together, and there are bottles of booze and bouquets of flowers. I begin to edge back out, but there is a huge booming protest from inside, so I open it up again, and they wave me in. Inside, there are maybe ten people, some of them still in bakers’ aprons, others in street clothes. They all have cups in hands, faces flushed with excitement.
In halting French, I ask if it might be possible to buy a macaron. There is much shuffling, and a macaron is produced. When I reach for my wallet, my money is refused. I start to head for the door, but before I get to it, I’m handed some Champagne in a paper cup. I raise the cup and everyone clinks with me and drinks. Then a burly guy with a handlebar mustache starts to cry and everyone pats him on the back.
I have no idea what’s going on. I look around questioningly, and one of the women starts talking very fast, in a very strong accent, so I don’t catch much, but I do catch bébé.
“Baby?” I exclaim in English.
The guy with the handlebar mustache hands me his telephone. On it is a photo of a puckered, red-faced thing in a blue cap. “Rémy!” he declares.
“Your son?” I ask. “Votre fils?”
Handlebar Mustache nods, then his eyes fill with tears.
“Félicitations!” I say. And then Handlebar Mustache embraces me in a huge hug, and the crowd claps and cheers.
A bottle of amber booze is passed around. When all our paper cups have been filled, people hold them up and offer different toasts or just say some version of cheers. Everyone takes a turn, and when it gets to me, I shout out what Jewish people say at times like this: “L’chaim!”
“It means ‘to life,’” I explain. And as I say it, I think that maybe this is what I was saying a prayer for back in the cathedral. To life.
“L’chaim,” the rowdy bakers repeat back to me. And then we drink.
Thirty-three
The next day, I accept Kelly’s invitation to join the Oz crew. Today they’re going to brave the Louvre. Tomorrow they’re going to Versailles. The day after that, they’re taking the train to Nice. I’m invited to come with them for all of it. I have ten days left on my ticket, and it feels like I’ve found as much as I’m going to find. I found out that he left me a note. Which is almost more than I could’ve hoped for. I am considering going with them to Nice. And, after my wonderful day yesterday, I’m also considering going off on my own somewhere.
After breakfast, we all get onto the Metro toward the Louvre. Nico and Shazzer are showing off some of their new clothes, which they got from a street market, and Kelly is making fun of them for coming to Paris to buy clothes made in China. “At least I got something local.” She thrusts out her wrist to show off her new high-tech digital French- manufactured watch. “There’s this huge store near VendÔme, all they sell is watches.”
“Why do you need a watch when you’re traveling?” Nick asks.
“How many bloody trains have we missed because someone’s phone alarm failed to go off?”
Nick gives her that one.
“You should see this place. It’s bloody enormous. They sell watches from all over; some of them cost a hundred thousand euros. Imagine spending that on a watch,” Kelly goes on, but I’ve stopped listening because I’m suddenly thinking of Céline. About what she said. About how I could get another watch. Another. Like she knew I lost my last one.
The Metro is pulling into a station, “I’m sorry,” I tell Kelly and the gang. “I’ve gotta go.”
_ _ _
“Where’s my watch? And where’s Willem?”
I find Céline in the club’s office, surrounded by stacks of paperwork, wearing a thick pair of eyeglasses that somehow makes her both more and less intimidating.
She looks up from her papers, all sleepy-eyed and, maddeningly, unsurprised.
“You said I could get another watch, which means you knew Willem had my watch,” I continue.
I expect her to deny it, to shoot me down. Instead, she gives me a dismissive little shrug. “Why would you do that? Give him such an expensive watch after one day? It is a little desperate, no?”
“As desperate as lying to me?”
She shrugs again, lazily taps on her computer. “I did not lie. You asked if I knew where to find him. I do not.”
“But you didn’t tell me everything, either. You saw him, after . . . after he, he left me.”
She does this thing, neither a nod nor a shake of the head, somewhere in between. A perfect expression of ambiguity. A diamond-encrusted stonewall.
And at just that moment, another one of Nathaniel’s French lessons comes back to me: “T’es toujours aussi salope?” I ask her.
One eyebrow goes up, but her cigarette goes into the ashtray. “You speak French now?” she asks, in French.
“Un petit peu.” A little bit.
She shuffles the paperwork, stubs out the smoldering cigarette. “Il faut mieux être salope que lâche,” she says.
I have no idea what she said. I do my best to keep a straight face as I try to find keywords to unlock the sentence like Madame taught us, salope, bitch; mieux, better. Lâche. Milk? No, that’s lait. But then I remember Madame’s refrain about venturing into the unknown being an act of bravery and her teaching us, as always, the opposite of courageux: lâche.
Did Céline just call me a coward? I feel the indignation travel from the back of my neck up to my ears to the top of my head. “You can’t call me that,” I sputter in English. “You don’t get to call me that. You don’t even know me!”
“I know enough,” she replies in English. “I know that you forfeited.” Forf
eit. I see myself waving a white flag.
“Forfeit? How did I forfeit?”
“You ran away.”
“What did the note say?” I am practically screaming now.
But the more excited I become, the more aloof she becomes. “I don’t know anything about it.”
“But you know something.”
She lights another cigarette and blows smoke on me. I wave it away. “Please, Céline, for a whole year, I’ve assumed the worst, and now I’m wondering if I assumed the wrong worst.”
More silence. Then “He had the, how do you say it, sue-tours.”
“Sue-tours?”
“Like with sewing on skin.” She points to her cheek.
“Sutures? Stitches? He had stitches?”
“Yes, and his face was very swollen, and his eye black.”
“What happened?”
“He would not tell me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”
“You did not ask me this yesterday.”
I want to be furious with her. Not just for this, but for being such a bitch that first day in Paris, for accusing me of cowardice. But I finally get that none of this is about Céline; it never was. I’m the one who told Willem I was in love with him. I’m the one who said that I’d take care of him. I’m the one who bailed.
I look up at Céline, who is watching me with the cagey expression of a cat eyeing a sleeping dog. “Je suis désolée,” I apologize. And then I pull the macaron out of my bag and give it to her. It’s raspberry, and I was saving it as a reward for confronting Céline. It is cheating Babs’s rule to give it to someone else, but somehow, I feel she’d approve.