Paris Summer

by Rosemary Friedman

  I had had Rochelle Eléctronique morning, noon and night for the past six months. I could not tell Jordan but, combined with the weather and the inconveniences of Paris, I was ras le bol with Rochelle Eléctronique and would be glad when it was all over.

  I couldn’t believe that after all the traumas of the evening he still had the stamina to make love. That was Jordan. He had boundless energy. It went with the job. Eviscerated by the events of the day – it seemed a lifetime ago since the repairman had done battle with the fridge – the only thing I wanted to do was to crawl into bed, or rather to lie on top of it, and sleep. Knowing that to refuse Jordan, who was hovering expectantly, in his present fraught state, would be to knock a nail in the coffin of Rochelle Eléctronique, I held out my arms as the telephone rang and he answered it. I knew it could only be Sherman.

  He stroked me absent-mindedly with one hand as he filled his partner in with the events of the evening.

  ‘…It went good. Judith excelled herself…’ He kissed my neck. ‘I think you can put Leroy and his team on standby. Why don’t you call them? My guess is that they should get their asses over here by the end of next week. We’ll have to take a look at the fiscal situation and liaise with the tax people over here. We don’t want to land ourselves with hefty bills…’

  Saying goodnight to Sherman and reassuring him that his call hadn’t woken us, Jordan turned once more to me, this time giving me his full attention.

  ‘Sorry about that, darling.’

  When you have been married as long as Jordan and I have, making love can be a bit of a minefield. Given the nature not only of our genes but the various demands of our working days, it could at times be like going up the down escalator. When Meg Ryan faked an orgasm in a crowded restaurant in the seminal scene of the hit movie When Harry Met Sally, there was not a woman in the audience who did not empathize with what was going on. Women are born to fabricate and men are easy to deceive. It is the way of the world.

  Watching the Venetian chandelier – which needed a good clean – above my head, I did my best to join in the fun while my brain took off in a multitude of directions to do with Michelle and the fact that she was going away, and whether the chicken could have done with another fifteen minutes and if the Lafarges had noticed, and the burden of shopping every single day until the refrigerator was fixed, and wondering what time Helga would turn up after her party and whether I was responsible for her welfare, and should I have worn tights like Madame Lafarge instead of prancing around bare-legged…

  ‘Sorry?’

  Already Jordan, invariably considerate, was asking how was it for me. ‘Great,’ I said. ‘It was fine.’

  With hindsight tights would have been a good idea, but how was I to know?

  In the morning Jordan brought me coffee in bed before he went to the bank. ‘Thank you for last night. The Lafarges were impressed.’

  He was a good and considerate man. He had enough on his mind at the moment. Sometimes I thought I didn’t appreciate him enough. I got married to Jordan when I was very young. He was one of my first boyfriends. Today we would probably have lived together – in Michelle’s eyes marriage conjured up images of boredom and dullness; every film, every song was about dangerous liaisons and where was the frisson in marriage? But I’m still not at all convinced that it’s such a good idea. I’m not the kind of person that does a trial anything. Being tested makes me nervous.

  I wanted to tell Jordan that inviting the Lafarges home had probably been a good move on his part, they at least seemed to have enjoyed the evening, but he had switched on his memo-machine and was walking round the room as he dictated into it.

  ‘Memo to Judd Barnard, Boston, re. Rochelle Eléctronique. The tax boys here have advised two tax havens. Investment income through one and exports through the other. I’d appreciate your views on this. Say goodbye to Michelle…’

  It was today that Michelle was going away.

  ‘…I’ll try to call her from the office.’

  Stuffing the memo-machine into his pocket, he ruffled my hair, kissed my forehead – I could smell the shower soap – and was gone, bedecked with his coat, his briefcase, his laptop and his mobile phones. I thought he looked very sexy but of course Jordan had other things, not the least of which was Rochelle Eléctronique, on his mind.

  By the time I got up, Helga, still in her frilled blouse, mascara careering down her face, was sitting at the kitchen table over a tisane, reading a letter from Germany. There was no sign of Michelle.

  ‘How was the party?’

  ‘It was good.’ She yawned ostentatiously.

  I wondered if Hans-Dieter, whose ring she wore on her finger, would appreciate the fact that his betrothed had stayed out all night and was probably up to no good. I indicated the fallout from the previous night’s cooking. ‘I’m afraid there’s rather a mess…’

  Helga looked at me blankly. Giving the encrusted roasting-tin and the pots and pans in the sink up as a bad job, I made breakfast for Joey, who was absorbed in the Black Mollys and Dwarf Gouramis that rose pouting to the surface as he dropped in their morning flakes, and went to wake Michelle.

  With her thumb in her mouth, a habit she had not grown out of, and covered only by a sheet – her narrow room looked out on to a well and was already unbearably hot – she was in the foetal position, sleeping like a baby. About to lose her, if only for a few weeks, I allowed myself to remember the night she was born. Jordan had been hoping for a boy. It doesn’t matter what major events happen to you in life, there is still nothing to touch the birth of a child, particularly your first. Although today having a baby is, by and large, a joyful, privileged experience compared with the suffering and loss of maternal and infant life of a hundred years ago, nothing can prepare you for the earth-shattering pain, the unbelievable pleasure – the impression of being at one with the world, the post-orgasmic sensation, the tingling in every fibre of your being – of delivering a nine-pound bundle, which physiologically is far too large for the birth canal. Arriving, as she did, late (a habit she was not to relinquish) and unexpectedly and before there was time either for the niceties of the waterbirth for which I had elected or an epidural, Jordan and I only just made it to the hospital, before Michelle, crying vigorously, made her appearance on the stage and changed the face of our world.

  With Joey it was different. Firstly I had had an amniocentesis at sixteen weeks, so the fact that the baby turned out to be a boy was no surprise, and secondly because of difficulties with the presentation – spine to spine, which once would have led to abandonment to my fate – he was born by Caesarian section. Whether it was because he was my second child and I, a seasoned mother, or that I was preoccupied with the abdominal scar and severed muscles which were consequent upon his birth and caused considerable discomfort, I don’t know. The two experiences could not be compared. It might of course have been the fact that every mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother, and that every woman extends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter, a phenomenon which gives rise to sensations of immortality. Michelle and I were part of a feminine conspiracy and despite our differences, despite the hostility, jealousy, and sniping endemic between mothers and daughters – she got on a great deal better with Jordan with whom she forged an opposition alliance – we were somehow inextricably bonded. Like most mothers I yearned to put my hard-earned experience at the disposal of her young life, but I knew that she had to enter the lists for herself.

  She was so soundly asleep that I was reluctant to wake her. I touched her face, envying her her flawless skin and aware that mine, despite the latest anti-ageing creams, was already beginning to lose some of its elasticity. She was smiling in her sleep and it seemed a pity to disturb her. I put my hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Time to wake up. Lois will be here soon.’

  Lois was from Los Angeles where her father produced movies. Michelle had met her on the Sorbonne course and they were to travel together. When th
ere was no response and the steady pattern of Michelle’s breathing did not change, I looked round the room at the discarded underwear and half-worn teeshirts, the shorts and sneakers and diaphanous skirts which lay like sighs on the floor ready to go into the flaccid rucksack. The flags of her freedom.

  chapter six

  The two girls, wearing shorts and tank-tops, stood in the hall on the threshold of their lives while I, knowing that I was doing it and hating myself for it, fussed round like a mother hen wittering on about tickets and passports and money-belts and credit cards and remembering to email frequently with their whereabouts. Far from being embarrassed at my behaviour – you’d think they were venturing into outer space instead of wandering around Europe and ending up with friends of Lois’ in Tuscany – Michelle who was used to it, did not even notice. She was too busy shouting at Joey who in attempting to lift the open rucksack on to his narrow back while she put a last minute lace in her hiking boots, had disgorged some of the contents, including a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, maps, flip-flops and a box of Tampax, on to the floor. Among the detritus I recognized my Calvin Klein teeshirt.

  Michelle’s eyes met mine as she stuffed it into the rucksack. ‘Okay, okay… I swear I’ll bring it back.’

  ‘Are you going to bring me a present?’ Joey, who had even abandoned his Pokemon in order to see his sister off, sounded wistful. Despite the age difference, which had not been deliberate but was the way things had worked out, he was going to miss her.

  ‘If you stop being a pest.’

  ‘Michelle!’ Sensing an injustice, I defended Joey’s corner.

  ‘Okay, okay!’ Fastening the rucksack, Michelle addressed me. ‘I left my Levis on the bed. The zipper’s jammed.’

  Decoding this message as ‘take my jeans to the alteration shop and get them fixed by the time I come back’, I bit my long-suffering mothers’ tongue, both in the interests of a harmonious parting and the fact that Lois was there. Together with Helga, apparently now recovered from her nuit blanche and with a towel round her hair, which predicated another hour blow-drying her crowning glory while the dishes remained in the sink, I managed to hoist the rucksack up on to Michelle’s tanned shoulders, wondering how the two girls could possibly stagger to the métro never mind make their way round Europe.

  Michelle flung her plump arms around me. From the warmth of the embrace I knew that I wasn’t the only one who was a little bit afraid.

  ‘Bye, Mom. Say hi to Daddy for me. I called the office… You have to make an appointment to speak to him these days.’

  ‘He said to say goodbye. Take care…!’

  ‘“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”’ Joey’s voice was a passable imitation of my own.

  I kissed Lois on both cheeks.

  ‘Cheers Mrs Flatland.’

  ‘Look after each other.’

  Opening the front door for them, as if they could not even manage that, I pressed the bell on the elevator.

  ‘Mom!’ Joey rolled his eyes to the ornate ceiling.

  I had forgotten they would have to yomp down five flights of stairs.

  When they had gone the apartment felt empty. As if the life had gone out of it; which it had. Little as Michelle’s chaotic lifestyle fitted with our own, I missed her already and wanted to run after her with help and advice, to keep her, not only safe but grappled to my side. We had had the promiscuity and sex talks when Michelle was twelve, although even at that tender age it was spitting in the wind. The drugs spiel came later when I had been shocked to hear that many of the kids, some of them well-educated teenagers who had been indoctrinated with the myth of ‘responsible drug-taking’ and ‘harm-free’ drugs, were passing on the hash and going straight for the hard stuff. As parents it bothered us that the substances were so easily available. Both Jordan and I had tried to impress upon Michelle that cannabis – even one joint smoked every other day – hung around in the blood for weeks, hit the immune system, inhibited performance, could result in permanent brain damage, and that drug-dealing was the most corrupt industry in modern society.

  Watching Michelle and Lois venture into the unknown equipped only with their backpacks, into which their lives had been summarily crammed, I knew that I was a little bit jealous. When Jordan and I travelled, which we did quite frequently, it was never economy and usually five star hotels; Jordan would no longer have any truck with the romantic hideaways of our early marriage with their sagging beds, non-existent service and lack of business facilities. Going away meant mental lists of what to take (if not actually packing) at least three weeks in advance, itemized plans concerning Joey’s schedule of extra-curricular activities and social life, and stocking the freezer and planning for emergencies to lighten the load on my mother who flew in from Florida to look after him. It seemed a lifetime back that I had light-heartedly headed for the Adirondacks (India had been a no-no as far as my mother, who feared dirt and disease, was concerned), a long time since I could simply get up and go.

  The day stretched before me, empty and vapid. I would tidy Michelle’s room so that Helga could clean it, take her Levis to be mended, touch base with Nadine, drop Joey at his violin lesson on the Left Bank and, while I was waiting for him, do my shopping in the rue de Buci. Enervated by the heat, although it was not yet midday, and not yet ready to face my chores, I flopped on the bed and dialled Nadine’s number.

  The three of us, Lauren, Nadine, and myself, had been at high school together although Nadine, who had had an abortion which had gone sadly wrong resulting in a hysterectomy at the age of eighteen, had dropped out and entered finishing school in Switzerland where the acquisition of fluent French and German – she was a natural linguist – had been no disadvantage. Of Catholic origin and the oldest of four brothers and three sisters, she had put her organizing abilities to good use and as CEO of Anyoccasion.com was Boston’s number one party planner. Much in demand when there was a birthday or wedding to be celebrated, an art gallery to be subsidized, a theatre to be funded, a charity to be launched or a benefit to be shored up, she could put together anything from a mini-makeover for precocious nine-year-olds to a full-scale reproduction of the Palace of Versailles complete with Marie-Antoinette ball gowns, waiters dressed as flunkeys, imported Alpine and Japanese gardens and fountains which spurted champagne.

  Once she had invited Jordan and me to a black-tie dinner (5,000 dollars a plate to refurbish the Opera House), which embodied the cream of Boston new money. Aware of the fashionistas I would be up against, I had opted for a chic black dress and had had my hair styled and my nails freshly manicured to show off my Flatland engagement ring. I thought I had done a good job, but no sooner had I entered the arena of the Four Seasons Hotel than I felt like Little Orphan Annie. At our table alone, among the svelte bodies – their delicate systems sustained by egg-white omelettes, organic carrot petals and wheat-free everything – there was a gown of chrome sequins topped with a head-hugging helmet of yellow turkey feathers, a white leather mink-trimmed two-piece which revealed a taut midriff with a jewel in its navel, and a translucent tulle sheath hand-embroidered with so many birds of paradise in strategic places that you expected the wearer to take wing and fly away. But it was not the get-ups that left a lasting impression.

  As soon as they had been seated, the ladies, who had been consistently nipped and tucked to what amounted to perfection, set their purses, like duelling pistols, on the table before them. Putting the faded clutch purse, embroidered and given to me by Laetitia Mercy, above the place card that proclaimed ‘Mrs Jordan Flatland’ (an appellation I refuted) in ornate copperplate, my mouth dropped open as I looked around me at the circle of purses fashioned entirely from multicoloured rhinestones, each one a work of art. A green and gold frog, a black and white panda, a scarlet bedecked elephant, a purple eggplant, and a bunch of asparagus vied for supremacy. I had seen the ornate reticules in the locked showcase in Neiman Marcus and knew that the cheapest of them must have set the owner back thousands of dolla
rs.

  It was a night to remember, but meaningless to Jordan who had spent much of the evening talking shop with Sherman and who had never heard of a Judith Leiber purse.

  Successful as she was in her job, Nadine had her problems. Not the least of these were the anorexia to which she did not admit, although she could not have weighed in at more than ninety pounds, her childlessness (she would not hear of adoption) and Sherman’s sexual addiction for which he had undergone treatment in an Arizona clinic. In the face of his philandering, which was an open secret, she stood by her man who paradoxically worshipped the ground she stood on. Away from her office – there were few parties in August – Nadine was as bored with Paris as I. We exchanged moans about the garbage and the heat and the fact that we hardly saw our husbands and that when we did they had other things on their minds, and our yearning to be back in the air-conditioned comfort of Boston. My saga about tidying Michelle’s room and taking her jeans to be repaired and chauffeuring Joey to his violin lesson and shopping for vegetables in the rue de Buci and getting some lamb chops (his favourite) for Jordan’s dinner, elicited a telling silence from the other end of the telephone. I knew that for all her talent and success in business, Nadine would have willingly jettissoned Anyoccasion.com for a Joey or a Michelle of her own and a husband who came home at night to eat lamb chops. With the day looming uninvitingly in front of her, Nadine suggested we continue our dialogue at A Priori Thé, in the tranquil backwater of the Gallerie Vivienne where, if you were lucky enough to get a table, you could sit outside, and the chocolate cake, in Nadine’s own words – although she only ever picked at it before pushing it to the side of her plate – was ‘out of this world’. I told her another time because Jordan wanted dinner early, and that I would call her tomorrow.

  Organizing Michelle’s room (for which I would get no thanks, she probably wouldn’t even notice), and sorting the mêlée of clothes which, if not on the floor, were stuffed indiscriminately into the Louis XIV armoire, occupied me for longer than I had anticipated, and I was on my hands and knees folding sweaters and putting them into neat piles, a task I found inexplicably satisfying, when Joey reminded me that it was time for his music lesson.