Paris Summer

by Rosemary Friedman

  ‘It’s over, Félix. I thought I loved you…’

  ‘Thought you loved me?’

  ‘It was an interlude. A summer interlude.’

  I took a deep breath.

  ‘I made a mistake.’

  Félix looked bewildered. ‘What are you talking about? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Us. You and me. It was an affair. A cinq à sept.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing happened.’ I had been expelled from paradise. ‘I made a middle-aged fool of myself.’

  Withdrawing my fingers as Félix reached for them, I was glad that he could not see the invisible tears that choked me behind my shades. I picked up my glass which was damp with condensation, needing something to do with my hands.

  ‘I thought we were happy.’

  ‘Perhaps human beings don’t need to be happy. Perhaps they aren’t meant to be.’

  ‘You’re angry about something. Are you angry with me?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘This has to do with Jordan.’

  I recalled the covenant I had made with Jordan and my heart which so short a while ago I had given to Félix.

  ‘It has nothing to do with Jordan.’

  ‘If you go back to Boston, Judith, my life is finished…’

  I wondered would Félix kill himself like other spurned lovers. Would he turn his face to the wall and perish. Would he lose his mind and do something terrible. Would he walk out into the snow and die.

  ‘I can’t live without you, Judith.’

  Witnessing his suffering I felt my own despair, the sensation of guilt which accompanied the withdrawal of my love, overwhelm me.

  ‘Don’t make it…difficult.’

  ‘Difficult! You want me to make it easy? I love you. Je t’aime, tu comprends? The two of us together. Your body next to mine… You think love goes away because you ask it to?’

  There was no answer to the question, or the answer was so atavistic, so deeply submerged that it was as good as buried.

  I finished my Pernod.

  ‘Il faut que je m’en aille.’

  ‘You can’t go. I love you…’

  I looked at my watch.

  ‘Jordan wants dinner early?’ There was fury in Félix’s voice.

  ‘It’s a celebration dinner. Jordan has pulled off his deal.’

  I touched Félix’s arm beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt. It nearly did for me. Drops of water fell on to the dimpled aluminium table. I looked up at the gathering clouds thinking that it must be raining.

  ‘You love me, Judith.’

  Summoning up my strength I pushed back my wicker chair.

  ‘Goodbye, Félix.’

  ‘You know you love me.’

  Standing up I crossed the street.

  ‘Judith!’

  From the other side of the rue de Buci, almost running, I looked round as Félix hurled some money into the ashtray.

  ‘Wait, Judith!’

  I pushed my way past the tourists clutching bottles of mineral water, the hunchback with his shopping basket, the rollerbladers, and two blue-shirted gendarmes with their pistols who were salivating in front of the chocolate-filled window of the bonbonnerie, towards the rue St Benoit where I had left the car.

  ‘Judith! Come back.’

  We were in the rue de l’Abbaye, separated by the traffic, by the drivers hurrying to get home. Félix was running along the sidewalk, struggling to reach me.

  ‘You do love me Judith!’ I saw him look to right and left before launching himself in front of a delivery van which braked sharply.

  ‘No!’

  I was impervious to the curious heads turning. Eluding him, I dived into the passage privé past the Indiana Café, the toyshop with its leering teddies and the Pedicures Medicales, twisting my ankle on the cobbles and losing myself in the crowds.

  ‘No,’ I yelled. ‘No!’

  Had I not stopped at a bar, standing at the zinc in my black and white dress, oblivious to the predatory glances of the perched male conspiracy ostensibly watching football on TV, I might have remembered the memo-recorder sooner and that I had to get to it before Jordan. It had completely slipped my mind.

  I seethed and cursed in the already gridlocked traffic crawling towards the river as a giant truck blocked the road. The strike was over and the garbage men were gathering up the black bags, shouting obscenities at each other, taking their time. Glancing at the cheery little icon on the dash, I saw that it registered empty and that in my delirium at going to Félix I had forgotten to fill the tank. Frantic and sweating in the sardine tin that was the Renault, I was afraid that I would run out of gas. I was making minuscule headway when a seemingly endless procession of nuns in grey habits, hands folded sedately before them, crossed the road in front of me. I was wondering were they trying to tell me something, when I realized that, in accordance with sod’s law of which I seemed to have fallen inextricably foul, the rue de Seine, my shortest route, was temporarily barrée. Joining the long line for the deviation which would take me round the one-way system, I prayed that Jordan was not yet home.

  By the time I reached the Boulevard Courcelles the cars were bumper to bumper and there was nowhere to park. Recklessly abandoning the Renault on the sidewalk and with my skirt cleaving to my legs, I ran the length of the street to find that the elevator, which always chose its moments, was en panne and that I would have to run up the five flights of stairs.

  In the apartment Joey, damp and smelling of chlorine, was in the hallway playing happily with his remote control car. He struggled to escape from the relieved embrace in which I encircled him, unable to separate his image from that of the boy, lying in the pool of his own blood, clutching his baguette.

  ‘Let me go, Mom.’

  That was the one thing I could not do.

  Jordan was in the bedroom incandescent with triumph. When he saw me, out of breath and dishevelled, my face stained with tears, he looked at me oddly. The memo-recorder was no longer by the bed. I stood by the door in my crumpled black and white dress in horror, waiting for what was to come. Jordan stared at me for a long moment.

  ‘Nadine said you’d gone to the coiffeuse.’

  I put a hand to my dishevelled hair which tumbled from Michelle’s Alice band.

  ‘The hairdresser was closed.’

  From the bathroom, while he was showering, his tongue loosened by the champagne with which he had been celebrating, Jordan related the events of his day. How the Viscomte had telephoned at one minute to twelve as the courier was impatiently waiting, how the French Government, whose reputation was at stake, had finally backed down. How the Rochelle Eléctronique deal would be safely signed, sealed and delivered in a few days at which point we would be going back to Boston. If he had listened to his memo-recorder, for which I searched frantically while he was in the shower but which I could not find, nothing was said, and I put his over-the-top behaviour – he was full of wild and uncharacteristic bonhomie – down to the champagne.

  I don’t know how I managed to smile through the iced soup and the gigot amid the vociferous sea of jubilant men in their shirtsleeves (Jordan had insisted that they remove their coats) who surreptitiously wiped the perspiration from their foreheads as they raised excited glasses to the man of the moment, to Rochelle Eléctronique, to Cavendish Holdings and to Pilcher Bain.

  In the dark oak dining-room I sat at the head of the table in my green Givenchy dress, my emerald earrings, my hair knotted tight on my head, making conversation to an expansive Claude Lafarge who had managed to lean on the Viscomte de Loisy and having persuaded him, during the course of several meetings, to withdraw the golden share clause, had apparently saved the day. He waxed lyrical about Jordan’s tough and uncompromising strategy and insisted I drink a toast to my husband who – blind to the fact that my heart was breaking – impassively met my eyes over the blatant arrangement of red roses Nadine had innocently placed on the table.

  With the pièce de r�
�sistance, carried in by the chef herself in a spotless white tunic, came a dramatic flash of lightening, then the room darkened and the curtains flapped angrily at the open windows. As she triumphantly set the overblown soufflé (‘you can’t hurry a soufflé’) on the mahogany buffet, there was a deafening clap of thunder and the rain, for which we had been waiting for weeks, finally fell, putting an end to the long hot summer.

  Coffee was served in the salon where Jordan plied his colleagues with Cognac and proffered cigars to the few who smoked. When the telephone rang in the hall I rushed to answer it.

  Just the timbre of Félix’s voice made me feel faint. Above the noise which emanated from the salon we could not be heard. Outside the rain was beating against the windows. I let him speak, let him tell him how much he loved me, how crucial I was to his life and how he was at a loss to comprehend why, after the intimacy we had created, an understanding so tender that everyone else was excluded, I had in a moment become alien, had stepped outside our charmed circle.

  ‘I don’t understand, Judith.’ He said it over and over. ‘I don’t understand.’

  How could I make him understand when I didn’t understand myself why I had thrown away my chance of happiness, walked away from the garden of Eden.

  ‘Listen carefully Félix…’

  ‘You love me!’ He wasn’t listening. I pictured him in the studio, pacing up and down before my likeness, reclining on the daybed, testament to our love.

  ‘I thought it was love. It was a romance. A summer romance.’ Making my voice light, attempting to make it mocking, to make the situation less hard to bear, I listened to the rain beating against the windows. ‘It was a wager,’ I said. ‘You won your bet. Go back to Olympe.’ I turned the knife. ‘The summer is over.’

  In the salon, like the warriors of old, the men of finance were exchanging stories of derring-do. Jordan looked at me through the blue haze of smoke but he did not enquire who it was who had called.

  It was after midnight when the last of the band departed. Unwilling to bring the evening to an end, Sherman stayed behind to chew over the victory when the others had made their inebriated way to the elevator.

  ‘A wonderful dinner, Judith.’

  ‘Thank Nadine. I had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘What do you think of your husband?’

  I did not think. I could not think. It was as if I were paralysed and another Judith was thinking, moving, going through the motions of putting the room to rights, emptying the ashtrays for me.

  ‘He’ll be on the board in no time,’ Sherman put an affectionate arm round his friend. ‘That scheme he came up with was nothing short of masterly. He would have gone ahead with it too. Doesn’t like being double-crossed. Do you know what this man here was doing while he was waiting for the Viscomte to telephone and we were all chewing our fingernails. Practising his putting! For Chrissakes, our future was on the line and he was practising his putting. You’ve got one hell of a cool husband. Are you looking forward to going home, Judith? Nadine can’t wait.’

  Lumping me together with Nadine, Sherman didn’t wait for an answer. Devoted to love but unable to commit himself, women for him were not thinking, feeling human beings but indifferent objects existing only to satisfy the desires he was unable to control.

  There are those who argue that ‘love’ does not exist, that it is a linguistic construct which provides the excuse for social, literary and political con tricks, that it is a state of physical and psychological arousal on which we confer the name of Eros while deluding ourselves with illusory grandeurs. Sick with love, yearning for Félix, my heart fragmented. I could not accept that the days of wine and roses were over and, unlike Nadine, I was not looking forward to going back to what I doubted would ever again seem like ‘home’. I did not even know if, forced to become one person again after being two, I would have the strength to leave Paris.

  When Sherman finally departed, I made myself busy in the kitchen although the caterers had left the place spotless and had spirited away the leftover food, and there was nothing for me to do except stare unseeingly as the Black Mollys and the guppies swum back and forth mindlessly in Joey’s fish-tank.

  I could not believe that in three days I would be going to back to my life in Boston, to taking care of the laundry and feeding the dog and making blueberry muffins for the school bake sale; that I would never again see the rue de Buci, the transvestite on his heels, the hunchback with his panier, and that the pinnacle of my week would be going out for a pizza with Nadine and Sherman rather than cracking leisurely crab claws face à face with my lover at a table for two in the Place de Clichy.

  ‘I can hardly believe it’s over,’ Jordan said when, unable to procrastinate any longer, I finally went into the bedroom. High on the adrenalin of his success, he was not looking the least tired.

  I listened, undressing slowly, while he recounted in exuberant detail the exact sequence of events at Pilcher Bain as he and his team waited to know the outcome of Rochelle Eléctronique.

  ‘It could so easily have gone the other way,’ Jordan said. ‘It might well have done had it not been for Claude Lafarge.’

  Sitting at the dressing-table, I brushed my hair remembering how Félix had brushed it, slowly, tenderly, and listened to Jordan holding forth about earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, and future takeover opportunities – subjects dear to his heart. As the early morning cars hissed along the Boulevard Courcelles, I climbed reluctantly into the lit bateau, dreading what might come.

  ‘How was your day?’ Jordan said as he removed his Rolex, checking its face automatically with the bedside clock which told the time on two continents. I wondered was he testing me, playing a game with me as he had played a game with the Viscomte de Loisy. Had he listened to my message on the memo-recorder and was he taking me to the edge? His voice was equable as usual, revealing nothing. A skilled poker player – he and Sherman had a regular game – Jordan never revealed his hand.

  Was it only eight hours ago that I was contemplating leaving him and never going back to Boston. Lauren had been wrong. I would not miss the gym and the Museum of Fine Arts; I would not miss my jobette and my colleagues and I certainly wouldn’t miss my dried-up stick of a mother-in-law. Delaying the moment, I rearranged the books on my bedside, the Sonnets from the Portuguese Félix had given me, the untouched bottle of pills prescribed by Dr Katz, and lay down on the square linen pillows with their borders of yellowing lace. Turning out the lamp I felt the warmth of Jordan’s body permeate mine, then heard his heavy breathing. Knocked out by the champagne, exhausted by his triumphant day, he was asleep.

  chapter twenty-two

  I hate airports. Like God’s ante-room. I suppose because I don’t like flying and am surprised every time the plane that I am travelling on makes a safe landing. It always amazes me that among the myriad faces of every age, every hue, every ethnic persuasion milling hither and thither, arriving and departing, no two are the same. The Flatlands, having checked in their mini-Everest of baggage, made a nervous little group outside the departure gate. Jordan, the conquering hero with his invisible wreath of laurels, anxious to wipe the dust of Paris from his feet and champing at the bit to get back to Boston; Michelle with her curled lip, on her mobile phone to Lois and standing, with her back to me, as far away as possible; Helga, rendered more useless than usual by the lure of Bananafanna Sundaes; Lauren, good old Lauren, who had come to see us off, to make sure that I got on the plane; and Joey, for whom we were all waiting, who had dashed off to buy a comic although Jordan had told him a dozen times to wait until we were through departure.

  Packing was not my favourite occupation at the best of times, but ridding the apartment in the Boulevard Courcelles of the Flatland presence constituted a Sisyphean task as each suitcase was filled, each scarlet strap – Jordan insisted on easy identification – fastened over the well-worn valises, took me further away from Félix. Had it not been for Lauren I doubt I would have made it.r />
  Coming into the apartment to see if there was anything she could do to help, she had found me sitting inert on the bed, surrounded by piles of garments prised from the heavy armoires, the cumbersome drawers, with tears running down my face.

  ‘Why are you crying?’

  ‘I’m not crying, I’m weeping.’

  ‘Crying, weeping… Come on now, honey, everything’s going to be all right.’

  It was the sort of platitude you uttered to one bereaved. It was as if someone had died, as if I had been abandoned, although paradoxically it was I who had done the abandoning. Aristophanes had been right in describing the search by each half of the original double-being for the other. He had touched a nerve that still quivered, inspiring images of something lost, some longed-for wholeness from which I had unaccountably walked away. The pain was insupportable and the past few days, in which there had been no word from Félix, had been filled with a kaleidoscope of conflicting emotions, depression and despair.

  ‘Look upon it as an illness,’ Lauren said. ‘You have to give yourself time to recover. Convalescence can last a long while. It can be painful.’

  Love does not go away for the asking. I doubted if recovery would occur at all. Three times in the past few days, unable to help myself, I had telephoned Félix needing, like a shot on which I had become dependent, to hear his voice. Twice there had been no reply and I imagined the telephone ringing and ringing in the studio with its easel – had he removed my picture? – its mug of sharpened pencils, its wooden case of paints. On the third occasion a woman had answered – Olympe? – and I had slammed down the phone. Each time the telephone rang in the apartment I had rushed to answer it. It was for Michelle, for Helga, for Joey, the agent about the electricity and the gas. I had hardly seen Jordan who together with his team was busy finalizing the Rochelle Eléctronique contracts. When our paths did cross it was to discuss the nuts and bolts of leaving and the travel arrangements. At night he had been too tired, or too distracted to make love.