Thomas and Beal in the Midi

by Christopher Tilghman

  “I think that’s what Arthur meant to say.”

  “Well, what else did he say? About me. What confidences did he break?”

  “None,” said Lawrence. This time he was the one to straighten, to deflect the moment by opening the picnic basket and spreading out the food. Bread, ham, mustard, fruit, a sugar cake. Beal was relieved that he didn’t bring along all those French foods that she would never really learn to appreciate: cheese, paté, cold fish in mayonnaise.

  “None,” she repeated, and then added the word he’d left space for but hadn’t said. “But?”

  “No but. Just that you and he do share confidences. Keeping secrets means you have secrets. I envy him. He loves you, but he doesn’t want you. He’s the luckiest man alive. He is a free man in your presence.”

  “I don’t want anyone to be anything but free in my presence.”

  “That isn’t something you have any control over.”

  “But not something I have to accept.”

  He handed her a deviled egg on a napkin. “Good?” he asked.

  “Yes.” As she was finishing the last of her egg, an especially charming young couple emerged from the bushes right above them, and the young woman glanced at Beal first in apology, glanced at Lawrence, and then looked back to her with a wink of solidarity. With Thomas, this was the kind of thing that never happened: that second look was always perplexed, at best.

  “Is there really no girl for you in Boston? Someone to make you forget about me?”

  “I am under great pressure in Boston. I would have to marry a queen. Like you.”

  “Please, Lawrence. Not this again. I am trying to live my life.”

  “I know,” he said glumly. “I know you are.”

  “Can’t we just drop this? Goodrum and Sons and St. Adelelmus. We’re not in Boston and we’re not in Azay-sur-Cesse. Can’t we just be gay? This is so beautiful. If you’re going to court me, I’d like it to be a gay courtship. Not something tragic. No opera, please. I would like just to be gay for a few days.”

  The next day, she took him to the Louvre. Although he hadn’t planned it this way, she was showing him the stations on her way that winter, the paintings that had seemed to speak to her, to comfort her during those times. They lingered, because they could not help it, in front of the gigantic The Raft of the Medusa, and she laughed when he said, “Look at that African in the back. He’s the one person in this whole scene who does not deserve what is happening to him.”

  She told him the story of the sinking of the French frigate Medusa off the coast of Mauritania, 150 men left drifting on a makeshift raft. “No one went to look for them, and only fifteen were alive when they were rescued—by accident. The colored man was named Jean Charles. I don’t know why he was on the ship in the first place, but he’s the one who is actually looking for a way out.”

  They toured the various galleries that had been home to her in those months, and she surprised herself by how much she knew, how much she had to say about so many of the paintings. The Dutch—what fun it was to see again their little scenes of the home, of lives lived fully, without want. She didn’t try to impress Lawrence—that was the last thing she wanted to do—but by the end he was both bored and amazed by the depth of her knowledge. “Three months before you sat here, you were a housemaid in Virginia. Can that really be right? There wasn’t some gap in there that I know nothing about?”

  She laughed. “No college. No swimming tests. Just my winter”—she waved her hand around at the Titians in front of them—“here.”

  “Doesn’t that strike you as kind of amazing? I mean unbelievable, literally. Kind of hard to believe?”

  “You’re telling me I am lying? That Thomas and I have made up the story of our lives to deceive someone?”

  “Of course not. But there was another man in there. Wasn’t there. That sort of gap, in your story.”

  “There was a man who haunted me and tried to hurt me, and if you want to talk any more about that, I will refuse to ever see you again.”

  She had stopped him, but he did not want to let it go. “Well,” he said, “you have been made over. I guess we leave it at that.”

  “That’s the specialty of Paris,” she said.

  As they came out of the Louvre, he suggested that they wander over to Les Halles, perhaps find a nice café. Was he toying with her? Could Arthur have possibly told him anything about this? She stopped walking and stared into his eyes, but the truth was, she saw no knowledge, no subterfuge. “You know,” he said, “the market?”

  “I know Les Halles,” she said, “but it is time I got back to Gabriella and the children.” Which it was; Gabriella had not relented in the least, and Beal bought her way back in by telling her that she was being silly and that Lawrence would soon be leaving for his buying trip. She loved Thomas and her children, she said, and she loved Gabriella. Who could doubt this? Gabriella pointed out that Mother Lucy seemed to have stabilized. She was worried about her own mother, she was homesick, and she hoped they would soon be going back to Languedoc. “Of course we are,” said Beal. “Don’t you think I am homesick too?”

  But two days later Lawrence was taking her out to the theater, and dinner afterward, and a few days after that, an afternoon at Montparnasse and then a long day trip to Versailles. These were all the sights any tourist would see, but on her first sojourn here, Beal had seen few of them. She and Thomas had not been tourists; their stay had been all business, if also all love. These outings occupied the gray area in between, and she realized that people made trips like this not so much to see the sights as to have an excuse to spend time in one another’s company.

  And then—would there be the other kind of time in his company? Lawrence had been mysterious about where he was staying in Paris, and that suited Beal, but would he offer a country inn on their return from Versailles? Pop off the train in Sèvres maybe, everything all arranged. Beal didn’t want to think of it, but she did think of it because that’s what courtship was supposed to lead to. Because that was the test, it seemed, of everything between a man and a woman, as stupid as it sounded when said like that. Beal was a farm girl; there was no domesticated species she hadn’t seen copulating. Lawrence was being proper, but he was as sneaky as a rooster. Would he pounce? It was easy for her to imagine the whole thing, the awkwardness, the undressing, the touching—easy for her to imagine because she had done it before. She could even imagine that it would be fun, that she would like it. She assumed that Lawrence thought of it every day, but it was one subject he never even hinted at. Then, in the train back from Versailles, she had an extraordinary revelation: He had never had sex, not even with a prostitute. Lawrence had indeed been a shy boy, and he was, for all his show, a shy man who didn’t know the first thing about how to make it happen. So if it were to be, Beal knew it would happen only if she took the lead, which was the best possible situation.

  To keep from having to think of this, they talked. Talking was all that she needed from Lawrence. They talked and talked and talked; such a change from Thomas. She had grown up in Tuckertown with storytellers but had never known anyone like Lawrence, someone who talked as he did with such ease, who could talk about anything, and about nothing. It felt good to Beal to say things, to converse. But sometimes, riding in a cab or sitting in a café, she found herself a little tired, wishing for the ease of silence. She had delayed their return to St. Adelelmus once again, but all this bright chitchat, all this gaiety—well, once she recognized that he would never be able to back her into a corner, that she couldn’t escape except through a bed somewhere, the chatter lost its thrill. It was becoming tiresome. Lawrence seemed too eager to please; she guessed that was what he thought courtship should be, but for her, the whole thing was a spectacle, all those professions of love. Paris was just a backdrop; for all she actually went into the buildings on street after street, they could be stage fronts. Who were the players here, the ones this city had been created for? Perhaps not Beal, though for a few tiny inst
ants in the past—say, January of their first year—she believed it could be for her. But not now. The more this went on, the more it became an unreal city for her, a city of ants, or dreams; she began to wonder what she was doing here when St. Adelelmus beckoned, when Gabriella and the children were caught in the froth of her indecision, and now, of her boredom. Things were becoming clear to her, thoughts became objects that she could observe, tuck away or bring forth. Lawrence was not one of those objects; he was mist, or foam. She felt as a physical sensation pieces of herself rearranging, like a ship’s cargo that had become unlashed in a rough sea.

  After three weeks of this, one afternoon Beal and Lawrence were walking along the Champs-Élysées. She did not want to admit it to herself, but all along she had been steering them toward safe territory for her, these Right Bank haunts where she and Thomas had never gone, where none of the artists she knew would ever visit. Far too expensive, for one thing, though Lawrence seemed pleased to let Goodrum & Sons give her the kind of luxe she’d asked for. They ended up at the bottom of the avenue in a café called Le Rond Point, and Beal surprised herself by asking for a glass of Champagne. He ordered a bottle. She found the first sparkling glass surprisingly refreshing and asked the waiter for a second. That morning she had promised Gabriella that this would be the last time she saw Lawrence. Why not have fun, why not be dangerous? Why not, especially because he had pressed his case, had made his last wagers and had fallen short. For the first time, she asked herself exactly what it was that had attracted her to him. The wine was helping her see things clearly; maybe wine had a use after all.

  “Sometimes I used to think I married a man who is too serious for me,” she said. “I was just a girl who loved to laugh. The only times I wasn’t laughing when I grew up was when I was with Thomas. I had to change my face when I saw him. But maybe that was good.”

  Lawrence seized on the opening, as she assumed he would. “I don’t care about whether the man you married is too serious. I just care that the man you married isn’t me.”

  This response struck her as stupid and dull; ardor is a tune with one note. She was getting tired of this, and the bubbles had loosened her manners. “Oh? Tell me. What would my life be as Mrs. Lawrence Goodrum?”

  “You’re teasing me.”

  “No. Really.” She leaned forward to prop her elbows on the table and tip her chin into her hands. There was a painting of a woman doing this that she had always liked. Was it Toulouse-Lautrec? Manet? A girl at a bar.

  “I have already told you. I have already proposed to you.”

  “But you have not proposed that we sleep together.”

  He recoiled, but was able to stammer out that sleeping together would be a joy too complete to be imagined.

  “I have thought about it, you know. I have thought about you and me together. Over the winter, when the winds near blew us off our feet, I found myself wondering what I would be doing at that very second if I was married to you. Would I be having ladies, white ladies, to tea? Would I be at the dressmaker’s? Would your sister and I be walking in Black Bay?”

  He corrected her: “Back Bay.”

  “Oh, wherever. Now you’re being a pill.”

  “Beal. Please.”

  “When we met you, it was Boston this and Boston that.”

  Even as she was spouting away like this, Beal realized that she was causing Lawrence pain. She didn’t know why, but in some awful way it gave her pleasure. This snippy, mean little girl thing; the pleasure it gave her in the pit of her stomach was all sexual. This was the only sex she would have with Lawrence. She’d seen the Parisian girls practically make their suitors crawl on all fours, and the men did it willingly. At the Bon Marché, back then, she’d see the sick, almost terrified look on the men’s faces as their lovers amassed their purchases, and Beal knew, as not all people would, that the women were sucking every centime out of the man’s purse. She realized now that this terror and abuse was part of the dance, that when the girl finally allowed him into her bed, he would attack her, stab into her just to get back, and she would be sore for days; the kind of girl who played this game would want this rough treatment at the end. Yes, the man would take what he’d paid for and then some, and just to make sure she had understood everything, Beal lingered on this image, the lovemaking, and she could feel the warmth of it in her own body.

  “Ask me to sleep with you,” she said.

  “So you can refuse? So you can destroy me?”

  “I’d like another glass of Champagne,” she said.

  “You have had enough. You’re not used to it. You’re drunk. I’ll get you a cab.”

  “So tell me. Why don’t I know where you are staying? Why do I have to send my letters to the poste?” It seemed with every word she was scoring more points, making him wince.

  “It’s just more convenient.”

  “Show me.”

  “There is nothing more that I would like. But not now. Not with you being like this.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like unworthy of yourself. Like worthy neither of me nor of your husband.”

  Beal couldn’t believe she had earned quite that, a two-pronged assault, shaming her on both sides. Wasn’t she just being a little playful? Wasn’t this how one flirted? She was too wobbly to be angry but sober enough to be hurt. “Why are you so mad at me?”

  “Because you have no idea what it has cost me to spend this time with you.”

  “I never asked you here. I told you not to expect anything from me.”

  “Don’t be a child. You have encouraged my affections since the first time you drove me to La Fontaine. The mistake I made was to believe you wanted them. That you weren’t just playing the coquette.”

  Beal wanted to defend herself, but useful words did not come, and besides, she could see fury in Lawrence’s eyes.

  “All this talk of ‘my husband.’ All this ‘I’ll tell Ibarra to turn the carriage around.’” For a second she was frightened of him. “You think you’re innocent, but there is nothing the least bit innocent about your innocence.” Beal’s head swam with that, as much of the meaning as she could parse; each attack seemed unfair yet strangely illuminating. “I’d hate to think that I have wasted years of my life, that I have longed almost to die, that the greatest love I have ever known has been for a woman who…”

  Beal’s brain was flooded, flooded with wine, with all this hard truth being poured into the middle of a harmless little pastime. “Who what?” she asked blankly.

  “I don’t know. You tell me, if you want. What kind of woman have you been to me?”

  She tried to answer, but it was impossible, and soon they were in a cab, her cheek rattling against the window. Lawrence walked her up to the apartment, and as soon as Gabriella saw her, she recognized that she was drunk. Words were spoken between Lawrence and Gabriella, but Beal could not concentrate enough to make out what they were saying, in what language, with what intent. It was still only late afternoon, but Gabriella put her to bed. She awoke in the middle of the night with a headache, miserable, mortified. She sat at her window and waited for the predawn arrival of the merchants, those kind and simple people who had befriended her when she couldn’t say a word of their language, when she was innocent of almost every offense she had now committed. It was the Champagne. Why was Thomas in the business of making this sort of thing happen to people who were otherwise decent and thoughtful? Was this what St. Adelelmus was wreaking on the world? But that line only went so far. It wasn’t Champagne, she understood, that made cruelty into pleasure. That made her unworthy. Maybe it was the city, Paris itself, that made her behave like this. She nodded off for a time, and when she awoke again, the greengrocers and fishmongers and butchers had begun to set out, as they did day after day after day, their wares in colorful array; imagine if they knew what Beal had been up to, the cruelty of her favors. The fault did not lie in Paris, but it was time to go home. Mother Lucy was beginning to suspect something; there could be no secrets fr
om her. Beal was risking all, beginning with Gabriella’s love. And Thomas; it had been almost three months since she’d seen him, since she had heard his voice, felt the intimacy of his body.

  But she could not simply leave it with Lawrence like this. She couldn’t have him in the world thinking she was unworthy. In the morning she sent him a note of apology—what could she say?—by pneumatic post, asking if he would agree to meet, and if he did not come, she would take that as the answer that she most probably deserved. She would tell him that the whole terrible episode was her fault, that yes, she had lied to him, a little, when she said he had no chance with her. Because he did have some sort of chance. She didn’t mind a bit being courted, and when, finally, she figured out what she was doing, she lashed out. Yes, she was unworthy. She would tell him that he had given her the gift of his affection, his belief in her, and she was unworthy of it. She proposed dinner, a final dinner in her mind, and a few hours later the response came that he would call on her at the rue Cler at six o’clock. About dinner the reply said nothing.

  It was a rainy day, a day with a touch of fall to it. They were into August, which meant the summer was done; the Paris idyll was over. She would be leaving with no regrets. Whatever Paris had ever meant to her, whatever it could do for her, it was done. She had outgrown it; Diallo Touré was right again. The rest of Paris was left to the greengrocers, to the grisettes and the clerks, to the artists, to the families and aristocrats. Beal was none of these.

  She had told Gabriella that she would be going out that evening, that this was the end of it, that there was nothing to fear. She begged Gabriella to believe in her, to trust her this time. Gabriella said that she could have no opinion on it. Beal must do whatever she thought was correct. What they had, earlier in the summer, was now gone, and Beal grieved for that almost as much as anything else. Those hot July days, those nights with Gabriella beside her in bed, smelling her hair, a hand on her hip. Why couldn’t that have lasted; why did she risk it? Randall was becoming a little boy; Céleste was sitting up, almost getting ready to walk at a ridiculously early age. Beal was ready to return. She wished with all her heart that she had not agreed to the evening ahead, that she could send a note to Lawrence with her regrets.