Cocktails, Caviar and Diapers

by Duke, Renee

  “Okay guys. I’ll give notice on the apartment. They’ll have a fit but so what.”

  Just like that, I decided. No think, think, think. It feels clean. Goodbye divorce lawyers. Goodbye Evans on the phone. Goodbye concierge, reporting all my movements to the police. Goodbye to simpering “Bonjour madame” to the lady in the bakery.

  Whew! Goodbye to all this folderol of dinners and cocktail parties that I’m not going to anyway and then, no more police vans parked outside on the Left Bank streets, waiting to get an unwary student. Goodbye to being careful, wary, not walking on the grass or walking too fast or not being allowed to sing in the streets with my friends from the Beaux Arts.

  “We’ll have to be very organized. We’ll start working on it bit by bit and then we’ll go, just after Christmas. Hope we can fit all the presents in the car, eh Matthew? Hey, help me take the dishes in!”

  The night smiles at me from the huge old rooms, the rain beats on the metal shutters and runs down the gutters.

  This is the first time I have ever decided to do anything on my own, all by myself. I must be growing up.

  ***

  “Mais, Madame[34]!” My landlady is furious. Evans cannot believe that I would transplant us all to Scandinavia. The lawyers are relieved. They see my escape as a way to persuade my ex-husband to leave me alone, a few shreds of humanity still clinging to their paper.

  “Andrée,” says one lawyer, bending forward on his leather topped desk, fingertips joined, “you are doing a ridiculous thing to move so far from your family and friends. You will be sitting in Copenhagen alone, not speaking the language, no one to care for you. I recommend you go to England. There you can pursue your philosophical studies and I will make sure you get your alimony payments.”

  “If I can’t make it on my own, what is the point of getting divorced? Evans won’t let me go back to America for five years or he’ll stop alimony payments. Copenhagen is as far away as I can get from Paris and still be in Europe. I can always drive down if I must.”

  He lets me out of his smart chambers on the Rue de Rivoli and I know that I’ve broken all ties to my lawyers, that enormous group effort needed to separate two Americans in Paris that can’t live together anymore.

  ***

  “Andrée, this is just one more of your exaggerated ideas,” says Evans. “I suppose you must do it to see.”

  How drawn his face looks, so bitter. Poor man. I don’t like his point of view but it’s hard to lose a world.

  I wish we could start over. We could have done so much more but now it’s too late. Does he hear me when I speak? What other person does he put there?

  We are on different planets, shouting across a void.

  “Sorry, Evans. Please come up and see us in Copenhagen. I’ll send the boys down regularly.”

  “If they aren’t properly brought up, they’ll come down to live in Paris with me. I’ll send a social worker to make sure.”

  “Oh, really, Evans. What can they do there that’s different from here? They’ll be going to school and learning Danish and you’ll see them whenever you wish. They’ll learn to sail and be outdoors all day in the good air. It will prepare them for going back to the United States. It’s much more like America up there.”

  “Andrée, I’ll miss them. If you ever find that you need to be alone after all these years, I’ll take them.”

  “Evans, I know. They’re part of our life. Please come and see them.”

  “Andrée, I will never be able to get away from work long enough to get up there. You’re doing this on purpose.”

  “No, really, I’m not. I’m not doing it to hurt you. I just want to get away from Paris.”

  “Oh, Andrée, I give up. Marry a Danish baron so I don’t have to pay alimony. Barney’s up there, by the way. Marry him. I approve of him. You always liked him at Harvard.”

  “One minute you’re jealous and then you tell me to get married.”

  “It’s who you marry that I worry about. He’ll be with my children. He has to have money and education, someone I’d like.”

  “Well, Evans, hope for the best. I’ll wire you the minute we get to Copenhagen. Please send the money on time or I may have a tight squeeze. I’ll try and leave the apartment in good shape but if there’s any damage let me know and I’ll try and pay you back. Goodbye.”

  I kiss his cheek. A familiar cheek, familiar cologne, no longer for me to kiss. Goodbye to it all, good and bad. I hope we get to know each other someday.

  ***

  The movers at last! What organization! All my furniture, children’s toys, trunks, all filed away. I have a feeling I’ll never see it again.

  Ah, Eric is here. The boys were all shouting and yelling at each other this morning. He incites to riot. I wonder why?

  “Mummy, I went to see Daddy.”

  His eyes look slanted, the green clouded over. He looks away. He’s uncomfortable.

  “Fine. What did he have to say?”

  “You know, I agree with him. You shouldn’t just do these things, move away like this from Paris. What will you be doing up there? It sounds a bit crazy to me. This is our home, why leave it?”

  “Well, honey, if you want to stay, it’s okay by me. You can always come up later if we are living the way you like. I’m tired of being stuck in Paris. I want a new adventure.”

  Is it sibling conservatism or betrayal? He doesn’t like to change. There’s no reason he has to come with me, he may do better, alone with his father. I’m copping out too. I can’t manage him and the other boys very well anymore.

  “I think I’ll stay, if you don’t mind.”

  “Go ahead dear, go ahead. The children drive you crazy anyway. Leave me your bright blue sweater, will you?” One contact with him, the sweater.

  “Why, sure. It’s too small anyway. Mummy, I have to go now, I have a guitar lesson.”

  “Goodbye honey. Thanks.” For what I’m not sure.

  I watch him go down the heavily carpeted stairs one last time, and lean over the balustrade of the stair to see him out the door. Ghastly sentiment that he hates. Memories of a small figure in grey school shorts interfere with him as he is now.

  A mover, smelling of beer and wrapping paper, pushes past me. I’d better get to my survey station in the middle of the hall. Sixteen moves in twenty years. Yet it doesn’t seem so much. Each place is very clear in my mind. I wonder how that works?

  I look at my lists by the big gilded mirror. I look at my body in the mirror. It looks fine. To look at me no one would ever know anything is happening at all. Pregnancy is the only inner change that really shows on the outside, and I’ve made full use of that! In myself I seem the same as when I was five or fifteen. A mirror is a lying checkpoint. I’m never still except when I’m staring at myself in the mirror. How could it look like me?

  “Madame, the small room with the carpet is complete and so are the children’s rooms in the back.” Passing through them they all smell empty. Strange how familiar the movers are, they know the rooms as well as I do.

  I’ll shut the metal shutters and close off the rooms for good. Dust swings into my face. I still pinch my fingers on the hinge. Shutters. My bond with the French in the town, in the country. The family, sealed in by shutters, outsiders sealed out.

  “Kirsten, let’s see if we can make the boys’ part of the apartment look respectable. Duncan’s tricycle has obviously been run full tilt at the wall.”

  “You should see the bathroom–and the Irish girl’s room is disgusting.”

  Dear Kirsten, she has a Danish sense of how things should be, even if they never get to be that way.

  “Kirsten, do you want to stay here with your boyfriend until your visa runs out? It would suit me fine. I don’t know where I’ll be staying.”

  “Oh, yes, I’d like to see him more, get to know his family before we are separated. Why don’t we keep Duncan at his country house and I can bring him up with me? It might give my boyfriend some good ideas about gettin
g married.”

  “That would be great, would you really be able to do that? I think the trip would be terrible for him. He knows you both so well that he’ll have fun. Oh, Kirsten, thanks!”

  How nice people can be. Things seem to feel better already.

  “We’ll fix the details later. Let’s get the big clean under way!”

  She’s paid but it’s like working with a friend. We’ll put back the great impersonal apartment with ghosts whispering in the corners.

  ***

  Time to go. Snow. Damn. I’ll have to drive in the dark to Evan’s country house to meet the boys.

  The Autoroute du Nord, cluttered at its entrance with big bridges like Piranesi[35] etchings ... long stretches past housing developments under the heavy sky … thoughts flick in and out as the tires swish on the snow … the cathedral of St Denis, so old … the curve where Eric had an accident on his motorcycle.

  Small thoughts, drained of big ones.

  Senlis[36] is near, toll-takers bundled against the cold. Medieval stone town, ancient intrigue. Musketeers gallop through the night while shutters close. Evan’s house, the one I would have rented too. Massive stone wall, trees against it, flattened out for warmth. Leave the car in the abandoned sightseer’s lot. The wind blows the snow in circles around the town lights. Push open the giant wooden door. Like Mary Poppins I blow up the path on an ill wind.

  ***

  Now we are really all together and leaving France. What piles of boxes! We’ll never be able to fit them and us in the car.

  “Sean, the T.V. stations won’t be the same in Denmark. What about leaving your father the T.V. and we take the portable radio? Matthew, the hamster will have a rough trip. Do you really think we should take him?”

  His bright blue eyes implore me.

  “Please, Mummy, I’ve got lots of hamster food and we can pad the cage. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him.” Famous last words for Mothers.

  “Let’s see, if I put my painting materials in the leather carrier from the old Morgan, we can use that as a padding by the back door. Let’s hope Cleo doesn’t go crazy and eat him up. How about your electric organ?”

  Well, how about it. We’ll all squeeze in somehow. Suitcases on the top. Tarpaulin over them. Should weigh us down in the snow. The impossibility of this trip makes my blood run faster.

  “Let’s have a huge supper, boys, and get to bed. A last bath too.” No, not enough water. Relief for all of us. Why should children have a bath every night? They’re usually cleaner than the adults. I think we have them briefly trapped in the tub.

  “Let’s fill up the tub with hot water from several kettles. I’ll have the bath, creeps!” Wonderful old fashioned tub and big bathroom. The heater is on like a tropical sun. The blue contact paper is peeling off the twelfth century walls. What can ever match France? Am I leaving my true home like a naughty child? Will I be able to create a new world for us? Tune out. Ah, I can bum some of Evan’s cologne. Last sentimental gesture.

  Tomorrow, we’ll go as soon as Duncan is picked up by Kirsten. I climb into the big bed Evans and I shared for twenty years. Duncan! I hug his radiantly warm body, put him next to me and fall asleep.

  Chapter 12: The Trip

  Up at dawn. Off and laden down like an old barge.

  “Goodbye Senlis,” I chirp, “say goodbye, boys. We’re off.”

  “Ho, ho, ho,” mutters Sean. He sinks down on the seat, straight black hair pushed over his eyes like a veil, knobby knees against the dashboard.

  “Move over a bit, honey, I can’t shift the gears.” Matthew moves his head on my lap, happy to be the baby while Duncan is staying with Kirsten.

  “You know, Mummy,” says Randall, “you could build a double bridge entrance at the entrance to the autoroute and have double decker buses that unload passengers.”

  “Randall, it’s too early to go into that for me. Take the map and tell me where we are going.” Randall, folded up in the back, will soon be building a new car in his mind while he stares out the window.

  I only know these people in my car as children. Now I must know them as people. No, I always suspected there was more to having children than wanting to give them over to nannies and get away from them. Never had the courage to do it.

  What an adventure! The stubby fields go for miles in all directions. A faint drift of snow just outlines the furrows. Crisp air, warm car. Noah’s Ark.

  “Mummy, what is there about French towns that make them look so French?” Funny question for Randall to ask. Leek soup simmering on all the stoves? Used to be the Welsh, if I remember Shakespeare.

  “Maybe it’s the same type of sandy colored stone. They cluster their houses near a big church. I wonder if we’ll find Denmark different.”

  I wonder indeed. There aren’t many people who care. I can hear them now: “Poor Andrée, you know when she was forty, she just changed her life completely. She went where she didn’t know a soul, with her poor children. All for an idea, what was the idea? Get the family close, know the children, learn to think? Really, too ridiculous. You’ll see, in ten years they’ll leave her flat for their own lives. Where will she be then?”

  Maybe I should pick the lawyers: “Well, of course, Mrs. Smokestone, we have protected you in every way we can in the divorce agreement. However, on the other hand, you should really be earning a living as well. Times are hard, you know.” Indeed, times have been hard for thousands of years. I see no letup. What about me? I’m a “me”, not the times.

  Or, there’s Vanessa, sitting by the pool at the Piscine Deligny on a hot July day in Paris: “Actually, Andrée, your figure is still fine. I don’t see why you don’t try and get remarried or take a rich lover.”

  “But, Vanessa, I went to find out about myself and if I take up with another man, I’ll still be doing the same thing. I’ll still be letting a man run my life.”

  “Aren’t you letting a man run your life if you live on alimony? What’s the difference?”

  “I won’t have to get up in the morning to give him breakfast. I won’t have to be there smiling at night. I won’t have to fight him to survive.”

  “Ah, Andrée. One must always fight to survive. You can always get a job.”

  “I’ve spent so many years with English nannies and Irish au pair girls and Spanish cooks. I’ve let them do my work. I want to see what I’ve created here with these six children. Could it be that it’s fun to have a family? It couldn’t be as hard as we make out.”

  “Think of it. Seriously, you won’t ever be able to go out to cocktails or have a luncheon at the Plaza Athenée or Lipps with me. If you leave France, God knows who you’ll know.”

  Her porcelain skin and huge brown eyes belie the strong willed woman who is so truthfully self-centered. Capable and thoughtful in her way.

  It’s Vanessa I’ll miss, not the cocktails. Of all the potentially fine people I have known, who has seen me except through the veil of cocktail parties?

  When I think of them, making a big entrance at a party. Vogue-faced, smoothing my hair which had been so lacquered by the hairdresser that it naturally levitates off the pillow at night. Usually I would have just had a bitter, hissing fight with my husband in the elevator and I barely had time to compose my features. What could I have said that would reveal anything of myself? Actually, who cared? We made ourselves plastic people. There must be real people out here. It’s not just students and the workers that are real, whatever my fellow students at the Beaux Arts like to think.

  “Sean, what if I changed my name back to my maiden name? How would you feel?”

  “How should I feel, it’s your name. You’ll still be paying the bills no matter what name you have. It won’t change you.”

  “It’s the principle. You might feel disowned. I have always felt strange taking someone else’s name. Makes me feel owned, as if all my young years were cut off when I got married. What do you think?”

  “I don’t much care. I don’t think that anyone does exce
pt people your age.”

  I can see that I’ll have to start making up my own mind on things. The boys won’t let me get away with stealing what they think as a justification for my thoughts.

  There’s a drift of snow over the plains of Picardie. The sky is high, a luminous grey with dark clouds massing by the Belgian border. A bad sign. The dog and the hamster are quiet and the boys at rest. I’d better make some time.

  ***

  “Cleo needs walking, Mummy, she’s jumping all over,” complains Randall.

  Hard to slow down the car, it seems to have a life of its own. There’s a good side of the road to stop; bushes and trees and a long stretch of winter dried grass.