The Engagements

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  Sometime after two a.m. she got up for a glass of water. James was watching television in the darkened living room. When she saw him there, she turned to go, but he had seen her too, and said, “Come in.”

  There were five empty beer bottles lined up like tin soldiers at the base of his chair. He held another in his hand.

  P.J. had told her that for as long as he could remember, his father had been a drinker. Not quite a drunk, he said. But close.

  “Sit down,” James said.

  She sat on the sofa, looked toward the TV.

  “Frasier,” he said. “That’s the name of the show. It’s set in Seattle. Ever been?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Me neither. They say it’s the best place on earth to have a heart attack. CPR is a public high school graduation requirement there.”

  “Oh.”

  “That or a casino,” he said. “In the casinos, you’re on camera and someone’s watching you every second. You collapse, somebody’s going to notice.”

  “Huh.”

  “Sorry, it’s just boring paramedic stuff,” he said.

  “It’s not boring.”

  “I was part of the first generation. It turns out now that a lot of the things we did back then were wrong. We’d intubate a cardiac arrest patient. Now they say that’s the worst thing you can do. CPR was completely different then. There were a lot more ventilations. In some cases, we were hyperventilating people. It kind of haunts you to think about it. All the patients you thought you were saving, but you weren’t.”

  “You must have seen so many awful things,” she said. “Did they have some way of helping you cope?”

  “Nowadays we have therapists on staff to talk to the guys. But when I was in the truck, you coped by going to the bar at the Ground Round after your shift was over and sticking your head under the tap.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, until a commercial for denture cream came on.

  “Let’s hope this isn’t the year I start needing that stuff,” he said.

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s my birthday.”

  “Oh, that’s right, it’s past midnight!” she said. “Happy birthday.”

  He waved her off, as if he hadn’t been the one to bring it up.

  “I hate birthdays,” he said. “Fifty years old. Christ.”

  Delphine was shocked to hear his age. He was six years younger than Henri.

  There was a newspaper on the coffee table, and he pointed his beer bottle at it.

  “I saved that for you,” he said. “There’s an article about him in the Arts section. Ran a couple of months ago. They called us up for a quote.”

  “You must be very proud,” she said. The same thing people always said to her.

  He swallowed hard, nodded.

  “Do you have kids?” he asked, and though it wasn’t impossible, the question struck her as odd.

  “No.”

  “You want your kids to do better than you did,” he said. “That’s what the American Dream is all about. But it’s hard when they outgrow you. It hurts like hell.”

  Delphine wasn’t sure what to say.

  “P.J. loves you very much,” she said.

  “Of course he does,” James said. “No one said anything about love. Love’s the easy part. It’s just that he can’t stand being around us.”

  “No!” she protested.

  “We haven’t seen him in a year.”

  “He’s so busy,” she said. “I live with him and we barely see each other.”

  James nodded, but seemed unconvinced.

  “When the older boys were little, I used to take them to redeem cans up at this garage. This was back when we lived in Massachusetts. They loved it. The two of them got to split whatever measly amount of money they made. Parker started going into Boston for violin when he was eight, and about two months into it, he was too good for the cans. He’d duck down in the backseat while Danny and I went in.”

  She frowned. “Kids,” she said.

  “That was nothing. Do you know he was on Johnny Carson when he was twelve? After that it all started happening so fast. He never really wanted us around. We embarrassed him.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” she said.

  “The worst part was that at the same time he was embarrassed of where he came from, he started using us as a story he could tell. Poor kid from a bad family made good.”

  “I know that’s not how he thinks,” she said. “If anything, it’s Marcy, his manager, pushing all of that.”

  “Right. His manager. These big important people came in and took over. And we let them. We thought that was the best thing for him. When he was really small, I used to dream of him becoming something one day. Now that he’s become something, I dream about back then, when he was just a sweet boy who adored his dad.”

  “Everyone has to grow up,” she said.

  “Sure. But let me ask you: What do you say to your kid after he has performed for the emperor of Japan and you’ve never even been to California?”

  He drank down what remained in the bottle, then got to his feet. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I went off like that. I shouldn’t have.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Naw, it’s not,” he said. “This is why I hate birthdays. They get you thinking about your life in such a way. I know he had to give up a lot for his dreams, but what about us? My wife and I grew up in this town outside of Boston, all our friends are there, and Sheila’s family. We uprooted our whole lives and came here so he could study in a prestigious place with a teacher who wanted him. Me in Cleveland? It’s like, well—maybe it’s a little like you in Cleveland.”

  She smiled. “Why didn’t you go back to Massachusetts once he left here?”

  “Life has a certain momentum. You get attached, even when you don’t plan on it. The younger boys haven’t ever known anyplace but this. We’ve got steady jobs here.” He trailed off. “I’m gonna get one more beer before I turn in. Do you want anything?”

  “No thank you,” she said. “I think I’m ready for bed.”

  “All right then. See you in the morning. And hey, don’t worry about Sheila. She’s just protective, that’s all. I’m sure you make a great couple.”

  Delphine finally fell asleep sometime around four. She awoke several hours later to the sound of a commotion outside.

  P.J. slowly opened his eyes.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  They looked out the window to investigate, last night’s problems evidently behind them. In the driveway, James was swinging Sheila in the air, never mind that she probably outweighed him by fifty pounds. They stood in front of a big red car that looked straight out of an American film from the fifties.

  P.J. had spoken of bitter fights between his parents, but they seemed happy together, still in love after so many years. Maybe this was why he so often spoke harshly to her—in his world, words had no weight.

  “Jesus,” P.J. said, looking out at them. “That looks just like the car he gave up, the one I told you about last night.”

  They would soon learn that it was the very same car. Sheila had somehow tracked it down and bought it back for her husband as a birthday present. P.J. had mentioned his parents’ credit card debt. Delphine wondered if they could even afford the car, but she thought better than to ask.

  “It’s so romantic,” was all she said while they discussed it over breakfast.

  James kissed his wife on the cheek, looking young and happy. “It’s the best gift I’ve ever heard of in my life.”

  On the way back to New York, Delphine made the mistake of telling P.J. what his father had said the night before.

  “We should try to see them more,” she said. “I think they miss you a lot.”

  P.J. scoffed. “That’s what he said, huh? Funny, it didn’t seem to be a problem for them when I bought them that house.”

  “Calm down,” she said.

  She had been thinking as much a
bout her own father as James. There was this distance between him and P.J. that it seemed both had decided to just accept. But as long as they were alive, there was still a chance. Why squander it?

  “My earliest memories are of my dad singing to me,” he said. “He tried to get me to play guitar. Then he saw some TV show about kids who had learned violin through the Suzuki Method and decided I should try it. Turned out I was really good. I could read music right away. In the States, everybody starts off with the Suzuki Method, you learn everything by rote, you listen to a recording and you try to repeat. A good teacher makes you read the music and the notes. The first class I ever went to, we were told to look at the music. In the next class a week later, I had it memorized. The teacher saw that I had something. She referred me to this class in Boston that my parents couldn’t afford. But they sent me anyway.”

  “They wanted the best for you,” she said.

  “I practiced five hours a day,” he said. “I haven’t had a normal life since I was eight years old. Do you get that? I couldn’t relate to the kids in my neighborhood anymore, and I sure as hell wasn’t like the music kids I knew. Most of them were the sons and daughters of Asian MIT professors, or famous musicians. My dad drove an ambulance. He sent me away when I was twelve. I moved out here to study with George Sennett, and as far as I’m concerned he was more of a father to me than my own father ever was. By the time they finally decided to move here, two years after I did, I didn’t need them anymore.”

  Delphine waited until the last possible minute to go through the security line, as if waiting might somehow make the ring appear. Once she boarded that plane, the possibility of finding it would be gone forever.

  But eventually the time came, and she went.

  On the plane, she thought of the options she had not considered. She was alone again, and could do anything—move out west and open a Parisian spa, go to Africa and teach in some remote village. But nothing so bold had crossed her mind in any serious way. The only thing she could fathom was going back to Henri, and closing her heart to this year, as if it had never passed. Part of her wanted to return—to the shop, to their simple routines, to the city she loved, to the man who loved her.

  The gold band he had given her on their wedding day was still in her purse, and had been since she left France. Delphine fished it out somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, and slipped it onto her finger.

  She had never asked him for a divorce. At first, it had seemed that she would have to do so right away. P.J. was so intent on marriage. But he soon stopped mentioning it, and Delphine felt oddly glad of that. They were engaged, that was enough. Looking back now, she wondered at what point he had known they would not last.

  Had she initiated a divorce, had lawyers been hired and property divided, she couldn’t say how Henri would have reacted when she called him that night from her hotel room to say that she was coming home.

  As it was, he sounded relieved and not quite surprised to hear her voice. He told her he would meet her at the airport when she arrived.

  Outside Charles de Gaulle, Henri’s Mercedes idled at the curb. She noted that he did not come inside to help her with her bag, nor did he get out of the car when he saw her. He opened the trunk automatically, and she placed her suitcase in it. Sliding into the passenger seat, she reached for his hand. Without looking at her, he accepted her touch, even closed his fingers tightly around hers. He started to drive.

  “You look thin,” she said.

  When he didn’t reply, she asked, “How is the shop?”

  “As bad as before. The Americans aren’t traveling. The dollar is plunging, they’re afraid to fly, and they think the French are in business with Saddam Hussein. I’m sure I would have lost the place if not for my savings.”

  They grew silent, both thinking, she assumed, of where the savings had come from. When they got home, he went to sleep in the guest bedroom without further conversation. Delphine woke alone the next morning to the sound of his alarm through the wall.

  She found him in the kitchen a few minutes later, preparing the tartines and café au lait.

  “We should talk,” she said gently.

  “There’s so much to do today,” he replied.

  He had just reopened the store after three weeks away in the country.

  Henri opened the newspaper and began to speak of the headlines, in particular the recent canicule, a massive heat wave which had killed thirteen thousand French people in their homes in the month of August. There had been highs between 99 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit since June, leading to forest fires and a drought that would prove disastrous to farmers. Worst of all were the stories of the thousands of people who had gone off on vacation, leaving their elderly relatives at home, which was the French way. With no air-conditioning in private homes and institutions for the elderly, many old people perished.

  President Chirac gave a rare public address to the nation that morning, conceding that weaknesses in France’s health system had led to the deaths. This after his return from a three-week holiday, during which he had remained silent.

  “How do these people live with themselves, just leaving their weak, old relatives behind?” Henri demanded when the story came on the radio.

  “It’s awful,” she said.

  It felt good to criticize France, after a year when she had only been able to defend it. She realized that maybe he was speaking about her as much as anyone. But she had done something hideous—it was only reasonable to expect that he would find ways of letting her know he remembered.

  The heat made front-page news for days. The morgues were full, so bodies were being stored in delivery trucks or buried in anonymous graves. The director general of health had resigned, and the people were calling for more resignations.

  One morning, Delphine took note of a smaller story, one that no one would call a catastrophe: a 325-year-old tree at Versailles, known as Marie Antoinette’s oak, had died in the drought, according to the palace gardener. Delphine wondered what happened to something as important as that once it was gone, if they would bury the tree or burn it, or chop it into mulch to feed the roses. Maybe there would be a plaque where it had stood, or maybe the land would just remain bare, with a faint scar marring the earth. Perhaps over time, something else would grow in its place.

  The heat passed for good in September, and with it all the outrage and the speculation about who was to blame, and what the country ought to learn from its collective moral failure.

  Delphine too escaped penalty. After three weeks of sleeping apart, Henri returned to their bed. He wrapped his arms around her. The next morning, he asked her, “Quelles nouvelles?” and she smiled, and ran her palm over his cheek.

  Life went back to the way it had always been. Sometimes she wondered if New York was a dream.

  On occasion, she thought about the ring. More than once, she dreamed that she had found it and woke up feeling hugely relieved, only to realize the truth. Delphine hoped that she had simply dropped the ring somewhere in the apartment, and that one morning P.J. might find it right there on the carpet.

  For a time, she received emails and phone calls from him, all of which she ignored. She changed her email address and her phone number, and even the number at the store, which had not changed since François Dubray installed a telephone line in 1972. Her husband never mentioned the changes, or l’Américain, or the year they had spent apart.

  Eleven months after she arrived home, Delphine gave birth to their only child, a daughter named Josephine.

  1987

  James steered the car onto Morrissey Boulevard. He turned the radio up and spun the dial, but every station was playing Christmas carols and he wasn’t in the mood. He listened to a few verses of “Feliz Navidad” before pushing in whatever tape was already in the deck.

  It was the Ides of March. “Vehicle” blared from the speakers, that opening horn solo that made you feel ten times more powerful than you would ever actually be.

  He noticed the cruiser
in his rearview mirror before the officer hit the siren. When the blue lights flared, his heart began to thump. There were no other cars anywhere nearby.

  “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” he said under his breath. So that was it, then. He pictured Sheila getting the call from the cops. He was a thief now, and he’d been dumb enough to steal from a patient, which meant that in addition to being a criminal, he would also be out of a job again.

  James pulled to the right. He thought he might vomit when he had to roll down the window and act like everything was normal. The cruiser picked up speed, getting closer and closer before zooming past him.

  He exhaled. Unclenched.

  He was still exhausted, but he felt artificially hopped up. The ring was like a living thing in his pocket. He could swear it had a pulse.

  James felt disgusted by the whole episode now. How had it even happened? Maybe he ought to mail the ring back in a plain white envelope. But mail it back to who? If he pawned it, he’d get the money, and no one would ever be the wiser. If he mailed it back, they might somehow trace it to him.

  By the time he arrived at his mother’s place, it was close to eight. James tested the front door, and was grateful to find it locked. He knocked, and waited, listening for her footsteps.

  She came to the door in her housecoat.

  “Merry Christmas!” she said. “Come in out of the cold. Take off your boots! I’ve already had a call from your brother.”

  “That’s weird. It’s like five in the morning out there.”

  “They get up early, I guess.”

  A stupid phone call meant so much to her, and yet his asshole brother could only manage it on her birthday and Christmas. James could hear the radio in the next room. He half wanted to stay, feeling now, as he sometimes did, the pull between his old family and his current one.

  “I’m late getting home to the boys,” he said. “I should get a move on. Do you want to come over and watch them open their presents?”