Kiss Me in Paris

by Catherine Rider

  “Oh, no, it wasn’t spite — we just couldn’t stand to be around each other after an argument. We always needed about six hours or so to really calm down. And do you know something? Twenty-five years later, I honestly can’t remember what that fight was even about. We’d been needling each other all day, about lots of things — I was mad at your dad because he forgot to book tickets for the Musée d’Orsay, even though he knows how much I love Van Gogh, and your dad … Huh … That’s what it was. Your dad made some joke about how I only ever got into Van Gogh to impress my high school boyfriend, Gerald, who was an artist.” She goes quiet for a second, and I can picture her staring into space, remembering that day. I can tell from her voice that she’s got a sad smile on her face, and I wish my arms were long enough to reach London.

  Or that I was just in London, so I could hug her.

  “That’s why we missed the tower,” Mom goes on. “Whenever your dad started thinking or talking about Gerald, you could guarantee that we’d soon be yelling at each other.”

  “He was jealous?” I ask.

  “Back then, he was,” Mom admits. “I think us missing the Eiffel Tower bothered him so much, he realized he was only causing problems by being jealous. He never got mad about Gerald after that — in fact, a few years later, we all went to a high school reunion, and the two of them got along great.”

  I take a deep breath. Try not to sound as shocked as I feel. “But why did you guys always talk about Paris so much, when you had such huge fights and never got to see all the things you wanted to?”

  “Because even a few months after we got back, it was all we could talk about.” I can hear in her voice that Mom is still smiling, but it’s not a sad smile now. “Yeah, we missed a few things, but would we have preferred to stand in front of a few Van Gogh paintings for an hour when, all those years later, we were telling people how amazing Maison d’angle was? Or about how I had to eat a second dinner on our first night there because your dad mistakenly ordered clams and was too proud to admit to the waitress that he didn’t really speak French?” I laugh with her. Dad was allergic to shellfish. “For us, it wasn’t the sights — it was being together that made it special. I would probably not remember how I felt staring at a Van Gogh, no matter how great the art. But I’ll never forget the joy of just being with the person I loved in some random corner restaurant, half the world away from home.”

  I stand up, because my butt is kind of going numb from sitting on this cold step for so long. “All this time,” I say, “I thought everything was perfect, beginning with your honeymoon.”

  “It was perfect to us. And that’s kind of all that really matters.”

  “So it didn’t matter that you weren’t always the best fit for each other?”

  Mom’s voice is soft, at once firm and comforting. “Honey, people are perfect fits only when they’re in the movies. In real life, relationships require effort. When it’s right, it’s worth it.”

  “But how do you know when it’s right?”

  “You don’t, not always. It’s a gamble. But it pays off. Your dad might be gone, but I will never, ever feel cheated, because being married to him brought more good into my life than losing him has taken away.”

  I can feel more tears streaming down my cheeks as Mom talks, my head and my heart feeling so much lighter. My mother may be in London, and my sister in Madrid, but I no longer feel stranded and alone in a foreign city.

  Even though it’s not in the way that I planned, Paris has fixed my family this Christmas.

  I tell my mom that I love her, miss her and will see her in London tomorrow. She tells me the same, then:

  “Wait, before you go …”

  “Yeah, Mom?”

  “What you were saying earlier, about forgetting your dad for an hour?”

  Crap, I forgot I was due a ticking off. “I know, I know,” I tell her. “It won’t happen again, I promise.”

  “I wasn’t mad at you for that. Truth be told, I was happy to hear it.”

  “You were?”

  I hear a strangled sob. Now it’s Mom who’s crying. “Sweetie, you don’t know what it’s been like these past two years, watching my happy, sweet little girl suddenly change. You used to smile so much — all the time — and now you don’t. And I couldn’t do anything to make you smile, and it broke my heart, every day … Because I know you were just trying not to show me how sad you were — but that never meant you couldn’t be happy. And for a while, I’ve wondered if you ever could be happy again, because you seemed so … I don’t know, like …”

  “Like I’m not really here?” I give her the words I think she’s searching for. The words that seem to have come up more than a few times today.

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” I tell her. “Never again.”

  We finish our goodbyes. I end the call and stand in the darkness beneath Pont d’Iéna, letting the tears flow, feeling like the tension and grief are draining out of me, the same way the Paris fog finally seems to be lifting.

  When I put my cell phone back in my cross-body bag, I see that tacky scarf again. Jean-Luc might have been too generous when he said it was worth five euros.

  I ball it up and throw it into the Seine. I’m going to leave Paris with my own memories, not forgeries of the ones my parents made on their honeymoon. No more walking in anyone else’s footsteps — from now on, I walk in my footsteps, and those footsteps have to be taking me forward.

  And even though the conversation with Mom has left me kind of drained, I find the energy in my legs to run out of the shadows of the bridge, into the light of Quai Branly, toward Pont de l’Alma Metro station.

  ~ CHAPTER FOURTEEN ~

  JEAN-LUC

  21H40

  It’s a shame I can’t just move my whole dorm room to Monsieur Deschamps’s office and present my project, rather than take everything down and put it in a folder. From the doorway, it looks kind of great — all my photos of Serena arranged in chronological order, the occasional “Lonely Hearts and Missed Connections” note pasted into a corner, like a commentary. I’m surprised at how well they fit together — like how the shot I got of her in the Louvre, among the dense crowd in front of the Mona Lisa, her eyes cast down so that she would not see the painting until she was close, somehow matches the anonymous, barely legible scrawl of someone writing to a “Sabine”:

  I don’t want to look up if I know you’re not there.

  Or how the photo of Serena staring at the Seine, tears streaming down her cheeks as she began to open up about why she had come to Paris, feels like an illustration of a message from “Z” to “Patrice”:

  My heart is heavy with the goodbye I never got to say.

  In the photo, the river disappears into the fog, seemingly infinite but also a dead end, like a veil Paris has thrown over itself, so that Z never finds Patrice. Cruelty, or kindness? I guess that will be up to the viewer.

  It is a story of how lonely we all are and how letting the beauty of a city, slowly discovered, into ourselves can sometimes fix that problem.

  I lean against the door frame, exhausted now that my project is complete. I am so happy with it, I almost don’t care about what grade Monsieur Deschamps gives me. I know that I’ve done good work here — and I could not have done it without Serena.

  Who is probably at the Eiffel Tower by now. I wonder if she’s taking selfies with that human carton of milk I saw her flirting with on the bridge earlier today. Is she gushing about how relieved she is to be in Paris with another tourist and talking about the crazy French guy she was stuck with for most of today?

  Of course, she’d be right to call me crazy. I was the one who made a scene at Maison d’angle, forcing us to leave the place, because my ex-girlfriend worked there and I assumed that she’d still be so into me, she would make a scene.

  Everyone moves on
, eventually. And if I got the whole situation with Martine that wrong, what else am I totally wrong about?

  I flop down on the same chaise longue where Serena flopped down almost twelve hours ago. Her suitcase seems to glare at me from its spot beside the door to Olivier’s room. She will have to come back here at some point, and I will have to face her. I start rehearsing what I might say, but beyond an apology — that I’m not even sure she’ll accept — I have no idea what that will be.

  I don’t know how interested Serena will be in my explanation — partly plagiarized from Martine — that I have realized I tend to run away when someone gets within reach of my emotions. That, because I’m so used to people leaving me — either by choice, like my father, or not by choice, like my grandpapa — I test their patience, to put them in a position where they prove that they want to be around me.

  From the chaise longue, I can still see the photos hanging on the lines. The first one, the beginning of the sequence, is the first photo I took of Serena today, when she was sitting in the exact spot that I am now, with her head in her guidebook, her lips pursed as she tried not to cry in front of a stranger. Now I see how alone she must have felt, in a foreign country, without the family she was supposed to be sharing it with.

  I’m alone, too, Serena. Not that I want to be.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t speak any French, and I feel so terrible about that!”

  The voice is muffled, because it’s traveling up from the lobby, but I can tell it’s American. Then I hear Thierry telling someone they can’t go any farther. I’m off the chaise longue and across the room in seconds, pulling the door open and hurrying halfway down the stairs.

  The view of the lobby spills out in front of me, almost like Serena is being painted into my vision. She’s standing where she was when I saw her for the first time this morning, pointing to the stairs, as if to tell Thierry that she wants to go up.

  She wants to see me.

  Thierry looks at me. “Is she with you?” he asks.

  I nod, and I have to bite the inside of my cheeks to keep from smiling, and remind myself that it’s entirely possible Serena has come back only for her suitcase, so that she can take it to the American guy’s hotel.

  We go up to the dorm without saying a word. Inside, I gesture toward her suitcase and open my mouth, when I see her head turning in the direction of my room. Once again, I am crossing the living room in seconds, to stand in the doorway — blocking her view.

  “What is that?” she asks.

  We are standing so close together that, when she looks up at me, I can see that her eyes are red. She’s been crying. “It’s not what you think …” I tell her.

  She says nothing. And I can’t very well pretend that she hasn’t just seen a room full of photos … of her. So I stand aside.

  She walks into my room, looking at each photo in the sequence. She gets halfway along, to a shot of her in the Louvre, frowning at her phone, at a photo she took of the Mona Lisa. Turns and gawks at me. Starts to say something but seems unable to find the words for a second. Finally, she gestures vaguely at the whole display.

  “What is all this?”

  “My project. It’s … It’s you … if that is okay?”

  She doesn’t answer. She just turns back to the photos.

  “It’s not as weird as it looks,” I tell her, talking fast, trying to reassure her before she storms out. “It was only as I was printing the photos that I realized, the story was you. This is how I can capture the city, through your eyes. Obviously, you are not taking the photographs, but I see something so open and vulnerable in your expression — pure emotions — that I can see the effect that Paris has on you … and that tells me more about my city than even the most perfect shot of the Eiffel Tower or whatever.”

  I really wish I ended that better. But my mouth outpaced my brain, and I ran out of points to make.

  Serena says nothing. She’s just moving from photo to photo, looking at each one for a few seconds. I prepare myself to get out of her way, deciding that I won’t try to stop her storming off or defend myself if she starts yelling at me.

  “Jean-Luc …” Here it comes. “This is … amazing. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen photos of me where I look so like me. Does that make sense?”

  It kind of does, kind of doesn’t, so I nod and shrug at the same time. Change the subject, before it can get any more awkward. “How was the Eiffel Tower?”

  She turns away from me, checking out the next photo. “I didn’t make it up there.”

  I hate to admit it, but my pulse quickens a little when I hear that she didn’t share that meaningful moment with someone else. “Why not?”

  “It just” — she pauses for what feels like a long time — “didn’t feel right, once I was there.”

  Now she turns around, facing me but keeping her eyes on the carpet. “Because, the moment I was about to check off the main point on my list for the Romance Tour, I suddenly stopped feeling romantic. Recreating my parents’ trip, walking in their footsteps was …” Her mouth tightens, and she shakes her head at the floor. “It just wasn’t right. Even though I was at the tower with a guy who seems like he was designed especially for me, I wasn’t feeling the excitement that I know my parents felt when they were together. Oh, man, I don’t know how I’m going to make this up to Ethan …”

  “You should not have felt like you had to go through with the date,” I tell her, “just to spare a boy’s feelings. His feelings are not more important than yours.”

  Now she looks at me. “I know that. But I do still feel a little bad, because Ethan’s not a bad guy.”

  “I am sure he is not.”

  “And you’re kind of an asshole sometimes.”

  Now it’s me who’s looking at the floor. I can’t exactly argue with her right now.

  “But you know what?” she goes on. “When I get home and tell my dormmate about my trip to Paris, when I want to remember the joy of being here, it’s going to be you I talk about. The Louvre, Shakespeare and Company, getting on the wrong damned boat … Even all the bickering we did.” I dare to look up, see her gesturing again to the Serena shrine I’m suddenly less self-conscious about. “Every part of this trip that helped me not only remember my dad but also … taught me some things about myself.”

  “Like what?” I ask, surprised that my voice doesn’t tremble.

  “That I won’t be able to connect with anyone if I don’t feel able to be myself with people. But in a weird way, seeing myself through someone else’s eyes showed me who I really am.”

  “Someone amazing.” It’s out before I can ask myself if it’s a good idea to say that, if it’s too cheesy.

  But she just smiles, lets her eyes fall to the floor for a moment, then looks back up at me so suddenly, I flinch. “I hope you’re not so French that you’ll laugh if I get all sincere and American on you for a minute.”

  “I am half-American, don’t forget.”

  “I didn’t. I, um … Wow, this is strangely difficult. I want to thank you.”

  I can’t think of a single thing that she should thank me for. “But I ruined your trip.”

  “Yeah, you did. But it needed to be ruined. If you hadn’t been so allergic to sticking to a schedule, if you hadn’t been so irritating — if you hadn’t been you — I’d probably have gone on the Romance Tour, crossed off everything on my list, taken a few photos home to Mom and Lara … and gone back to being the girl sleepwalking through her life, feeling only sadness, all the time. Thanks to you, I realized it’s okay to forget some things, sometimes.”

  I keep quiet. Anything I say now is going to ruin the moment. But we end up staring at each other so long that we both start grinning — both of us a little confused, a little shy and a little excited.

  “So …” I take one step toward her and stop. I suddenly don’t trust
my legs to keep me upright. “You didn’t see any of the light shows tonight?”

  She laughs and shakes her head. “I got right up to the elevator, then turned around.”

  “Then we should go,” I tell her. “If we leave now, we should be able to catch one of the last shows. From the Trocadéro, the view will be amazing. Especially now the fog is lifting.” I hold out my hand to her. “Come on.”

  She doesn’t move. “It’s really okay, Jean-Luc. I’m done trying to create ‘moments’ in Paris. Mom doesn’t need my scrapbook, so I don’t need to get a photo of the tower anymore.”

  I keep my hand held out and close the distance between us. Take her hand in mine. It feels kind of cold, because she’s been outside, but when she squeezes my hand, a fire runs through me.

  “Not for a photo,” I tell her. “Let me show you Paris.”

  She looks at me for a long moment, her eyes shining as they flit from side to side. “Sure,” she says. “That sounds great.”

  I squeeze her hand back, and we walk out of my room together. Just as I have my coat on and am about to leave the dorm, Serena stops.

  “Almost forgot something …” she mumbles, fumbling in her cross-body bag and taking out her crumpled, wrecked itinerary. She leaves it on top of her suitcase, then walks back over to me and takes my hand again.

  We head back out to the city together, charting our own course.

  ~ CHAPTER FIFTEEN ~

  SERENA

  9:58 p.m.

  Jean-Luc and I are running hand in hand along the Fountain of Warsaw, in the Gardens of Trocadéro, moving so fast I cringe, worrying that the wine bottles he’s carrying in a plastic bag in his other hand — which cost him fifteen euros from the store near his dorm — might get smashed.

  The long rectangular basin we run along is lit by bright lights, and the water explodes with arcing jets. A fine mist is falling over us, but I don’t care. I’m too exhilarated. Of all the things I expected to happen during the Romance Tour, running through Paris at night with a French boy was not on the list. But that is what’s now happening, and I’m definitely not complaining about it.