Paris Was the Place

by Susan Conley

  Then I kneel next to them on the floor. “Good night, Pablo,” I say. I imagine Macon and Delphine tucking him into his bed in Chantilly all those other nights, and another wave of jealousy comes over me. Macon kisses his son ten times on the cheek.

  “What should I dream about?”

  “Flying horses.” Macon smiles. “And red kites.”

  “Where will you be, Daddy, if I need you? Where will you sleep?”

  Macon rises and stands in the door of our bedroom, just behind the couch. Pablo can see him without turning his head. And he can see our bed inside the doorway. “Right here,” Macon says. “I will be sleeping so close to you. I can hear anything you say.”

  “Leave the door open,” Pablo says. “And my covers on. Half of my body always has to be covered up. Then the bad guys can’t see me.”

  “I won’t ever shut the door. But there are no bad guys here. Only Willie and me. Sweet dreams, Pablo. See you in the morning.”

  I follow Macon into the bedroom. “I hope I can learn to speak the language of four-year-olds,” I whisper, taking off my shirt and jeans. “It’s so good to have him here.”

  “He is away from Delphine for the first overnight. You have to understand how close he and his mother are.”

  “Tell me what you mean.”

  “She’s getting better. It helped when I told her that if she didn’t let him come, I’d go back to the judge and bring Pablo here on weekends without asking. I didn’t want to have to do that. She’s been good about this trip. There has been very little yelling.”

  “She used to yell?”

  “I would like us to not ever yell. Do you think that’s possible?”

  “I think anything is possible. You are here in my bed, and Pablo is sleeping out there on the couch. I didn’t even know you four months ago.” We lie in bed holding hands and I try to listen for the sound of Pablo sleeping, but it melds with the sound of his father sleeping next to me.

  IN THE MORNING Pablo crawls into bed with us, and it’s so surprising—so thrilling—that I lie very still under the sheets while he climbs up on my back. “I’m hungry, guys.” Then he crawls over to Macon’s back. “When are we having breakfast? When are we eating?”

  “There’s only one rule in Willie’s house,” Macon says. “It’s serious. It’s called the Don’t Laugh Rule. I’ll explain it to you, and it’s important you follow along. Do you understand?”

  “Do it! Do it!” Pablo yells.

  “But do you understand? The rule is, you must not laugh.”

  “I’m ready. I won’t laugh!”

  Macon tickles Pablo under his chin and down the sides of his stomach until he screams and laughs and can’t stop.

  The two of them go out for croissants once the sun is up. I sit at the kitchen counter with my coffee and call Sara. “It’s been more than three days. Where’s the lab report?”

  “It’s Saturday at nine o’clock in the morning, and I told you to plan on Monday.”

  “Monday is a horrible idea. Pablo’s here, and he’s terrific. Macon’s taken him out to get chocolate croissants. What if Luke is really sick?” The idea of waiting until Monday exhausts me.

  “You’ve got to stop thinking like that. We’re going to make this okay. We don’t know anything yet. It’s fantastic that Pablo’s actually getting to stay with you.”

  “Pablo is sweet. Very sweet.”

  “He’ll love you. Just make sure you’re fun, Will.”

  “When am I not fun?” I yell into the phone.

  “No, really. You have to be willing to get down on the floor with him and play. You need to build things with him.”

  Macon’s key is in the lock. “Since when are you the expert in child rearing?”

  “Since I devoured every book on parenting I could get my hands on.”

  “I love you, and I’m hanging up.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Pablo runs into the kitchen with a white paper bag in his hand. “Willie, they had the chocolate ones!”

  I put the croissants on a plate and slice a melon. Then the three of us sit at the table and eat. “Yum.” I smile.

  “Chocolate is my best one.” Pablo takes little nibbles of his croissant.

  The phone rings after I’ve taken a big bite of melon. Luke says, “Is the sleepover going well?”

  “My mouth is full of cantaloupe.”

  “I can’t understand you. You’re talking with your mouth full.”

  I swallow. “I wish they had your blood results this morning. Sara says it will be Monday now.”

  “You’re worrying. You’re not supposed to be worrying. I’m good. I feel much, much better. How is Pablo? Are you having the most wonderful time?”

  “He’s a funny boy. You’ll like him. Have you talked to Gaird yet?”

  “Yesterday. I finally reached him. He says he’s been crazed with the logistics of the tugboat. It’s much more involved than he ever imagined.”

  “And did you tell him to get himself home? It’s been a week now. Did you say that your lung is acting up again? That you need him? Did you ask him why the hell he hasn’t been calling you?”

  “I did. Maybe I didn’t use those exact words. But I did ask him. He says he’s got to go out on the boat now, so I won’t hear from him.”

  “He’s not coming home?”

  “Not yet. I’m fine, Willie. He’s got a job, you know.”

  “I’m not impressed. And I’m baking a fish and I want you to come over.” I cut the other half of the cantaloupe in pieces with the phone stuck deep in the crook of my neck. I don’t like Luke spending so much time alone. “I’m going to keep the head of the fish on, Chinese-style. I do this maybe once a year if you’re lucky. It’s my tradition.”

  “Oh, I’m feeling lucky. Truly lucky, let me tell you. Beijing is going to explode. They’ve brought tanks into the city. Thousands of people are going to die if the army opens fire. And you don’t have any baked fish traditions that I’m aware of.”

  “I have the Chinese cookbook you gave me. You can’t miss it.”

  “But I can. I can miss it.” He laughs. “You don’t get enough practice cooking.”

  “I do good fish. You have to come.”

  “CAN YOU TELL ME again how old Luke is?” Pablo asks from the arm of the couch while we wait for my brother to arrive.

  “He’s thirty-two, and I’m thirty.”

  “How many years older does he have than you?”

  “Two years.” I smile.

  Macon calls Pablo from the kitchen: “Come help me crack eggs for custard.”

  Luke knocks four times on my door. I open it, and he kisses me on both cheeks. “Do you know how expensive, how très, très chères framboises are in Paris, sister of mine?” He goes into the kitchen, gives Macon a quick hug, and opens the freezer. “Burn. A great deal of burn in here,” he yells, trying to find a place for the sorbet he’s brought. “You are both aware of it, I trust? Freezer burn, Will? You’ve heard of it? And of defrost? And of getting rid of these dead things that live here? These plastic baggies of unidentified brown meat?”

  He stands up. He looks fine. He doesn’t have any secret disease. I can rule it out. “The Chinese government has enforced a curfew. You know that, right? They’ve got the tanks there, and no one is allowed out on the streets.”

  “French TV has been following it around the clock,” Macon says.

  “It’s getting tense. I don’t like the way it looks. God, I was just there in May. The sun was shining on Mao’s tomb. I would have never predicted this. But it’s going to get bad. How can it not?”

  I light the white tapers on the table. Paul Simon’s on, and the bass line moves through the apartment: My traveling companion is nine years old. He is the child of my first marriage. Pablo runs laps around the couch—three times and then a jump, four times and then a jump. Luke catches him on the sixth round and hands him a black pirate hat he’s brought in a paper shopping bag.

  “Sh
iver me be!” Luke yells, and Pablo runs to the kitchen to show Macon.

  Then we sit down at the table to eat. “To the men in my life.” I raise my glass of Bordeaux and look to Macon and Pablo and Luke.

  “The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” Luke says. “If only Dad were here to appreciate this.”

  We look for bones in the fish. When I’m happy like this, it’s unfettered—as if I’ll never feel removed from life again. Why doesn’t anything achieve this lightness on other days—not even Macon, not even Luke singing over the telephone? I want to remember this night when I’m not longing for anything and not mourning anyone’s absence.

  After dinner, the men take on the dishes. I play a Joan Baez album, and Pablo lets me rub his back on the couch. “How do you make hair, Willie?” I’m half-listening to Macon and Luke talk about their favorite ways to braise calf livers. “Hair,” Pablo says. “How do you make it?”

  “You don’t, my friend. It grows. From the time we are born, hair grows.”

  “Like corn? Grows like strawberries?”

  “Exactly. Hair’s alive.”

  The song “Kumbaya” comes on. Luke and I always make fun of it because our parents used to sing all the verses out loud in the car. The needle crackles, and Pablo listens closely: Someone’s singing, Lord, Kumbaya. Someone’s singing, Lord, Kumbaya. “Willie,” he asks without looking up, “can the people in the music hear us talking right now like we can hear them?”

  “No, sweets.” I finger his hair. “They can’t.”

  Luke pokes his head out of the kitchen and sings the last line falsetto: “Someone’s singing, Lord, Kumbaya, Oh Lord, Kumbaya.” He looks hollowed out around his eyes, but healthy. I bury my worry. I’ve been overreacting. The lab results will be fine.

  VERY EARLY the next morning, even before the pigeons have stirred in the gutters outside the bedroom window, Pablo climbs into our bed again. He’s got Lego pieces in his hands. Macon says, “We need to sleep more, Pablo. Either you lie here and get quiet, or go back to your bed.”

  He chooses to lie down between us and pulls most of the top sheet and quilt off me. “Hey,” I say. “It’s cold. Blankets, please. Can someone give them back?”

  Macon wrestles some of the sheet away for me. Then Pablo stands up so his little toes are very near my face. He says, “I need to get my astronaut hat for flight.”

  “No flights this morning,” Macon announces. “The airport is closed for sleeping.”

  I’m in a deep REM cycle when the phone rings. I pick up the receiver in a dream. “I went down to the lab last night before I went home,” Sara says. “It was one a.m. Too late to call. But it’s not good, Willie. It’s not what we wanted. His T cells are off.”

  “Where are you? Why are you calling me in the middle of the night? Are you crazy?” I can smell coffee in the kitchen. Macon’s moving dishes around in there, while Pablo chatters away to him.

  “It’s six in the morning, Willie. Wake up. Wake up, my friend. I have bad news.”

  I feel calm and very still, as if Sara will now give me the information I’ve been waiting for—the precise answer to why Luke can’t kick his perennial cold or all his fatigue—and using this, we will fix everything. “Tell me.” The only sign of panic is that my arms are prickly.

  “It’s his T cells. They’re bad.”

  “I know all about T cells.” I still sound calm. “Do you understand how many of Luke’s friends have died in the last five years? Why didn’t you say you were looking at his T cells?”

  “I thought you knew. I thought you understood we were looking at everything, and that the blood would tell us about his immune system.”

  “You never said that.”

  “Did I really need to say it?”

  “I thought you were going to tell me he has hepatitis.”

  “He may.”

  “Or mono. I thought you were testing for mono.”

  “That and a host of other things. HIV looks a lot like mono at first and a lot like the flu. It’s been really hard to diagnose him.”

  “HIV.” I’ve circled it in my mind in the darkest, most private moments but only at peril to my sanity. And I’ve been able to banish these thoughts. No one I know with HIV—not one person that Luke or Gaird or I know—is getting better from the disease. All I see are people getting worse. People dying.

  “That’s what we’re talking about, Willie. I’m so, so damn sorry.”

  “Tell me his number.” I’m crying, but she can’t hear it yet because the sobs start so far down inside my body. I open my mouth to let the sounds out, but nothing comes.

  “His T cells are becoming more damaged, which weakens his immune system and leaves him at risk for other infections besides the lung. The higher the number, the stronger he is.”

  “Tell me, Sara. Please just tell me.” Tears start streaming down my face. I’m cold now. Shivering.

  “Five hundred. He’s at five hundred, which we’re considering normal for someone infected by the HIV virus.”

  I close my eyes and put the phone down beside me on the bed. Then big, loud, racking sobs rise up, and the snot and tears run together down into my neck. “For someone infected by the HIV virus.” Oh, fuck. Oh, God. My poor brother. Oh, what are we going to do? I pick up the phone and listen to her—she’s still talking—but I can’t speak. I must let out some kind of sound; I’m not sure. But Macon hears something and comes running in from the kitchen and sits on the bed.

  “Willie, I know you’re there,” Sara yells into her end of the phone. “It’s 1989, Will. Not 1985. We will have new drugs. We have AZT. I’m following this closely. Picard is one of the best in the world. He consults with the Pasteur people every week. They’re the ones who discovered the disease, for God’s sake. AZT. It’s a good drug, Willie. We can fight this. I’m going to help you fight this. Don’t go away on me. Don’t go away on him.”

  I hold the phone to my ear so I can feel her there, and she waits. A few minutes go by like this—with me panting into the phone and Sara silent. “What’s a normal count, Sara?” I finally ask. “What’s normal?”

  “You and I have seven hundred to one thousand T cells in a drop of blood the size of a pea.” She’s almost whispering now. “If the number drops below two hundred, we classify it as AIDS. Or if, God forbid, he gets some opportunistic infection.”

  “So we are three hundred T cells away from AIDS?” I force myself to keep talking. I have only a dispassionate interest anymore in what she’s saying. My mind’s fogged. I can’t process the numbers. I could hang up and this would all be over. I could try doing it—hanging up. Just to see what would happen. Pablo yells from somewhere in the apartment, and Macon goes looking for him.

  “Let’s not look at it that way. It’s a continuum. It moves around.” Sara’s crying now, too. “Oh, sweets, don’t do this to yourself. Don’t cry like this.” But she can’t stop either. “We’re going to get him through this. There are good protocols now. The prognosis isn’t as bad as it used to be. You need to call him and tell him.”

  “I’m not.” I snap out of my haze. “I’m not doing that. He’s been at Andreas and Tommy’s house in Neuilly all weekend. He’s happy right now. Gaird is a fucking deserter.”

  “It’s really bad,” I say to Macon and put the phone down again when he comes back to the bedroom. “Luke’s sick. It’s HIV.” He grabs the phone and I roll over on the bed. I can tell it’s going to be one of those fucking heartbreakingly beautiful June days in Paris. A milk-blue sky washes over the faces of the apartments across the street, and the sun shines down on the wrought-iron balconies, munificent. Godlike.

  “Sara. It’s Macon now. Can you tell me about the lab report? What the numbers are?” He nods and rubs my back with his free hand. “Oh, merde. Okay. Okay, you’re right. All right, we’ll talk later.” He hangs up the phone and climbs onto the bed so he’s lying on top of me. Then he puts his arms around my shoulders and holds me. We lie like that for what feels like a very
long time. Where is Pablo? I have no idea what Macon has him doing. Neither of us talks. And the bad news takes shape in my head. I’m trying to find a place to put it.

  HIV is everywhere in the news. There have been days I thought Luke fit the description, but every time I got to that point I turned back. I couldn’t even try the word on. I hid from it. I don’t know how long we lie there. Everything’s different now. The line between Luke having HIV and not having it is everything. If it were a mark in the desert, I’d get down off my camel and rub it with my hand. Because I want something I can touch. Demarcation. Proof.

  “Willow Pears, this is Macon speaking.” His mouth is directly over my ear like a megaphone. “Where have you gone in your mind? You’ve left me. I’m calling you back. Come back to us. You need to get up. You need to get dressed. I’ve got really good coffee in the kitchen. Pablo is drawing you a picture of a giraffe. Can you smell the coffee? Luke isn’t dying.”

  I open my eyes and look at him. “How do you know he isn’t dying?” I feel primitive. Reduced to whether Luke will or will not die. I only want this one question answered. “How do you know if he’ll live?”

  “Because people live with HIV for many years. Sara is going to make this happen. She’ll get you another appointment with Picard. You’re going to talk to a leading doctor soon.”

  “When? I want to talk to him today. Right now. I want to know everything there is to know about HIV. What does HIV even stand for? Is it really even a word?” I know from my mother that the brain is chemically wired to hear bad news and think of it only as a threat. And that’s all I see. Threat.

  “You’ll get to talk to him soon. In the meantime, there is a girl in the center on Rue de Metz who’s got a hearing next week. You’re her court guardian. She needs you to go there today and help her get ready.”

  GITA IS THE only reason I get up. I told her I’d be there today, on Sunday, to listen to the full testimonial we’ve been working on. I put on clothes without thinking and drink the coffee standing up in the kitchen. Then Macon and Pablo walk me down Rue Monge to the metro station. I take the train to Châtelet and switch to the No. 4 line and get off at St. Denis. Nothing on Boulevard de Strasbourg looks beautiful in the glaring sunlight, not the green ivy growing on the side of the gray bank or the chestnut trees so thick and full of leaves they remind me of drawings of the tree of life. Paris has closed in on itself today. It feels too insular in my grief. I want my home language. I want home. I’m homesick. Sick for home. But I’m not keening for the house. It’s for all of us together. My mother and father and Luke and me. Halloween. Abbey Road. The longing is acidic in my mouth. Dizzying. Why do we live here, so far away from Dad? Far away from the good hospitals? Shouldn’t we be in San Francisco?