In her seat Deanna put her head back and closed her eyes, feeling a knot in her chest and a lump in her throat. There was a lifetime of crying lodged there, but for the moment it wouldn’t come out.
They drove slowly through Paris, as street cleaners swept and the sun shone too brightly on the pavement. It should have been a day of rain and heavy mist, but it wasn’t, and the bright sun made the horror seem a lie. How could she be gone on a day like this? But she was … she was—gone. The thought kept running through Marc-Edouard’s head—gone—while Deanna stared unseeingly out of the window.
The maid was already at the door when they reached the Duras apartment, still draped in her bathrobe. She had heard the elevator and come running to know. Marc-Edouard’s face said it all. Silently she began to cry.
“Shall I wake Madame?”
Marc shook his head. There was no point waking her now. The bad news could wait.
“Some coffee, monsieur?”
This time he nodded and softly closed the door as Deanna stood by, feeling lost. He looked at her for a moment, wiped his eyes, and held out a hand. Without saying more, she took it, and they walked slowly to their room.
The shades were drawn, the shutters were closed, the bed was turned down, but somehow Deanna did not want to go to bed. She couldn’t face it, couldn’t bear lying there and thinking, couldn’t bear knowing that Pilar was dead. Marc Edouard sank into a chair and put his face in his hands. Slowly the sobs came again. Deanna went to him and held his shoulders in her hands, but there was nothing more she could do. At last he cried himself out, and she helped him to the bed.
“You should try to sleep.” She whispered it to him as she had to Pilar.
“And you?” His voice was hoarse when he spoke.
“I will. Later. Didn’t you bring a bag?” She looked around the room in surprise. None of his things was there.
“I’ll get it later.” He closed his eyes. Picking up his bag meant seeing Chantal. He would have to tell her about Pilar. As he would have to tell his mother. And their friends. He couldn’t bear it. Telling them would make it real. The tears seeped out of the corners of his eyes again. Finally, he drifted to sleep.
Only Deanna drank the coffee when it came. She took her cup to the salon, where she sat alone, looking out over the rooftops of Paris, thinking of her child. She felt peaceful as she sat there, thinking, looking at the gilt-edged morning sky. Pilar had been so many things, and not often easy in recent years, but eventually she would have grown up. They would have been friends…. Would have been. It was hard to imagine. She felt as though Pilar were right there, nearby, and in no way lost. It was inconceivable to her that they would no longer talk, or laugh, or argue, that Pilar would no longer fling that long golden hair like a mane, or flash those blue eyes to get whatever she might want, that Deanna’s slippers would no longer be borrowed, her lipstick wouldn’t be gone, her favorite robe wouldn’t disappear along with her best coat. … As she thought of it, the tears finally came in great waves. She knew, finally, that Pilar was no more.
“Deanna?” It was the old woman, standing in the center of the room, looking like a statue in an icy-blue robe. “Pilar?”
Deanna shook her head and closed her eyes. Madame Duras steadied herself on a chair.
“Oh, my God. Oh, bon Dieu … bon Dieu.” And then, looking around, tears rolling down her cheeks: “Where is Marc?”
“Asleep, I think. In bed.” Her mother-in-law nodded and silently left the room. There was nothing she could say, but Deanna hated her once more for not even trying. It was her loss too, but she owed Deanna the words at least.
On tiptoe Deanna walked back to their room. She was afraid to wake Marc and she opened the door very quietly. He was still sleeping, snoring softly. This time, as she watched him, he no longer looked young. His whole face seemed to sag with grief and even in sleep Deanna could see that he wasn’t at peace.
She sat for a time, watching him, wondering what would happen, what they would do. A great deal had changed in a day. Pilar. The woman she had seen him with at the airport. She realized now that was probably where he had gotten the car and where he had left his bag. She wanted to hate him for it, but now she didn’t care. She suddenly realized she had to call Ben. A glance at Marc’s watch told her that it was past eight-thirty. It would be midnight in San Francisco. He might still be up, and she had to call him now, while she could.
She ran a hand over her hair, put her jacket on again, and grabbed her handbag. She would make the call half a block away at the post office where Parisian residents without telephones made their calls. She didn’t want his number on her mother-in-law’s bill.
She felt numb as she rode downstairs in the tiny elevator and then walked the half block to the poste. She could not move her feet quickly and she couldn’t slow her steps either; she just kept moving at the same pace, like a machine, until she reached the post office phone booth and closed the door.
The number rang only twice, and the connection had been rapidly made. She felt herself tremble as she waited, and then she heard his voice. He sounded sleepy, and she realized then that he had already been in bed.
“Ben?”
“Deanna? Darling, are you all right?”
“I….” And then the words stopped. She couldn’t say more.
“Deanna?”
She was trembling violently, still unable to speak.
“Oh, darling … is it…? How bad is she? I’ve been thinking of you every minute, ever since you left.” The only sound Deanna made in answer was a short convulsed sob. “Deanna! Please, sweetheart, try to calm down and talk to me.” But suddenly a ripple of fear raced up his back. “My God, is she … Deanna?” His voice was suddenly very soft.
“Oh, Ben, she died this morning.” For another endless moment she couldn’t speak after she said the words.
“Oh, God, no. Darling, are you alone? Where are you?”
“In the post office.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, what are you doing there?”
“I wanted to call you.”
“Did … is he in Paris too?”
“Yes.” She tried to catch her breath again. “He got here last night.”
“I’m so sorry. For both of you.”
She sobbed again. With Ben she could let herself go, she could reach out to him and show him how badly she needed him. With Marc she always kept up a front. She had to live what he expected, be what he thought she should be.
“Do you want me to come over? I could take the first plane out in the morning.”
And do what? she wondered. It was too late for Pilar. “I’d love you to, but it doesn’t make much sense. I’ll be home in a couple of days.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to be a problem, but I’ll come over right away if it’ll help. Would it?”
“Very much.” She smiled through her tears. “But it’s better not to.”
“And … everything else?” He tried not to sound concerned or upset.
“I don’t know. We’ll have to talk.”
He knew she was talking about Marc. “Well, don’t worry about all that now. Just get through this, and then we can worry about the rest. Is it … are you going to have it here?”
“The funeral?” She wanted to die when she said the word. Her hand shook terribly. She tightened her grip on the phone. “No, Marc wants it here. It doesn’t matter. I think Pilar probably would have preferred it too. In any case I’ll be home in two or three days.”
“I wish I could spare you all that.”
“It …” but she couldn’t go on for a moment, “… doesn’t matter. I’ll be all right.” But would she? She wasn’t so sure. She had never felt this shaky in her life.
“Well, remember, if you need me I’ll come. I won’t go anywhere for the next few days without leaving a number, so you can always reach me. O.K.?”
“O.K.” She tried to smile as she said it, but the effort made her cry more. “Can you … could you call�
��”
“Kim?”
“Yes.” It was a sad little croak.
“I’ll call right away. Now I want you to go home and get some rest. Darling, you can’t keep pushing. You have to rest. Go get some sleep. And as soon as you come home, we’ll go to Carmel. No matter what. I don’t care what happens after that, but you’re coming to Carmel with me. We’ll walk on the beach, and we’ll be together.”
She was sobbing violently now. They would never be together again. She’d never walk on that beach again, or any other. She would be trapped in this nightmare forever, alone.
“Deanna, listen to me,” Ben was saying. “Will you think of Carmel through all this, and try to remember that I love you?”
She nodded sadly, still unable to get out the words.
“My love, I’m with you every moment. Be strong, my darling. I love you.”
“I love you too.” But her voice was only a whisper as she hung up the phone, then walked to the counter and paid the woman at the desk for the phone call—and passed out cold on the floor.
18
“Where on earth have you been?” Marc was sitting in the living room looking rumpled and haggard when she returned. “You were gone for hours.” It was an accusation. He was staring at her, red-eyed, over a cup of coffee. She looked scarcely better, in fact considerably worse. “Where were you?”
“I went for a walk. I’m sorry. I needed some air.” She put her handbag down on a chair. “How is your mother?”
“You can imagine. I called the doctor half an hour ago, and he gave her a shot. She probably won’t wake up until noon.”
For a moment Deanna envied her. What an easy way out. She didn’t voice the thought. Instead, she asked, “And you?”
“We have a lot to do today.” He looked at her mournfully and then noticed the smudges on her skirt. “What happened? Did you fall?”
She nodded and looked away. “I must have been tired. I stumbled. It’s nothing.”
He came to her then and put an arm around her. “You should really go to bed.”
“I will. But what about the arrangements?”
“I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to do anything.”
“But I want to….” She suddenly felt out of control again, as though she never had any say.
“No. I want you to get some sleep.” He led her to the bedroom and sat her on the bed. “Shall I call the doctor for you?” She shook her head, then lay down, looking up at him with heartbroken eyes that tore at him. “Deanna …”
“What about your friend?”
He stood up and turned away. “Never mind that.”
“Maybe now isn’t the time, but sooner or later we’ll have to talk about it.”
“Perhaps not.”
“What does that mean?” She stared at him very hard. He turned to face her.
“It means that it’s not your affair. And that I will do my best to settle it.”
“Permanently?”
He seemed to hesitate a long time, and then he quietly nodded, his eyes never leaving hers. “Yes.”
Chantal heard his key turn in the lock as she climbed out of the shower. She hadn’t dared call the house on the rue François Premier, and her last anonymous call to the hospital had brought only the information that Pilar was the same. She had intended to call again as soon as she had coffee, but Marc-Edouard arrived first, looking as though he hadn’t slept all night. Chantal looked up and smiled from the bathroom doorway. The pale-yellow towel was drying her leg.
“Bonjour, mon chéri. How’s Pilar?” She stood up with a serious expression, holding the towel in one hand. There was something in his eyes that suddenly frightened her. He closed them and covered them for a moment with one hand. It seemed a very long time before he looked at her again.
“She—she’s gone. At four o’clock this morning.”
He sat down heavily in a chair in the living room, and Chantal came to him quickly, pulling a pale-pink robe off a hook on the bathroom wall.
“Oh, Marc-Edouard … oh, darling, I’m so sorry.” She knelt beside him and pulled him gently into her arms, encircling his shoulders and holding him tight like a child. “Oh, mon pauvre chéri, Marc-Edouard. Quelle horreur….”
This time he didn’t cry, he only sat with his eyes closed, feeling relieved to be there.
She wanted to ask him if something else was wrong. It was an insanely stupid question, given what had happened that morning, but he seemed odd to her, different, strange. Perhaps it was only exhaustion and the shock. She let go of him only long enough to pour him a cup of coffee, and then sat down again at his feet, her body curled on the white rug, the pink bathrobe concealing only the essentials and leaving long silky legs bare. He was staring at her as she lit a cigarette. “Is there anything I can do?”
He shook his head. “Chantal, Deanna saw us last night. She came to the airport to pick me up, and she saw us both get off the plane. And she knew. Everything. Women are uncanny that way. She said she knew by the way we moved that we had known each other for a long time.”
“She must be a very intelligent woman.” Chantal studied him, wondering what he would say next.
“She is, in her own quiet way.”
“And? What did she say?”
“Not too much. Yet. Too much has been happening, but she’s an American. She doesn’t take this kind of thing well. None of them do. They believe in eternal fidelity, the perfect marriage, husbands who wash the dishes, children who wash the car, and everyone goes to church together on Sunday and lives happily ever after until they’re all a hundred and nine.” He sounded bitter and tired.
“And you? Do you believe that?”
“It’s a nice dream anyway. But not very real. You know that as well as I do.”
“Alors, what do we do? Or, more exactly, what do you do?” She didn’t want to ask, “her or me,” but it amounted to that and they both knew it.
“It’s too soon to know, Chantal. Look at what has just happened. And she is in terrible condition; it’s all bottled up inside.”
“It’s still fresh.”
He nodded agreement and looked away. He had come here to say good-bye to Chantal, to end it, to explain that he couldn’t do this to Deanna—they had just lost their only child. But as he looked at her, as he sat next to her, all he wanted was to reach out and pull her into his arms, to run his hands over her body, to hold her close, now and forever, again and again. How could he let go of what he loved and needed so much?
“What are you thinking about, Marc-Edouard?” She could see the look of torment on his face.
“About you.” He said it very softly, looking down at his hands.
“In what way?”
“I was thinking,” he looked up into her eyes again, “that I love you, and that right now I want more than anything to make love to you.”
She sat watching him for a long moment, then she stood up and held out a hand. He took it and followed her silently into the bedroom. She smiled as he slipped the pink robe off her shoulders.
“Chantal, you will never know how much I love you.”
For the next two hours he showed her in every way he knew how.
19
The funeral was brief and formal and agonizing. Deanna wore a plain black woolen dress and a little black hat with a veil. Marc’s mother was dressed all in black with black stockings. Marc himself wore a dark suit and black tie. It was all done in the most formal of French traditions in a pretty little church in the seizième arrondissement, and the “Ave Maria” was sung by the parish-school choir. It was heartbreaking as the children’s voices soared over the notes, and Deanna desperately tried not to hear. But there was no avoiding any of it. Marc had done it all à la française—the service, the music, the eulogy, the little country cemetery with yet another priest, and then the gathering of friends and relatives at the house. It was an all-day enterprise, with endless rounds of handshaking and regrets, explanations and shared sorrows. To some it
was undoubtedly a relief to mourn that way, to Deanna it was not. Once more she felt that Pilar had been stolen from her, only now it really didn’t matter anymore. This was the very last time. She even called Ben collect from the house.
“I’m sorry. I won’t stay on long. I just needed to talk to you. I’m at the house.”
“Are you holding up?”
“I don’t know. I think I’m numb. It’s all like a circus. I even had to fight them about an open coffin. Thank God, at least that battle I won.”
He didn’t like the sound of her voice. She sounded nervous, tired, and strained. But it was hardly surprising under the circumstances. “When are you coming back?”
“Sometime in the next two days, I hope. But I’m not sure. We’ll discuss it tonight.”
“Just send me a wire when you know.”
She heaved a small sigh. “I will. I guess I’d better get back to the ghoulish festivities now.”
“I love you, Deanna.”
“So do I.” She was afraid to say the words, lest someone walk into the room, but she knew he’d understand.
She went back to the fifty or sixty guests who were milling around her mother-in-law’s rooms, chatting, gossiping, discussing Pilar, consoling Marc. Deanna had never felt as much a stranger as now. It seemed hours since she had seen Marc. He found her at last in the kitchen, staring out a window, at a wall.
“Deanna? What are you doing out here?”
“Nothing.” Her big sorrowful eyes looked into his. He was actually looking better. And day by day she seemed to look worse. She wasn’t feeling well either, but she hadn’t mentioned that to Marc, or the fact that she had fainted twice in the past four days. “I’m just out here catching my breath.”
“I’m sorry it’s been such a long day. My mother wouldn’t have understood if we’d done it differently.”
“I know. I understand.”
Suddenly, looking at him, she realized that he understood too, and that he could see what a toll it was taking on her. “Marc, when are we going home?”
Summer’s End Page 19