by Glenda Adams
“What about the extra line leading to the building next door?” Lark asked.
“Who told you about that?” the courtesy representative asked sharply.
“The repairman,” said Lark. “He was very courteous.”
“He should not have told you about that,” the courtesy representative snapped. “He had no authorization to say that. That was confidential. Disregard entirely what he told you. I am calling to inform you that there is nothing wrong with your telephone.”
“She said it was confidential,” Lark said, which made Tom sit up.
Tom smiled and ran his hands through his hair. She could see that he was still with her, that he was still himself. “You know what confidential means, don’t you?” he said quietly. “It means that hundreds of people in hundreds of offices have access to detailed information about you, but since it’s confidential it means that you’re the one who’s not allowed to see it. And we acquiesce, because the government reassures us it’s in the interests of national security. Governments lie.”
Lark knew that Tom was right—for her life and indeed all their lives had been filed away, somewhere—and that he was right about most things that had to do with public policy. She regretted her doubts about him and what, this morning, had seemed like her petty-mindedness. He had already taught her a great deal. To her surprise and pleasure, she found that this first morning of her marriage she was glad to be beginning her life with this man, Tom Brown, whereas the night before she had been about to escape from him, to flee. She felt fortunate, at last. It was as Tom had promised, her horizons had been broadened. Donna Bird was out of the way, seemed finally to have been put to rest. Tom could now pay full attention to Lark, and Lark could at last relax and enjoy her life with him.
Lark and Tom spent one quiet, happy day together, then the next day Agnes Comet, who had tried to commit suicide when Tom had left her, telephoned from Paris. She had terrible news for Tom and desperately needed his help. Donna Bird, passing through, had given her his number. Her father, a lawyer, was in jail. He had been investing clients’ money for his own purposes, buying up art works, and was unable to produce the money when clients had called for it. He was being held in debtor’s prison, and Tom simply had to fly over immediately to help Agnes and her mother raise the money to pay back his clients and get him out of jail.
“Of course I’m coming, immediately,” said Tom, looking at his watch. “I’ll fly this afternoon. I’ll be with you tomorrow.”
“You’re going now, today, this very moment?” Lark was dismayed.
Tom was shaking his head. “That Agnes. You know, she’s one of the most intelligent women I have ever met, a first-rate mind.” Tom dialed the travel agent. “Change of plans, Mavis,” he said, “I’ll have to leave this afternoon.” And he secured his ticket.
“We’ve only been married two days.”
“Lark, please don’t be so possessive and so deeply conventional. You can’t appropriate me. That’s the same thing as murder. This is an emergency. I have to go. Agnes’s mother is a very old friend. I have to help her. And this whole thing is likely to make Agnes flip.” He went to his desk. “Luckily everything I’ll be needing in Europe is already organized.” He placed two boxes of note cards of blue, yellow, green, and white and several folders of clippings and notes in a duffel bag, then he stuffed underwear and shirts and socks and sweaters on top of the note cards and folders. “You can come over as we originally planned, in two weeks, and I’ll meet you in Paris.”
Lark stood on her balcony, watching the street. She had lost him. She had had him for just one day. There was no point in even trying to be a first-rate mind and to discuss the outcome of elections and economic policy and the arms race. And then another thought crossed her mind. “This isn’t another joke, is it? You didn’t plan that phone call, did you?” A dark green station wagon was maneuvering into a tiny parking space, inching back and forth. Lark had grown accustomed to noticing green station wagons, like little remnants of Solomon Blank. A man got out and stood stretching on the sidewalk. It appeared to be Solomon Blank himself.
“Don’t be absurd,” said Tom. “In this world, emergencies occur, you know.”
A woman, the same height as the man, fairly attractive, fairly blond, carrying a baby, emerged from the green station wagon. Lark watched them for a second or two, unable to shout. She ran down to the street, down the five flights of stairs, but the man and his family had disappeared. She ran to the corner, and down the block to the next corner. Then she walked home.
“I thought you had run away,” said Tom.
“I thought I saw someone I knew,” said Lark. “But I must have been mistaken.”
“Don’t do that,” he said, “don’t make me panic like that. And Larkie,” he hugged her extravagantly to him, a stage hug, “don’t be selfish. I have to help Agnes and her mother. We’ll be together again in no time.”
When Lark looked down at the street again, the station wagon had gone. She shrugged. Perhaps it had never been there in the first place. Lesson number one, as Tom had taught her—don’t necessarily believe what you think you see. Later she watched from the balcony as the yellow taxi whisked Tom off to Kennedy.
Mrs. Watter wrote: “He is interested in genealogy now, ever since he finished his project. And he has written to a lord in England suggesting that they are related. He would like to have ancestors. What next? I wonder. I hear there are many people on this continent who believe they are related to English aristocrats. It’s quite an antipodean delusion, I hear. I dread to think what the lord will answer. Don’t tell him I called it a delusion, though. I think he misses you. He mutters a lot, about arcs and larks. We are glad you are happy now. It is not such a terrible thing to be settled, you’ll find. And you’ll be interested to know that I have started a native garden, with bacon-and-egg, black-eyed Susans, sarsaparilla, flannel flowers, and, I hope, touchwood, a waratah. It’s just a small contribution to preserving this natural heritage of ours.”
IV
Off Lark flew on a chartered jet that left Kennedy seven hours late. It was the best deal in trans-Atlantic flights the travel agent had been able to find, and it was just as well she was flying cheaply, since Tom had had to pay the full regular fare.
The night before she left, Lark dreamt that President de Gaulle was asking for volunteers. Lark kept trying to raise her hand and cry out, “Je, je,” but the only sound that came from her mouth was a kind of hum. The good part of the dream, Lark felt upon awakening, was that she had understood de Gaulle when he spoke French, although she was aware that the answer she was struggling to emit was ungrammatical.
Lark took Dramamine at the airport, just in case she got airsick, since it was a small, older plane, but because of the delays, she kept taking a dose every four hours until the departure. She fell asleep in the middle of the chicken cacciatore. When she awoke she found there was a piece of unchewed chicken resting in her mouth, which confused her. They had cleared away the dinner tray while she slept, and the chicken in her mouth at first seemed to have no relation to anything around her. She swallowed.
“Oh, Tom,” she whispered to the passenger next to her. “There’s something I never told you,” and slept again, vaguely aware that she had addressed a complete stranger by her husband’s name, and had wanted to confess to him her role in the investigation of Manfred Bird’s shipment of artifacts.
Lark telephoned Tom at Agnes’s flat before she cleared customs.
“Oui, allô?”
“Est-ce-que je pourrais parler à Tom Brown?” Lark had written the sentence down on a piece of paper. She spoke each word clearly, excited at last to be speaking this language.
The woman did not answer, but Lark heard her call Tom. “C’est ta femme, comment s’appelle-t-elle?”
Lark was too pleased to have understood to be concerned with the tone, the content.
“He comes,” said the woman.
“Merci beaucoup,” said Lark.
“Your plane is so late,” said Tom. “I finally gave up calling.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lark.
After she passed through customs, she realized she had left her collapsible luggage trolley at the phone booth, and as she waited for Tom, turning her stone bracelet around on her wrist, the catch broke and the bracelet fell through a grating. Lark knelt down on the pavement, her forehead resting on the grating, trying in vain to see the bracelet.
“Good grief, Lark.” Tom was there trying to haul her to her feet, the passers-by pretending that this woman hunched over on her knees with her head on the ground was nothing out of the ordinary. “For God’s sake, get up. Are you ill?”
“I lost my bracelet, that’s all.” Lark wiped her forehead with her palm.
When Tom saw that she seemed to be all right, he softened, smiled, and held open his arms for her. “You had me worried. I thought at first you were some mad woman praying. Then I recognized the jeans and jacket and the behind in the air.” He gave her a playful pat. “Just joking.”
“I’ve even missed you,” said Lark, with a little laugh to show that she, too, was joking, although the heaviness from the loss of the bracelet was still with her.
“We really did a good job with raising the money. Mission accomplished. We have almost the full amount pledged. Monsieur Comet will be out in a few days, I hope. I can’t carry this.” Tom picked up Lark’s bag and put it down again. “I’ll throw my back out. These soft French beds have been murder.”
Lark saw that Tom was still lost to her. He was off and running, and she wondered how she would ever catch up, retrieve that moment of understanding that they had experienced, that perfect day of peace, after Donna Bird had left, before Agnes Comet had called.
“I can carry my own bag,” said Lark. “Only travel with what you can carry yourself, has always been my motto. Ever since I was four years old.”
They walked to the car, Tom with the palm of his hand at his waist, the fingers rubbing his back, to show that he was indeed incapacitated from sleeping on a soft mattress. “Madame Comet wants us to stay with them for as long as we can.”
“Can’t we get a hotel room?”
“They’d be terribly offended if we moved out. And besides, it’ll save us money, which would be better spent on wonderful food, and you’ll be able to see Paris while I finish off my fund-raising chores. Madame Comet cooks a mean meal. You’ve got to hand it to Frenchwomen.” He kissed a thumb and a finger to show how good her cooking was. “And they’re so grateful for my help that Madame Comet is letting us use her little Citroën—you’ll love it, a tin can held together with rubber bands—while we’re in France. She’s dying to meet you. Agnes, too.”
“A little Citroën, a deux chevaux, is big enough for a bomb,” said Lark brightly. “That’s what Jean-Claude said.”
Tom opened the door of the car for Lark to throw her bag in. “We called and wrote to everyone who has known the Comets and appealed for help. It was pretty simple. We said it was a misunderstanding, of course, that Monsieur Comet was in prison, but in the meantime they should send in contributions to get him out. It was like fund-raising.”
Lark was taking in the road signs, the place-names, saying them to herself as they passed the exit signs on the expressway into the city, striving to appear normal. Every now and then she looked at Tom’s profile as he talked, and then she remembered that she was married to the most handsome, most talented man in the world. My husband, she thought, without pleasure, for he had gone from her; my clever husband. Then she remembered Portia Bird saying, “My husband, the tenured professor,” as often as she could, and looked out the window again. She wanted things to be straight between them.
Lark moved close to Tom and put her hand on his thigh. He placed his hand over hers. “There’s something I never told you, several things, about Manfred Bird and me,” Lark said. She rested her head on his shoulder, this moment of confession helping her to feel closer to him, to feel like a wife.
“And there’s something I want to tell you.” Tom swung off the expressway. “There’s something I ought to tell you before we get there. Salot,” he called out the window at a driver who had cut in front of him. “Espèce de...” he could not find a word bad enough but gave the driver the finger instead, a gesture different from its American equivalent. Tom could gesture in French and English. “If Cécile, Madame Comet, says anything about Agnes and me sleeping in the same bed, don’t be upset. They were short of space and Agnes has been too upset over her father to be alone. She needs a lot of comfort, you know, a friendly shoulder to cry on. She’s a bit shaky emotionally at the best of times.”
“You slept with Agnes? We’ve been married less than three weeks and you slept with Agnes to comfort her?” Lark was screaming, yelling, punching first Tom’s arm, then the door of the car. “Let me out, stop this tin can and let me out.” She tried to unlatch the door.
“Mon Dieu,” muttered Tom. “Take it easy. I told you, it was nothing.” He reached over, pushed Lark’s hand out of the way, then held the door with his right hand, pinning Lark with his arm back against her seat. The car swerved. Other cars around honked their horns. “Cochon, salot, espèce de cochon,” rang out from the other drivers.
“You’ll get us killed,” and Tom edged over to the curb and stopped.
Lark made another effort to get free and leave the car. Tom grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her violently until she relaxed and let herself be shaken. Then he let her go, and she subsided into her seat.
“Nothing happened,” said Tom. “I didn’t know you were going to react so crazily. I only told you in case Madame makes some kind of joke about it. She has a great sense of humor and likes to joke. I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.” He paused. “You’re a big girl now, remember. I thought you’d grown more than that.”
Lark was whimpering now. “Take me back to the airport.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Jesus, I didn’t expect the shit to hit the fan. I didn’t even expect there to be any shit. I was just helping out old friends, who I’ve known years longer than I’ve known you, the same as Manfred Bird. I know how much you hate him and resent my friendship with him.”
“But I am your wife,” said Lark.
Tom groaned and beat his fists against the steering wheel. “There’s one other thing you ought to know. Donna Bird had to fly back to New York. Manfred has been arrested. There’s going to be a trial. He’s accused of larceny, smuggling, and fraud. Everything.” He looked at her coldly. “That ought to please you.”
Lark could see nothing. A gray veil had been drawn over her eyes, as if someone had put drops in to dilate her pupils, blur her vision. She turned to Tom but could not see him. She reached out her hand to see if he was there. He took it as a gesture of reconciliation and grasped her groping hand and kissed it. “There, there Larkie, I didn’t mean to shock you. But this is the real world, remember.” He shook his head. “Jesus, you frightened me with that outburst. It’s not like you.”
Lark still could not see. She believed she had gone blind. She reached for the door with her free hand. “Ah, ah, naughty, naughty,” said Tom, reaching over and taking that hand, too, holding both her hands in his right hand, the way a rider holds both reins. “Come on, kiss and make up,” he said and kissed her cheek and ear. Lark did not move away, which he took as a good sign. “When we get to the Comets, you can go straight to sleep. You’re overtired, I can see that.”
Lark blinked, trying to dismiss the gray veil.
While Madame Comet had insisted on speaking English on the telephone, as if Lark’s French were too painful, in person she spoke rapidly in French.
“Elle est douce, très docile, une bonne femme, je crois, et malléable?” She addressed this to Tom, indica
ting Lark with a nod. “She looks like a child. She should do something about that short hair.”
Tom explained that Lark was fatigued from the journey.
“Ah, fatiguée, but are you sure? Vous vous êtes marriés combien de semaines?” She was raising her eyebrows and nodding in a knowing way.
“No, it couldn’t be that,” said Tom.
Madame Comet and Agnes had not been home when Tom parked the car outside Madame Comet’s flat near the Champs Elysées and led Lark inside. He was carrying her bag now, since she seemed incapable, and he also held onto her as she stumbled and tripped over the doorstep, then bumped into a skinny little table just inside the door. “Steady,” said Tom. Then he thought for a moment and asked, “Did you drink a lot on the plane?”
“Dramamine,” Lark said. She was concentrating on getting her vision back. The gray had lifted and the pupils seemed to be contracting. She could see the shapes of the pieces of furniture and the brightness at the windows. Tom led her into a bedroom and placed her on the bed. “Is this the bed?” she asked, and sank into sleep.
At dinner, Lark had trouble following the conversation. It was all so much faster than she had expected. She was still working out “malléable,” whether it was “mal et” something, and they were discussing her illness, or something else altogether, when the conversation moved on. She heard Donna Bird’s name and the word or words “panneroppe,” or perhaps “pas neroppe,” or “pain eroppe.” After considering that there was perhaps a type of bread called Eroppe bread, or Roppe bread, she finally seized upon Pan-Europe, and gathered that they had been talking about some sort of new political activism designed to unite all the countries of Europe, which Donna Bird had had to give up because of Manfred’s troubles. But by then the conversation had progressed even further from Lark’s grasp.
Lark was glad that she could not follow everything, that she could plead language difficulties for not joining in, not that anyone seemed to care. She had turned leaden, getting heavier and heavier in the limbs, so that it was hard to pick up a fork, hard to chew, hard to stop the eyelids from descending. Agnes, who had appeared just before dinner for the first time, was also eating in silence, leaving all the talking to Tom and Madame Comet.