Paris Ever After: A Novel

by K. S. R. Burns

  But even now I often picture her magically appearing at my side, alive and vital and well, bursting to tell the story of what a crazy misunderstanding it all was, the cancer and the three long years of futilely fighting it. “No way,” she would say, smacking me wetly on the cheek. “That couldn’t happen. We’re too young. Let’s go out for ice cream or drinks.”

  It’s only a daydream. Kat never will magically appear. These days I don’t drink, and when I eat ice cream, it’s with Margaret, whose laughter I can now hear in the next room.

  “Manu!” she is saying. “You wicked boy.” He’s always teasing her. It’s sweet. Even when she sinks into bouts of sadness, as she often does, he never fails to find a way to make her laugh. Margaret and Manu’s relationship is jokey, tender, and respectful, like a loving mother and son.

  She even frets about him as if he were her own. “Manu is a young man capable of succeeding brilliantly at whatever he lays his hand to,” she’ll say. “If only he would finish school or settle down to a real job.” It drives her to distraction that Manu, who himself turned thirty this year, is not on a corporate or professional track. Instead he chases after his twin passions, food and technology, and tends to get lost in them, sometimes to the point of forgetfulness. I try to tell Margaret not to worry. There are worse qualities to have.

  I lift my head from the windowpane to listen. Manu is saying something I can’t quite make out. Hervé is oddly, for him, silent. Wait. There he is. “Madame!” he exclaims, loud and clear. “Allow me to make a suggestion.”

  Funny. Not that long ago these people were complete strangers to me. Today they’re at the center of the beautiful new life that I, with ridiculous luck and some work, have managed to create for myself.

  Yes, I know it’s a precarious life. According to God and the State of Arizona, I am still bound to William. Our business remains unfinished. Catherine is waiting for me, expecting me to do the right thing, which does not involve spending the whole night hiding out in the bathroom.

  I turn my back to the window and tap out a brief text:

  Hey. Just now got all your messages. They were delayed. It happens sometimes.

  But before I press “Send,” I pause. His last message was, “Expect to hear from you tomorrow.” By now he may have managed to fall into a jetlagged sleep. If so, I sure don’t want to be the one to wake him up with a text chime. A sleep-deprived William is never a cheery William. I delete my text, not wanting to send it off by accident.

  Caution is wise, because he’s going to go ballistic when he finds out I’m having a baby. He’ll be enraged he wasn’t immediately informed even though it was his fault for ignoring my many attempts to reach him. He won’t believe me that it was July before I myself found out. He will bring up his “rights,” just as Margaret has been doing recently.

  “He at least needs to be told he’s going to be a father,” she reminds me on a semi-weekly basis. It’s weird because, at first, she wasn’t in favor of me leaving her and returning to William. Ha. No way. From the moment we met, by chance in a café, she seemed to crave my presence, my company. Manu says this is because I remind her of the daughter she lost. Yet as my pregnancy has progressed, more traditional notions have started to take hold in Margaret’s mind. “Your baby is something you and your husband made together,” she’ll insist.

  I don’t disagree. Even before I knew for absolute sure about Catherine, my life in Paris has been shadowed by guilt, by a sense that I owe William something—a degree of allegiance, a measure of loyalty. At the same time, I’d like to just say, “Thanks a million, babe, for those lovely, lively sperm. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

  Snark.

  Out in the next room, Margaret laughs again. I’d love to possess an elegant silvery laugh like hers. She’s nothing at all like my own mother, or at least how I remember my mother, who rarely laughed, but when she did, produced a squeak that sounded more like a sob. And who is, like Kat, dead and gone. Also like Kat, I wish I could have had more time with her, especially now that I’m about to be a mother myself. My situation gets a little scarier every day, to be honest. I adore Catherine, and want to meet her more than anything. But yikes.

  I stand up, step to the sink, splash some water over my face, and use my wet hands to slick my hair behind my ears. No more hesitating. Must get going. Everyone is probably wondering what I’ve been doing in the bathroom so long.

  Just before opening the door I check my phone one more time. No new messages have appeared. William, engorged with pizza and numbed with jetlag, must be sound asleep.

  Good. Today is still my birthday, after all. I’d like to enjoy what’s left of it. So I power down the phone and stash it under a stack of bath towels. If William does wake up and decide to text again, or call, I don’t want to know. Not tonight.

  Because, damn it, he has nerve, showing up here and threatening to put an end to my happy-ever-after.

  four

  As I emerge from the bathroom into the sitting room, I feel as if I’ve stepped into the last act of an amateur stage production. Hervé is standing at the front door, buttoning his coat. Margaret is hovering nearby, clutching a white linen tea towel. Manu is seated beside the fireplace, elbows on knees, expression unreadable.

  “Your invitation for a digestif is most flattering, monsieur,” Margaret is saying. “Alas, I have a frightful amount of matters to attend to here.”

  “What’s going on?” I ask. I was counting on a second slice of cake with my coffee. A digestif is supposed to come afterwards. If at all.

  Hervé transfers his beady eyes from Margaret’s face to mine. “Amy, I desire to invite you and madame to accompany me to a club.”

  “A club?” I cross the room to stand beside Margaret. It’s nearly midnight. The last thing Catherine and I should do right now is go out clubbing.

  “Yes. It is members only. Very exclusive.” He rubs his palms together like a praying mantis.

  “It sounds charming,” says Margaret. “You, Amy, my darling, absolutely should go. And you, too, Manu, my dear boy,” she adds, flapping the tea towel in his direction.

  I hesitate. What I should do is stay home, help with the dishes, and go to bed. But the problem is that no matter how many dishes I wash, or how early or late I get to bed, I know I’m going to lie awake for hours obsessing over William. The man is staying only a few blocks from where I am standing right now. I can almost smell his signature vanilla-scented cologne. What’s more, seeing him today, fleeting as it was, reminds me that my old desire for him is not dead. It’s crazy, I have to admit. Always has been.

  Yet I worry about leaving Margaret. “Are you sure? I don’t want you to do those dishes by yourself,” I say. She looks so tired. Her hands are trembling.

  She chuckles. “Don’t worry, my child. I’ll save them all for you!”

  “Good. You better. Seriously, I mean it.”

  She loops her arm through mine and leans against me. Usually I handle the cooking—I even buy the lion’s share of the groceries, which is the least I can do seeing as I live here rent-free. But tonight, Margaret insisted on preparing the whole birthday dinner by herself, from apéritif to entrée to plat to dessert. Well, the dessert we bought at a bakery that specializes in American-style layer cakes. Our oven isn’t big enough for something like that.

  “I promise. No dish doing for me.” She slings the tea towel over her shoulder. “Meanwhile, you young people should enjoy life! Have a digestif for me!” She laughs her silvery laugh as she reaches for the coat rack, where my black fingertip-length trench hangs from a curved brass hook. It was brand new when I first came to Paris last April. Now it’s rumpled beyond redemption, partly because it was a cheapie coat in the first place and partly because it got completely soaked on a crazy trip I took down into the catacombs with Manu and some of his friends.

  The memory makes me want to giggle. Exploring the forbidden Paris catacombs was the first true adventure of my life. Never in a million years wo
uld I go down there again, yet I love that such a place exists. When I walk the streets of Paris it’s cool knowing a second Paris exists only a couple dozen yards beneath my feet, a city of shadows under the City of Light. I adore every single new thing I’ve learned about Paris and France. It’s been awesome.

  “Here.” Margaret is holding up not my ratty black trench but her crisp tan Burberry. “Take my coat. The weather report predicts rain.” She inserts my arms into the sleeves the way you would do for a child. “Off you go! I’ll be asleep by the time you get home.”

  Before I can say another word, I’ve been gently shoved out the front door, followed by Hervé and—a half minute later—Manu.

  The three of us clomp down the stairs in silence. My guess is that Hervé is annoyed Manu is along, and Manu is annoyed Margaret is not along. I, by contrast, am happy to be along. It’s still my birthday, for one thing. For another, once Catherine is born I won’t be able to just pop out for a late-night glass of whatever with friends. My life will be very different. I’m a little scared, as any sane person would be. But, also, I can’t wait. Kat is no longer here to be loved, but Catherine will be, soon.

  We step out onto the street, still in silence. I half expect to see Manu pivot on his heel and stride off down the sidewalk. Or return upstairs to spend the rest of the evening with Margaret. I wouldn’t put it past him to do all those dishes by himself.

  But Manu doesn’t leave my side. When a cab pulls up, all three of us pile into the backseat, me in the middle, and we squeal off, heading west toward the rue de Rivoli.

  As we speed along, I lean forward to peer out the side windows. This cozy enclosed spot, though it smells like cigarette smoke, feels like a good place to be right now. Tomorrow will be soon enough to find out why William has come to France. Tonight, I’m brimming with a mad joy.

  After all, I’m in Paris.

  I’m home.

  Of course, this is ridiculous. I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and had never even traveled back East (much less overseas). But the first time I stepped onto a Paris sidewalk I felt wholly at ease. The sky was the color of pewter. The streets were shiny jet black from a night of rain. I walked for miles, sloshing straight through puddles, invincible in my boots and then-pristine black fingertip-length trench coat. It was, to date, the nicest walk of my entire life.

  We are rocketing past the long, sober façade of the Louvre when Hervé murmurs a few words to the driver, who a block later turns right off the rue de Rivoli and onto the broad avenue de l’Opéra. I scrunch down in my seat to gaze up at the Opéra Garnier, an ornate square building presiding at the end of the avenue like an enormous billion-calorie birthday cake.

  It’s funny. You’d think in a crowded metropolis like Paris there wouldn’t be enough space for you to be able to admire things from a distance. But there is, and you can. Notre-Dame Cathedral is set on an island in the Seine, the Arc de Triomphe stands in splendid isolation at the top of the Champs-Elysées, and the Eiffel Tower can be spotted from all over town. You can turn down some anonymous little street and be treated to a perfectly framed snapshot view of an iconic monument, like the Sacré-Coeur or the Panthéon. It pays to keep your eye out. Be ready to be dazzled, Kat would say.

  I’m wondering if our destination tonight is near the Café de la Paix—the café someone said the whole world eventually walks by—when our cab veers into the black maw of a poorly lit side street. All three of us pitch to the right, briefly pinning me between Hervé’s bony shoulder and Manu’s much more muscular one. My heart thumps. Without warning, we’ve plunged into one of the dark narrow lanes that Napoleon III told Baron Haussmann to replace with airy broad boulevards, all the better to march soldiers down to keep the rabble in line. Haussmann obviously missed this one. Perhaps barons are just not that reliable.

  A hundred yards later the cab brakes, screeching, and Hervé opens his door before we’ve even come to a complete stop. “Come,” he says, reaching for me. I don’t need help exiting a car, just as I don’t need help rising from a chair, but I allow him to assist me anyway. It’s his thing. “No doubt he was brought up by Swiss governesses,” Margaret once mused. “He has such lovely Old World manners.”

  Whether or not this is true, Hervé always seems to know the right way to conduct himself. He exudes a noble sense of self-assurance that I envy. Some people are just naturally confident, I guess. Not me. I often feel awkward or uncertain. I often do the wrong thing, or say the wrong thing, or make decisions hastily and fall into situations that most people would avoid. I react, instead of act.

  That’s got to change with Catherine on the way. Whatever happens or doesn’t happen with William.

  Manu leaps out of the cab a nanosecond before it lurches away, and I catch sight of Hervé’s grimace in the red glare of the taillights. He was probably hoping the car would take off before Manu could get out. Honestly, the antipathy between these two is so thick you could cut it with a cheese knife.

  “Where are we going?” I ask Hervé, but he doesn’t reply. He only bares his whitened teeth in a glittering smile, happy to be the one with the upper hand. I mean, seriously. What is it with men and their need to control everything?

  I reach out to brush Manu’s elbow, to reassure myself he’s still there. It’s creepy here. We can’t be far from the place de l’Opéra, where no fewer than seven major boulevards converge, but this forgotten quartier is hushed, deserted. The few street-level stores have long since closed up shop for the night, and the shutters on the upper-floor windows look as if they haven’t been cracked open for decades. That’s another surprising factoid about Paris. A mere half block from a bustling thoroughfare you can find yourself entirely, gloriously alone. All you have to do is round a couple corners, and poof, it’s as if you’ve traveled miles instead of yards. It’s uncanny. William would say there are wormholes.

  We walk a few yards to the mouth of a street even darker and narrower than the one we’re on, where Hervé pauses to pull two small flashlights from his pocket and passes one to me. Who knew Hervé was such a Boy Scout? I aim it so both Manu and I can navigate by its thin beam and am again reminded of our adventure in the catacombs. That was way scarier—black as ink, filled with icy pools and bottomless pits, studded with caverns hip-deep in human bones. “Weren’t you terrified?” Margaret asked, her eyes wide. “Yes,” I said. “But Manu was there. I never actually felt unsafe.”

  Margaret is easily disturbed so I didn’t go on to explain that, in any case, safety is an illusion. It’s a lovely story we tell ourselves, a fairytale that gets us through the night. Besides, she surely knows this, deep down. The loss of her daughter must have taught her that. The deaths of my mother when I was eight and my father when I was eighteen were how I learned.

  Also, Kat’s death.

  I still miss her so much. Every day.

  “Voilà.” Hervé touches my elbow.

  We’ve stopped in front of a windowless unmarked door. It looks more residential than commercial, and for a second I wonder if this is where Hervé lives. Margaret and I often speculate about what Hervé’s apartment is like. That it’s baronial goes without saying, and both of us look forward to being allowed to see it someday. However, I’m ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain that while he might take me there, he would never take Manu.

  Which is why I’m not surprised when he doesn’t get out a key—the enormous antique brass key with a filigreed handle of Margaret’s and my imaginings—but simply gives the door a push. It swings open noiselessly to reveal a smoky hallway, beyond which I can hear music and see tables and chairs.

  As we step inside my first act is to scan for William.

  I know. It’s ridiculous. The odds against him being here are astronomical. Spotting him today has sent my brain into a whirlwind of speculation and paranoia and desire and panic. My worlds are colliding and most likely not in a good way.

  “All right?” Manu touches the back of my hand, his blue eyes bright with concern,
but all I can do is gaze around the room and think how William would hate the low ceiling, painted black, and the rough plank walls, also painted black, and (especially) the multitudinous votive candles littering the marble table tops. A firetrap, he would call it. The sole feature here that he might approve of would be the zinc bar. “Zinc is a living metal,” he once told me. “It changes its color over time in reaction to its surroundings.”

  William is always divulging obscure pieces of information like this. Some are tedious. Some are intriguing. In the early years of our marriage he used to spend hours explaining how things worked. Engineering-type things like Tesla coils. Kat said I was nuts when I confessed to her that I thought this was adorable. But it was. Maybe it could be again. I shift away from Manu and let Hervé help me off with my coat, the hair on my arms standing up.

  Not because the room is cold, or Hervé’s touch is electric, or I’ve changed my mind about running straight to William’s side, but because of the Bach cantata being played by an acoustic guitarist seated on a round raised platform in the center of the room. I recognize the piece right away because my mother was addicted to Bach. Whenever Dad, not a classical music fan, wasn’t around she would put on her stack of battered records—we were among the last vinyl holdouts—and play her cantatas and chorales and preludes and hymns at full blast with all the windows open. We were the outcasts of the neighborhood. To this day, Bach gives me a stomachache and makes me homesick at the same time.

  “Hervé, let’s go somewhere else.”

  But Hervé doesn’t hear me or doesn’t choose to. He’s acknowledging the aggressively thin woman gliding over to us. She smells of patchouli and is wearing a sequined black chemise that hangs from her shoulders to her ankles in a perfectly straight line.