My stomach is growling. My feet are tired. I’m starting to get a headache. Just last night I heatedly told Hervé that I never nap, but I would love one now, just for twenty minutes—what Margaret calls a “nice lie-down.”
So without further ado, I turn my attention back to my phone.
Hey Will. Welcome to Paris.
I push “Send” and wait.
And wait.
It’s maddening. His phone must have pinged. Even if he has the sound off he would have felt the thing vibrate in his hand.
I try again.
Hey. I got your texts. They were delayed and didn’t arrive till late last night. That’s why I didn’t answer.
This time he removes the phone from his ear and glances at it. Ah. Finally. I stand up. Surely he’ll end his call with Robert or whomever and text me right back. Or call me. Or—here’s an idea—switch his focus to across the street and recognize me, his wife. His pregnant wife.
But no. He returns his phone to his ear and resumes his conversation.
Unbelievable.
This is too much. I head for the nearest Métro station. I glance back a few times, but William remains deep in conversation, nodding attentively, the smile faded from his face. I suppose it’s important. It better be. Whatever, I’m not up to playing second fiddle to a phone call. He saw my text and ignored it. The ball’s in his court now.
The distance that took two-plus hours to meander takes mere minutes by Métro, and I even get to sit down—a fifty-something woman offers me her seat, nodding at my midsection, and I gratefully accept. I don’t try calling Margaret again. She’s obviously done something to her phone, which she often knocks off the hook or manages in some other way to render inoperative. Anyway, I never get good service down in the Métro, even though they say they offer free Wi-Fi.
Just as I’m pushing open the heavy street door of Margaret’s building, my phone rings.
Great. He waits until I get all the way home before calling. William, your timing is awful.
Tempted to let it go to voicemail (which would serve him right), I get out my phone anyway, only to see that the smiling face on the touchscreen is not William’s. It’s Manu’s.
Oh no.
The lunchtime deliveries. I was supposed to meet Manu at ten-thirty.
I clap the phone to my ear. “Manu! I am so sorry! I forgot all about the deliveries!”
“Aimée?”
Manu uses the French version of my name, pronouncing it “Em-ay.” I’ve never corrected him because it sounds so much more beautiful than plain old “Amy.” Plus, every time I hear it, I think how “aimée” means “beloved.”
“You forgot?” he asks. I can tell he’s upset because he’s speaking to me in English, which he does when he wants to be absolutely sure I understand.
I let the massive door latch behind me and move a few steps deeper into the entryway. “Manu, listen. I am so, so sorry.”
I really am. Today is Thursday, our biggest day. Normally we meet up at his apartment and take his van to a restaurant to pick up the pre-made lunches—on Thursdays we swing by three restaurants. But this morning I was so wrapped up in thinking about William that I never once thought about Manu, much less about all those hungry office workers waiting for their sandwiches and salads.
“J’ai tout à fait oublié,” I add, as if repeating the apology in French will somehow make my thoughtlessness less terrible.
“T’as oublié?” he repeats, his tone incredulous. You forgot?
“Yes, I—it—”
I stop and try to order my scattered thoughts. I want to tell Manu what I’ve been up to all morning, but I also want to reveal the news in the right way. William’s arrival is so momentous. Manu may be hurt that I didn’t confide in him immediately, which would have been the natural thing for me to do. He knows the whole story of my shotgun marriage and of Kat’s death and of my numerous unsuccessful attempts to get in touch with William. In fact, he knows my entire life story, chapter and verse, as we have tons of time to chat while stuck in traffic on our daily deliveries. I’ve surprised myself by confiding in him so completely. He’s too easy to talk to, that’s the problem.
I lean my shoulder against a cool wall of metal mailboxes. The entryway is drafty and coldish, even on hot days, but it’s a good place for private conversations because it’s almost always empty. “Manu, I have some pretty interesting news,” I begin, part of me thinking I should first ask if the deliveries went OK but the rest of me too overwhelmed by my own problems to focus on Manu’s. “Yesterday, on my way back from the bakery, I saw—”
“Amy! Amy!”
Someone is shouting my name. I take the phone from my ear and step forward into the interior courtyard, a serene indoor/outdoor space created by walls of cream-colored stone, a floor of square light gray cobbles, and a ceiling of pale blue sky.
“Amy!”
For a mad, sad second I imagine it’s Kat. I often think I hear her, or see her—even in Paris, a place she’d never visited. She still exists in my head and my heart, though, where I guess she’ll live forever. In that way you never really lose the people who die. At least this is what I tell myself.
“Amy dear, where are you?”
Of course, the voice floating down from above doesn’t belong to Kat. It’s Margaret. Which makes a lot more sense.
What doesn’t make sense is how hoarse and raspy she sounds. Not her usual pure clear tones.
“Listen, Manu, Margaret is calling me,” I say into my phone as I hurry across the courtyard toward the foot of Escalier B, the staircase that leads up to Margaret’s (and my) apartment. “She sounds weird. I have to go. I’m sorry. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
He’ll understand. Manu knows all about Margaret’s fragility. Anyway, I don’t wait for him to answer because Margaret is shouting my name again, her voice even louder and shriller than before.
“Ammeeee—? Are you coming? I saw you out the window. Hurry, darling, hurry!”
The last syllable is cut short, causing me to pause and grasp the worn wooden handrail for support. What if William has discovered where I’m living? What if he’s up there with Margaret right now, freaking her out with a million questions? I consider turning back. Running.
But no. That’s ridiculous. William is either chattering on his phone or chowing down on a big French lunch. Also, the very idea of turning back is out of the question—in four short months I’m going to be a mother. A parent. My turning and running days are over. Time to grow up. Way past time, I guess.
“Amy? Hurry, child, hurry!”
She’s shrieking now. I take the stairs two at a time, and when I round the last landing, she’s standing in the open doorway of the apartment, her mouth agape and her long thin arms stretched out toward me. She’s barefoot and wearing her bathrobe even though it’s nearly one p.m.
“There you are! At last!”
“Margaret! What—what is it? What’s wrong?”
She bares her teeth in a too-wide, too-bright smile and darts forward to grab my hands as I mount the last few steps. “Come, child, come! You will never believe what has occurred!”
Her breathing is labored and her face flushed. I worry she’s having a heart attack or a stroke. My mother died of a stroke. One minute she was her normal self, yelling at me for being the bratty little kid that I no doubt was. The next, she was gone. Completely, permanently gone. That’s how it happens sometimes. We think things will last forever, that people will stay with us forever. Until they don’t.
“Margaret, please tell me what’s going on.” As she tugs me into the apartment I check the coatrack for signs of William’s jacket. I know. It’s insane.
“Oh Amy. Oh Amy. I cannot find the words!” Margaret lets go of my hands and takes me by the shoulders, her icy fingers digging into my flesh.
“Margaret, what is it? Are you all right?” I try to squirm away, but she has a surprisingly powerful grip.
“All right? Oh yes.
It is all happening, it is indeed.”
She again flashes the too-big smile, revealing the chip on one incisor, and pushes me into the sitting room.
As I stumble forward the first thing I notice is a pair of blood-red leather slippers. They are lying in a T in the center of the chocolate and robin’s egg blue Aubusson carpet as if someone has just kicked them off. The slippers don’t belong to me, or to Margaret, though they’re similar to a Moroccan-style pair she sometimes wears. These are far more exotic, however, with long pointy toes and extravagantly embroidered uppers.
The presence of the slippers bothers me. Our apartment is never in disarray. The Limoges figurines are always dusted, the creamy lace curtains are always starched, and the Baccarat vase is always filled with fresh cut peonies or roses and placed just so on the marble mantelpiece. Margaret and I do not leave items of clothing lying about.
Nor do we let dirty dishes sit out after meals. But now the cherry wood dining table is strewn with the remains of lunch—the uneaten half of a leek quiche, some green salad, a nearly empty bottle of white wine, and what’s left of my birthday cake.
It takes a second hard push from Margaret for me to notice the woman sprawled in the nut-brown leather armchair next to the fireplace. My armchair. She’s about my age, or maybe a few years younger, and is wearing a flowing black caftan. Her feet are bare—the exotic slippers must belong to her—and are very dirty. So is her shoulder-length ash blonde hair. She has unusually huge round eyes that she fixes on my face and doesn’t move, even to blink, as Margaret ushers me across the room to stand before her, like a peasant being presented to a princess.
“Amy!” Margaret says, her voice shooting up another octave. “Amy, allow me to present my daughter, Sophie.”
My polite smile freezes in place. Margaret has a daughter named Sophie?
To the best of my knowledge, Margaret had only one daughter—the one whose name no one has ever told me. The one who vanished without a trace, whom I supposedly resemble, whose clothes I often wear, and in whose bedroom I now reside. The girl who long ago wore the gorgeous baby clothes Margaret gave me for my thirtieth birthday just last night.
This lamented lost child is how Margaret and I met. After Margaret recovered from her breakdown, she started taking up with young women who reminded her of her daughter, often picking them up at random, as she did me at the Café de la Poste. “They weren’t all as sympa as you,” Manu said to me when he explained all this. Sympa means nice. It made me feel he approved of me, which made me happy.
“Sophie, darling,” Margaret is saying. “Amy is the young friend I’ve been telling you about. The American? The one expecting a child?”
Sophie barely glances at my baby bump. She’s too busy chewing on her thumbnail and jiggling her knee. She possesses none of Margaret’s elegance and warmth, and doesn’t even seem to physically resemble her, except for the fact that her enormous round eyes are green. For a split second I wonder if she’s a home invader. After all, any amount of weaponry could be concealed under the voluminous folds of that caftan. She could be holding Margaret, and now me, hostage. I hang back, half expecting her to whip out an AK-47 and start demanding our cash and jewels, but after a few seconds she apparently remembers her French manners and holds out a small, none-too-clean hand.
We shake. We do not kiss on both cheeks, which would be the normal greeting in France between two similarly aged young women (even on first introduction) and which means I may have been purposely snubbed.
“Why don’t you two girls chat,” Margaret says, clasping her palms together like a mother superior. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
Sophie remains seated, so I sit opposite her, in the chair Margaret usually occupies. “Um, hi,” I say. I try not to stare at the elaborately beaded caftan, which like her feet and hair is filthy. As a matter of fact, I have never seen such world-class dirt on anyone. Not even on a homeless person on the street. It seems impossible that any daughter of Margaret’s could let herself get into such a state.
“It’s Sophie, right?” I ask. “Nice to meet you. Have you been at school? Traveling?”
Sophie has leaned forward and is eyeing the diamond bangle bracelet Margaret gave me last May. It was a gift “for no reason,” she said. I told her it was too extravagant, but she insisted, and I decided to wear it, but only on a sort of loan.
I pull my sleeve down over the bracelet and refrain from asking Sophie any of the other many questions running through my tired, malnourished brain—Why doesn’t anyone talk about you? Where have you been all this time?—because I’m pretty sure she would not reply. We sit together in stiff silence, listening to Margaret rattling dishes and tunelessly humming in the kitchen. At one point, Catherine gives my lower ribs a soft nudge, reminding me how worn out I am, how much I’d like to have a bath and a nap, and how good that leftover quiche smells. My eyes wander to the dining table.
Lunch remainders mean Sophie must have arrived around late morning. Maybe earlier because not only is Margaret not dressed, her usually perfect silver hair is sticking out in all directions. I recall the multitude of mood-regulating pills Margaret still takes and wonder if we’re heading toward trouble.
“How long do you stay?”
I jump. These are the first words out of Sophie’s mouth.
“How long do I stay?” I repeat. I can’t tell if she wants to know how long I’ve been here or how long I intend to be here.
“You. Here.” She waves a grimy hand around the apartment. “When?” If she recognizes how rude this sounds, she doesn’t care.
“You’re asking when I’m leaving?”
“Oui.”
My breath catches. I’ve never heard anyone say “oui” quite in the way Sophie says it. She squeezes the life out of the word. She exterminates it, expelling it through her lips in a brief violent blast of air. They say French is a beautiful language, and it is, but I’ve come to realize it depends on who is speaking it, and how. And why.
“Well,” I begin. “I’m going to have a baby.”
Sophie sits back and lifts her left eyebrow in an expression that in Arizona would mean, “No shit.”
“And I am, sort of, living here,” I continue. “With Margaret, with your mother.” I run my thumb over the bracelet. “She’s wonderful, your mother. An amazing woman. So kind. So good.”
At this point I stop. I’m not saying anything Sophie doesn’t, or shouldn’t, already know.
We’ve lapsed into another uncomfortable silence when Margaret enters the room carrying a large silver tray laden with her English bone china tea set. Not the Cornishware mugs with the wide blue stripes we use for everyday, but her best vintage Spode with the tiny pink roses.
“Right. Here we are.”
Margaret is breathing heavily, but before I can jump up to help her—Sophie keeps her butt firmly planted in my chair—she places the tray on the hammered copper side table. “Ouf. Good job I laid by these lovely bon-bons. You never know when you’ll be in need of a proper celebratory sweet, I always say!”
Smiling so widely I worry her face will split in two, she produces a small golden box of a dozen Godiva chocolates from underneath the table, pulls a brocaded footstool forward, and plops down on it. “I’ll be mother,” she says. That’s what English people like to say when they pour out the tea. It’s a thing. She knows I find it funny, and she giggles at me as she tips a splash of milk into each of the three dainty cups.
Other than that, we are silent as our tea is sugared and milked and passed around. I open the box of chocolates with the Swiss Army knife Manu gave me for my birthday, which is still difficult to believe was only yesterday, and Margaret proffers them first to Sophie, who grabs the box and gobbles up two pieces rapidly one after another, as if she fears someone will take them away from her. I salivate at the sight of the chocolates and continue to puzzle over the possibility of Margaret’s having two daughters. But the truth is I’m having a hard time making my brain work. Last night I got
less than four hours of sleep, and it wasn’t sound sleep. This morning I walked for miles. And I’m famished. I sip my tea, wishing I had the nerve to help myself to some chocolates. But the box is on Sophie’s lap. Miles out of my reach. Like William.
“Amy.” Margaret is speaking to me but does not take her eyes off her daughter’s waxy face. “Is it not the most marvelous thing you could ever imagine? I still cannot believe it. The most marvelous thing.” She shakes her head as if to clear it of cobwebs and stretches forward to caress Sophie’s fingers. She doesn’t seem to notice how dirty and broken the fingernails are. Sophie does though, pulling her hands away and tucking them under the folds of the caftan.
“Oh, are you tired, darling?” Margaret’s voice swoops up yet another octave. “But of course you are! Come. You can take a rest on my bed. Or would you like to have a bath first?” she adds brightly. “Perhaps that would be better.”
Aha. So she does notice the dirt.
I can’t help smirking as Margaret hops up and hastens toward the bathroom. She’s halfway there when Sophie surges to her feet, jostling the tea tray and almost knocking over the footstool. She’s shorter than I thought she would be, one of those people who oddly look taller when sitting down.
“Your bed?” She places the box of chocolates on the mantelpiece, a good six feet away. “Mais pourquoi? But why? I have my own bed, do I not?”
The fact that Sophie speaks English with a French accent surprises me. By all rights she should sound endearingly British, like Margaret. But Margaret’s French is also impeccable. Maybe that’s what she spoke with her husband and children (and I’m still trying to work out if Margaret did indeed have more than one child), making English Sophie’s second language.
Margaret spins around, needing to reach out to place the tips of her fingers on a bookcase for support. “Yes, you do, my darling girl. But, at the moment, dear Amy is using your room.”
Paris Ever After: A Novel Page 6