Lives Paris Took

by Rachael Wright

  Lives Paris Took

  Lives Paris Took

  *

  Rachael Wright

  Copyright © 2017 Rachael Wright

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN:

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  No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.

  This is a work of fiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

  Cover Photography from Shutterstock.com

  To David.

  To Catherine.

  To Zoya.

  “Alas for those that never sing. But die with all their music in them.”

  Oliver Wendell Holmes

  CHAPTER ONE

  10 January 1960

  DAVID TURNED AND SHUFFLED to the station entrance, his breath rising in spirals before dissipating on the wind. In the field to the left, animal troughs lay frozen solid. A lone cow raised her head mournfully. Man and beast locked eyes before the animal dropped her head again to plow the dirt for a few blades of grass. David jerked, heaving his bag off the ground, running toward the doors.

  He looked strange as he stood in line, his knees propping up a worn suitcase, listing to his right side, fingering the sleeve neatly pinned to the suit coat. David took care to foster his aura of unapproachability, believing (quite correctly, too) that it was all that stood between him and the rabble. He didn’t invite confidences. His eyes were perpetually scanning, analyzing people and their interactions.

  From beyond the windows, caked with a decade of exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke, oak trees rattled like naked circus performers. David leaned against the back of the bench and stared at the gray wall. No one made conversation with a handicapped man if they could help it, not even 15 years after the war, although he was too young to pass for a solider. But David relied on this fear, cherished it, and nourished it so that it shone out of him like a beacon. It was easier this way, easier to cut off the world.

  “David, old chap!”

  A sharp clap on his shoulder nearly sent David toppling from the bench. He looked up and stared with utter resentment at the man standing behind him. He had the sort of face women found attractive; the classic definition of American man with wavy brown hair and sharp cheekbones and brooding eyes. Bertie Phillips, one of the few wealthy residents of Bunker Hill, Illinois. It was Bertie’s father, Albert Sr., who had quickly fronted the bill for Bertie to go to medical school right after Pearl Harbor. While David’s brothers suffered in the war, Bertie spent his time chasing women and cutting open cadavers. There was no Battle of the Bulge, no Normandy, no horrors at the liberation of the concentration camps, not for a rich man’s son.

  “Bertie.”

  “How are your brothers? Haven’t heard from them since the war,” Bertie said, draping himself across three seats opposite David.

  “They have recovered well.”

  “Dreadful business. Dreadful business.”

  David stared. He was almost free of this stifling town, standing on the brink of another life. When he continued staring, Bertie’s pompous manner flickered.

  “I say, what are you doing here, David? Meeting a girl?”

  David watched as Bertie’s top lip curled predictably, and he hated him for it.

  “How is your wife these days?” David asked. “Margaret, isn’t it? Does she know you’re meeting a girl?”

  “I’m certain I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I’m sure you know even less,” Bertie hissed and rose to leave.

  His suitcase connected with the bench with a sickening crunch. The snaps burst open; the contents tumbled across the dusty floor. David snatched up a pair of black lace undergarments and held them out to Bertie with a lopsided grin.

  “Wouldn’t want your wife to lose these. And those lipstick stains on your cheek and collar, you might want to rub those off. There’s a good man.”

  Bertie snarled, grabbed at the underwear, and stalked off to the men’s restrooms. David fell back against the seat, grinning. It was marvelous to bring Bertie Phillips down a notch after all these years and to give his brothers some justice. He replayed the scene in his mind, over and over until his train was announced.

  Boarding was a hassle, travelers pushed past with grunts and glares, some with thick briefcases while others herded children and wives along. After a couple squashed toes and a bruised knee, David fell into a seat, drew his faded leather satchel onto his lap and pulled out an envelope from the cavernous interior. The one-way plane ticket from Chicago to Paris sat in that envelope. It was like holding a piece of Atlantis or the Incan City of Gold. He fingered the paper, imagining his arrival and the peace the distance would bring.

  With a nail-grinding lurch, the train ambled from the platform, fields and scattered farmhouses scattering away. It weighed heavily on him, this decision. A midwinter storm rolled across the plains, and the familiar places of his youth flew by. Grief settled around his heart like a fog.

  What was done was done, even though he might have wanted to say goodbye to his brothers. But Paris sang its siren song from across the sea. He was capable for the first time in his life, capable of making a name for himself, capable of success. He was hurtling toward the change at such a rate that excitement and thrill merged with grief, guilt and loss until they formed something new — something complex and inseparable from each other.

  DAVID HANDED OVER HIS passport as he stood in line to board the plane to Paris. The airline agent looked down at it, then up again, his eyes rested for the smallest moment on his arm.

  “Go ahead,” the agent said, tearing off a portion of David’s ticket and handing him back his seat assignment.

  David smiled and heaved up his briefcase. He walked out to the plane, buffeted by the wind and sighed in relief when he finally sat down. It was cramped and smelled of cigarette smoke, but the was taking him to Paris —in only a matter of hours and Paris would change everything.

  David leaned against the window and looked out onto the tarmac. A thin line of passengers wound their way from the gate to the plane. A tall thin man held the hand of a young boy in blue pants, who clutched a metal toy plane. There must have been a huge gust of wind for the plane flew out of the boy’s hand and landed thirty feet away. Before he could even blink, the boy tore his hand out of his father’s grip and ran across the tarmac. A luggage truck screeched to a stop. The last trailer whipped dangerously around.

  The father, flushed and trembling, smacked the little boy who looked around, confused. David drew a heavy breath. A weight settled over his chest and the plane and the chatting people slowly disappeared until all that was left was an old white farmhouse covered in silence.

  He sat beside his mother, her smile slowly slipped away. The car rolled over the driveway; gravel flung up under the car, clanging against the metal like weak firecrackers. Nothing had changed here, the hedges were still perfectly trimmed, the rosebushes still lined the driveway, and the rusted tractors were parked in the ramshackle three-sided garage. The white clapboard house with its wrap around porch still stood at the center of it all, as tired and worn out as his mother.

  “Forward to darkness,” David said
under his breath.

  “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  David looked askance at his mother. “It’s always that way.”

  The house was quiet. They carried his suitcases up the staircase, which creaked and shifted like a rolling ship, to his old bedroom. A bunch of dried lavender, in a white milk jug, stood on the desk, which faced an open window. David closed his eyes and let the smell of sunshine-soaked sheets calm his frantic mind.

  “Welcome home,” his mother said before slipping out and tiptoeing down the stairs

  David sat down on the side of the bed, the springs shrieked in protest. He slipped off his shoes, slid his feet against the softened wood, and kicked his feet back. They smacked hard hard against something under the bed. With a great creaking of springs, he leaned down and tugged at the side of a wooden box.

  What came out was a jumbled assortment of his childhood: G.I. Joe figures, an unraveling jump rope, a few spinning tops, and a child’s magnifying glass. He picked up the soldiers and twirled them through his fingers; memories of the war flooded his mind. The figurines dropped from his hand with a muffled thud. He shoved the box out of sight before heaving himself off the bed.

  Walking gingerly down the staircase, he listened to the steady thump-thump of knife upon wood. He walked through to stand by his mother in the kitchen. She didn’t look up from her work, but they fell into their old routine as though no time had passed. David set the table, washed the dishes and kneaded the dough while she cut meat and vegetables.

  With heavy-handed strikes the grandfather clock in the hall signaled the hour. David stopped mid-rinse, and listened. The small ticks turned into the sounds of trumpeters heralding his doom. His mother too fell silent, her fingers trembling as she slid a clean pot into a cupboard. They waited with weary hearts and straining ears, but the night held only the whistling of the wind and the merry crackle of food in the oven.

  The gale outside grew stronger by the moment, and the porch groaned from the shifting pressure. David looked up; a scraping came from the other side of the door, like a small animal begging to be let in. With a small sigh, David closed his eyes to savor the quiet and the peace, which came to a bitter end.

  “Della, we will need two more farmhands for harvest next year. Try and get the ones we had this year. Either that or bring two of the boys home to work it.” The voice boomed around corners and through the cracks in the walls and around David’s mind.

  He forced himself to step around the corner, his mother at his heels, her smile long gone. In front of them stood a tall man with steel colored eyes. Robert Raikes Golike was a thin man with a pointed chin and hard deep-set eyes. His ears stuck out too far from his head for him to be handsome. Robert was a hard man, the sort of man who took on the quality of leather from so long in the sun. Robert stopped for the briefest of moments, perhaps the flittering of a butterfly’s wing, before addressing his wife.

  “Dinner, Della,” he grunted as he slung off his coat, hung it on a rack by the door, and dropped into the seat at the head of the table.

  Della rushed off to the kitchen, gathered the water glasses and scurried back out again.

  “There you are,” she said with a wilted smile.

  He looked up as his wife placed the glass in front of him. David watched in horror as their eyes met, something passed between them, an understanding of sorts. Robert nodded and Della, blanching, hurried around the table to her seat.

  “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven …” Robert’s voice softened as his lips formed the familiar words.

  David opened his eyes; looked down at the table and watched as steam rose in spirals from the mashed potatoes. Robert recited the prayer with increasing fervor, though as soon as he said, ‘Amen,’ the sounds of silver against china began. Robert heaped food onto his plate from the dishes that were grouped in front of him. David watched, waiting for the moment that his father would pick up his fork. Only then could he too portion out his own food.

  Beyond the sounds of mouths chomping away, a silence grew — silence that was so much more than mere absence of sound. David took frequent glances to see if his father had finished his dinner. He couldn’t eat … couldn’t touch more of the food now that his stomach had turned into a quivering mass.

  “What are you going to do now that you’re home? I won’t have a lay-about son; every one of your siblings is working hard for The Lord. You ought to be doing the same, or are you still ‘agnostic,’” Robert said, fixing his son with a glare.

  A small part of David sighed in relief.

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that, Father.”

  “Hmm? Do let me in on what scheme you have cooked up. What have you told your mother and not me?” Robert said, his eyes roaming to the kitchen where Della was cutting up the pie.

  “I haven’t kept anything from you.”

  “Don’t lie to me. You’ve been glued to your mother’s skirts since you were five. Of course you told her.”

  Tension seeped out from the table and filled the house; even the wind stopped howling. Heat rose up David’s spine and settled in his brain, black dots flickered across his vision, and he couldn’t control his three limbs or keep his torso upright. Robert leaned forward; his hand darted out, almost as if he were going to reach for his son. But his arm jerked back and he resumed his stern gaze once more.

  “I’m going to Paris.”

  The words tumbled out like vomit and were met by an avalanche of silence. Robert’s eyes clouded over, a napkin balled in his fist. Della tiptoed out of the kitchen, wringing a wet towel. David stared at his father whose mouth gaped open.

  “What?”

  “I was offered employment teaching English courses after hours at the Université in Paris,” David said, his voice much louder than he intended. “I leave in a week.”

  “Robert?” Della said, her voice scarcely above a whisper.

  Without a word, Robert rose from his chair, pushed it flush with the table, turned and walked out of the room and down the hall. With a small click, the door to the master bedroom shut.

  David and Della remained at the table, struck dumb by Robert’s abrupt exit. Neither dared move, should he come out and begin to yell. It was as though he was still in the room, fixing them both with his glare, daring them to give him a reason to rage and storm. Seconds turned into minutes and minutes turned into what seemed a century. David stood until he had no notion of how long he stood, barefoot on the wooden floor, listening for the telltale grinding of a hinge.

  A loud voice echoed through the rows and rows of economy passengers. A stewardess rose and began a rehearsed speech about emergency procedures and water landings. David turned to look out the window, scraping sweat from his forehead. The airport swung out of view and beyond lay Chicago.

  His father’s voice echoed in his head … the look … the clear disappointment. David closed his eyes, ignoring the older woman beside him who had just pulled out her knitting. His heart thudded wildly and for a moment he regretted everything. He thought about jumping up and begging to be let off the plane and he could go home and apologize. But he was frozen … he couldn’t move. And when he could finally hear again he was shoved down into the seat as the plane tore across the miles of flat concrete and into the sky.

  PARIS ISN’T JUST PARIS. Paris is a hundred different cities thrown into a pot and cast out into the wind.

  Paris is always gray in January — dirty gray marble, gray trees, gray mist burrowing into the alleys and settling down to rain for several days. Anyone who is anyone leaves Paris during January, just as they do when the summer sun beats down on the pavement and the ice in drinks melts before the waiter gets it to the table.

  It was this Paris that David found on January 11, 1960. A Paris darkened by the soot and grime of centuries. It was into this less than sparkling city that David traveled by bus from Orly airport, but he saw nothing of the soot o
r grime. David, who knew so much of the city’s history, saw Napoleon, the Celts, the early Franks, even Hitler posing in front of the Eiffel Tower. His eyes shone with childlike joy.

  Everywhere he looked, Parisians bustled about, oblivious to the fact that above them, a man drunk in their every movement as though he was dying of thirst and they the only source of water.

  The grimy bus disgorged David in the fifth arrondissement, the corner of Rue Jussieu and Rue Saint-Jacques, next to the grand marble steps of the Sorbonne. David stopped on the sidewalk, dropped his bags, his gaze bent down Rue Saint-Jacques, but Paris wasn’t meant to be stopped, not for an enraptured American. He was jostled this way and that until he picked up his two suitcases and set off down the street. He passed more classical architecture, barren walnut trees, and ornate metal scrollwork on balconies until he stopped in front of an unassuming front with only the world ‘Hotel,’ on a small sign, designating it as such.

  After checking in, using his most polite French, he unpacked his few possessions in room 49. He sat on the bed to re-read the letter from the university. Here he was, in Paris, the sound of the city echoing up off the streets. And yet he lingered. He was as uncomfortable as he had been in the train station in Bunker Hill, Bertie Phillips sneering down his nose. All the planning it took to get here, all the careful preparation, and now here he was hyperventilating in a hotel.

  Ten minutes later the door to room 49 shut with a rattle of the windowpane. David burst out and retraced his steps. He came upon a quiet, unassuming bistro where he might sit in peace, ordering coffee, which was delivered by an impeccably dressed waiter, clad all in black. It was delicious, it was metropolitan, and it was Paris. David closed his eyes and listened to the bustle of his surroundings, the hiss of the espresso machine, the crackle of baguettes as they were torn into pieces.

  He leaned back against the metal chair and unbuttoned his blazer. None of his fellow diners bothered enough to spare him a glance. With careful eyes, he looked around, watching a table of women as they gossiped and chortled over their pastries. Across the room, a discreet lover’s spat was unfolding. It was awkward to watch their simple, outright refusal to look at each other. When the woman’s head turned, a glint of light caught on the corner of her eye. She looked up and over and found David looking at her. He tried to give her what he thought was an apologetic smile. The woman sighed and looked down, picking up a piece of baguette and rolling it in her fingers.