In two hours, his life was shut away in the faded suitcase. All that was left were the pictures, two by the bed and the music on the mantle. Catherine stared out of her silver frame. David collapsed on the side of the bed, and touched her thin lips. Her eyes were still dark. They still glowed with passion, with a depth of sentiment, and courage.
The photo brought back all of the pain, as though it was only yesterday. Time was supposed to heal. Time was meant to give perspective. Time was meant to make the memories fuzzy and less painful. But Catherine–Catherine was the zenith of his life. Catherine was the world. It didn’t matter what Gilbert had done. He’d tricked himself into believing that he might continue without Catherine in his life. Gilbert had awakened him to his own folly.
At seven the next morning David stepped out of his bedroom and into the pale November sunlight. He stared at the bags by the door. It really was over. He could hardly resign himself to it. But the fight had left him. The excuses for leaving his family behind were shattered, and all that remained was to go home and find a way to manage the pain of losing Catherine.
“David?” called a worried voice as a sharp quick rap on the door echoed across the barren apartment.
“Jeanne?”
David opened the door wide, and hitched a smile on his face.
“Mon dieu, David. I thought I missed you!”
Jeanne’s face broke into a wide smile. A thick veil of worry seemed to slip from her shoulders, and her eyes lit with motherly warmth. David’s stomach squirmed uncomfortably. It hurt to see her so thankful. In these long years she had treated him with gentleness and love, and now he had disappointed her as well.
“Je suit désolé,” he said, and meant it. He truly was sorry to lose her.
“What will I do without hearing your voice in the mornings and sharing café? Twenty years and it might have only been twenty days. Oh cher, I wish you well.”
Jeanne didn’t press him for information, and he was grateful for it. Instead she touched her hand to his cheek, patting it as a mother might. He swallowed hard. This short, feisty woman who treated him as a son … saying goodbye to her was like saying goodbye to Paris. Saying goodbye to the city that had made him into a man, who had swallowed him in its great expanse.
“David! David, wait!” she said as he turned to gather his bags. “I almost forgot, you’ve had a call from the hospital. Apparently you’re the emergency contact.”
Jeanne handed over the paper, turned, picked her way carefully down the stairs, and stopped at the door to the restaurant. She stared back at him, frowning, and then with a resignation blew him a kiss with tears in her eyes. A moment later he could hear her chattering away to her guests, laughing through pain as only the French can.
Georges: Hôpital Saint-Louis
Major heart attack.
DAVID TURNED TO THE bedroom; wave after wave of nausea hit him. He twitched and fell against the walls, scraping his shoulder, mortified at the thought of Georges in a hospital, dying, or perhaps already gone. A knock sounded at the door, soft, like wings beating the air. He hesitated on the threshold to the bathroom, his stomach convulsing. Turning and shuffling across the wood floor, he laid his hand on the cold metal of the doorknob and turned.
“Catherine.”
He had expected Jeanne. But it was Catherine framed in his doorway, on the very day that he was to leave Paris. His gaze dropped to what she was holding; the blanket shifted. What he had thought was a bunch of flowers now kicked again. Catherine stared; she shifted her weight as though she couldn’t quite bring herself to speak.
“I wanted you to know,” she whispered.
“Know what?”
He could not put together the shifting bundle and the sudden reappearance of Catherine in his doorway.
“You have a daughter,” she said.
Catherine moved the cozy, white fabric aside to reveal a serene sleeping face with a shock of black hair. David stared. Blinked and stared. A pudgy hand batted at the air beneath Catherine’s chin. She dropped her head, and cooed softly. She looked up to catch David staring.
“May I sit down?” she asked, clearing her throat.
“Please.” He motioned to the lone couch.
Catherine gripped the little bundle even tighter, bending her knees and sitting down with grace.
“I know I am barging in unannounced.”
She shifted backward, a strong hand on her bundle, hardly able to glance at him, though David couldn’t tear his eyes from the child.
“What’s her name?”
Catherine looked down again, radiating such a glow that David was unsure of how the baby was not blinded by it.
“Zoya.”
David watched as Catherine brushed the pink cheek with the smallest part of her finger, rolling it over the small mound of flesh. He could not put together what was happening inside his own home.
“How old is she?”
Catherine looked up, frowned, decided it wasn’t such a probing question after all, and answered.
“Two months. She was born on October first.”
Silence broke over the room. Catherine tightened her grip around the baby, and David shifted back in his seat. He blinked, counting back the timeline all the way to New Year’s Eve.
“It’s quite a surprise,” David said.
“Why are your bags packed?” Catherine interrupted.
David glanced quickly over his shoulder; his face reddened.
“I’m leaving.”
“Were you going to try and see her?”
David paled. “I didn’t think …”
“You always said that you didn’t want children. You didn’t want marriage. Can’t you imagine how hard it was for me to stand before you, carrying your child, certain that our relationship was over? And you were just going to leave?”
“You forced me to make a decision about something that I was honest about since the beginning.”
“And you don’t think anything has changed.”
David shook his head and gripped the arm of his chair, “Why did you come, Catherine?”
Catherine looked down at the child in her arms.
“I wanted you to know. Jeanne told me you were leaving for America. I thought you deserved to know about your daughter, before you left. In case it would change your mind.”
“What would that look like, Catherine? You made it abundantly clear that I am not good enough to be in your life. Why would you want me in your daughter’s life?”
“Our daughter’s life.”
“I can’t be what you want me to be.”
“You could be, David! If you wanted to,” she said, her eyes glistened, brimming with tears.
“I’m not ready to be a father. I can’t be your husband.” He wanted to give her a different answer, but his life was in shambles. What did he have to offer her?
“Why, David? Why?” She leaned forward, searching his face, hungry for answers.
David thrust himself out of his chair, walked to the mantle and fell against it. Ten minutes ago he had been a single man, tied down only by the painful memories of his lost love, and the shame of returning home penniless. Now the demands of two women were being thrust upon him.
“May I use your restroom?”
David raised his head to see Catherine standing, holding out the swaddled bundle.
“Will you hold Zoya while I go?”
She walked forward, and placed the child in David’s limp arm.
He curled instinctively around the bundle Catherine gave him. Zoya’s little body turned, and burrowed into the warmth of his chest. A small, perfectly shaped hand reached out from amid the luxurious white folds and grasped the fabric of his suit coat.
His eyes fell fully on the child–on his daughter. Her black eyes were fixed solidly upon him, searching his soul, just like Catherine’s did. He moved carefully back to the chair he’d vacated, sitting down almost as gracefully as Catherine had done.
“Hello, Zoya,” he whisper
ed.
Zoya smiled, a little drunkenly David thought, and then blinked her eyes twice before falling back asleep. He stared. Wishing, neither for the first time nor the last, to have two arms, that he could caress Zoya’s cheeks the way Catherine had.
Then, as though a dam had burst, tears fell on the soft folds of merino wool. There really was no other answer that he could give Catherine, as much as he wished it were different. What could he give this little girl, robbed as he was of his livelihood? No happy ending awaited their family. A child couldn’t erase the problems that plagued her mother and father. David curled his arm closer around the sleeping baby. He did not hear Catherine walk in.
“You look beautiful.”
It took David a moment to understand who had spoken.
“You aren’t as sneaky as you think you are,” David said, smiling. “I didn’t hear the toilet flush.”
“I had to powder my nose.”
“It still looks a bit shiny, you must have missed a spot.”
Catherine laughed, then walked closer, looking over David’s shoulder before she sat down across from him. The enmity was gone. All David saw in Catherine’s eyes was sorrow and remorse. Perhaps it was better this way that they parted on good terms. Perhaps it would make the final goodbye easier.
“I’m sorry I came over unannounced.”
“I understand.”
“No, please let me explain. I wanted you to see her. My mother tried to talk me out of it. She said it wasn’t fair to barge in on you like this, showing up after how it ended. It’s a lot to take in in a few minutes. You deserved more.”
“You don’t have to apologize. We ended on bad terms. It was your decision.”
David finally looked up, gazing at Catherine, wet tear streaks on his face. Catherine smiled back.
“Madame Jeanne told me about Gilbert.”
“How did she know?”
“Paris is not always such a large city. Sometimes it’s more of an extended family. I am sorry about what happened. He should be prosecuted. It is such a terrible thing for even him to do.”
“I appreciate your sympathy.”
“You are leaving?”
“Yes, this evening. I had only finished packing when you arrived.”
“You’re sure you want to leave?”
“Yes. It is all that is left for me. Gilbert stole more than money, he took every single client with him. The Université de Paris has ended their program. I cannot stay here.”
“There’s nothing that I could do to make you stay?”
“I’m not the right man for you. You deserve so much more than I could give. And so does she,” David said, indicating the child in his arms.
“I wish you wouldn’t leave.”
“Take her to the hotel in Cannes, eat pizza in Italy, let her dip her toes into the English Channel at Normandy. Take her to Invrea, to our spot there. Show her the world. Give her the world.”
It was surreal; hearing the clock tick by the few moments he had left to hold Zoya. This would be it, he thought, and his first and last time to hold his daughter. All he would ever know was this baby. He’d never go to her dance recitals, or help her with homework, or be jealous of the boy taking her on her first date, or walk her down the aisle towards her future husband, or toss her children in the air. It would only ever be the stolen minutes in a small flat above a restaurant in Paris.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Catherine turned, pulled a black purse onto her lap and rooted around. “I brought this. So you had something to remember her by.”
She pulled out a small pocket sized photo with Zoya’s likeness, and placed it on top of David’s satchel by the door.
“You must have known what my answer would be,” David said.
“I hoped I was wrong,” Catherine replied, choking back tears.
“Bunker Hill, Illinois, that’s where I’ll be if you ever need me.”
Catherine nodded. David stood, took one last look at Zoya and handed her back. When his daughter–it cut his heart in two just to think the words left his arms, the last remnants of his old self shattered. He wanted to grab her back, to hold Zoya until night turned into day and her love healed him, because now the pain was destroying everything.
“I should have been better for you,” he said.
He couldn’t look at Zoya, couldn’t bear to see the perfection of her little face.
“You made me fall in love with you. I’ll never love another,” Catherine said.
“Neither shall I.”
She sighed, gave David a sad smile, and picked up her purse. Zoya stirred and flung out an arm, searching for the soft wool she held. “I’ll go before I make a fool of myself.”
Catherine rushed forward, threw her free arm around David’s shoulder, and held him close. He sobbed into her neck, quietly begging the universe to intervene, so they could stay this way forever, the two of them with Zoya between them, embracing. But Catherine broke away, kissed him on the cheek, and rushed out of the apartment. Leaving as quickly as she had come.
David stared at the empty staircase. The last remnants of their presence drifted out the open door and through the open windows, like a fading sunrise before the march of a cold and starless night.
He stood for a few minutes, staring, thinking he could hear Catherine’s step on the landing. But she was gone. He lurched toward the luggage at the door. With his satchel slung across his body and the battered case in his hand, David walked to the nearest bus stop. The sun gazed bleary over Rue Saint Jacques, and memories flooded his broken heart. It was easy to remember, easy to pour over his relationship with this city. Black Paris didn’t exist anymore, it hadn’t for years, but David wished he could have sung on its stage, sung for Catherine, and to make the emptiness in his soul fade just a little.
AT THE HÔPITAL SAINT-Louis, David alighted from the bus and stood with his suitcase in his hand. The street hummed with pedestrians, who walked this way and that with dour faces. The doors swung freely on their hinges as visitors, doctors, and nurses rushed in and out.
“Bonjour, Georges Nevue, si vous plait,” he said to a receptionist sitting behind an overlarge desk.
“Chamber, 267,” she said, waving her hand at the elevators and turning to the next person in line before he could say merci.
It didn’t matter which country you were in, hospitals were all the same. Stripped of the different languages, it was the same mixture of bodily fluids and disinfectant, the same scurrying, and the same look on the faces of the damned. David turned a corner into a green windowless corridor. Door upon door lay in front of him. The smell of antiseptic turned his stomach.
He hurried forward; counting the doors he passed until he found 267 with ‘Nevue’ written on a placard. He hesitated. A nurse rushed by, pushing a large black cart filled with bottles and pills and bandages. The wheels squealed and flopped back and forth across the linoleum.
The door to Georges’ room swung effortlessly on its hinges, air rushed out: air that smelled of death. Georges lay, underneath a beige blanket. His hands rested on top of the coverlet, sunken and colorless. David moved forward to get a good look at his old friend. What had the passing month done? Georges’ face was hollow, but beyond hollow, as though he had been drained of blood, of life.
“Allô?”
David turned. A young woman stood, bearing a tray, in the doorway.
“I’m David.”
“You finally came,” she said, moving around him to hook a bag of fluids to Georges’ IV.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Monsieur Nevue was brought to us after suffering a heart attack. It was severe. He won’t last more than a couple of days. You should say your goodbyes now,” she instructed and bustled from the room.
“Oh Georges,” David sighed as he pulled a chair to the bed.
“You’re here.”
A weakened hand lifted and fell on top of his.
“You’re awake.”
“Heard everything that
nurse said.”
David’s throat constricted and he forced a smile. Georges’ voice was rough and little more than a whisper.
“Don’t pay attention to her,” he said, gripping Georges’ hand.
“She’s right, you know. I can feel it. I can feel Him coming for me.”
“Him? What do you mean ‘him?’” David said, nonplussed.
“God. It’s amazing what the end of life will do to your beliefs. Now David, you need to know a few things before I go.”
“Georges, please. You will get better,” David sputtered.
“No, I won’t. I know what happened. I know what Gilbert did, at the end.”
“Georges, please don’t worry about this now.”
“You are all I have to worry about now. I don’t want you to be destitute. I have a check for two thousand francs. Not much. But enough perhaps to help with your journey home.”
How did he know, David thought, but before he could reply, Georges collapsed into a coughing fit. David drew back in horror, looking fervently for the nurse.
“Water,” Georges said, hacking and pointing at the large bottle sitting on the windowsill.
He drank heartily before sighing in relief, and dropping back onto the thin pillow like a stone. David stood, horrified, a few feet away.
“Come here, my boy,” Georges whispered. “It’s in my bag. Promise me you’ll do better in the future, with your business partners.”
David stood, unable to move, and nodded his head.
“Good. I’d like to go knowing you are safe.”
“But Georges, you can’t go,” David said. “I meant to take care of you.”
“You have. But I am at the end of my life, David. I have seen many things, dark and terrible and good and hopeful. But I am worn out. I have no more life in me. You have given me purpose, these last ten years. But now, at eighty–whatever I am, I am ready.”
“Gilbert did this. You wouldn’t have had the heart attack if he hadn’t done what he did,” David snarled, his face contorted down hard lines of anger.
Lives Paris Took Page 21