Lives Paris Took

by Rachael Wright

  “I … I’m …”

  “You know what, don’t bother, Lois,” he said, and slammed the phone back down on its cradle with a satisfying crunch.

  TWO MONTHS LATER DAVID had burned through the money Georges had given him before his death. One hundred dollars was all that remained to his name. All that remained of Paris. On a fine Sunday morning he woke late. A thumping echoed from downstairs, sounding oddly like the front door. He bounded down the stairs, skidding to a halt before the door; wincing at a splinter he’d gotten from a floorboard.

  “David!”

  A black-haired woman bounded over the threshold and took his face in her hands. Her small brown eyes crinkled. She filled his heart with joy.

  “Marilee! What a surprise, where’s Delbert?” he said and hugged his sister-in-law.

  “Oh, Doris said they needed help on the farm and, you know Deb, he rushed off.”

  “He is known for that,” David said with a smile.

  Marilee bustled through the house; making comments on how little had changed, frowning at the dishes that David had let pile up in the sink, and tidied as she went.

  “I am so sorry for the loss of your parents, David,” she said and settled down on the sofa, patting the seat beside her.

  In the course of twenty years, Marilee had aged. Her ankles were a little thicker than David remembered but her hair was just as black and though her face was lined, David knew it was from an excess of happiness.

  “A granddaughter. Can you believe it? To have three boys and then to finally have a girl, that is happiness. We saw her, you know. They are living in Scotland now. Lovely place, not at all like here.”

  Pride broke over her face. Her eyes dropped out of focus as she spoke, building the Scottish countryside with her hands. David watched her like a film. Marilee was never one for keeping her emotions hidden. She viewed it as a lie. So he could quite clearly see love and pain and more love fly over her round features.

  “Congratulations, Grandma.”

  “Yes,” she said, tilting her head higher, “I do enjoy that.”

  David sat with Marilee as she talked about her children, about the church Delbert was preaching at, the congregations that were quick to take advantage of her soft-spoken and kind-hearted husband.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” she said abruptly.

  “All right.”

  David looked over his shoulder as they descended the porch stairs, at the swing, swaying slightly in the breeze. For a moment he thought he saw a movement on its seat and gave a start. ‘A trick of the light,’ he mumbled.

  “Why’d you come back?”

  The sparse gravel that lined the driveway cracked and crunched underfoot. There was never enough money to lay down more gravel for the driveway and Robert would never have allowed the expense, no matter the mud that formed during heavy rains. It was just like Marilee to ask this question, one that was on everyone’s tongue and yet no one dared ask. But she was different; she didn’t succumb to the heaviness of his glare or his ‘fits of the sullens’ as Doris called them. She was open, honest, if at times a little hard.

  “It was time.”

  “That’s not an answer, David.”

  “I don’t have an answer.”

  “So you are determined to keep it to yourself?”

  There was no malice in her tone, no heaviness, just a question; a question borne out of love and tenderness and care. He loved her all the more for it. Often he believed that she complimented his brother so well, Delbert who hated confrontation and argument and preferred to live in peace and harmony and to love. Marilee was bold and outspoken, and flocked to conflict.

  He longed to confide in her, much as he had confided in his mother so many years ago. Marilee cared for the downtrodden, for the troubled, for those that couldn’t protect themselves. She was their hero, their protection, and their joy. When Marilee looked at him, she saw nothing of the lost arm or the black sheep of an otherwise spotless family. She simply saw a human being in need of love and care. It was like staring into his mother’s eyes.

  Silence fell between them as he endeavored to make up his mind. Marilee was not content with this, not while there were things yet to be said. She simply passed over one facet of the conversation and went for another.

  “How long have you been back?”

  He registered the use of “back” and the lack of “home”. She must know something, then. Know that something happened in Paris. Lois must have spoken to her.

  “Two months.”

  “What employment have you sought? Teaching?”

  “I haven’t sought any as of yet,” David said.

  She snorted and fixed him with a hard stare. “Why?”

  “Grief.”

  The word leapt from his mouth. It had risen on top of the secrets he held inside his breast, and was the first to be spoken. Marilee did not flinch, nor did she show any sign of surprise.

  “Whom did you leave behind?”

  He stared, hot shame rose in his cheeks.

  “It’s not a secret. How can any man spend twenty years without finding a single person to love? Of course you miss whomever you’ve left behind. You grieve for them because you don’t think it was right, or because it wasn’t the time to leave France,” she said.

  They were the very last words that he expected to hear that day or any day. David stared, in awe of the specimen in front of him. He looked around, thinking his past was written in the frozen dust around them or written in the sky.

  “My sister fell in love with a Marine, when we were working for the USO in California, during the war. He was bright and funny and came from a good family in New Orleans. They talked nonstop of Rousseau and Adam Smith and Homer. It was a meeting of the minds, as the saying goes. They fell in love with each other’s passion, and soon it became more. Promises were made, not set in stone, but made nonetheless. He died two months later at the Battle of Bulge.

  “You see, David, I know what grief looks like–what it does to a person. I saw it firsthand. I recognize it now.”

  “Marilee, you would hate me if I told you,” he whimpered.

  Marilee turned away from him, looking east.

  “It is not wrong to grieve. It is not a sign of weakness. It is love. It shows us that our memories are real and that the time we spent was good and true. Grief is a gift. What would happen if we felt no pain after a loss? We would forget: our memories no more than a dream. Grief is good. Embrace it. Cherish your memories, but don’t let them consume you.”

  They walked on in silence, down the dirt road, which was flanked on both sides by fields that stretched to the horizon. While Marilee talked lovingly of the grandchild who had arrived, and the many more than were sure to follow, David’s mind rushed back to the look on Catherine’s face the day she left. The finest years of his life were spent, and now he was making the downward trudge toward death: devoid of purpose.

  Marilee was an abrupt and sometimes abrasive woman, but she understood people. Without prying, she had diagnosed his mood, and his depression. But Marilee had a plan. It had formed in her mind as Delbert’s sisters told her that David had returned home. She put the plan into motion now, never once doubting herself.

  “Back to business, David,” she said flatly, for this was her way. “You need employment and it just so happens I have an employer. I have spoken to a man in the community who is in need of an English teacher for a group of ten people. What do you say?”

  David jerked his heart and mind out of the apartment above the bistro.

  “Teaching English? To whom?” he said, he was sure he missed something, his head felt foggy and his speech slowed.

  “I was under the impression that teaching English was your forte. His name is Hien Due, a Vietnamese immigrant. He’s very concerned that his daughter learns English properly.”

  “Vietnamese?”

  “Yes, Vietnamese. Many Indonesian countries were colonized by the French and therefore speak French along with
their native tongue. You do speak French, do you not?”

  “I do speak French.”

  “Then it’s settled.”

  “Only ten students?”

  “That’s what he told me. Now, I’ll give you his number and once we get back to the house, you give him a call and set up the lesson,” Marilee said as she continued down the road.

  “You did this, all alone?” he asked as he walked along side.

  “Yes, David, now let’s walk.”

  She took hold of his hand and pulled it through the crook of her arm. They walked until Marilee thought time was running out to call Hien Due, too early and you interrupt dinner, too late and they might already be in bed.

  David hardly noticed that they had climbed the porch steps, before Marilee had her hand on the doorknob and twisted it round. He loitered on the step, watching as she walked straight to the cream rotary dial phone and held out the receiver.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  2 February 1980

  “YOU MUST BE DAVID!”

  The voice assailed his ears as soon as he walked through the burnt orange doors of the library.

  A short Vietnamese man, whose hair was greying at the temples, came bustling up to David. His face was so good-natured, so open, and the eyes so clear that David mimicked his smile.

  “Hien Due,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur.”

  “Bonjour. Please, please come. To have someone so educated, a Parisian, we are most honored.” Hien Due ushered David through the stacks, bulging with books but lacking in people.

  They weaved through the library, and Hien Due continued to express his thanks and his bewilderment that David would consent to carry out this service for strangers. David smiled and ignored the uncomfortable squirm of his insides at this stranger’s praise.

  “Come, come, sit here,” Hien Due said as he ushered David into a small room at the back of the library.

  A wall of windows separated the room from the main library. It had a disused, almost abandoned, feel to it that a storage shed might have. Two women sat demurely in chairs near the front of the room.

  “Ma femme et fille,” Hien Due said, gesturing to the two women, with immense pride in his voice.

  His wife smiled back and nodded encouragingly to Hien Due, the daughter hid shyly behind her mother.

  “Are you ready, Monsieur David?”

  David glanced around the room and peered out the windows, ready to usher in stragglers.

  “Are you all there is?”

  Hien Due smiled, and yet did not mask his disappointment and concern. “We are few but we will be good students.”

  “Excuses moi?” a small voice said.

  The room’s occupants immediately shifted toward the door and the new arrival who stood there–a teenage Vietnamese girl wearing high-waisted jeans and an oversized grey sweater.

  “Mai!” Hien Due’s daughter stood up, speaking for the first time. The girls embraced and sat down, knees touching, jabbering away in rapid French.

  “Ok,” Hien Due said, closing the door.

  He sat down, next to his wife, with an expectant smile on his face. David smiled weakly and began in a halting voice, quailing in the bright smiles of the strangers in front of him, unused to such a thirst for knowledge. Their faces were keen; they hung on every word, and poured over the rules for every verb conjugation.

  The door to the small meeting room opened once more, two hours later. A librarian stuck her head in, announced the library was closing, and left, with a look on her face as though she’d smelled something foul. The three women formed a little knot, and walked to the door chattering in quick happy voices.

  “Twenty-five dollars for you, David,” Hien Due said and pressed five bills into David’s limp hand.

  “No. This is too much.”

  “Two hours with four people. And tip. This is fair.”

  Hien Due spoke with pride, the pride all men have in being able to pay their own way, and in expressing their gratitude to others for their hard work.

  “Merci,” David said, and returned Hien Due’s bow.

  “Perhaps next week more will come!” the older man said, cuffing David on the shoulder, a feat he had to stand on tiptoes to accomplish.

  “Tell me, what is it you do?” David said, speaking in French for Hien Due’s ease and comfort.

  “I have, ah, it’s hard to explain. I am an entrepreneur. We have set up, my wife and I, a business. We cater to Vietnamese immigrants, and other Indonesians. They come to us to network, to find homes, and employment. We are the first stop for many. My wife and I had a terrible time when we first came to America … you are in an ocean of people whom you do not know, who do not know you, and they see you as different. It is exceptionally easy to hide away. We had each other, but it was hard learning even a little English. It was also difficult to make contact with other Vietnamese immigrants. We wanted to talk about home. We wanted to speak French. But now, others do not need to suffer. We give our love, and they give what they can or pay us when they find jobs. They are all grateful,” Hien Due said, and trailed off looking past David, beyond the stacks and the pale walls, to a past, but also to a future.

  “We are grateful to have found you, David. To speak French, to speak of Paris, this is what beauty is. You have brought such joy to my family. Things will be much easier for us now, and easier for many others. My daughter wants to go to university. She must; there are so many opportunities that will open for her, and so she must be able to speak English. You will change lives. You’ll see.”

  Hien Due’s words struck at David’s heart. Love emanated from every pore of Hien Due’s body. He spoke with passion and care. It was as if he carried all those people with him, the people he had helped, those he was helping now, and those he could help in the future.

  “I don’t need to change lives.”

  “We all need to change lives. We must live for others. If you stop living only for yourself and start living and working for others, those people see your love and they start living for you: because they care for you. And this goes on. It goes on and on until there are many people living for you, loving you. And in this way, love is multiplied. You gave away the love of self and it was picked up. It changes lives.”

  As Hien Due talked of love and living, a beauty washed over him, a pureness that David could not help but stare at. The grey hair gone, gone as the wrinkles and the yellowed teeth were gone. All gone because only the light of his love and the piercing stare of his eyes could be seen.

  “Such wisdom.”

  It was all David could hope to say, for Hien Due’s words struck him in a way that all the religious messages of his father’s church never did. It was strange that it would come from a sixty-year-old immigrant wanting English lessons.

  “Old age comes for us all,” Hien Due said with a wave of his hand, the wrinkles and grey hairs reappeared.

  He buzzed with whispered plans for next week’s lesson, alight with excitement over the prospects.

  “More will come. Much more. Maybe ten next week,” Hien Due said, clapping his hands, his voice returned to a normal volume as the doors to the library swung shut behind them.

  The long-suffering librarian rushed up behind them; key in hand, to lock the doors. David watched from his car as Hien Due, his wife and daughter, and Mai talked in the parking lot. They reminded him of the French, so passionate in their speech, and in their feelings. The ease of their laughter pained him.

  As the old, rusted truck wound its way through the back roads of Bunker Hill, David’s thoughts wound as well. Catherine was ever on his mind, a vision of her flitting through her restaurant, laughing with her girlfriends, her thin fingers wrapped around the stem of a wine glass, and little Zoya resting on her hip.

  As he turned down the driveway, David came to a terrible realization. He had chosen wrong. For ten years. He could not hope to resurrect their love from old memories and fabricated ones. Hien Due was r
ight, in others he would find purpose; hope even. It was a start, but a flaw remained. David was a fortress: a fortress with unassailable walls. He might commit to loving others but would never commit to let others love him. For behind the walls were secrets. Secrets no man could ever forgive.

  “HOW WAS THE FIRST tutorial?” Doris asked him.

  David sat at the table Monday morning, eating a four-minute egg. The sun had barely risen, and yet here he sat, forty-five years old being force-fed by his sister.

  “It’s just an English lesson.”

  It had become such a habit, downplaying every moment, that David no longer took notice. In the middle of cutting fruit, she dropped the knife and dropped herself into the chair opposite.

  “David, tell me how it went,” she implored, patting his arm in an affectionate sort of way.

  “There were only four,” he said, pulling his arm out of her grasp.

  “Yes. And?”

  He sighed and told her all she wanted to know, describing Hien Due’s absolute commitment to the cause, to English, to his people.

  “I think I’ve heard of him. His center used to be a single room at the back of a dry cleaner. After a few years, it moved to what used to be a restaurant. It’s never empty.”

  “They enjoyed speaking French more than English.”

  “Something you share, I think,” Doris said with a tinkling laugh.

  “How are your children?”

  “They’ve grown, grown in ways I never thought to see. It’s a strange thing to watch those that you’ve held as infants now holding their own. I wish the same for you.”

  “I don’t think that’s in the cards for me.”

  “Life isn’t about cards.”

  “Doris, you know I admire you all for your faith. But it doesn’t tally with what I’ve seen of life. Don’t preach.”

  She looked back at him; her jaw clenched so tight the veins stood out like sentinels. He could see it, her desire to question him until she got answers. It was written on her face; so clear it was almost like reading a children’s book. But somehow, she managed it. Managed to swallow the tide of questions, and listen.