by Alicia Drake
He was wearing his suit and tie. Everyone was looking at us.
“I came to see you,” he said.
Scarlett was standing next to me; we’d said we’d go get noodles together. She watched us both, her big red sunglasses stacked up on top of her head, her eyes going back and forth between my father and me.
“Aren’t you going to introduce us, Paul?” She twirled a strand of hair around her finger, put her head to one side, and pushed her lips together to make them look sexy.
“This is Scarlett,” I said.
“Bonjour, monsieur.” She said it in a breathy kind of way, holding out her hand for him to shake, letting her jacket fall open so that you could see the words BORN WILD across her breasts.
“Hello,” my father said. He shook her hand. He didn’t say anything else.
There was a moment of silence. I looked down at the pavement. And then Scarlett said: “Well, I guess I should leave you guys together. I’ve got to go get lunch. See you later, Paul. Good-bye, monsieur.” She walked off down the road, but I saw her turn and check us out before she carried on along the rue d’Assas.
“Is that your girlfriend?” my father said when she had gone a little way.
I didn’t reply.
“She’s not beautiful, but she’s got something.”
“She’s not my fucking girlfriend, all right?”
I’d never sworn at him before.
“It was just a question,” he said. But he didn’t tell me off for talking to him like that.
We walked along the road in the direction of the Jardin du Luxembourg.
“I thought we could go out for lunch.”
I said nothing.
“Where do you normally go?”
“McDo’s,” I said.
“Your mother’ll kill me if we go there.”
“She lets me get the Big Mac menu,” I said.
“Yeah, well, you should know by now, Paul, your mother never plays by the rules.”
We walked on for a bit.
“How about we go get a crêpe instead?” he said.
A crêpe, my God; he hadn’t bought me a crêpe in years. He hadn’t even bought me a crêpe when he told me they were breaking up. All I got then was a quick walk to the jardin and back before he dumped me at the apartment with the moving men.
We crossed over the rue Guynemer. My thighs were shaking.
“So,” he said, “how have you been?”
I shrugged.
“I texted you, but you didn’t reply.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Why didn’t you reply, Paul?” We were walking side by side, looking straight ahead.
“I didn’t have anything to say.”
“I was worried.”
Pierre and Guillaume were just ahead of us on their way to McDo’s. I saw them turn and stare.
“How’s school?” he said.
When I didn’t reply he asked: “Have you gotten any tests back?”
I wasn’t playing that game anymore.
“Nope,” I said.
“Do you want to tell me what this is about, Paul?”
“What what is about?”
He looked across at me then and I stared back. I saw his pupils dilate, ink spots growing large. It was him that said nothing this time. We walked through the open gates and into the jardin. There was no sunlight, only gray in the December sky, gray in the faces of the people who walked in the cold under the bare trees. We walked between the muddied lawns, past the miniature Statue of Liberty. The trees were wet and stained black. Their branches had been cut back, brutalized, leaving only stumps. A pack of guys from the lycée were standing there, shouting and pushing each other. They looked up as I passed by with my dad in his suit.
I saw my father’s feet walking alongside mine on the gravel that was wet and brown and covered in dead stalks from the trees. I saw his hand in his trouser pocket and I wanted to smack him to the ground. I wanted to punch him in the stomach, smack him in the six-pack that he’d spent so long sculpting. I wanted to stamp on him, stamp on his face, stamp on his balls, make him bleed. Make him cry. I wanted him to know how much I hated him.
“How was your race?” I said. My voice came out uneven.
“Which one?”
“The one you did last weekend. Remember?”
“Oh, yeah, I had to pull out. Shin splints. They hurt like hell and if you don’t rest they get worse. Todd said I shouldn’t risk it. I don’t want to tear myself up before Puerto Rico next spring. Todd says I’ve got to rest up now, I’ve got to listen to my body.”
“Todd.” I smiled, but not a nice smile, a twisted smile, a smile to make my father sweat. “Your animal man.”
“My what?”
“You know,” I said, “your animal man.”
“What does that mean?” He looked uncomfortable.
“Nothing. It means nothing. Does it? So what did you do?” I said.
“To my shins?”
“No, last weekend, what did you do?”
“Not much. Bit of strength training. I had a lot of work to do. I’m working on a deal.”
“I bet,” I said.
We walked the last few meters in silence, past the ground where they were playing pétanque. There were mostly old guys out playing; Teresa’s husband was there. I heard the clicking of the metal in their hands and the smack as the boule hit the wooden barrier. I could smell the crêpes. A lady was making them in the kiosk, standing behind the counter underneath a trail of plastic sunflowers, pouring the beige liquid onto the griddle in front of her. Her eyes lit up when she saw my father.
“Hello, monsieur, young man, what can I get you?”
“I’ll try your soup of the day,” my father said.
“I do the croûtons myself.” She tucked a wisp of her hair behind her ear as if she were a girl. “Thierry,” she shouted to a toothless old guy hanging around the side of the kiosk, “run and get me some bread!” Then she smiled at me. “You look like you could do with one of my famous crêpes.”
There were pictures of cows all over the kiosk; postcards and fridge magnets, plastic cows hanging from the ceiling, black-and-white cows with huge pink swollen udders. Her breasts were pushed together under a shiny green python-print top and when she bent down to put the milk away, her satin trousers stretched tight across her ass. She picked up the whisk and started beating the crêpe mixture. My dad and I went and sat down at a small metal table. We sat in silence for a bit, me looking at my phone, my dad looking at his. After a while he looked up at me and said:
“Are you angry about something, Paul?”
I thought, If I open my mouth now, it will come out, my liquid rage; it will pour out like lava onto the table; it will drip down onto my father’s handmade leather shoes.
“Is it the divorce, Paul? Are you angry about the divorce?”
I couldn’t speak for a few seconds. I bit the inside of my mouth until I tasted blood and then it started.
“Is that what you always do? Get a man in a black hood? Is that, like, your special request? Because I know that’s what you all have, your ‘special requests.’”
“What are you talking about, Paul?” His face was pale.
“You. I’m talking about you. Being fucked by a man with a big head. Remember?”
There was no iris left to his eyes, only guilt.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Oh yes, you do, you fucking do. The laundry room, remember? I saw you. I was there.”
I must have shouted that because the lady sitting across from us looked around. I saw her perk up at the sound of a fight. My father said nothing. We waited; my breath was coming in big gusts.
“Voilà, monsieur.” The crêpe lady leaned across my father to put down his soup, pushing her python-print tits as close to him as she dared. “And a Nutella crêpe and a Coke for you, my love.” She cocked her head expectantly. My father looked like he was dying. She waited for him to smile a
nd then she headed back to her kiosk.
He checked to make sure the woman next to us wasn’t listening and then he said, “What did you see?”
“What do you think I saw? Him hammering you in the laundry room. Sweat all over you.”
“How did you get in?”
“Essie.”
“Essie?”
“She gave me keys. She said I might need them. I was down in the park and I saw your light was on and it looked warm and I was cold and I was on my own. You told me you were at a race. I thought I could go up and be in your apartment, hang out, even if you weren’t there; maybe I could wait for you. I could surprise you, be there when you got home.”
He didn’t say anything for a bit. He just sat there staring at the table with his face creased up like he was in pain. And then he looked up at me and said: “It was an accident, Paul. I got onto some site by mistake. I don’t know what happened. I was looking for bike stuff. I was looking for some biking kit for a race. And then I thought I’d do it once. I don’t know why. I can’t explain, I thought…I don’t know what I thought. It just happened. I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t even understand myself.”
“Who was he?”
He put his head in his hands.
“I’m not gay if that is what you are thinking.”
“Is that why you left us? Because you’re gay?”
“I said I’m not gay, Paul. I told you. I’m not gay. You have to believe me. It was an accident. I wanted to stop. I will stop.”
“You mean you’ve done it before?”
“No. No. I have not done it before. I didn’t say that.”
“You just said you wanted to stop and now you will stop.”
“I haven’t done it before.”
“What about the text in the car?”
“What text?” He looked confused.
“The text when we came back from your parents. ‘Come back, big boy. I’m gonna treat you mean.’ That fucking text.”
“That was a woman,” he said. But he was lying.
I took a bite of my crêpe. I was crying. He sat with his head bowed and I took great big flabby bites of crêpe, one after the other, stuffing it into me so that it grew inside my mouth like that yellow stuff they give you at the orthodontist when they are fitting you for braces; it swelled inside me, choked me with its sweet and sagging pulp.
After a while he looked up and said: “Have you told your mother?”
My mouth was full. I shook my head.
“It’s just that our case is heard soon. We go in front of the judge…” He paused. He moved his hands through the air and then he said: “I’m just trying to say the divorce has taken so long, it would be difficult if you told her now, it would delay things and we are trying to close the”—he searched around for a word other than deal—“we are trying to close the divorce.”
I swallowed all the crêpe that was in my mouth.
“Is that all you care about?” I said.
“Listen, Paul, I understand you are angry—” he started, but I cut him off.
“What if I close my eyes at night and I see you and that guy? What does that make me? You keep saying, ‘I’m not gay, I’m not gay,’ but I heard you, you were begging for it. I know all about what goes on, all those straight guys who just want to get shafted. I’ve read about it. You told me I shouldn’t lie, you went on and on at me about my marks, always my marks, that they aren’t good enough for your son. You know what? That seventeen, you were right, I didn’t get that on my own, I cheated. I looked at Guillaume’s paper and I let him use my PSP so that he would let me cheat. But you, you lied to all of us, to Maman, to your parents, to me, you lied to me. Everything about you is a lie, you are one big fucking lie.”
“It’s not what you think. It was something I did, something I did to see if I could feel. I was trying to reach oblivion. You see, I am damaged, Paul. Do you know what an abyss is? Do you know what I mean by that? All that I have striven for, all that I have worked for, and I am in the dark hole of an abyss.”
I cried out then.
“I don’t care about you. I don’t care about your abyss. It’s always about you. You, you, you. What about me? It’s in my head now and I can’t get it out. You kept it from me, you hid it away all this time so that I had to go searching for it, searching and scrabbling around in the shit until I found the truth.”
“This is not the truth, Paul.”
“Don’t fucking tell me what the truth is. I saw you.”
“You don’t understand. It’s not what you think you saw.”
I stood up to go.
“Don’t you ever think about me?” I said.
I had Nutella smeared all over my fingers and there were tears and crap from my nose running down my face.
“I wanted you to care about me.” I was sobbing.
“I do care,” he said.
“No, you don’t!” I shouted. “It’s you that you care about. It always has been.”
“Paul, listen to me.” He stood up, knocking the table, upsetting my glass of Coke. The dark liquid spilled across the table, spreading out across the white paper tablecloth, blistering the paper before dripping to the ground. There was fear in his eyes, but even that was for himself. Feeling sorry for himself, scared I would tell Maman, scared I would blow the divorce proceedings sky-high, wondering how he could make the situation go away.
“When you broke up you promised me it would be better,” I said. “You said it would be better for me if you were apart, that you wouldn’t fight all the time. You said it here. Right here in this jardin. You said I would be happier.”
“Yes,” he said, “I said that.”
They were all looking at us now, the woman sitting next to us, the crêpe lady, Thierry the toothless guy, the Japanese teenage girls, all looking at the fat boy shouting at his dad, wondering what the problem was, why he was crying, why his world was falling apart.
“I am not happy,” I said.
“I know that, Paul. I know you’re not.”
“I am not happy because of you.” I jabbed my finger at him. I couldn’t hold it in. I couldn’t control it. I ran at my father. I punched his chest with a closed fist.
“You!” I shouted. “What have you done to me?”
I went to punch him again, but he held my hand back.
“Stop, Paul. Don’t do this.”
“You lied!” I shouted. “You lied to me.” And then I turned and ran from him. I heard him calling out my name as I ran past the guys playing pétanque; I heard their laughter. I ran past Teresa’s husband polishing his boule with a piece of cloth, past the empty hangers on the metal coat stand and the pile of dead leaves rotting inside the cage. I ran out of the big black gates and I ran across rue Guynemer. I looked back, but he wasn’t following me.
I turned onto the rue d’Assas. I was out of breath. I put my hands on my knees, leaned my head over a trash can, and stood there, listening to my sobs. Then I shoved my fingers to the back of my throat and I kept them there until all the crêpe surged up and out of me. I didn’t care who saw me. I retched it out.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I caught my breath. I tried to stop the sobbing. I cleared the crêpe out of my nose; I snorted it onto the pavement. I used the front of my sweatshirt to wipe away the tears and the saliva. Then I waited for the number 82 bus to go past me and I ran out across the road. I ran until I reached school and then I went inside to find Scarlett.
Chapter Thirteen
After school Scarlett came back to my apartment. I was glad she was there. She lay on my bed with her legs in a diamond shape and I could see the crotch of her bleached jeans.
“What did your dad want?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“He doesn’t say much,” she said.
I was staring out the window, watching the guy who lives opposite on the floor below. He was sitting in front of his computer. His head was at a strange angle to his neck, kind of lo
cked forward and down, as if he wanted to fit his whole head inside the screen.
“Does he have a girlfriend?” Scarlett said.
I wonder what it is that makes us look and look, what we think we’ll find inside our screens.
“Paul?” she said.
I turned around.
“Are you okay?”
She was staring at me. She looked different. Tender. Like a flower.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m okay.”
She watched me for a few seconds as if she were trying to figure something out and then she suddenly jumped off my bed.
“I forgot,” she said. “I’ve got something for you.”
She felt around inside the back pocket of her jeans and then she reached out her hand and opened it. There was a gold medallion lying there. I stood up and took it from Scarlett. It was warm in my hand. We were standing close, Scarlett and I. It was dark outside and only my bedside light was on. She was barefoot and staring at me, but softly staring.
“It’s the miraculous medallion, Paul, remember?” She said it in a kind of whisper. “Saint Catherine gave them out when there was a cholera epidemic and all these people who were dying were miraculously saved. Thousands of them. I got it at the shop at the chapel.”
“Thanks,” I said, “I like it.”
“It’s not real gold or anything.”
There was a picture of the Virgin Mary and the light pouring out of her hands, like the sculpture at the chapel. I turned it over. On the other side there was a cross entwined with the letter M. And there were stars going all the way around and at the bottom there were two hearts, side by side, one with a crown of thorns around it, the other pierced through by a sword.
“That’s us, Paul,” Scarlett said. “You and me. Two wounded hearts. No matter what they do to you, you still keep wanting them to love you. And then you hate yourself for thinking that way.”
I looked up; she was smiling but she had tears in her eyes. It was like she knew without me telling her. It was like she understood. I thought about telling her about my father, thought about letting her in. I tried to think what I would say. But I couldn’t do it.
We stood for a minute without saying anything, just staring at each other with our hands by our sides, and then her phone made a noise and she looked down at it and the moment was gone. I didn’t know how to get it back.