by Corine Gantz
Lucas had been Johnny’s good friend, and she had known Lucas for twelve years now. But it was only since Johnny’s death that Lucas had become a friend to her. When he was Johnny’s friend, she had mistrusted him. Too well dressed, too blue blooded, a playboy who had never married and wasn’t committed to anyone in particular. And then there was the politeness, the careful diction, the insistence on kissing her hand like she was the frigging queen of England, and all those big words, which she now realized were not an affectation. Was it his fault he’d had a semi-aristocratic upbringing? But now that they were friends, the other side of Lucas had revealed itself: the humor, the hilarious naiveté, the patience, the unwavering dependability, and what she valued most, the blunt honesty.
Lucas lived alone in an atrociously expensive apartment in the seventeenth arrondissement. Old Madame Dubois cooked his meals and pressed his laundry, as she had done for the last twenty years. Lucas had love interests, but too many of them. His excuse was that he was forever searching, relentlessly hunting the perfect woman. The relationships lasted long enough for him to regale Annie with stories that involved mystical themes such as his sex drive and the size of his penis—large, allegedly.
“And how are you planning on finding lodgers?”
“I ran the ad in Chicago, L.A., and Cincinnati papers.”
“Americans!” he moaned, “Pourquoi?”
“Chicago because of the Bulls, Los Angeles because of the Lakers, and Cincinnati because of the Reds. I had to start somewhere.”
“This is doomed. Doomed.”
Reminding herself that this was actually a fight, Annie took the high road for once. They were, after all, in an exclusive restaurant. She made her voice calm but firm.
“You’ve always been very supportive. I need you to help me make this work. I’ve made up my mind.”
Lucas’s pale blue eyes were sad for a moment. He brought the fork to his mouth, chewed slowly, and said, “You and the boys could come and live with me. You could rent out the house until it sells.”
Calm but firm, she thought, then she yelped, “Three active boys and me, your sloppiest friend, living on top of each other in your annex of the Louvre?” To demonstrate her sloppiness, Annie made a big gesture that tipped her precious glass of Château Margaux. The red wine had barely hit the white table cloth when three waiters materialized, one to fill her glass, one to place a napkin over the injured tablecloth, and the third possibly to serve as a kind of visual shield. An instant later, they had disappeared.
For a moment, Lucas seemed to consider the image of Annie and her boys ransacking his apartment. “If your house sells as well as it should, you could rent a two-bedroom outside Paris and live reasonably well on a small income.”
“Outside Paris! La banlieue?”
“My dear, have you become one of us Parisian snobs?” Lucas expertly weaved crudités onto his silver fork and added, “That of course takes into consideration reimbursing all your credit cards and the backlog of electricity and telephone. I was thinking, perhaps a translating job, something that would allow for a flexible schedule.”
“Translating? In the suburbs?” She had spoken too loudly. The women at the next table looked at her ever so slightly, then looked away.
“A snob indeed.” Lucas said.
Annie felt her eyes moisten. She hated that about herself. She got so frigging teary. “My house is my life and you know that.”
“I know, I know,” Lucas said softly. “But look at you. You could extend yourself outside the house, have a real life. You are still young. And pretty.” Annie shrugged off the notion, but Lucas insisted. “Yes, yes, you are. You could make a nice life for yourself. Find companionship perhaps?”
Annie rose one eyebrow. “Companionship?”
“At the very least you must consider the silver lining of your financial crisis. This might force you to drive again, to take classes, maybe travel.”
“What possesses you to think I want those things? I’m perfectly content with staying home.”
“Content perhaps. But happy? Are you happy?”
“What’s happy anyway? My house and my kids around me are all that I need.”
“What about companionship?”
She shook her head. “What the hell, Lucas? Companionship? You want me to get a dog?”
Lucas hesitated, as though the word cost him to pronounce; “Un homme?”
“It’s a myth perpetuated by men that a woman cannot be whole without a man. I don’t need a man. I have a man.” She caught herself. “I had a man. I don’t believe the perfect man will come knocking at my door twice. That’s another myth. And besides,” she said grabbing Lucas’s hand, “I have you. Why would I need a man?”
“Yes, you have me,” Lucas answered, looking away.
“This is a good idea and you know it,” Annie said.
“Don’t do it.”
Annie finished her glass. “I’m doing it.”
She left the lunch not having convinced Lucas, but suddenly resolute. Of course she would not do anything without talking to the boys first, particularly Maxence. No, she did not need his authorization. But the truth about their financial problems was going to come out sooner or later, and this was the alternative solution to moving. They’d understand that. Maxence would say “double you tee eff.” WTF was his new thing. Where had he learned that? Irritating because he had found a loophole around swearing. She could not justify forbidding him from pronouncing letters, and now all three kids were saying WTF about everything.
At pick-up time, she waited for them on the other side of the street facing the school to avoid the mob of moms and conversations. She waited and watched the pretty French mothers, always in pairs or small groups, rapidly talking or laughing, always stylish and lovely. She watched them from the other side of the street for a long time wondering what they could be talking about. What could be so enthralling? They were taking their children to the park probably, or to each other’s houses. Her own friends were all in the U.S. and she sometimes communicated with them, but not often. Since she arrived in France, she had not felt the need for women friends. Johnny had been all she needed, and she had been too busy having babies to notice the empty space. Now she noticed it but it was too late. She had forgotten how to make friends, found it terrifying, in fact. And French women were still a mystery to her; their way of relating so different from what she knew. But it was not only because they were French. Annie found that she mistrusted women, the cattiness, and the competition, a leftover from having to keep women off Johnny.
There was the sound of a school bell and almost simultaneously the large wooden door opened and children poured out of the building. Colorful coats, hats, backpacks, boots, strollers, and umbrellas mixed in with the sounds of voices. She saw her boys finally and her heart leaped. They had found each other as they always did before getting into the street. She waved for them to stay put and crossed the street. Maxence, her eldest, her nine-year-old little man, so young but so frighteningly mature was holding each of his brothers by the hand.
They walked back home and she listened to their day and let them talk her into a stop at the patisserie. The strawberry tartelettes, were ridiculously expensive with strawberries being so entirely out of season, but she said yes.
“You said it was too expensive yesterday,” Maxence pointed out.
“It’s cheaper today.”
“It’s the same price. Look: 2.5 Euros each.”
Annie sighed. “I’ll have one too after all,” she told the boulangère.
Once at home, she set the tartelettes in front of each boy, cleared her throat and told them about her plan. Paul and Laurent seemed uninterested at best and more into counting the remaining strawberries on each other’s tart. She asked, “What do you think? Do you have questions about this?” Paul and Laurent looked at Maxence for clues.
Maxence made a gagging face like he had swallowed something horribly bitter. “For how long?”
�
��We don’t know, baby. They pay month-to-month. I’m hoping they’ll stay six months, maybe more.”
“Six months!” he wailed. His brothers chewed in silence, watching Maxence. Maxence was the one she had to convince. He was the alpha dog of the pack.
“We’re not doing it because it’s fun,” she said.
“It’s not going to be fun at all,” Maxence announced. The way he said it, he actually looked like Lucas. She wondered if the two had been speaking.
“Okay. We’re doing it because we don’t have a choice, then.”
“I thought you told me we always have a choice.”
She sighed. Semantics and her eldest! Her changing moods and frazzled actions drove him mad. Maxence was too pragmatic, too mature. Maybe that’s why she tried hard not to talk to him like the adult he pretended to be. She called him “baby” more so than the younger two. She gathered her strength for one of those courteous, reasonable, very grown-up arguments that always left her exhausted. “The choice,” she said, “was sell the house or have tenants. We chose to have tenants.”
“Who’s we?”
“We, well, of course, I...Lucas and I decided...”
Maxence rocked from side to side on his chair, hands in his pockets, the tartelette still sitting in front of him untouched. Annie adored his unruly hair, his freckles, his stubbornness.
“One, Lucas is against it,” Maxence said from a corner of his mouth.
“How do you know that?” she cried out.
“It was me,” Paul said triumphantly. “I heard it! I told them!”
”You knew? You knew I was planning this and told me nothing?”
“Two,” Maxence continued, ”Lucas doesn’t make the decisions. You do.”
Touché. She took a deep breath, “Then I guess this was a unilateral, unanimous decision between me, myself, and I.”
Maxence calmly bit into the pastry. “And what if your unanimous decision is ruining your kids’ lives?”
“Guys, I’ll make it up to you,” she whined. “Somehow, I swear I’ll make it up to you.”
“Can we get the Internet?” Laurent asked.
She looked at her boys. Was it a furtive sign of complicity she was reading in their way of avoiding looking at each other? “What’s going on around here?”
“And we really want to get cable, Mom,” Laurent said. “We really, really, really need it.”
Chapter 5
At the bank, she signed her name, Althea Hoyt. The Bank of America teller handed her the handwritten piece of paper. There was the number: exactly $50,000 in her savings. She had just withdrawn the $351.23 to make that number cleaner. Althea was drawn to evenness, and she was going to actually spend $351.23 on something for herself. She put the bills and coins in her wallet and said thank you to the teller, aware of his stare.
Saving all this money had been challenging. She was single but had quite a few expenses: the rent for the apartment, apples, tea, cable, and telephone. She was low maintenance, always had been. She had sold her car and put the cash, insurance, and gas savings for the month into the savings account. Now she walked everywhere, saving money and, especially now that it was winter, burning calories with every step. Althea was not saving for any reason in particular. Saving was the goal, and now she had met that goal. Her savings were not affecting anybody else. She was alone and was leaner that way. Unattached. Detached. Light. Invisible. She wasn’t hurting anyone, bothering anyone.
Outside the bank, the frigid wind dragged trash and muddy leaves in circles on the pavement. She sat on a bench, took off her leather gloves slowly, and observed her long white fingers for a moment. The usually busy downtown was empty. Passersby walking against the wind and wrapping themselves in their winter coats came and disappeared. She rubbed her face with her icy hands trying to feel something.
She had reached her goal. She had fifty thousand dollars in the bank and just over three hundred fifty dollars to spend on herself. She didn’t know what to do next. What did people do with fifty thousand dollars or three hundred and fifty? She needed nothing, and desired not a material thing.
She lifted her emaciated body off the bench and began walking against the wind. Why walk? To go where? The problem was that at this point, she didn’t want immaterial things either. Not love, or happiness, or a family. All she wanted was to be thin and that cost nothing. She had no want for anything money could buy or for anything money couldn’t buy. She didn’t exactly want to die. She already felt dead.
Before Mark came back from work, and while Simon and Lia were watching cartoons—Goodness gracious how many cartoons were those children watching? Hours each day?—Lola called their friend Lou Driver, who happened to be their attorney. Lou was one of the best, most ruthless lawyers in L.A. Lou, as Mark said, was the best. She tried to control the shiver in her voice when his secretary interrupted a meeting to let her speak to him.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt you Lou, it’s just that I don’t know what to do anymore. Mark mentioned divorce this morning again. I’m wondering, I mean, what are my rights?”
Lou laughed reassuringly. “Your rights? Oh Lola, honey, there is absolutely no need to be so dramatic.”
“But I--”
“Take a breath sweetie. Mark is a reactive kind of guy, that’s all. He’s brilliant otherwise. Brilliant. And I know for a fact that he needs you far more than he shows. I’ve known him for twenty years. He is crazy about you.”
She hesitated. How much could she reveal without betraying Mark? “He has those ups and downs,” she tried to say.
Lou interrupted. “Every couple has ups and downs. You’re the only woman for him and you know this.”
“But he gets so angry, and for no good reason sometimes. And every time he tells me that if I’m not happy, I should divorce him.”
“He’s under a lot of pressure, that’s all. I’ve known that bullheaded husband of yours long enough to assure you that he doesn’t mean a word of it. And I personally won’t pay any attention to this divorce scenario until Mark himself calls me.”
When Lola hung up the phone, it was clear in her mind whose side Lou would be on in case of a divorce. And Lou was “the best.”
Dread almost brought her to her knees. She stood at the kitchen counter, feeling numb, numbing herself for Mark’s return. She turned the pages of the Los Angeles Times. The travel section. Maybe that’s what they needed: a beautiful vacation! Maybe they could bring the nanny. Hawaii, Tahiti, Paris... Three small lines of text lost in an ocean of cruises and Club Med photographs caught her eye.
Start over in Paris! Lovely rooms in a beautiful private home. Nurturing environment. Children welcome. Affordable. Meals included. Best area of Paris. English spoken. Call ****
She heard the sound of Mark’s Hummer coming up the driveway. She threw the newspaper in the recycling bin and rushed to the window to watch Mark come out of the garage. Her heart went wild in her chest when she saw the bouquet. She was forgiven! But by the time he had turned the doorknob, barely a minute later, her mouth was dry and her head pounding.
Mark walked in the front door, dumped his jacket and briefcase into Serena’s hands, and handed Lola the bouquet. He was handsome and tall even compared to Lola, who was five-eleven. He gave her his most dazzling smile and asked, “So, did you finally get a grip on your responsibilities?” He was being humorous. Lola stared at him. Her body stiffened further as Mark hugged her and grabbed her butt amorously. “Oh, you can’t still be mad about this morning?” He said.
“Is the, the, the...divorce cancelled?” she stuttered.
“Baby, what divorce? I’m the one who overreacts around here, remember? Such a silly girl!” He gave her a gentle tap on the forehead. “You know I’d be a condemned man without you. I’m under a lot of pressure,” he said, and he walked away calling, “Could a hardworking man get something to eat?”
A lot of pressure. Lou’s exact words. Were the flowers Lou’s idea? In the kitchen, she opened the refrigerator.
Her breath was shallow. She pulled a plastic container out of the fridge, placed it on the counter. For a long moment, she stared at the lid in her hand. She finally set it down, walked towards the recycling bin, took the travel section out, folded it, and hid it in one of the kitchen drawers. By the time dinner was made, she was essentially gone. Thousands of miles away.
From the sofa, Jared scanned the room for a discreet way out through the wall of bodies undulating to the music. Beautiful Parisian men and women were crammed around tiny tables or lounging as if swallowed by the red velvet sofas that looked like gigantic mouths.
He had come here with the intention of persuading a girl to come home and have sex with him, but it was taking too long. The girls wanted to stay until closing, be flirted with, have a couple lines of coke but he had run out of momentum. At this point, he wanted to get the hell out, immediately and alone. He extricated himself from the red sofa and two girls plunged in the warm spot where his body had been. The sofa-mouth became a knot of bare arms, sexy legs, drunken giggles, and hands that hung on to him and tried, like a playful octopus, to draw him back in.
He labored his way through the crowd. The weather report had mentioned snow. When he finally reached the front glass door of the wine bar, he rubbed a finger on the condensation and peeked into the street through the small clearing he had created. No snow. He found his coat beneath three others on a hook near the door and put it on. He searched his pocket unsuccessfully for his scarf. Had the scarf been lost, he would no longer be accountable for it. But the raggedy orange scarf made by his mother when he was twelve was not the kind of object he could deliberately leave behind. He searched the floor, the hangers, and in the process found his hat. No snow and, now, no scarf. At the other end of the wine bar, he spotted the scarf around the neck of a girl whose name he had forgotten. He had felt shackled to her for part of the evening, but then she had moved on to someone more responsive.
Seething and bundled up like an astronaut, Jared made his way towards her. “Au revoir, beauté,” he said as he slowly unraveled the scarf from her neck and gave her a soft kiss on the neck. She arched her back like a panther, turned, and clutched his arm. “Jared, où vas tu?”