Bad Marie

by Marcy Dermansky

  “McDonald’s,” Marie said, grinning.

  There was an answer to every question, as long as she stayed calm.

  Marie found a McDonald’s on the Champs-Élysées, just around the corner from the movie theater. Marie’s hamburger, the Royale Deluxe, came with a strange mustard sauce and was served on a small, good roll instead of an ordinary bun.

  Marie liked it very much.

  Marie ordered another beer. She wasn’t drunk; it was the alcohol that allowed Marie to stay calm. She had every reason to be afraid. She was in Paris at night with a little girl who wasn’t hers. But Marie had beer and she thought of Harpo Marx and she was fine.

  Caitlin was pleased with her chicken nuggets. They seemed to be no different from American McNuggets. McNuggets like these had also been served at the prison; it had been one of the inmates’ favorite dinners. Caitlin and Marie shared an order of french fries.

  They were safe.

  Benoît Doniel had not found them.

  How could he? Paris was an enormous city. Marie didn’t have a cell phone. Or a credit card. There was no way Benoît could know where they would go, because Marie had no idea herself. She was taking her time finding a hotel, but she would find one, a hotel with a bathtub. And then, she would go on from there.

  Benoît would not call the police on her. Marie was fairly certain of this. He was in too much trouble already, with his wife, with his French actress, with that overbearing neighbor next door. With Marie. He was guilty of his own crimes.

  Marie finished her beer.

  “Where do you want to go next, Caty Bean?”

  “Where is Mommy?” Caitlin said, dipping her McNugget into the dipping sauce like a fast-food pro.

  “Work?” Marie said. “Do you miss her?”

  It was not a smart question, but Marie asked it. Maybe it was the beer. Maybe it was the situation. Juan José’s mother had been overjoyed when Juan José came home. She had embraced Marie as if she were one of her own. But in Paris, there was no warm welcome for them. Instead, they were homeless. It was not supposed to be this way: Marie and Caitlin sitting in a McDonald’s, Caitlin’s things in the apartment of the French actress, Benoît Doniel in the arms of the French actress. Ellen crossing the ocean, law enforcement on her side. Juan José still dead, forever dead.

  “I want to go home,” Caitlin said.

  Marie nodded.

  She had every right to be angry at Caitlin, wanting more than Marie could provide, but Marie also understood. She also wanted to go home, and when she thought about what that was, home, she envisioned her small windowless room in the basement of Ellen’s brownstone. The stainless-steel refrigerator full of food, the claw-foot bathtub. Maybe they could go back, Caitlin and Marie. Return without Benoît. Ellen wouldn’t need to feel jealous because she would no longer want her husband. Even Ellen deserved better than Benoît Doniel. She had deserved better than Harry Alford. Marie had been jealous of Ellen all her life, but when she actually thought about Ellen’s life, when she bothered to think about it, it didn’t seem all that great. Her daughter, for instance, had just been kidnapped.

  “Your mommy fired me,” Marie said.

  Marie understood that Caitlin would not understand this. She understood that it was ridiculous to feel self-righteous, given the circumstances, but nevertheless, she did.

  “I want Mommy,” Caitlin said.

  “Not me?” Marie said.

  “Mommy.”

  A bad smell was coming from the spot where Caitlin sat: the undeniable, unavoidable smell of shit.

  “Do I need to change your diaper?” Marie said.

  Caitlin nodded.

  Marie felt resentful. First she had been slighted. Now she would have to change Caitlin’s diaper. She would not be paid for changing this diaper. She would not be appreciated for changing this diaper. She had even paid for the diaper herself.

  “You smell bad, Caty Bean,” Marie said.

  There was nothing to do but change Caitlin in the bathroom of the McDonald’s.

  Caitlin’s shit was a runny green.

  “Terrific,” Marie said.

  There was no changing table, so Marie put Caitlin into the sink. Caitlin started to cry, and this time she was inconsolable. “Mommy,” she cried.

  Marie did not see how she could fix this situation; she felt unspeakably awful, almost helpless, though being helpless was not an option. Marie picked up Caitlin, leaving the dirty diaper in the sink, and rocked her, sang to her in the McDonald’s bathroom. With the diaper off, the runny shit had begun to drip down Caitlin’s leg, onto Marie’s hands, but she did the best she could. Caitlin continued to cry. Marie gave up on her song. She put Caitlin back into the sink and tried to clean her, but was unable to do so, because Caitlin’s legs were flailing. Marie was growing more and more frustrated.

  “We could be done by now,” Marie said.

  Two pretty French teenagers came in, whispered something to each other in French, and then left. The paper towels were too scratchy for Caitlin’s soft bottom. Caitlin continued to howl.

  “Please,” Marie said. “Come on, Caitlin. Please. I am almost done. Please.”

  Marie’s voice was taut with barely suppressed rage. She had drunk too many beers. She had not finished her hamburger. She wet a paper towel under the leaking faucet and desperately tried to wipe Caitlin clean. She cleaned Caitlin’s hairless vagina, her pudgy thighs, trying to be gentle, trying not to get Caitlin wet. It didn’t help that the sink was covered with Caitlin’s runny green shit.

  A young woman wearing a head scarf and a McDonald’s uniform came into the bathroom. She said something to Marie in French. Always French. Maybe she was offering help. Marie needed help. Caitlin continued to cry.

  “S’il vous plait,” Marie said, pointing to the diaper in her hand. Marie kissed Caitlin’s head. At least her hair was clean. “You don’t have to cry. We’re almost done. We’re almost done.”

  Marie lifted Caitlin from the sink and held her midair while the McDonald’s employee put the diaper on Caitlin.

  “Thank you,” Marie said. “Merci.”

  The woman did not accept Marie’s thanks. She looked at Marie with open disgust. She went to the other dripping sink and washed her hands.

  Caitlin, at least, was clean. She had stopped crying. Marie held Caitlin to her chest, rocking her, patting her head.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Marie said over and over. “It’s okay.”

  Marie had had it with the City of Lights. The fucking Eiffel Tower. Overpriced baguette sandwiches. Benoît Doniel. Marie had done Ellen a favor, revealing his true nature, but that did nothing to help Marie. She would get no reward. This knowledge could not begin to make up for her own bitter disappointment. Marie pushed Caitlin down the Champs-Élysées, stunned by the blare of headlights, the wide road filled with cars, white lights strung over trees, lining a massive structure that Marie recognized as the Arc de Triomphe. This realization brought Marie no pleasure.

  “Horsey,” Caitlin said.

  It was not a carousel horse, but an actual horse, with a policeman sitting astride the large animal. They were coming directly toward them, the horse’s hooves jarringly loud on the pavement. Marie did not expect to be caught that quickly. Not now. Not when she had still had so much money in her pocket. Was she that incompetent? With Juan José she had made it all the way to Mexico. They had spent several happy months together. Marie kept on walking, pushing Caitlin’s stroller, suddenly determined to make it to the Arc de Triomphe, even though she had absolutely no interest in the monument itself. She would not let the police officer stop her. Marie understood that she would be sent back to jail. Marie was not ready to go back to jail. She had not eaten escargot.

  Marie’s eyes darted toward the thick row of bushes lining the wide sidewalk. She wondered if she could hide there, but the police officer was already upon them; it was too late. Marie remembered that horrible moment in Mexico, the police officer grabbing her, yanking her
arms behind her back, the metal handcuffs tearing into the thin skin of her wrists. She had had no idea handcuffs could be so painful.

  The police officer rode right by Marie.

  He was gone.

  Marie puked into the bushes, and then, without missing a beat, she wiped her mouth with her hand and kept on walking.

  “I love you, you know,” Marie told Caitlin.

  Caitlin did not seem to hear. So Marie stopped walking and knelt down in front of the stroller. Caitlin’s eyes were open wide. She was looking at nothing and everything. Marie kissed her cheek. Both cheeks.

  “We are so French,” Marie said.

  She had gotten vomit on Caitlin’s clean face. Marie tenderly wiped it off with the sleeve of her T-shirt. She looked at the tall white monument ahead. It was farther away than it had seemed. The Champs-Élysées was not a pleasant street to walk on at night: four lanes of French cars, stuck in traffic, emitting fumes, honking loudly.

  Marie blinked, blinded by the headlights.

  This was not where she wanted to be.

  In prison, when Marie had closed her eyes at night, she imagined the sea, the gentle lapping of waves, stars overhead. She thought of Benoît’s book. Benoît’s dead sister’s book. Virginie at Sea. There was beautiful water somewhere in France, a coast to escape to. The Mediterranean.

  “Let’s go to the sea,” Marie said.

  Marie hailed a taxi.

  “To the train station,” she said, confident that her English would work for her. It did.

  “Which one?”

  Marie did not know. She had no idea. “I don’t know. The big one. We want to go to the sea,” she said. “The South of France.”

  “The sea,” Caitlin said in a singsong voice.

  “You want the TGV,” the driver told Marie. “It will get you to Nice by morning. Le Train à Grande Vitesse. They go fast. You can sleep on the train. It’s good.”

  “Yes,” Marie said. “Oui. Thank you.”

  “Fast,” Caitlin said.

  “Merci,” Marie added, grateful.

  She hated Benoît Doniel. She did not need to hate the French. The McDonald’s employee with the head scarf had helped with Caitlin’s diaper. The taxi driver was kind.

  Marie fastened Caitlin’s seat belt. They had already driven a couple of blocks without it, but that did not matter. Who would Caitlin tell? Caitlin no longer asked for her car seat. Eventually, she would stop asking for Mommy. Marie could do this. They were in the taxi, on their way. She could take care of Caitlin.

  She did just as the taxi driver suggested, booking two tickets on the overnight train. Marie observed the Xeroxed poster taped to the ticket window, showing the photos of two black men. France’s Most Wanted. Marie was not on the poster. In France, her only obvious crime was language deficiency.

  Marie took the tickets and searched for the right track number. Numbers were not different in Paris, and Marie was able to figure out where to go. She found the track, and then the train, sleek and silver.

  “We won’t even need a hotel,” she told Caitlin.

  Marie felt her heart race, could feel the grin spread across her face. She had been ready to give up, but that had been premature. Caitlin was not impressed.

  “Where is the cat?” Caitlin asked.

  “The cat,” Marie said. “Ludivine.”

  Marie had managed to forget about that sad, wretched animal. The image of dead Ludivine flashed before her eyes, erasing Marie’s spontaneous grin. At least, Marie thought, it wasn’t the same old request for Mommy.

  “She was a bad cat,” Marie said. “She had no teeth.”

  “I have lots of teeth,” Caitlin said.

  “That is a fact.”

  Marie had even remembered to brush them. Even in Paris. She might even brush Caitlin’s teeth again on the train after they found seats. She would brush her own teeth. They had woken up that morning in a hotel room. Now they were boarding a train. Marie was almost done, had nearly made it through the day.

  Boarding the train, Marie was presented with a new set of challenges. Her hands on Caitlin’s shoulder, navigating the narrow center aisle, lugging both her backpack and the stroller. The day, in fact, still was not over. They were on the train, but Marie needed to find seats. Everyone was going to Nice, every seat taken. Marie almost expected to see Benoît and the French actress, sitting side by side, reading magazines. Marie and Caitlin walked through one car and into the next and then the next, which became all the more difficult once the train started to move. The train kept accelerating, going insanely fast, too fast. Marie lost her balance, putting her hand on the tops of the seats and sometimes the heads of angry French people.

  “Merde,” Marie heard, again and again, as she put her hand on top of French people’s heads.

  “Merde,” Caitlin said.

  It was not until the last car of the seemingly endless train that Marie found an empty row, facing a young man wearing ripped jeans and aviator sunglasses, reading Ulysses.

  Caitlin climbed up on her seat to look out the window, pressing her hands against the glass.

  “No, baby.” Marie shook her head. “You have to sit.”

  Caitlin looked at Marie, but she did not sit.

  “Sit down. Sit down now. Sit down, Caty Bean,” Marie said. She longed for the little girl who demanded her car seat. “That’s dangerous.”

  Marie was aware that the man in the ripped jeans wasn’t actually reading Ulysses. He was watching them from behind his aviator glasses, watching Marie, making her more uncomfortable than she already was. She pretended not to notice him.

  “Caitlin, sit. Right this minute.”

  It was a new tone of voice for Marie. They were no longer friends, Caitlin and Marie. Marie had become the boss; she had channeled the manner of a prison security guard named Kitty Louise, a dreadful woman who took pleasure in turning the lights out early.

  Caitlin sat down. She tilted her head to the side, staring sideways at Marie, the confusion on her face clear. Marie shrugged. If that was how it had to be, Marie could be mean. Now they both knew. She tucked Caitlin under the blue French train blanket she found on the seat.

  “Are you tired?” Marie asked.

  Marie would give a hundred euros to have Caitlin fall asleep. “Do you want me to read to you? And then you’ll go to sleep. Okay?”

  There would be no bath. There would be no milk in a bottle. Marie would not take the effort to brush Caitlin’s teeth after all. Not tonight. She could not do any more. Marie wasn’t sure what time it actually was, but it was bedtime, because Marie was done. Besides those all too brief hours in the darkened movie theater, Marie had not had a moment to herself.

  Marie looked directly at the guy in the aviator sunglasses. He had not stopped watching her, which was rude, which was making a hard situation even harder for Marie. There were holes in both knees of his jeans. That could not be a coincidence.

  “Do you like that book?” Marie asked him.

  Ulysses had nearly given Marie a nervous breakdown in college. She had taken an upper-level English class and the novel had been too hard for her, unreadable, a source of unending torment. Somehow, no one else in her class seemed to share her problem. They were able to turn in papers and speak coherently during class. At the end of the semester, Marie had drop-kicked her copy of Ulysses into the campus pond, but that hadn’t made her feel better.

  “I keep trying to,” Marie’s seatmate said. He had a low voice, deep. “It’s sort of hard, isn’t it? But I feel like I am supposed to read it.”

  Marie smiled, instantly liking him. She had always had a feeling that she wasn’t the only person out there who couldn’t read Ulysses. Her loathing for the book did not, in fact, indicate her own mediocrity. No one in prison cared about James Joyce, either. Ruby Hart used to criticize Marie for wasting her time reading fiction.

  The man took off his sunglasses. His eyes were green and bloodshot. He was younger than she’d have expected, in his early
twenties. He was unmistakably American.

  “Eli,” he said, offering his hand.

  “Marie.”

  “Eli Longworth.”

  With this, he seemed to be waiting for a response.

  “Nice to meet you,” Marie said.

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Marie said, annoyed. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Best supporting actor nomination? The Oscars. Two months ago? You haven’t heard of me?”

  Marie had never heard of him. Another movie star. His holey jeans did look expensive. He might have been handsome if he did not seem somehow so incredibly ridiculous. The sunglasses, the perfect stubble. Juan José hadn’t introduced himself with such arrogance. I am Juan José, bank robber, love of your life. He had had some modesty. Marie, however, was all through thinking about Juan José. It was the fault of Benoît Doniel, his complete and utter collapse as Juan José’s replacement, that was sending Marie backward, back to a place where she did not want to return.

  “Hi Eli,” Caitlin said. “Hi. Hi Eli. We are on the train. These are our tickets. Look. Our tickets.”

  Caitlin had not lost their tickets. Marie wondered if she could ignore Caitlin altogether. The girl was supposed to be asleep. Sleeping.

  “What nice tickets,” Eli Longworth said.

  “Read to me.” Caitlin pointed to his book.

  The movie star shook his head. “I don’t think you’ll like it much, either.”

  But he handed Caitlin his copy of Ulysses. She immediately dropped it. Marie picked the book up and handed it back to him.

  “There are no pictures,” Marie said.

  “This book would be better with pictures,” the movie star said.

  “Read me another book,” Caitlin insisted.

  All of Caitlin’s books were in the apartment of the French actress.

  “Hey Caty Bean,” Marie said. “What if I sing to you? I’ll sing to you and then you’ll go to sleep? Okay?”

  Caitlin shook her head, no, and then she started to laugh. She was overtired, Marie decided, as usually she was not obnoxious. Or was she?

  Because they were in France, Marie sang “Frère Jacques.” She sang it three times, knowing that she was being watched. Marie felt herself blushing, singing in front of a movie star she had never heard of. In the fourth round, the movie star started to sing along with her, his voice low and beautiful. By the sixth round, Caitlin had passed out, thumb in her mouth.