They didn’t talk; it was as though they had nothing to talk about, or that the talking would come later, but the current between them was live and thrumming.
The ship felt like their own, something private now, where no real scale applied. They would go to lunch, and then to stroll the deck in the blistering sea wind, and then to play cribbage in Mrs. Parrish’s stateroom. Mary Frances had no patience for cribbage and would bring her notebook and write. She marveled at how hard it was for people to find something pleasant to talk about, and how hard they tried even after it seemed unlikely they would find it. It seemed a lesson to her, that we try, even when we ought to know better, to connect with where we are, whom we are with. But whom was she with? She felt Tim’s presence in an empty room, she sparked and lifted to it, and when he touched her, her mind went everywhere and nowhere at once. But here, to be here, to feel like she could be here, she rose every morning to write a letter to Al.
* * *
The night before they landed in Cherbourg, the little dining room was transformed into a forest. Pine boughs arched the doorways, waxy with scent, and behind them hid the cabin boys with birdcall whistles, trilling at each other from all corners. It was meant to be a woodland feast, some sort of Bavarian tradition, and from the kitchen came huge platters of roasted boar and pheasant and trout, sheets of potatoes, sausages, schnitzels.
Mrs. Parrish clapped her hands like a girl at a play. “Isn’t this amazing,” she said. “Look at all the evergreens! Where have they been keeping them all this time?”
Mary Frances had no idea.
Tim had fallen quiet, watching. From the bar came the drunken Germans with their champagne flutes full of cherries, their tall buxom women on their arms, and their songs. The cabin boys peeped and twittered, the German women squealed with laughter, and platter after platter poured out of the kitchen on the upturned palms of white-jacketed stewards. There were people in California lining up for bread; a forest of game in the middle of the Atlantic seemed no more impossible than that.
There were songs, of course, salutes and toasts, all in German. The noise rose around them, and Mary Frances found herself intent upon her food, as if she hadn’t eaten in a week. The buxom women pointed and laughed. Some of them wore little felt hats with plumage. Some of them wore dirndl skirts and pinafores. A steward came around with a tray of wooden popguns and a basket of cotton balls.
“For the birds,” he said. “For shooting.”
Mary Frances leaned forward. “The cabin boys or each other?”
Tim shook his head. He didn’t know. The stewards went around, and the first cotton ball took flight, another and then another. Soon the air seemed filled with cotton balls.
Tim fiddled with the hammer on the popgun, trying to figure out the load. The room was getting louder now, the laughter turning coarse, and Tim was frustrated with the gun, prying open the mechanism with a butter knife and muttering something under his breath when all of a sudden, Mrs. Parrish let out a chirp of her own.
“Oh dear, oh dear, I shot him!”
Mary Frances looked up to see one of the Germans stiffly bending in his tuxedo to look behind him, hand at the back of his neck. He pulled from the floor, not a cotton ball, but a round red grape, the same kind spilling from the centerpiece in front of Mrs. Parrish.
“Mother,” Tim said, “if you’d given me a second, I was trying to figure it out.”
“Here he comes, here he comes.” Mrs. Parrish picked up her fork and took a large bite of roast boar.
Tim set down the popgun.
“Guten Abend.” The man’s face was pasty and taut; he wore a sort of smile that seemed stretched into place. He bent slightly from the waist, and Tim stood. The man extended a hand, the red grape rolling in his palm.
“Gehört das Ihnen?”
“I’m sorry,” Tim said. He lifted his chin, his eyes scanning the room for a steward. Everyone was hiding; everyone was busy, Mrs. Parrish chewing furiously. “I don’t understand.”
“Ihre Waffe zu haben scheint Befeuert. Ihre Gun. Diese Gun. Ja?”
“I’m sorry.” Tim looked at Mary Frances, whose hand covered her mouth. “It was an accident.”
“Ein Unfall. Ein Spiel. A game, yes?” The German smiled again, letting the grape roll onto the table next to Tim’s plate. “Kraft durch Freude.”
He bowed again, and Tim repeated the German back to him, Kraft durch Freude, as it seemed to solve the problem. He repeated it to himself, then repeated it again to a passing steward whose sleeve he caught.
“‘Strength through joy,’ sir. It is a common feeling in Germany now, that we will find strength through joy.”
“Of course,” Tim said.
“I am really terribly embarrassed,” Mrs. Parrish said. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s all right, Mother. Your Nazi was very understanding. And they did hand out the guns.”
But neither Tim nor Mrs. Parrish went back to their meals. Mary Frances realized they’d been surrounded by these Germans for the entire crossing and yet she hadn’t spoken to any of them, no more than a nod in the passageway, an acknowledgement on deck. It was, in fact, their ship.
Slowly, the twittering cabin boys became less of a spectacle. The whistles and catcalls died away, the Germans pushing back from their tables with their goblets of cherries, making their way back to the lounge, to the bar, to other rooms on other decks. Mary Frances and the Parrishes stayed put, and slowly the cabin boys came out of hiding, shaking the needles from their hair.
Tim ordered another bottle of wine. The cabin boys began dismantling the forest. The stewards cleared the platters of food to the kitchen, snapped clean white linens over the empty tables for the morning’s service. There seemed to be a pall settled over them now. None of them were willing to be the first to stand and break it, and they sat there long after their wine was just sips in their glasses. The stewards had finished with their work, a line of white-jacketed young men at attention by the kitchen door, ready for the Americans to take their leave.
* * *
They lay in her cabin long after saying good night, the pitch of the ship beneath them. Mary Frances wanted to ask him if he was scared, but it seemed such a silly question now, after all they’d done. All she seemed to have were silly questions.
“Tim?”
His breaths were deep and even.
“What happens tomorrow?”
“Well.” He rolled onto his side, his lips next to her ear. “We strike land. We make land travel to Paris. A train, I think. They have beds there too, but I’m not sure we will have the time to make use of them.”
“It will be different.”
“So serious.”
She didn’t say anything, and he didn’t try to see her face.
“Yes,” he said finally. “It will be different, for us. Than this.”
“Everything feels a bit more possible at sea.”
* * *
When the ship docked, they took the train from Cherbourg to Paris, through the wet, gray countryside. Mrs. Parrish seemed unsettled; she spoke to Tim with a surprising intimacy, as though Mary Frances were not there.
“I have real doubts, Timmy. I may well be too old for a journey like this one.”
“That’s ridiculous, Mother.”
Mrs. Parrish made a sound.
“You just got off the ship and have now hurtled yourself off again. You’re still catching up. You need a nap, a meal, and then we’ll see who can stop you.”
Tim crossed his legs, nonchalantly snapping open the paper his French was nowhere near good enough to read. It was interesting to see him bolstering his mother; she wondered where he had learned to do what he did to people. Everybody took his encouragement.
“I could go to the club car,” Mary Frances said.
“No, dear, it’s fine. The
porter will be around shortly. Surely there are porters.”
“It’s no trouble. Those days on the ship have caught up with my appetite. I’m always hungry now.”
“You do look it, dear, healthier. Still, Timmy, fetch the porter.”
Tim folded the paper. “Of course.”
He slid back the pocket door, brushing against her knees only the barest bit as he passed through. Mrs. Parrish had such firm ideas about what was for her to do, what was for Tim, what she could do alone, and what she needed his escort for. Mary Frances was still learning her place and the expectations therein. She found herself wanting to lean over the rails to test them.
“If I may ask,” she said, “what’s the matter?”
Mrs. Parrish cut her eyes at Mary Frances, suddenly a much younger woman, capable of far more than prattle and worry.
“Years ago,” she said. Then she gave a sigh, the rest of what she was remembering trailing off. “I’m old, dear. Who wants to be old?”
“But you’ve looked forward to this trip for so long.”
“And now I won’t have it to look forward to any longer.”
Mrs. Parrish turned to the window, the countryside whipping past. Mary Frances followed her gaze, dizzy with the speed at which they traveled. She remembered taking this exact route with Al on their honeymoon, on their way to Dijon by way of Paris. They’d gone to the club car, and she ordered her first French meal, good bread, good ham and butter, a bottle of champagne, and they’d eaten, so happy across from each other, she felt as if she would burst.
When Tim returned, both women sat with their chins in their hands, unreachable in their own places. He opened the French newspaper again and stared at the words until they ran together, blottish, swelling blackness, the opposite of clouds. He could tell fortunes by this newspaper, but he could not read it, and he had no idea what had happened in this compartment while he had been gone.
* * *
At the hotel desk, they were holding mail for Mary Frances, a letter from Al and two from Edith. It was cold in Whittier, and with Anne and the children away, with Mary Frances away, and Rex completely flummoxed by his new editor, Edith had nothing to do. I miss you, Dote, she said. There is nothing so fine as our talks when I start to feel the blurries waiting in the wings.
Mary Frances took the other letters to the bar. She ordered a whiskey, then another after that, smoked a cigarette and then another after that. In all her travels, even when she and Al had lived in France, this was the first time she’d ever felt so distant from her family. By the time she reached Al’s letter, all she was good for was skimming it.
Tim pulled out the chair beside her, ordered a beer. “This hotel is quite modern,” he said. “Perhaps all of Paris is modern now.”
“Your mother will be disappointed.”
“My mother is indefatigable. She knows no French disappointments.”
Mary Frances tucked her letters into her purse, to read another time when she did not feel stretched so thin.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Of course not. I mean, it’s hard to be in two places at once.”
“For you?” And maybe she didn’t want the answer to that, to hear his feelings were divided when he was with her, and who else he might be thinking of, but they had a long habit of being honest with each other, and it was out of her mouth before she could think twice.
Tim fiddled with the cocktail napkin. Finally he looked at her, and all his high fervent promises were in that look: how she was like no one else, how they were like no one else together.
“We could run away,” he said.
“You don’t really think so.”
“I’ve found it to be a perfectly acceptable response to life’s difficulties. Don’t I seem comfortable on the run? Dashing, even.”
“You’re trying to make me laugh.”
“So laugh,” he said. “Will you?”
* * *
It became her job to perform a certain part of every day as though she knew a great deal more about France than she did. She rose to the occasion, offering translation, checking maps, and making itineraries with Mrs. Parrish over lunch, because now that she and Tim stayed up half the night, nobody ate breakfast anymore, and their days unfolded from the table according to the various attractions of Paris.
Cathedral after cathedral, she stared hard at the guide and the French that rolled out of him. She had to concentrate to understand, Dijon two years gone, but worse and harder, Tim at her elbow in his beautiful blue suit, his overcoat open. He stood so close, she could feel the difference in the air inside his coat and out.
He leaned to her. “The church is what?”
“Old,” she said. “Old and . . . important.”
He told his mother this was a church built during the Dark Ages, with marble quarried from the Hebrides, that every king of France had been interred there, and that the monks now made beautiful cheese. There were no monks or marble in the Hebrides, but he was right about the kings. The guide kept speaking and Tim leaning close to her; everything kept happening.
The guide spoke of an abbey made famous for the marriage of Louis XIV and something to do with lace. There was Tim’s hand, and she let her hand fall beside it, this part of France the province of apples, of honey, of sheep, of iron, and like it was an accident of proximity, the back of his knuckles brushed hers and her body leaped and rushed to remember the night before.
Mrs. Parrish asked, “What are they talking about sheep for?”
Mary Frances couldn’t say. Her blood thrummed in her ears.
“My dear, are you sure you’re listening?”
* * *
Tim stood in the gallery at the Musée de l’Orangerie and realized how long it had been since he’d painted. Gauguin’s Tahiti before him now, violently affixed to canvas, green and gold and red and cerulean blue in the light that seemed to come from everywhere, an explosion, ecstasy; he loved it. It had been too long since he’d spent time in museums, too long between shows; he’d forgotten what this test felt like, to measure your fire against another.
Of course, he thought of Al. Tim had never been unable to do what he wanted, whether it be to write or paint; he’d opened restaurants and tea shops, torn houses to the ground to rebuild them. He felt a stab of sympathy, another unexpected feeling in this situation. But he could not understand where Al’s congratulations for his wife had gone. How could you not be happy for the woman you loved?
Mary Frances stopped behind his shoulder, and Tim turned to look at her.
Her eyes worked fast across the canvas. She would say something, soon, she would say something he’d never thought about, and that made him want to paint all the more, just to hear whatever it was she said next. God, he loved women: young women, smart women with talent, Mary Frances. He was forty-two. There was still time to be a genius in her eyes.
“What do you think?” he whispered.
“It doesn’t seem to care,” she said, “does it?”
He laughed out loud; heads turned. They drew such attention wherever they went, a triumvirate of statuesque travelers, insulated by their English, their apparent wealth. Tim saw no point in pretending to hide, but Mary Frances brought a finger to her lips and moved away. She sat beside his mother on a green velvet bench in the next gallery, removed her notebook from her purse, and bent to it.
He followed. “Lunch?”
“Timmy,” his mother said. “Who can think about lunch at this hour?”
“Most of the Western world. It’s two o’clock.”
Mary Frances put a hand on his mother’s arm. “We could send Tim ahead, Mrs. Parrish. There’s no rush. You and I could take a taxi when we feel ready to leave.”
His mother looked pleased. “Would you be able to get yourself a drink?”
“I’m capable of the hand signals.”
“Here, then.” Mrs. Parrish reached into her purse for a fistful of francs.
“I’ve got money, Mother. I’m fine.”
They agreed on the bar at the Ritz, and Tim set out through Monet’s water lilies to the sparkling cold Tuileries. He’d been to Paris last winter, after Gigi left him, and winters before they were married, winters during the war. It was a city he was quite familiar with. But today with Mary Frances, with the stir of work and watching her, the attenuated hours of want ahead, this Paris seemed like the culmination of all those others, the whole point.
Perhaps he would just get drunk at lunch, tell his mother everything she well suspected already, and persuade Mary Frances to really run away with him. Perhaps he would just get drunk.
Sometime over the weekend, when it seemed nothing could be done about it, Hitler marched into the Rhineland, knocking on the door of France.
* * *
We go everywhere, Al, and we see everything, eat everything, and the Parrish pocketbook never seems to flag. Soufflé! Omelets with burnt sugar, like we used to get at Aux Trois Faisons, with our initials burned into the crust. The Tuileries! the wind biting at our coats. We walk and walk and walk (so as to wear out Mrs. Parrish so that when they did return, she was exhausted. She begged off dinner. She began to lose weight, they all did, even though they ate the lunches of duck, creamed Brussels sprouts with lardons, terrine, confit, fromage blanc, steak tartare with shimmering soft-set eggs, brioche. And they passed cathedral and train station and park and square. They passed women with their prams, old women, tired women—they all made Mary Frances want Tim more, as though he could keep her from the ages to come).
I was so cold this afternoon, I thought about that February in Strasbourg, how the wind was so bitter and we moved into the rooms at the Elisa, where the heat came blaring off the radiators. I would sit at the window and watch you leave for the university in the mornings—how cold you looked, your collar turned up, while I basked like a lizard inside. I welcomed you home warmly, as I recall. I wish for that same welcome now.
Your last letter sounded so melancholy. And I know it’s wrong of me to be oceans away and having a high time in all our old haunts, telling you to keep your chin up. But I do worry. His grief seemed like a thick blanket that wrapped him away from her now, as if he too were carrying on a separate life back in California, as if they both had somehow moved on. She knew this wasn’t true, but every thought she had of them together seemed sepia-toned and distant, their youth in Dijon, the ghosts of who they had become.
The Arrangement Page 17