“Do you have any idea how pretty you are?” I said.
She smiled and said, “Do you have any idea how much I love kissing you?” Then she kissed me quickly all over my face before rolling over back on top of me. I held her face in my hands and stared at her.
“Now you do,” she said. She rolled off me and stood up. We brushed the leaves off each other before walking arm and arm through the park, stopping to watch a group of old men play boule.
After we left the park we took a taxi to Sacré-Cœur and sat on the sloping lawn, looking out over the city. Julia took my hand and kissed it. “I haven’t felt this content—this peaceful—in so long that I’d almost forgotten what it’s like,” she said.
I turned to say something, hesitated for a minute, then said, “There is something I don’t understand about you.”
“What is that?” She looked anxious.
“I don’t understand how you could be so alone for so many years. Especially someone like you. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Whose life does?”
“Haven’t other men proposed to you?”
“God, no.” She laughed.
“I would have.”
“Patr—”
“It’s true.”
“You shouldn’t say that. It’s too much for me.”
“I can’t bear to think of you being so alone; of us being apart.”
“At least now I’ll always have you to think about.” She leaned against me.
“But that’s not enough. It’s not enough for me. I need to see you and touch you and hold you. At night when I’m in my hotel I can’t sleep because I crave you so badly.”
“I’m here now,” she said, putting her arms around me.
“Don’t you know what people would give for this?” I tried to keep my voice steady. “Everything, Julia. Most people would give everything for this.”
She nodded slowly, then rested her head on my chest as I lay back.
“So we’re luckier than most people,” she said softly.
“Are we?”
She didn’t answer.
We must have fallen asleep because when we awoke the sky had changed colors and the air was cooler, portending rain. We walked through the streets of Montmartre for a while, pausing to admire the work of local artists, then stopped for dinner.
“I want to take you to the Louvre,” she said, after we had finished eating.
“I’d love that. Ever since you first told me about going to the Louvre, about how the things that you saw brought tears to your eyes, well, I’ve dreamed of going there with you.”
She looked down at her watch. “You’d better get back to your hotel.”
“There’s a little time.”
“But not enough, is there?”
I leaned forward and took her hand. “I could leave Charlotte.”
She pulled her hand back. “No. No you can’t. Not your wife and son. Please don’t say that.”
“But what will we do?”
She was silent for a moment, then said, “Don’t you understand? There is nothing for us to do.”
“What do you mean? I couldn’t bear to lose you.”
“I couldn’t bear to lose Daniel.”
“But you don’t have to lose me.”
“I never had you, don’t you see?”
I looked down at the table, fighting back tears. My fists were clenched. “Goddamn it.”
She put her hand on my back and rubbed it. “I should never have come to Paris.”
“Don’t say that.” I lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply.
“I won’t ruin your life, Patrick. I’d rather never see you again than know that I took you away from your wife and child.”
“Do you mean that?”
She nodded slowly as she bit her lip.
“I’d always find you,” I said, leaning toward her. But when I said that I thought I saw fear in her eyes. Of me? Of what she’d done?
“Please don’t make this any harder,” she said.
When the waiter brought the check she insisted on paying it. Outside it was raining lightly and the streets were quiet. We walked slowly back to her hotel, pausing to watch the light from the street lamps skip across the puddles at our feet. We stood out front for a while, unwilling to say good night yet too sad to make hurried love in her room. Finally she said, “Do you know why I was so upset when I visited the Louvre, why I ran out?”
“Why?”
“Because for the first time I realized what the Louvre says.”
“What does it say?”
“That our lives—all of our lives—are a struggle between love and loss.”
“And which wins?”
“That’s what I can’t decide.”
I ran my fingers along her cheek, then kissed her forehead.
“I’ll be waiting for you,” she said, as she turned and walked into her hotel. I watched her cross the lobby to the stairs, then hurried back to my hotel and tiptoed into bed. In the morning when Charlotte asked where I had been I told her I’d felt better and gone down the street for some dinner where I met a French veteran who told wonderful stories and plied me with drink until I could barely walk.
IN THE ROOM across the hall there lives a blind and partially paralyzed woman named April Lessing. She never comes out, not unless she has to, so I go visit her a few times a week. I sit on the small metal and wood chair next to her bed in the permanent semidarkness and we talk. Sometimes she puts her hands on my face, running her fingers slowly from my forehead down to my chin. It bothered me at first, especially when she described what my face felt like. Nice high cheekbones, but a bit thin in the cheeks, she would say. Good chin. Strong jawline. (If only she knew.) But now I rather enjoy it, though it often feels more revealing than I would like.
April is ninety-two. Her voice is low and hoarse like a smoker’s, though she says she quit forty years ago. She keeps three sets of rosary beads by her bed: one pink, one yellow and one white, and still complains about the reforms of Vatican II. “They took all the mystery out of it,” she says. “Putting the mass in English.”
“I think the idea was that it would be better if people could understand what was being said,” I respond.
“People don’t want to understand what’s being said, don’t you see? Once you understand the words the whole thing is not nearly so impressive.”
April’s husband died thirty-six years ago, at the age of sixty-seven. “I told my daughters, ‘Whatever you do, don’t marry an older man unless you plan to marry twice,’” she says. “It’s so silly, women marrying older men when the men die seven or eight years before them anyway! Dumbest thing I ever heard.”
“But if they fall in love… ”
“That’s what happened to me, only I didn’t realize that all the men would die off in their seventies. They were dying like flies at the club we belonged to. Heart attacks on the golf course, strokes in the locker room, seizures in the dining room. Goodness, what a mess! And most of the ladies can’t find a decent second husband because they are all dead or dying or married and dying.”
“I didn’t realize how exceptional I was.”
“Oh, but we’ve given up on you!”
“You have?”
“Why sure, you’re already taken.”
“I am?”
“Of course you are. You’ve been taken all your life. Do you think I’m blind?”
YOU KNOW HOW when you are young, you can’t imagine forgetting how old you are, whereas once you hit middle age it becomes necessary—especially if the question is fired out of the blue—to consult your fingers? Well, when you get even older the same thing happens with what year it is, not just whether it’s 1980 or 1981 but whether it’s 1980 or 1970. And then you think to yourself, Good God, which young chap is president these days? And as you’re trying to remember you’re suddenly flooded by the childhood smell of pencil shavings, and there you are, emptying the silver and black pencil sharpener bolted to the wall of
the classroom near the pretty girl in the blue and white gingham dress, which is why you’re at the pencil sharpener in the first place. And then pain brings you back again, wondering what year it is and who is president.
I JUST FINISHED reading Jung’s autobiography: Memories, Dreams, Reflections. I was struck by his inability to go to Rome. He said he didn’t have the strength for it; the strength to deal with “the spirit that broods there,” a spirit suffusing every stone and layered back through antiquity. The last time he tried to go he fainted while buying the tickets.
What about me? Would I have the strength to go back to France?
IT WAS ONLY after the police found me half a mile from Great Oaks after dark and without even my customary sweater that Dr. Tompkins told me, in his roundabout way, that I was losing my mind.
“Early onset,” he said, assuring me that it would never catch up to and overrun the cancer.
“Brain rot, eh?”
“You might want to get your affairs in order.”
“How did you know I was having affairs?”
He didn’t smile.
All I remember is how happy Sarah was to see me when the officer escorted me through the front door just before midnight. And I remember that she hugged me and that she almost cried and I wondered what horrible thing had happened to her until she told me. Then I felt ashamed like a kindergartner who has crapped in his pants. And that’s when it was agreed that I wouldn’t be allowed to leave the grounds on my own again.
I waited a long time for sleep that night, and when it came it whisked me far far away all on my own.
NOT MUCH longer now, Julia. Not much longer at all.
I THINK most of us are haunted deep within by a sense of lost perfection, by the nagging feeling not just that things could be better but that they once were better; that we can actually, in our hearts, recall a feeling of joy that we cannot reproduce, and that is our ultimate agony. It’s not just that we can imagine utter happiness, it’s that we’ve tasted it; perhaps, as Freud would say, at the breast of our mothers. And having tasted it, nothing else tastes the same, which is why so much of life is so bitterly sweet.
I don’t think we ever stop trying to find it again, that sense of infinite well-being and security. Deep in our hearts we all long for a sort of Restoration. That’s what love offers: our only chance back to an ethereal communion we once enjoyed. And maybe that’s why love even at first sight feels so much like a reunion.
And without love? Without love we are like songbirds who cannot sing.
IS JULIA DEAD? I couldn’t bear to think so.
I WAS LEANING against an oak tree near the gazebo vomiting when Martin found me.
“You all right?” he asked, putting his hand on my back.
I waved him off and retched again.
“I’ll get a nurse,” he said, turning to go.
“No, stay.”
“But you… ” I vomited again, my whole body convulsing as Martin held on to my shoulder. “Let me get someone,” he said.
“No, please, it’s nothing.” I wiped my mouth with my sleeve.
You’re sick. I’m going to get the doctor.” He turned again to go.
“Wait.”
He turned back toward me.
“This isn’t the big C it’s the little c,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Cigar. I had a goddamn cigar.”
“You had a cigar? But you don’t smoke.”
“I know I don’t smoke.”
“So why did you have a cigar?” He looked confused.
“Because I wanted one.”
“It made you sick, huh?”
“Yes, it made me sick.” I pushed myself into an upright position.
“Here, let me help you,” he said, taking my arm and leading me across the lawn and back inside.
“I don’t think you should smoke anymore,” he said.
“No, I don’t think I should either.”
GOD, IT’S ME, Patrick. Patrick Delaney. Patrick E. Delaney. Room four, if that helps. I was just wondering, do the people who believe in you know something I don’t? Do you give them some sort of secret understanding or insight or signal? Because if you do, I believe you’ve overlooked me. (A flick of the lights will suffice.) And if you don’t, why then I’m baffled.
The truth is—and I’ll keep this short because you must be quite pressed for time—the truth is that it’s getting awfully tempting to believe in you, which is to say that the alternatives are looking rather bleak. I hate to say it, Lord, but you may, finally, have me on the ropes. But I was wondering: if you really do exist (and I still have grave doubts), any chance you could lighten up a bit? And must I always do the talking?
I COULDN’T see Julia for two days. It was raining hard and Sean was sick and there was no way to get away. So all I could do was run to her hotel each day through the rain and leave her a note telling her that I missed her and that I’d try again the next day.
And then I would sit next to Sean’s bed and put wet washcloths on his forehead and sing him “Old King Cole” and “Swanee River” and “Five Little Sailors,” and whenever I thought of sailing for New York I would clench my fists and teeth and struggle not to cry out at the rain.
YESTERDAY I noticed a scent of bark outside that I had not smelled in years. While the bark lingered in my nose, flushing out ancient treehouses and campfires and games of tag and capture the flag, I noticed that the birds seemed to be singing louder than usual and the leaves on the trees looked more pronounced, almost exaggerated in their lush clarity. I sat perfectly still, waiting for some evidence of a stroke or heart attack. But nothing hurt. I took long deep breaths, slowly at first then one right after another, tasting the air that swirled within my lungs and thinking how the first scent of autumn is like coming across a lost album of childhood photographs.
And today too, I feel, well, good. Clearheaded. Crisp even, though it fades in and out. Everything seems to have unusual depth and color as though my senses are on heightened alert. I feel a fullness in my chest. It’s a pleasing fullness; like the deep welling one feels before a good, overdue cry.
Only two things in my life ever had the power to contain me wholly in the present moment: Julia and the German Army. But now? What is this?
It’s death, isn’t it? The encore. I smiled, trying not to laugh as some visitors walked quickly by. Well if this is death’s approach, then I no longer envy those who die abruptly, never experiencing the power of death’s proximity. Let me breathe as deep as I can and close my eyes for a moment. Yes, that feels so peaceful, so relaxing, as though everything is brimming over.
Oh Lord, I’m crying now and I don’t have my handkerchief. But I’m not sad. No, not at all. I’m wildly happy like a boy in the rain, face up to the clouds, arms aloft, fists clenched. Alive!
WHEN I SAW Julia again she was standing in front of her hotel, leaning against the wall with her hands in the pockets of her raincoat. Her hair was wet from the rain and she didn’t smile when she saw me. I had only a few minutes before I had to meet Charlotte and Margaret.
“What is it?” I said, running my hands along her cheeks.
She turned her face away.
“Tell me. Please.”
She turned back and looked at me. Her eyes were swollen.
“I saw you and your wife and son. I watched you come out of your hotel.”
“You watched us?”
“And I followed you to the park. I watched you playing with Sean and I saw how you and Charlotte held hands as you walked.” She swallowed hard. “You looked so lovely together. All three of you.”
“But why—”
“I had to know what it would feel like. I had to see that you were married.”
I remembered carrying Sean on my shoulders in the park and galloping like a horse and then hiding a coin in my hand and pretending to pluck it from behind his ears, a trick that never ceased to delight him, causing him to search behind his ears several times a day.
I nervously reached for my cigarettes. Julia began crying.
“It felt awful, Patrick.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I couldn’t bear it.”
“You shouldn’t—”
“It’s my fault.”
“Don’t say that.”
“There is no place for me in your life. I don’t belong here.” She turned sideways as if to leave.
“There has to be a place.” I was whispering.
“There isn’t. I can’t do this.”
I felt my fists tighten until my whole arms were quaking. The pressure in my head caused a piercing pain just behind my eyes. “You can’t leave me, Julia. You’re the only person who’s given me any hope. You’ve changed everything for me, don’t you see?”
She looked up at me and began to say something but stopped, her hands held limply aloft in grief, as if in midsentence. I could hardly look at her.
“Just give me some time,” I said. “Please.” I thought again of Sean and how we had played in the bath for an hour that morning and how he had laughed hysterically when he abruptly peed all over me.
She didn’t say anything.
I grabbed her by the shoulders. “You’ll wait a little longer? Say that you will.”
She looked up at me. “Yes, I’ll wait,” she said softly.
I spent the rest of the day following Charlotte and Margaret around Paris, stopping to look inside every shoe store—Margaret’s idea—and trying my best to remember to smile as we sat for dinner at an expensive restaurant near the Pantheon.
I couldn’t sleep that night. Early the next morning I took Sean out for a walk, stopping in a park so that he could chase pigeons. Then we sat together on a bench and watched the sun come up, casting an orange and then yellow hue on the streets and buildings. Sean was on my lap and it was cold so I unbuttoned my jacket and wrapped it around him. He tilted his head straight back to look up at me, then reached for my nose. After he crawled out of my jacket he began searching my pockets with his small, dimpled hands. “Bon bon?” he inquired, smiling sweetly.
Losing Julia Page 30