A few other visitors were here and there in the cemetery. The closest one, although he was at least forty yards away, was a solitary man about my age. He sat on a bench, staring down at a grave by his feet. Was it his wife’s grave? Or maybe a child’s? He sat there staring, occasionally taking a deep breath. I thought that we should put a chair or a bench by Tracy’s grave. I looked down. Squares of sod made a checkerboard pattern.The squares in the center had sunk slightly below grade. I felt lost again, and turned to go back to my car.
Someone had put a small stone sculpture of the hind legs, rump, and tail of a puppy at one of the nearby graves. It looked as if the puppy had dug far enough into the grave so that his head and the front of his shoulders had disappeared underground. My first thought was that the deceased person had loved dogs, but that thought was immediately swept away by revulsion. The dog was desecrating the grave, searching for bones to chew. The ghastly image of exactly that appeared before my eyes. The dog’s mouth was dripping with saliva as it held a human femur in its teeth. I wanted to kick the little sculpture away. I forced myself to keep walking.
I do not believe in ghosts rather more than I believe in them. As a child, I didn’t want to sleep with my feet or hands extended over the edge of the mattress, since then the monsters who lived under the bed at night might grab them. Later, when I was fourteen or fifteen, sleeping without a shirt during a summer night before air conditioning, I felt a chill go down my backbone as if a frozen finger had traced a line there. I turned and saw a shade standing by my bed. It was tall, narrow, featureless, as if a robe had been hung on a skeleton. I screamed in terror so loudly that my stepfather, in the bedroom at the end of a hall and behind a closed door, heard me and came rushing through the darkness into my room. He flipped on the light, and, of course, nothing was there.
Now, in the months after Tracy’s death, at home in the condominium where we had lived for the last four years of her life—a place so redolent of her, because she had designed a renovation from floor to ceiling and during six months of construction had supervised the contractor so closely that his final bill was under budget by twenty-five cents—I would sometimes find things placed differently from the way I remembered them. Or the thermostat—always a source of minor friction; Tracy liked it cooler than I did—would be lower than I had left it. Tracy drank only bottled water. I bought some to keep in the refrigerator, because, standing there, cool and ready, the bottles reminded me of her. And then, one by one, the bottles began to disappear. I counted. I was certain. I was having a difficult time trying to hold on to the world I knew existed and stay away from the worlds that I believed probably did not exist. Then I figured out that Rosie, the maid, usually drank one of the bottles as she worked. She was the explanation for the changed thermostat as well.
Then, one night, around three, I heard a beeping. I knew it was our refrigerator. It beeps if it has been left open. There are two doors, side by side. If you are not careful, it’s easy to pop one door open when you close the other one. I got out of bed and walked the length of the apartment to the kitchen in the dark. When I turned on the light in the kitchen, I saw that, indeed, the left-side door was ajar. I pushed it closed, careful not to force the right door open, and the beeping stopped. But then I wondered, “Why did it start beeping now?” It usually started just a few moments after it had been left open, but I had been asleep for hours. With no easy answer to the question, I turned out the kitchen light and went back to bed.
A few minutes later, I heard the beeping again. I walked through the dark to the kitchen a second time. Now the right-side door was open. That couldn’t be—I had made sure both sides were shut. But, groggy with sleep, maybe I had made a mistake. I pushed the door closed, and the beeping stopped. I returned to bed.
Before long, the beeping started again. Now I was frightened. The sharp, insistent sound, repeating every five seconds in the quiet of the night, was a horrifying torture. I did not want to go back into the kitchen. The beeps continued relentlessly, one and another and another and another. I had to stop them. I turned on the light in the bedroom. I opened the door and flipped the switch so the hallway lights came on. I stepped into the hallway. Nothing was there. I stepped over to the switch that turned on the lights in the living room. My cat looked at me quizzically from the chair where she was sleeping. I went to the kitchen and turned on the light. There was nothing there. I was breathing heavily. Both refrigerator doors were closed, but the beeping continued. I opened the doors and closed them again. The beeping never faltered. I opened the doors again. The bottles and packages inside were all sweating. The refrigerator was beeping because the internal temperature was higher than it should have been. Tracy and I had confronted this a couple of times before and could never figure out how to make the beeping stop. We just closed the doors and waited.
Back in bed, even with the bedroom door closed, I could hear the relentless beeping. I couldn’t stop listening for it. I felt mocked and silly for being frightened, but I was frightened. Was there really nothing there? Evidently not. In the morning, everything was normal. As I stood in front of the refrigerator, my cat rubbed against my ankles and rolled over on her back
A few nights later, I had a terrible dream and woke up tossing and screaming, to discover several other people hiding in the bed with Tracy and me. We were all lying in a row, as stiff as boards, seeking safety together from some merciless, revolting, oozing plasma. Then I woke up for real and realized that I had only dreamed of waking up. I was alone in my own bed with the covers in a wad beside me.
Now, years later, I don’t always dream, but when I do, Tracy is often in the dream. I haven’t called to her, nor does she materialize as if she had come from another world. She is simply there, and in my dreams she is always alive. That seems perfectly normal in the dream, although nothing ever happens between us. I think of these dreams as visitations. When I awaken, I’m disappointed and feel empty.
* * *
. . .
After the difficulties I had in 2011, during the weeks around Tracy’s birthday and Mother’s Day, I knew I would need some agreeable distraction to carry me up to, through, and beyond May 11 in 2012. I had no trouble deciding what that distraction would be. I would take another randonnée à cheval in France.
But I had quit riding in 2002, bored with the way I was riding. To improve and move forward, I would have had to buy and maintain a good horse and spend a lot more time in the saddle. I decided that wasn’t the way I wanted to spend my money or my time. Now, in 2012, I hadn’t been on a horse in ten years. I went back to the stables where I had begun, and rode in the ring twice a week. The riding master was a funny, intelligent, and strict woman who called out sloppy riding or bad habits mercilessly. With her help, it didn’t take me long to find my leg again, especially since I felt comfortable in the saddle almost immediately. Part of that comfort came from feeling a pleasant and unexpected connection with Tracy as I remembered our times together at this stable, and at horse shows with our daughter. But I didn’t take any fences. There wouldn’t be jumping on the ride I was planning, and I didn’t want even a slight amount of added risk. I pulled my horse to the side and watched as the other riders ran through courses taking multiple fences, turning corners, and effortlessly changing leads. Once, I could have done all that myself, but those days were behind me now. Watching the other riders taking a difficult course of fences, I always felt a little frisson of mortality.
I made a reservation for a ride across the Dordogne, which I chose because it began before and ended after May 11, 2012. I stopped in Paris for a few days in late April, so I could get over jet lag before the ride began. I took a small—very small—room in a small—very small—hotel on the rue Victor-Cousin, near the Sorbonne and the Panthéon. I chose that hotel in part because it looked reasonably nice and wasn’t expensive, but mostly because Tracy and I had never stayed there or in that neighborhood. I liked it immediat
ely, and took pleasure in thinking that she would have liked it, too.
The rue Victor-Cousin intersects the broad rue Soufflot, which runs from the Boulevard Saint-Michel to the Place du Panthéon. It’s very stately and lined with appealing cafés and restaurants. But the side streets in the neighborhood are narrow and often twist around one another. There are many bookstores, small academic presses, and art-movie theaters. In the Place de la Sorbonne, at the foot of the rue Victor-Cousin, there are cafés crowded with animated students, and there are interesting shops everywhere and a couple of cavernous used-book stores. Surely, they held the wisdom of the ages if only you could find it among the almost petrified stacks of ancient volumes.
I gladly returned to the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, and other obligatory stops that Tracy and I had always made together, but I found I liked wandering around this new neighborhood just as much. I actually said “Aha!” out loud when I turned a corner and discovered a magic shop. (Since then, in the manner of many magic shops these days, it has disappeared.) Tracy and I had discovered a Paris together that we both loved. But now, during odd moments as I wandered, I began to think that there might also be much more in Paris that was there waiting for me, a Paris filled with wonders and mysteries and pleasures that I could discover without betraying or abandoning either Tracy or the Paris that we had found together.
The ride was splendid, and it did for me emotionally what I had hoped that it would. Unfortunately, the only other rider was a woman from South Africa who was inane and proudly wealthy, a deadly combination. She was riding while her husband followed the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. While we were on horseback, I was usually able to ignore her, although meals were another matter. We began riding on a Sunday morning and ended on a Friday evening, but after the first day I lost—or, rather, fled from—all sense of time. The eleventh day of May came and went without my knowing when.
Jean, the outfitter, was a tall, lanky horseman about forty who wore jeans and pearl-snap shirts and looked as much like a cowboy as any Frenchman could look. In his van he had a score of country music CDs. Béatrice, his assistant, was a tiny woman with short white hair. She drove a separate van with our luggage. Each day, she went ahead to the place where we would stop for lunch outdoors and had the food and wine ready when we arrived. The lunches always took about two hours. This was partly to rest the horses, but, then, Jean wasn’t in any hurry, either. I had to make myself slow down in order to enjoy such a leisurely lunch. My solution, after eating and drinking several glasses, was to find a comfortable spot and lie in the sun with a hat over my eyes. That way, I got a little rest and also avoided the woman from South Africa.
After lunch, Béatrice drove on to that night’s hotel, so our luggage was there when we arrived. The South African woman and I remounted and followed Jean for the afternoon. It was real riding, with frequent long gallops across the countryside during which the only sound was the horses’ hooves pounding the ground. Then, as we walked, mounted, through villages, the clanging of the horseshoes on stone streets excited a frenzied barking by the local dogs. The villages hadn’t changed much over the years, and I had the feeling of going back in time, way back long before the automobile or the train. The trip was expensive, but the hotels were always comfortable, and the evening meals were elegant feasts with very fine local wine, which made up for having to dine with Lady South Africa. So, for six days, the only decision I had to make was which shirt to put on in the morning. I had not a single worry, because I knew that the next day would follow the same pattern as the one that had just ended. And one chance moment confirmed for me that this ride had been a fortunate choice that had been meant for me all along.
A few years earlier, I had somehow lost the Nontron knife that Tracy had given me before the stag hunt. I think I must have left it in a hotel room. During the days in Paris before this randonnée, I had gone back to the rue de Richelieu to buy another Nontron knife, only to find that the elegant store with hunting equipment near La Comédie Française had closed. That was a disappointment. But one evening during the ride, while wandering around before dinner in the little town where we had stopped for the night, I found a cutlery store. It seemed odd to me to find a pricy specialty store in such a small village. I entered out of curiosity, and immediately saw a large display of Nontron knives, including the same model of pocket knife that Tracy had given me. I bought one to replace the one I had lost. I use it constantly at home and always bring it with me when I travel.
I lingered in Paris for a few days after the ride had ended. I could no longer forget, and didn’t want to forget, that Tracy’s birthday had come and gone just a few days ago. I had bought the Nontron knife as if it were a present from her to me. Now, in Paris, I wanted to buy a present from me to her. I knew that I wanted to give her some santons, and I knew I could find them in Georges Thuillier, on the Place Saint-Sulpice.
I spent a long time choosing among the many santons for sale before deciding on a woman wearing a traditional red dress from Arles and a woman carrying a basket of bread. I chose the Arlésienne because Tracy and I were enthralled with Arles when we visited there in 1998. We stayed at the Grand Hôtel Nord-Pinus, with the dramatic statue of the Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral (Nobel Prize, 1904) in front, and the restaurant where van Gogh painted The Night Café just to the side. Photographs of Africa by Peter Beard enhance the bar. In one taken with a powerful flash at night, a beautiful nude woman is feeding a leaf to a giraffe. After some wine, Tracy stood by our table and parodied the pose while feeding me a peanut. I chose the woman carrying a basket of bread not because Tracy baked bread—she didn’t, although she cooked divinely—but because that santon seemed to represent generosity and hospitality.
The statues were about three inches tall. The cashier in Georges Thuillier wrapped them in tissue and then put them in a stiff cardboard box, which kept them safe in my suitcase during my flight home. The day after my arrival, I drove to the cemetery and put the two figures on the base of Tracy’s tombstone. Even today, they still valiantly keep watch over her in the summer heat or the wet winter cold. By now, they are worn slightly, but not as much as you would expect after more than eight years exposed to the elements.
* * *
. . .
I rode with Jean again during early May the following year, 2013. Once again, we crossed beautiful country, stayed in comfortable hotels, and were served splendid dinners. This time, there were four other riders, all of them agreeable company. During the day, it was pleasant being outdoors on horseback beneath a gentle sun, following along behind Jean. With little else to occupy my mind, I sometimes found myself pondering my situation and wondering what I should do.
I didn’t want to spend the rest of my evenings drinking alone and watching magic DVDs, comforting as that had been for the past two years. When I thought about romance, which I did less often than I would have thought, I knew that I would like to find another woman and be in love again, but I made only a few faint efforts to find someone. I encountered one or two women for whom I had some hopes, but when I asked them out, I was refused evasively. I found those moments, standing in front of a woman who was looking to the side while she searched for a polite way to say no to me, more painful than they should have been. I wasn’t ready emotionally for even the slightest rejection.
Eighteen months after Tracy’s death, I did have one romance that began well enough, but then fizzled when I backed away. “You aren’t over Tracy,” the woman said. “I never had a chance.” And she was right.
In my solitude after Tracy’s death, I had made three resolutions about women. I would not become involved with anyone who had children still at home, or anyone who smoked, or anyone who had cancer. I was sixty-six when Tracy died. I had enjoyed having a young family once, but I didn’t want another one now. I had come to hate cigarette smoke and the smell of tobacco on the clothes and in the hair of smokers. And I had watched Tracy lose
her battle with cancer and didn’t want to suffer through that experience again.
But, shortly after making those resolutions, I was invited to a fancy horse show in Houston. There was an attractive woman in a vermillion sheath at the next table. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and wasn’t there with a man. She didn’t seem to have cancer and she wasn’t smoking, but she did have two young daughters. The girls looked to be around six and eight. They wore pretty ruffled dresses, and their mother had obviously scrubbed their faces and carefully brushed and combed their hair. And they were very polite and perfectly behaved without being stiff. I asked the older one if she rode horseback over fences.
“Yes,” she said.
“Are you scared?”
“No,” she said solemnly. “You have to trust your horse and you have to trust yourself.”
I found all this so charming that a few moments later I whispered to my host, “Do you know that woman at the next table?”
“Yes.”
“Is she married?”
“Yes,” he said.
“She’s not wearing a ring.”
Paris Without Her Page 12