by Mary Fleming
The shrillest cries, however, did come from the train drivers, the ones who had gained the right to retire at fifty, in the days when driving a train was hard work, not merely a matter of pushing buttons. Technology had changed, but not the laws or the drivers’ expectations.
“Who,” I heard Jean-Jacques say to Marcel at the bar, “except some elitist politician is going to agree to work more years? I mean, who would want to put off the good life, except a power-hungry, money-grabbing elitist?” Marcel nodded sympathetically but didn’t say anything. Although he found life without the garage dull and tedious, he felt obliged, as a member of the working class, to agree on principle. It was the same for a majority of the French nation, working class or not.
However, what preoccupied me most that morning as I ate my bread and butter and drank my coffee was not the latest chapter in this interminable tale of class struggle. What worried me as I watched the endless stream of people flowing by the window was that I would have to walk with them to the 7ème, where I still had both my professional and personal accounts. I’d stayed at my family’s branch because when Mademoiselle Lafarge had been our bank manager, there was a certain tolerance for overdrafts, especially given that the rest of my family maintained plump sums in their accounts. But Monsieur Petitdemange had marshalled in a new era of austerity.
At the end of the morning, I trudged south with the hoards, feeling like a farm animal on its way to slaughter. I waited for Monsieur Petitdemange in a bright blue chair opposite a bleak brown desk. He was late, but I knew from previous meetings that he would keep me waiting. It helped lend an air of importance to his lower-management existence. The office in which I sat was a box separated from other box-like offices by flimsy partitions. The furniture was sparse and functional. There were no windows. The only adornment was a painting, a landscape that looked expressly designed to offend no one.
Monsieur Petitdemange finally arrived at a brisk and breathless clip. After shaking my hand, he sat his short, harried body at the desk, pushing his bulbous shoes forward so they stuck out the other side. My feet instinctively recoiled under my chair.
“So,” he said, folding his hands on my red folder. The cuffs of the bright blue shirt that protruded from the black, four-button suit jacket covered half of his small hands. Monsieur Petitdemange glanced at the only other object on his desk, a folded copy of The International Herald Tribune. He never failed to make at least one reference to this expat paper. Checking my watch, I wagered today it would take seven minutes.
“The last few months, I’m afraid,” Monsieur Petitdemange sighed, “have been less than satisfactory.” I wondered by what artificial means—gel, grease, spray—he got that hair to curl so implacably to his head. “In fact, the situation is becoming untenable, Monsieur Mic-Far-Car, and I must demand what you propose to do about it.” Instead of looking at me, he fixed his eyes intently on a corner of the ceiling.
Finally forcing his gaze back to the task at hand, he opened my red folder and spread his fingertips around his temples, as if even the idea of consulting my account gave him a severe headache. “Your file indicates that when you inherited this venture, you had over two hundred thousand francs in your account. Your balance at the present moment is,” he went on, snatching up the top sheet of paper with a flourish, “on the wrong side of zero. Firmly in the red.”
I nodded slowly while considering whether now was the time for him to know that the whole messy business would soon draw to a close. That I was being evicted and the money from the deposit on the lease would cover my overdraft. “Monsieur Petitdemange, I can promise you that the situation, as you call it, will change in the next several months.”
“You are referring, I suppose, to an upswing in the French economy,” he began. “As predicted in this morning’s ‘Erald Tribune.” I looked at my watch—only five minutes—I’d way overestimated his restraint and was disappointed in myself. He touched the paper lightly with his right hand and again gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling, perhaps this time in search of the H he’d snipped off Herald. “But I fail to see,” he continued, stretching back in his chair like a replete cat, “how that will affect your prospects, Monsieur Mic-Far-Car. You run a bicycle shop.”
“I expect my circumstances to change. That’s all I can tell you at the moment.” Then he looked at me for the first time, I think trying to assess whether I was a liar or a nut.
Our conversation went back and forth in much the same manner for several more minutes. He got his calculator out and tried to prove that any significant change in my “situation intenable,” as he called it, was impossible. And I kept assuring him, without providing any evidence, that a solution was at hand. Finally he looked at his own watch and said: “All right. I’ll give your miracle until February. Then I will be forced to take drastic measures.” From previous meetings, I knew Monsieur Petitdemange was sounding tough so he could bring the meeting to a close. Arguing with the likes of me was not worth cutting into his lunch hour.
What I had managed to mask better than anything else, I thought as I stood in the security space of the bank, waiting for one door to close so the other would open and release me, was my own panic at this financial uncertainty. I didn’t used to live like this. As a young man, I took care of my finances and always made sure I had enough money. According to how much came in, I would calculate how much could go out. It was the days before cash machines dotted every corner, and I would go to the bank on Monday to withdraw whatever I could afford for the week. Never a centime more. Inheriting Mélo-Vélo had been like marrying a spendthrift woman. Though I still spent almost nothing on myself, the shop bled money or at least didn’t make enough to keep it—and me—afloat.
In this way, I reasoned with myself, as I made my way back up the crowded rue du Bac, I’ll be better off once Mélo-Vélo is gone. It’ll just be me again. This whole situation intenable is merely another reminder that attachments, even inanimate ones, equal trouble.
That’s what I was thinking when I spotted Stephanie. Her perfect red-gold head stuck out above the crowd, and my eye gravitated toward her as it would to a glint of light. She had just walked out of the dry cleaners. Over her left arm, she held reams of plastic; with her right she was rearranging her wallet in that yawning black bag. Today it had a riding crop sticking out of it. People flowed around her.
“Stephanie,” I said. The face with the long jaw and pointed chin turned toward me. Her first expression was one of annoyance, but when she saw it was me, the chill melted and the fruit-slice smile exposed her line of white teeth, two front incisors slightly overlapping.
“Trevor,” she said, readjusting the dry cleaning that was slipping from her arm, “what are you doing down here?”
“A meeting at the bank.”
“Monsieur Petitdemange?” she said, her nose wrinkling in amusement. He constituted one of the few subjects we could laugh about as a family. Edward did a particularly good job of imitating his folded hands on the desk, his references to the ’Erald Tribune.
“The one and only,” I said. “Let me help with you that.”
“Thanks,” she said, handing me the whole package of cleaning while she finished settling her wallet in the bag, which she then zipped up and put back on her shoulder. “Where are you headed now? Do you have time for a bite of lunch?” The two of us were standing like two tall pillars, while annoyed pedestrians made their way around us on the narrow sidewalk.
“Sure,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. There was so much human traffic that we walked most of the way to the rue de La Planche single file. She led; I followed with my brother’s suit and my sister-in-law’s silk shirt and her blue cashmere sweater, wrapped in plastic, over my arm. The blocked streets somehow blocked my brain. I didn’t think about what I was doing. I just walked, looking at the back of Stephanie’s head, at the straight, shiny hair with the blunt tips pulled into a tight ponytail. At her black bag with the riding crop sticking straight up in the air.
Ste
phanie punched the code into their building, using several fingers, as if she were at a keyboard.
“Phew,” she said as we squeezed into the elevator, which was so narrow I had to stand at an angle. We were face-to-face under the bleak white light. The inner metal doors clunked closed and we jerked upward. “In the States, this piece of junk would never pass an elevator inspection,” Stephanie said. “I’m always amazed when I get to the top in one piece.”
As the elevator moaned, I could feel Stephanie’s presence, as if it had tentacles that were touching me all over, and was thankful for the dry cleaning plastic shield. By the time the metal inner door clunked open at the fifth floor, both heart and penis were pounding. Backing out of the narrow elevator, I held the outer door for Stephanie with my body and felt her brush past my excited nerve ends.
She opened the front door and I followed her inside. It was dead quiet.
“Sorry it’s a bit of a mess,” Stephanie said as she kicked a toy fire engine out of the way. She took off her jacket, then sat on a chair so she could pull off her worn leather riding boots. “Dolores couldn’t get here this morning. Your mother took Henri. I have to go pick him up after lunch.”
“The other two stay at school for lunch?” In the back of my mind, I’d imagined the kids would be here. That we wouldn’t be completely alone. When I was a boy, Lisette picked up Edward and me at eleven thirty and whipped us home on the métro, to the hot lunch that sat ready and waiting in the oven.
“No, some other mothers and I share feeding the children. On Mondays, Caroline and Matthieu eat at Odile de Chauvignac’s house. Her daughter and Caroline are best friends, but Odile still insists on calling me Madame and vous. Even though I’ve purposely slipped in a friendly tu from time to time, she won’t take the bait. But what should I expect from someone who was appalled to learn that Madame Villeneuve uses potato flakes for her mashed potatoes instead of the real thing? What would she do if she saw the boxes I pour the soup out of? Or that Dolores pours. I usually give her lunch duty.” She stuffed long wooden trees into her riding boots and headed for the kitchen in her socks. “You can hang those clothes in the front closet. I’ll get going on lunch.”
I hung up the dry cleaning in the large closet, where the bicycle for Caroline still stood, then looked around the room. I did not remember ever having been here during the day, when it was empty. The place looked different, distorted in a way. The ceilings seemed lower and the windows larger, the apartments across the street closer. I’d never noticed the childproofing chicken wire along the iron railings of the narrow balcony. A few beleaguered geraniums lay in tilted pots along the bottom. Inside, the edges of the furniture looked sharper, the glass tables reflected the light from the windows, and the just off-white carpet gleamed.
I went into the kitchen, which was right off the entry hall. In most Haussmann Paris apartments, built when everyone had full-time hired help, the kitchen is way in the back, at the end of a long corridor. But at great expense (so Mother had informed me), Edward and Stephanie had changed the order of things, converting this large room into kitchen, breakfast room, and playroom. Their bedroom had been the kitchen. It now looked more like an American apartment.
“Is some leftover Chinese food all right with you? I’m afraid it’s all we’ve got,” Stephanie said as she opened the large two-door refrigerator.
“Just fine,” I said, looking out the window onto a narrow shaft that was covered with a net to keep out pigeons. Maybe burglars too. I turned away from the window.
The kitchen area was a vast expanse of counter space, white cupboards, and shiny appliances. Stephanie moved around it gracefully in her skin-tight riding britches and stocking feet. She swept from fridge to microwave, counter to drawer, as if she were taking part in a choreographed dance.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked, punching buttons on the microwave. “We’ve got red and white.”
“Red,” I said.
“Why don’t you open it,” she said. Our hands touched as she passed me the corkscrew, then our eyes met, and we continued the lunch preparations in silence. I opened the bottle of Bordeaux with my brother’s state-of-the-art corkscrew. Pop went the bottle. Beep, beep, beep, went the microwave. Stephanie put two glasses on the counter. I poured while she re-stirred the stirfried vegetables in their plastic container and reinserted them into the microwave. I put knives and forks on the table while she got plates.
“Not very elegant,” Stephanie said as we sat down with a series of plastic containers between us. “But it’s lunch and I’m always starving after I ride.” She scooped herself some vegetables and rice while I negotiated a heap of noodles onto my plate, then some pork. “Is the food all right?”
“It’s good,” I lied. Some of the noodles had stiffened, as if stricken with rigor mortis, and they were only hot every other bite. I took a swallow of the wine. “So how are things with Edward?” I asked because I didn’t know what else to say.
She put down her fork and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin she had grabbed from a holder on the table. “We had a terrible fight the other night when, as usual, he came home at ten.” She finished chewing. “The kids had already been in bed for over an hour, and I’d had two glasses of wine while I waited, starving, for him. When he came in, he looked as if he didn’t even know where he was. He could have been in an airport for that blank stare. He did notice that the table was set, but all he said was, ‘Oh, sorry. I had a sandwich at the office.’ Then he sat down in front of the television with a cigar and a glass of wine.” She paused for a minute, taking a sip from her own glass. When she looked up at me, her green eyes were round and bright, and her full mouth gave an uneven smile, revealing a piece of black Chinese mushroom stuck next to her overlapping left canine. “I lost it. I put myself between him and the television and screamed that he was never home, and even when he was, he might as well not be, for all the attention he gave me. He told me he was tired, stressed at work. I said, ‘What about me?’ He said, ‘You’re always edgy and critical and unhappy.’ He said, ‘I’m just trying not to rock the boat. To give you space.’”
She looked down at her plate and began stabbing the food, vengeful jabs at bamboo shoots and soy sprouts. “Where do I fit into the picture? The guardian of his offspring? His housewife? I can’t live like this.” The fork clattered onto the plate and she looked straight at me, her round eyes steady as a cat’s. “It’s as if we have nothing but our three children in common anymore. Sometimes I wonder why we ever got married in the first place. What was I thinking?” She shook her head, and her now loosened hair fell forward. She slowly swept it back, then let both hands fall on the table.
“Isn’t this what happens to all people with small children?” I asked lamely.
“No,” she answered. “No, it isn’t. Not to the other mothers at school. All they want to do is to have six children and spend their days mashing potatoes. Not to the American women I meet through all those associations. They seem happy in their little gaggles. I just don’t fit.” The tears now filled her eyes.
I got up and went around the table, putting my hands on her shoulders. “Paris is a big city. You just have to find something else to do, different people to see.”
“I know, I know,” she said, dabbing her eyes with the paper napkin.
She stood up too and then, despite all my pretensions to a clean and uncluttered life, it happened. Before reason could trump desire, the delicate features of her face were tucked into my neck as if she were a small animal that needed protecting. Her shiny hair brushed smoothly against my cheek while my hands ran over the soft grey sweater, under which her ribs and muscular back were once again all too palpable.
We accomplished the irrevocable act on the floor of her American-style kitchen-playroom, on the unfolded futon that was already covered with stains from the three small children, my niece and nephews. Pillows and toys were tossed aside, riding britches and jeans lying in a crumpled heap. All around us was a mes
s, as it was bound to be.
SIX
THE STRIKE WAS indeed the most determined protest movement France had seen since 1968, and that was saying something. Mai ’68 was still referred to with wide eyes and reverentially low voices. Not quite a repeat of the Revolution itself but almost. In this case, there were no decapitations, no hurling of paving stones, but the country—with no trains, no métros, no buses—ground to a halt. Roads and streets in and around every city were an endless stream of idling engines, manned by frustrated and angry victims of the strike who honked their horns and flapped their arms like trapped geese. Meanwhile, the sidewalks were an unbroken mass of moving human traffic, as all the underground travelers surfaced to make their way as best they could on foot.
At first, the government did nothing. The prime minister stayed locked in his office, convinced he was right. It all made sense on paper, after all. But if he thought he could outsit the strikers, he should have known better. French workers are a stubborn and determined lot, especially when riled. They are able to outsit anyone, particularly with public opinion behind them. And despite everyday life being rendered miserable, the majority of the population continued to support the strikers. As Jean-Jacques had said: “Who in their right mind would want to work longer hours, more years?”
Maybe that solidarity explained the unusual atmosphere of struggling camaraderie during those three weeks. Paradoxically, despite the endless inconveniences, normally grouchy Parisians, at least those who weren’t stuck in cars, had never been so patient and forbearing, so polite and attentive to one another. Even the most modest employees spent hours getting to and from work. Those who lived outside the city formed car pools, previously an unknown concept to the individualistic French. Still others hitchhiked for the first time in their lives.