The Art of Regret

by Mary Fleming

  Inside, everything was different. There were toys scattered about; a large playpen dominated the middle of the room. There was no fire lit, no smell of cooking, just a vaguely sweet smell of baby on the slightly chilly air. Viviane approached me with the same silly grin Cédric had been wearing at the station, and a white-haired baby tucked around her waist like a monkey. When I leaned down to kiss her hello, the simian attachment grabbed a large clump of my hair and yanked with all its might.

  “Ow.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Viviane, trying to pry his fingers one by one away from my still inclined head. “He just loves hair.”

  “Good grip,” I said.

  “He’s a strong little guy.”

  “Thank you,” I said, finally able to pull away. “You look great, Viv.” Which she did. Her face had smoothed out, as if she’d just dropped ten years.

  “Actually, I feel great. Finally. Is this your new friend?” She put a hand down to Cassie.

  “Here, let me,” Cédric said, reaching out his hands to take the baby.

  “No,” she said, pulling him even tighter. “I’m going to put him in his pen for a minute while I get his food ready.” Cédric turned away. His uneven face went even more askew when hurt.

  “How’s the painting?” I asked.

  “I’ve hardly picked up a brush since we left for Russia. Isn’t he amazing? So alert, such a sensitive nose.” Little André did have startling eyes. They were bright blue and looked right through you. “They said at the orphanage all the babies have that wise old man look. It’s because no matter what they do, they can’t give each child the attention he needs. They said the look would go away. It’s already faded.” She wrapped her arms around him, kissed his forehead, then each cheek, then each ear. “We’re making up for lost time.”

  “You can take the dog off the leash, you know,” Cédric said. “I put the other dogs out back.” I let her go and she began hunting around the room, checking their empty bowls.

  “We’re just having a cold lunch today,” Viviane said. “Getting something hot on the table is too complicated with this little guy.” She kissed him again and put him on his back in the playpen, then rattled a toy in front of his face and cooed at him while he pedaled his legs. I was beginning to wonder why they’d bothered with the enclosure, when he suddenly rolled over and crawled rapidly to the other side, plopping down on his rump and looking back at Viviane with a smile. “Can’t keep him still,” she said.

  Viviane’s doting on André as if he really were a prince was hard to watch. As was the way she barely let Cédric get near the child. “Aren’t you worried about your painting?” I asked. “Now that you’re getting some attention?” There had been one or two magazine spreads, with photos of her studio and paintings, the previous year. It had been a breakthrough, which before the baby had delighted and encouraged her.

  “I’ll get back to it. There’s nothing wrong with channeling my energy somewhere else for a while,” she said, putting her hand to her stomach and looking down at André who was intently turning a clear plastic ball filled with smaller colored balls around and around in his tough little hands. Even under her large sweater, Viviane’s bulge was beginning to show. She suddenly looked right at me, through her big round glasses. “Anyway, since when did you start worrying about letting work slide?”

  “Exactly,” said Cédric as he popped the cork of the wine bottle from behind the kitchen counter.

  At that moment the back door from the garden opened. I could feel the cool, wet air waft in too, overpowering for a minute the baby smell. The figure of a person, darkened like a puzzle piece against the milky light behind, stepped into the room. Suddenly Cassie lunged at the dog coming in behind the woman and turning abruptly back toward the room, hitting the woman at the back of the knees. They buckled, and she fell in a heap on the floor, bumping her forehead on the edge of a stool on the way. The baby gave a high-pitched cry. I ran over to help her up, get her to the sofa while Viviane ran for a cold cloth and an ice cube, and Cédric shooed the dogs outside.

  “Wow,” she said, lifting herself up on an elbow. A pink and blue lump was forming above her eye like a small egg. She gingerly put the ice on it.

  “The dog’s never been to the country,” I said. “She’s a little overexcited. I’m really sorry.”

  “Can I get you anything else?” asked Cédric. “That’s quite a lump you’re growing.”

  “No, no. I’m fine.” She rested her head on the sofa-back.

  I sat on a nearby chair. The dog was a liability. There was no way I could leave her with Cédric and Viviane, even for a week.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Béa?” Viviane called from the kitchen area. “Do you need more ice?”

  “I’m fine. Really.”

  “I’m Trevor, by the way.”

  “I know. We’ve met before,” she said in English.

  I shook my head.

  “At your brother’s.” I still couldn’t get it; she suppressed a smile. “I was a friend of Jennifer’s.”

  “Ah,” I said. That was an evening I was unlikely to forget, being the one where, after being a cad to Jennifer, I had first laid my hands on my sister-in-law.

  “It was a long time ago, I guess.”

  “No, no. Now I remember. You were the painter friend. We talked about your knowing Viviane and Cédric.” Something was different about her—I couldn’t place it. “And remind me why I have never run into you before or since?”

  “Until a few months ago, I was based in Aix-en-Provence. That’s where I met Viv and Cédric, and that’s mostly where I’ve seen them until now.”

  “That’s right.”

  Cédric was in the kitchen, laying out some pâté and cheese on plates, and Viviane was fussing with André again. Béa pulled the ice from her forehead.

  “The lump on your forehead seems to have stopped growing.”

  “Good. But I don’t think I’ll go running. I got hopeful that the rain was letting up.” Her small person, stretched along the sofa, was dressed in dirty, well-worn running shoes, a baggy sweatshirt, and leggings. That was it. She’d been, well, not fat, but on the heavy side that night at Edward’s. It was as if she’d melted.

  “Jennifer never really forgave me,” I said. “Have you kept up with her?”

  “She went back to Canada. I think she’s still dancing and waiting tables. I haven’t heard from her in a while. To be honest, we weren’t great friends. She just asked me to come with her to that dinner because she knew you were going to be there.” She paused. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Well, it’s not surprising she wanted reinforcements. I was a total jerk,” I said, feeling like one all over again. Shame leaves a stubborn stain.

  “Here you go, Béa.” Cédric put down a bottle of wine and some glasses. “The wounded first.” Usually the coffee table had an assortment of yogurt pots with candles in them, a wine bottle with torrents of hardened wax tumbling dramatically down the side. But like everything else around the room, I now noticed, it had been cleared, baby-proofed.

  Viviane came and sat down with André on her lap. “Come on, now, a little dessert before nap time,” she said. He sucked greedily, his hands hovering around the bottle protectively. The stairs creaked, and a sturdy man with a beard appeared. “You missed the excitement,” Béa said. “I just got floored.”

  “Ouch,” he said, helping himself to a glass of wine.

  The stairs creaked again, and a young woman appeared.

  “Curt,” said Béa, “this is Trevor.” He had a wide hand, an overpowering handshake, and he smelled like pepper. “And this is Connie.”

  “Hi,” she gave a little wave. She was very young indeed, with a fresh, freckled face and an upturned nose.

  “Connie’s modeling for us,” said Curt. “Nice wine.” He held up his glass.

  “Just a little Côte du Rhône.” Cédric shrugged awkwardly in English.

  The whole atmosphe
re had suddenly gone tense, I assumed because of the language thing. Like most French people my age, Cédric and Viviane spoke terrible English. Like most Americans, Curt did not speak French. I’d experienced countless such social gatherings, where the failure to communicate left everyone feeling awkward.

  “Here, Connie,” Curt said. “Let me pour you some wine.”

  “Great,” she said in that enthusiastic American way. “Your house is really cool,” she said, looking around.

  “Thank you,” said Cédric.

  Then silence. As always in these situations, where I should have been providing some cross-cultural emergency aid—saying something in French and English to put people at ease—I couldn’t think of a thing to say. But this time I was saved. André was being patted on the back against Viviane’s shoulder after his milk, and he let out a hearty burp. No need for translation; everyone could laugh.

  “Let me get him settled,” said Viviane in French. “Then we can eat.”

  There we were again. Silence. Cédric got up and went to the counter to cut some bread.

  “So, Trevor, are you an artist too?” Curt asked me. His beard looked more like a couple weeks of planned neglect.

  “No,” I said.

  “I thought you were a photographer,” Béa said, pulling the ice away from her forehead and taking a sip of wine.

  “Only the weekend variety.” The blue egg on her forehead stared at me. “The rest of the time I run a bicycle shop.”

  “A bicycle shop!” said Curt, his eyes lighting up. Maybe out of interest, maybe out of mild mockery. I couldn’t tell. But they were sparkly eyes, eyes that pulled you in.

  “Cool,” said Connie.

  I looked from one to the other. “It’s—”

  “Bon,” Viviane said, coming out of their bedroom, baby walkie-talkie in her hand. “Time for some grown-up food.”

  The meal may have been cold, but it was still exquisite. There were roasted red peppers with fresh goat’s cheese and thyme and olives, a slab of pâté de compagne, next to paper-thin slices of country ham. There was a mushroom and mâche salad and a plump, soft Camembert next to a large piece of Beaufort cheese. Since I still didn’t bother about the food I put in my mouth when I was alone, Viviane’s meals continued to jolt me into awareness of what I was missing.

  “Are you exhibiting much these days, Viviane?” Curt asked. He had a strong physical, almost animal, presence. “Béa showed me your magazine spread.”

  “Before André, yes,” she answered in heavily accented English. “The Paris market changes. Some people like that apples look like apples.” Better than Piotr but not by much.

  “There was another magazine article,” Cédric said, accent just as thick. “It was for fashion. With the studio, the garden, the paintings.”

  “I’d like to see some of the real thing, in your studio, before we leave.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The conversation sputtered to a halt. We ate. I tried to think of something to say. Nothing in either language came to my socially deficient mind.

  But Curt was an assertive sort. He didn’t seem bothered by the language barrier. “Now that we’ve moved up to Paris, my agent Hillary keeps telling me I need an exhibition. She says the new economy has hit and people have francs, soon euros, to spare.”

  “If there’s money, Hillary will be here,” said Béa

  “It will be better than in Aix-en-Provence,” said Viviane in painful English.

  “That’s what Hillary said,” said Béa.

  “Come on, Béa, I’m lucky someone’s thinking about the bottom line for me. Anyway, she says if the French invest their money in art, they don’t have to pay taxes on it. Or the wealth tax. Something like that.”

  “Maybe,” said Cédric, though of course he had no idea.

  “The art market changes,” said Viviane. While she was doing her best to describe it to Curt, Béa and Cédric started talking about something that had happened the previous summer in Aix.

  I turned to Connie, who was sitting on my left.

  “So what are you doing over here?” I asked.

  “I finished college last year,” she said, looking up at me with large green eyes, “and I’m over here doing what every other American in Paris does. Writing a novel. Nothing new,” she shrugged. Having cut most of the food on her plate, she put her knife down, switched the fork into her right hand and took the first bite. This American method of eating, rather than the European practice of using knife and fork together, had always seemed unnecessarily labor-intensive, fastidious, but today I found it added to Connie’s freshly graduated charm. “I thought it would only take one year, but it looks like I’ll be here another. Which is fine by me. My French still needs lots of work, and I’m having a blast. The modeling these last couple months helps a lot. At least I can pay the rent.” She looked at Curt, who had just laughed.

  Over the course of the lunch I learned that she was from a large Irish Catholic family. In fact, she couldn’t stop talking about her parents, all her brothers and sisters. It was endearing. She was perfect Casual material: young, pretty, and looking for fun, but clearly planning to go back into the fold of that beloved family.

  Cassie came over and nudged my leg. I looked around the room. Viviane and Béa were now huddled in one corner, and Cédric had taken Curt off for an architectural tour of the house. His pepper smell lingered in my nose, even once I was in the garden with Cassie.

  It had turned into a magnificent day, the brilliant blue sky illuminating the first signs of spring. Daffodil shoots had pushed their way through the damp earth, and their delicate yellow flowers were just beginning to open. The tougher, broader tulips had elbowed their way above ground too, but their red heads were still tight pods of green. Along the wall a forsythia bush was on its way out; yellow petals lay scattered at its feet. It was amazing, I thought, how every year spring took me by surprise.

  “It’s a lovely garden, isn’t it? Even at this time of year.” I jumped. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to intrude on your solitude,” said Béa.

  “I didn’t hear you coming,” I said. “Still too stunned by the sight of the sun, I guess.”

  She walked over to a line of rose bushes, all cut down to spindly stumps. “There’s just the first hint of a new shoot here. It’s amazing to think that in a few months it will be a huge, unwieldy plant with an abundance of flowers.” She had a low voice for a small person, and that combined with her airy English accent gave her an unexpected resonance.

  “Is this the kind of thing you paint?” I asked as the two of us looked intently at the reddish-green nub of a budding branch on the rose bush.

  “I usually wait until the plant has something more to show for itself,” she said. Then came the laugh, which I suddenly remembered from that dinner years ago. The thing that seemed to start way down and work its way up, before being released like a flock of birds. The kind of laugh that made you want to make a joke so you could hear it again.

  Just then Viviane, Connie, and Curt came out. Viviane was carrying the baby, wrapped in a shawl, and Curt had a fold-up stool under one arm and his painting box in his other hand.

  “I’m off,” he said to Béa. “Any interest in joining me?”

  “I think I’ll walk,” Béa answered.

  “All right then. See you all later.”

  “Paint well,” she said to his back as he walked through the gate.

  “What about you, Connie?” Béa asked. “Are you going to come for a walk with us?”

  “No, I think I’ll sit here in this pretty garden and try to get some writing done.”

  “Well, good luck,” said Béa.

  “Can you help me get the pram out?” Viviane called from the shed.

  “Don’t you think this thing will be a little awkward once we get off the road?” I asked. “It barely fits through the door.”

  “The wheels have great suspension. It’ll be fine. But what about you? Are you heading off on your usual solo st
roll?” Cassie was already leaping around the three dogs.

  “I’ll come with you. You’ll need some help pulling that thing out when it gets stuck in the mud.”

  We walked first through the village. At the edge, there were three new houses, their pale walls and roof glaring in the sunlight, the ground around them scraped raw. The three of us stood stricken, as if we were witnessing a car accident.

  “Even here,” I said. “From the train you see swath after swath of them.”

  “It breaks my heart,” said Viviane. “Literally. I feel each new house as a physical blow.”

  “The trouble is,” said Béa, “they will never blend into their surroundings. Old houses do because the material—the wood, the stone, the brick, even the earthen roof tiles or the slate shingles— comes from the land. In an old house, nature’s elements have just been rearranged. But this is all manufactured. And cheap to boot.” She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. “These houses will always look awful.”

  “I certainly hate looking at them. Let’s go up the other way,” said Viviane, pushing the huge pram toward a footpath across a field that rolled ahead of us to meet the huge sky, now a mixture of deep blue and bold, urgent clouds. “This is a good view. You can’t see any buildings.”

  “You have to live with blinders on,” said Béa. “Or you have to go further and further away.” This small woman was full of opinions. I dropped back a bit, and they began to talk about the studio she was hoping to get at Montmartre. I watched their backs. Viviane was leaning forward into the pram as she walked, while Béa became more and more animated. Her hands flew up in the air; she moved up on her toes and back down again.