The Art of Regret

by Mary Fleming

  “So what do you paint besides roses?” I asked again, catching up with them.

  “A bit of everything,” she shrugged.

  “But at the moment you’re painting Connie?” I asked.

  “Mostly. She’s a really good model. Supple and patient. And that sweet face is surprisingly expressive.”

  “Careful what you say, Béa,” said Viviane. “You might encourage Trevor to pounce on the poor girl.”

  “Come on,” I said.

  Béa gave me a wry smile. If there’s one thing I know about women, it’s that they share every detail of life with one another. No one’s story is safe in their hands, and I therefore had no doubt that Viviane had told Béa absolutely everything about me. This made me feel uncomfortable and embarrassed. I was tired of people thinking badly of me.

  “Let me push that pram for you,” I muttered to Viviane as we started up a hill.

  Near the top we entered the woods where the bare trees were still shiny and slick from the earlier rain. Little white flowers carpeted the forest floor. “Do you mind taking the pram back?” I asked. “I’d like to take a photo.”

  “Let me,” said Béa, taking the handle. Her eyes had changed color from before lunch, in the house. Then they were light hazel. Now they were tinged with blue.

  I squatted down, trying to get as close to the ground level as I could, to catch the flowers and the tree trunks in the light. Cassie stood by me, panting. I’d been afraid she might wander, but until now she’d flopped along with the others, never going beyond the invisible circle drawn by the other dogs, instinctively staying with the pack.

  “Oh, no!” I heard up ahead. “I’ve never seen it so muddy,” Viviane was saying when I got there. “I’m not sure I can get down this bit.”

  “It’s likely to be just as slippery going back the other way,” said Béa.

  “I don’t know,” Viviane said anxiously.

  “If you take the baby,” I said to Béa, “I’ll try to maneuver that pram down the hill.”

  “I can take André,” Viviane said.

  “You need to be careful,” said Béa. “And I’m the one with the good traction,” she said, pointing to her running shoes.

  So Viviane took the baby in his shawl and handed him reluctantly to Béa. I took the pram and the three of us inched our way down the rocky, slippery path. My old shoes had long ago lost their tread and sure enough, halfway down the hill, I slipped. Grabbing onto a sapling with one hand, my other still on the pram, I couldn’t move. Béa and Viviane, ahead of me, were now on level ground.

  “Help,” I said, trying to sound ironic.

  Béa scampered back up the hill like a mountain goat: “Let me get your camera to safety first,” she said, lifting it over my head and hanging it over a branch, while she took the pram from my hand so I could regain my balance.

  “Thank you,” I said, retrieving my camera. We picked our way downhill, pram between us.

  “You were quite a sight,” she said at the bottom, releasing one of her laughs.

  “Let’s go back,” said Viviane as she cradled André protectively.

  When we walked through the gate at Hautebranche, Connie was gone and Cédric was sitting in the sun reading.

  “Where are the others?” asked Béa.

  “I haven’t seen them,” he said. I helped Cédric move out some other chairs and a table, a plastic tarp and the playpen, and we had tea outside in our shirtsleeves. The garden walls trapped all the sunlight, heated the air as if summer were right around the corner. Connie wandered in, saying she’d decided, finally, to take a little stroll of her own. Then Curt came back, and the thick clouds came rolling along behind him. The temperature dropped too, and we had to hurry inside ahead of the next rain, which came down all through dinner and all night, needling the leaded panes of the bull’s-eye window in my alcove.

  I lay in the bed, watching the rain run down the colored glass. How silly I must have looked and how terrified I’d felt on that hill. The near fall had brought back all too vividly another fall on a hill with a camera. While I was stuck there, I saw that bicycle wheel, robbed of the handlebars, wobbling frantically. I saw my body flying forward toward the verge of the road. Viviane and Béa of course had no idea, but oh—I shuddered all over again, turned, and pulled the cover tightly around me—how relieved I’d felt when Béa had come to my rescue.

  Béa, the small person with strong opinions. Jacqueline was a small person with strong opinions too. But they were very different. Jacqueline’s pale doll face with the blue, blue eyes, the short dark hair, now even darker because of the hair dye she applied to mask the grey. Béa’s hair, which appeared to be younger by several years, was light brown and tumbled over her shoulders. Her skin was softly toned and her eyes changed color according to the light. Jacqueline had a brittle laugh; Béa’s was jubilant and generous.

  At least they seemed different.

  I turned over again. Why was I comparing these two women? Why was I thinking about women at all? During supper, I’d cornered Connie again. She’d babbled about her novel, offered more information about her family, and I quickly found her excruciatingly dull. But what should I expect? At twenty-two, she was twenty years younger than me. She was hardly more than a child—could have been my child—and there I was toying with the possibilities. What was I thinking? Interest in Connie was verging on the indecent. What kind of person was I?

  Several words came to mind, none of them flattering. All, in fact, in a range between ridiculous and contemptible. How could anyone put up with me—I couldn’t even stand myself.

  Cédric took me to the train the following morning.

  “I hardly recognized your friend Béa,” I said as we drove past the glaring new houses at the edge of the village.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t she used to be on the plump side?”

  “I guess that’s right. I’ve always thought she was incredibly pretty, whatever her weight. She’s got the kind of beauty you don’t notice right away. That always appeals to me.”

  “Her eyes change color.”

  “What?”

  “They change color according to the light.”

  “Well,” Cédric said, looking at me. “Whatever the status of her eyes, you’re too late on this one. Unless you’re planning another heist.”

  “I certainly am not. In fact, I’m giving women up. As a general policy.”

  “That I don’t believe.”

  “You’ll see. I am. I’m too old.” A night’s sleep had not removed the bad taste in my mouth from my even vague interest in young Connie. “What makes the boyfriend smell like pepper?”

  “I wondered too. Viv says it’s patchouli oil.”

  “In the year 2001? I thought that was hippie stuff.”

  “Who knows,” Cédric said as we rolled in front of the station. “Viv also says he’s a really good painter.”

  “And? So?”

  “I don’t know. He’s okay. They haven’t been together long enough for me to form a real opinion.” He yanked on the parking brake. “Don’t wait so long between visits next time,” he said as I got Cassie out of the back of the car.

  “I’ll be back before the house gets too crowded. Count on it.”

  THREE

  MICHEL’S RELEASE FROM prison got closer and closer, and I still had no plan for hiding the dog. With Hautebranche excluded as a possibility, where else could I look? Who else could I ask? My bleak personal landscape left me high and dry. I thus awaited Michel’s return like a bankrupt man anticipating the bailiff’s knock. Imminent dread hung over every day.

  Finally one afternoon, with Piotr out to lunch, he came. I had just hoisted a bike on the repair stand for a gear adjustment when the Tibetan chimes chimed. I popped my head around the corner of the workshop, and there was Michel, with Claude looking on eagerly.

  “You’re out,” I said, wiping my hands on a cloth.

  “I am. And I want Leffe back.” He leaned dow
n to Cassie, who by now was dancing around him. She hadn’t forgotten. “Hey, that’s my girl.”

  “Leffe?”

  “My favorite beer, when I can afford it. Anything wrong with that? That’s my girl,” he repeated.

  “Not really,” I said. “You’ve been gone a long time.”

  “And now I’m back. Where’s the leash?” Claude was watching this exchange as if he were at a tennis match. “I want the leash and the bowl and the bed.”

  There was an awkward silence. Claude began his little dance, hopping from one foot to another in his laceless boots. “He’s got the leash, I’ve seen it,” he offered helpfully.

  Still I didn’t move.

  But then I had an idea.

  “Okay,” and I went to get Cassie’s leash. Michel was smiling; Claude looked disappointed that game, set, match had been settled so quickly. Michel attached the dog and tried to pull her toward the door. Cassie leaned back, legs stiff, paws firmly planted, just as she did with me if I tried to deny her a turn through the Tuileries gardens on our morning walk. The harder Michel tugged, the more the loose skin of her neck wrinkled her face in stubborn resistance. When he eased up for a second, she sat down and began scratching, sticking her back paw right into her ear with concentrated attention. Just as I’d hoped, she did not want to leave the person who had been feeding her the last months. Michel’s face fell.

  “She won’t come with me,” he said helplessly.

  I shook my head. I felt sorry for him, but I have to admit, it was the supercilious pity of the victor.

  “I told you. It’s been a long time.” I paused before moving into Phase Two of my plan. “But I’ll tell you what.” I paused again. “She was your dog, after all, and you should be compensated accordingly. I should pay you for the dog.” He didn’t say anything for a minute. He fiddled with the end of the leash. “Come on,” I said more softly, “she’s happy here. You won’t have to worry about taking care of her, but you can see her all the time.” The leash slackened. “How about five hundred francs.”

  “She’s worth more than that,” said ever-helpful Claude.

  “The woman gave you five hundred,” I reminded Michel.

  “A guy in prison told me these dogs go for more like five thousand francs.” Michel looked at me defiantly. I waited. He said: “I couldn’t give her up for less than four thousand.”

  “Wow,” said Claude.

  “Come on, Michel,” I said. “What are you going to do with four thousand francs? You’ll have every Ukrainian in the country after you, and you’ll end up back in prison.” This reasoning seemed to make a dent; his face began to relent.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s getting to be drink time,” Claude said.

  We haggled for a few more minutes and finally agreed on two thousand five hundred francs, which I would distribute in five installments, to discourage further thievery by greedy fellow drinkers.

  Just as they were walking out, Piotr came back from lunch. “How much?” he asked.

  “Don’t ask,” I said, shaking my head. “The amount of money I’ve spent on that mutt.” Cassie wagged her tail.

  “Five hundred?”

  “Times five.”

  “You turn crazy,” he said, pointing his finger to his temple.

  “You going to send us down the pipes.” He leaned over and whispered into Cassie’s ear.

  “Don’t try and get the dog on your side,” I said.

  “I tell her how stubby you are.”

  “Stubborn.”

  “Stubby, stubborn—you give too much money.”

  “It’s my turn for lunch,” I said. Piotr shook his head and went back to work. “Come on, Cassie.” I walked to the café with the gleaming dog, now all mine, trotting along at my side. Two thousand five hundred francs seemed like a pretty good deal.

  With the dog officially mine, I felt something of a letdown. There was absolutely no edge to my life, not even the fear of Michel’s release from prison. And it seemed that if I didn’t give up on women, they would give up on me. When Joséphine returned from her teacher training, we’d gone out for sushi, and cold, raw fish just about summed up the flavor of our meeting. People always surprise you: for all her holistic wooliness, she didn’t like dogs. So I couldn’t spend the night, which, if truth be told, suited me fine. I was tired of Joséphine too.

  Besides, who had time for women when there was the future of the planet to worry about? The weather over the last year had provided me, anyway, with all the proof I needed that the earth was angry and melting. Just before the millennium, a windstorm had ravaged the country, felling millions of trees and even blowing the l’An 2000 countdown sign clear off the Eiffel Tower. How could a clearer message be sent? Since then, it had rained almost nonstop, causing disastrous flooding in the first months of 2001. It seemed to me that the Apocalypse was right around the corner, and all the population could do was shop. On Saturdays the rue de Seine was so crowded, I bought a sandwich at the bakery in the morning and ate my lunch at the back of the shop, as far away from the hordes as I could get. When I complained—okay, ranted might be a more accurate word—about this conspicuous consumption in a drowning world, Piotr would throw his hands up and say: “Good for us!”

  One night as I was coming up the stairs to my room, soaked from another sudden downpour on the way home, the phone was ringing.

  “Ah,” said the voice.

  “Edward,” I said, panting and dripping water around me. Cassie shook and sprayed more water everywhere.

  “I was just about to hang up. I’ve been phoning for three days, and there was never any answer. You apparently still have no answering machine.”

  “No. I’ve been out a lot.” I remembered several instances over the last days of a ringing phone that I hadn’t felt like answering.

  “Right.” Pause. “It’s been a long time. How are you?”

  “Okay.” Pause. Clearing of the throat. “And you?”

  “I was hoping we could get together.”

  “I guess. Yes. If you want.” I was having trouble breathing.

  “Good. How about tomorrow,” he said more than asked. “Five would suit me.” And he gave the address of a café not far from the Champs-Elysées, near his office.

  Why, I wondered, as I put the phone down and took off my soaked clothes, after more than five years of silence does he suddenly want to see me? And tomorrow, no less.

  The rest of the evening, I careened from euphoria to panic. I drank more beer than usual and slept almost not at all, and when I did, had a strange dream that mixed Lisette’s Seine monsters with the roiling brown water of the river’s flooded banks. Specter-like forms of Edward and Mother and Edmond were walking in the Tuileries, and the water had risen so high, it was lapping right beside them. But they were oblivious, too busy laughing at me. They were saying what a silly person I was, and I was trying desperately to catch up with them and tell them I’d changed, I really had. And to beware of the rising water. But they kept just out of my reach.

  The café Edward had chosen was one of the trendy new places that were beginning to pop up all over the well-heeled quartiers. They had sleek lines and cushioned chairs and waiters and waitresses who, with their slim-fitting black suits and catwalk ennui, looked more like fashion models.

  A tall, slim, dark-haired waitress sidled over to my table, and I ordered a coffee. It was a quiet time in the café, and the background music, as well as its volume, had been selected for the benefit of the staff rather than the odd customer like me. I opened the newspaper I’d brought along but kept rereading the same paragraph.

  Then my eyes were drawn upward, and Edward was walking toward me. He still had the same brisk manner, the agile step, but his light-brown curly locks had gone almost completely grey. I stood up. I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “My hair got your tongue?” he said, same ironic smile, though perhaps now somewhat tighter. Closer up, I could see he’d grown lines around the
eyes. I felt guilty for them, as well as for the hair.

  “Surprising,” I finally got out, wishing my own head had at least a sprinkling of wisdom to show for itself.

  “Better than losing it,” he said. “And when you go grey young, you don’t associate it with getting old.”

  “You always do see the advantage.”

  “And you the disadvantage.”

  My coffee arrived. Edward ordered a Perrier.

  “So it’s been a long time,” he said, sitting back and crossing his arms across his chest. Same old compact posture on his smallish person. Same elegant clothes: a tailor-made grey suit and a Hermès tie with yellow gazelles leaping across it.

  “Five years.”

  “Five years and four months.” Same old mathematical superiority. We were silent for a moment. “The bike shop still going strong?” Edward finally asked.

  “It’s fine.”

  “You’ve moved up in the world, as I understand it.”

  “Or down, depending on how you look at it. Geographically, I’ve moved south. The rue de Seine.”

  Edward took a sip of his Perrier, then pulverized the slice of lemon with the long spoon. “It’s taken me a while to stand the sight of you, I have to say,” he said.

  “Understandable.”

  “There were times when I thought if I saw you, I might kill you. But then later,” he said with a smile that sent the wrinkles spraying around his eyes, “there were moments when I was almost grateful.”

  “Oh, please,” I said.

  “Well, maybe not quite.” He took another stab at the lemon slice. “Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I had a bad marriage. Without your help,” he paused and looked at me, with irony, pain, and a dash of disbelief on his face, “I may not have seen it until it was too late.”

  “No one needs help like that.”

  “It gave me a second chance while I was still young.” Now he was wearing a look I’d never seen on his face before. I would almost have called it misty. “I got it right this time.”