by Mary Fleming
“If it makes her feel better . . . ,” I said. He nodded.
The dogs were scratching at the orchard door, and I got up to let them in. It was a perfect early evening, the late sun slanting low between the roses, which cast long, jagged shadows across the grass. We went inside. Cédric fed the animals; Béa got some soup and milk out for the baby, and I made some pasta for us. But no one—not even the dogs or the baby—was at ease. Viviane’s absence hummed through the air the whole evening. After dinner, Béa said she needed to go to bed. Cédric, with some difficulty, settled André in his crib in their bedroom, and then he and I sat down in the garden.
“I keep thinking: what could I have done to prevent this? Should I have questioned Viv sooner, instead of being my usual passive self? Because maybe there would have been time.” The guilt, the tortured revisiting of the event and what we could have done differently. That state of mind with which I was doubly familiar.
“Of course you couldn’t have done anything,” I said, so easy to say and believe when it’s not your story.
That night, as we sat in the dark, Cédric talked for a long time about how Viviane had been consumed by her inability to have a baby, how he’d find her in the middle of the night in front of the almost dead fire, or out pruning her roses in the early morning, tears streaming down her face. How nothing she could do made her feel worthwhile, as long as she remained infertile. How hard it had been to get her to admit defeat and adopt some stranger’s child as her own. Even when they’d gone to Russia and she’d first held André in her arms, there had been no joy in her face. It was only when they’d left the orphanage and were the only people André had in the world that she’d melted. Her natural sympathy and good heart had taken over. When they returned from Russia, she’d worried about her own health. She felt funny. Her breasts hurt, especially the left one, and she went to the doctor expecting to hear she had cancer, only to find out she was finally pregnant. The prospect of two children in a short time didn’t daunt her for one second. She’d finally succeeded; she was worthwhile after all.
“Now what’s she going to think?” Cédric asked me, a note of desperation creeping into his previously monotone voice. “How will she go on? She sits there in her hospital bed, taking her medication so the milk won’t keep coming, staring blankly, hardly uttering a word, except when she gets going on all this business about heaven and Catholic burials.” He shook his head.
“You have to give it time,” I said.
“But I worry she won’t be able to bounce back from this. That it will be too much for her. She’s almost forty. The doctor said there’s now no chance of her getting pregnant again.”
“She’ll be all right,” I said to Cédric, hoping I sounded convincing, as we parted. He went to sleep near the crib of his adopted son, in their ground-floor bedroom that overlooked the apple orchard, and I climbed the steep stairs with my dog to the alcove where I always slept, wondering if indeed Viviane would be all right.
I opened the door. The moonlight was coming through the colored glass of the bull’s-eye window, leaving patches of blue and green and red on the tall bed that took up almost all the space in this small room.
“Hi,” came a sad, defeated voice from the bed.
“Hi,” I answered.
Cassie settled on the floor at the end of the bed, and I got in with my clothes on. Béa, dressed in a nightshirt, threw her arms around me. I could feel her begin to quiver. “It’s so awful,” she said as the tears rose and spilled over. She began to shake with sobs. I held on tightly, kissing her hair and her face lightly, while she cried and cried.
I woke up the next morning still fully dressed. Béa didn’t move as I slid quietly out of bed and Cassie danced around. I looked down at her, the light-brown hair a messy mound around her fair face, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen anything so beautiful. I could have stood there forever, but Cassie couldn’t and Cédric was already downstairs knocking around the kitchen while he talked to a babbling André.
Instead of my usual start to the day at Hautebranche, a long, hot lie in the bathtub, I splashed cold water on my face and headed downstairs to help Cédric. André was propped up and contained in his high chair, and Cédric was feeding him baby cereal with a spoon. Caught up in the morning routine, he’d put aside his brooding of the night before.
“I’ve got to get this baby in his own room. He wakes up with the sun, which these days is about five,” Cédric said as I poured myself some coffee.
“I thought you’d done up a bedroom for him.”
“We did, but it’s upstairs, and Viv’s worried it’s too far away.”
“I thought you had one of those intercom, walkie-talkie things,” I said.
“We have got one. But she won’t let him go.”
“Maybe we should move the bed before she comes home today. She’s less likely to object to a fait accompli.”
Cédric put down the spoon and wiped André’s face, where most of the cereal seemed to have landed. “Maybe you’re right. Just take control. I’ve never been very good at that.”
“Would you stop talking as if only you’d been a better person, none of this would have happened? Neither you nor your character has anything to do with it.” We sat there in silence for a few moments. I walked over to the French doors and looked at the garden where we’d been sitting in the dark the night before. It was still in shadow, though the sun would soon be above the trees of the forest beyond the wall. Cassie ran around, sniffing this and that in a businesslike manner. I always liked waking up here. The birds sang, the light grew. It was as close as I ever came to those Connecticut mornings before my world fell apart.
“It’s time for our breakfast, and then let’s move that bed,” Cédric said as André let out a piercing scream when his cereal bowl was removed. “It’s all gone, mon ami.” Cédric leaned over André and planted a kiss on his soft white hair. “Ter-min-é. Now it’s my turn to eat.”
Just as we finished our tartines with Viviane’s quince jam, Béa came down, dressed in running shorts and a T-shirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her eyes were slightly red and puffy from the crying, but she smiled and said good morning and tried to look cheery. She walked to the refrigerator for some orange juice. Her wrists and ankles were so delicate, it was hard to imagine her chubby.
“I hope you don’t mind. I’ve got to have a run,” she said, standing right next to me.
“Please,” said Cédric, looking at the two of us with a little smile. I felt myself go red. “Have your run. We have furniture to move.” She went out the front door, but that smile stayed plastered on Cédric’s face as he watched her doing warm-up exercises through the window. I cleaned up the breakfast dishes. “What, exactly, were the sleeping arrangements last night?” he finally asked.
“You’ve obviously figured that out for yourself, Sherlock,” I said.
“But Trevor,” he turned to me, now speaking seriously. “You can’t . . .”
“I’m not.”
“This is Viv’s good friend. You can’t just add her to your list.”
“I don’t have a list anymore,” I mumbled. “And this is different. I can’t tell you how or why, but it’s different.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” He shook his head.
“Well, strictly speaking, I haven’t done anything,” I said.
“That must be a first,” he said. “But please be careful. I like Béa, and Viv might never forgive you.” He looked at me with his uneven lips pulled to one side, his slightly crooked nose, his soft eyes as stern as they could ever get.
“I can’t make any promises about the future,” I said. “But for once, at least, I’m thinking about it. Hoping, even.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “Now let’s move that bed. I’ve got to get to the hospital, and you’re right about just doing this. Otherwise André will be a teenager before he’s out of our bedroom.” We moved the bed, showed André his new room, and Cédric left, the brooding re
signation back on his face.
André stayed in his playpen in the sitting room while I cleaned up for Viviane’s return. The baby had an extraordinary capacity to amuse himself. Maybe it was his past in the orphanage, but he remained intent on the selection of toys I’d laid out for him and didn’t make a sound until Béa, red and huffing, came in the door. She’d been gone for at least an hour.
“Do you always run that long?” I asked.
“No. But I needed it this morning. It’s a gorgeous day. What are you doing inside? Where are the dogs?”
“In the orchard.”
“Let’s take André out there for a minute. While I cool off.” She took a large glass of water from the tap, and I picked up the baby.
“You’re not carrying a bicycle, you know,” Béa said, her laugh rising and dancing. “Just put his legs around your hip.” I tried to remember if I’d ever held a baby. I must have taken one of Edward’s children in my arms, sometime, when no one else was available. But that compact, alert body against my side felt completely foreign.
We walked through the French doors to the walled garden, past the rose bushes in full flower and through the gate. The apple orchard, a large area surrounded by high hedges, actually contained several kinds of trees. Predominantly apple, but there were also quince, plum, chestnut, and walnut. On various weekends, I’d helped pick whatever fruit or nut was ripe.
“You see what you’ve been missing staying in the house?” Béa said, shading her eyes from the sun as she looked up at me. Nature was in peak form this June morning. The grass was thick and green and just beginning to look unkempt. The leaves had lost that tenderness of early spring and were a strong, chlorophyllic green. The apples on the tree near where I was standing were little nuggets, at the point where the link between fallen blossom and future fruit was clear. There was not a cloud in the sky, and birds sang lazily. The dogs had stopped playing and were lying in the sun—all except Cassie, who was jumping jealously at my side. I put André down on the grass to let him explore and took Cassie’s ears in my hands, letting her lick my face. Béa lay down on her back next to André; I lay down next to her.
“Don’t get too close,” she said. “I must stink.”
“No, you smell like the sun.” Despite the lost baby and my dying mother, it was a sublime moment, lying flat on my back here on the early summer grass, looking at the blue sky, next to Béa Fairbank. Most unusually, I felt happy and lucky to be alive.
Cédric came home with Viviane, who looked broken in half. She moved slowly, tentatively, as if even the soles of her feet hurt, and hardly seemed to recognize where she was. We stretched her out on the sofa. The poor woman still looked pregnant, the bulging stomach a cruel reminder of what might have been. Béa brought André over to sit on her lap. At first, she hardly reacted, but then he began touching her face with his strangely unpudgy fingers. He had an intense look on his own face—as if he were part sculptor, part blind man. He might well have been modeling clay, because after a few minutes Viviane’s taut muscles relaxed and a faint smile appeared. She pulled André very close, folded him into her arms, and exhaled.
“It’s been hell,” she said. “But coming home—it’s a start.”
Béa and I drove back that afternoon. We talked a bit about Cédric and Viviane and what might happen now, but mostly we were silent. Béa cried again, and I drove with one hand on her thigh.
“I’m completely drained,” she said to me as I dropped her off that Wednesday afternoon. “Why don’t you come for supper on Saturday. I’ll have pulled myself back together by then.”
Though Saturday seemed an unbearable wait, I just said: “I’ll be there,” and made our kiss last as long as I could.
Wanda and Piotr looked almost disgruntled to see me back. From the blissful smile on Wanda’s face, these two days in the shop could have been the honeymoon they never really had. The place was spotless, and all the repairs were finished. I felt superfluous in what was supposed to be my own shop. Since Wanda lingered, so obviously loath to leave, I invented a chore and left myself. Like Béa, I needed a bit of time alone. I even left the dog.
For the first moments, I felt unfettered as a teenager when the teacher is absent and class is canceled. But then, when I got to the corner of the rue de Buci and the rue de Seine, I stopped, at a loss for what to do and where to go. Suddenly I felt more like a newly released prisoner, unsteady with the sudden freedom of choice and movement. The need to make up one’s mind—even about whether to turn right or left—can be a terrible burden. I walked to the pont des Arts, where I could sit down on a bench and think.
About the future.
My future.
I considered the facts.
Fact number one: my mother would soon be dead.
Fact number two: I knew—had always known—that when my mother died, there would be some money for me. Mother had sold our house and apartment before moving to France, but she’d bought the Long Island house, which her parents had only rented. My grandfather, I believed, had made some bad investments in the 1970s. But the Long Island house was now to be sold, and the proceeds were to come to Edward and me.
Fact number three: that money alone would be enough for me to give up this bicycle shop business.
Fact number four: Piotr and Wanda were practically running Mélo-Vélo already—and loving every minute of it.
All this should have had me quivering with excitement. Bubbling over with plans. But all I could feel was apprehension. Wasn’t it easier to live like a failure, doing a job I didn’t much like, seeing women I didn’t care about? The idea of picking up my camera as a profession, or thinking of Béa in the longer term—well, the longer term from any conceivable angle terrified me. Failing at things I chose to pursue was not the same thing as choosing failure.
But there was also fact number five: I was forty-two, and life was passing me by as fast as the waters of the Seine running underneath me at that moment. Did I really want to die the notso-proud owner of a bicycle shop?
I got up and went to see Mother. The blip of improvement was gone. Not wanting to mention Cédric and Viviane, afraid that the baby would appear as her own angel of death, I couldn’t think of anything to say, and what a relief it was when Anne-Sophie arrived. She had all those children to talk about. Though she too avoided bad news and did not mention that Caroline had been caught skipping school one day and was being sullen at home. Anne-Sophie brushed over her stepdaughter with: “She’s rushing into adolescence headfirst, that Caroline.” Throughout, Mother just lay impassively, as if she were already somewhere else.
On the way out, still thinking of Caroline, I said to Anne-Sophie: “Maybe she’s acting up because she’s losing the person who’s acted like her mother for so much of her life.”
“Maybe.” Anne-Sophie shrugged, looking at the ground in a way that suggested she was no longer interested in explanations for Caroline’s impossible behavior. She was just fed up with it. I recognized the look; it was the expression that Edmond had worn with me for the last thirty years.
Over the next few days I left the shop often in Wanda and Piotr’s happy hands to visit Mother. They were good days when she needed little morphine, and I wanted to take advantage of her desire now to talk. She in fact talked so much that I suppressed the desire to take notes, to get the story down before the source was gone. Instead, as soon as I left, I went straight to the café on the corner of the rue de Verneuil and the rue du Bac and scribbled it all down. From scraps of paper the first day, I went to a notebook the second. My own memories started spilling out on the page. With the dog lying at my feet, one espresso led to two, and I kept writing until Cassie got impatient. Each day I walked out feeling released, relieved, but also unsettled as I reworded sentences I’d written in my head, as more memories continued to burble to the surface. On the street I started scribbling in the pocket notebook usually used for notes on photos.
My father’s parents, she told me, had wanted him to be a banker. T
hey’d lost most of their money in the Depression and hoped he’d reestablish the family’s fortunes. But he had no interest or mind for finance. Literature was his thing, and he was determined to pursue it. When my parents met, Mother’s mother had died a couple years earlier. She was working as a French translator and living with her father, who liked Gordon, my father, but worried about his ability to keep them afloat. The pressure from above weighed on him. When his parents left them that rundown house in Connecticut, as Mother called it, and moved to Florida, and her father gave them a small flat in New York, my father’s sense of responsibility—almost guilt—only increased. He would go quiet for several days at a time, she said. Disappear into his study to work, work and only come out when she’d call him for meals. Occasionally Mother would look off, lost in some thought that she didn’t want to share.
But she’d start up again, telling me that before my father died I was an easy child. Always an observer, she said, but a smiling one. Certainly—to my surprise—easier than Edward, who couldn’t sit still or keep his fingers out of trouble, and Franny, who had colic and cried for months and months. Every mention of her daughter’s name made her mist up, and she would quickly change the subject. Her death we didn’t discuss, and I resigned myself to forever living with only my own re-creation of those events. Our move to Paris also remained off limits, and these gaps meant that however much information I gobbled up during each visit, I felt a gnawing hunger for more. But I told myself that’s the way it is with starving people; they never feel quite full. Meanwhile, on I wrote.