by Mandy Berman
Liv stepped farther into the bedroom. “Are you serious?”
“We’ve only been doing things you want to do, and nothing I want to do,” Fiona said, sitting up straighter in the bed.
“That’s not true,” Liv said. “We’re sharing this experience together. And I thought it meant something to you.”
“You forced it to mean something to me. I am not just your friend with the dead sister. I am trying to move past that, not toward it.”
“Well, you certainly don’t seem to be doing a lot in that regard.”
“Fuck you.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said—”
“No, fuck you, Fiona. You’ve been miserable this entire trip. You do nothing but complain. You only want to do touristy shit. I didn’t force you to come, and I certainly did not use your sister as a ploy to get you here. What kind of fucked-up person do you think I am? You chose to come here, too.”
“Can I tell you something about Gabriel Benoit?”
“Here we go.”
“I’m being serious.”
Liv took a deep, labored breath. “What.”
“I was drunk. But I remember I didn’t want it. I know that.”
Liv looked as if Fiona had just struck her across the face.
“I hadn’t thought about it all year,” Fiona continued. “But seeing him last night, it came back.”
“Okay,” Liv said slowly. “Once you say this, you can’t take it back.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” She was clearly trying to figure out how to say this delicately. “Are you sure? Don’t you think, the last few years, you and guys and alcohol, they haven’t been the best combination? Sometimes when you’re drunk, you come up with alternative histories. You fill in the blanks.”
“You were the one who told me he was bad news.”
“He definitely has a past, but…” She trailed off. “You didn’t remember him, Fiona.”
“So I’m different than the girl he actually raped, huh? The one he got suspended over?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t believe me because you think I’m just as much bad news as he is. You think I wanted it. Or was too drunk to know any better.”
“I never said that. It seems like there’s a lot of gray area.”
“Gray area,” Fiona said. “That’s rich.” She got up from the bed and started emptying the drawers. “Listen. I’m gonna go.”
“Where?”
“I have another place I can stay.”
“Hold on. We’re just talking.”
“I guess I don’t really feel like talking, then.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’d rather not say.” She didn’t know, actually, but she wasn’t going to let Liv in on that.
“Please don’t do this.” Liv’s eyes were beginning to fill with tears.
How had Fiona not seen it until now, how much she fulfilled for Liv, and how little she got in return? Liv needed to be better than everyone she came into contact with; she loved having a mess of a friend like Fiona because she could be constantly reminded of how intact her life was in comparison. She never had to take into account her own shortcomings if she was too busy counting Fiona’s. It didn’t fit into this narrative, then, that Fiona might have been a victim of someone else’s wrongdoing. Everything had to be Fiona’s fault, or else Liv’s worldview would crumble.
“I guess you only have yourself to worry about now,” Fiona said to her friend, not without pity, and zipped up her suitcase.
21.
SIMONE GOT THE call from Alex on Friday morning: Danièle’s water had broken, five weeks early.
Henri and Oliver were on the floor in the living room, playing with the truck that Oliver had brought back for Henri from America—one of the many toys he’d brought back. Simone had been halfheartedly reading a novel on the couch, but she wasn’t paying much attention to it—she kept getting distracted by Oliver and Henri, how obviously delighted Henri was to have his father back, how utterly attentive Oliver was to his son.
Simone and Oliver, though, had been fighting. They were moving back to Paris in a little over a week: their lease in Berlin was up on June 1, and their subletters in Paris would be leaving then, their apartment free again. Oliver was less than excited about the move. He wanted to stay another year in Berlin: his new book took place there, and he needed time to do research. The city was cheaper than Paris, he reasoned. No one was moving into the Berlin apartment after them, and they could easily re-sign the lease for another year.
For Simone, Paris was nonnegotiable. Her research project had been a complete bust, and she had to return home. She’d ended up mining one Polish woman’s letters for interesting if not very elucidating correspondence between her, at Ravensbrück, and her sister, who was forced into sexual slavery at one of the Sonderbauten. Neither woman had survived.
Simone had spent months trying to find more on the woman at the Sonderbau but came up short; there was barely enough for an article, let alone a book-length project. She’d yet to tell Oliver or the museum any of this; she was so ashamed that she had convinced them of the import and viability of this project when there was nothing there.
So she would return to her regular teaching job in the fall. She might have to give back the fellowship money; she didn’t know how they would handle her total failure. There was no way she was going to ask for an extension, and spend another year in that lonely office behind the stacks. There was no way she was going to put Henri through another year in that hellish school. They would return to France, where her family was.
“I just got here,” he’d said in their kitchen in Berlin during his first week back. He was drying a serving bowl with a dish towel; they had just put Henri to bed. “I want a little more time in this city. I need to write, and I know I’ll get the work done here.”
“What do you want me to do about it? Our lease is up. Our Paris apartment is ready. Danièle is due in a month. This isn’t the time.”
“It wouldn’t be so crazy to stay for the summer. What if we tried to extend the lease for two more months, until August? We’d still be back in time for school.”
“And what about the baby?”
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“I’m your husband.”
“She’s my sister.”
“She has a husband. And your mother.”
“I’m not having this conversation,” Simone said. Just because he didn’t have siblings or living parents didn’t mean that hers meant nothing. “This is my family we’re talking about.”
Oliver hung a dried saucepan on a hook above the sink.
“I thought we were your family,” he said, appearing hurt.
“You are,” she said. She wrapped her arms around his waist from behind him. “I had this vision of us all being together in Paris. Why can’t that happen?”
He’d assented, but she knew he wasn’t happy about it, knew that there were still some wheels turning, that he was still trying to come up with ways to stay in Berlin. Since that conversation, he’d grown sour—withdrawn, moody, quiet. More than once in the week since, Simone had asked him what was the matter, but he only said that he was tired. He still wasn’t interested in sex, even though they hadn’t seen each other since the winter.
She wasn’t without guilt; she could understand that Oliver was still jet-lagged, and had just gotten back after a year away, and probably wanted to stay in one place for a bit. But she couldn’t help the current circumstances, even though he was treating her like she could.
* * *
—
Alex was flying back from London in an hour, Simone managed to piece together on the phone now, and their mother had already taken Danièle to the hospi
tal, but Joséphine wouldn’t be the best caretaker alone, in her late sixties and with a bad case of sciatica in both legs.
“Should I come?” Simone said.
“It’s up to you,” Alex said, his voice shaky.
“I’m getting on the next flight,” Simone said. “She’s going to be okay.”
She hung up the phone, Oliver looking up in alarm. “What is it?”
“We have to go to Paris.” Simone frantically opened her laptop to pull up the Ryanair website. “Her water broke.”
He was doing calculations in his head. “How many weeks early?”
“Five.”
He nodded. “She’s going to be okay.”
“You don’t know that.” Did he not remember how painful the loss of each baby was? She couldn’t imagine how afraid Dani was right now, having grown that child for so much longer than Simone had during her unviable pregnancies. Danièle had felt the baby moving and kicking and eating. She was going to give birth; she was going through labor no matter what. Could Oliver not comprehend how gigantic this was? That there was nothing truer than this, someone at the precipice of living or dying, someone whom you’d grown inside of yourself, who belonged only to you?
“Five weeks is, I think, within the realm of mostly healthy deliveries.”
She ignored him, clicked through the flights.
“There’s one at noon.” She checked her watch: ten A.M. They could make that easily. “Can you be ready in forty-five minutes?” she asked Oliver. “Henri, sweetie, can you go get your little suitcase from your closet?”
“Wait a minute,” Oliver said.
She looked up from the computer. “What?”
“Do you think it’s a good idea for him to go?” Oliver asked, his voice lowered.
“Who would he stay with?”
“Well maybe…maybe I would stay with him here.”
“What?” The possibility seemed so remote that she had trouble comprehending it.
“What’s the matter with Aunt Dani?” Henri asked, in a voice more curious than concerned.
“Henri, go get your suitcase,” Simone told him.
The boy looked to his father for confirmation.
“Henri,” she said again. Oliver nodded, and Henri went into his bedroom.
“I’m not sorry that my family is important to me,” Simone said in a hiss, angry but not wanting Henri to hear her. “And it should be important to you, too. And to him. I want him to grow up in a family whose members care about one another.”
“You know I’m concerned about your sister. But he’s too young for all that. It could be traumatizing.”
“We don’t have time to fight. We have to go to Paris right now.” She went into their bedroom to get her own suitcase out, and he followed.
“It’s not a fight. I’m trying to reason with you.”
“You can come or not come, but Henri and I are going.”
He took a deep breath, like he needed all the strength he had left to endure her. She was so tired of feeling like she was difficult and needy. He treated her like everything she wanted was beyond what was appropriate. Too much. She wanted too much.
“Maybe it’s best you go without me,” he finally said.
She looked up at him, the duffel bag open and empty in her hands. “What?”
“You gave me a choice,” he said, steeling himself. “And I’m choosing to stay here.”
She suddenly felt a deep and unwavering hatred for the man standing in front of her. She did not understand how this could be what had become of the person she’d decided to be with, raise a child with, spend a life with. How did the man she’d once loved—or thought she had loved—turn into this? Or had he always been like this, and she had just never noticed?
“When did you become so cruel?” she asked him, her voice cracking a bit from the pain, the disbelief.
“I have to get out of this apartment,” he said, and did.
* * *
The hospital room, with its shining linoleum floors and bad overhead lighting, was buzzing with nurses adjusting sonogram equipment, IVs, heart monitors. Danièle was lying in the hospital bed, head propped up on a pillow, sipping water through a straw. Alex was sitting at the edge of the bed, rubbing her feet, and Joséphine was arranging a bouquet of flowers in a vase on the windowsill.
“Sister,” Danièle said, her smile calm and beatific. “Nephew.”
Henri was scared, clutching Simone’s leg.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Dani said to him. “I’m okay.”
Simone’s eyes filled with tears as she pushed Dani’s hair back from her sweaty forehead. She’d never seen her little sister in a hospital bed.
“I’m fine,” Dani said, still smiling.
“She’s on lorazepam,” Alex told her.
“Is that allowed? For the baby? Is the baby okay?”
“She had to calm down. She wouldn’t stop screaming.”
“Henri, why don’t you go with Bubbe,” Simone suggested after kissing her mother and handing her a bag of toys. “Go play in the waiting room.” After they had left the room, she turned to Alex, confused. “Is she having contractions? Is the baby okay?”
“Everyone’s fine,” Alex said, still rubbing his wife’s feet. Danièle didn’t seem to hear them. She was looking out into the middle distance, her eyes fluttering. “Their heart rates are normal. She’s not in labor. She wasn’t dilated.”
“Why would her water break if she’s not in labor?” Simone asked.
“It’s a premature rupture of the amniotic sac,” Alex said. “Apparently it happens especially in high-risk mothers, because of the fertility treatments and her age.”
“She’s only thirty-five,” Simone said.
Alex shrugged. “I guess that’s considered old with babies.” Simone felt slightly offended by this comment, even though she knew it was simply fact.
“So what now?”
“They want to keep her overnight and make sure she doesn’t lose any more fluid and also monitor her for any signs of infection. She’s on antibiotics and steroids.”
“What are the steroids for?”
“They make the baby’s lungs stronger. If she doesn’t go into labor on her own in the next twenty-four hours, then they’ll have to induce her. Most likely, they won’t need to do that.”
“She still has five weeks before her due date.”
He shrugged. “The baby has other plans. Where’s Oliver?”
“He couldn’t make it.”
Simone wondered, during this past year, if Oliver was worse than Alex for leaving for an entire year. Surely Oliver wouldn’t have left if Simone were pregnant. Or would he have?
“That’s too bad,” Alex said, not seeming particularly bothered by the fact that Oliver wasn’t there. He kept rubbing Danièle’s feet, even though she had now dozed off and was breathing softly, asleep.
22.
FIONA CHECKED INTO a boutique hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Prés that she’d found, in a hurry, on Yelp. She was determined to stay on the Left Bank in order to not run into Liv before she left. There was only one room left, and it cost over three hundred euros a night to book it so last-minute. She had two nights to go before her flight home. She paid for one night for now, figuring she’d decide in the morning what to do for the following night, and felt more than a twinge of guilt about spending more of her absent father’s money as she signed the receipt.
She carried her heavy bag up the spiral marble staircase and turned the antique-looking key in the door. The room was tiny, but charming. The bed was covered in an embroidered white quilt, and above the headboard was an oval painting of some woman from centuries earlier, her skin fair and her cheeks blushed pink, the portrait framed in tarnished gold. There was a mirror in a similar gold frame on the opposite wall, and Fiona l
ooked at herself in it. Her face was flushed from the heat, and her hair was matted against her forehead. She was wearing a blue-and-white-striped dress, no makeup. She was still buzzing with adrenaline and fury from walking out on Liv. She was surprised to see that she looked pretty.
The room was stifling, and she opened the doors to the balcony, which looked out onto a narrow side street. There was a boulangerie across the way, and an art gallery next to that, though they were both closed now. There were all sorts of things she could do by herself this weekend. The Musée d’Orsay was only a few blocks away, and she remembered loving that when she was fourteen. The Luxembourg Gardens were also close.
How, she wondered, would she deal with sitting next to Liv on the plane?
She opened her laptop and got onto the hotel’s Wi-Fi network. She sorted through her junk emails and saw, after deleting them, a single email from her mom. She had replied to Fiona’s last email, a short message checking in and saying she was having a great time. “Sounds wonderful,” Amy had written back. “Be sure to get Berthillon for me. Call whenever you have a chance—I want to hear your voice.” She thought about emailing Marley, telling her what had happened with Liv, but decided to save that until later, until she could write about it with a clearer head. And then there were two messages from Facebook. She was about to delete them when she noticed the name “Oliver Ash” in the message preview.
“Oliver Ash has accepted your friend request,” read the first email.
She opened the second: “Oliver Ash has sent you a message.” She hurriedly logged on to Facebook.
“How’s Paris?” was all his message said.
It had been sent only an hour earlier, at 4:30 P.M.
She stared, bug-eyed, at the screen, squatting on the bed like a praying mantis. She felt that this could not be happening. Was this actually happening? This thing she had been fantasizing about all year? Her heart raced, and she felt sheer glee. She typed back right away, her fingers jumpy hitting the keys.
“Paris has its challenges,” she wrote back. “And Berlin?”