“
Merde, merde, merde!
” Coach Thierry snapped, frustrated by the bungling. “
Qu’est-ce qui se passe…
?”
He started toward Mobylette. Matt followed, but I grabbed him by the arm. “You think she be trying to mack me, man? A grown woman, jocking me?” It was hard to keep it to a whisper. “Tell me I ain’t for real!”
Matt stopped and kind of glared.
“Free, I swear, if it weren’t for context, I wouldn’t understand half of what you say. You’re always jabbering, but I mean, I’m a Francophone, and, strictly speaking, I speak English better than you.”
“Different,” I told him.
“Different?”
“Different than me,” I said. “Different don’t equate to better. It’s how black Americans speak, how we been speaking since slavery.” I was speaking it heavy right then to make my point. “You saying what you just said is
like calling me out of my name. Like me saying you was French when you ain’t.”
“I’m
Québecois
.”
“Right. You just speak French.”
“Some say a bastardization of it,” Matt said. “Some French people anyway.”
“Right! But you know you’re not lesser on account of the difference.”
“Right,” Matt said, his face gone soft, apologetic.
“
Alors, les filles
!” Moose called over. “You going to quit with the English jabbering and help us out here?” He looked as annoyed as Matt had just a few moments before.
The other guys had all stopped too. Everybody stared.
» » » »
On the train headed back to Paris, Matt sat silent. Not ignoring me, just not talking. I figured it should be me all mad after what he had said about black English, but he just sat there, stewing.
“You still want to go to that cemetery?” I asked.
Père Lachaise. Jim Morrison’s grave. I didn’t really want to go, but Matt had been talking it up for days. Apparently lots of hippies hung out there, lots of girls, people passed around jugs of wine, and it was generally
a party. Myself, I didn’t feel like partying in a cemetery.
Especially
not in a cemetery.
Still and all, I said, “Well, do you?”
“Not tonight,” Matt said, and I was straight-up relieved.
The
RER
arrived at Gare du Nord, my transfer point. When I got up, Matt did too; he walked me toward my metro line and I couldn’t figure out why, because the one we had been on led to his cousin’s spot. My look must have stated my question.
“I’ve got an errand to run,” he explained.
We sat side by side on the metro but didn’t speak. A long silence. I thought I knew what was eating him, and it wasn’t just practice. It dated from a little while back. “Look, I’m sorry,” I said, “but Villeneuve
is
a shithole. Cops everywhere, wannabe gangsters…”
“When you say things like that, you sound more like a Jet than a Diable Rouge. Your ‘shithole’ is Moose’s home.”
“I know,” I said.
I watched the dark tunnel walls stream past the window.
“Listen, I like Moose and all, but he rides me. Always tossing out snarky comments and whatnot. He acts like he’s got something to teach me, but the kid is seventeen, just like me, and hasn’t been balling one-tenth the time I have.”
“He’s the team captain and wants to be a schoolteacher. For him, everything is a potential lesson or a teachable moment.”
“Well, I’m not his pupil, and besides, his teaching method needs work.”
“Moose takes the team very seriously. It’s his life, you know—community pride and all that. Sometimes you act like you’re on vacation.”
I
was
on vacation, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t bringing it for the team. But I didn’t say that.
We got to my stop, and I stayed seated. “I already told Françoise I wouldn’t be back for dinner,” I said. I figured we should hash this thing through, me and him. “I’ll ride with you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Ain’t got nothing else to do.”
He didn’t seem any too pleased, but he didn’t protest either.
I felt like there was something more I should say, to kind of make up for something—for how I’d been acting, being moody and all, or for whatever expectations I wasn’t living up to. But we just sat there, silent. I didn’t know what to say. He didn’t say anything either.
He got off the train a few stops later, at Ternes. I followed him down the platform and up the stairs. “How’s my girl?” I said to lighten the mood. “Is Juliette asking after me?”
He smiled. “Actually, she is. You made quite an impression.”
“I told you so. I’m a killer!”
We got out on the street, and he stopped under the illuminated yellow
M
metro sign and extended his hand. “Okay, killer. Goodnight.”
And I was like,
Huh?
“This is my errand.” He pointed to the hotel across the street from the station. “My dad. He arrived this morning.”
“Uh-oh,” I said. Obviously he’d been brooding over something too.
“He called from the airport and told me to meet him here.”
“With no advance warning?”
“Not a word.”
“Dang.”
“Dang is right,” he said.
He had told me how close he and his pops were. He said his pops had made him who he was. He’d taken Matt to rallies and protests: for Earth Day, against global warming, to oppose the
US
invasion of Iraq (the last hardly surprised me). But Matt said his pops had been different since Matt ran off.
“Juliette didn’t give you any clues he was coming?” I asked.
“I don’t think she knows he’s here. And I haven’t told her.”
“Not Moose?”
“Just you, just now.” Then he smiled. “If it was your father just showed up like this on leave from Baghdad after you’d done something like what I did, he’d be coming to kick your butt, right?”
I hadn’t told Matt about Pops. I wasn’t thinking I would. I mean, it wasn’t none of his business. Besides, Pops had made me a man. I knew that his death was my weight to carry. Mine alone.
I said instead, “I expect your pops is here to make sure you’re all right. It’s all good. Don’t sweat it.” I pushed off up the street. “Holler at me tomorrow. Let me know how it goes.”
At the corner I turned back, and he was still standing there, facing the entrance to the hotel, strangely lit by the pale glow coming from the lobby—part shape and part shadow, kind of like a ghost. A doorman pushed open the door, and Matt walked in.
Naw, I remember thinking. If it was Pops that had showed up like that, it wouldn’t be about scolding me, about calling me out. He’d be about making sure I was good to go. He’d come by a game, and he’d see that I was wearing 49, his high-school number, instead of 17, like I did back home. He’d even help out with the team, the days he was here.
Maybe he’d take an extended furlough, stay the whole season, coach the Diables. And he’d take me around places. Versailles, Normandy, a
TGV
back to the Alps.
The clock on the corner by Georges and Françoise’s building said it was quarter to nine. I sat on a park bench between streetlights in the almost-night, looking up to the lit windows of their apartment. Nine ten, nine thirty-five, nine fifty-five…I waited until the apartment went dark.
When I got upstairs, I snuck quiet-like past Georges and Françoise’s room. In my room I took from the desk the letter I’d been writing to Mama. Not email, a real letter—paper and pencil, like in the Hemingway book. I’d been working on it for days—writing a sentence and scratching out another, erasing and replacing words, scribbling in the margins—but now I finally knew how to write it.
I’d known it was cowardly to not go back at the end of the class trip, to not try and help Mama out some way. I did! But I’d also known something felt right about staying. Making my own way, living in Paris, getting to see something more—going places, like Pops had said. And I’d known Mama wouldn’t say no to me staying. She hadn’t protested about me coming on the trip in the first place. She didn’t do anything.
» » » »
Auntie Constance drove in from New Orleans after Pops died, and it was her who called the Army Casualty Program and the life-insurance people and the funeral home. Mama sat on the sofa beside her, silent. After the funeral, everybody who had come in flew out. Auntie Constance took Tookie and Tina back to New Orleans. It was just me and Mama, our house suddenly so empty.
I heated up Hungry Man fried-chicken dinners that first night, even though the fridge was full of leftovers from the buffet at the wake. I told Mama, “It’ll take us days to eat through all Aunt Joanie’s deviled eggs and the meatloaf and the Hoppin’ John that Grandma Jessie left. We’ll be okay for a good stretch.”
Mama “mm-hm”ed.
There was still all kinds of stuff to get done, filling out forms and whatnot, insurance and pension stuff. I told her, “If you need me to, I can stay back from school. To help out.”
She shook her head no and dropped her face, tears shining her cheeks.
I didn’t insist. I let it be.
A little while later she came into my room, wearing an old shift and house shoes. “I think I need to go to Connie’s too,” she said. “Be home in a while.”
And I remember thinking, Home? It ain’t here?
But I told her, “Yeah, of course. Go ahead. You should go.”
She just stood there, framed by my bedroom doorway, eyes sunken, black and heavy. “You’ll be fine,” she said, “with Ms. Glassman.”
Ms. Glassman?
I’d been lying on my bed, so I sat up. “France, Mama?” How was I supposed to head off to France with Pops gone and Mama like that?
“And when you get back, it’ll be just about time to get you to Iowa.”
“I’ll be fine here on my own,” I told her. “Winter break starts in a few weeks. I can join you at Auntie’s.”
But she said, “I’ve put together a little money—for pocket change over there.”
Seeing Mama like that, I remember thinking, Forget Iowa. Forget
UT
. There was Alamo Community College, right there in San Antonio. I could work construction and take classes at night, be close by to take care of Mama till she got right.
“For real,” I told her. “I’ll be fine here till I can come get youall in New Orleans.”
And she lost it. “Dammit, Freeman!” Her neck was a twist of muscle, a vein popped at her temple. “I just can’t worry after you right now.”
Whenever we’d Skype after I came to France, she’d be smiling, and I’d smile, and I’d let her know that I was fine.
I’d say that we had beat the Ours or whoever, or that Georges and Françoise were real nice, and she’d always be like, “That’s wonderful, Freeman. Have a good time.”
Have a good time, she’d tell me.
But the thing is, I
was
having a good time. It felt like I shouldn’t be.
I got back to the letter. I wadded it up and started from scratch on a new piece of paper.
Dear Mama
, I wrote. I told it like I would to Pops, like when I was walking around pretending he was with me and I was his tour guide, showing him the things I was learning about the city. I wrote all the details so she would see and smell and taste it. I told her about the roasted chestnuts they sold at Montmartre and how, from up there, you could look out over the entire city. I told her about Mont Blanc and fondue, about the classic A-frame chalets, the whole town smelling of woodsmoke. I told Mama how big my world was, and how I had her and Pops to thank for it.
To close, I wrote:
I know you don’t like me to go on like this, but I need you to know that I know I’m not doing what I should. I’m not doing what Pops would do, if it was him in my shoes.
Youall are my family, my only family. I promise to never quit you like this again.
Love,
Me
The question my dad kept returning to was Why? Why did I leave Montreal without giving him a heads-up or an explanation? Each of the three days after his arrival, we’d walk the city and he’d pepper me with questions, but always, ultimately, it was back to that one question. I guess my answer was never quite satisfactory.
Maybe because I didn’t quite know the answer myself. The divorce? Mom’s new boyfriend? The pressure to go to Orford, to “succeed”?
Walking around the Friday night before his departure, he asked the question a little differently. “So tell me,” he said, “what is it about Paris that you find so grand?”
I recited the words I’d been rehearsing since the night before, after reading an op-ed in
Libération
, a local newspaper.
“I read somewhere that Paris is a stage where we’re all actors. Ever since I got here, I feel like I’m free to decide what role I want to play. For the first time in my life!”
He didn’t respond but strode ahead.
White stone walk-ups lined the street. We were meeting Moose for dinner at L’Auberge Esclangon, a restaurant my dad had read about, over by Les Puces de Saint-Ouen, the famous flea market.
(Free and I had gone to the Puces one Sunday morning. After his shock at the mass of humanity and his fear that every other person was a pickpocket, he ended up negotiating for a boxful of battered
Astérix
comic books. He boasted about his “mad haggling skills,” but to me, his purchase seemed a good deal only for the woman that had sold him the books. He paid 90 percent of the price that he could have had he bought them new at the
FNAC
bookstore, and got some that had been written in or were missing pages.)
“So tell me, Mathieu, what role is it you’re playing on this…stage?”
“I don’t know, Dad.”
The street was quiet, even though we were only a few hundred yards away from the noisy, polluted ring road and the brassy shopping centers that ran along either side of it.
“Star quarterback,” I said.
“You were that back home.”
I
was
. That was the key word:
was
, past tense.
“Over here, I get to call my own plays,” I said as a joke, to change the subject.
“It’s great to be in a position to call your own shots,” my dad said as we approached the restaurant, where Moose was waiting out front. “Coming here was the first of millions of decisions that will shape the rest of your life, that will determine the type of man you will become. So let me give you a piece of advice: Don’t lie to yourself. The truth is a much better friend. You stole money. You ran away from your responsibilities. Face the man in the mirror.