My family had taken a two-bedroom suite, my brothers together in one room, my parents in the other, a living room between them.
“You can come stay with us for a few days if you want,” my mother said after they’d pulled me into a chain of embraces and gotten the remarks about my pale face, dirty hair, and bad posture out of the way.
“If you want to get out of that house for a few days that’s fine with us. It’s comfortable here, mi amor. We have plenty of room.”
I thought the best way around the suggestion was to ignore it. I turned my attention to Beto, who, wearing a natural smile, looked excited for the first time in years.
“I want you to show me Chateaubriand’s park,” he said, “and the Louvre, the obelisk, all the places you wrote me about.”
“The park’s just around the corner.” I led him to the window. “You can probably see it from here.” But we couldn’t. Le Bon Marché and a few other buildings were in the way.
My father ordered room service, and we had a family breakfast in the sitting area while my brothers spread a city map out on the coffee table and my mother said in her quasi-apologetic way, “Don’t feel obligated to entertain us, mi vida. We know you have
your classes and studies to think about.” But before her next breath she managed to add, “How’s the kitchen in your house? What do you think about me coming over to cook dinner for you and all your friends?”
“You’re on vacation, Mami,” I said. “I don’t want you to worry about cooking.”
I made my way out of there as quickly as I could, telling them I’d be late for school, but Beto wouldn’t let me go when I hugged him good-bye.
“You all should rest for now.” I tried to sound like the voice of experience. “I’ll come back later and we can spend the rest of the afternoon together.”
They were quiet. All of them. And I couldn’t leave them. Not for a lie, not to run back home into the haven of my bed with Cato.
Those early February days were the snowiest and sloppiest of any I’d know in France, with a whipping northern wind, but I would make sure my family—for all their skepticism—would love Paris as much as I did. I led them on the same tours Loic had invented for me during my first weeks in the city, all over Saint Germain, across the river through the Tuileries and Les Champs, through Montmartre and the Marais, the entire museum circuit, blistering gusts spitting in our faces, until they were near crying from exhaustion. By evening they were so tired, we’d never make it to any of the reservations the concierge made for my father, the foodie, and instead retired to their suite for room service or ate dinner in the hotel dining salon where Séraphine told me Nazis used to gather during the occupation.
And within those long bustling days, though separated by only a few street corners, the strands of my life seemed to grow further apart. My life in Paris fell away—there was no House of Stars, no friends wondering why I was taking so long to come home, not even Cato, who gave me the space to be with my family, entertaining himself out with Sharif or lounging around my room reading the collection of books I’d been amassing from Gallimard on Raspail. These were moments in which I felt uniquely possessed by familial joy, forgetting there was anything beyond this family sitting together in a hotel room, laughing together, teasing one another, as if we’d left our pressures behind back in the States and had once again displaced ourselves, a family of snails taking our house with us on our backs, all ties, all obligations—my father’s business, my mother’s network of assistance—left behind. And we were, at least for this week, our clan of five, free together, and we were all we needed.
But my family wanted to know the life I lived away from them. They wanted to see Séraphine’s house, my bedroom, meet the people I lived with. I held them off for a few days. Séraphine was in with one of her doctors, so she couldn’t receive my parents, but Loic came out to greet them, speaking wonders of me and how delighted the de la Roques were to have me under their roof. My mother produced a small box from her handbag, delicately wrapped with a card attached, a gift of a silver pillbox engraved with her name, for Séraphine.
I showed them around the house and gardens. Santi and Beto whispered that I lived in a dump, while my parents complimented the lovely architectural details, the elaborate (broken) moldings, the intricate Persian (hole-laden) rugs. I’d buried all of Cato’s clothes in the back of my closet, and my room was as neat
and clean for their arrival as it had ever been, but the photographs Naomi had taken of Cato and me together at Far Niente, and on a house outing to Chambord, remained tacked to the wall, and my parents and brothers noticed them, without comment. Since I’d told her about him, my mother had kept mum about Cato and never asked about him during any of our phone calls, as if she could will him away with her indifference.
Loic spread the word that my family was in the house. Maribel was at the studio, but Naomi and Saira quickly appeared on the landing just outside my room to introduce themselves. Dominique also came by, ever so polite, and Giada, fresh out of the shower, descended the stairs in nothing but a towel.
“How lovely to meet you all,” my mother said and gave them each a hug.
I should have known the girls would flock to Santi. Camila was the first, but she was no match for Tarentina, who, upon seeing him, stared at me as if I were guilty of some terrible betrayal for hiding him this long. She met him with her expertly coy routine, and Santi, of course, never turned down gratuitous flirting.
My parents invited each of them to join us for dinner, and one by one, they graciously, thankfully, declined.
Except Cato, whom we finally found in the foyer as we were heading out. I hadn’t expected they’d meet this way. I was still trying to invent the perfect scene for their first encounter, but here it was all at once: my family, the tall black-haired bunch surrounding Cato, pale and gaunt, his hair still uncombed from the morning.
“This is my friend Cato. He’s in town for a while.”
My mother’s brows went up slightly but she didn’t let on. All these days, not a mention of him from her side or mine.
My father shook his hand, every young man a nephew, a sort of son.
“I once knew a Gato Gonzales from Brooklyn. Any relation to you?”
“It’s Cato, Papi,” I corrected with a hard C sound.
“Is that Greek?” That was Santi.
“I don’t really know,” Cato said.
“It’s a nickname,” I was irritated. “We
all
have them.”
“Short and sharp,” my father took over. “Just the way I like it. My name is Alberto but I’ve only ever been called Beto with a B. Nice to meet you, hijo. Are you joining us for dinner?”
Papi called everyone hijo or hija but I could tell Cato was taken aback.
“Yes, sir. I’d like that very much. Thank you.”
We took two taxis. I rode with Cato and my mother. She watched the city lights outside the window, not a sound between us but the faint hum of Radio Nova.
Cato cleared his throat, “Are you enjoying your time in Paris, Mrs. del Cielo?”
She didn’t understand him the first time, with his accented English and her accented ear. I repeated the question in Spanish.
“It’s beautiful.” She sounded shy, little-girl-like, watching the building facades go by like a film.
The concierge sent us to some fancy place in the First, way too stuffy for our tastes, decorated in various tones of green, and nearly empty and overstaffed, which made the waiters all the more attentive.
“We should have taken them to Far Niente instead,” I told Cato as we were quietly analyzing the menu around the large round table, the waiters watching us like bodyguards.
Beto leaned into my shoulder. “Is this guy supposed to be your boyfriend or something?”
I nodded, and he mumbled to Santi on his other side, “Affirmative.”
Santi let out a low laugh that made everyone look up from their menu, and I knew everything was about to turn.
Their first tactic in exclusion was to speak only in Spanish, and when I interjected that we should stick to English tonight, Santi gave Cato a puzzled, “What? You don’t speak Spanish? How is that possible?”
“He does,” I said, “as well as you speak French,” because Santi hated being reminded of what he wasn’t good at.
My mother also kept to her mother tongue, but my father tried, as he would toward any friend of mine, to engage Cato in English, ask him about his studies, his work, what he did with his free time.
Cato told him how he lived on the coast and worked with boats at the marina.
“Hijo, would you believe I didn’t see the ocean until I was twenty years old? And that was just from the plane. We didn’t make it to a real beach until we took the kids to the Rockaways many years later. When I saw all that water, I thought I was in heaven.”
“That’s a beach in New York,” I told Cato.
“Y esta muchchita, this one right here,” my father pointed to me, “she hated the ocean when we first put her in the water. She hit the waves, smacked them, furious the water was touching her. She refused to even put her little feet on the sand.”
Cato turned to me, amused. “You hated the beach?”
“I was a baby,” I said. “Obviously I grew to love it.”
And then Santi took over. “Did you know my sister almost got married? It wasn’t even that long ago.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“I was sure she was going to go through with it. They were so in love. Isn’t that right, Beto?”
Beto, the traitor, nodded.
“I couldn’t stand the guy back then but I kind of miss him now,” Santi said trying to sound nostalgic. “Lita broke his heart. Devastated the guy. Practically ruined his life.”
Our parents did nothing to stop their performance. Papi only looked a little bored by their banter and pulled a piece of bread from the basket. My mother stared back at me with surrender.
“Lita’s always been a girl who can’t be held down. She even refused to work in the family business … she has told you about our family business, hasn’t she?”
Cato nodded, though I’d described it more like a family-owned grocery store and less like a multinational corporation.
“Always Lita with her big dreams, talking about being a diplomat, moving from country to country, tasting different cultures like they’re a slice of cake.”
“Would you cut it out?”
“This is a free country, isn’t it?” Santi laughed. “I mean, we all know France is full of neo-fascists, but a guy like me can still speak his mind, no? No offense to you, Gato, my friend.”
“It’s Cato,” I said sharply. “Get it right.”
The waiters appeared with the first course. I watched Cato face his soup, wish bon appétit to the table, though my brothers had already started eating.
The rest of the meal followed the same pattern. During dessert, when my father looked at me from across the table and told me I looked more like my mother than ever—his way of saying pretty—Santi reminded everyone of how I was often mistaken for
a boy until I was about ten years old. Santi also pointed out that even though I’d skipped two years of school—second and fifth grade, which he said were no big deal because they were just “filler” years—I’d still never managed to be first in my class like he always was. And when he wasn’t taking direct aim at me, Santi, with the help of Beto, guided the dinner conversation out of Cato’s reach to home, and to people he did not know.
When it was over, we split into two taxis again. This time Cato and I rode with my father. Cato thanked him for dinner, and we dropped him on the corner of rue de Bellechasse so it would appear he was staying elsewhere.
“Let us know if you come to the States one day,” Papi told him as he stepped out of the cab onto the sidewalk. “We’d love to have you over to our home. You ever been to the U.S.?”
“No, sir. Never.”
“No? Well, you’ll have to put that on your list. Things to do before you die.”
My father held my hand across the leather seat as we continued back to the House of Stars. “Parece un buen muchacho, tu amigo. Kind of quiet. But a good handshake.”
We were quiet the rest of the way until the taxi pulled up in front of the house and my father, as we pulled apart from our hug good night, said in a heavy tone so it came off more like an order than advice, “Mi amor, watch yourself.”
“I always do, Papi.”
“No, corazón,” he shook his head, “I mean really watch yourself.”
Cato arrived a short while later. I was already under the duvet. He pulled off his sweater, kicked off his shoes, and dropped into
bed beside me. I wanted to apologize for the night, but how could I apologize for my own family? It felt like a betrayal.
He wrapped me into his arms from behind, pushed in close, and we lay quietly until he finally said, “Your parents are very nice. Your brothers seem nice, too.”
I breathed. I told myself they weren’t so bad. An average family. Certainly no worse than his father.
“It must feel good to have siblings. Having someone, in your case two, to share everything with. It must make a lot of things easier. I can’t imagine it.”
I was silent. It seemed he wanted to say more but was stopping himself. After a while he said, “You look so much like your mother, like she had you alone.”
“I’m sure my father had something to do with it.”
“I wish I could see that house you grew up in. With all the people and animals.”
“You will. One day. Maybe in the summer you could come back with me.”
“I haven’t been on a plane since I was a child.”
“No?”
“I’ve been on helicopters with my father. But no more planes. After I got sick the doctors said it would be too much of a risk with my lungs.”
And then, as if he were talking only to himself, “I always thought life is long. I’ll have time for all the things I wish I could do. But I turn around and ten years have disappeared, as if they never were at all.”
“There’s time,” I said. “There is always time.” But I wasn’t sure what we were talking about anymore.
“Do you still want to do all those things your brother said you wanted to do?”
I nodded. “In a different way. But I still have big dreams.”