Little Death by the Sea (9 page)

“Are you French?
Parlez-vous anglais
?”
Maggie scanned the darkened parking lot for any sign of another
person, perhaps a cruiser? Security?

“I am American.” The woman croaked out the
words as if unused to speaking. “Where...where am I?”

In an instant, Maggie grabbed the woman’s
arms and pulled them away from her face, the woman weakly resisted
her as she did so. Maggie touched the ravaged face, pulling it
towards her, her fingers pressing into the woman’s skin. Their eyes
met, one pair hunted and cloudy, the other wide and
disbelieving.

It was Elise.

PART II

“Rose-Lipped Maids Are Sleeping...”

Chapter 6

1

Maggie stood quietly in her living room, a
bulky cardigan pulled tightly around her. The heat of the Southern
night had given way to a chilled moistness—a result more of her
spirit (or lack of it) than any actual temperature fluctuation.
Twice, she’d nearly picked up the phone to call her parents and
twice she’d stopped herself. She rubbed her arms as if to bring a
surge of warmth back to them and looked down at her sister sitting
on her couch, her feet tucked up under her.

Elise looked like an older version of
herself. Like a police rendition of her sister as a hag or a bag
lady. At twenty-nine years old, she looked nearer to fifty. Her
hair was dry, probably hadn’t even been combed in months. Her face
was lined and haggard as if it had formed every possible
exaggerated expression of woe and mirth and had no elasticity left.
She was thin and her clothes smelled as if she lived in them. But
it was her eyes that were the worst. Protruding in their sockets,
they looked at Maggie with hunger and despair.

Elise clutched a coffee mug upon which was
scrawled: Smart Ass White Girl. Maggie tried to remember where
she’d gotten the ridiculous thing. Elise’s lips were cracked and
sharp like a bird’s beak, she drank as if she’d not quite mastered
the skill.

“I wish you’d sit down.” Elise’s hands
clutched the cup as she brought it to her lips. Maggie wouldn’t
have been surprised to see the mug shatter between her fingers.

“Are you in any pain?”

Elise looked up at Maggie and smiled. Her
eyes were filled with such angst that Maggie wanted to weep for
her.
Oh, Elise, what happened to you?

She had bundled her sister into her car and
home in a fluster of tears and questions and hugs. Elise had been
too weak to do much but simply receive Maggie’s barrage of
affection and queries. She had dozed on the short ride back to
Maggie’s apartment.

Maggie had prattled and wept and rejoiced as
she drove, quickly imagining her parents’ joy, their
self-absolution to learn that Elise was back and alive. Even little
Nicole would be cured, Maggie felt, when she was reunited with her
Maman. And, as she pulled into her apartment driveway, her right
hand still holding tightly Elise’s bony, withered one, Maggie knew
they would help put her right. Whatever was wrong with her,
whatever was hurting her, would be banished and eliminated.

Now, as she sat watching Elise in her small
living room, Maggie felt her whole world move into place with a
resounding, satisfying “click.” She thought of her parents’ pain
this last year, of how far they had come in saying good-bye to the
daughter they believed they had failed.

“Elise, Mother and Dad have been so...”
Maggie screwed up her face to keep the tears from coming.

“I know, Maggie.” Elise set the mug down on
the coffee table as if it were Spode china. She looked up at
Maggie, her face an encyclopedia of suffering as if to say: what is
the pain of these rich people compared to drug addiction? The loss
of one’s baby? Degradation? What do you know about pain?

Maggie felt her sister’s indicting gaze and
turned away from it.

“I don’t know what all you’ve been through,
Elise. But I know what our parents have been through.”

“And none of it was necessary.”

Maggie turned to regard Elise and her sister
smiled at her. Maggie sat down slowly on the couch next to her.

“You’re...you’re not in pain right now?” she
asked softly.

“I’m a junkie, Maggie. That’s not clear to
you?”

The words stabbed at Maggie’s heart. Other
people, Elise. God, other people.

Elise laughed and rubbed her hands across her
face. She looked around the room, smiling cheerlessly as she did
so.

“You’ve got sort of a knack for color,
Maggie. I’m surprised, I guess.”

“Elise, I need you to tell me what happened
to you. What happened to you over there? I don’t know anything. You
were out of touch for so long. And Gerard. God, explain to me about
Gerard. I guess you know Nicole is with us?”

Elise stared at the room.

“Your room at home was always so...orderly
and organized. You’d always have everything in its place.” She
shrugged sleepily and reached for her empty coffee mug.

“I’ll get some more.” Maggie got up and
walked to the kitchen to pour another cup.

“But no style. No color or flair
or...life.”

Maggie returned with the steaming mug and
handed it to her.

“And your room was a shambles,” Maggie
said.

“Full of life.”

“Yeah, teeming with it.” Maggie smiled
nervously at her and Elise smiled back. She felt in awe of her
sister back from the grave. It occurred to her that so completely
had she accepted Elise’s disappearance and probable demise that she
had plunged headlong into the process of grieving her, so that she
now felt off-balance and inadequate.

“I loved him,” Elise said. “From the moment I
laid eyes on him.” She looked directly into Maggie’s eyes. “I loved
him and I needed him.”

Maggie swallowed painfully.

“And all you see is this...miscreant that
could dump me out of a car or beat me up, oh yeah, he did that a
few times. Nicole, too, for that matter.” She shrugged. “Enough
times.” Her eyes returned to their casual inventory of the living
room. “She was born with a heroin addiction, you know. Such an
awful thing to endure...the sound of a helpless baby screaming, not
for food or to be changed...” She looked back at Maggie and smiled
weakly, sheepishly. “But because she needs a fix.” She drank her
coffee in silence.

Who
are
you? Suddenly, Maggie wanted
to leave, not to have to hear everything she knew Elise was going
to tell her. Not to have to keep it all from her mother—through the
happy times, warm times, close moments that she was sure were still
ahead of them.
To listen to Elise—and she had to listen to
her—was to help her keep her awful secrets for the rest of their
lives. And to continue to love her through it all.

“She was such a sweet little baby,” Elise
said moodily. “I’ll be needing some stuff, soon, Maggie. I’m sorry,
darling. You’ll have to help me.”

Maggie didn’t know what to say. Need her to
help kick the addiction or need her to help score some drugs? She
decided not to push it until the actual moment was upon them.

“Gerard was...he became everything to me. I
don’t suppose you can understand that. Oh, especially since you
probably think he’s this terrible monster, but even if he were the
neatest, sexiest guy in the world, you still wouldn’t understand
throwing yourself totally into him, would you? Just devoting
yourself.” Elise sounded very satisfied with that phrase. “I was
devoted to him. And it felt wonderful, Maggie. Better than any
accomplishment. Better than painting something wonderful or feeling
like I looked beautiful or better, even, than when Nickie was born.
I’d never be able to explain it to you.”

“He was like a drug.”

Elise looked over at her.

“Maybe you do understand. Yes, exactly. Like
a drug.”

“And even when the drug turns bad, lets you
down, hurts you...”

“Ahh, well.” Elise shrugged and set her
coffee mug down again.

“How did you get here? To the States? Why did
Gerard bring you with him?”

“I scored the money for the tickets. But
you’re right, he didn’t have to bring me. He could’ve taken the
money and gone without me. I think he was delivering me back to my
family. To your care.”

“Maybe he thought he could humiliate you this
way. Or us.”

Elise just smiled.

“How did you score the money?” Visions of
Elise wheeling and dealing with nefarious underworld characters for
the price of cocaine and smack alongside Mediterranean piers and
ports sprang quickly into Maggie’s head.

“I may not look like much to you now, Maggie,
I know. You have a memory of what I used to look like, I
suppose.”

My God, she sold herself
. Maggie
nodded to indicate she understood.

“You really don’t want to hear where I’ve
been, do you, big sister?”

The tears formed at the rim of Maggie’s
lashes.

“Yes, I do, Elise,” she said. But her heart
whispered,
no
.

“When I first met Gerard,” Elise said,
burrowing into a little nest of cotton throws and satin pillows
that studded Maggie’s plush couch, “I knew he would be my future. I
saw him on the
Rue de la Paix
. Can you believe that? You
know, the café where they say if you sit there long enough you’ll
see someone you know? Well, I saw him and I knew him. In my
heart.”

Maggie settled back into her own chair.

2

Elise smoothed the creases out of her wool
skirt and looked again at the young man who stood watching her from
across the crowded outdoor café. She sipped her demitasse and
wondered, well? Is he going to come over or not? She knew she
looked very French yet with a certain piquancy that only an
American living-in-Paris-for-the-first-time can possess. After her
art classes were over for the afternoon, she’d taken to spending an
hour or so at the
Café de la Paix
with her sketchpad getting
ideas for her next canvas or for class assignments. She knew what
sort of picture she presented, with her golden blonde hair tucked
under a coal black beret, her sketch pad at the ready, and her
intense blue eyes (everyone always said so) scanning the crowds for
the next worthy subject.

She’d known from years of drawing that
everyone wants to think you will want to draw them. Women pushing
baby prams always slowed in front of her as if to say: You want to
draw something,
Mademoiselle Artiste
? Wait till you see me.
Or my baby. Elise had loved the thought of selecting and rejecting.
It was a game, a transaction of sorts and the whole world was open
to playing it with her.

And he was not the first young man to stand
watching her, wanting to be noticed by her, to be with her.

When he approached her table, gently tossing
down his cigarettes and matches as if to claim possession of it and
her, she had kept her smile far away from her eyes.

“You are an
artiste, oui
?”

He was narrow, almost delicate, with strong,
white teeth. The better to eat you, she had thought excitedly. His
clothes were shabby but clean. He was a student, like herself.
Young, good-looking and in Paris with no job or responsibility to
make him boring. They both had the freedom to flirt and make love
and dream unachievable dreams of a life together. A life filled
with healthy, cherubic babies and the world wanting to buy her
paintings and wanting to read his books. Gerard was going to be a
great French novelist.

Gerard Dubois. From the moment he saw her
sitting there at the famous café—and she never went back again—he
had captured her.

“I am a painter, yes,” she had responded
carelessly.

“
Americaine?”

“I live in Paris.” She loved to hear the
sound of it.
J’habite á Paris
.

“In the dormitory, yes?” His eyes loved her,
lapped her up, seemed to glory in her.

“
Mais, non
.” She began sketching him,
afraid her hands would shake too much to make anything but a mess,
but not caring as long as it made her look more the fantasy she
believed he had already created of her. “
Je vis seul
.” She
looked up from her sketch to find his eyes. “Alone.”

“And you are to become a great
artiste,
non
? Paris is the city for the artiste and for lovers, of
course. Gerard, he was born in Paris.”

“How wonderful for you.” And she’d meant it.
How extraordinary to claim this city, the City of Light, as the one
that gave you life.

“For an
artiste
, Paris is the only
one,
n’est-ce pas
?”

“It’s why I’m here.”

“And you must not leave. Not ever.”

She stopped drawing.

“I never will.”

“
Toujours, petite Americaine
. You will
always stay in Paris.” You will always stay with Gerard.

“
Toujours.”

From there they had been swallowed up in a
spin of activities belonging strictly to lovers. They visited the
flea markets on Saturday mornings, fingers intertwined tightly,
huddled into their greatcoats against the drizzle of winter days.
They claimed quiet, early-afternoon cafés as their special
snuggeries, slept late every morning in Elise’s tiny one-bedroom
flat on the Left Bank near Notre-Dame, and before the gold had left
the autumn skies to reflect the famous green-gray ceiling of Paris
in winter, Elise had stopped attending classes at
L’Ecole des
Beaux Arts
and had stopped writing or answering letters from
home.

She had found a world, finally, that
understood her. A world she had defined but never knew existed. She
wore black, as she always had growing up, but now her world
encouraged the black to be the limp, thread-bare ebony fabrics that
draped off one like graceful spills of Spanish moss from a tree
branch. Her new world explained that grime and the absence of care
gave her wardrobe the desired patina that all her painstaking
fashion planning could not. She learned to let go. She had smoked
marijuana in high school, but her new world was too sophisticated
to be impressed. The people in her new fraternity used needles.
Silver-thin, beautiful spines that pierced her unpocked flesh in an
experience that made her high school pot-smoking look sophomoric
and ridiculous.