Morning Is a Long Time Coming (17 page)

Finally looking up he said, “I think you should eat something light. Do you like omelettes?”

“Oh, yes. Very much.”

Roger lifted the ugly crustacean by the bone of his back
to my eye level and for a moment, I thought he was preparing to make an introduction. “With crabmeat?”

“Uh, yes, thanks.”

His pupils constricted. “You’ve never had crab before. Have you?”

What did he think I was, a country bumpkin? “Well, actually no.”

“Never mind, the way I prepare it, you will love it! It’s not for radishes that I’m the son of
le premier chef,
Edmond Auberon.”

“I know,” I answered, admiring in him what I lacked in myself—confidence unabashed. Then just as I was about to ask where his kitchen was, Roger bent low, pulling a low wood cart from beneath the bed. “My
cuisinière,”
he said, pointing to the shiny, meticulously arranged items within—a series of graduated pots and pans, utensils, an espresso coffee pot, and something that at first looked like a kerosene lamp without the glass chimney, which Roger identified as his alcohol-burning stove. That’s a stove?

As he began preparing the food, I asked if there wasn’t something I could do to help, but when he said that it’s easier to do than to explain, I felt secretly relieved. He was like a culinary juggler who simultaneously sliced, sniffed, and poured while directing each action for maximum results. And, as any fool could see, this was no place for a rank beginner to join in.

The second time I asked the same question he gave a different response. “Just watch for now. In the future, there will be many opportunities to help.”

That sounded like an important statement. It meant—at the very minimum didn’t it have to mean—that he likes me
well enough to want to spend this and future time with me? “Okay, Roger,” I told him, realizing right off that my answer wasn’t good enough. Not by a long shot, for it was far too fearful and too self-protective to match the occasion.

Anyway, I think I’ve always suffered from what I call the “Patty Bergen malady.” What happens is that every time some important thing happens, my brain just ups and jams like an aged typewriter and all I can think to say is something spectacularly dumb. But this time, it didn’t sound spectacularly anything. Maybe I could count that as an improvement.

Somehow I felt a little freer. “Roger, I think that was wonderful what you did. I mean, taking care of me.”

Roger shrugged as with single-minded determination (not to mention patience) he picked the remaining meat from the shellfish. “It wasn’t very difficult. I had the help of the hotel manager and the taxi driver. I, uh, took three hundred francs from your purse to pay the driver. Can you afford it?”

“Oh, sure.”

He wiped his hands on the white dishtowel that he had tucked through his belt. “I should know better than to ask an American what she can afford.” He unfolded his paper, pointed to the headline and read:
“LES ÉTATS-UNIS DONNENT À LA FRANCE DE L’ARGENT POUR L’INDOCHINE.
The United States gives France money for Indochina.”

I wasn’t sure if I had really heard the fine edge of anger in his voice. “So?”

“So, there’s apparently very little that Americans cannot afford.”

“I don’t understand. I mean, are you saying that you don’t like my country helping yours?”

Roger sighed just as though it was time to take out the garbage. “Don’t you ever read the newspapers?”

“I not only read them, I work for one,” I answered, hearing pride’s voice. “The
Commercial Appeal.
It’s Memphis’s largest paper, with a paid circulation of one hundred and forty-seven thousand, and that’s only on a weekday. On Sundays, the circulation is much greater.”

“And your journalists, don’t they speak of politics?”

“Oh, sure, they do! The last time I was in the city room, they had this bet going on. By what percentage points would Boss Crump’s candidate for mayor win over his opponent, the reform candidate.” And having said that, I wished that I hadn’t. “Of course, not all of our political talk is only on the local level. Some of our reporters are very interested in national and even international politics.”

“Then you must have heard,” he said, “how France is fighting to control a small Asian country against the express wishes of the vast majority of the population.”

Isn’t he making too much of it? I know for a fact that America could never be a party to the tyrannization of another country. Anyway, if it was so important wouldn’t it have been written up in the
Commercial Appeal?

“Well, naturally enough,” I lied, “I’ve certainly heard about it. It’s just that I know that my country would never knowingly meddle in other people’s affairs.”

Without answering, Roger set the table with bamboo mats and sturdy wood-handled utensils, and lit two candles on either side of an earthen pot of mint. As he poured me a half glass of red wine, he gave me the admonition to “stay reasonably sober.”

The candlelight touched only his facial ridges leaving the
rest bathed in shadows. “I wasn’t planning to drink at all,” I told him. “For I wouldn’t want anything to blur my memory of this.”

It was then that I caught the very same look of surprised vulnerability on his face that I occasionally only feel on mine. And that bit of vulnerability exposed provoked a feeling in me that was at once as unexpected as the first clap of thunder and as right as the shower that breaks a long hot, dry spell.

What I really wanted was for him to know with certainty unquestioned that there was nothing illusory about my words. The compliment, he had to know, was not only very real; it was his. All his to keep. “What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m happier being here than you know, and so I don’t need or want another thing.”

With studied slowness, Roger rose from his chair to look at me in a way that I couldn’t (or was frightened that I could) decipher. Then for a moment, I thought he was going to move past me to change the radio’s dial, but I couldn’t imagine why. The music—Mendelssohn, I think it was—was really quite lovely.

Almost more with his eyes than with his hand, he reached out for my hand. And as we moved together, I came to believe that I could feel the rhythmic beat of his heart beneath the tissue-paper thinness of his cotton shirt.

“Moving with Mendelssohn,” I said, wondering why I said that. And then I knew. If I could give words to this experience of closeness, then I could endow it with longevity. And one thing more. The sound of my own voice did give me a heightened sense of this is real ... this is wonderful ... and this is happening to me!

With his finger, he leisurely traced the outline of my lips. I don’t remember ever before wanting to be kissed. But I wanted it now. As I opened my eyes to find out why it wasn’t happening, I saw that he was looking at me as though “the beautiful lady” could now be found in places more permanent than the image-reflecting brass of L’Hotel George V.

As his lips moved in maddening slow motion toward mine, my eyes again closed. This time, I thought, I’m going to get something that I want. And when at last his lips reached mine, they moved me so deeply that for this moment, there was nothing else.

Then Roger’s hand circled my breast and I saw in my memory a heavily perspiring revival tent minister crying out in evangelical ecstasy, “The devil saves his hottest fires for them that lusts!”

“Don’t!” I cried, grabbing his wrist to break the connection.

“What’s wrong?” asked Roger, looking as stricken as if he had been reprimanded.

“Nothing ... it’s not your fault.”

“Tell me what happened? Why you changed? Became frightened?”

“Frightened? Yes, but not by you. Honestly, not by you!”

“Then you remembered something,” he said, guiding me over to a bed covered with an Indian print fabric, “something bad from another love?”

I laughed. “Another love?” I hoped he wouldn’t think I was laughing at him. “No ... no, there has never been another love. You see, I’ve never ... done anything before.”

“Then what?” he asked, speaking low into my ear.

“I don’t know—not exactly. Only that I was taught that this ... that we—that what we’re doing is a sin.”

He brought his lips lightly to mine, then moved his head away to look at me with the most intense kind of concentration. “And what do you believe?”

I believe that those little men in their white preacher’s suits spew venom along with scripture. What else have I learned from sneaking into revival tents? I have learned what it is that Protestants preach: Heaven is a very private club with an impressive sign posted across those pearly gates which reads,
OFF LIMITS TO JEWS
!

“Oh, God, Roger, don’t ask me to think about them when I only want to think about you.”

Our lips rejoined. And I felt the warming effects of a hundred glasses of
vin ordinaire
that I had never drunk.

Then our bodies began responding to a rhythm that was never scored by Mendelssohn. Something I want. Something I need. Just this once, by God, I deserve to get something I need! And it would be ... and it would happen. And then no more alien and adrift ... but connected and complete.

20

T
HE SOFT,
Paris-blue light of morning woke me, but even before the waking I knew exactly where I was and why. While drawing in the deep breaths of the still-sleeping, Roger nestled up to me as though begging warmth from my body. My arms tightened around him. Dear Roger. Sweet Roger. With you I can be free to give without having to ask what’s in it for me. Only you can help me become more involved in the giving than in the getting.

I thought about that dank little revival tent evangelist now and how his under-the-arms half moons of perspiration became full moons every time he threw up his arms heavenward to plead for all those gifts that not even the Sears Roebuck catalog could provide. Go on preaching if you must. Preach on and on about the ferocity of all those fires just awaiting those that are tempted by the flesh. Preach on and on and forever and ever, but you’ll never make me feel evil, not anymore. Because for at least once in my life, I am both loved and loving.

And I have just one more thing to say to you, Mister Preacher Man, one more thing: I think I may have learned something during this night that you may never understand.

As I tried with some gentleness to remove my arm from beneath the numbing effects of Roger’s head, he momentarily opened his eyes. “You were happy with me, yes?” He asked before squeezing out every last bit of space between us.

“Yes,” I answered, and when it struck me that I was speaking the purest kind of truth, I repeated, “Yes. Yes. And you?”

Roger grinned in a wicked way calculated to deny what his eyes were already affirming.

“You were!” I told him. “I don’t care what you say, you old phony. You were happy then and you’re happy now. I have ways ... I can tell.”

He blew a lock of hair from my forehead. “I was happy then and I’m happy now.” Roger fixed a quick kiss on the tip of my nose before literally bounding out of bed. “But at this moment, my passion for food exceeds even my passion for you”

“Little wonder. We missed out on our crabmeat omelette.”

Roger groaned. “From this time forward, I promise to contain my passion until after dinner.”

Outside, the air came up with a slight cutting edge that the rising sun was already promising to blunt. If a city can be so beautiful now in September, what must she be like in April?

Roger led me over an arched bridge into an area with streets so narrow and quixotic that its planner could have given whimsy lessons to the Mad Hatter.

He pointed to a brick tricornered building with only the ground level whitewashed. “That’s the place—the Café de l’Île Saint-Louis. I’ll meet you there as soon as class is over. About a quarter-to-twelve. No later than noon!”

Then we kissed and as I watched him go back across the bridge, I was flooded with so much feeling for him that I had trouble remembering exactly why I had decided that this relationship had to be a temporary one.

How could I forget the obvious? Forget that there’s so much that separates us. Mother, Father, please allow me to introduce my new husband. My French Catholic husband ...

Well, why should I care what they think? Unless, is it possible even now, after everything that’s happened, that I’m still trying to please my parents. Still wanting their approval ... still needing their love.

That’s not the only reason it can’t be permanent. I care about Roger, but maybe he’s not exactly like a man ought to be. I mean I could never in a hundred years picture my father carrying an oilcloth shopping bag or cooking an omelette or asking any woman, “Did I hurt you, my darling?”

When my father spoke, my stomach perched on convulsion’s edge. Even Michael Werner was manly enough to scare me. My father and Michael, but not Roger. Not one bit Roger!

Maybe the truth is that Roger is just an imitation man.

“LIES!” My voice shrieked across the morning still. Filthy lies constructed out of revenge to punish me for my happiness.

Why is it that my father and Michael seem to me so all-fired masculine? Neither of them is particularly strong or athletic. Then what is it, this incredibly virile standard that they both represent? They look nothing alike. Everything about them is different. Their age, looks, interests, work, even the geography. No, there’s absolutely nothing about the two men that’s similar! Except maybe—I don’t think it’s that! And yet both my father and Michael seemed to experience the same kind of release after they wounded me with their easily triggered fury.

A grocer arranging a storefront bin of oranges had stopped his work to observe me. I rubbed my hand, giving out a couple of subdued cries of “oh ... oh” just so Monsieur Grocery Man would know that when an American shouts out “LIES!” it’s only because she has just been struck by some hard and painful object. Obviously!

21

I
T WASN’T UNTIL
noon when I came out of the l’Alliance Française for the hundredth time—five times a week for three months is only sixty ... not until noon when I came out of the l’Alliance Française for the sixtieth time did I realize what mischief the world had been up to in my absence.