Morning Is a Long Time Coming (18 page)

Outside it was as though I was looking through a fine white silk screen. There was a sky full of oversized snow
flakes silently gliding to earth. I took it as an omen. A first snow on the eve of Christmas eve had to be a good omen—well, if not an omen, at the very least a Christmas present.

If I walked as quickly as possible I could be back at our place in about fifteen minutes. Passing the bus stop on Boulevard Raspail, I slowed down to consider just how much faster the bus would be. On the other hand, these twice daily fares are becoming too expensive for me. I walked faster. But I also have to start conserving shoe leather. Half-soles, which are already practically an undeniable necessity, aren’t cheap—at least three hundred francs everywhere I priced them. Back to the bus stop.

When I jumped off the bus in front of our four-story aged stucco building, I first peered inside Jacques’s, the street-corner café, to see if Roger, who thinks of it as his own extended living room, was there, but he wasn’t. Probably upstairs, I told myself, afraid that he might not be.

He wasn’t there, but on the oak table was a folded sheet of lined paper with a message printed in red crayon. “Back about five. Your Roger.”

Your Roger. I like that. I took off my snow dampened shoes and stockings, rubbed my cold-to-the-bone feet warm, made myself a cup of espresso, and finished off Roger’s very spicy paté. It’s rather nice not having him here. This way I have something to look forward to.

Also, it just might give me the time that I need. I opened my spiral notebook to re-examine yesterday’s entry:

I doodled as I searched the page for solutions which had to be there, even though they always seemed ever so slightly beyond my grasp. I searched until I heard sounds on the stairs, sounds as if the building were under siege. And I knew that the only resident of 39 Place St. Sulpice who could make three flights running was now on his way up. And I guessed, even before the door opened, I guessed that he’d be smiling, and sure enough, he was.

Without a word, he set down his battered shopping bag and hung his camel-colored duffel coat on a closet hook. Then he sat down next to me. “We shall now pursue an ancient American custom.”

“We’re going to lynch Negroes?” I asked, remembering last night’s speech which was filled with impassioned indignation after reading
Le Monde’s
account of a murder which took place outside of Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

“Tu veux être drole,” said Roger more or less successfully beating back his grin. “As you can plainly see, my dear, I’m a typical American Santa Claus.”

“Howdy do, Santa.”

“While you,” he said, bringing me to his lap, “are a typical little girl who is about to tell old Santa what you would like to have for Christmas.”

“Well, old typical Santa,” I said, encircling his neck with my arms. “As you must certainly realize, I’ve been this really terrifically sweet girl and so what I want is what I deserve. A tiara to wear to my class at the Alliance. A tiara with diamonds so large that as a source of light, it would shine in direct competition with the sun.”

“Granted. The sun is now burning with envy. And now your second wish?”

“How many do I get?”

“Three,” answered Roger with a matter-of-factness which gave a certain credence to our fantasy.

Immediately I regretted having wasted the first one with a dumb joke. “I wish for a bright red Fiat with a large wicker picnic basket filled to capacity with all the things we like to eat: cheese, paté, fresh fruit and bread, and that kind of wine you told me about.”

“Lafite Rothschild.”

“That’s it, Lafite Rothschild! We’d eat cheese and drink Lafite Rothschild while we explored the provinces. We’d visit your folks in Normandy—why, we’d discover things we didn’t even know we were looking for!”

“Excellent wish. Also granted. And now, my child, tell me your final wish.”

“My final wish.” Two wishes gone and I haven’t begun to really get down, down to the source.

“Do I have to tell it?”

“In France, it is considered the only civilized way to make dreams come true.”

It has to come true. I need it. “I’ve got to have a place.”

“A place?”

“To belong. I have to belong to someplace ... to someone.”

Roger looked like a man who had given everything he had, only to be told that it wasn’t quite enough. My dear, sweet Roger.

“You don’t belong here?” he asked incredulously. “With me?”

“Yes, you know I do, or did for a little while, but time is running out.”

“And I told you, we could marry.”

“Marry? On what? If you were more practical, you’d understand immediately why it can’t work. You can barely support yourself and your country won’t even allow me to earn my keep.”

“I’m not all that impractical! I have been thinking a good deal about it. I could take my photographs to every newspaper and magazine in Paris. Eventually somebody would hire me. And when we’re married, the government would be compelled to issue you a work permit.”

“You know, Roger, that scares me. That really scares me! Maybe I’m greedy ... I don’t know. I only know that I’ve grown up with only one kind of security—financial security—and you mustn’t ask me to—I don’t think I’m strong enough to give that up.”

The silence was overwhelming. Was Roger in process of withdrawing his love? Was he thinking that I was only interested in money? In marrying any man with money? Now that’s not fair!

“Roger, I feel—I know—that we should each marry someone whose life is more secure than our own. Why, even if they’d let me work, exactly what is it that I could do? This isn’t my country, so please just tell me what it is that I’m qualified to do.”

Finding no immediate way to dispute my words, he stared at the planks in the floor for something that seemed, if not lost, at least highly elusive. When he finally looked up again, he was almost back to the old Roger.

“Mon Dieu!”
He slapped his forehead. “What kind of a Santa am I?”

“Not a particularly experienced one,” I said as he raised aloft a large, cheerfully wrapped box.

“After you open it, you will see why your Christmas is coming a day early this year.”

“Oh, Roger, this is really lovely of you.” I pretended not to know what it was, but as recently as a week ago, he had mentioned that he was getting together an album of some of the best pictures that he had taken of me. “Then,” he had said, “you will see with my eyes ... and you will come to understand just why it is that I love you.”

With as much delicacy as Scipio razing Carthage, I broke string and tore paper until the bare box lay in front of me, waiting only for a final lifting of the lid. I hesitated only momentarily, hoping that he hadn’t spent any of his money on an album because any pictures that would allow me to see what it is that Roger has found to love wouldn’t need any costly embellishments. When I threw off the cover, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Is there a mistake?

“I bought you a size larger than your shoe size.”

“A size larger?”

“So you should be able,” he explained, “to wear them over heavy socks.”

“Oh ... yes.”

“Are they all right?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“If you don’t like black boots, the store also has them in brown.”

“No!”

“You don’t like them. The style?”

“That’s not true. They happen to be very attractive.”

“Then what’s wrong? Good God, you need them!”

“Nothing’s wrong!”

“Lying doesn’t become you.”

I heard myself sigh as though I had just been told that I had many more miles to go and I had already gone so far. “I love the boots. It was very generous of you only ... only I—it’s so hard to explain.”

“Try.”

“It’s the equation, Roger.”

“The equation?”

“Yes, the damn equation is off balance! Can’t you see?”

“Do you know what you’re talking about? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I’m talking about inequality! I’m talking about not giving enough. I’m talking about not having anything to give you.”

“It doesn’t matter. When you had money, you bought me things—the silk tie.”

“It was nylon.”

“It was silk. The label said silk.”

“Roger, damnit, you spent a fortune! Who the hell asked you to go out and spend a fortune on me?”

“Nobody. It was my own dumb idea.”

“Well, next time ask!”

“Why is it, Patty, when I’m good to you, you act as if a man would have to be crazy in the head to be good to you! Is that what you were taught to believe back in your home town? Jenkinsville, America? That you were unworthy of receiving good treatment? Unworthy of being loved?”

“Oh, you know that’s really stupid!”

“Is it?”

“Of course. It’s only that I hate to see you waste your money. And that’s all!”

“Waste my money?” Roger looked incredulous. “Waste my money? Why is that? Because I chose to spend some of it on you?”

“And who do you think you are, damnit, Sigmund Freud? Well, you’re not! You’re nothing but a photographer. A lousy unemployed photographer!”

By the time I had walked to what looked like the Sorbonne area, my physical distress may have been even greater than my emotional distress because neither thin-soled pumps nor an unlined trench coat which had long since forgotten how to be water-repellent was ever meant for a snowstorm.

I climbed up some ice-glazed steps and from the freezing outside walked into the merely cold inside of St. Severin’s. Even so I wondered if Catholicism was capable of doing as much for the spirit as this cathedral was doing for the body. I thought now about how comforting it must be to be Catholic, as years ago I had had very similar thoughts about being a Baptist. I’ve got to have somebody out there telling me exactly what I can and cannot do. Exactly what to believe and what not to believe.

No more maybes, buts, ifs, and if-nots. No more blurred pages or illegible scripts. If I were a Catholic, everything would be neat and clean and all spelled out.

Inside, there was a slight scattering of people. At the far side, I located an almost deserted section of pews and made a credible curtsy before entering one of them. Using my arms as a pillow, I leaned forward, letting my head rest against the pew in front. Here I can get away with it. Because here
a bowed head is probably considered a sure sign of the profoundest kind of piety, while at the Café Jacques, it’s considered nothing more or less than a sign of the most intense kind of intoxication.

I shivered from cold only partially relieved. It felt as though the cold had seeped clear down to the very marrow of my bones. Thawing was going to take more than a little while.

“Ah!” A sudden spasm of pain struck beneath my breastbone. It felt as though I had just been penetrated with incredible force by a poisoned-tip dart. I touched the exact point of pain while telling my—“Oh!”—while telling myself that nobody just collapses and dies of a heart attack at just turned nineteen. Ridiculous! “OHHhh ...” Roger, Roger. I got to my feet and started a rush toward the door. “AHHhhh ...”

While reaching out for the marble baptismal font, I felt myself crumpling. Not passing out fully, only crumpling. For there is a fire—an intense flame, the size of a pilot light, burning a hole through my heart. Please somebody, “Put out the fire ... put out my fire!”

Hands came supporting my arms, encircling my waist. And now, finally ... finally I could let go. ...

22

T
HE CAR DRIVEN
by somebody that I didn’t even try to see was going fast, maybe even recklessly fast, through the streets of Paris. In the back seat with me was a woman. Had it been her arms that had kept me from falling? “Oh ...”

Was a stranger really taking care of me? All those times that I had been sick before, nobody had ever taken care of me. “Somebody must have said
boo
to you, Patricia.” “No, Mother, nobody said
boo
to me. Honest!” “Well, somebody
must have because you get sick every time somebody does.”

Madame was firmly pressing my forearm. “Nous allons à l’hôpital, et quelqu’un va s’occuper de vous bientôt.”

Although she was dressed in ordinary street clothes, I believe she was a nun on sabbatical. She had the clean, caring look of a nun and she was holding me as though she had no intention of letting me die. And I both believed in and took comfort from the fact that with her vast network of celestial connections, nothing could possibly happen to me without her prior consent.

Just before the car came to a complete stop, the horn began honking out the news of our arrival. Madame rubbed the back of my hand, saying that we had now arrived at the American Hospital and that I was going to receive the best possible medical care.

Car doors opened. Car doors closed. Madame cautioned the white-coated attendants who began placing me on the wheeled stretcher to
“faites attention!”
Then she ran behind the stretcher as they wheeled it up a ramp through an emergency entrance and down a corridor into a brightly lit examining room.

As my blood pressure was being taken and the beating of my heart monitored through the chilled metal disc of a stethoscope, I noted that Madame was never far away. Thank God, because no matter how many doctors and nurses were in attendance, without Madame, I would be all alone.