“I’ve tried to sleep here before. It won’t work.” He pulls on my arm and walks me back toward the rocks until we’re five feet from the seawall below the road. Part of me feels sorry for myself, which seems pathetic. We’ve come all this way. I’ve never been to the south of France. I drop the sleeping bags and walk to Macon and put my hands around his back.
I start kissing his neck. I kiss the side of his mouth, lightly, quickly, and pull back. Then I kiss it again, willing myself to get over it. He laughs, but not like he’s surprised, and turns to face me. He unbuttons my jeans and tugs at them until I bend and step out of them. He unzips one of the sleeping bags and kisses my shoulders. It’s only just dark.
We lie down by the rocks, and he kisses my collarbone and along my ribs. He kisses my breasts and puts each nipple in his mouth. Then he unfastens his belt and grins while he takes his own jeans off. It’s wordless, our lovemaking, the very best kind of wordlessness. I’ve never learned to speak during sex. It’s been pointed out to me that I’m unwilling to name what I like. But it’s the surprise I crave. Loss of language. Afterward, he traces a circle on my stomach with his thumb in the dark.
“So you liked it? You didn’t say you liked it.”
“That’s because you don’t have to say anything.” I close my eyes. “This is the great thing about sex.”
“But you have to say something.”
“We’re sleeping together on the beach in France. What if we just say I liked all of it?”
“Which parts, exactly?” He kisses me hard on the mouth, roughly, different from his earlier kisses.
“Your lips, for example. I like your lips. You said you wanted to take me to the beach. You said nothing about this part.”
“What part?”
“The part where I moan in the sand.”
“I’ve been waiting for this part.”
We sit and drink wine in little paper cups he’s brought. We’re alone on the beach. The small crash of each wave gives me this great, unequivocal joy, and Macon amplifies everything. Maybe he’s the cause of the joy; I can’t separate it. I hear the waves and car doors closing up on the road—all part of it—this surge of hope. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so alive—like my life has been cracked open.
A
T DAWN MY
teeth taste fishy and I’m embarrassed. I can’t find my underwear. I reach for my jeans and stand and hop into one leg, then the other. The beach sits like a half-moon in the cove with piles of rocks that form the seawall behind us. The sand is the color of honey and textured, not fine. Wide-hulled sailboats float near white mooring balls in the harbor. The water is a shocking, pure blue, with turquoise streaks closer to the shore. Two women swim back and forth from the cove to the boats. Their heads are shiny and smooth in black rubber swim caps that remind me of seals.
Bells ring out in a church in the town, and Macon rolls over and puts his hand in front of his eyes to block the light. The sun rises slowly far to the right, which must be northeast. The sky over the mountains is dark cayenne, infused from the sun, which defines the ridgeline so it appears to have been drawn in ink. I’ve lost my sense of direction. But that’s got to be north.
“Are you real?” Macon wraps his arm around my calf and presses his face into my knee. “It’s you. It wasn’t a dream.” He pulls me down on top of him in the sand, and I laugh out loud.
“There are people swimming now. They look like seals. The water must be warm.”
“I want to make love to you again.”
“Not here. Not on this beach.” My knees are pressed into his shoulders.
“Then where?”
“I think I’m stoned on all the driving. And on not enough sleep.”
“You need food.” He stands and jumps into his jeans. Then we carry everything back to the truck. On the walk into town he stops on the side of the road and pushes the bangs out of my eyes again intently, like this is a small chore he must take care of regularly. The cafés spill onto the cobblestone sidewalk, which is more like a plaza that looks down on the train station in the middle of town, blocked off by black wooden fencing. We sit outside at a round table. It’s maybe sixty-five degrees. There are more coves that dot the coastline down below, and tiny inlets set off from each other by juts of smooth rock. We order
pain au chocolat
and
michette
with melted cheese and tomato. I also ask for two eggs, poached, and café au lait.
“Why did you learn French? Why not Spanish or Italian?”
“It was the thing to do in 1978. To speak French and study Sartre and smoke cigarettes. Except I always threw up when I smoked.”
“I like it when you speak French. I like it when you speak anything.”
I blush and take a sip of coffee. The eggs come, and after I eat them the fog in my brain clears.
We leave francs on the metal table and climb the road behind the plaza until we get to an inn. I can make out the low shoulders of mountains in Théoule from the patio and all the way down in the other direction to the crowded marinas in Cannes. Small swells crest ten feet offshore and break lazy against the beaches. I feel very small, but in a good way—not distanced at all from Macon. A man finds us on the patio and asks us if we’d like a room. We would. Macon pays for everything inside with a credit card from Banque Populaire. Then a teenage boy walks us up the wooden stairs, which have been painted white. I stand on the landing and hold on to the banister while the boy gives Macon a skeleton key on a piece of red ribbon. We have no bags.
Macon carries me into the room. It’s tiny and decorated like a
ship’s cabin with robin’s-egg-blue walls and white wooden furniture. “No one’s ever done that before.”
He puts me down on a brass bed, also painted white. “Gotten you a room at a hotel?” He locks the door and pulls the curtains closed.
This time our sex is slower. I can’t separate myself or watch him watching me like I did last time. The sex connects me to him in a way I wasn’t sure was possible. Then he stops. I don’t understand. He moves down my stomach, until he finds the place between my legs with his tongue. Then he’s back inside me, kissing my face and neck. We fall asleep together after that, at ten in the morning while sunlight streams through the white curtains.
“You told me about a museum in Vence,” I say hours later.
“I did, didn’t I?” He rolls onto his side. “We can drive there later. There are more Kandinsky paintings than I’ve ever seen in one place. And Matisse.” The sun has passed over, and the indirect light is warm and soft. There’s no space to be scared of everything that could go wrong between us. He kisses me. “I promise we will go to Vence. Just later.”
B
EFORE WE DRIVE BACK
to Paris on Sunday, we walk down to the cove again. French women in black one-pieces with tan, supple legs come and go from the shoreline carrying naked toddlers. Fathers in postage-stamp Speedos lose swimming races with older children. I’m wearing the green bikini Luke helped me find, grateful that I actually have a bathing suit. Macon and I dive under a wave before it breaks on our stomachs. There’s the shock of the water, and I brace for the cold as it travels my body. It’s elemental, the way water works on my mind and distills my life down to a simple question of how to swim.
We make it to the sailboats and float our way slowly back to shore, talking and not talking. I love this feeling of weightlessness. I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of the water. We used to do this sometimes in the desert—float in water holes in the canyons that looked like pools of thick black glass. Luke and my father and I would slide in. The water was so clean that I could see my legs and arms in great
detail underneath me. It was like looking at myself through some liquid magnifying glass. I didn’t fully know myself like this. Or know my body. I was some kind of water creature, but I loved it. Every time we found one of these pockets it felt like we’d discovered something primordial. Something secret. And I thought the three of us were immortal while we swam. It hadn’t occurred to me yet that anyone in my family would ever really die. Ever. These were some of the best moments I had with my father. Time stopped. He’d taken Luke and me so far off the grid. My dad floated in the water so close to me that we could hold hands and then we did.
Macon and I swim in until the water’s too shallow. Then we have to stand and walk in the sand. We dry off on the beach with towels Macon grabbed from the truck. I lie down and close my eyes. I want to memorize everything. The sand. The rocks. The cement steps. I can share it with all these people. But I’ll keep my claim on it in my heart. This is the place where I broke through something with Macon. Broke through something in myself—some harder casing around my heart. There’s the plain view of the mountains. The rhythmic, percussive waves. The smell of salt and pine needles. I stand and put my T-shirt on and wrap the towel around my waist like a skirt. Macon does the same thing, and we walk to the truck.
On the drive back to Paris, we listen to the Rickie Lee Jones again and Paul Simon and Los Lobos and an Edith Piaf tape I find in the bottom of my bag. There are more loud diesels in Lyon and sedans full of families returning home from weekends in Provence. I roll my window up to block the noise of the traffic, and it gets warm in the truck. I start thinking about Gita again. “They lock girls up in France for too long.”
“They lock girls up all over the world, Willie. At least the incarceration gives the people called lawyers time to build a case for the girls. I need time. That is something in itself, and you must see this. Some of the girls are denied summarily.” His nose is thin and angular and perfect. I watch his eyes while he talks. Then his lovely mouth.
“It is still too long to wait. There’s a girl named Moona, older than
Gita, and smart, and her hearing is in one week. I’m worried about her.”
“You’re right to worry. It’s not a fair fight. The girls had no idea what political sand they were stepping in when they applied for asylum here. Things are changing fast in France in 1989. The far right has more influence. We’ve gone from a country that welcomed people from all over the world to one that erects barriers.”
“I don’t think there’s enough evidence for Moona to prove what her uncle did to her in Bombay. Or what you call corroborating testimony.”
“They are crucial. I could never begin to recount all my cases to you. So whatever Moona’s uncle did to her, I’m sure it is unspeakable. But sexual predation is part of the vernacular inside the court. It’s what we bargain in. Rape. Torture. Sexual slavery. By whom? I have to ask my clients. And how often did it occur? I have to explain it graphically so it has more impact. Sometimes, when I ask the girls to tell me about the violence in all its specificity, I feel like I’m the predator.”
“How do you find evidence of a crime done against you in a factory your uncle owns back in a country you’ve fled? You’re in a French jail where you know no one, and the crime was a whole season of rape, which the uncle is never going to admit to.”
“This is what my job is, Willie. We have outreach teams. We have ongoing investigations.” We’re closer to Paris, and the cagelike frame of the Eiffel Tower marks the way. “This is my job,” he repeats. “Please don’t mix the two yet. It is still technically the weekend. You teach poetry, and I don’t tell you how to do that. You are not a lawyer. There is a system, and it begins again on Monday, not today.”
“But the girls are more than students for me.”
“This girl Moona is someone you need to prepare yourself never to see again. Don’t get sentimental on me.” He takes my hand. “What is most likely is that she will be denied and she will have a month, give or take, to leave this country to go back to India. The same will most likely happen to Gita. Unless the court accepts my foster care
idea. Thousands and thousands of girls are migrating across Europe as we speak.”
“If Gita’s forced to go back, then I’ll follow her. She’ll be kidnapped by Manju’s brother. He has land. Acres near Jodhpur, apparently.”
“What are you saying? Where will you follow her?”
“To India, when I go in July.”
“If you could fly there this week, you could see whether or not Gita’s grandmother is really alive in Jaipur. Then I would feel better about sending Gita back.”
“Better? She is going to have to marry a man who’s already raped her.”
“We will try for foster care with you as court guardian. You will help her get ready for court, yes?”
“Surely.” I have no idea what I’m really agreeing to.
“But you can’t rescue Gita. That’s not our job. You’re a teacher. I am a lawyer.”
“If there’s a grandmother in India, she’ll be an eighty-year-old woman who may or may not be living in a small house in Jaipur and won’t be able to protect Gita. I want to come to the hearing.”
“You have to come. But you need to sit in the benches, and you cannot speak.”
“I won’t. I’ll just listen.”
It’s eight o’clock when we cross back into Paris at the Porte d’Italie. Macon double-parks on Rue de la Clef. Then I get out and stand in the street with my arm on the roof of the truck, listening to him through the driver’s window. I don’t want to leave him. The truck’s been like a home to me. A time capsule. It’s possible that I’ll never see him again or never see him like this. It happens all the time. People get scared and change their minds. He’s going back to a house he lives in with his ex-wife and their son.
“What’s he like? Your son? I bet he’s very beautiful.”
“I’m afraid he has my nose.” Macon laughs. His hands are on either side of the steering wheel. “He’s a good boy. He lives for Lego right now.”
I make myself step away from the truck. “You and your ex-wife must be very good parents.” I don’t know what I mean by this. If it’s a compliment, then it’s double-edged, because it’s also a signal. I’m paying attention. I haven’t forgotten the woman named Delphine. He doesn’t seem deceitful. God, I hope he’s not still sleeping with her.
“Pablo will want to meet you.”
I walk toward my apartment and this is enough for me, so I smile.