Plum Blossoms in Paris (33 page)

Yet I am twenty-three. I realize now how ridiculous my fantasies of marrying Andy were: no better, really, than the little princess playing dress-up in mom’s ill-fitting clothes. I am notready to fill that oversized role. Look at Campbell’s mother, who is over forty. She likely waited until her thirties to get married, after finishing school and establishing herself in a career and achieving satisfaction on her own before the inevitable—well, anyway. My biological clock hasn’t been wound yet, and may not exist. I forget to feed Beckett now and again because I
am
still a kid. And I’m fine with that. I thought he was too. Two dumb kids with nothing to lose, dancing a tango on the rooftops of Paris.

We are here. At the Happiest Place on Earth. Yet I feel like the most miserable creature on this Picasso-blue planet.

“—if my being a writer makes you embarrassed, or ashamed, then—”

“Shut up.”

“Wha—”

“Just shut up.”

He leans back as the rest of the travelers, happy and expectant cherubs with only minor clouds—those wispy, cirrus things—on their Nebraska blue horizons, spill noisily out of the car. They leave a gray vacuum in their wake. The car is deathly quiet, paused, while awaiting our decision. Stay, or go.

“I know what I said before.” He sighs, overlooking my rudeness. “About it.”

“I know what you said, too,” I say, not apologizing. We stare at the worn seats before us. The threads are unraveling.

“It seems like such a small thing.”

My missing period weighed like a stone in my gut.

“Not really. It seems huge.”

“I meant for me. I did not know that I cared so,” he explains, shaking his head.

Hearing the sincerity in his confession, I turn toward him more compassionately.

“I guess I am getting older.”

And that’s true. Five years divide us. When I look back to the person I was at eighteen, I see a grub. Everything was in place for me to grow, but that thing wasn’t me yet. Who’s to say how I may feel about Daisy at twenty-three when I am Daisy at twenty-eight? It’s irrelevant. I can only act on my present convictions. Just as Mathieu is.

I can tell by the hitch in his voice that having kids does not fit into Mathieu’s romantic idea of himself. Did Sartre have kids? Maybe bastard ones, if that. Mathieu knows that children are parasites, of the chubby-cheeked, lovable genus, yes, but still parasites. They survive by taking something from their parents. Call it life force, passion, or freedom. It all tastes delicious to the little darlings.

My mother only plays the piano when she has to, now.

Yet Mathieu is slowly positioning himself toward the beguiling siren of martyrdom that people must hear before embracing the idea of parenthood (it is impossible, I imagine, to embrace anything but the
idea
until the screaming, tyrannical babe is placed in your unprepared arms). Is it I—honest, at least, in my selfish-ness—who is the egoist here? Or is it Mathieu, naïvely believing he is capable of living two lives: that he will be a philosopher-poet in the mornings and a stay-at-home Daddy from noon until six? Maybe it is easier for men; perhaps, still, not as much is expected.

Is it lazy to pin the problem on gender, or am I wrong to believe that I would be the one to monitor every morsel of food that passed their impressionable mouths (when I wasn’t feeling guilty for being away, due to my taking a crap job that no Frenchwoman, in spite of 10 percent unemployment, would possibly want) and that it would be me who couldn’t sleep at night because one of them had a funny rash on her belly that might be Lyme’s disease (if deer ticks were suddenly to infiltrate Paris like Hitler’s army), and that it would fall on
moi
, in my broken French that makes
les mamans
smirk and avert their eyes, to make play dates and check out preschools, all while Mathieu got to be The Fun One when he wanted to be and Absent (and so more fun by comparison) when something more fascinating than the subject of potty training came along.

Would we have time for our lovely, aimless talks then? Or would they, like us—and my poor mother before me—be plowed into a belly-up submission? I have no doubt that sacrifice is noble, if also self-serving, and necessary for the survival of the species.
The children are our future
, trilled Whitney Houston, astutely. And even Shakespeare’s Benedick, abandoning his bright recalcitrance for dingy clichés, insisted,
The world must be peopled!

But not by me.

I place my hand over my belly.
Please
, not me.

“Old and conventional,” Mathieu says, cupping his chin in his hand.

“Downright bourgeois,” I add, squeezing out a smile. “Watch out—pretty soon you’ll be eating at Hippo’s and shopping at La Samaritaine.”

He smiles weakly back.

“And, God forbid, actually wanting to go to Disneyland.”

The doors start to close on that opportunity. I grab Mathieu by the hand, hoist him up, and fling our conjoined body between the sliding partitions with the force of my determination that we have this day. We just make it, though the doors cough at us in protest, and open again.

“My coat!” He darts instinctively back inside.

“Mathieu!”

The doors are shutting. Mathieu snatches his coat and lunges toward me. But we had our chance, and the same doors that gave us lead before are less forgiving this time. Mathieu’s face is surprised, then sheepish as he quickly abandons his hopeless clawing. He lays a sweaty palm on the glass and mouths something to me. The train starts to pull away toward its next destination, quite on its own authority.

“What?” I shout, placing my palm against the cool glass. I cannot feel his warmth, though there is the illusion that our hands are touching. A rising sense of panic floods me as the train hurtles down the tracks. I run beside it, not wanting to let go.

He repeats his message.

I can’t help but smile.

He actually told me to have fun.

And, to my astonishment, I do.

It feels good to escape our prickly conversation and Paris, which for all her beauty, plays like a series of stereoscopic images just past my reach. It’s gorgeous and dignified, but also a bit paralyzing. My television-suckled brain desires variation, even vulgarity. Disneyland Paris is so artificial that it flaunts its vulgarity on its taffy-colored chiffon sleeves. I let my guard down and allow myself to be lulled by her gauzy, vanilla-scented embrace.

Once I realize that Mathieu is gone and unlikely to return, especially since this is a good excuse for him to pretend that the idea was untenable (but
it wuz impozeeble, Day-zee!)
, I shed the expectation of seeing him and the burden of convincing him of the park’s charm, which is considerable. Smaller than Disneyland and more manageable by foot, I marvel at the remarkable symmetry it maintains with its sister parks, down to the Cowboy Cookout Barbecue in Frontier Land that serves racks of ribs and grilled corn on the cob. The people are eating it all up. It is a multicultural bonanza, but French is still the dominant language spoken and engagingly raised in sing-along here. A sizable contingent of Mathieu’s countrymen does not share his horror of kitsch or sentimentality, and they reject his prejudices toward Chip and Dale, overpriced fish tacos, and perfectly choreographed parades.

I chat up an American group of senior citizens carousing around Western Europe on an Elderhostel tour while sitting on a bench and sipping a lemon slushy, and again in line for the Phantom Manor. I am happy to hear that many are nearly neighbors
(Cleveland? Why, I’m from Pittsburgh!)
, conveniently ignoring the fact that this would mean nothing back in The States. Because it does mean something here. They are my countrymen and women, though many of them are fat and maybe a trifle dull (allusions to Sartre more likely to be met with nothingness than being). Probably half of them had the shortsightedness to vote for George W. Bush on an absentee ballot, but they are forthright and friendly and touch my heart with their direct, if still gentle, questioning (
You’re not alone, dear? Does your daddy know you’re seeing a Frenchman? Is he feeding you enough?)
.

One of them, a lady named Ruth Ann, who has a lovely, if slightly tinted, permanent, volunteers to sit with me on a “Doom Buggy” as we curl our way through the not-so-phantasmagoric array of ghouls, goblins, and other animatronic concoctions. I try to imagine Mathieu seated next to me as the skinny, buffoonish ghost inserts himself into our reflected buggy image near the end of the ride, but the spirit seems a more hospitable and likely passenger. Ruth Ann actually yelps a little at the sight of him. We dissolve into giggles like a couple of schoolgirls, and she invites me to her home in Sarasota, if I’m ever down that way and in need of a place to stay. They do a killer dinner theater, apparently.

It’s lame, but I cry a little when she hugs me good-bye. Her bosom gives slowly, like a quilted pillow, and she smells of Jean Naté and mint lozenges. I watch her walk carefully toward the restroom with her posse, those arthritic knees making her waddle slightly, but still owning the grace of a lady in control of her identity: American, Jewish, Born in Brooklyn, Retired in Florida, Mother of Four, Grandmama to Eleven, Marvelous Millie-Loving, Purple-Haired, Kind Ruth Ann.

What could I say in return? One-time American, Now Nationless, Religiously Confused, Unemployed, Ex-Student, Modern Art-Loving, Unmaternal Lover of Mathieu. What does that say about me? Jesus, everyone and his gay brother loves modern art. The other stuff is so nebulously gray. Except for Mathieu, who moves deeper than all color.

So there’s my identity for you. A bunch of nothingness, and a man who may no longer want me or my squandered ovaries. After all, he sacrificed his leather shoes readily enough the other night to do something he wanted to do. Why should he have gone back so impulsively to fetch his coat when cornered by something
I
wanted? To get away, I must assume. The subconscious is a brilliant strategist. Who knows? Maybe mine tipped me off that first day in Paris as I walked down the aisle of that other train and noticed a man so devoted to being alone that he could not afford to glance at any of the other passengers, even the striking foreigner biting her lip in feigned confusion, but burrowed deeper into his book with the monochromatic cover and impossibly Danish author. And maybe this same subconscious worked the numbers and devised a scheme—embarrassing, if ultimately successful—that would force him to confront her, and the Meaningful Book she clutched as a talisman to her intelligence. Maybe. Then again, I might just carry too much crap in my carry-on. What would Freud, or for that matter, Sartre, say? I should really start reading the latter. But whenever I pick up Mathieu’s English copy of
Critique of Dialectical Reason
, I have this irrepressible urge to pluck my eyebrows, or something equally less excruciating.

To be honest (if that is possible while passing the Disneyland Paris version of the Becky Thatcher Showboat), I am beginning to wonder whether loafing really suits me. I know what I said before, about being brilliant at it, but I work hard at everything I do. It is the American Way to soak up new challenges, even when that means rejecting all challenges. But should I have to apply myself to something that ought to be effortless? Have I expanded my greedy hour from our little teahouse into a gluttonous bender that I cannot sustain? Did I embrace this unlikely style of living only to secure Mathieu? Are ponderous epiphanies allowed in Disneyland, or do I have to pay extra?

It is true that I have gained more understanding in the past two weeks than in any year, yet I am consumed by a terrible, animal restlessness I cannot shake. All of my energies seek Mathieu: when I can see him, for how long, and to what end. Every day I encounter sublimity. Yet it comes in flashes, like heat lightning that cannot be photographed, leaving me wanting, always wanting, in the blackness left behind.

I am jealous of a goddamn typewriter. I hate people who do not exist.

Even while dreaming, he slips away. The names of his characters—
Gerard, Jean
, and
Violet
—find his lips more often than my own lately. I guard his eyes some nights, watching for real and imagined betrayals with every twitch of that shuttered lens. I have become like Milton’s Satan from
Paradise Lost:
expelled from this heaven of mine through my desperation to be the favorite, and the resentment of serving a higher power than my own. For Mathieu, in spite of his braying to the contrary, is writing, and in droves. His frantic, gunmetal typing is a shield I have no hope of piercing, and so I flee his apartment to escape the temptation to just ram on through, and be bounced.

For that strange madness—the artistic cycling of feeling into thought, and thought into feeling, which Mathieu describes as “an explosion of tongues”—is a beautiful thing to contemplate in the aftermath, when viewing a Pollock, or reading a Rimbaud poem. But viewed up close, in the act, it is frightening in its capacityfor shutting out the world, and me within it. The channeled voices occupy him far more eloquently, and completely, than I could hope.