The Light of Paris (11 page)

“Nice to meet you.”

“Hey, do you want some breakfast?” Sharon asked.

“Nah, I already ate. But I'll have some coffee.” And with that, Cassandra tied her dog to the railing and hopped over like Sharon had. After
pulling another table toward ours, Cassandra settled in, ordering a coffee from the waitress.

“So you own a knitting store?” I asked, trying to keep the doubt from my voice.

“Yeah. We opened last year down the street, by Java Good Day.”

“They're where the fancy dog store used to be. The one that sold, like, tutus and socks for dogs. Remember?” Sharon interjected.

“Right. Thank God that place is gone. It used to creep me out.”

“I know. I actually called in a woman to do a spiritual cleansing when we moved in to chase away the ghosts of all those poor dogs forced to wear doggie nail polish and bows in their fur. Totally legitimate business expense,” Cassandra said. She picked up a grape from Sharon's fruit bowl and popped it in her mouth. “So how do you guys know each other?”

“We went to high school together. And now I'm selling her mom's house,” Sharon explained. “She's in town to help out.”

I liked that she gave me an alibi, but of course Cassandra didn't know me, couldn't have cared less why I was there, or who my mother or my husband were, or why I wasn't wearing my wedding ring. No one cared. No one cared about my clothes or what I was supposed to be doing. It was as liberating as a sprinkler in summertime, and I wanted to throw my arms back and let it wash over me.

“Cool,” Cassandra said, and helped herself to another grape.

“Sharon Baker.” I recognized Henry's voice and looked up. “And you said you'd never eat at another restaurant.” Clearly excited to see him, Sharon jumped up from her chair and gave him a hug over the railing.

“To be fair, you don't serve breakfast,” she said, releasing him and sitting back down.

Henry was wearing sunglasses, and he had a newspaper folded under one arm and a paper cup of coffee in his hand. Cassandra gave him a hug, too, and then he spotted me. “The Lady Bowers,” he said, dropping me a mock courtly bow.

“Sir Gastropub,” I returned.

“Nice to see you again. I didn't know you all knew each other.”

“Sharon and I went to school together. Cassandra and I just met. You, on the other hand, are apparently Magnolia's best-kept social secret.”

He pushed his sunglasses up into his hair, which was as messy as it had been when I'd seen him the last time, though he was less covered in dirt. His pants were baggy and worn at the knees, and his T-shirt was loose over his broad body, but to my surprise I felt a little shimmer inside when I saw him. Which was stupid, of course. I was married, and Phillip was far better-looking than Henry. I blushed anyway when I looked at his scruffy beard, thinking of how it might brush against my skin, and then stopped myself from wondering anything else at all.

“I'm pretty much the sun around which the Magnolia social scene orbits,” Henry said, as if he were admitting a great burden. I snorted into my water, imagining him at the country club with Betsy Lynn Chivers and my mother and Lydia Endicott, who always looked as though she had been soaked in lemon juice.

“Henry used to be in a band with my boyfriend.” Sharon gestured at Henry with her knife as she went back to her pancakes.

“A band? Well, aren't you full of hidden secrets,” I said.

“It was a long time ago. And we were really atrocious.”

“So why'd you quit? Atrocious sells these days, or haven't you heard?”

“I got too old for that crap. Staying out all night at clubs with kids ten years younger than me? Not my idea of a good time. Also, I found it was much more rewarding to do things I didn't suck at.”

“Hey, are you doing anything for First Friday this weekend?” Cassandra looked up from her assault on Sharon's breakfast and squinted up at Henry.

“Oh, you know. The usual. Feeding hungry people. What about you?”

“There's a knitting group meeting in the store and I've got a fiber
artist who's displaying some of her stuff. It's amazing—you should come check it out if you can get away.”

“I should be able to,” Henry said.

“What's First Friday?” I asked.

“First Friday of every month they close off the street and make it like a block party. All the stores and restaurants do something special, there's live music. You should come! It's a good time.”

“They block off the whole street? My mother must hate it.”

“So you'll come, then,” Henry said.

“Wouldn't miss it for the world.”

“And don't forget, you're invited for dinner at the restaurant. Anytime you like.” He pointed his newspaper at me and I nodded obediently. “Speaking of which, I've got to bail. Nice to see you all. Cassandra, let me know if you all want refreshments for Friday. We'll work something out.”

“Awesome,” she said, and he waved as he turned and headed back up the hill toward my mother's house and his restaurant.

“How do you know Henry?” Sharon asked.

“We just met in the yard the other day,” I said, omitting the parts about my pajamas and my strawberry feeding frenzy.

“He's a nice guy.”

“My mother can't stand him.”

“Well, you can't ask for better proof than that,” she said, flashing me a wicked grin.

The three of us sat in the sunshine, lingering over coffee long after the waitress had cleared our dishes. I lived so much of my life in taxicabs, in climate-controlled rooms, that I had forgotten what a real neighborhood felt like, one where people lived and worked and ran into each other by coincidence instead of by engraved invitation. As we sat, people came by—people Sharon knew, people Cassandra knew, artists and musicians and store owners. Wanee, who owned the Thai restaurant down the street, stopped by long enough to say hello and invite me to lunch
there. Cassandra introduced me to Kira, a sculptor who owned an art-supply store a few blocks away, and Pete, who had bought the coffee shop with his partner, and Sharon's boyfriend, Kevin, arrived with the twins in tow and dark circles under his eyes and we talked and laughed and watched the kids running around the now empty tables. I automatically reached into my purse for my antacids, and realized, with a little jolt of surprise, that my stomach didn't hurt.

Walking home, the noise of The Row fading behind me, absorbed by the trees shading the sidewalk and whispering soft blessings above my head, I couldn't stop smiling. How funny, how sad, to realize at this late date that Magnolia wasn't only the country club and Ashley Hathaway and Ladies Association literacy fundraisers. It was Cassandra and knitting groups and Kevin's band and restaurateurs and people who opened Wiccan shops on The Row and sold crystals and sage and led past-life-regression workshops.

It made me love Magnolia in a way I never had. How many First Fridays had I missed? How many meals with people whose stories could make me laugh and who made me want to sit them down and say, “Now, tell me everything about this thing you love”? How much had I missed out on because I had never thought to push the boundaries of what I knew? And who was I doing this for? The hair, the clothes, the right committees, the perfect husband who wasn't the perfect husband for me—I certainly didn't care about any of those things, and I didn't like most of the people who did. So why did it matter to me?

My mother's house, which had always seemed so big, seemed so small as I turned up the walk toward the front door. Looking to the side, I saw the restaurant's parking lot was empty, but I could still hear sounds from inside, faint music and a clatter of pans and an occasional shouted demand. I longed to be there. I longed to be back at the table at the café down the street, greeting everyone who came by, getting to know them and this new way of seeing my hometown.

Margie sat alone at breakfast in the hotel, fuming. Evelyn hadn't come back the night before; her bed lay as still and untouched as when she had left. Margie had tried to read a novel, had tried to write, first a story and then a letter to her mother. But how could she explain the truth now, when the last letter she had sent had been lies?

She had written those things with the expectation that her relationship with Evelyn would get better—that Evelyn would
behave
better—when they were on land. But of course nothing had improved, and Margie was left with an overwhelming fear that this adventure might be over before it had truly begun, that Evelyn's behavior would mark Margie as an unsuitable chaperone, that her parents would demand she return and everything would go back to the way it was before, the musty parlor, the clock on the mantel chewing away the hours, the awkward dinners with desperate bachelors or widowers, and the endless growing sadness inside her as she realized there was no escape.

Well. Enough of this. She had been looking over her Baedeker, and she had decided she would go out on her own, Evelyn be damned. As long as she returned before dinner, she would be sure to catch Evelyn preparing for her night out, and the two of them would have a conversation. Margie would allow her this time in Paris, but when it was time
to leave, it really would be just the two of them, as planned. When she pictured it in her mind, she was firm and strong, and Evelyn recognized the wisdom of it and nodded agreeably.

Outside, her confidence faded. In the hotel, most everyone had spoken at least some English. But here, on the street, she heard nothing but French. Margie panicked slightly at the sound—she had studied French in high school and college, but hadn't spoken it since, and she longed for the artificial environment of the classroom, of the single, American-accented dialect, of the slow, steady speech of her teachers and professors. She had never imagined the different accents she would need to contend with, the people who mumbled or spoke quickly, or that when she descended into the Métro station and asked a question about which platform the train might be on, she might be answered with anything other than the orderly dialogue laid out in her textbooks:
Où est le train
?
Le train est là.
Instead, the man at the ticket window released a torrent of rapid French, of which Margie caught only the words for “right” and “left,” and, unable to remember which was which, she retreated, burying herself in a crowd of people and praying they were going where she wanted to go.

But she did find her way, unfolding the maps from her guide book and, when she got close enough, following other people who seemed to be slightly less lost than she. In the Louvre, she found herself tagging along after groups of Americans as though she belonged, attaching herself at the end, listening to the comforting width of American vowels, the drawls and sprawls of Southerners and Bostonians alike. The museum's floors creaked and groaned pleasantly beneath their feet as they moved through, and Margie found her mind wandering away from the art to the palace itself. She could picture the courtiers, the kings and queens, moving along the same floors, and she closed her eyes and tried to feel their steps beneath hers. In the larger halls, she imagined people arriving for balls in the grandest, most extreme costumes, saw herself
stepping out of a carriage in a high, powdered wig, her face stylishly made up, her ball gown shimmering, and there would be a handsome man to greet her—a prince!—and he would . . .

“Pardon, mademoiselle.”

Margie opened her eyes to find herself standing in a doorway while a couple, attempting to pass by, stared at her curiously. She shook her head, breaking free of her daydream's spiderweb strands, and stepped aside, offering a sheepish smile. Still, she kept looking for her prince as she moved through the rooms, her eyes dropping on one young man or another, picturing her hand in his as they strolled together, on his in a courtly dance, or resting on his face during a caress. She was awful, she knew; she should have been paying attention to the art, should have been improving herself, but her imagination always seemed to carry her away.

She walked home through the Tuileries, moving as though she were drifting, the afternoon sun falling across picnickers, strollers, young children carrying ice creams. Maybe this was why they called Paris the City of Love—its languid beauty gave her the feeling of endless summer, an eternal freedom, making love impossible to suppress. She smiled her way through the gardens, emerging to the rude insult of the traffic around the Place de la Concorde, buses and motorcars and horses and wagons all in chaos, and drifted her way dreamily back to the hotel.

It was late afternoon, and the light was strange and golden, a hint of violet in the sky and a stronger yellow where it fell across the endless rows of Haussmann buildings, their black balconies and windowsills spilling over with flowers, red and purple and blue and white. The people moved more slowly than in Washington or New York, strolling along the streets instead of hurrying, and everywhere were cafés and restaurants, people sitting at tables on the sidewalks, eating, or drinking coffee and smoking and talking. As she walked, she watched the crowds, the faces passing by, the people in the restaurants or at their own windows. The smell of food was overwhelming—mussels in butter and garlic sauce, their shells
gaping open at the sky, warm bread, yeasty and steaming, the sharp snap of fresh green beans.

She felt, wandering through the city, as though she were a part of it already, as though it belonged to her now that she had seen it. When she didn't actually have to speak to anyone, she rather liked the French wafting through the air around her, the snatches of conversation she heard as she passed by a café, the occasional sharp shout like an arrow—a mother calling out the window to a child, or a workman barking a warning. And being alone felt strange and new. Had she ever been alone this much before? Even when she locked herself away in her room, feeling very much like Emily Dickinson as she scribbled out her stories, she was not alone. She could hear her mother and the maid moving around the house, the clatter of dinner being prepared in the kitchen below, or, while she read at night, the murmur of her parents' voices in the parlor. Here, too, she was surrounded by people, yet separate from them. She felt pleasantly anonymous, isolated by language and culture but mostly by choice, and she moved through the city streets as though she were held in a globe of glass. She ate an early dinner in a café, she drank a rich, red wine, she finished with crème brûlée, heedless of her waistline, and walked home to the hotel in a pleasant sugar haze.

Margie had lingered over dinner, and when she returned to the hotel, she could see Evelyn had come and gone already; the mess was slightly disturbed, and the air smelled of Evelyn's perfumes and lotions, of lemon and rose and lavender. She might have gone to look for Evelyn, but where would she begin? The city was wide and busy, opening itself to the night, and her cousin could be anywhere. As the evening fell, the cafés came alive, the streets, which had gone quiet for a time, filled again. In the other buildings windows glittered in the fading light, blank faces hiding their secrets, and Evelyn could have been behind any one.

Across the street, music drifted up from a basement, and Margie saw people descending the stairs to enter. A nightclub, then, though the
people going inside looked utterly normal, far unlike the degenerates she had always been warned about. She could go, couldn't she? No one was stopping her. But the stories she had been told froze her there, the pleasure of independence she had felt a few hours ago swallowed by the habit of fear. What if she went out and were mugged? Or mistaken for a lady of the evening? What if, once they were inside, those utterly normal people turned into angry, violent drunkards? But oh, that music. She'd heard so little jazz—her parents certainly didn't listen to it at home, nor was it played at any of the parties she went to. But didn't it make you want to dance? Margie leaned against the window, looking down, her feet moving sadly on their own, wishing she had the courage to go out and be part of things.

That was how it went. Evelyn came and went when Margie wasn't there, and Margie began to suspect more and more that Evelyn was avoiding their inevitable confrontation. Margie woke early, walking through the streets when they were still quiet, the trash men and the bakers about their business, the rest of the city stirring sleepily. She went to the places she had read about, had dreamed about—she walked through the Luxembourg Gardens, envious of the lovers who lingered there between the statues, who kissed underneath the shade of the trees, making her blush and look away as she hurried past. She climbed the endless stairs to Sacre-Coeur and sat on the steps with a hundred other people, watching the sunset, all of Paris spread out below her like an offering. She walked across the Pont Saint-Michel, waving to the boatmen who passed below, and lingered in the tiny shops on the Île de la Cité and then disappeared into its crooked, ancient streets, so quiet it was as though the entire town had paused around her and was holding its breath. She fell a little bit in love with every young man she saw, and she sat on the steps of the Panthéon, its columns soaring majestically behind her, and wrote imaginary love letters and lines of poetry to try to capture the ache of emotion in her heart. She never wanted to leave.

In this way, a week went by, and then one night when she went back to the hotel, scurrying home as the city turned into the night version of itself, the darker side that still made her so afraid, she found Evelyn waiting for her in their room. To her surprise, Evelyn was packed, though they weren't due to leave Paris for another week.

“Hello,” Margie said tentatively. Closing the door behind her, she let her hand linger on the knob, as though she might need to make a quick escape.

Evelyn was dressed to go out, and Margie, who had been, as usual, floating along in her own daydream in which she was as beautiful and stylish as any of the women she passed on the street, felt suddenly sad and dowdy. Evelyn was wearing white, sheer and gauzy, like a fairy's dress, covered with beads of starlight. Her white wrap was trimmed with ermine, and though Margie's mother would have raised an eyebrow at wearing fur so close to summer, Margie thought it added to her glamor. Evelyn looked like one of the lost Russian princesses, like a creature formed of snow, all magic and sparkle and the promise of dreams to come.

“Hello,” Evelyn replied. Her eyes flicked impatiently up and down, evaluating Margie and, clearly, finding her lacking. Margie hunched her shoulders, wishing she hadn't worn this dress, these shoes, wondering if her stockings were bagging around her ankles, her face red, her hair messy.

“Have you been having a nice time in Paris?” Margie asked politely, and immediately hated herself for the question. There was so much she ought to have said, and yet she couldn't seem to summon the nerve to say it.

“Look, Margie,” Evelyn said, her mouth set tight, “I'm leaving. I just came by to pick up my things and get my spending money.”

“Leaving?” Margie asked weakly. The cheese she had eaten for lunch, a pleasant picnic by the Medici Fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens, which had seemed such a romantic idea at the time, churned in her stomach. “Are you going home? Are you ill?” She felt herself still clutching the
doorknob, her hand wound into a claw, and she forced herself to let go, to step forward.

Evelyn shook her head. “I'm not ill, Margie. I'm leaving Paris. And you,” she added, as if to make things clear. “Now, if you'll give me my share of the money, I'll be on my way.”

“Wait, where are you going?”

“Nowhere that matters to you.”

“Of course it matters! I'm responsible for you. Your mother would never have let you come if it weren't for me. We were supposed to travel together.” She sounded wretched, she knew, whining, as though she were in the wrong. She stood in the middle of the room, fists balled up by her sides, her knees shaking a little underneath her dress. This was not how it was supposed to go. She had been giving Evelyn a little freedom, that's all, and then when she had gotten this silliness out of her system, they would begin the trip their mothers had sent them on. The trip Margie had been dreaming of, with rich paintings and nights at the opera and handsome unexpected princes in castle gardens.

“I'm not a child,” Evelyn said, and now she was whining too, though Margie didn't want to point it out. “I don't need a chaperone. And I certainly don't need you, with all your guide books and your boring history. You may be an old maid, but I'm still young, and I want to enjoy it. I don't want to see a bunch of fusty old castles or museums. I want to see what matters
now
.”

But all those things did matter now, didn't they? Margie wanted to ask. She thought of how she had spent her days, wandering around those fusty museums and lingering in the gardens of Le Palais Royal, looking for the romantic ghosts of nobles past, and she felt ashamed. Oh, she was boring, wasn't she? She and Evelyn were never going to get along. Any change she had hoped for she now saw clearly was her own imagination, yet another unfulfilled daydream.