Last Lovers

by William Wharton

  ‘Qu’est-ce que je peux vous offrir comme vin, monsieur?’

  He hands me a wine list. I don’t even open it. I answer in English.

  ‘What do you have in the way of a simple Côtes du Rhône, monsieur?’

  He leans over me and opens the wine list, paging through till he comes to the page with the Côtes du Rhône. He now speaks in reasonable, heavily accented English.

  ‘Here is a simple but robust Côtes du Rhône, monsieur.’

  He points with his pencil at a wine costing a hundred and seventy-five francs. That’s robust all right. I barely glance at the wine list. Let him think I’m illiterate.

  ‘Good. Bring us a bottle. It should do.’

  He retreats inside himself, marks on his pad, leaning back on his heels, then swoops the wine list from my hands. I smile at Mirabelle.

  ‘Jacques, I feel from your voice that you are angry with these people. Have they done something wrong?’

  I take both her hands. They’re definitely cold.

  ‘No, Mirabelle. They’re fine and I’m having a wonderful time in my own way. It’s only all this seems so wrong when I think of the way I lived, the way we live, the trueness of our lives. This is so artificial, unrelated even to the food, it is all form and doing the right thing. I guess it reminds me too much of the way I lived most of my adult life and I’m actually angry at myself. I promise to stop.’

  ‘Perhaps we should leave. What could they do to us? We could pay for our Kir Royal and walk out the door.’

  ‘Don’t tempt me, Mirabelle. No, let us celebrate. I want to enjoy this with you and not ruin everything. I promise, we shall have a wonderful time for our mutual birthdays.’

  And we did. We laughed, and we laughed at the right things. I stopped laughing at the people around us, and we had our own private funny things, mostly about us and the clothes we were wearing. I began to feel sorry for the waiters, the maître d’, even the sommelier. Hell, they were only trying to make a living. They probably didn’t believe in all this googah any more than we did.

  We finished off with some mousse au chocolat and a coffee.

  ‘Jacques, with this chocolate and the coffee, we’ll never sleep tonight.’

  ‘Do you really want to sleep, Mirabelle?’

  I squeeze her hands, then her leg under the table. I wonder if anyone else in the room is doing the same. It doesn’t look like it. They’re taking the whole thing seriously.

  ‘No, Jacques, I do not want to sleep. I want to taste you. I know you taste better than anything they could ever cook or think of in this restaurant. Your taste is so natural and there is such variety. Am I a shameless woman?’

  ‘I think you’re a wonderful woman, and besides having good taste, you taste good, too.’

  We walk back in the night. Mirabelle doesn’t want to take a taxi. She says they always smell of cigarette smoke and the perfume and sweat of other people. So we walk. I don’t know what time it is, but the lights on the buildings are still lit. There’s less traffic on the quais. We walk slowly and feel the bottle of wine, the mousse, and the coffee fusing into our bodies and making us soft and vulnerable.

  When we arrive home, we undress each other and go to bed. We make love, just as Mirabelle wanted, and then go to sleep. We have no trouble sleeping despite the chocolate, the wine, and the coffee. Our lovemaking has melted them all into one totality and it’s just the two of us. As we go to sleep, Mirabelle whispers into my ear.

  ‘I do not think I had an orgasm, Jacques dear, but I am beginning to think I might know what it could be.’

  In the morning when I wake, Mirabelle isn’t at the foot of the bed as usual. When I go into the main room she’s standing on her head. I know, now, this is about the third position she takes with her yoga. I go back into my room and dress for running.

  When I return from my run, breakfast is being prepared and my bath is ready, hot as usual. I kiss Mirabelle on the back of the neck as I walk past. She turns to me.

  ‘That was wonderful last night, Jacques, all of it. I hope you had as fine a time as I did. It is as if I have lived all my life preparing for that particular birthday. I still cannot believe I am seventy-two. It does not seem possible.’

  ‘That’s right, Mirabelle, today’s your birthday. Happy birthday. Let me cook the meal today. Would that be all right? I can make something very American, something you’ve never eaten, I’m sure.’

  ‘Is that what you want, Jacques?’

  ‘Yes, if you want it, too.’

  ‘You know I love surprises.’

  ‘All right, you go out with your pigeons and when the bells ring come back and I’ll have a surprise for you. It will be better than Le Grand Vefour and much less expensive, too.’

  After breakfast, I go shopping. Mirabelle says she’ll practice some, then go out to her pigeons.

  I hunt all over before I find what I want. Even finding the name for them is a trick in itself, but I see some hanging in a butcher shop and from then on, it’s easy. I also find the other ingredients I need.

  This is something I know how to make. It was sort of my specialty around the house. I enjoy cooking. In the years at MBI there just wasn’t much chance for me to do any. God, what a waste, it was as if I had been trying to destroy the quality of my own life, of those I loved.

  I do the last basting and tasting just as the bells start ringing. A few minutes later Mirabelle comes in the door.

  ‘What are you cooking, Jacques? I have never smelled anything like this. It smells delicious.’

  ‘You just sit down, Mirabelle, and it will come.’

  First I serve half an avocado each with a regular vinegar, oil, and garlic dressing in the hole where I took out the pit. Mirabelle had never tasted avocado before. I show her how to eat it. She carefully munches down on the avocado flesh and at first is surprised, but then I can tell by her face she’s experiencing the wonderful nutty flavor of avocado.

  ‘But what is this? It is delicious. Is it a fruit or a vegetable or did you make it yourself?’

  ‘It’s avocado, Mirabelle. They have them in many of the markets now in France. In California, people eat them all the time. These come from Martinique. It’s one of my favorite foods.’

  My pièce de résistance is some irresistible American spareribs with a sweet and sour sauce. I also have ears of corn. Mirabelle just sits there. She touches the tops of the food gently with her fingertips.

  ‘What is it I am eating, Jacques, and how does one eat this food? I feel like a baby.’

  ‘This is finger-lickin’ finger food, Mirabelle honey, and there are no waiters watching; pick up the corn or the meat and eat the way it seems best. If you feel too messy, use your napkin. You might like some butter and salt or pepper on your corn. You eat the kernels right off the cob.’

  ‘Are you making fun of me, Jacques? Do not be cruel.’

  ‘No, really, Mirabelle. If you could see me, you’d see that’s exactly what I’m doing myself. Try it. I think you’ll like it.’

  And she does. We munch along, not talking much. I hadn’t thought of how it would be a new experience for a blind, older person to eat with fingers, but she works it out quickly.

  ‘I feel as if we have gone back thousands of years into the past, eating with our fingers, no forks or knives, just tearing meat and corn off with our teeth. And it is so delicious. Maybe this is what makes Americans the way they are, eating the food of angels as if they were devils.’

  She wipes her chin. I’m really enjoying myself. I managed to get the sauce on the spareribs to have just the right blend of sweet and sour so one can taste the tomato but it isn’t acidic. It goes beautifully with the corn. Mirabelle is searching, with her fingers, over her ribs and cobs for bits of food she hasn’t found.

  ‘Jacques, that was one of the best meals I have ever had. You could really put that restaurant last night out of business. You will have to cook us some more of your American cooking.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mirabe
lle, I don’t know how to cook many things, but I’ll try. It was fun.’

  It’s then I spring my surprise.

  ‘Mirabelle, let us drink some more of your wonderful drink with the pear. It would be the perfect way to end this birthday meal together.’

  ‘But there is none left, Jacques, I saved the bottle where it always was before, but it is empty.’

  ‘Please, Mirabelle, for me, let us pretend.’

  She stares at me a second in her perceptive blind way, then slowly stands up and goes over to the cupboard where she keeps the bottle. As she comes to me, a smile comes on her face.

  ‘What have you done, Jacques? It is full now. Did you put water in it, are you trying to change water into Loire William for me, as Christ did for his Mother with the wine?’

  ‘Do you want me to take down some glasses, Mirabelle?’

  She places the bottle on the table and turns back to the cupboard; gently, in that special way she has with her fingers, she holds two glasses by their short stems and puts them beside the liquor. She sits down.

  ‘Please, Jacques, open the bottle again as you did before. I pushed it down hard so the pear would not be rotted in the air.’

  She hands me the tire-bouchon. I push it into the cork and pull it out easily. I pour generously into our two glasses. She’s listening. We say nothing. Then I lift my glass to hers and she senses it. She holds out her glass.

  ‘To Mirabelle, the most wonderful woman in the world, for whom, as with this pear in the bottle, time does not pass. Happy birthday.’

  We drink. I’m anxious to hear her reaction. It is a long chance I took. I didn’t want to desecrate; at the same time, the coincidence was irresistible. She sips, seems to look into the glass, sips again.

  ‘It is very good, Jacques, but it is not the same. It has another flavor completely. I know nothing of these things.’

  ‘Well, Mirabelle, I wanted to buy, as a birthday present for you, a new bottle with another pear in it. I searched all over Paris for such a thing but could not find it.

  ‘Finally, I was in a small specialty wine shop for these types of liquors near the Panthéon. He had Poire William but without the pear. I told him something about us. I said I was buying it for a wonderful woman named Mirabelle.

  ‘His eyes sparkled. He turned quickly and went down a trapdoor he had behind his counter. He came up with a dusty bottle and put it on the counter between us.

  ‘“Sir, this is a twenty-year-old bottle of Mirabelle made by my father. I’m sure you will find it exquisite. To make the Mirabelle properly, it is necessary that one allow the fruit to mature on the tree until it is just ready to fall, then one must carefully pick these fruits, store them in a wooden barrel, and allow them to ferment. Fruit picked like this scarcely needs any sugar.

  ‘“It is just so that my father made this Mirabelle. This is the last of over eighty bottles he bottled. Here, see the date in his own handwriting, 1953.”

  ‘So, Mirabelle, I bought that bottle, then I brought it here. I was going to give it to you for your birthday present. Then I had the idea to pour the Mirabelle into your bottle. It seemed the right thing to do. I’m sure the man at the shop wouldn’t be too happy with what I was doing to his father’s wonderful liquor, but I hope you approve. Your approval is all I really need.’

  Tears are rolling down Mirabelle’s face again. She comes around the table and for the first time sits in my lap. Intimate as we’ve been, I’m still shocked at how light she is, it’s as if she has hollow bones like a bird. She has her glass in her hand.

  ‘Please, Jacques, drink from my glass while I drink from yours. It would make me very happy if you would do this. It is an old custom, one my mother and father practiced every birthday I can remember.’

  We drink and then Mirabelle tucks her head in the hollow of my neck and shoulder. We stay a long time like that.

  In the evenings, while Mirabelle is practicing her harpsichord, I write to my family. Mirabelle’s still working on the English Suites.

  Lorrie’s sent on the letters from Helen and I’ve been reading them one at a time in the sequence they were written. Some of them make me cry, some laugh, all of them reveal her in a way I’ve never known; as a very serious person with a great sense of humor. For the most part, she treats Lorrie’s and my separation with a light hand for such a young person. But sometimes her resentment and Lorrie’s, so well concealed, comes through. She calls me ‘the outcast.’ In these letters I begin to see how she loves me, wanted to be closer to me, but I was never really available to her.

  I answer each of her letters as I read them. I try to explain what was on my mind when I left, the sense of having lost myself and of going on a search, sort of a personal crusade. I tell her how I think I’ve found something of what I really am, and am much happier for it. I tell her in as much detail as I can the progression of experiences I’ve been through.

  Many of her letters are about the things she’s been doing at school or about boyfriends or girlfriends. I know it is all not particularly au courant now, but I respond as I would like to have responded at the time. They were important to her, so they’re important to me.

  I also receive letters from each of the other children. Jack is somewhat reserved. I guess as the oldest and the most formal of the children he resents me the most. But he’s cordial and talks some about his new work. The other two spend half their letters explaining why they haven’t written, but don’t ask why I left. I imagine Lorrie primed them to be nice.

  I try answering them as I’ve done Helen, hoping to bridge the gap in our lives. I find it takes me hours with paper and pen explaining, without complaining or begging. What I want most of all is to make up for some of the lost time, not just these last long months but all the years when I was only there physically, and not very much of that.

  I write more intimate letters to Lorrie. I start at the very beginning of my saga and tell everything that happened. Just getting down the main experiences and what I was feeling at the time fills twenty-five pages and takes three evenings.

  Then I try to tell her about Mirabelle and me. I tell about buying the suit and top hat at the marché and going to Le Grand Vefour. I tell her about Mirabelle’s pigeons, how she can handle them, about her harpsichord playing and the way she learned so many languages by herself, just with tapes. I tell about her doing yoga and how she exercises every morning while I run. I tell how she became blind, the terrible shock of it, and how she can see my paintings now but still can’t see anything else.

  I don’t tell how Mirabelle got so she could see. I do tell how we started by painting together, how she opened my mind and heart to the beauty of the world so my painting began to make sense.

  It’s hard to write all this and not hurt her. But I’m convinced it must be if we’re ever to be together again. I don’t want to hide what I am, what I’ve become, from her.

  For example, in telling about our visit to Le Grand Vefour I mention Mirabelle cutting my beard before I realize Lorrie doesn’t even know I have one. So I back up and tell how I’ve had a beard for some time now and enjoy it. I ask if this would be too difficult for her to take, to become accustomed to. I tell her also that I’m going quite gray. In this time that’s passed, I’ve gone from a man with gray temples to a man with pepper-and-salt hair receding at the forehead. My beard is, if anything, even whiter.

  Lorrie writes back the most beautiful letters, telling me about her life, the children, assuring me that there are no hard feelings with any of the kids except perhaps for Jack.

  It feels wonderful to be in contact with all of them. I worry about Mirabelle. We don’t have much time alone together; the writing takes so much time in addition to my painting. Also, after I’ve finished, I’m dead tired. I can feel myself drained in a way not even painting has ever done.

  Each evening, as I finish, Mirabelle always knows. She’ll come out of her music room, stand behind my chair, put her hands first in my hair, gently massaging, then
massage my neck and down my back. Her hands, so small, so gentle, are also strong. She rubs and strokes the tension out, across my shoulders and down my arms.

  Often, then she’ll invite me into her music room and play for me. She has a tremendous repertoire, including Scarlatti, Handel, and others I’ve never heard. It is as if strength from her pours back into me through the music. I guess it’s because I don’t play. Music, more than anything, is nourishment for my soul. I take it into my heart and it flows through my body.

  Sometimes, especially if I’ve been painting all afternoon, I drop off to sleep with the music. Mirabelle says she doesn’t mind because she knows it’s what I need. Always, if I’ve fallen asleep, she comes to me, gently strokes my forehead and kisses my closed eyes, my nose, my lips with soft featherlike kisses until I wake and she leads me almost drugged to my bed.

  Sometimes I’m asleep again when she comes in beside me. She’ll touch me softly all over, knowing with her sensitive fingers if I want to sleep.

  Usually, no matter how tired I might have thought I’d been, she can arouse me and our lovemaking proceeds almost as in a dream, soft, drifting, slow movements, practically uninterrupted with the moment of my insertion and careful, gentle movements almost as if we’re underwater. I fall asleep sometimes after I’ve come, especially now she’s learned to be on top of me and control the movements of our sexual union herself. She’s so light, I scarcely feel her weight, only her intensity.

  My painting is going well. On some days when it rains, I paint inside the apartment, first looking out the window, then setting up small still lifes in my room by the window. As a student I’d always disliked painting still life. But now, with what I’ve learned about one’s personal inner vision being more important than the subject matter itself, I find still life an interesting challenge. It’s nice for Mirabelle, too. She can be comfortable beside me without the noise and confusion in the streets.

  One day when it’s raining, I start another portrait of Mirabelle. The reason I do this is because the portrait I painted of her when we first met is the only painting she can’t see. If it’s in her field of vision she automatically becomes blind to everything. It’s really strange. The morning when she saw the painting for the first time, I had it hanging on the wall over my bed, separate from the rest. I like looking at it as I’m undressing for sleep. That’s why she couldn’t see it. Now I want to try painting with my new vision, my new skills, my knowledge and love for her revealed.