Paris Summer

by Rosemary Friedman

  Why then, when he attempted to make love to me on my return from Antibes, did I turn away before thinking better of it and, not wishing to be unkind, submitted with my eyes closed – with Félix they were always open – to his caresses. When he touched me I floated unencumbered on the translucent sea; when he held my body, I looked up at the umbrella pines; when he entered me I was in a deserted cove, oblivious to the inroads into every orifice made by the coarse white sand.

  ‘Good to have you back.’ Sighing with satisfaction, Jordan kissed my forehead tenderly.

  He was not to know that I could never, would never, return.

  chapter seventeen

  Looking back on it – my meeting with Félix at Michelle’s birthday party, our time together in a separate world which only we inhabited – I attempted to convince myself that I had been in the grip of a midlife crisis, and that Dr Katz had been right. Although I started at the sound of every motor-bike, jumped when the telephone rang and looked expectantly in unlikely places for the sight of a red rose, I tried to put the episode, my affair with Félix, behind me in the interests of my family, which could disintegrate at any moment, and my marriage. I did not realize how ill I was, and in the days that followed with no sign from Félix, all reason collapsed and my symptoms became progressively worse until my entire being was at their mercy. Although I talked to myself severely, telling myself what an idiot I was making of myself, my malady, which entailed suffering and pain unlike anything I had previously experienced, would not go away and I was at a loss to understand what it was doing to me and why. The nights were the worst and I tossed and turned, as if in the grip of a fever, imagining my lover in bizarre and phantasmogoric scenarios in which I did not figure, or living it up with a panoply of nubile Kikis, Natashas, Juliettes and Olympes.

  I did call him from a call-box, my heart pounding, but all I got was an answering machine, on which there seemed to be a great many messages judging by the beeps, and the information that Félix Dumoulin was not available à ce moment but would ring the caller back. What with Michelle not talking to me, and Jordan on a knife-edge waiting for an answer from the Viscomte, the atmosphere in the Boulevard Courcelles was tense.

  Stupidly, regretting bitterly what had come between us and optimistically hoping to improve the situation, I had tried to square things with Michelle. I explained to her, woman to woman, that what appeared to be unforgivable behaviour was due to circumstances entirely beyond my control, that it was not my intention to hurt either her or her father, but that the human heart was as susceptible at forty-two as it was at eighteen, and that the psyche did not age.

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ I said.

  ‘You’re dead right. I don’t. I think you’re disgusting and I never want to have anything to do with you again.’

  Of course Jordan noticed what was going on between us. When Michelle pointedly ignored me, or when I made the mistake of asking her to do something and she told me, impertinently, to do it myself, he took her to task for her rudeness and enquired what had gotten into her and what it was all about. She told him to ‘ask Judith’ – ‘Mommie’ or ‘Mom’ hadn’t crossed her lips since we had been home – and sometimes she even referred to me, when she was addressing Jordan, as ‘your wife’. Since she had outgrown teenage rebellion Jordan put her defiant attitude towards me, coupled with her insistence that she was abandoning her law degree and not coming back to Boston with us, down to the vicissitudes of her love-life. Little did he know that it was mine that was to blame.

  On the morning that I was to fetch Joey from the airport – my mother and Walter were catching a plane straight back to the States – I noticed the Kawasaki with Félix sitting patiently astride it, waiting at the end of the street as I unlocked my car. We walked slowly towards one another and stood under a plane tree not daring to touch although there were few people about. He told me that there had been an urgent message waiting for him when he got home from Antibes, that he had been in Mulhouse, that his grandmother had had an operation.

  ‘I did not dare to telephone. J’ai beaucoup souffert. When will you come?’

  I did not answer immediately. I had intended to devote the next few days to Joey, to take him swimming and to the Jardin d’Acclimatation where there were ropes and a shooting-range. I had alienated my daughter and had no intention of alienating my son. The part of me that defined Judith Flatland as a rational human being realized that, standing under the plane tree with Félix, I had reached the point of no return, that I had had my summer and should have put an end to our folly there and then. Turning towards him, for I had been looking nervously up and down the street, I saw that he too was still in the grip of the malady with which I was consumed and in the face of which I was helpless. I was not responsible for the words that tripped feverishly off my demented tongue.

  ‘I’ll come tomorrow.’

  Joey’s delight in seeing me, and the fact that he had missed me, made up in part for Michelle’s behaviour. He loved being with Grandma Pam and Walter, and had thoroughly enjoyed the fishing, but it was obvious from the way he regressed at bath-time, allowing me to wash his grimy neck which looked as if it hadn’t been near a face-cloth since he had been away, that he was happy to be home. Picking up the threads of his life, he had already inveigled Jordan into allowing him to call his best friend, Ricky Judd, in Boston. He informed me, apropos of nothing, as I towelled him dry hugging him to me, that Ricky’s parents were getting divorced.

  ‘Ricky’s going to live with his father,’ Joey said.

  ‘Why his father?’ I rubbed his wet hair.

  ‘His mother can’t play baseball.’

  To celebrate Joey’s homecoming, Jordan put away his laptop and played regular Monopoly with his son. It was not just a game. It was about how to win in a modern world when your hotels are mortgaged and you can’t pass Go. It educated you about life, taught you how to control your emotions and how, even if you were down to your last dollar and everyone else was winning, you don’t give up. Jordan took every throw of the dice seriously, as he did everything, informing Joey as he amassed property after property, placing the Title Deeds face up in front of him before ending up in jail, that the three most important things to remember, as far as real estate was concerned, were location, location, location, and that you needed luck to buy your properties but skill to manage them. He explained the minutiae of buying at auction, the best way to sell unimproved buildings, railroads and utilities in private transactions, the finer points of bankruptcy procedures and what action to take if the Bank, which could never go broke, ran out of money. Watching the two of them, one a carbon copy of the other, the same louche posture, the same blond quiff – although Jordan swore his hair was already receding – I tried to integrate them into the landscape of my mind, to make them part of me, but there was room for no one but Félix.

  In the morning I asked Helga to take Joey to the Jardin d’Acclimatation. He did not seem to mind. I gave them money for pizzas and instructions that Helga was to keep her eyes on Joey at all times. When they had left the apartment, I watched them go down the street from the window; Joey seemed happy enough, taking six steps to Helga’s one. I showered and put on my La Perla underwear and went to meet my lover.

  What I liked about Félix and what I had missed while he had been away, was that even when we were thrown hither and thither on a sea of emotional turbulence, he didn’t cut the thread of courtship, of gallantry, even of romance that lent vitality to our love. As I approached his studio I saw him looking anxiously out of the window for me as he fed the pigeons crumbs of stale puits d’amour: inside there was a red rose on every stair. I gathered them up, one by one, as I ascended, and the petals were crushed as he took me in his arms.

  I had not intended to stay all day in the rue Dauphine but we were thirsty for each other, hungry for love. Later, entertained by street jugglers, we sat on wicker chairs outside the brasserie in the rue de Buci over an extremely late lunch which neither of
us could eat. I was reluctant to go home.

  When I put my key in the front door I expected to be assailed by an excited Joey eager to tell me of his adventure in the Jardin d’Acclimatation, but in the apartment only the gloom hit me. I called, then opened the doors. There was no Helga, no Michelle; their rooms were empty and although it was after six o’clock Joey was nowhere to be seen. I wondered what could have happened to them and was about to telephone Jordan at the office when the thought occurred to me that Helga had given into Joey’s importuning and they had gone to see a film. I reckoned that they should be back within the hour, and turning on the radio to a jazz station on which they were playing A Night in Tunisia, set about preparing dinner.

  I was assembling the salad which was to accompany the ham I had bought in the rue de Buci when I heard the front door open and rushed into the hall ready to castigate Helga for taking Joey to the cinema without my permission, without letting me know where they were. I was stopped in my tracks by the spectacle which confronted me.

  Jordan, grim-faced, was putting his door keys on to the brass tray on the table, Helga, her hair awry, had been crying, and Joey, his arm in a sling, his teeshirt filthy and his cheek grazed, was white-faced and dishevelled.

  Jordan was the first to speak.

  ‘Where were you…?’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Running to put my arms around Joey, I didn’t answer the question.

  ‘I tried to call you.’

  ‘I went to the dentist…’ the words came tumbling from my guilty tongue. ‘I told you, I’m having this root canal treatment.’

  I caught Jordan looking at me strangely, as I fiddled with Joey’s sling to cover my confusion.

  ‘Just a sprain,’ Jordan’s voice sounded terrible. ‘Luckily it isn’t broken.’

  Piecing together the story I discovered that when Helga had taken Joey to the Jardin d’Acclimatation, he had shinned up one of the climbing ropes. Waving to Helga to demonstrate his prowess – typical Joey – his attention had wavered and his hand had slipped. He had fallen into the sandpit but had managed to knock his head on the side of the path. Because his mouth seemed to be bleeding profusely, a panic-stricken Helga had called for help and an ambulance had arrived to take him to hospital. Jordan had been summoned from the office in the midst of delicate negotiations with Claude Lafarge and he had had to spend the afternoon at the hospital where Joey’s arm had been X-rayed before being strapped up. At the end of the day, when Joey was finally discharged, Jordan had taken him to the dental surgery where his broken tooth and bleeding mouth had been attended to. The dentist in question was Bob Latham, an American ex-pat whose practice was in the rue de Renard and to whom I had gone for a check-up when we first arrived in Paris.

  Bathing Joey, taking care not to disturb his grazes, I asked him, my heart in my mouth, if ‘Uncle Bob’ as he called the dentist, had said anything about me.

  ‘No.’ Joey was squeezing water from the sponge on to his sore knee.

  ‘Didn’t he mention me?’ I had to be sure.

  ‘Daddy said, “I hear Judith’s been having trouble with her teeth lately”’ – the voice was Jordan’s, Joey was a born mimic. ‘You won’t be cross with Helga will you, Mom? It wasn’t her fault.’

  ‘And what did Uncle Bob say?’

  ‘“I guess he’ll live. If he takes care what he eats for a few days he’ll keep the tooth too.”’

  ‘About me?’

  The water ran in rivulets from the sponge.

  ‘“Tell her to make an appointment.”’

  Busy with Joey, with dinner which he couldn’t eat, with pacifying Helga who refused to be pacified as if it was her fault that Joey had fallen, I managed to avoid a confrontation with Jordan who was on the phone to Sherman for most of the evening, until Joey was asleep and we faced each other in the salon.

  Almost as shocked as Joey, Jordan told me grimly that after lengthy consultation, the Viscomte de Loisy had regretfully rejected the new proposal with which the Boston team had come up and that the situation, as far as Rochelle Eléctronique was concerned, remained unchanged.

  ‘We gave the Viscomte one last chance to withdraw his insistence on the golden share.’ Jordan’s face was grim.

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said, “I think the Foreign Office has made its position quite clear, Mr Flatland.” Fucking bastards!’

  Jordan rarely swore, rarely lost his cool. My heart went out to him as he saw everything he had been working so hard towards for the past six months in danger of disintegrating. ‘He’s not going to get away with this.’ He snapped open his laptop.

  ‘You can hardly take on the French Foreign Office.’

  ‘I’ll take on the entire government if I have to.’

  His face was tense with anger.

  ‘I’ve got work to do, Judith. You go to bed.’

  chapter eighteen

  I was having lunch with Lauren. The salon de thé in its inauspicious courtyard had just reopened after the summer break and was packed with chattering women.

  ‘I wish I was going back to Boston,’ Lauren said over her Japanese tea in its distinctive silver pot. ‘J’en ai ras le bol de Paris…’

  ‘What’s wrong with Paris?’

  ‘The place is old fashioned, the people are fifty years behind the times, the bureacracy is insupportable and the Bureau de Poste is beyond belief…’

  Lauren had got it wrong. So much talent had been tapped, so many hearts had been fulfilled, so many powerful personalities had flowered in this city. Without Paris, Picasso would not be Picasso; without Paris, Chopin would not be Chopin; without Paris, Freud would not be Freud. Paris had made demands on them and they had lived up to her expectations.

  ‘I’m not going back to Boston.’

  ‘Excuse me? I presume you mean Michelle is not going back to Boston.’

  ‘Jordan has persuaded Michelle to change her mind. He told her she’s going to be on that plane if he has to carry her on. Michelle is scared of Jordan. She knows that he means it. I’m the one not going back to Beacon Hill.’

  ‘I suppose your toy boy’s at the bottom of all this.’

  ‘His name is Félix.’

  ‘That’s what he is, Judith. Your cinq à sept, your liaison dangereux, call it whatever you like. But not going back to Boston… Come on now, Judith!’

  I had thought that Lauren, a woman of the world, would understand, but although she was a veteran of the dating trenches, I doubted if she had ever known love.

  My decision had been made on the day after Joey’s accident, when contrary to Jordan’s instructions that I was to watch him like a hawk for the rest of the day in case he showed signs of concussion, I had sworn Helga to vigilance – nothing could go wrong in the apartment and I should not be gone long – and rushed into my lover’s arms. I could not help myself. I could not. I knew that I should have stayed home with Joey who was perfectly happy playing with his Game Boy and watching his videos and enjoying the attention he was getting, but I had to get my fix of the mind-altering drug that was Félix.

  In the rue de Buci I stopped at Carton to buy mille feuilles, Félix’s favourite, heavy with caramel and thick with pears. They were getting to know me in the quartier and, recognizing the familiar figures – the torch singer with her sequins, the old woman with her bag of clanking bottles, the transvestite with his long eyelashes, wobbling on his stiletto heels – I had begun to feel at home in the midst of the largely inviolate local life.

  Félix was at his easel. He was painting, apparently from memory and in his own inimitable style, the Lady with a Glove: the oval of the face was still blank. He kissed my hand gravely, turning my legs to water.

  We guzzled the mille feuilles I had brought as I fed him, at the easel, with the pastries. I told him about Joey, and about the accident, and my fabrication about my whereabouts which had been given the lie by the dentist.

  ‘What did Jordan say?’

  He had been too wrapped up
in Rochelle Eléctronique. I hoped my falsehood had passed him by.

  When we’d finished the mille feuilles, Félix threw down his brushes. We made love on the day-bed with its colourful Indian throw, then, frightened to stay in the studio any longer lest we forget the time again – I had told Helga I would not be gone long – and needing to get out of the stifling air, we walked down the rue Dauphine until we reached the Seine where we strolled, among the other lovers, from the Pont Neuf to the Pont St Michel in the footsteps of André Breton, of Baudelaire, of Rilke, of Walter Sickert and of Wagner. Stone and water neither come into nor go out of fashion; the quays along which we passed were timeless and nothing had happened to change them.

  ‘I’m not going to let you go back to Boston, Judith. Now that I’ve found you there is no way I can let you go…’

  Standing on the quayside, watched by the tourists on the bateaux mouches when I should have been caring for my son, I considered his remark which I had long anticipated, and to which I had already acquiesced in my head. I tried to analyse what it was that drew me inexorably to Félix, like Juliet to Romeo, or Héloïse to Abelard, like so many star-struck lovers through the ages. It was like trying to analyse a painting, breaking its components down into so many square inches of canvas, so many brush strokes, so many tubes of paint. Like any beloved construct, Félix was greater than the sum of his physical presence, of his caring and romantic parts.

  ‘You will have to tell Jordan…’

  He made it sound easy to surrender my life on a plate.

  ‘Will you tell him?’