Paris Mon Amour

by Isabel Costello

  My sigh expressed something I had not been capable of articulating but it was a lot more complicated than relief. Dr Lafarge ventured a smile as she handed me tissues to clean myself up. The weird hollowness that always follows an internal felt different now I wasn’t sick any more.

  ‘It’s not my husband’s baby,’ I told her when we were back at her desk, my voice devoid of emotion. I don’t know why I told her, or what I expected by way of a reply.

  For a split second I could see the whites all the way around her irises. ‘Ah,’ she said, turning away to a drawer. She spent a long time flicking through papers before handing me a brochure for a counselling service. ‘In case you need to talk to someone,’ she said. Unwanted pregnancy, genetic abnormalities, testing for hereditary conditions; numerous scenarios were listed, none of them mine.

  ‘Otherwise I’ll see you in four weeks, and by then…’ Her voice trailed off but I got what she meant. The end of the first trimester would be approaching. As I was leaving, she said something to me in an off-the-record tone. ‘I feel for you, Alexandra.’

  Her office was near the Gare Saint-Lazare, a short walk from the big department stores on Haussmann. The contrast between the gravity of the medical consultation and a shopping trip had a certain appeal; I craved a moment of lightness and frivolity. It was my mother’s birthday in two weeks’ time but given the unreliability of the French and US postal services, it was not too soon to send a gift. Something special was called for to mark the big thaw between the two of us. Since everything blew up with Philippe she was checking in on me almost daily and we were already talking about her next visit. If the worst comes to the worst, you can always come home, she said. I tried to imagine myself back where everything went wrong the first time, a single mom working some deadbeat job, dependent on my mother to watch my kid. Back amongst people who knew my story (it’s not the kind anyone forgets), good honest people who might shake their heads sadly and say to each other, The odds were always going to be against her, after what happened here.

  I was casting around for gift ideas as I walked when I became aware of a fracas on the opposite side of the street. A police officer was raising her voice to someone on the edge of the square in front of the church of Sainte-Trinité, and you don’t see cops on the streets that much in Paris. People were walking by, shaking their heads and covering their noses. Dégueulasse!

  Suppressing my instinct to steer clear, I crossed over and the scene began to take shape. The offender was a woman of maybe sixty years old sitting on the ground, her skin nut brown and wizened by the sun, wild grey hair all over the place, layer upon layer of ragged skirts fanned out around her. And from underneath them copious streams of urine were tracing a delta across the asphalt. She was cackling, oblivious to it all.

  ‘Laissez-la tranquille!’

  The police officer rounded on me with a look of pure aggression, which transformed into amusement when she took stock of me, a nondescript member of the public, scared stiff. She was an intimidating presence, at least six feet tall, her uniform tight around ample curves, hair in tight cornrows under her cap. On her belt were the standard issue gun and baton. Her authority and confidence gave off a charge as powerful as any man’s.

  ‘You think this is the way to live, madame?’ she asked me, pointing at the woman with her reinforced boot. ‘There are services available for these people. And public toilets, over there.’

  ‘I just… It’s just so sad,’ I said, like an imbecile.

  The police officer crossed her arms over her chest, tilting her head in mock anticipation of my miracle solution to all the city’s problems. What a job like hers would do to anyone’s view of human nature, day upon day. How randomly life deals the breaks. Take the three of us women, who couldn’t be more different. A few opposite strokes of fate and it could be that officer on the wrong side of the law. The woman on the ground could be a respectable grandmother. It could be me sitting there in my own filth, raving. It could yet happen.

  Chapter Sixty

  Philippe was watching the news. He looked over his shoulder and greeted me but it was just a reflex. I hung around in the hall before taking the groceries into the kitchen. It was about time we ate a square meal, and if he decided to walk out that was his call.

  In the event we managed eight or ten minutes at the dining table together, at right angles rather than facing each other as we used to, eyes locked on our plates. Philippe poured red wine for himself and stared at the contents of his glass. I pleated and smoothed my linen napkin so often that it remembered its folds like a Roman blind.‘Arrête!’ he said in the end. I stopped.

  After cleaning up I went to what was now my room, the previous haven of guests who were neither entirely welcome nor entirely unwanted. Which about summed it up, really.

  It was very late when I was woken by the unmistakable noise from the street. There was something very wrong with that motorbike. My phone rang while I was still at the bedroom window. For once I had to stick to my guns. ‘You can’t be here, Jean-Luc. Philippe knows everything.’

  More than he did. It was wrong, and I knew it.

  ‘You have to let me in,’ Jean-Luc insisted. ‘Tell me the code.’ I recognised the odd note in his voice from that day at the Malavoines’ and other times I’d made him mad and it made my windpipe constrict, as always.

  ‘I’ll come down.’

  ‘No, let me in, I said. If you don’t, I’m going to bash this door down. Watch if you don’t believe me.’

  As I surveyed the scene from the fourth floor, he angled the motorbike towards the wooden doors to the courtyard, looked up to check I was there and revved the engine. I had no doubt he would do it.

  ‘Stop, please, before you wake the whole street. I’ll tell you the code.’

  He killed the engine and my courage ebbed away with it. Now what? Did I stay inside the apartment or try to head him off at the stairs? If we had any kind of conversation in the courtyard people would hear. It was almost two in the morning.

  I guessed before he even reached our floor that he was drunk, high, or both. I hadn’t seen the crash helmet a minute ago, and he wasn’t carrying it. As he clomped up the stairs I stood in the doorway, trying to occupy the entire width.

  ‘You said you’d let me in.’

  ‘I didn’t mean into the apartment! You know Philippe’s here – he drove all the way back from Nice after your mother said her piece.’

  It was some twisted comfort knowing Philippe was home, fast asleep only metres away. In what kind of a sick situation does a woman need her husband as protection against her lover?

  ‘Actually, it’s him I want to see,’ Jean-Luc said, staggering. ‘Philippe! Are you there?’ he hollered, his cries echoing up and down the stairwell. As he was so close to the top of the steps I had no option but to grab him like I had in the restaurant the night he returned to Paris, only harder. As I pulled him toward me he tried to kiss me, tasting of whisky. My stomach heaved with an urge to be violently sick but I didn’t have that luxury. I was behaving like the hostage negotiator in the crappy film Vanessa and I had watched, with artificial calmness, manufactured reassurance. The humouring you until you do what I want approach.

  ‘Philippe!’ he roared again.

  From downstairs a neighbour threatened us with the police.

  ‘Don’t do this, Jean-Luc, you’re not thinking straight. Let me get you a cab.’ He was in no condition to be riding around Paris on that heap of junk. ‘Or I’ll call your father to come pick you up.’

  Nobody else knew the state Jean-Luc was in, I was sure. It was the one thing I hadn’t told Philippe – it seemed like an insult too far expecting him to care.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ He appeared behind me in his robe. It was only then that I registered I was standing there in a sleeveless nightdress that was only mid-thigh length. I pulled my raincoat off the rack inside the door and Philippe pushed past me out onto the corridor, where Jean-Luc was now leaning against the ele
vator.

  ‘Philippe,’ I said. He ignored me.

  ‘You’ve got a nerve, showing your face here,’ he said to Jean-Luc. ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’

  ‘There’s something I want to tell you.’ Jean-Luc sounded drunker than ever but that wasn’t it. For all his bravado, he was scared of Philippe and I was scared for all of us.

  ‘I don’t want to hear it. Go home!’

  I stepped forward but Philippe blocked my way with his arm.

  ‘I didn’t just fuck your wife. I love her.’

  Philippe flew at him, landing a punch in the face before gripping his shoulders, giving him a vigorous shake. ‘You little bastard! Alexandra is my wife, you said it.’

  I said nothing as I slipped past Philippe to form a physical barrier between them.

  To hit Jean-Luc again, my husband would have to manhandle me first, although from the aggression flooding off of him I would no longer rule anything out.

  ‘Go, Jean-Luc, please! I’ve told you it’s over. Philippe knows everything.’

  Jean-Luc gave a manic laugh. ‘You think?’ he said, with an unsettling look aimed at both of us. ‘Did you know I fucked your daughter last night?’

  I heard Philippe take a huge breath in and took advantage to manoeuvre him back into the apartment.

  ‘If your father wasn’t a good friend I would kill you this minute, you piece of shit!’ he yelled across me. ‘If you’ve laid a finger on my daughter… You’d better be lying.’

  I turned to Jean-Luc, recalling the photos on Vanessa’s phone, her saying in my dreams. The way she’d been used by Boris and the boy at the party who didn’t call. ‘Oh, please tell me that’s not true. Vanessa’s a kid – I can’t believe you’d do that.’

  Philippe was watching closely. I didn’t know if it was true or not; my doubt became his certainty. His fury turned to anguish in front of us.

  ‘What have I ever done to you? What has Vanessa got to do with this?’ he asked Jean-Luc. ‘Wasn’t it enough for you knocking up my wife?’

  ‘No!’ I warned Philippe under my breath. He stared at me, realisation breaking over his face. ‘God almighty,’ he groaned. ‘When did my life turn into such a disaster?’

  Jean-Luc had sobered up in an instant, his eyes piercing me. ‘You’re pregnant? Is it mine?’ I didn’t have to answer. He knew. We all knew. ‘If that’s true how can you stand there and let him send me away?’

  I didn’t know how I could be so heartless when I felt the way I did inside.

  ‘Nothing here is yours,’ Philippe said, with scant regard for the facts, giving him another shove. ‘And if you don’t get out right now I’ll call the police myself.’

  Jean-Luc stumbled down the half flight of steps and steadied himself against the wall.

  ‘I love you, Alexandra,’ he said, looking up at me beseechingly. ‘I can’t live without you.’

  I was embarrassed for him, resorting to the language of cliché and cheesy ballads. Of course I didn’t think he meant it, not the second part.

  ‘You’re going to have to try,’ said Philippe, slamming the door to the apartment. From inside we could hear Jean-Luc ranting all the way out into the street.

  ‘I want to be with you, Alexandra,’ he shouted. ‘I know you love me.’

  I lay my cheek against the cool glass of the bedroom window. Lit by the streetlamp, his expression as his eyes searched for me was as clear as if he’d been lying right beside me. My sadness had always been serene, gentle. Now it flayed me to the core.

  Chapter Sixty One

  Philippe found me about twenty minutes later still in darkness, still in that same spot. Even in the dim light from the hallway I could see his face was drained of colour. ‘I said terrible things,’ Philippe said, his voice cracking.

  ‘We’ve all said terrible things. He’s not just in a bad way over this – there was a diving accident in California. I only found out a couple of days ago. I made him promise to talk to his parents but I don’t think they know.’

  ‘Go to him,’ Philippe said. I went to protest, but he wouldn’t hear it. ‘Go on,’ he insisted, snatching clothes off the chair and pushing them at me. ‘Please. You have to. He’s not going to want to talk to me. I’ll go and see Henri first thing in the morning.’ I left him sitting on the bed, head in hands.

  After the taxi dropped me at the studio I tore up the stairs that always made me so nervous two at a time, never making it to the top floor. As soon as I saw the open door to the unfinished apartment with its exposed rafters, I knew. I took Jean-Luc’s weight against one shoulder and with a sharp tug of the electrical cable he went crashing to the floor, almost taking me down with him, still involuntarily committed to breathing, if not to being.

  A single minute earlier or later and the outcome would have been different. I couldn’t stay away from him in the depths of his despair. Even then he couldn’t have what he wanted. I couldn’t save him from anything in the end, only cause more suffering. Months of it.

  He looked so young when the paramedics arrived that they assumed I was his mother and I didn’t correct them, afraid they wouldn’t take me if I told the truth. I couldn’t bear for him to make that journey alone. As I ran across the courtyard after them, I saw Mokhtar arrive home at the end of his shift. He stood with his mouth open and the moped clattered to the asphalt. It was only then I took the full impact, buckling like cheap metal as one of the men bundled me into the ambulance and we sped away on the siren’s first note.

  Since I’d fled the hospital after handing the doctors Henri’s phone number, he and Geneviève had practically taken up residence in the intensive care unit. Nobody, nothing could help Jean-Luc now, trapped between life and death. I was beside myself to think of what he’d done and to know exactly where he was and not be able to see him. Every day was a battle to stop myself from going there; from turning up to be turned away, even though all that awaited there was another scene of recrimination and impossible desire, like the night he came to our home.

  We would never be together again. Sometimes I indulged in vengeful fantasies in which I screamed at Geneviève for interfering. I railed at humanity in general for having rules about who you can fall in love with and at myself for caring what anyone thought. I reproached Philippe for his callous behaviour that night and for never sharing what he knew about Jean-Luc. Poor Philippe, the secret keeper.

  Jean-Luc had told his parents he wasn’t going back to California. They worked out for themselves that he’d developed a fear of the sea, but not why. When Henri had the sombre task of contacting the institute, he discovered Jean-Luc had been asked to leave after causing the accident in which he and the marine biologist he’d been diving with had almost drowned. The man had threatened to bring charges unless Jean-Luc left the programme. He later wrote the Malavoines a letter saying he regretted his extreme reaction.

  Jean-Luc’s problems began when he was fifteen years old. He saw the best doctors but resented their diagnoses, being ‘labelled’. He took his medication reluctantly. A charge on his credit card led to a psychiatrist he consulted in Los Angeles after the accident, who’d prescribed a new medication that made the panic symptoms worse. He’d gone back to the original drug before deciding he didn’t need it when he met me. Love is its own kind of mania and we’d both been high on it.

  But I judged nobody and blamed only myself. As I said at the start, I was the one who should have known better. Jean-Luc was only twenty-three, an occupant of another sort of in-between, the suspended reality between adolescence and full-blown adulthood, where you think you get it precisely because you don’t yet know what there is to get. He knew far more than most and, I sometimes think, far more than me.

  He was my awakener, the father of a child I never thought I’d have. He was Geneviève’s son, her only child, and she lost him. There really are no measures, and there could only ever be one small consolation.

  Chapter Sixty Two

  ‘Everyone thinks it would be
best for us to leave Paris,’ Philippe said with his back to me.

  We were at home, where we’d been circling each other for weeks since that terrible night, barely talking, never touching. He made me get out of bed and wash and eat and I followed his orders just because the default position is to stay alive. The only communication of note was when he told me Vanessa hadn’t seen Jean-Luc since returning from Nice. Hearing the relief in his voice, I felt it in my chest, a reminder that in the world beyond us, fear and guilt and grief were not all there was.

  I had not been to work since it happened; it hadn’t even occurred to me, even though my involvement was normally essential in the run-up to sending a new title to print. Maybe the new book had been put on hold. Nobody had questioned my absence, not Alain, not Lisette, and I knew she had a soft spot for me. Suzanne hadn’t called.

  Bad news travels fastest, as I well knew. Alain had become friends with Geneviève through me and I guessed it was a relief to my colleagues that I stayed away. I wasn’t who they thought I was. For a while Emily wasn’t just my best friend – she was my only friend. Some may never speak to me again.

  It took a moment to sink in, what Philippe had said about us leaving Paris.

  ‘What difference would it make?’ I said. ‘I can’t see…Our life is here, Philippe, our work. I don’t want to leave.’

  He turned to me with a look of contempt fused with pity. ‘It’s not about what you want, Alexandra.’ He held my gaze for the precise length of time it would have taken to complete the sentence, although of course he didn’t have to. It’s about what you’ve done.