“What is this?” I said, looking at the cup he’d given me. I’d talked so much I’d not put it to my lips.
He turned my cup so that he could see what was scribbled on the side. “Scotch,” he said. And then: “How are you?”
I took a sip and sputtered.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Mmm,” George said. “I find whiskey the better balm. Apologies for adulterating it with coffee, but I figured you needed the caffeine, too.”
I put the cup down and marveled at it, and George, for a moment. “You didn’t have to cancel your trip,” I finally said. “She’s going to be okay. The world still grants miracles. Even to mothers like me.”
“Meaning pretty ones?” he said.
I sniffed. I had once been a PowerPoint pro for a university president in Milwaukee, and a sideline parent par excellence of many American sports. Now I was in Paris, in a hospital, in my older daughter’s skirt, outside my younger daughter’s room, exhausted from a night out clubbing, drinking scotch with the best-dressed Englishman in Paris.
“I’m a terrible, terrible mother, George,” I said. “I’m so sorry—I understand if you want to take the twins elsewhere from now on. I recommend you take the twins elsewhere.”
“So American,” he said. “An incomplete apology, a willful misconstrual, and bad advice, all in one go.”
“George,” I said.
“Drink your medicine,” he said.
I smiled, or tried to. “You’re fired up today,” I said. I looked at his drink. “Have you been at your ‘medicine’?”
“Mine’s sans,” he said, waving his cup. “White chocolate mocha with this new vitamin thing added in. It’s better in Vietnam, but then, so are the baguettes. They’ll get the hang of it here.”
“I hope I do,” I said after a pause.
“Please do not be silly, Leah,” George said. “If anything, I—”
“Don’t say you’re the worse parent,” I interrupted. “Because—”
He looked horrified.
“Because I’m not,” George said. “I’m a fantastic parent. I lead a busy life, I don’t always see my children daily, but they are well-fed and cared for, they don’t hate me, and they don’t hate their mother. I take full credit for all of this. I take credit for teaching Annabelle and Peter taste and manners and English as it ought to be spoken. There are plenty of subpar parents in the world. I know one who is married to a sheikh and another, much older, who owns a building that houses a bookstore. But you and I are not bad parents, not by a long shot. Your youngest child is recovering from an illness that was none of your doing. Your oldest child was able to get her sister the care she needed in the dead of night in a bureaucracy-mad country not of her birth. You’ve carved out a life in Paris for yourself and your children and made space for mine. Discount none of this. Leah, you’ve practically made the short list for the World Parenting Awards.” He took a slug from my cup now. “It’s not a crowded field, god knows. But still.”
“But—George, I . . .” I didn’t know what I was going to say; I think I thought that saying something, however, would forestall tears. It did not.
He handed me his pocket square, which I took, and even used, despite the fabric feeling like it cost more than the sum total of everything I owned.
“Moving here—I knew Paris would be hard, but not this hard,” I said. “I mean, not just this, but . . .” I trailed off.
He waited before he spoke. “Did you know? I lived in the States for a while,” he said. “I went to business school there. California. Shocking, yes. Shocked me, too, that I loved it. Life—school—was so easy. I lived two blocks from a drugstore—what was it called? C-V-S—that sold whiskey—and drugs and condoms and basic groceries, not to mention a full line of batteries. Socks. It stayed open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Handy. But in Paris, I live, like you, less than a kilometer from the banks of the Seine. Charlemagne used to stroll here. At least, until he moved the capital of the Holy Roman Empire to Aachen, but that was his mistake. Not mine. Not yours.” He looked up. “Maybe it’s harder here, some days. But it’s better, every day.”
I let him make me smile. I looked at my cup. He gave it back. “Did Charlemagne drink before noon?” I said.
Now he smiled, but spoke softly. “Only after he left,” he said. He raised his cup to toast mine. “To your health,” he said.
* * *
—
It was only after George departed that I finally returned to my phone. United Airlines was telling me what? Something about Eleanor.
Eleanor?
Yes, the phone insisted, and now offered a pent-up series of her texts, truncated, that I’d have to swipe to read in full.
Please call when . . .
Delete.
If you get a . . .
Delete.
Where are you . . .
Delete.
And finally: Leah, I have . . .
I swiped.
. . . news.
CHAPTER 12
Normally, word of “news” from Eleanor would necessitate an immediate call. But I didn’t want to talk to her right then, and certainly not about her “news,” so I precluded hers with mine, via text. I explained that Daphne was in the hospital. On the mend, due to be discharged soon if all went well and—
I know, Eleanor said. I’m on my way.
Ellie had gotten to Eleanor before I had, with news of Daphne.
Eleanor now explained that the “news” she had been so eager to share earlier was that she’d booked a flight to come see us, but as soon as she’d heard about Daphne, she had accelerated her plans dramatically.
The adverb, the implied italics, the drama: all hers. Oh, what she had to do to move that flight! But what else could she do? Where, after all, was she needed most? And so on. Texts and e-mails rattled my phone throughout our hospital stay and continued once we got home. It would have been annoying—it had annoyed the nurses—but for the fact that this brought increasingly bright smiles to Daphne’s face.
Daphne was improving. Maybe it was the prospect of Eleanor arriving. Maybe it was that I’d not left Daphne’s side. Maybe it was the medicine. Maybe the doctor’s coat had been long enough after all.
* * *
—
Dramatic acceleration means different things to different people; for Eleanor, it meant that she’d arrive in a week’s time, late morning.
During the school day, in other words. Ellie asked to stay home, not just to greet Eleanor but to take care of Daphne. But Daphne stubbornly insisted on attending school—the doctors had cautiously said an abbreviated schedule was okay—and I’d stubbornly insisted that Ellie go to school, too, just in case anything happened. Similarly, I was not going to go out to the airport but would stay nearby, at the store, on call.
“Perhaps Declan could meet Eleanor?” Daphne asked, confused.
They had told us to be alert to any changes in her hearing, among other things, but so far Daphne seemed her old self, if a paler version.
“He’s busy,” I said.
And he was, sending me one solicitous text after another, all of which I’d ignored: is everything all right? Can I help?
Everyone in the world knows more about texting than I do, but no one has been able to tell me how to send a text retroactively, a message like the one I’d like to send now that would arrive to Declan back when Eleanor first arrived in Paris. I could—should—have answered the first question, no. And the second, yes.
Because Eleanor had much more news than she’d first shared.
* * *
—
Her accommodations weren’t commensurate with the business-class air ticket I learned she’d purchased—she had not booked the Ritz—but they were comfortable and awfully close. Awfully. Three doors down, to be precise: the Hôtel du
Cinéma.
In all our time of living on the street, I had not realized that it was a hotel. In my defense, its storefront was as narrow as ours and it looked like a storefront—large glass windows that, yes, said HÔTEL DU CINÉMA, but behind those windows, piles of hats and wigs and old movie cameras. Classic movie posters on the walls. It should have intrigued me, but instead, had long depressed me. No one ever went in or out. I assumed it was yet another Paris boutique whose existence as a money-making concern, past or future, was impossible to envision.
I was peering in the windows, trying to decide if it was, in fact, a money-making concern, when Eleanor’s car arrived.
“Look who’s here!” Eleanor called as she extricated herself.
“Bienvenue en France!” I said, spinning. I tried to move into a hug, but she was already busily overtipping the driver, who bowed gratefully, and thoughtfully opened the trunk so that Eleanor could remove her own five suitcases.
As soon as Eleanor was done, he sped off, and we looked at each other.
“You look good,” she said, appraising.
“By which you mean I don’t,” I said.
“You’re thin,” she said.
“Not so thin,” I said. “Which may be the first time I’ve heard anyone deflect that comment. Or heard two university women un-ironically take up body image issues within seconds of greeting each other.”
“Hardly,” Eleanor said, and then she grinned and grabbed me, and gave me a long, deep All-American hug.
We eased out of our embrace, but not fully, each of us staring at the other’s distress.
“Oh, it’s a damnable thing,” Eleanor said. “Damn it all to hell.”
“What is?” I said.
“Daphne, sick—”
“Daphne’s better,” I said.
“Robert—”
“Robert?”
“Oh,” Eleanor said. “I mean—just being here, seeing you, I—”
“Robert’s still gone,” I said. We let go.
“But—”
But it was a long flight, I thought—too long, really, if all she did during it was turn the events of the last thirteen months over and over in her head. It was May. It had been just over a year since he’d been gone. Less than a year since we’d been here. Just weeks since I’d found, and lost, Robert’s book with the scribbled sorry. “Can we—can we not—not just right now?” I said. I swept my hand up and down the street, which looked like it did most weekdays, gray and gritty and perfect. “Eleanor,” I said, “you’re in Paris.”
She smiled. It looked like her eyes were filling with tears; I tried to remember if she’d been to Paris before.
“I am,” she said. “And my god, so are you!” She looked around. “Now where are the two most extraordinary young Americans in France?”
“School,” I said. “But they’ll be along soon. Let’s get you moved in to your—hotel?” We took this as a cue to study the strange façade. “At least I think it’s a hotel.”
“Let’s give it a shot,” she said.
We needed to give it a lot more than that to get everything inside, and once in, everything only looked more bizarre, less like a cinema-themed hotel than the set of a movie about a cinema-themed hotel.
A narrow young man with a mustache so faint it may have been drawn on appeared from behind a door. “Bonjour,” he said solemnly.
“Bon-jour,” Eleanor said. “This is a hotel?”
He looked at Eleanor carefully, and at me. “Oui,” he said.
“Are you sure?” I said to Eleanor quietly.
“It’s really so unusual,” Eleanor said. She was staring at a bust of Charlie Chaplin with garishly roughed cheeks. “I bet the kids will find it fun.”
“Madame?” the man at the desk said.
Switching to French, I quickly told him that Eleanor did not have kids, but did have a reservation and wanted to check in.
He answered me in English. “Reservation is good.”
“Well, let’s get on with this, then,” Eleanor said.
And they did. More staff appeared, in 1930s-era movie palace livery—tarnished-button tunics, tiny hats—and swept away Eleanor’s luggage. She was issued a pair of “celebrity sunglasses,” a gift of the hotel. They looked like Audrey Hepburn’s, circa 1961. I shook my head. She tried them on. I started to follow her bags up the stairs, but Eleanor took off the glasses, sat heavily in a chair in the lobby, and patted one beside her.
“I’m sure you’re exhausted,” I said.
“I am,” she said.
“Why don’t you go up and rest? In fact, we’ll just take it easy tonight, and we’ll have our grand reunion tomorrow.”
“We are having a grand reunion right now,” Eleanor said. She patted the chair again. “Do you think they serve popcorn?” she said. I shook my head. “Pity,” she said to the air. And then to me: “Leah, sit, or risk being judged more nervous than I am.”
“I’m not nervous,” I said, though I was. I’d let myself think that all those Skype conversations were just as intense as being interrogated by Eleanor in person. They were not. “Wait,” I said, and sat. “Why are you nervous?”
She drew a deep breath and then coughed. Dust swirled around us. “Because I do want to talk about Robert. And then I want to talk about him with your girls. He’s been gone for so long that—it’s time to—”
“Eleanor—”
“Leah—”
“Eleanor,” I said. “What else do we ever talk about—”
“It’s different now,” she said.
“It is different now,” I said. “You’re also exhausted now. I’m exhausted now. And if you think you’re going to say one thing to that poor child just days out of a hospital bed, or her sister—”
Eleanor smiled as much of a smile as her exhaustion would allow her, which wasn’t much. “You sound like me,” she said.
I looked out to the street, where scarf after scarf passed by. No one looked in. I noted this phenomenon when I was in my own storefront, and it always upset me. All these wonders lining Paris sidewalks—corny wonders, as here in the cinema-hotel’s overstuffed lobby, or civilized wonders, as in my tumbledown bookshop—and no one but the occasional tourist even turned to look in the window? I myself spent my entire Paris existence not looking where I was going, but rather casting my eyes right and left. Here was a take-out pizza joint the width of a pizza box. Here was a storefront of puzzles. Another featuring aluminum canes and walkers and oxygen tanks painted a blue Yves Klein himself would have envied. Madame Grillo’s world-class mops up the way. The painter’s abandoned stepladder in the storefront down the block.
I thought I’d assimilated so well to Paris life, but this must have been how the city read me for what I was, a visitor, a tourist, someone who looked in windows. A widow.
“Can I make you a deal?” I said.
“Probably not,” Eleanor said, “but you are welcome to try.”
“Let us not do this today,” I said. “You are tired, I am tired, and I don’t want to just start in on this with the girls now, not like this. I want to talk with you about what to talk about . . .”
Eleanor closed her eyes and leaned back into her director’s chair. “The thing is,” she said, “I loved you both. I loved the idea of you and the actuality of you. That you existed, the two of you, and the daughters you made, and the cooking shows I celebrity-guested on in your very kitchen—you all were a favorite text of mine. Forgive me for that. For being so captivated by such a family.”
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about this yet,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m so tired I don’t even know what I’ve been talking about.”
Ellie saved us. She came down the street, and she looked in the window. Not entirely me nor entirely Robert. I spent a second or two admiring
this creation beyond the glass.
Eleanor was watching her, too, but absently.
“It’s true, what they say,” Eleanor said. Either she was more exhausted than I thought or she really didn’t recognize Ellie. “Absolutely everyone in Paris is more beautiful than anywhere else on earth. Just look at this girl.”
I laughed. “I do,” I said, “every day.”
Eleanor looked at me and then stood and stared out the window.
“Good god,” she said. “This is Ellie? You’ve been gone months. She’s aged years!”
Ellie caught sight of Eleanor and burst into the hotel, acting for the first time in months like the daughter I had once had in America.
“Auntie El!” she said.
“My dear girl,” Eleanor said.
They hugged for long enough I almost thought it was a competition—had Eleanor given me the longer hug, or Ellie?—but they didn’t let go, they held on and on, and I realized that Ellie had won, and easily.
Then Eleanor opened her eyes and looked at me, and with a tiny, imperceptible shake of her head, told me that I’d won, too. We wouldn’t discuss Robert today.
* * *
—
First things first. Eleanor didn’t even bother following her bags up to her room. You just know what it will look like, Eleanor said, small, a poster of Chaplin’s Great Dictator, but in French. (As it turned out, she was wrong: there was a poster, but of Le Magicien d’Oz.) Instead, she marched out of the hotel, arm in arm with Ellie, and walked two doors up to see the rest of the family. And the bookstore.
Eleanor admired the store from outside first. She craned her neck to see the sign, and then walked across the street, narrowly avoiding a slaloming Vespa that would have killed her. Ellie went across to join her and I looked at the two of them, godmother and goddaughter, as they pointed to various floors: this is where we sleep, this is where we eat, this is where the landlady lives. Arm in arm, the two crossed back—looking both ways this time—and went inside.
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