You Deserve Nothing

by Alexander Maksik

  It was awful and suddenly I had that same terrible feeling, as if he was a ghost, or I was a ghost, and that he’d never love me. I was just filling space.

  GILAD

  He’d never been so late. Twenty minutes had passed and nothing. I thought of him waiting at Odéon the day we saw Christophe Jolivet die. I looked around at my classmates and imagined their lives to come. It seemed to me that without Silver we were all doomed somehow. Rick sat with his arms folded across his chest looking at the closed door. There was something wistful in his expression and I watched his eyes until he glanced at me. He nodded, almost indiscernibly. Hala looked away from the room out to the poplars. Lily smiled sadly at me. Abdul rocked back and forth, from time to time quickly running his thin fingers through his curly hair. What would he become, this nervous kid so paralyzed? In black ink, Cara drew an intricate design across a white page. Aldo slept on his desk, his hair across his face. Jane straightened the books on her desk and then she opened her notebook. On a blank page she wrote, “December 13, 2002.” I watched her hand, the black nail polish replaced by a clear varnish, move slowly over the page: December 13, 2002, retracing the date again and again, December 13, 2002, December 13, 2002, December 13, 2002. The tip of her pen followed the deepening line, the pressure forming a groove in the soft paper.

  “He’s probably not coming,” Hala said.

  I glanced up at her surprised.

  Rick looked at Hala and nodded knowingly.

  Cara shook her head. “Unbelievable,” she said.

  “What?” I said.

  No one answered.

  Colin was staring at me with a strange expression on his face. When our eyes met it seemed as if he were apologizing for something.

  We were so quiet waiting there. So still. And I thought: This is exactly where we are. Friday morning. December 13. 2002. This is exactly where we are, waiting for the next thing. December 13, 2002. I concentrated on the fake wood grain of my desk.

  In the stillness of the morning, I felt such affection for all of us in that single moment of our lives. Everything was tenuous. Everything was fragile. The flat gray light outside, the black leafless poplars, the frost on the field, the muffled voices filtering through the thin walls. This is where we are. December 13, 2002.

  * * *

  When the door opened and we saw that it was him, what we felt, I promise you, what we all felt, was relief. He carried with him a stack of novels.

  “Bad morning,” he said. “Sorry I’m late. As I Lay Dying. William Faulkner,” he said, handing out the books.

  “We haven’t even talked about l’Etranger,” Hala grumbled.

  “No, Hala, you’re right we haven’t. And we will, but I’d like you to have this and begin reading it. You’ll be able to move through it slowly. It’ll be an opportunity, a chance to savor a novel rather than read it under duress.”

  He smiled. But Aldo, who’d been sitting glumly with his chin on his desk, laughed smugly. “Savor it?”

  “Indeed Aldo, savor. Like a piece of pie.”

  “Whatever.”

  Silver turned, looking at him for the first time.

  “Aldo,” he said sternly as if beginning a speech. And again in mock sadness, shaking his head, “Aldo.”

  He turned to us and began.

  “Every text is understood by each of us differently. We cannot separate our experience from the way that we read. Our experience informs our reading in the same way that it informs our lives, what we see on the street, how we interact with people, and so on. Which is why you might argue that there’s no single truth, no absolutely common experience. Both l’Etranger and As I Lay Dying deal, in their own ways, with this same idea. As you read, you’ll see that Faulkner and Camus have more in common than you might first imagine.” He looked around the room. And then he said what he always did, “What am I talking about?”

  He folded his arms across his chest and waited. I watched him up there, that familiar expression, the cocky demeanor, the posture of expectation, of control. He’d been charming, had spoken with those irregular pauses, a slight grin when he’d suggested the possibility of savoring the novel. And again the restrained smile, amused with himself.

  I raised my hand.

  He faced me and gave a slight bow. “Gilad,” he said, “Tell us.”

  “I think the point is, well, I think that’s right. Everything we’ve experienced determines how we experience other experiences. Something like that. Each person sees the world slightly differently. So, the same should be true with something we read. I guess because reading is another experience.”

  He nodded and he had the look on his face that always made me proud.

  “Obviously,” Hala said, “there are many people who believe in a single truth, Mr. Silver. But it’s obvious to me that, I mean, it is an impossible, stupid, childish idea. I read a book, or see a film, or even go to a party, what I see there, what I take away from those experiences can never be the same as what someone else takes away.”

  “Yes, Hala,” he encouraged. “And let me make clear that these are not my ideas; I certainly wasn’t the one to come up with them. These are the principles of deconstruction, the notion, essentially, that the reader, as much as, if not more than, the author provides meaning to a text. We, as readers, apply our experience, our knowledge, not to mention our ignorance, to the meaning of a given work. This is interesting as literary theory, but for our purposes, I think more interesting if we apply it to our lives, to the way we view not only texts, but also the world around us. Does everyone see what I mean?”

  Cara didn’t understand. How could a paragraph not mean precisely the same thing to every reader?

  Silver wrote a sentence across the board: “The dog ran across the field.”

  “Consider this sentence. Read it to yourselves a few times.” He waited and then read aloud, “The dog ran across the field. The dog ran across the field. Rick, what does the sentence mean?”

  “A dog ran across a field?” He looked flatly back at Silver.

  “Yes, O.K., fine. But give me your interpretation of the sentence.”

  “There’s nothing to interpret, a dog ran across a field.”

  “I agree,” Abdul said, eyes on his desk. “It’s obvious.”

  “No mate, what you see is obvious, but the sentence might mean different things to other people,” Colin said.

  Silver nodded and folded his arms. He turned to Lily, twirling a braid in her fingers, studying the board. He kept his eyes on her.

  “What do you see Lily? I mean exactly.”

  She shrugged. “Ummm, there’s a little white dog, he’s missing a leg, and he runs with this weird limp. He’s small and the field is all covered with snow and he leaves his little tracks as he goes.”

  She never took her eyes off the board, and when she finished we all laughed. She shrugged her shoulders again and said, “That’s the dog I see.”

  Which was precisely what Silver wanted. And he knew Lily would give an answer like that. Then the bell rang and we were left with an image of a three-legged dog limping across a field of snow.

  Winter break began the next day.

  WILL

  Nothing was the same.

  We’d never see each other outside of the apartment. She’d come over and lock the door. We watched movies together. She complained about her parents.

  “You’ll survive it all,” I told her.

  All month it was cold and gray outside. She walked around the apartment naked. She called me an old man. One Sunday morning we woke up and she said, “I love you.”

  She shook her head. “I know you don’t love me. But I love you. Will you fuck me like you love me?”

  I didn’t say anything. I was as gentle and kind as I knew how to be. I touched her as softly as I could. I kissed her slowly.

  “Make love to me,” she said. And I did. As best I could.

  After she came, she cried and I held onto her. She pressed her head against my chest
. I kissed her hair. “It’s O.K.,” I said. “It’ll be O.K.”

  “I love you, Will. William.” It was the first time she’d called me by my first name.

  We lay there for a while in silence. “I’m going to get us breakfast Marie. Stay here. I’ll be back.”

  I climbed out of bed, got dressed and stood in line at Carton. As I was leaving the bakery, Julia Tompkins and her mother walked in.

  “Oh my God, Mr. Silver!”

  She hugged me. Mrs. Tompkins smiled. “Having a nice Sunday, Mr. Silver?”

  I imagined Marie asleep in my bed.

  “I can’t believe you live around here.” Julia laughed. “We live like five seconds away. We come here all the time. They make the best bread in the world. We’re totally neighbors.”

  Mrs. Tompkins shook her head at her daughter’s enthusiasm. “Julia’s a big fan. I’m sure you know that by now.”

  “Shut up, Mom.”

  “Both Rick and Julia are big fans.”

  I forced a laugh.

  “I should get back,” I said holding up my bag of croissants.

  “Have a great rest of the weekend,” Mrs. Tompkins said.

  “See you on Monday, Mr. Silver.”

  When I arrived home, Marie was standing at the sink, washing dishes.

  “Hi honey,” she said. “How was work?”

  I spooned coffee into the old Bialetti and she wrapped her arms around me.

  We drank our coffee and ate the croissants with raspberry jam. They were playing an old Sidney Bechet concert on TSF. It had begun to rain.

  “Will, I’m so happy,” she said. “I’ve never been so happy. Never.”

  I smiled at her. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair a mess. She was naked beneath one of my old shirts. She looked prettier than I’d ever seen her.

  We lay in bed listening to the rain, the street noise outside. Marie told me how she wasn’t afraid of anything. How powerful she’d begun to feel, how confident.

  “You see the way I walk around your apartment, Will? Like nothing can go wrong. Like I’m the queen of the world, the smartest, toughest, most beautiful woman in the universe? I’m going to feel that way in the street someday.”

  I smiled at the ceiling.

  “Laugh all you want, asshole. You’ll see.” She sat up and looked at me. “You know what I’m going to do? One day?”

  I shook my head. It was hard to resist her when she was like this.

  “You want to know what I’m going to do when you’re old, I mean even older than you are now? When I’m even more beautiful and you can barely get up those fucking stairs?”

  I laughed. “Tell me.”

  “I’m going to have my own school. Outside Paris. Like in Saint-Denis for poor kids who are getting fucked by France and it’ll be full of teachers like Ms. Keller and you.”

  I watched her and listened. Her eyes so full of light.

  “You think now just because I’m who I am at ISF, I won’t be someone else later? You think that, don’t you?”

  “I like who you are now, Marie. More and more to tell you the truth. And I know you’re right. I know you’ll do all of it. Everything you want to do. I just have to look at you to know.”

  “Queen of the fucking world, Will. You’ll see.”

  “I believe you, Marie.”

  She lay back down, resting her head on my chest. “You’ll see. A beautiful school. And out there, I’ll feel every day like I feel in here.”

  I held her tight against me.

  “Are you happy?” she asked.

  I looked at her, touched her face, and said, yes.

  It was true.

  * * *

  For a while there were days like these. Afternoons after school watching movies, making love in a chair by the window, lying in bed awake together in the early evening, watching the room darken.

  Marie came after school and late on Saturday nights when she’d arrive long after I’d gone to sleep, bringing the smell of evening with her. She’d slide beneath the blankets, waking me with her cool body. We’d tear at each other and, particularly when she was drunk, she’d push herself against me desperately. And on those gray Sunday mornings, I’d play music she’d never heard—Keith Jarrett, Dinah Washington. It was always cold outside and there was never any sunshine—only the dull Paris grisaille and often, the steady rain falling against the roof like gravel against a drum.

  Once, I was waiting for the doors of the train to close when Mia and Marie walked into the car. The three of us sat together—Mia at my side, Marie facing us.

  “So what are you doing on this train?” Mia asked.

  “Shopping with Ariel, hot chocolate at the Flore,” she answered, looking Mia in the eyes.

  So she can lie, I thought.

  * * *

  Days later, I had lunch with Mia at La Palette.

  “You seem better,” she told me.

  “I am,” I said.

  “I’m glad.” She looked at me briefly and then cast her eyes away. “You can tell me anything, you know.”

  I nodded. “I know, Mia.”

  “Are there a lot of things you don’t tell me?”

  “I guess there are a lot of things I don’t tell anyone. Like most people.”

  She touched my hand. “You’ll be all right, Will.”

  “How are things with Olivier, the lawyer?”

  She shrugged.

  The café was filling with people. Charlie Parker came on playing “Lover Man” and the dark-haired woman reading the paper behind the bar turned it up loud. We listened to the music, looking at each other, our empty plates in front of us.

  “You could come home with me, you know. Spend Christmas with my lunatic family.”

  “Mia,” I said.

  “You could come, Will. I don’t know, we could . . . ” she trailed off.

  The next day she left for Chicago and I stayed in Paris.

  * * *

  A few days before she left to go skiing with her family, Marie came over and wouldn’t sit down. She paced frantically around the apartment. She pushed me onto the floor and rode me angrily. She looked down at me, her eyes narrowed. I never saw her blink.

  “Hold my hair,” she said. “Pull it.”

  Afterward there was blood on her knees.

  We lay together until we got cold. She stood up and wrapped a blanket around her body.

  “Ariel thinks you’re so hot,” she said.

  “I doubt that.”

  “Don’t. She told me. She says it all the time.”

  “She’s pretty horrible to me in class, Marie. I doubt—”

  “Probably because you’re sleeping with me and not her, Will.”

  I sat up. “Marie, have you told her?”

  “Jesus. No. It was a joke, a fucking joke. Putain! Calm down. She hates her dad. That’s why she’s always so pissy. It’s nothing to do with you, Will. Believe me, she’d fuck you in a second. She told me yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “On the phone.”

  “How’d that come up?” I watched her biting her nail.

  “She brought you up, I guess. She wants you. What’s the big deal?” She glanced up and looked at me, “Does that excite you Will? Would you like to fuck Ariel?” She stared at me.

  “No, Marie.”

  She was walking around the apartment, picking things up, pretending to look at books on the shelves.

  She went to the window and looked out at the city. I watched her standing naked, the curtains falling around her. Then she turned. She was shivering.

  “Once, her father tried to seduce me.” She crossed her arms across her chest.

  I didn’t say anything, just pulled the blanket around my knees.

  “I was in Ariel’s bedroom waiting for her to come home from a run. I was sitting on her bed. He came in and tried to seduce me.”

  I nodded, watching her.

  “But then Ariel came home and caught us. Well, caught him.”


  “Doing what?”

  “Nothing. He was just sitting on the bed with me. He said he’d help me with my homework. He had his hand on my leg when Ariel came in. That’s it, O.K.? But she was so mad. She didn’t talk to me for like two weeks.”

  She sat down on the floor next to me. I pulled the blanket around us and stroked her back with my hand.

  “But that was all? Nothing more? Just his hand on your leg?”

  “Nothing more, Will.”

  “Does Ariel know, Marie? I mean about us. Have you told anyone?”

  She looked at me briefly and then turned to the window where the light was flat and weak.

  “Just tell me, Marie. I need to know.” I took a slow breath. “Please, Marie tell me if—”

  “No,” she whispered pulling away. “No one knows. I haven’t told anyone. O.K.?”

  “O.K.,” I said. “O.K.” I pulled her against me.

  “I’d never tell anyone, Will,” she said beginning to cry. “Never. I know what it would do. To you. To us. Why would I? Fuck, Will why would I?”

  “It’s all right. Forget it.”

  She was sobbing, her body shuddering. I held her and I knew.

  Soon, Marie went home and I stayed on the floor.

  * * *

  Those weeks I sat in cafés reading. I went to the movies. At night I went to La Palette and drank. I slept late, often until the afternoon. I missed Marie and as the city emptied, the streets quieter and quieter the closer we came to Christmas, the more I wished she’d return.

  She wrote messages to me. I love you, Will. I miss you, Will. God, I miss your body. Comme tu me manques!

  I picked at a roasted chicken on Christmas day and drank a bottle of Bordeaux.