Grace

by Calvin Baker

  “You are just seduced by her,” I said.

  “We will see,” he retorted. “But I do not have any preconceived ideas about who it is who might wind me back up in line with time. People like us cannot afford to.”

  I could tell he liked her, so I let it drop, as Genevieve and Elsa returned to the table. Genevieve looked piqued, dabbing at her eyes, and it was clear she had been crying. Elsa had a worried expression on her face, and looked to Davidson with distress.

  “I think we should probably go home,” I apologized, bidding goodnight to Elsa and thanking Davidson for the meal.

  “Call me tomorrow?” Davidson asked, with an expression of real concern.

  “I’ll ring around ten o’clock.”

  We left the restaurant, and I went to hail a taxi, but Genevieve wished to walk, because she did not think she could bear the motion and closed space.

  It was the longest night of the year, and music poured from every block as far as the river. When we reached the center, the streets were still crowded with people, and the full moon behind the cathedral shone down silver on the white stone of Notre Dame, and pure and clear on the velvet blackness of the Seine. Below, on the sand, musicians played, and families strolled, and the tourists, and the lovers, and the hustlers; the beautiful in their prime, the powerful at their height, the babes at their mothers’ breasts, and the ancients on their canes, all promenaded, alive and pleased the earth was theirs that night.

  “Are you pregnant?” I asked.

  “No. I am just dizzy. But the fresh air is making it better.”

  “It is okay if you are.”

  “Oui,” she said. “I know. We are together.”

  She took my hand as we crossed over the river.

  “The princess and Davidson are perfect.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because she is so boring, and he can be such a boor.”

  “He’s bright.”

  “It does not matter. The nice clothes do not matter. The money does not matter. Paris does not. New York does not. Hollywood especially is not important. Art is the only thing that matters, besides an incorruptible love.”

  We were still holding hands, and in my hand she was the truest girl on the Left Bank, and, when we crossed over the bridge, the river and I had the truest girl in the city in our right hand. The two of us walked the remainder of the way to her house, listening to the music from each block as we passed. When we finally made our way up the cobbled lane again, the people in the same apartment were playing Nina Simone, and Genevieve brightened to the sound.

  At her door, she told me she did not think it a good idea for me to stay the night. “I’ll be fine tomorrow,” she assured me, wiping her damp brow. “I just need to rest.”

  “I’ll come by to check on you in the morning.”

  “Oui, that would be good. We will take breakfast.”

  “You’re okay?”

  “Yes, but I want to work. I have not in days. And if I do not, I feel like I will go crazy.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, kissing her atop the head, where the walk and the heat had lifted her scent to the crown of her scalp. I inhaled her fragrance deep into my diaphragm, deep as memory, and if I had my way I would have never ceased.

  12

  I had left my room key at the front desk of the hotel, where I had not been for several days. When I returned that night and asked for it, the night clerk looked at me appraisingly, without recognition, and what felt like undue suspicion.

  “Et, vous-êtes?”

  “M. Roland.”

  “Et, quel est votre numéro de chamber?”

  “Au dernier étage.” It was the only room on the floor, and the only one in the hotel with a balcony.

  “Et, que faites-vous, M. Roland?” he asked, attempting to seem nonchalant, but obviously wondering why I did not keep set hours.

  “I’m a writer,” I said briskly.

  “I see,” he nodded, still looking confused. “And how come you speak French, you are American?”

  I had tried to humor him before, but was unamused by his insolence, and gave him a look to let him know what part of the desk I needed him to operate. His cheekiness may have been motivated by anything. It may have been something specific. I didn’t care as long as he got my key, and called me if there was a goddamned fire in the middle of the night.

  “Ah, oui,” he snapped to attention, scrambling to retrieve the keys. “You know, I once saw Miles Davis perform, many years ago at Olympia, when I was a young man. It was raining, and I did not have a ticket, so I wait by the gate. When the usher isn’t looking I sneak in, and run, and do not look back.

  “When I stopped running, I am in the front, with all the special people. There is a seat free, and I take it. Nobody say nothing. The lights went dark and it was the most amazing concert I have ever seen. At the end the people next to me, in the furs coats, invite me to another party, because they see how I love the music, or maybe see I listen in a different way.

  “The party was in a small, petit, petit club, maybe the size of this reception, and when Mr. Davis come, everybody shut up. He went to the front of the room, and still does not say anything, and he turn his back on us. It is like, fuck you, my appointment is with the music.

  “He create a space that nothing can enter but pure music. He begin to play, and it is even better than at the concert, and no one say nothing the whole two hours. It was the best night of my entire life. And it is only because a spirit see me, and take me from the rain and put me in the concert, and the same spirit put me in the party. Life is like this, no?”

  “When we seize it, my friend.”

  “Or are fortunate and remember what gives us happiness, and see possibility to have it.”

  We were friends after that, and his words were still with me the next morning when I left the hotel, easy-hearted and centered, to see Genevieve. On my way to her place I stopped to buy bread at our favorite pâtisserie, and oranges for juice from the fruit seller. It was still early when I reached the top of the stairs to the atelier, the quiet morning light streaming through the skylight in the hall, where I could hear her footsteps on the other side, so knew she was awake.

  When I knocked there was no answer. I called out to her, full of a joy that had welled up inside of me for no seeming reason, but still she did not respond. I knocked again, louder, before fishing in my pocket for the key. As I turned it in the lock I heard unintelligible sounds from the other side, but the security chain was fastened and the door would not budge.

  I rang her on the telephone, but could not reach her that way either, so thought she must have been wearing headphones, or earplugs. I wrote a note, and slid it under the door, before leaving her breakfast on the table outside in the hall and making my way back to the street.

  When I returned in the evening the pastries were still there. I knocked again, and heard the sound of her moving around inside the apartment. I called out to her. Still there was no answer. I was worried by then, but told myself she was in a mood and just wished to be alone.

  I returned the next day in late morning. There was still no answer, and I became consumed with dread. One of the neighbors heard me out in the hall and opened his door to see what the commotion was.

  “Have you seen Genevieve recently?” I asked.

  “No, but there has been an awful racket in the apartment all night. I do not know what it was.”

  I tried my key again, but the security chain was still in place, and the door cracked only partway ajar.

  “Genevieve,” I called through the opening. She did not answer. I pressed my eye to the crack, where I could see a horrible mess inside, as if something had exploded.

  “Genevieve!” I heard her sobbing from deep within the apartment. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you alright?”

  “Oui.”

  “Do you want to let me in, baby?”

  “Non.”
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  “Why not?”

  “I do not want you to see me like this. You will be angry.”

  “I will not be angry. I promise.”

  “Non, amour. Go away. I will call when I am feeling better.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be at the hotel.”

  I heard her still crying from the other side. The neighbor remained in the hall, and I asked whether I could cross over from his balcony. He agreed and I went through his apartment with a feeling of slight embarrassment, but offered no excuses.

  From the balcony I heard Etta James rising from lower down the hill, and saw Genevieve’s windows were open. I sprang over the wall separating the flats, and down along the widow’s walk. From my perch outside I could see the extent of the damage in the apartment, and my mind raced with worry. She had covered the walls with paint, and lashed string all around, with pieces of paper pinned to the string, and stacks of what looked like papier-mâché, crisscrossing the room in a maze of confusion, where she was seated on the floor amidst it all. She was still wearing the same clothes from two days earlier and obviously had not slept and was in the most awful way.

  When she looked up and saw me on the balcony, she shrieked, and threw the water glass in her hand, which shattered against the window frame as I clambered inside.

  “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I figured it all out, and wanted to make it before I forgot,” she said.

  “What did you make?” I asked, tenderly as possible.

  “It does not matter. I did not finish, and now you are angry because you think I did the wrong thing, and I have lost my concentration, so you have ruined it. I told you to leave me alone.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I did not mean to ruin it.”

  “It is too late. Do you want to see what you ruined?”

  “Yes, show me what you made.”

  “I know you were worried, because I do not work anymore, and thought I would be like some silly princess who does not do anything and does not know anything except how to wear jewelry, and takes everything for granted. So I wanted to show you all the meaning of everything. Here, see, are the cave paintings and here is the totem pole and here is the primitive perfection, with its ancient sacred magical power, and here is the perfection of the Goyas. Here is Tintoretto, and Michelangelo with all the known universe of God, and the choirs of angels and the saints and the kings and the pilgrims and the penitent and the sinners and the demons. Here is the modernism, and one of Picasso’s crying women, because every time he don’t know what to paint he makes his woman cry and because the people they love the suffering, and here is the surreality, and here the beautiful light from Corot and the perfect life force from Manet and here is Degas looking at his girls and here is Matisse and all the immaculate colors and the object is here and the form is created and the form is destroyed here by the photo that makes realism into something else, and the abstract is here with pure consciousness and here all the pop things and cartoons for the Americans, and on the wall is Guanyin Bodhisattva and, next to it, there, you will see, is the Virgin, and the suffering the people love so much and here is the creation and it is all the meaning because if you look from here are the eyes that are not gone from the world. Okay I will take the pills again now, and now you know all before we marry but first I wanted to show you this, the entire world. It is everything, almost everything, before the pills make it stop.”

  I felt knifed through the core and stood frozen with pain; afraid for her and afraid of her, and in awe of the sheer amount of energy that had poured out of her, as I navigated that divine madness, not knowing what I should do. I reached her at last, but she only bit down on her lip anxiously, and turned and went straight away to the bathroom, before emerging with a bunch of pills, which she took with water from the faucet.

  “How long has it been since you stopped taking them?”

  “Two weeks,” she said. “I will be fine again. You will see. But perhaps it is you no longer love me, because I do the wrong thing, the crazy thing. But the crazy thing is necessary.”

  “I still love you,” I said.

  “Okay, we go now.”

  “Where?”

  “To the hospital,” she answered, as I tried not to cry and kissed her wild, wild eyes.

  13

  I stayed with her until I felt confident she would be all right alone, before leaving one afternoon, two weeks later, to meet Davidson, whom I had not seen since dinner at the restaurant.

  “How are things with Genevieve?” he asked sympathetically.

  “Fine.”

  “You’re a terrible liar.”

  “I know.” I was silent after that. There was nothing to say.

  “You know it is impossible to be happy when you are with someone who is not well.”

  “You are not suggesting I leave her when she has fallen on hard times? She will get better. She is ill, not crazy.”

  “That is not what I said. I only mean sadness is contagious. You see, the educated classes can all be located on a graph, with the queen of England on one end and a renunciant monk on the other. For the creative, it goes from those willing to accommodate the world to those willing to follow art to the edge of the map. It is primarily a function of talent, but the y-axis is fear.” He took out a piece of paper and began to draw. “Genevieve is talented and unafraid. I respect my fear, which is why she dislikes me. She fears making the compromises I do. People with modest talent, and reasonable fears, stumble along the axis, there, doing what they can, according to formulas, and thinking the formulas are real. People with greater imagination and either lavish fear or lavish greed do the same, only they know better. People like her have a chance at making something brilliant and changing the world, then again they have a chance of getting lost. You I cannot plot yet, because you have not decided yourself. Worry the koan, it will help. But, what am I saying? I suppose we all fall for the wrong person once.”

  “You don’t leave who you love because she is unwell. I am sure there are other ways of looking at it, but they are not ways to live.”

  “You love that woman, don’t you?”

  “Like a blues song I love her. Are you going to tell me to call your shaman?”

  “It will not help.”

  “I thought you said he was a real medicine man.”

  “First class at fixing things when you get outside of yourself. For what comes to you from your own spirit, nobody can fix, only help you see.”

  I did not want to discuss it further, and we talked shop instead, then had a glass of wine, but I did not have the taste for it, and went back to my hotel to rest.

  The last days had been uncertain and exhausting, with me constantly checking to see she was taking her medication, which she sometimes did and sometimes resisted. She was there, but no longer present, not really, until slowly my faith that she would be well again was sapped, so I was there but not present as well.

  I was responsible to her, though, and did not break with her. How could I? I had asked for a great love. They gave it to me.

  When I arrived back at her place that evening, she was in a state of tranquility, and we were eating a quiet dinner, when she stared up from her plate all of a sudden. “I always knew you would leave me one day,” she said.

  “Who said anything about leaving you? I care about you.”

  “Do not be sorry,” she said, “and do not be a coward. Sometimes the people get married, and sometimes the people get divorced. I give you a divorce. You are free. But always remember we were married.”

  “We still are.”

  “We are not anymore. Non, I was not the right wife for you. It was not right.”

  “You are the best wife anyone ever wanted. I can wait as long as it takes.”

  “Yes, I will be better. But no, you cannot wait and see, so don’t make me love’s beggar. I am too proud.”

  I felt worse after that, like a weak liar and coward and every mean, worthless thing there i
s. I did not leave her, though—not that night, or the next one, or the rest of the season.

  The following month was September, and things had grown no better. Some days were up and some were volcanic, and I was due to return to New York to attend to my affairs and renew my visa.

  “You will call when you arrive?” she asked. “Or you will let all of this fade into the past?”

  “Do not say things like that.”