Paris Ever After

by K. S. R. Burns

  In any case, my plan is to change into different, better clothes the minute I get to Margaret’s. I’m rounding the corner onto her street, wondering if I should’ve phoned first, when I see Hervé has beat me here. He’s standing out on the sidewalk.

  With Sophie.

  They’re engaged in what appears to be a cordial chat and don’t notice me. Hervé is impeccably turned out in a navy blue blazer, gray wool trousers, and polished leather loafers. Sophie is wearing white jeans and strappy high-heeled sandals. And my red Christian Dior tunic.

  Unbelievable.

  I hurry to join them, towing my carry-on and wearing yesterday’s outfit and feeling like a poor relation.

  Hervé and Sophie continue their conversation—in French—leaving me, as I so often am, on the outside looking in. In Phoenix, I understand everything. In Paris, I am out of the loop a good ninety percent of the time. In many ways life will be a lot easier if I go back to Arizona, to English, to the familiar, to William. No matter how long I stayed in France I’d always be a foreigner. An outsider.

  When I can stand being ignored no longer, I poke Hervé in the arm. “Hey. You’re early. Didn’t you say a half hour?”

  The flow of French stops short, like a faucet being shut off, and he turns to me. “Ah. Amy. Te voilà.” There you are.

  His impeccably groomed eyebrows arch as he takes in my rumpled trench coat and baggy-at-the-knees yoga pants. When his gaze reaches my mother’s white ankle socks he visibly recoils. I almost giggle. Yes, the socks are tacky. But this is who I am. Or at least part of who I am. Or was.

  Sophie murmurs something I can’t understand. Her eyes are bloodshot but she looks ten million times better than yesterday, with now-clean hair and wearing my Christian Dior tunic, which, I hate to say, she carries off far more successfully than I ever could have. Nor was I ever able to walk in those high-heeled Manolo Blahnik sandals, even though Margaret was always urging me to wear them, along with the rest of her missing daughter’s couture wardrobe. Manu says it’s because I physically resemble her. But I don’t see it at all.

  I nudge Hervé again as I fish my keys out of my tote bag. “Why don’t you come on up? Margaret would love to see you. Have you had coffee?”

  I extend the invitation without thinking, not remembering that the apartment upstairs is no longer mine to invite guests to.

  Sophie, however, does remember.

  “That is impossible!” She uses the French pronunciation. Ahm-poh-see-bluh. “As I just tell to monsieur, my mother, she is ill. She cannot receive visitors today.” Her round eyes narrow to half-moons, making it crystal clear that if there were a list of visitors who cannot be received my name would be at the top of it.

  “Margaret is sick? What’s wrong? Is Manu here?” I reach past her to punch the building code into the keypad. If Sophie were less wrapped up in herself, she would realize how fragile her mother is.

  She grabs for my hand. “Mais je dis non!” But I say no. Her voice is different today. Less sharp. More throaty. And she’s pale, even paler than yesterday.

  I’m at least three inches taller than she is, so I just bat her away. That’s the way to treat Sophie—like a pesky insect. The last thing I would expect is for her to physically retaliate.

  I would be wrong. A sharp blow to my shoulder as I’m leaning into the door to push it open catches me off balance. I teeter sideways, dropping my keys and windmilling my arms through the air. My only thought is Catherine. I must protect Catherine.

  “Attention!”

  Hervé steps forward just in time to save me from landing on my ass in the street. I feel a flash of surprise and gratitude.

  When I regain my equilibrium, I turn on Sophie. “Are you insane? What is wrong with you? Can’t you see I’m pregnant?”

  Sophie neither responds nor apologizes. She scoops up my keys, which landed on the sidewalk at her feet, and stations herself in front of the doorway, legs wide, arms folded, chin set.

  OK, so she’s stronger than she looks. Still, it’s ridiculous. Sophie can’t lock me out. My stuff is here. Margaret is here.

  “Listen.” I disengage myself from Hervé’s grip. “I need to go up to the apartment. I’d like to check on Margaret, for one thing. And I’d like to quickly shower and get the rest of my clothes. For example, that top is mine. Give it back, please.”

  “Top?” She says the word as if she’s never heard it before.

  “Yes, you know what I mean—”

  Hervé interrupts, his eyes glittering. “Du calme! Du calme!” He’s definitely enjoying this.

  “Your chemise, mademoiselle. It is, I believe, the property of Amy.”

  Sophie puffs her lips in what a lot of people would think is an adorable moue and straightens the silky hem of the Dior tunic. I suppose she assumed anything in the armoire that was couture must automatically be hers. Or maybe she put it on because none of her old stuff looks good on her. She is extremely thin. Skeletal. Wherever Sophie was for the past two or three years, she was not eating or living right. If she weren’t being such a total bitch, I’d feel sorry for her.

  She is being a total bitch, however, so I dart forward to grab my keys.

  But once again she’s too quick for me. “Non!” she cries, concealing the keys behind her back and fending me off with her free hand.

  This is madness. We’re standing out in the open street. The Hôtel du Cheval Blanc is only four blocks away. What if William were to happen along and catch the three of us facing off on the sidewalk like gang members?

  Hervé retakes my arm. “Do not worry, chère Amy. You can refresh yourself chez moi. I have another ensemble for you to wear. We will call Margaret—may we telephone her, mademoiselle?” He’s now addressing Sophie, who nods, never taking her mongoose-like gaze off me.

  “Bon. My car is just here, Amy. Come,” he says as he leads me to a red Fiat illegally parked across the street.

  Sophie wins another round.

  As I get into the car, I glance back to see her punch in the code to the building and slip inside. She must have come down to the street when Hervé rang to tell him that Margaret was unwell.

  A small part of me is pissed off that she again got the upper hand. A larger part of me is freaking out about Margaret, William, the safety of my money belt, and the exact location of where Manu slept last night. Somewhere other than Sophie’s bed, I hope. Not that it’s any of my business.

  On the bright side, without even having to ask, I’ve been invited to Hervé’s. So there’s that.

  ten

  We zip along the quai du Louvre. You might assume Paris traffic to be perpetually awful, but sometimes the streets are near empty, and motorists tootle along like in an old Audrey Hepburn movie.

  Also like in an old Audrey Hepburn movie, a large wicker basket filled with bread, fruit, chocolate, water, and wine is occupying most of the Fiat’s tiny back seat. Evidently Hervé’s original plan was to whisk me off on a lovely picnic somewhere outside of Paris. Judging by the size of the hamper, the quantity of white-paper-wrapped packages that I assume are cheese and pâté, and the presence of champagne, he intended to invite Margaret too.

  “I can’t do this, Hervé.” I dig around in my tote bag for my phone. Manu hasn’t texted me yet this morning, but he deserves reassurance that I’ll be on time to help him with today’s deliveries.

  “Do?” He scowls.

  “Sorry.” I smirk. Hervé’s least-favorite English word is “do.” It has “too many employments,” he often complains.

  “I can’t cancel out on Manu and go with you today,” I add. “It’s impossible. Sorry. I did appreciate your help though. Back there with Sophie. Thanks.”

  He slides into the left lane without even glancing into a rearview mirror. “Mais, ma petite. You forget you come to me for a change of wardrobe. And to refresh yourself.”

  I nod. “Yes, that’s true. You’re a lifesaver, Hervé. But please understand that I do need to work today. It’s my job.” As
if to bring home my point, I push “Send” on the text I typed to Manu, telling him I will absolutely, for sure, without fail, be at his place to go pick up the lunches.

  The horizontal lines on Hervé’s forehead deepen into a frown. He’s irked. Which is not good. I was just about to broach the subject of me staying at his place for the night.

  “Your colleague can do his own work,” he sniffs. Hervé never refers to Manu by his actual name. It’s always “your colleague” (which he pronounces like “koh-leg”) or “that one” or just “he.”

  “His business is not your responsibility,” he continues. “Your responsibility is to care for yourself and for your bébé.”

  “I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”

  I’m annoyed with myself for being annoyed. And I’m aggravated that Hervé has the nerve to lecture me about responsibility when, in general, he puts precious little energy into caring about, or even thinking about, anyone other than himself. Even that picnic in the backseat has more to do, I’m sure, with Hervé’s priorities than my pleasure.

  “Listen. I am fulfilling my responsibilities. By having a job. Isn’t that what people do? What women do? At least in the twenty-first century they do. We’re not living in the nineteen-fifties.” I lean heavy on the “do’s,” not by accident.

  Hervé clamps his mouth shut and concentrates on his driving. I turn my head and gaze out the side window. This day, which started out so positively, is already falling apart. Why is it that every little plan I try to make dissolves into chaos?

  A few minutes later he swerves the Fiat into an underground parking garage and guides it into a space marked “Privé.” We got here in seemingly no time, and it occurs to me that unless you count Manu’s van, I haven’t been in a private vehicle since leaving Phoenix, where driving is practically a state religion. I haven’t missed it one bit. Cars don’t feel special the way cabs and buses and trains feel. I suppose Parisians think of car travel as special, and cabs and buses and trains as boringly ordinary. I suppose I’m just a silly romantic.

  We continue our journey on foot, still not talking. I’m busy looking around. It’s surprising. All these months, when Margaret and I wondered about Hervé’s “maison,” we assumed it would be an elegant eighteenth-century apartment in a stunning building in the sixteenth arrondissement, which is the fancy area. But a street sign tells me this is the less-than-fancy fifteenth, and the narrow, unmarked door Hervé stops in front of is spattered with graffiti and squeezed between a Chinese deli and an orthopedic shoe store.

  He punches a series of numbers and letters into a keypad. If you lived in an apartment in Paris, you would access the street door of your building like this—with a code, not a key. Everyone does.

  “Entre, chère madame.” He pushes the door open and holds it for me.

  I hesitate before stepping over the threshold. “So this is where you live? Seriously?”

  He smiles the way he does, mouth tightly shut, lips curling up at the corners like a cat’s. “You will see.”

  Because I do want to see, I allow him to take my elbow and escort me not into the swank foyer of Margaret’s and my imaginings but a long, narrow, low-ceilinged corridor. The white plaster walls are blotched with water stains, and the red hexagonal floor tiles are cracked and in some places missing. The odor of urine prickles my nostrils. My stomach lurches, and I glance back over my shoulder as the door clicks shut. To return to the street, to the light and traffic and noise and safety of other people—of Paris—all I have to do is retrace my steps and push that button labeled “Porte.” That releases the lock. “Always have a fallback,” Kat used to say.

  Which is smart advice that in my life so far I don’t think I have taken even once.

  The corridor is short, less than ten feet long, and ends in a second door just as graffiti-spattered and unimpressive as the first. Hervé enters a second series of numbers and letters into a second keypad, but instead of opening up the door when it unlatches, he leans over to give me a kiss. It’s the kind of dry, chaste, peck-on-the-cheek a brother would give a sister, and it makes me chuckle. Fussy, prudish Hervé, shorter than me, older than me, with less upper body strength than me, is not someone I ever need to feel suspicious of or uneasy about.

  “Now, ma chère enfant. Close your eyes.”

  I laugh. “You’re killing me here.” He shoots me a quizzical look, and I’m glad to have the upper hand for a moment, if only linguistically. But he still doesn’t open the door. He waits. Finally, I cover my eyes with my hands.

  What I expect is a creak of hinges. What I get is a gust of air so aromatic and fresh it completely obliterates the urine smell. For a fantastical instant I imagine we’ve somehow been teleported out of the urban hallway and set down in the rural countryside. After all, you never know about Paris. In Paris, magic is always ready to happen.

  Without waiting for permission from Hervé, I drop my hands and open my eyes. “Oh my God.”

  He smiles again. “Et voilà. Bienvenue au paradis.” Welcome to paradise.

  On the day I met Margaret she said to me, “You’ll find that Paris has many jardins secrets.” And she was right. Yet never in a million years could I have imagined a secret garden as amazing as this. For one thing, it’s unusually big, about the size and shape of a tennis court. For another, it’s bursting with flowers of all sorts—roses, hydrangeas, mums, asters, calla lilies, and others I don’t know the names of. I even see, at the back of the garden, a trio of plum trees with actual plums hanging from the branches.

  Breaking away from Hervé, I head directly for a stone sundial presiding in the center of the garden and sit down on one of the two stone half-circle benches flanking it. The seat is surprisingly warm. In fact, it feels much warmer here in the garden than out on the street. If William were here with me, he might explain that the high walls formed by the surrounding buildings trap and reflect the sunlight, magnifying the heat and perhaps accounting for the profusion of flowers so late in the season. I might think this is cute. I always have.

  I lift my face to the sun, now fully emerged from the clouds of last night’s rain, and draw in a long, deep breath. Funny. The floral component of my day started out with a single African violet in Manu’s apartment. Now I am surrounded by dozens and dozens of waist-high rose bushes.

  Hervé catches up to me, but I wave him off. I don’t need to know the life story of the sundial’s sculptor or the scientific name for a plum tree or whatever other arcane subject he’s no doubt about to expound upon.

  I need a few minutes to myself.

  When Kat was dying she actually found time to worry about me. “I don’t want you to be alone,” she said more than once. Well, she’s getting her wish, in a way she never dreamed of. Ever since Margaret dragged me to the maternité to confirm what by that time even skeptical me was starting to suspect was true, I’ve been by definition no longer alone. Catherine is with me, always. It’s a good thing. But also a scary thing.

  I need to do right by her. That is paramount.

  Hervé taps my shoulder. “Viens, Amy. Come.”

  “Wait just a minute. Please.” I am reaching into my pocket for my phone. I want to take a photo. A hundred photos.

  But then I spot the tunnel.

  When Margaret told me Paris is full of secret gardens, she should have mentioned it is also full of tunnels. Around ninety percent of the Métro is underground. The catacombs consist of a crisscrossing network of subterranean arteries and chambers, miles of them, comprising a virtual city beneath the city. Aboveground, sort-of tunnels occasionally appear in the form of narrow shop-lined streets roofed with glass. They’re called passages and were, Manu told me, a precursor to the modern shopping mall. This made me burst out laughing.

  And now, on this slippery, off-balance day, a day when I have so much to deal with and decide upon, I’m confronted by a new kind of tunnel—a living tunnel, its walls and ceiling formed by a luxuriant wisteria vine.

  I pocket my
phone and leap to my feet.

  Hervé chuckles as he leads me into the tunnel’s leafy mouth. He knows he’s captured my fancy.

  At least he doesn’t chitchat, for which I’m glad. Privileged, spoiled Hervé could never experience this fragrant path the way I do, as something magical, like Dorothy’s yellow brick road or the winding grassy lane that tempted hobbits to wander away from the shire. And not only magical, but historical. I know without being told that the closely fitted cobbles under our feet were set in place centuries before Phoenix was so much as a flyspeck on the map.

  The wisteria tunnel isn’t long. About thirty feet. At the end I expect to come to another locked door or a foyer or a set of stairs. Anyone would. Like every other Parisian I’ve met or heard of or read about, Hervé has to live in an apartment, likely one larger and more opulent than Margaret’s, but still an apartment of some kind.

  Which is why I do not expect to find myself standing in a small square cobblestoned courtyard, staring up at a castle.

  OK, it’s not truly a castle. There are no crenellated battlements. No moat, no drawbridge. But there’s a turret—a tall round stone tower with narrow slit windows and a steep conical slate roof that makes me think of a witch’s hat. And there are balconies, roomy enough for Juliet to pace back and forth on, calling out for Romeo.

  Margaret would go bonkers over this place. Even Manu would be reluctantly impressed. As for William, he’d no doubt just remark how expensive such a large place would be to heat and cool. He’d point out the mullioned windows on the ground floor and mention how all those little panes would be a bitch to keep clean. William is pragmatic, which is a fine quality. Within reason.

  Hervé trots up to the shining mahogany front door like a tomcat returning home after a night on the town.

  He knows I will follow, and I do. The entryway is flanked with topiary shrubs snipped into perfect cones and topped by a stone pediment incised with foot-high numbers. I step back to make out a one, a seven, an eight, and a six. “Is that when the house was built? In seventeen eighty-six?”