Paris Ever After

by K. S. R. Burns

  But William isn’t looking at my dirty hair or my naked lips. His focus is on my cabbage-sized stomach. I squirm, because this morning, instead of a chic mini-dress and Hermès scarf, I’m wearing a baggy-at-the-knees pair of leggings and a size extra-large T-shirt from the flea market that says “I ♥ Paris” in big red letters across the chest. My permanently rumpled black fingertip-length trench coat is draped around my shoulders. My black boots that were shiny new last April are dirty and scuffed. When I threw on these clothes, I believed I was choosing them at random. Now I realize this is a defensive outfit. Like when you purposely don’t shave your legs before going out on a date.

  Because you just don’t trust yourself.

  “I got breakfast.” William nods at the basket of croissants and the pair of café crèmes positioned on the table between us. Unlike me, he is groomed and alert, not knowing or caring that in Phoenix it’s past one in the morning and he should be the sleepy one.

  I sip my coffee, wishing it were tea, and reach for a croissant while he talks.

  And talks.

  Last night William seemed barely able to utter a complete sentence, but today he overflows with conversation. Granddad sends his love. Summer in Phoenix was hotter than normal, setting a record for number of one-hundred-plus-degree days in a row. The new job is going well. His promotion to chief engineer has doubled his workload, and the T-30 prototype program was cancelled, but he enjoys being a supervisor, and a new project is already in the pipeline. His work buddy Robert has split up with his wife, Jennifer, but they claim it’s only temporary. I picture the delicious baby girl they had last January and ask myself how anyone could walk away from a child. Even if it’s only temporary.

  I don’t contribute much to the conversation. I don’t need to. William does all the talking, glancing in the vicinity of my midsection from time to time but not mentioning it. Nor does he seem to recognize how uncharacteristic his chattiness is. Instead he rambles on, projecting a determined good cheer and an air of prosperity personified by new jeans (a better-fitting brand than usual) and the hip ankle boots from the other day. That promotion must have come with a big raise.

  Or perhaps he somehow found out about the news from Kathryn. That was the sole item of interest in the sack of snail mail he delivered to me last night—a letter from Kathryn, the aunt Kat was named after and the executor of her estate. “Remember last spring when I said Kat made you her sole beneficiary?” she wrote in her big loopy old-fashioned longhand. “When the estate is settled, I’ll mail you a check. Get ready! I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

  I’ve always known Kat had a nest egg—her grandmother left her stocks and bonds in addition to a set of Noritake china—but not how much. All I know is she was always ready to take time off from her website design business to go surfing or skiing or run a 10K somewhere. I used to nag her to save more and worried she wasn’t providing enough for her old age. “Joke’s on you,” she would say now. “Har har.”

  While I wonder whether William is the kind of person who would steam open an envelope to read someone else’s mail, he continues his monologue. “The house is fine, not as clean as when you’re there,” he confides with a wink, forty-five minutes later.

  The croissant I’ve been nibbling drops from my fingers onto my plate. No way can this be true. William is ten times better at housekeeping than I am. He never leaves dirty dishes in the sink, not even a water glass. He squeegees the shower every day, then meticulously dries the walls and fixtures with a special microfiber towel purchased for that purpose. He vacuums or mops the floors on a set schedule maintained on his phone calendar. He regularly disinfects sinks and toilets. He power washes the exterior walls of our house twice a year. Before we were married he used to send his Egyptian cotton sheets and pillowcases out every week to be laundered and ironed by hand.

  For sure he’s returned to that last routine. He was never satisfied with the way I iron sheets.

  Yes, I ironed our bed linens. Table linens too. I didn’t even mind. It’s relaxing.

  I sip my now-cold coffee, again yearning for tea—specifically a big mug of hot strong English Breakfast laced with milk and sugar the way Margaret makes it. But when I left this morning she was still zonked out. “Do not worry about her,” Manu reassured me as I sped out the door. “I will be here all the day.” He returned to the apartment late last night and spent the night there, sleeping on a cot we found behind Margaret’s armoire and set up next to the dining table. He didn’t say where he’d been all evening. I assume with Sophie.

  “So you know what I’d like to do right now?” William sets his empty cup on the table with a sharp clack.

  My arms move to shield my stomach. It’s a reflex. Yesterday he said he had “news.” Here it comes. “What?” I ask, my voice husky.

  “I’d like it if you’d show me some of your Paris.”

  I lower my arms. “My Paris?”

  “Yeah. Why not? By now you must know your way around pretty good. We could start with a long walk.” His gaze flickers to my belly. “Assuming, you know, that it would be OK. For you.”

  “Of course.” My pregnancy has gone super smoothly. I know how lucky I am. I barely had morning sickness, and not at all after the first few weeks, which is probably why it took me so long to accept the possibility that I could be pregnant. The whole experience has been completely different from the first time. Kat would say it’s meant to be.

  He’s staring at my stomach, and again I tense, waiting, if not for the promised news, then for the interrogation I’ve been expecting since I told him about Catherine. It’s weird. I assumed he would begin pelting me with questions right away. The William I know would not only be furious he didn’t find out he was going to be a father until now, the middle of my second trimester, he would insist on getting up to speed on all the details as soon as possible. “You can’t make a plan until you have all the facts,” he always says. And I can’t argue with that.

  But instead of quizzing me he shifts his focus to paying the bill, overtipping the waiter even more egregiously than he did last night. I guess no one told him restaurant prices in France already include a service charge, and I don’t say a word. He likes to be the one to tell people things, not the other way around.

  “Ready?” He pushes back from the table.

  I gobble down the remainder of my croissant, gulp a couple swallows of coffee, and get to my feet. If William and I had come on a trip to Paris together, just the two of us, it might have gone like this—croissants for breakfast, a day of sightseeing. Today it’s the three of us, and he and I are tippy-toeing around each other. I suppose he’s as freaked out about everything as I am.

  We exit the café, William holding the door for me, and I pivot left, pretty much at random. A huge part of the pleasure of walking in Paris is that, no matter which direction you choose, you’re guaranteed to encounter something beautiful or amazing or confounding or funny. Maybe William has already figured this out because he doesn’t ask where we’re going. He just strides along at my side, matching his pace to mine, the way he did during our honeymoon in San Francisco.

  On that too-brief trip—unbelievably, one of the few times I’d been outside the state of Arizona—we walked all day and made love all night. The memory curls my toes. It’s been ages since I’ve thought of San Francisco, the hills, the bay, the sourdough, the big square bed in our tiny hotel room. My happiness felt complete. I assumed there would be more vacations to more lovely cities, preferably lasting longer than four days. But William would never agree to being away from his job for too long. “You don’t want the brass to figure out they can function without you,” he once told me.

  Without any specific plan I head for the same destination Margaret selected on that eventful day I met her—the Pont de Sully, the bridge that connects the Right Bank to the eastern tip of the Île Saint-Louis. Just like me on that first ramble with Margaret, William doesn’t realize he’s walking over a bridge until we’re
a third of the way across.

  “Hey. First time I’ve seen the Seine.” He leans over the stone balustrade and gazes down at the choppy water. Exactly the way I did last April. Unlike me, however, he pronounces the name of the river the way most Americans do: “Sane.” But I don’t correct him and tell him “Seine” rhymes with “men.” Let him enjoy it on his own terms.

  He swivels his head from one side to the other. “I thought the river would be wider.”

  “It is in other spots. This bit is just the part between the Right Bank, where we were, and an island, where we’re going.”

  “Island?”

  “Yeah. There are islands in the Seine. We’re about to get to one.”

  “You mean that there?” He frowns as he squints at the mass of white stone five-and-six-story buildings ahead. “Doesn’t look like any island I’ve ever seen.”

  Of course it doesn’t. The heavily developed islands in the Seine sure don’t resemble the bushy green clumps dotting the Mississippi River in southern Minnesota, where William grew up.

  I decide he’ll have to see it to believe it and lead him the rest of the way across the bridge into a long narrow street. Like many Paris streets it’s solidly lined on both sides with buildings. No vegetation or open spaces. No indication you’re anywhere near a body of water. You’re cognizant only of a cramped urban neighborhood teeming with many pedestrians and few cars. In other words, the polar opposite of Phoenix. And, I guess, Minnesota.

  William hunches his shoulders and jams his hands into his pockets. San Francisco was an exception, I learned later. William doesn’t go for cities or crowds or closed-in spaces. His idea of a good vacation is a camping trip to some untrammeled wilderness or a road trip through the empty expanses of the American West. Not that we ever went on any such trips. That would have involved taking time off work. And I can’t imagine William ever coming to love a big city, much less understand why anyone else would love it.

  But I have to hand it to him; he seems determined to try. “Hey.” He’s come to a halt in front of a display window. “Look at the chocolate.”

  I know this chocolate shop well. It includes a café, and Margaret and I come here often to share a pot of the thickest, smoothest, richest, creamiest hot cocoa you could ever imagine. It’s another of the voluptuous pleasures of Paris—indulging in an hour of casual delight on a random weekday afternoon. At first, I felt guilty being so decadent, but decadence is an easy thing to get used to.

  I study the window display. I suppose Margaret will soon be coming to this chocolate shop with Sophie instead of me. Everything will change. Has changed.

  William reaches for the brass door handle. “Wanna go in?”

  “Chocolate? Now? We just had croissants.”

  I half wish I did feel in the mood for something sweet, though, because William’s offer is so unprecedented. Here he is volunteering to accompany me into a chocolate shop, a cramped one crowded with low tables he’d be sure to bump his shins against, and tiny hard chairs he would find uncomfortable to the point of offensiveness. I struggle to understand. Perhaps his plan is to seduce me back to Phoenix with a steaming cup of chocolat. Perhaps it’s simply that even he is falling under the spell of the enticing aromas emanating from the shop. But my stomach is telling me the next thing I eat needs to be protein, not sugar or carbs. “No. Thanks. Maybe later.”

  “Your call.” He shrugs and walks on ahead of me.

  I follow, asking myself where this new William came from and if he’s here to stay. If he were, would that make all the difference? Would that be the game changer? It may well be the right thing. For Catherine. For me.

  A hundred yards later we emerge from the narrow street shaded by buildings into a small square shaded by trees. A sprinkling of sidewalk cafés gives it a village feel. William’s shoulders lower, and I sense him starting to breathe easier.

  “You’re about to hit your second island of the day,” I tell him as we saunter across the open space. The cornflower blue Paris sky, punctuated with cumulous clouds, arches high above us. The light breeze that ruffles our hair is cool but not cold. Another weird thing is William hasn’t mentioned how radically different this weather is from what he left behind in Arizona, where it must still be in the hundreds. At this stage of the year most Phoenix residents would be thrilled to escape the oppressive heat, even for a day. At the very least, they wouldn’t be able to stop talking about it.

  “What? Two islands?” he exclaims instead. We’re already crossing the second bridge, this one narrower than the first and affording a more expansive view of the slate-colored river, which he scans from bank to bank, nodding. I’m starting to think he might actually be impressed. “How many are there in total?”

  “Islands? Several.”

  How I wish I knew the exact number of islands in the Seine. It would be fabulous to astound William with the depth and specificity of my knowledge. Instead I am—as I tend to be even when not made stupid by the lack of sleep—vague. “A long time ago there were quite a few small islands in this section of the river,” I say, “but they combined some of the littler ones to make bigger ones.”

  I watch as William tries to wrap his brain around this engineering feat of yore. “When?”

  “In the 1700s and 1800s, I think.”

  His eyebrows lift. “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “From reading.”

  From high school all the way through my twenties, instead of going to Paris, I read books about Paris. Hundreds of books. Fiction as well as nonfiction. Even academic works. So I do know stuff, just not numbers.

  He shoots me a look of grudging respect.

  “Anyway,” I continue, “the island we’re coming to next is called the Île de la Cité and is the heart of Paris. Of France really.” I pause to rack my memory banks for an enticing detail. “In fact, the kilometer markers on all the highways of France are measured from a spot on this island.”

  “Cool.”

  I nod, accepting the praise. William loves any kind of fact, no matter how random or arcane. He likes them for their own sake and to use them to impress others. I don’t tell him that Notre-Dame Cathedral is also located on the Île de la Cité, because I want him to be surprised. Most Americans have heard of Notre-Dame, but many don’t realize it’s on an island. I’m willing to bet William doesn’t. He’s not a reader. He doesn’t care about literature or architecture or even geography. So I hoard this bit of trivia and allow the tidbit about highway markers to soak in.

  We encounter a street performer costumed to look like a marble statue—this one is dressed in the flowing white robes of a Roman centurion, his skin heavily caked with white greasepaint, his eyes bloodshot from holding them open without blinking. But William doesn’t even glance at the guy or register the tin can at his feet half filled with euro coins. Possibly he thinks it’s a real statue, out there on the sidewalk for no reason. I smile to myself. I’m being elitist, but it’s a treat to know things William doesn’t.

  “You don’t need a map to get around, do you?”

  Our elbows bump, and I catch my breath. It’s our first physical contact since last night, when his knee touched mine and later when he briefly brushed his lips across my forehead.

  My voice is shakier than I mean it to be. “Map? No, not here.”

  He shakes his head. Faced with navigating a foreign city, William would absolutely equip himself with maps, guidebooks, websites, and apps. He’d never just wing it. He’d never, say, take up with a random stranger he met in a café and end up living with her. He wouldn’t go on an expedition into forbidden catacombs with a bunch of guys he’d just met.

  Yet those are two of the most exciting and fulfilling things I have ever done.

  “You’d learn your way around in no time,” I add. “You’ve only been here for a couple days.”

  I point him down a long, straight street, the right side featuring a row of gaudy souvenir shops. The left side is the north wall of Notre-Dame C
athedral, but William doesn’t even glance at it. “You’re the boss,” he says. He is absolutely aiming to please. This reminds me of when we first met. He would cook me cozy dinners at his house, take me up to Sedona for elaborate picnics, and plan whole weekends around what I like to do. Like those four short days in San Francisco. And four long nights. The memory sweeps through me like a wave sluicing across the beach. I almost groan.

  “This is an island, huh?” He tips his head back to take in the upper stories of the souvenir-shop buildings on our right. “I’m guessing these structures are solid stone. They must deliver a huge gravity load. I wonder what the weight per unit area is.” He pulls out his phone and starts to punch numbers into the calculator app.

  William is an aeronautical engineer, not a civil one, but as we dawdle along he’s effortlessly lost in the land of x and y, of knowns and unknowns, of quantitative not qualitative. Catherine flutters, reminding me that in our sweet little equation of one plus one I’m supposed to be the responsible adult, the parent who needs to be calculating and hypothesizing, and most of all, thinking rationally.

  Oh, but it’s not easy. Just as when I followed William around on his first morning in Paris, just as when we met in the no-name café last night, nothing is happening quite the way I thought it would happen.

  At the end of the street, we veer left into a vast open plaza. His shoulders again relax, a sign he’s happy to be in an unrestricted space despite the masses of people swarming all around us.

  “Where to now?” He pauses and starts to look around.

  “No! Keep going. Don’t look back.” I grab the sleeve of his jacket and tug him forward. I don’t want him to see it too soon. We reach the middle of the plaza before I stop and allow him to turn. “Voilà. There it is. Notre-Dame de Paris.”

  His mouth drops open as he gazes up at the iconic façade. William is not religious and doesn’t much care about art or history—or at least any history besides American—so I don’t expect anything like actual awe. But for a few seconds he gawks in respectful silence. Then he glances at me. “Isn’t this one of the seven wonders of the world?”