The Engagements

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  Everything in New York moved too fast; she could feel the speed flattening her.

  She thought it might be different if she had friends. She considered going to the embassy, and trying to find out if there were expatriate groups she might join. But she had never been the sort of person who joined a group. She wouldn’t know what to say or how to act. It seemed desperate somehow. That left P.J.’s circle: his friends from school were young musicians, some struggling, some doing all right, but none as well as he was. They were all classically trained, but among them only P.J. was a master of interpretation. She could tell that they were jealous of him, though he denied it. One of them, a guy they called Clams, sat around smoking marijuana all day. P.J. paid him to take the dog to his place in Brooklyn when he traveled. She told him she’d be fine caring for Charlie, even though she didn’t particularly want to, but P.J. said he was worried about his friend and would rather have an excuse to give Clams some cash.

  Sometimes she traveled with him, but she didn’t want to go to Europe, not yet. She felt uncomfortable whenever their new world overlapped with her old one. At a party after he performed with the Montreal Orchestra, the principal oboe player had approached her and said, “I’m certain we’ve met before.” They had, at a dinner at her apartment in Paris. But Delphine only shrugged and said she couldn’t place him.

  In Paris, she and Henri had made something of a name for themselves, and everyone they socialized with knew them for it. But now she was merely an appendage of P.J. When they traveled together, all she ever heard was, “You must be so proud of him.” When they asked, “And what do you do?” she would tell them she was in real estate, and watch their eyes fog over with disinterest.

  There were a couple of female musicians she had met whose company she enjoyed. One of them, Jennifer, was about Delphine’s age. She was from California, the daughter of a renowned cello player, now a renowned cellist in her own right. The other, Natasha, was a bit older, tall and lovely, born and raised in Manhattan. A flutist with the New York Philharmonic. Delphine invited them and their husbands over for dinner twice. On each occasion she prepared a traditional French meal, complete with homemade pumpkin soup, salad, meat, a cheese course, and dessert. Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time. Natasha sent flowers after the first visit, and a sweet handwritten note after the second. But the invitations were never reciprocated. Delphine told P.J. that she felt hurt by this. She wondered if she had done something wrong.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said. “People in New York don’t really entertain at home very much. I have friends I’ve known for ten years and I’ve never been inside their apartments.”

  She thought that was strange. What was it about Americans that made them so enthusiastic and familiar on the surface, when in reality they didn’t want to share anything of themselves? She had believed that moving to America would be no harder than leaving Montmartre for Henri’s bourgeois quartier of the Rive Gauche, but she saw now how foolish that had been.

  When P.J. brought her to parties in New York, everyone talked so fast that half the time she had no idea what they were saying. For years, she had worked with Americans and prided herself on her English. But now she saw that in those interactions, both sides had agreed to go slowly, to meet in the middle. Here, they simply expected her to keep up.

  At Parisian dinner parties, everyone around the table contributed to the conversation. In New York, they tended to pair off and talk to only one person, usually someone of the same gender. She found this terribly boring. The women asked her mostly about Paris. They wanted to tell her about their vacations there, and ask what she thought were the main differences between France and the U.S. They wanted to know how Parisian women stayed so thin despite the presence of tempting pastries and cheese and wine, and what brand of moisturizer she used before bed.

  New York women had an obsession with French women, even though they too were beautiful. It seemed to her that their goal was perfection: the perfect outfit, the perfect body, perfect hair. In Paris, they were far from perfect—the teeth might not be quite as straight, the makeup not applied so exact—and yet they had confidence and grace that these women lacked. But of course you couldn’t tell them that!

  It gave her a shock when an American she hardly knew approached her at one of these gatherings and threw herself into Delphine’s arms as a greeting. She herself was naturally inclined to kiss someone on both cheeks upon meeting, but since she knew that it was not the norm here, she weighed what she ought to do on a person-by-person basis. P.J. said that New Yorkers found it charming, and so French. And that was the point, really. Here, she wore her nationality like a costume. It was the first thing people saw in her, the only trait that made her special. Nobody cared whether she was funny or sharp or a horrible angry drunk. She was French and that was all.

  Through the autumn and early winter, she spent her days furnishing the apartment with a fervor that delighted P.J. Sometimes, as she hung curtains, or unpacked silver from a box, he played the violin in the next room and her heart felt heavy with love. She tried to let the feeling envelop her, using the sensation to push off any doubts. This was permanent, and it would feel that way if she could just finish decorating, get an American visa, open a bank account. For now, she still used her French credit card, and when she needed cash she had to get it from P.J. He kept a fat stack of hundred-dollar bills in his sock drawer, and told her to feel free to take what she needed, but Delphine felt odd about it sometimes. Eventually, she would get a job, perhaps as a translator. That would help some too.

  In the beginning, she didn’t mind his travel schedule. When they reunited, it felt exciting, and for so many years she had missed the pleasure of being alone. But as the holidays drew near, she began to feel lonesome. Delphine had grown accustomed to having Henri around, and she sometimes found herself talking to him in her head. She wondered what he would do for Christmas, whether he would stay home alone or brave the weekend in Brittany with his parents, who would no doubt baby him, filling him up with bûche de Noël and lait de poule, trying to cover his sorrows over with cream and sugar. On Christmas Eve, Henri’s mother would excuse herself to cry and smoke her Gitanes, and look through old photo books of Josephine, her daughter who had died more than fifty years earlier. Henri and his father would stand by, fidgeting, awkward, unsure what to do with such unending sorrow.

  The only time they had ever discussed having children, P.J. told her that he was fine without. But she knew he was young, and wondered if he would regret the choice later. She thought of Henri, who had wanted a little Josephine of his own. Would it have been better or worse if all this had happened but he had been left with a child?

  Delphine had heard from him only three times, over email. The first was businesslike, asking if she knew the whereabouts of some important papers in the shop. The second had been sent at three a.m. Paris time, and in it he begged her to come home. When she didn’t reply, he wrote again, this time to tell her of a wonderful performance he had attended at the Paris Opera, a message so chaste that he might have been sending it to his grandmother.

  After a few months in the States, she woke one morning with a sense of dread about her father’s grave.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to it,” P.J. said. “Don’t worry.”

  “If no one tends to his grave for long enough, they’ll dig him up and move him to some anonymous crypt,” she said.

  “Jesus Christ, that’s barbaric,” he said.

  She shrugged. It was just what happened.

  The thought possessed her for several days, until she wrote to Henri, asking if he might visit and place some flowers on the tombstone. He said he already had, and she wanted to cover his face with grateful kisses.

  Every time the phone rang, she expected it to be him, though of course he wouldn’t know how to contact her. She had gotten an American cell phone shortly after she reached New York, but she had no one to give the number to. Only P.J. ever called her, to see how her day w
as going.

  In mid-December, Delphine went to hear the Philharmonic perform with P.J. as guest soloist. When he came onstage, she leaned forward with her chin in her hands and closed her eyes to hear each note. The sound of it was heavenly. There was something intoxicating about the fact that she had heard him practicing the piece for weeks and now the world could hear what had been only hers. She wanted to tell the strangers on either side of her that she had made this man many late-night grilled cheese sandwiches after rehearsals, and sat there in her negligee as he dunked them straight into a pot of Campbell’s tomato soup.

  P.J. moved about the entire stage while all the other players remained stationary.

  “A bit unconventional for my taste,” she heard a man say to his wife as they walked out, and Delphine laughed to herself. She thought he was brilliant.

  They had last left the country together to go to Montreal in early October, which meant that her passport’s ninety-day allowance in America was almost up again. They spent Christmas on a beach in Mexico, drinking sweet piña coladas in a green-and-white-striped cabana. He said he didn’t feel like going home anyway, he’d rather just spend his time off with her. She feared for a moment that he did not want to introduce her to his family yet, but dismissed the idea. They had planned a trip to his hometown to celebrate his father’s birthday in the spring. And perhaps going home for Christmas didn’t mean the same thing here as it did in France. P.J. said there were plenty of years when he had skipped the madness of family holidays to relax and recharge on his own. Delphine wondered if he had really been alone, or if he had some woman along, but this she did not ask.

  On Christmas morning, he gave her an emerald bracelet from Tiffany’s. He stuffed the blue box into a red felt stocking, which he hung from the corner of a dresser drawer. She had seen Christmas stockings in American movies but had never had one of her own. In France, they left their slippers beside the fireplace for Père Noël to fill with treats.

  They sat by the pool and sang carols to one another—he taught her “Jingle Bells” and she laughed, recognizing the notes.

  “We sing ‘Vive le vent’ to the same tune,” she said.

  “What does it mean?”

  “ ‘Long live the wind.’ ”

  P.J. frowned. “That seems so unfestive, compared to jingling bells. Who wants the wind to go on?”

  She laughed. “I know a sweeter one, which you will like.”

  Softly she sang “Il est né, le divin enfant.” Her singing voice was nothing, but she could remember a time when she and Henri had gone to Notre Dame to hear it sung by a children’s choir. Just the memory of their sweet, tender voices made her cry.

  She thought of the way they had decorated the shop each Christmas, with fluffy artificial snow covering the front window.

  “What’s wrong?” P.J. asked.

  “I’m just a little sad.”

  “Why?”

  “I was thinking of Henri. It’s silly.”

  Delphine had expected him to comfort her, but she could tell P.J. was uneasy. She wanted to tell him precisely how she felt—that she loved him in a way she had never known possible, but that she could not just forget her old life. She worried about what she had done to Henri, she wondered why she had ever married him in the first place, and suspected the worst of herself—he had come along soon after her father disappeared from the world, and she had replaced one with the other, as if they were interchangeable pieces instead of men made of flesh and blood. But she couldn’t explain without upsetting P.J. He seemed to find the complexity of her feelings suspect.

  “I was hearing this saying on television the other day,” she told him. “He loves me, he loves me not.”

  “ ‘I heard this saying,’ ” he said.

  “You did?”

  “No. That’s the right way to—Oh, never mind. What were you going to say?”

  He seemed irritated, and she wondered if she should just let it drop. But Delphine continued. “In France, the saying is different: little girls picking the petals off of flowers say, Il m’aime un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, à la folie, pas du tout and then start again. The translation would be something like, He loves me a little, a lot, passionately, madly, not at all. Everything in America is so black and white. Do you understand?”

  He made a face that communicated the fact that he did not. They ordered two more cocktails.

  She had underestimated how hard it was to be in love with someone who didn’t share her native tongue. She was frustrated by language all the time. Her English was strong and growing stronger with use, but there were turns of phrase that only an American could understand. She couldn’t say everything she wanted to. Delphine translated each sentence in her head before saying it out loud. She sometimes went to French films alone during the day and basked in the feeling of understanding every word again. She still thought in French, and dreamed in it, sleep a sweet relief from having to think twice as hard as she ever had before. P.J. teased her for talking in her sleep. It was the only time, he said, that he got to hear her speak French very much. He thought it was sexy.

  He was always correcting her. She would tell him, “Today I walked all the way up to One twenty-five Street,” and he would laugh gently before saying, “It’s One twenty-fifth.” To a certain extent, she appreciated his help. But she sometimes grew annoyed by him, too. He had never learned to speak her language, other than a few simple words and phrases. He spent $500 at the Virgin Megastore on a set of CDs called Rosetta Stone that promised to teach him all of French in just a few months. But P.J. never even took them out of the package.

  Meanwhile she worked so hard. She forced herself to read The New York Times in English. She attempted American novels as well, even though she suspected that she was missing certain parts. She knew it was unfair to compare, since he had such a busy and full professional life, while she had to search for ways to fill her time.

  The sex never slowed down or diminished, as if they both knew this was the only sure, perfect way to understand one another. When they made love, it put her at ease. He was hers, this beautiful genius. He loved her and made her laugh. Everything else would improve with time.

  A week after New Year’s, on an unseasonably warm Wednesday night, Delphine ventured out for a walk while P.J. was in London, working. Just a few blocks from the apartment, she came across the Brasserie Montmarte. She had never noticed the place before. With warm yellow lightbulbs outlining the sign above the door, and baguettes stacked in the window, it looked like any other of the dozens of faux French bistros in New York. She never went to these places, as she suspected that they bore no stronger resemblance to real Parisian restaurants than Mr. Chan’s Chinese Food on West Seventy-third did to dinner in Hong Kong. But the name made her smile, and she thought she might stop in for a glass of wine.

  The room was dim. Several couples ate by candlelight in the back. Most American restaurants were so loud that you couldn’t hear your own dinner companion. But here, it seemed more like Paris, soft and quiet.

  A bar in front had high stools and mirrored walls, painted with an outline of the Eiffel Tower. She took a seat there and made eye contact with the bartender, a pretty blonde who looked to be in her mid-twenties.

  “What can I get you?” the woman said, and Delphine realized with a slight flutter of her heart that she was actually French.

  “Un petit rouge, s’il vous plaît.”

  “We have a beautiful Côtes du Rhône tonight.”

  Delphine nodded with pleasure. It felt so nice to be understood.

  “Have you eaten?” the woman asked. “Don’t let this tacky decor fool you. The specialty of the house is a crisp confit de canard, as good as any you’ll get at home.”

  Delphine smiled. “Ahh, oui, merci.”

  “Are you visiting New York or do you live here?” the woman asked as she poured the wine. “I know I haven’t seen you before.”

  Delphine told her she was engaged to an American, and that she
had moved to the States five months ago. It felt like so much longer.

  “I’ve been here ten years,” the bartender said.

  Her name was Marie-Hélène. She came from Marseille. At thirty-one, she was older than she looked. She was not really the bartender, only covering for someone who had called in sick. She was a co-owner and the night manager, she reported, entrusted with every part of the business, since the other owners—an American couple in New Jersey—were only interested in the restaurant as an investment. She said she had put every cent she had into the place, and lived with two roommates, but so far the restaurant had done well.

  “Tell me everything you hate about New York,” she said after Delphine had ordered a second glass of wine.

  Delphine laughed. “I don’t hate it.”

  “Come on. We all hate it at first.”

  “I just have so much to learn about America.”

  Marie-Hélène raised a finger to correct her. “New York is not America. Remember that.”

  Delphine nodded. She switched to French. “I hate the way they are all slaves to the gym. They’re so proud of it! You hear them talking about these machines and boot camp classes like it’s a religion. It seems like Americans have been brainwashed into thinking you have to do sports to survive.”

  “They have.”

  “What about just taking a walk or playing a nice game of tennis?”

  “I play every Tuesday and Friday,” Marie-Hélène said. “You should come along.”

  “I would love that,” she said.

  Women from the South of France were something like New Yorkers. They made fast friendships, friendships of convenience. In the North, it was harder to meet people, but Delphine thought the connections ran deeper. In Paris, she might have been turned off by Marie-Hélène’s intensity, but here she felt grateful for the kindness.