Losing the Light

by Andrea Dunlop

  “What do you mean?” Véronique lit a cigarette for herself and then handed me one. I was becoming less concerned about my new smoking habit by the day.

  “I don’t know,” I said, forcing a bright, casual tone. “They’re acting like two kids who have a secret.”

  “Maybe they do.” Véronique smiled slyly.

  I gulped and took a long drag on the cigarette to hide my expression; they were such helpful little props that way.

  “I like your friend Sophie,” Véronique said, sounding as though she meant the opposite, “but I was hoping you and Alex would get together. What a shame you’re not interested.” She took a drag from her cigarette; her nails, despite the improbability of their being painted that color in the seventeenth century, were royal blue. She looked at me and held my gaze until I cracked.

  I sighed. “How did you know?”

  She gave a little chirp of laughter. “Because you are a woman and Alex is Alex.”

  I nodded. I hated to be such a cliché. It was a hopeless and tiresome choice, and I felt both unrealistic and unoriginal. Of course she should laugh.

  “He talks about you. Often.”

  I felt a stirring in the pit of my stomach. “He does?”

  Véronique rolled her eyes. “Tout le temps. ‘Les Américaines’!”

  “So he talks about us,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as disappointed as I felt.

  “I don’t think Sophie is right for him,” she said, both ignoring and addressing my comment in a way that seemed particularly French. “She reminds me too much of Marie-Catherine.”

  “In what way?”

  “Beautiful and crazy.” Belle et folle.

  “Sophie? Beautiful, yes, but not crazy.” As much as I warmed to the idea that Véronique thought that I was the one who belonged with Alex instead of Sophie, I had no desire to rake her over the coals and felt suddenly defensive of her.

  “Maybe you’re right, you know her better than I do. Just some of the things that Alex has told me. But anyway, Alex is so dramatic.”

  What had Sophie told him? Something noteworthy enough for Alex to, in turn, pass it on to Véronique, obviously. This, along with Sophie’s having known about his father’s death, were nascent signs of an intimacy that I felt left out of.

  “And you know Alex much better than I do,” I said.

  “Which is why I am shocked that he has not made a move yet. It is very unlike him.”

  I could feel my face turning red.

  “Ahhh. I see. When?”

  “Two weeks ago. We were coming up from his darkroom. We had been having a kind of intense discussion.”

  “Vraiment? About what?”

  “About photography. Well, sort of. I think it was also about something else. What is this new project he’s working on in Nantes, do you know?”

  “Haven’t a clue. He’s very secretive about his work.” She smiled, but I had the tiniest flash that I had caught her off guard somehow. “He must trust you if he talked to you about it at all. And then what happened?”

  “We were heading back to the garden, and then just as we reached the top of the stairs, he pushed me against the wall and kissed me. I was shocked. He took my breath away.”

  “Très sexy!”

  “Then he just walked away and we haven’t spoken about it since. I’m so confused.”

  “Ah, well, not to give my cousin away, but he’s a true seducer, you know? He would leave you wanting more. Not like an American boy, who acts all at once. You must enjoy it.”

  Did that mean that there would be more?

  She looked pleased as she took another sip of her drink. “And I heard you met my aunt? Madame de Persaud the younger.”

  “Yes,” I said, quickly checking that Alex and Sophie were still at the bar, “we had a very strange dinner with her.”

  Véronique nodded. “There is no other kind of dinner with Alex and his mother, trust me.”

  “I’m fairly sure she thought I was robbing the wine cellar when I first ran into her.”

  “Oh, no!” Véronique said with delight. “That is so perfect. Alex will love you for it.”

  I smiled and looked down at my lap, unable to keep from thinking, If only.

  “The truth about Alex and his mother?” she asked.

  “Please!”

  “Well, no one knows the truth, but Alex will joke—or perhaps he’s not joking, one never knows—that his mother poisoned his father.”

  I gasped.

  “I don’t know if he says it because he really thinks it might have happened or because he hates her. He has other reasons to hate her, so again, who knows?”

  Was Véronique being serious? This family was unlike any other I’d ever met. I felt a surge of delight that I had access to the dark, secret suspicion before Sophie did. I knew how childish this was but I couldn’t help it.

  “She doesn’t seem very respectful about his chosen career path,” I said.

  “Ah, no, to say the least. She wanted him to work for the government. She is always trying to convince him to give up on the photography. He thinks that she’s trying to make sure that Virginie doesn’t leave him any money. He’s probably right on that count. His mother would say she’s doing it out of love, to keep him from becoming idle, and no one would question her.”

  “That’s not right,” I said, feeling defensive on his behalf, then adding quietly, “he’s so talented.”

  Véronique looked up from her glass and studied me for a long moment. “But, yes, he is, isn’t he?”

  Before the conversation could go any further, Sophie and Alex reappeared.

  “We have the best idea,” Sophie said, looking conspiratorially at Alex.

  “Can you believe, Véronique, that les filles have not yet been to Paris? It’s a complete tragedy! Since my mother is back in town and crowding the house, I thought we should all go this weekend. What do you think? Say yes.”

  “D’accord. Oui!” Véronique said, mimicking Alex’s enthusiasm.

  I chafed at the idea that Alex and Sophie had planned this on their own and I was only now being included, not to mention the money, which I did not have. Later, as Sophie and I were walking home, I attempted to raise the concern of cost, but Sophie swatted it away.

  “It’ll only cost us the train ticket since we’re staying at Alex’s apartment, and I’ll buy yours if you’re out of cash.”

  “I can’t let you do that.” For Sophie, money was nothing, an unimportant detail. In her life it had always just been present, like background noise. In my house, we’d been hypervigilant of every dollar; it wasn’t something I could just turn off. The awareness of it coated me in a thin layer of shame.

  “Why not? Who cares?”

  “I do.”

  “You’re good for it; I’m not letting you say no to this. Why are you being this way all of a sudden?” Sophie’s eyes were sparkling, almost manic.

  “I’m not. I’ve just spent a lot of money while I’ve been here and it’s making me anxious.”

  I looked at Sophie, who was regarding me incredulously, swinging her beautiful gray bag as though she didn’t have a care in the world. My protestations tasted like tin coming off my tongue. Sophie had slipped right into their privileged world; I was the odd woman out, the spoilsport.

  “Okay, we’ll go.”

  She threw her arms around me.

  I wanted to ask her what she’d been talking to Alex about, but I sensed with a sharp pang that it wasn’t my business. For as much as we’d been having a shared experience here, we’d also been having separate experiences—and being experienced separately by the people we’d met.

  You understand. No one understands, but you understand.

  I had secrets of my own.

  SOPHIE AND I arrived late by train into Paris; Véronique had blown off her Friday classes and gone down the night before. I’d been tempted to suggest that we do the same, but I was starting to panic about my abysmal grades. My experimental laissez-fair
e attitude about schoolwork wasn’t seeming like such a good idea anymore as March rolled along. I did still care, more so when I reminded myself that I did, in fact, have to go back to school in California at some point. Real school where things like grades would once again matter to me.

  The Gare Montparnasse train station was the only part of Paris that I’d seen before, and I was struck immediately with an intense sense of déjà vu. I could almost see the imprint of a past Brooke through the gaps in the crowds as they crisscrossed in front of me, her worried eyes darting across the platform, unable to appreciate that she was in Paris because she was so nervous about catching the train to Nantes. She didn’t know Alex or Véronique yet and couldn’t have dreamed how much things would have changed by the next time she’d be here.

  It seemed to me that from the moment we set foot there, Paris conformed to my expectations in an almost uncanny way. It was as if the city were bending toward me to give me what I had imagined. The whole feel of the place—the wicker chairs on the pavement, the red awnings, the cobblestones—you couldn’t take a step without knowing you were in Paris. The city seemed lit up from within.

  Compared to Nantes, the Paris metro was fairly easy to figure out, and we made it to Alex’s apartment in the sixth arrondissement without any trouble. Whatever I had been expecting from the de Persauds’ apartment on the bank of the Seine, the reality was even more exquisite. The apartment was in a building that took up the entire corner of the city block, with an elegant café at its triangular point. I gazed up at the narrow windows, the tiny wrought-iron balconies, the detailed stonework; it was dizzying. The doorman smiled and let us up. The smile threw us. We laughed in the elevator—had he thought we were French? Had he thought we belonged here?

  Véronique answered the door. “Hi, girls. Come in.” She was wearing a long black silk robe, knotted tightly around her waist, and her slick black hair was coiled around the top of her head in an intricate knot. It seemed as though we’d caught her off guard, even though she’d known when we were scheduled to arrive. She seemed weary and a little preoccupied. Alex was out. “I think he’s working” was all she would say. Then, just as quickly, she switched on her charm again and was anxious to hear what we wanted to do the next day. She went into the kitchen, a large room with an impressive display of copper pots suspended around a central island.

  The apartment was chic, much more modern than the house in Nantes, and in cooler colors, blues and grays. We sat down on a plush white couch.

  “You mustn’t be afraid to be tourists while you’re here. We all secretly love to show off the city, and it gives us an excuse when we have visitors. So the Louvre, the tour Eiffel, Montmartre, whatever you want!” Véronique said.

  Sophie wanted to go to the Louvre to see Winged Victory and also to see the Mona Lisa “so that I can be one of those smug people who tells you it’s not worth seeing,” she said. I wanted to see Sacré-Cœur. But that was all, we said, we wanted to enjoy the day.

  “Parfait,” Véronique said, “and Alex is having a party here tomorrow so you will be able to meet lots of vrais Parisiens.”

  Sophie yawned and I involuntarily mimicked her.

  Véronique laughed. “You are exhausted, no?”

  “Yes,” Sophie said, “this week was long.”

  “We don’t want to go to bed before Alex gets home, though,” I added quickly. I had prepared myself to see Alex that night; in my imagination this was when we would continue what we’d begun.

  But Véronique shook her head. “You won’t want to wait up for him, trust me. He could be gone all night. You’ve had a long day. Just come see one thing before I put you to bed.”

  We followed her and she gingerly unlatched and pulled back the French doors, revealing a balcony I hadn’t seen until then. As a gust of brisk early-April air blew in, Véronique held her robe closed as the wind sent the silk fluttering around her. We followed her onto the balcony.

  “If you lean out a little and look to the left, you can see it.”

  We did as she said, and we both let out a little gasp as the tower came into view, glittering and unbelievably close. The Eiffel Tower was something I’d expected to be disappointed by. A certain kind of person, even some students, even some French, loved to let you know it was overrated. But I couldn’t be disappointed. What you don’t understand until you’ve seen it is how well the rest of the city gathers around it, stooping at its feet. No buildings for miles and miles were allowed to be taller than six floors. The only one that ever broke this rule was the Montparnasse Tower, which people liked to joke was the box the Eiffel Tower came in.

  “That always impresses visitors,” Véronique said with a little laugh. It was strange at times like this to think that she was the same age we were.

  It almost hurt to imagine living here, that’s how much I wanted it. Knowing the people who owned this place, being allowed to sleep here as an invited guest, gave me the illusion that it might be possible. Even though some deep, gnawing place inside me still told me it wasn’t. Paris didn’t feel like a place you could just go to the way you could move to any American city. Its money and glamour were ancient and inherited, as inaccessible as the stars.

  Véronique pointed us in the direction of the guest room, wishing us a good night and sweet dreams, her voice cheerful. As we walked away, I glanced back at her. She was standing next to the French doors, gazing out into the night, the same unsettled look on her face as when we’d arrived.

  Sophie and I slept together in the guest room. When she came to bed, she had on what looked like a new nightgown, a light lavender color and silky, meant for someone to see.

  “Where did that come from?”

  “Oh, I’ve had this.” She pulled back the covers and wriggled in next to me, then whispered, as though afraid Véronique would hear her, “Feel.” She took my fingers and traced them over the silk that clung to her hips. It was buttery soft. “Can you believe this place?”

  “It’s amazing. I don’t want to say it’s like a fairy tale, because you know I’d have to kill myself if I said something like that, but, well . . .”

  “It’s like a fairy tale?”

  We both laughed.

  “It’s about as far-fetched,” I said.

  Sophie pulled herself up on her elbow and looked down at me, her hair falling over her shoulder, her face suddenly serious. “Don’t say that.”

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “That it’s far-fetched. We could get here, we could come back.”

  I laughed a little sadly. “I know we can. Aren’t you a little excited to get back to the States? I’m not, but I would think you would be.”

  She looked down at me annoyed. “Why would you say that?”

  “Easy, tiger, it’s not a criticism. It’s just that, you know, you have volleyball and everything to go back to.”

  “So that’s all you think I am, huh? Like everything is so perfect.”

  I sat up now to be able to look her in the face. “No, Sophie, that isn’t what I mean, but you have to admit that from the outside your life doesn’t look so bad.”

  She swung her legs off the bed and was suddenly on her feet as though intending to leave. “Wow, you too, huh? Everyone thinks I’m not allowed to have any problems. Do you have any idea how alone that makes me feel? That’s exactly why I want to stay—I can be new in France. People here understand me.”

  That we were having this argument in bed made it feel as though we were a couple. I would have laughed if it wouldn’t have incensed her more. Something clicked just then. “Alex?”

  “What?”

  “Alex. He understands you. That’s what you mean by ‘people here.’ ”

  She looked flustered. “No, I didn’t mean Alex. Not just Alex anyway. Actually I was talking more about Adam and you, or at least I thought you.”

  “Of course me. I don’t judge you. Talk about unfair. I had an affair with a professor, that’s what I’m going back to!” My voice wa
s raised now and I was up on my knees on the bed. “I have no real friends and I come from a piece-of-shit town that I’m terrified will suck me back in the moment I’m back on American soil. Fucking sue me for being a little envious of your circumstances, Sophie.”

  “Look,” she said, backing off a little now, “I recognize that from the outside, it looks like I have a lot to go back to. But I don’t want any of it anymore.”

  “Then what do you want?” Which was more preposterous, that she wanted me to sympathize with her, or that I did?

  “This.” She came back to the bed, taking my hands in hers. “We should stay. We could have this.” She gestured to the room around us, meaning not only the room but the apartment or one like it, Véronique and Alex, Paris, France, the world.

  “I just don’t want to get my hopes up. We still need to finish college, you know.”

  “We have choices,” Sophie said, lying back with a deep sigh, “that’s all I’m saying. You need to recognize that. Promise me you’ll think about it.”

  “Okay, I will,” I said, not even knowing what exactly I was agreeing to think about.

  She leaned up and kissed me on the cheek. “Let’s get some sleep.” She turned off the lamp. I could feel her fall asleep next to me, leaving me alone in the darkness with my thoughts.

  The next morning I woke up with the uneasiness of being in an unfamiliar bed. I looked around for Sophie but she wasn’t next to me. What time was it? I put on my cotton robe and walked cautiously out the door. I could hear voices and laughter coming from the kitchen. Sophie was on a stool by the center island, still in her nightgown, covered with only a sheer robe, sitting kitty-corner to Alex, who was in jeans and a black T-shirt. A day or two’s worth of scruff covered his chin.

  “There you are,” Véronique said, appearing before me, nearly running into me as she zipped from one end of the kitchen to the other. It’s always surprising to see people in the morning for the first time. “Did you sleep well?”

  I nodded, pulling up a stool next to Sophie.

  Véronique had dark circles under her eyes despite her chipper demeanor. “Have some coffee.” She poured me a cup from a nearby French press.