Losing the Light

by Andrea Dunlop

  Sophie looked down at her hands and let out a long sigh. “This is going to sound so petty.” She was twisting her fingers around each other, interlacing them the way she did when she was anxious.

  “Sophie.” I put my hand on her knee. I was relieved that I wasn’t imagining things or misunderstanding her after all. It was important for me to know that we were as in sync as I’d believed. “Just tell me. You can tell me anything.”

  She seemed to rally her courage. “I think it’s great, you and Alex. It’s just that everything’s been so wonderful and now . . . I’m afraid it will be different with all of us.” She glanced quickly up at me and then out the window. “I guess I just don’t want things to change; I know it’s selfish.”

  Did I question her reasoning then? I wouldn’t have, because I thought I understood. She worried that Alex and I would retreat to a world of two with no room for her. It was the same thing I had feared.

  “Ah.” How good it felt to hear her acknowledge the existence of an Alex and me; it was proof that I hadn’t imagined the whole thing. “It’s not going to change anything, Sophie. I promise you.”

  “I’m sorry. Should I not have even said anything? Am I being silly?”

  She spoke in such a childlike way, how could you suspect her?

  “No, I want you to tell me when something is bothering you. But you don’t need to worry. It isn’t going to be like that, Soph. There will always be room for you.”

  “Okay.” She looked at me now with a peaceful smile and took my hand. “Je t’aime, chérie.”

  “Et toi aussi.” I closed my eyes, shielding them from the countryside racing my window.

  BY THE time we got back to Nantes it was dark, and Sophie and I shared a cab back to our home stays. The streets were so quiet that it felt almost as though we were sneaking back into town.

  The next morning, I woke up stiff and parched from the long weekend of drinking too much and not sleeping enough. I readied myself for school with a feeling of dread. Now that I was back from Cap Ferrat, nothing stood between me and my impending final exams. My grades in France had been on the bad side of mediocre, and I was trying to convince myself that this didn’t matter. I had no plans for graduate school, so what was the point of grinding for grades? But after a lifetime of feeling as if getting anything other than straight A’s was a gamble with my future, the habit was difficult to break.

  Maximilian was in the kitchen eating cereal when I came in to make myself some toast.

  “Bonjour, Maxo.” I ruffled his hair.

  Nicole came around the corner, taking me a bit by surprise. She was never usually up this early. “Ah, Brooke, I am up way too early this morning for a school meeting. How was your weekend in Cap Ferrat?”

  “Very nice, marvelous actually.” I stopped for a moment, realizing that I had never used that word before getting to know Alex and Véronique.

  “Is your boyfriend rich?” Maximilian asked.

  Nicole gasped and swatted the back of his head lightly. “Maxo! That is not polite.”

  Max gave me a sheepish look.

  I laughed. “He is very generous,” I said simply, and leaned down to kiss Maximilian’s cheek. “Bonne journée, tout le monde.”

  Outside, the weather was warm with just a little breeze. I found myself checking my phone again and again, waiting for something to appear. Alex had my number, and though he didn’t normally send me messages or call, I was half expecting to hear from him despite having left only a day ago. Things were different now, weren’t they? I resolved not to think about it, which only seemed to further my obsession.

  It felt strange to come back to the institute after the weekend away, to return to the kitchen and make the Nescafé as usual. Which one was closer to my real life now? This slightly shabby place full of nondescript Americans, or Cap Ferrat and Alex? The answer, of course, was neither. My real life was far away and I would be thrown back into it soon enough. Actual reality loomed just on the other side of the dreaded exams, and going home after all this seemed too brutal to contemplate. Just as I was beginning to spiral into these untamed thoughts, I heard Sophie approach, chatting with Adam.

  “I am si jaloux that you two spent the weekend in Cap Ferrat. I did exactly nothing glamorous over my long weekend. Bonjour,” he said to me, kissing my cheek. “All I did was study. I must admit I’m a little anxious about the exams.”

  Sophie and I groaned in unison. Of all the things we talked about, studies and grades never entered into the conversation. It was as if school were a bit beneath us now. We preferred to concern ourselves with higher planes of thought: art and freedom of the spirit. And love. And our perfect, shining futures.

  “You two have been in some kind of alternate universe with those fancy friends of yours,” he said.

  “But they’re so wonderful,” Sophie said. “You should come out with us the next time we see them.”

  “Yes! Véronique loved you,” I added.

  Adam smiled and rolled his eyes. “Only because I told her she’s a good actress. But, okay, les filles, let me know.”

  “Oh, God,” Sophie said after he’d walked out, “I really don’t want to think about the exams.”

  “You’ll be fine,” I said, believing it for her if not for myself. Sophie didn’t seem to need to study much back at home and she was a natural with the language.

  “No, I won’t. I mean, my spoken French has gotten better and I’ve been reading a lot. Olivier Cadiot, like Alex told us.”

  “He didn’t tell me that,” I said a little too quickly, a little too sharply.

  “Oh, well, anyway. It doesn’t even matter probably, right?” she added unconvincingly, sipping her Nescafé through tightly pursed lips.

  “Tell you what. I don’t have any plans this afternoon—let’s go to the park and study for a little while after school. It’s so nice out.”

  “That’s a great idea!” Sophie’s eyes lit up. “We can get a bottle of wine. It’ll be like a picnic, a study picnic.”

  I laughed. “If you think it will help!”

  A closet near the back of the institute was full of odds and ends left behind by previous students. Sophie and I found a picnic blanket among the miscellany, then stopped at the Monoprix to pick up a bottle of wine and plastic cups.

  “Won’t you miss being able to get such good, cheap wine at the grocery store when we go home?” I said as we got in line to check out.

  Sophie said nothing but smiled as though she had a secret.

  “What?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  All day since we’d made these plans, I’d felt a small but mounting sense of relief. I’d been worrying about the exams and now I was going to do something about it. I was going to put my head down and focus and it would all be okay. We spread out the blanket on a grassy knoll between two trees. I took a little bite of the Toblerone we’d bought and cracked my heavy textbook to the page I’d marked. Any feelings of calm quickly left me as soon as I began to review the materials and realized I had only a passing familiarity with the information. I looked up at Sophie, who had her books open but was focused on uncorking the wine. The bottle gave a satisfying little pop as the cork came out.

  “Here you go.” She handed me a plastic cup. She looked calmly back down at her open textbook and sipped her wine. A few more minutes went by.

  “Sophie?”

  “Oui, chérie?”

  “I don’t know . . . any of this.”

  She looked up at me, eyes wide, and whispered, “Me neither.”

  We both suddenly burst into nervous, near-hysterical laughter. We laughed and laughed for a few minutes before either of us could pull it together enough to speak.

  “We did go to class, right?” she said. “I mean, I seem to remember it.”

  “Oh, God, Soph,” I said, trying to compose myself, “what are we going to do?”

  “Have another drink.” Sophie held her glass aloft.

  “I’m seri
ous. I’m worried I’m going to fail these tests!” I said, a little relieved to admit it aloud.

  Sophie swiped her hand in the air as though brushing away the possibility. “You won’t fail. It’s not like the point of being over here was to get perfect grades anyway. I mean, think about it,” she said quietly and emphatically. “Who’s had an experience like we’ve had here? It’s worth more than grades, you know it is.”

  I tipped the rest of the wine in my cup down my throat and mulled that over.

  “Brooke, what was the point of you coming here if you’re going to keep looking at everything just as you did before you left?”

  “What does that even mean? I’m just facing reality. You know we have to go back soon. What exactly is the alternative?” I was growing a little irritated now.

  “To stay,” she said evenly.

  “For what, the summer?”

  Sophie shrugged. And suddenly I knew that she didn’t mean the summer. I let out a sigh that sounded more exasperated than I meant it to.

  “I don’t even want to talk about it if you’re going to get so angry with me,” she said softly.

  I sighed. “Sophie, I’m not angry with you. I’m just freaked out about the exams. And I don’t think you’re being practical. What about school? Volleyball team? Our parents? Any of this ringing a bell?”

  “I don’t care about any of that anymore. And I don’t think you do either; you’re just afraid. Why do you immediately assume that staying isn’t even possible? Look how good our French is now! We could transfer to the University of Nantes! Or the Sorbonne!”

  I looked down at my hands. It was too painful to imagine that staying in France was a real possibility, only to then lose it—which somehow I knew I would. She was right, I was afraid. I knew how easily I could give in to her, to all of it.

  “Are you telling me you actually want to go back to California?” I noticed that she didn’t refer to it as home. “That you want to leave France? Leave Alex?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to leave, no. But at some point we have to face facts. Where would we live, for one thing?”

  “Alex would help us. He loves us. He would look out for us. His grandmother wouldn’t even notice if we lived in that house! We’re there all the time anyway.”

  I wanted all of this to be true. Looking at Sophie, at the fervor in her eyes, I could see she believed it was. I rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. The late-afternoon sun was still warm, and more than anything I had the urge to lie down on the picnic blanket and sleep.

  “Let’s just focus on the test for now, Sophie, can we please?”

  “Fine. But I’m going to find a way for us to stay here.”

  “You do that.” I smiled at her.

  “I will,” she said with a defiant smirk. “And you just need to keep an open mind.”

  AS THE days passed, it began to feel less and less as if my night with Alex had ever happened. I called him late in the week, longing to hear his voice, but was met with his voice mail. I hung up without leaving a message, afraid the desperation would be plain in my voice, trying to comfort myself with the knowledge that he was never one to keep in touch in between the times we saw him. With Regan, I’d always known when I’d see him next, there was never the opportunity for these chasms to open between us. But Alex inhabited the moment he was in or else was just easily distracted. The thought of a vague someone else began to materialize in my mind. But it didn’t matter. He and I were something, we had something. I knew it in my soul. I told myself the story of us again and again to soothe my troubled mind. I remembered, it seemed, every touch, every point of contact. But as I endlessly replayed these memories, they began to lose the visceral power they once had; they’d become emptier, more like memories of a dream.

  I tried to focus on studying and enjoying the time I had left. With its lurching toward the end, each day felt monumental. I tried to memorize everything: the taste of the ham sandwiches, the smell of the aged wood in the house, the way the place Cigale bustled and came alive in the mornings. But Alex was never far from my mind, and I found that I was always either thinking of him or vigilantly trying not to. The elation of remembering his touch alternated with the desperation that I wouldn’t see him again. It felt like the heat and chills of a fever.

  By the time I did see him again, a week later, I was so consumed with yearning that I felt it bubbling beneath my skin, felt flammable with it.

  Sophie told me that he was back in town and that we were meeting him at a bar we liked off the place du Commerce with low lighting and a small, cheap-looking dance floor. When I found out she’d been in touch with him before I had, I felt myself light up with jealousy. Then I reminded myself that while I had been trying to focus on studying for the exams, Sophie had been scheming to stay in France. So I assumed she had called Alex, maybe over and over, the way she did when I didn’t answer her calls right away. I was a little mortified to think that she was asking him to help us, but I figured there was no stopping her. Truthfully, it gave me some pleasure to think of her embarrassing herself in front of Alex. She would have to snap out of it when the time came to go home. Yet I had to admit that a small part of me hoped she would come up with a plan so perfect that I would be compelled to relent and stay.

  I called my mother after several weeks of delinquency and too-brief e-mails. I could hear the loneliness echoing in her voice, could hear the emptiness of the house around her. She was straining to sound chipper, to transmit only her happiness for me for the experience I was having. She wouldn’t admit in a hundred years that she was anxious for me to come home, wouldn’t impose that upon me. I could scarcely imagine telling her I was going to stay. But I would leave her someday soon either way, so perhaps it wasn’t so much a matter of if as of when.

  In the meantime, since returning from Cap Ferrat, I had made some progress with my studies. I had even spent a terrifying twenty minutes after class one day with Adam and our traduction professor. We asked Sophie to join us but she declined. In general, I had tried to avoid studying with her after our first less-than-productive session; in any case, she didn’t seem very interested. I figured that she was a better student than I was in general and was perhaps expecting to have an easier time with the tests.

  I spent a long time getting ready that Friday night. I tried on half my clothes, wishing I had the cash to pop down to the Galeries Lafayette for something new the way Sophie always seemed to be doing. I ended up with a black cotton dress that I’d worn dozens of times but, as far as I could remember, never with Alex. For at least half an hour, I fussed with my hair, without much success. I felt that the first moment he saw me tonight, after this time apart, would be crucial, and I wanted this vision of me to be an improvement on whatever impression he’d been left with. I had to move a step beyond the girl he hadn’t thought to call since we’d slept together. I promised myself I wouldn’t ask him why he hadn’t called, wouldn’t even acknowledge that I’d noticed. Let him think I had distractions, even other men.

  As I’d planned, I arrived a little bit late, trying to cultivate a breeziness that I didn’t actually feel. Véronique was habitually late, and I’d told Sophie I would meet her at the bar, so I headed upstairs and searched the empty couches. I heard Sophie’s laugh, high and bright as it echoed through the space, then spotted Alex leaning forward on his knees, listening intently to Sophie chattering and twisting her long hair around her fingers as she sat angled toward him. She was wearing a frothy, embroidered white dress that nipped in at her narrow waist and splashed out over her tanned legs. As she leaned toward him, her breasts strained against the scooped neckline. I froze for a moment as I saw Alex reaching out to Sophie. He brushed something from her cheek, an eyelash maybe, and his fingers lingered there for an excruciatingly tender moment. What was I seeing?

  They saw me just as I was approaching. Sophie shot out of her chair, startled, and put her arms around me as if she hadn’t seen me in ages, though it’d only been s
everal hours since we’d been at school together.

  Alex stood and kissed my cheeks. I looked at him for a moment as we both stood there. He gave me a searching gaze, then sat down and promptly pulled me onto his lap. So it had been nothing. Or was this now a flurry of overcompensation?

  “Sophie and I were just discussing how you plan to move here and be French forever,” he said, sounding amused.

  I blushed and held my hands up to indicate that I knew nothing about Sophie’s scheme, then laughed and was embarrassed by how giddy I sounded. To feel the warmth of Alex’s body next to mine brought the memory of being with him rushing back through my every nerve, obliterating every other thought. I let my fingers curl around his shoulder, and he looked up at me warmly. Maybe we could stay in France. I felt as if the blood were draining from my brain, heading elsewhere.

  “Merde,” Alex said, “this waitress is terrible! I am going to get us a bottle of wine and bring it over myself.”

  Reluctantly, I got up from his lap and moved to the seat next to Sophie.

  “What have you been up to?” I asked, narrowing my eyes, meaning several different things at once.

  She shrugged and smiled innocently. “I told you I would find us a way. Alex has been saying all along that we could stay with him in Cap Ferrat for the summer. I don’t know why you refuse to take him seriously. You should just have some faith in people, Brooke, faith that things can all work out for the best.”

  “Easy for you to say.” I stared fixedly at the rapidly filling bar.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I was growing weary of her defensiveness. I knew that she had her own struggles, but I thought she was too smart to be so blissfully unaware that not everyone moved throughout the world with the same freedom that she did. Money was among the things that never seemed to concern her, and I wondered what that must be like. Her parents must have been keeping a steady cash flow going to her while she’d been here. She never seemed to want for it, insisting that we go out to eat and then blithely paying the whole bill, showing up with adorable new dresses all the time. Nor did she seem to have any concerns about being cut off.