“Will you be okay for Thanksgiving, Mom?” Meg already knew she was going to Steven and Bix's for the holiday, but she worried about her getting lonely over the weekend. She didn't have a lot of friends in San Francisco yet, and Meg knew she wasn't seeing anyone, or so she thought.
“I'll be fine. I'm just glad you'll be here for Christmas. That's more important.” And it was only later, when she and Meg were both getting ready for bed, and Wim was downstairs, that Paris shared her secret, or part of it at least, with her. She rarely kept anything from her daughter. And what had gone on for the last five weeks was unusual for her in every way. She told her she was dating someone, and he was French. But she did not say that he was staying with her, and he was fifteen years younger. That was too much to confess at one gulp.
“What's he like?” Meg looked pleased for her, as she always was when things were going well for her mother.
“Adorable. He's a photographer. He's on assignment here for a few months.”
“That's too bad.” Meg looked disappointed. “How soon is he going back?”
“I don't know. We're having fun for now.” She sounded philosophical about it.
“Widowed or divorced?”
“Divorced. He has a ten-year-old son.” She didn't say that he was barely older than that himself.
“It's weird how all these older guys have young kids, isn't it?” Meg was thinking of her father, and her mother's new friend had obviously gotten a late start, she assumed. Paris made a vague mmming sound as she nodded and brushed her teeth. But she knew that sooner or later, if they met him, she would have to at least acknowledge the difference in their age. It didn't bother her or Jean-Pierre, he said it didn't matter to him at all, his ex-wife was older than he was too, though only five years, and not fifteen. But Paris had no idea how her children would react, and she was nervous about it.
She talked to Bix about it in the office the next day. She had felt dishonest not saying something to Meg, particularly after her comment about older guys getting a late start and having kids. There was nothing “older” about Jean-Pierre.
“I don't think anyone gives a damn these days,” Bix reassured her. “Older, younger, same age. Fifty-year-old women have twenty-five-year-old boyfriends. Seventy-year-old men marry thirty-year-olds and have babies. The world has changed. A lot of people don't even bother to get married to have kids these days. Single men and women adopt children. None of the old rules hold. I think you can do damn near anything you want. And you're not hurting anyone. I hope your children will be decent about it.” But Paris was still unsure.
Paris talked to them on Thanksgiving, they were at their father's. They were staying there, and Rachel answered the phone when she called. Paris just asked to speak to Meg, and didn't say anything to her. But she told Wim to wish his father a happy Thanksgiving. It was the only contact she had had with Peter in over a year, when they took Wim to school. They no longer even talked on the phone, they had no reason to, and it was easier for her this way.
Jean-Pierre was with her when she talked to them, and afterward they went to Bix and Steven's, and had a lovely Thanksgiving. It was Jean-Pierre's first, and he said he liked it. And they went to see two French movies and an American one that weekend. Jean-Pierre loved films.
And for the next month, they lived in their little bubble, like twins in the womb. Everything was protected and happy. She worked a million Christmas parties with Bix, or it felt that way at least, and Jean-Pierre was doing a lot of work for the new magazine. They couldn't believe their good fortune to have him, and he had to do a lot of explaining in Paris and New York as to why he had dropped out of sight for the past two months, and didn't know when he would return. He had until April, and then he either had to do something about getting a permanent resident's visa, which wouldn't be easy to obtain, or go home. But for the moment, everything was easy and simple in their world. And Paris had never been happier in her life. She invited Richard to join her and the children for Christmas, and realized that she had to say something to Wim and Meg, so Jean-Pierre could be there too, and she wanted him to be. She finally took the bull by the horns with Meg the week before they came. She wanted to give her at least a few days to digest it, but her hands were shaking before she made the call. Their approval and support were important to her, and she wondered if, in their eyes, she had gone too far.
She chatted with Meg for a few minutes, and then decided to drop the bomb. “Something unusual has happened,” she began, as Meg waited.
“Are you still seeing that French photographer?” Meg sensed what it was, or so she thought.
“Yes, I am. If it's all right with you, I'd like him to join us for Christmas. He has no one else here he knows, except the people he works with, and Bix and Steven.”
“That sounds fine, Mom.” She was grateful that her mother had invited Richard. Things had gotten very serious between them.
“I think I should probably mention something before you get here.”
“Is there something weird about him?” Meg sounded suspicious as Paris plunged in.
“Not weird,” Paris said cautiously. But all she could do now was tell the truth. “Just different. For me at least. He's young.” There was a silence at the other end of the phone, and she felt like the daughter instead of the mother.
“How young?”
Paris took a breath. “Thirty-two.” There, she'd said it, and Meg didn't answer for a minute.
“Oh. That's pretty young, Mom.” Meg sounded a little stunned.
“Yes, it is. He's very mature,” and then she laughed at herself. In fact he wasn't. He was totally age-appropriate, and sometimes she felt like his mother, except very certainly not in bed. “No, he's not,” she corrected. “He's a perfectly normal thirty-two-year-old, and I'm probably an old fool. But I'm having a wonderful time with him.” What she said was honest at least. There was no pretense about what she was doing.
“That's good.” Meg was trying to be mature herself, but Paris could hear that she was shocked. It was surely a departure from the ordinary, and not one her daughter had ever expected from her. “Are you in love with him?” Meg sounded concerned.
“I think I am. For now. But sooner or later he'll have to go home. We can't do this forever. He's basically taking some time off from his normal work. He can't do that forever either. He's working for a tiny magazine here, instead of Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. We're having fun.”
“If you're happy, Mom, that's all that counts. Just don't do anything too crazy. Like marry him.” Meg didn't think that would work although the age difference between her and Richard was far greater, but that seemed more normal to her, because he was a man. It was a shock to Meg to think of her mother with a much younger man. And later Richard reassured her. He didn't think her mother would do anything foolish, although a lot of well-known women seemed to be involved with younger men these days. And after she talked to him about it, Meg felt better.
It was Wim who was shocked. “How old is he, Mom?” he asked in a suddenly high-pitched voice. She told him again.
“That's like me going out with a four-year-old,” he said to bring the point home. Paris got it. He was upset.
“Not exactly. He's a grown man.”
“What's he doing with a woman your age?” Wim said in a tone of disapproval. The whole world was going crazy, as far as he was concerned. His father had left his mother and married a woman barely older than Meg, and they were having a baby, which seemed ridiculous to him, and in bad taste. And now his mother had a boyfriend nearly half her age, or close enough. Or actually the same age as his father's new wife. Young was certainly in. And Wim thought both his parents were nuts.
“You'll have to ask him,” Paris answered, trying to sound calmer than she felt. She didn't want either of her children to be upset, or to look foolish in their eyes and she was sure she did. But Bix reassured her again the next day. He thought Jean-Pierre was a terrific man. And Jean-Pierre himself seemed unconcerned.
Whenever she brought it up, he brushed the age difference away, and she didn't feel it as a problem between them. It just sounded so bad. But in reality, it looked fine. No one ever stared at them, or seemed surprised to see them together, which was a relief for her.
And when her children arrived on the day before Christmas Eve, there was an awkward moment when she introduced them to Jean-Pierre. They all seemed to be circling each other and sniffing the way dogs did, checking each other out. But while Paris checked on dinner, Richard made an effort to break the ice. And before she knew it, everyone was talking and laughing, and teasing each other and making jokes, and by the end of the evening, they were friends. Even Wim. He and Jean-Pierre played squash with each other the next morning, and by the time they sat down to Christmas Eve dinner, he seemed more like their friend than hers. Their objections and concerns seemed to evaporate in thin air. It was a lovely Christmas, and at one point even Paris had to laugh. The world really was upside down. Meg was with a man old enough to be her father, who should have been going out with her mother, and her mother was with a man technically young enough to be her son. She was still thinking about it when she and Jean-Pierre went to bed that night. Her children were in the mother-in-law apartment downstairs.
“I like your children very much,” he said with a warm look. “They are very good. And very kind to me. They are not angry to you?”
“No, they're not. Thank you for being so understanding.” It couldn't have been easy for him either. He was in a foreign country where he barely spoke the language, working on a magazine that was far beneath his stature, living with a woman old enough to be his mother, or almost, with grown children he had to audition for. And he'd been a terrific sport. It had been a lovely Christmas so far, and when they went to bed, he handed her a small package with a smile. When she opened it, it was a beautiful gold bracelet from Cartier, with the Eiffel Tower on it and a gold heart with her initials on it on one side of the heart, and his on the other, and just above it he had had engraved Je t'aime.
“Joyeux Noël, mon amour, ” he said softly. And then she made him unwrap her present. They had shopped in the same place. She had bought him a Cartier watch. And she knew that whatever happened later, it was a Christmas she would cherish forever in her heart. They were savoring stolen moments, and living in a magic bubble. But it was becoming a little more real. The bubble included her children now, and so far at least, all was well. Joyeux Noël.
Chapter 26
Meg and Richard and Wim stayed with Paris for a week, and over the New Year weekend they all went to Squaw Valley to ski, and stayed at a large resort hotel. And Jean-Pierre joined them for the weekend. He turned out to be an Olympic-class skier and had raced in Val d'Isère as a kid. Wim loved skiing with him, and Richard stayed with Paris and Meg and skied more sedately down the slopes. And at night they all went out. It was an ideal vacation for all of them, and on New Year's Eve, Paris forced herself not to think that it was Peter and Rachel's first anniversary and they were having a baby in five months. It was still hard for her to believe. And she could remember all too easily how ghastly the day had been for her a year before, knowing that he was out of her life forever, and in Rachel's arms for good. As she thought about it while she dressed for the evening, Jean-Pierre saw the look on her face.
“Tu es triste? You are sad?”
“No, just thinking. I'm all right.” She smiled at him. He had understood instantly what it was. She only looked that way when her children talked about their father, and it hurt his feelings sometimes. To him, it meant that she didn't love him as much as he loved her. But it was more complicated than that. It was about history and memories and hearts that were forever intertwined, from her point of view at least, no matter what the legal papers said. She had tried to explain it to him once, and he had been upset for two days. He viewed her feelings about Peter as a disloyalty to him, and no amount of explaining changed that. She had learned that the words were better left unsaid. He didn't seem to understand what the loss of her marriage had meant to her. Maybe he was too young. He hadn't lost enough yet himself. There were times when, in spite of his warmth and charm, she felt the difference in their ages. He saw life as a young person, and preferred to live only in the moment. He hated to think about the future or make plans. He was entirely spontaneous, and did whatever felt good at the time, with no regard for consequences, which sometimes irked her. He had called his son on Christmas Day, but he admitted that the child was almost a stranger to him, and he didn't feel the loss. He had never spent time with him from the first. And had never allowed himself to love him, which seemed wrong to Paris. She felt Jean-Pierre owed him more than that, but Jean-Pierre didn't. He felt he owed him nothing, and it made him furious that he had to send money to support him. He hated the boy's mother, and said so. He and his ex-wife had married to give the child a name, and had divorced shortly after that. He had had no great emotional investment in the mother or the child. They had both been a burden to him, one he tried to ignore. So he avoided the boy, which seemed sad to Paris, and irresponsible. He had no other father than Jean-Pierre, but Jean-Pierre resisted any emotions about him, because he had been manipulated by the boy's mother. Paris always felt, when they talked about it, that his responsibilities to the child should have transcended his feelings about the mother, but they didn't. He had shut them both out years before. And ultimately it was the child's loss, which bothered Paris. But they saw it differently, and probably always would. She had stopped talking to him about it, because they argued over it, which upset her. She felt he owed the child more than he was giving, and she thought his attitude about it was selfish. But perhaps it was only young.
There were other things they saw differently too. He had a more casual work ethic than she, and the people he liked were younger, which made her uncomfortable. She preferred hanging out with people closer to her own age. And the people he brought home from the magazine were in their twenties and made her feel ancient. And one of the important topics they disagreed about was marriage.
Jean-Pierre talked a lot about it. Paris never did. She avoided it discreetly. There were times when she actually thought about it, and wondered if it could ever work with him long term, but there were subtle hints, to her, that it couldn't, that it would be too big a stretch. The people he liked, his boyishness, which translated to juvenile to her at times. And although he wasn't a socialist, he had very definite political ideas that were far more liberal than hers. He thought riches of any kind were offensive. He detested all things bourgeois. He hated old-fashioned ideas, and traditions and obligations that seemed pointless to him. He was very avant-garde and free in his thinking. He believed in high taxes, for the good of the people. And he detested anything elitist with a passion. The parties she and Bix organized always irritated him, because he thought the people were so pretentious. And they were, some of them, but she and Bix loved them, for the most part. And elitism was the essence of their business. Some of his ideas she knew were because he was French. But the essence of it was that he was young. It did make a difference. And the only ancient tradition he believed in was marriage, because he was a romantic, and believed in commitment, which she admired in him. Unlike Chandler Freeman, who was committed to nothing and no one. But Jean-Pierre was the reverse side of that coin, and he often pressed her and asked if she thought she would marry him one day. And threatened that, if she wouldn't, he would move on. She never promised that she would, and she thought about it herself from time to time, but never as often as he did, and she came to different conclusions, on her own. She thought that over time the difference in their age and philosophies would pull them apart, rather than the reverse.
Meg asked her about it before they left Squaw Valley. She had finally taken several runs down the mountain with Jean-Pierre and her brother, while Richard and Paris skied the easier runs in the afternoon. And that night she questioned her mother about Jean-Pierre.
“Are you thinking of marrying him, Mom?” she a
sked with a look of concern.
“No, I'm not. Why?”
“I just wondered. I went up on the chair with him today, and he said he hoped you would, and maybe next summer we could all take a trip to celebrate. I didn't know if that was his idea or yours.” She looked worried.
“His,” Paris said with a sigh, but it made her sad anyway. She knew that one day reality would have to be faced. She couldn't imagine committing the rest of her life to a man his age. A boy, as she thought of him at times, although he hated it when she said that. But he was. He was carefree and independent, and very young. He was a free spirit, detested schedules and plans, and was always late. It was hard at times to think of him as an adult. He had never had the responsibilities she had, and had no idea what they meant. It was hard to explain away time, or change it, to add it or subtract it at will. It wasn't an easy thing to do, even when the reasons for it were good. Time and history and experience were what they were, and couldn't be discounted or erased. They had to be earned, like patina on bronze. It took a long time to get there, and once it was there, it stayed. She knew it would be years before Jean-Pierre was responsible or even mature, if he ever was.
“He's terrific, and I like him a lot,” Meg said honestly, careful not to hurt her mother's feelings, but she had her own ideas, and Paris didn't disagree with them. They were similar to her own. “But a lot of the time, he reminds me of Wim. A little careless, a little crazy, they just don't see the whole picture, they're too busy having a good time. Not like you. You understand a lot more about people, who they are, what they need, and why they do what they do. He seems like such a kid.” The trouble was, he did to Paris too.
“Thank you,” Paris said with a warm look, she was touched. But she saw the same things in Jean-Pierre that Meg did. He was an irresistible, charming, delicious boy. But nonetheless a boy. Tenderhearted and loving, but irresponsible at times. He had never had to be otherwise, but she had, for many, many years. And she also thought he should have children one day, more than just a son he had been estranged from for all his life. And she wasn't going to have babies with him, although he had mentioned it more than once. He thought they should one day. Paris just couldn't see that, even if she could, which she was no longer sure was possible, not with ease anyway. Even if she started now, she'd be forty-eight when they had a child, which was pushing it, in her mind at least. And if they waited any longer, it wouldn't be possible at all. Not in a year or two, or five, when he'd be ready to settle down. There were so many reasons why marrying him didn't make sense, but loving him did. She just didn't have the answers yet. And in four months his visa would run out. That reality was going to force them both to make decisions they probably didn't want to make. And she was trying not to think of it. “Don't worry about it, Meg,” Paris reassured her.
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