Women with Men

by Richard Ford

  But when he'd walked almost to the end of the street, where it entered the lighter-skied, wider street at a large, crowded intersection, his eyes happened to fall on the number 4 and another small brass plaque, inscribed with Éditions des Châtaigniers. His eyes passed over the plaque once, unalerted, but then returned. Éditions des Châtaigniers. No. 4 rue Duguay-Trouin. 75006 Paris. This was his publisher. It was only a small shock.

  From the pavement he gazed up at the building's tan stone facade. Four floors, with a rank of little balustraded windows near the top, and above that a skimpy level of dormered ateliers with chimneys and what looked like geranium boxes. The offices might be one of the ateliers, he thought. Undoubtedly the whole operation was more modest than one might imagine. Yet it was satisfying to realize that Paris was a sufficiently small and knowable place that he should simply happen accidentally by his publishers on his second day.

  Here, of course, was where he'd have met François Blumberg for a brief but solidifying conversation before adjourning up to Le Dôme or La Coupole for a long, memorable lunch that might've lasted until dark and where a staunch friendship could've been forged, ending with him strolling the Boulevard du Montparnasse back toward the hotel (a better hotel, in this revised version), smoking a Cuban cigar as the evening traffic thickened and the yellow lights of the brasseries and tiny bookstores and exclusive side-street restaurants began to warm the evening sky. Those had been his private thoughts, and they had been wonderful thoughts. He'd told no one, because no one would've cared except possibly his parents, who wouldn't have understood. Châtaignier— he'd looked it up—meant chestnut tree.

  Yet here it was. At least. And he felt, in fact, certified in this small contact, closed though the offices were for the holidays. He was this near now and would someday most assuredly come nearer—when someone knew him in Paris.

  He stepped over to the glassed-in arched entrance of No. 4 and peered down the interior passageway to a small bricked courtyard, where one car was parked and a man was sweeping snow, like fallen leaves, toward a drain grate, using a handmade broom with enormous straw bristles. The man paid him no attention and after a moment passed out of sight.

  Beside the glass door was a brass panel with numbered buttons 1 to 10 and lettered buttons up to E. No names were listed, as there would've been in the States. You needed a code even to gain entry. France was a much more private place than America, he thought, but also strangely freer. The French knew the difference between privacy and intimacy.

  He looked up again at the building's steep facade—smooth buff-colored stone ending in a remarkably blue sky. He checked back up rue Duguay-Trouin. Only a blond woman with a small Brittany spaniel on a leash stood talking to the policeman with the machine gun. They were shaking their heads as if in disagreement. Muffled traffic noise hummed from the other direction, on the avenue.

  Just for the touch, he wanted to push the brass buttons. Nothing, of course, would happen; though he could get lucky and ring the publishing office. He quickly pushed C for Châtaigner, then his own birth date, 3-22-59, then waited, staring into the shadowy passageway toward the parked car and where snow crust was heaped on the drain. He didn't expect anyone to turn up. C-3-22-59 meant nothing. Yet he wouldn't have been surprised if someone—a young secretary or a pretty but overworked assistant editor—had suddenly rounded the corner, smiling, a little out of breath, not recognizing him but happy to let him in, bring him up to the offices. In his working out of these fugitive possibilities he would speak French, just like in his dream; the assistant would be charmed by him, eye him provocatively, and he would later buy her dinner and (again) walk in the evening down the Boulevard du Montparnasse.

  Only nothing happened.

  Matthews stood outside the door, looking in, his hands in his trench-coat pockets, his presence making no reflection in the glass. He had the sudden sensation he was smiling; if he could've seen his face, it would've worn an almost beatific smile, which would certainly be inappropriate if someone should appear. He studied the panel again, shiny and cold. Impenetrable. He firmly pushed F-1-7-8-9, then waited for some sound, a faint, distant buzz of entry. He looked back at the policeman at the top of the street, where he now stood alone, staring Matthews’ way. No buzz sounded. And he simply turned and walked away from his publisher's door, hoping not to seem suspicious.

  The Jardin du Luxembourg seemed like a lost opportunity now. The large, congested street at the end of rue Duguay-Trouin turned out to be rue d'assas, but on his Fodor's plan, rue Duguay-Trouin didn't even appear, so that he wasn't sure where the park was but didn't now care if he walked its spacious lawns or under its chestnut trees. It would be there when he came back to Paris. The Sorbonne too. The Panthéon, the same. He'd never seen them. He couldn't be said to have missed them.

  He didn't, however, feel absolutely certain what to do now. Helen would've gone for the guillotine site, a boat ride, possibly the Louvre. But on his own he lacked curiosity for these. A boat ride would be cold. The Louvre had the Japanese. (Most Parisians, he guessed, had never set foot inside the Louvre and couldn't tell you where the Sorbonne was. Most Americans, of course, never saw the Grand Canyon or the Empire State Building.) He believed he could probably find his way with the map to St.-Sulpice and the remains of 21 rue Vieux-Colombier, and then, if there was time, take a walk along St.-Germain for the experience. And he could also, along the way, find a public phone to make a call he'd assumed he wouldn't have the chance to make but now did—a flight of fancy, a single indulgence.

  In his last three bleak years of Wilmot College (he couldn't actually remember the date, except Bush was the President), he had allowed himself a brief excursion outside his marriage. This was acknowledged to be nothing lasting, just a sudden careening together of two human beings in otherwise unexpressed and unexamined need (several of these careenings occurred in his Mazda hatchback, a time or two on his cold office floor, once in his bed at home, once in hers). She, in this instance, was Margie McDermott, wife of a professor in the history department, and a woman who was quietly going crazy in eastern Ohio, not so different, Matthews understood, from how Penny felt not long afterwards and probably with the same justice.

  With Margie McDermott, the liaison had ended just as it had begun—undramatically though suddenly, and without a great deal of comment. One day they met in a sub shop in the next river town down from Wilmot, decided it was all over and that they were both headed straight for big, big trouble if they didn't cease right then. They looked toward each other across a raised Formica table, proclaimed they were both better served by marriage than by adultery and smart as whips for knowing it so soon. At the end of a brief lunch they got in their separate cars and drove away in opposite directions, feeling—Matthews had been certain—immensely relieved to have dodged the bullets they'd dodged.

  In six months, of course, Margie had abandoned her husband, Parnell, and in a year Penny had abandoned Matthews. If they'd only recognized that likelihood, Matthews had often thought, they could at least have kept doing what they'd been doing and enjoyed life a little longer before the curtain slammed down on both their acts.

  Margie McDermott had gone directly to Paris, leaving her three children stranded in Ohio with her husband. It turned out she had a former boyfriend from Oberlin who survived in Paris as a painter, someone she had not been in touch with for years but who'd told her she could always come to him if times got tough—which they were. Margie moved in with Lyle and his girlfriend, Brigitte, for six months, tried all kinds of jobs, searched for an apartment, studied French, borrowed money from Parnell, plus some from Parnell's parents, and at long last and after several false starts and tragedies found a job working as a receptionist for American Express, making four hundred dollars a week.

  All this Margie had written to Matthews—in a letter that came out of the blue to his new address on the woodsy east edge of Wilmot. He had no idea how she'd found him or why she wanted to be in touch or explain her situation a
t any length. They had never passed another word once their cars had departed the sub shop on the Marietta highway in nineteen ninety-something. Once or twice he'd seen Parnell at the farmers’ market on Saturday morning, looking forlorn and deviled, surrounded by unhappy kids who all, it seemed to Matthews, looked like the absent Margie and not a bit like Parnell.

  In Margie's letter, though, had been an invitation that Matthews seek her out should he ever find himself in Paris. She could, her letter said, now cook an excellent coq-au-vin, and she had always felt “totally sorry” she'd never “in the midst of all that crazy time” cooked him “a proper meal” Matthews could “sit down to and eat like a civilized human being.” She'd enclosed an address and a phone number. “Mine is a poor flat in a very chic neighborhood. The 6th Arrondissement.” He had never responded.

  He had, however, tried to picture Margie McDermott, who'd been a thin, small-boned, sallow-faced, delicately pretty brunette who wore corduroy skirts and blue stockings and always seemed passive and accepting and slightly defeated by life but who apparently wasn't at all. (You could never predict these things.) He'd pictured her first in Ohio and then in Paris—in settings he could only make up. But it wasn't, he'd decided, an improbable transition to accept: Ohio to Paris. Though he'd imagined that a difficult, somewhat straitened existence as a receptionist at American Express, instead of as the unhappy, adulterous wife of a history professor and mother of three, would probably work out to accentuate Margie's sallow and defeated sides rather than the adventurous, no-holds-barred, narrow-eyed, nobody's-fool aspects she'd set free in the back of his Mazda.

  In any event, he had thought while planning the trip that it was worth a phone call, possibly even a brief visit, though he'd imagined he'd never get out of Helen's sight long enough, in which case it wouldn't matter. He had no idea why he might want to see Margie McDermott, since he hadn't wanted to see her since the last time. His only thought was that he wanted to see her simply because he could, and because this was Paris, and visiting a woman in Paris, even a woman he didn't much want to see, had never happened to him in all of life.

  The rue d'assas, at its intersection with the rue de Vaugirard, offered an obvious turning and an invitation to wander back toward the Luxembourg and resume a remnant of his original scheme. But he had lost the taste for sightseeing and felt more purposeful to find a phone and call Margie McDermott, who must live somewhere quite close by, though he couldn't find her street—rue de Canivet, or possibly Canivel—in the Fodor's. Perhaps it was too small to show up.

  He made straight out for the busy commercial avenue, which was rue de Rennes, which he could see on the map, leading toward St.-Sulpice or close at least to a connecting street, which seemed in fact to be rue du Vieux-Colombier, where the famous club was and where he was sure he'd find a phone.

  Now was the beginning of the last weekend before Christmas, and the warmer weather and sudden sunshine had pushed Parisians out onto the damp sidewalks, crowding around the windows of stores where there must've been sales in progress and standing in line for buses to take them somewhere else, where there were even better bargains. He wondered if here was the true center of Paris, the official downtown recognized by all, or if Paris never had a downtown and was actually just a series of villages connected over time by commerce—like London. These were facts he'd eventually know. It could be that downtown was an American idea, something the French would all laugh at if they knew what he was thinking as he plowed along the crowded sidewalk. Ahead of him, down the long, descending avenue (sloping toward the Seine, he was sure), was St.-Germain-des-Prés and, he'd deduced, the Deux Magots, the Brasserie Lipp, the Café de Flore—one of the great confluences of Europe. There was no more famous place. Descartes was buried in the church. It would have to be the center of something.

  At the corner of rue de Mézières he found a public phone outside a tabac, where workingmen stood at a long bar having coffees and smoking cigarettes. This phone accepted no coins, but Helen's travel agent had thought ahead and supplied two phone cards for emergencies, and she'd given him one at the Pittsburgh airport.

  The card clocked up fifty crisp little units of something on the pale-green coin box window. Rue de Mézières had begun funneling a damp, bristling wind, and looking straight into it, Matthews could see one pale rounded tower of what must've been the St.-Sulpice church. It was colder, he felt, nearer the river—just like everywhere else.

  He had no idea what to expect by calling, and it was tempting just to forget the whole idea. There wouldn't be time to see Margie unless she happened to live a half block away from where he was standing—which was of course possible. On the other hand, Margie could be different now. What he'd finally found uninteresting and going-nowhere about her in an Ohio college town (and no doubt she'd found the same about him) might be changed in Paris. Something locked away due to circumstance, that inhibited everyone's view of everything and everybody, might have opened up here. All kinds of things were now possible. At the very least, they could restore contact (she had written him), have coffee at the Deux Magots or step right inside the tabac, maybe set a plan in motion for his eventual return. Or in five minutes she could appear, breathless, expectant, wearing little other than a green cloth coat. After which they could hurry back to her “poor flat,” and he wouldn't return to the Nouvelle Métropole until after dark, and possibly never. This, of course, wasn't feasible, given Helen's condition. But there'd been a moment, leaving the toy store, when he'd thought about not coming back, just having a long lunch alone, buying the cigar he'd imagined and setting off on a very, very long walk.

  Margie's number was written in her cramped little bird scrawl on a scrap of paper in his wallet. The phone rang once, twice, three times, then Margie McDermott suddenly answered. “Oui, c'est Mar-gee,” Margie said, in a nasally girlish voice that sounded like a French chambermaid.

  “Hi, Margie, it's Charley Matthews,” he said, unexpectedly light-headed, so that he almost put the phone down and walked away. Cavernous before him was now the unhappy need of explaining to Margie McDermott who he was. The words “Wilmot College,” “Ohio,” “Remember me?”—even his own name—were flat, metallic, about to be bitter. He looked around at the line of men at the smoky bar, drinking coffee and quietly talking. He wished he could speak French. That would be perfect. English was the wrong language for this sort of maneuvering. “Charley Matthews,” he said again, wretchedly. “Remember me from Ohio?” He felt the same smile again involuntarily stretch to the corners of his mouth.

  “Sure,” Margie said brightly, French accent blessedly abandoned. “How are you, Charley? Are you in Ohio?”

  “No,” Matthews said. “I'm not.” Though suddenly he didn't want to be in Paris. The sound of Margie's voice, small and waxy and drab, caused all the sound reasons they'd brought their interlude to a close—how long ago was it?—to throng up in his ears like a loud machine hum. “I'm actually in Pittsburgh,” he said.

  “You are?” Margie said. “What are you doing there?” She laughed an odd little laugh, as if Pittsburgh was the strangest place on the face of the earth to be. It annoyed him.

  “It doesn't matter,” Matthews said. “I was just thinking about you. I guess it's pretty odd. You sent me your number, though. Remember?”

  “Oh, right. I sure did,” Margie said. And then there was silence, or at least there was no talking on their line. All around was Paris street noise, but street noise was the same—unless a police siren started up on rue de Rennes. They might even hear the same siren if she lived close by. He would need to cover the mouthpiece. “Are you coming over here?” Margie said.

  “Oh, I don't know,” Matthews said, looking warily out at rue de Rennes, where cars and buses and scooters were hurtling past. He put his hand by the mouthpiece, ready to cover it. “Maybe someday. You never can tell.”

  There was another silence then. It was barely after six in Pittsburgh, he thought.

  “Are you still teaching?” Margie
said.

  “No,” Matthews said. “I'm not. I quit.”

  “Did you and Penny get divorced? Seems like Parnell said that.”

  “Not yet,” he said. “But soon.” The bristly wind gusted up in his face. “How's the weather in Paris?”

  “It's been very cold,” she said. “But it's a little warmer today. It's pretty nice. Parnell moved over here with the children. We're living together again. It's a lot better.”

  “Great,” Matthews said, picturing Parnell looking lost, hauling her three look-alike kids around the farmers’ market in Wilmot. It occurred to him he might look like Parnell right now. Cold, unattached, vaguely stupid. What forces brought about such an unwished-for moment? He could probably ask Parnell about it and learn something.

  “So, did you just call up to say hi?” Margie said perkily.

  “Yeah,” Matthews said. “I'm at a pay phone.”

  “Is it cold where you are? Pittsburgh's cold now, isn't it?”

  “It's windy. It's probably about the same as Paris.” Matthews fixed his eyes on the blunt tower of St.-Sulpice, two blocks away. There was a flower stall in the church plaza. People were lined up there for Christmas flowers.