by Susan Conley
It’s important to have him here, where I live, where I’m most myself. It makes what’s between us real. I don’t want to know what time he has to be home. I can’t figure out how the operation works over there in Chantilly. I’m so hungry I finally sit up in bed.
“I’m starving.” It’s way past dinnertime.
“Tell me what you have in the fridge.” He kisses me and stands.
“Very little. But wait, there’s chicken. I was supposed to be roasting a chicken today.”
“Where there’s chicken, there’s often potato.” He steps into his jeans.
“And I may even have spinach.”
“I’ll conduct an investigation.”
“I didn’t know you cooked.”
“There are many things you don’t know about me.”
“More wives? More children?”
“Not funny.”
When I walk into the kitchen, he’s leaning against the counter barefoot, chopping garlic. He kisses me on the mouth. “We’re going to make my grandfather’s chicken-potato stew. Do you have nutmeg and tomato?”
I reach for the bowl of cherry tomatoes by the sink. “Tomatoes.” I find nutmeg in the narrow cupboard next to the oven. He cleans the bird and dresses it, then heats the skillet and throws the garlic and potatoes and tomatoes in. When they’ve stewed he spreads it all over the chicken and places the casserole in the oven.
“It’s a dish they ate all the time in Estonia.” He opens the cupboard and pulls down two white bowls. “Do you believe in love?”
I’ve lived alone in Paris for over seven months, and no one except Sara and Luke has ever cooked a meal with me in this kitchen. I’m trying to keep up with how fast Macon’s moving. I’m sort of delirious. “My greatest surprise,” he says, “is that my marriage dissolved. And that I didn’t have the strength to fight for it.”
I don’t want to talk about his marriage. I want to eat dinner and make love again. I smile at him and nod and go take a shower. Then I put on my mother’s kimono. When I come back into the kitchen, he’s peeking into the oven.
“It’s ready. Bubbling.” He reaches in with the oven mitts and pulls out the casserole. “It’s very hard to explain divorce to Pablo.”
“I wish people married for life. I really do. But I’m glad you didn’t.” I lean over his shoulder. He spoons stew into each bowl.
“I never considered divorce until the very end,” he says. “I’m not how I appear. I’m serious about the vows. I’m serious about you.”
I smile. I can’t help it. What he says makes me very happy. He follows me to the couch. “The only thing this stew is missing is anchovies. My grandfather used to fish them an hour north of Tartu. Big schools of them. Sometimes you could grab them with your hand. When he was tired of catching them, he would drive home and chop them and add them to my grandmother’s chicken.”
We drink red wine, and the meat is tender and falls away from my fork. There’s a warm trace of nutmeg. The potatoes are brown and slightly crispy on the outside. My mother’s kimono is one of the few things I have of hers. After she died, my father let the church-women come and clean out her closets. I haven’t been able to forgive my dad for this. I was lucky I already had the kimono on permanent loan in Oakland, pink with bright tangerines and deep blues running through the lighter-blue origami flowers. It smells like my mother—like green grass and lemon—and also a little like a woman in Japan we’ll never know.
“You’re not wearing any clothes underneath.”
“This is true.” I touch his forehead with my hand. Then I bend toward him and he opens the kimono and places his hand gently on my stomach. He reaches to kiss me on the mouth.
But then he leans back against the couch. “Is this crazy for me to be here? What am I doing?”
I wrap the blanket around myself. “It’s too difficult?” He’s not going to turn back now? “Should you go? Tell me this is okay?”
“It’s simple when I’m here. It’s so easy to be with you. But it’s hard to explain to Pablo where I go. I’m abandoning him.”
“I know what it’s like to have a father who left, so I can’t tell you anything about it that will make you feel better. I hated it when my father was gone.”
“Pablo says he won’t go to sleep until I tuck him in every night. We have songs we sing in a certain order. There is a way he likes to have his back rubbed.”
“Right now he would probably like his back rubbed.”
“Right now.”
“You should go.”
“No, I should stay. Delphine is there.” He takes the blanket off me and smiles. “I needed to hear myself say what Pablo wants from me. Now you know.”
We make love on the couch, and afterward we lie in the dark. Each time a car passes by on the street, the windows pulse with refracted light. “You know, I think about Pablo, too. I want to make this okay for him.”
“I am trying to figure out how to tell him where I go when I come here.”
“Tell Pablo you go to the house of your friend from the zoo.”
15
Flan: from the Old French flaon, “flat cake”; a custard baked with caramel glaze
Everyone wants to meet Macon then. Sara is adamant. She won’t give up. And Luke is beside himself. I hold them off until Saturday night. Which is why Macon stands in the kitchen wearing my long green apron tied around his waist like a skirt.
“Should I be nervous?” he asks.
I open the wines. He adds sea salt to the tomato sauce. Then I put my arms around his neck and kiss him on the cheek. “Don’t be nervous. Luke doesn’t bite. He’s very, very kind. But Gaird I can’t speak for entirely. He will grow on you. Sara and Rajiv are two of the nicest people you’ll meet in your life.”
I climb up on the counter and pull down Fiesta Ware plates from the highest shelf. Luke found these for me at the Clignancourt flea market. They’re almost identical to ones we had growing up. “Though a little bit of suspicion is warranted.” I hand Macon the plates. “I never know exactly what any of them will say.”
Then someone’s banging at the door like they’re trying to break it down. I open it, and Luke’s standing there, bottle of red wine in one hand, yellow baking dish covered in tinfoil in the other. He’s about to ram the door again with his shoulder. Gaird waits behind him, his face hidden by a huge bunch of red tulips.
“It smells so good in here.” Luke walks right past me. “Where is he? Where is this man who’s become your personal cook?”
Gaird steps inside and kisses me on both cheeks and hands me the flowers. “Dutch.” Then he loosens his thin black tie.
“Thank you so much, Gaird. They’re very beautiful.”
“Ah, Willie, it’s my pleasure to make you smile.” He winks at me.
Macon comes out of the kitchen and Luke lifts him off the ground in a hug. “He feels solid.” Luke smiles at me. “He’s got a nice build, and he’s not afraid of a little physical contact. What could you possibly be cooking that smells so delicious?”
We all follow Macon into the kitchen. “It’s chicken Marseille, right?” I ask.
“It’s called Everything We Needed to Use Before It Spoiled.” Macon smiles.
Luke frowns. He can be a cooking snob. I want Macon to explain how much time he’s put into the sauce and to show Luke and Gaird that the meal matters to him. I want more than anything for them to like each other.
“Where do we smoke?” Luke asks. “This has been horribly nerve-racking. Bathing. Dressing. Meeting Macon. I need to go up on the roof.”
I have a skylight in my apartment that opens to the roof. What someone has done—the landlord? a previous renter?—is nail a ladder to the wall outside my bedroom so I can climb up and push a spring-loaded lever, which causes the skylight to open slowly. There are two wooden benches up there and a round metal table.
“Go.” Macon waves us away. “I need ten more minutes with the sauce.”
But there’s more banging on the door.
Sara and Rajiv stand with their arms interlaced in the hall. She’s almost all stomach. A big, round belly on her tall, thin frame. It’s a fantastic thing to behold and I swear she’s glowing. Beaming. I double-kiss them both. Then Rajiv moves toward Gaird with his hand outstretched. I take Sara’s arm and walk her slowly toward the kitchen.
“Where is this person I’ve been waiting to meet? Where is he? I need to get my hands on him.” I present her to Macon with a bow. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, let me at you!” She hugs him hard next to the stove, and what I love about him is that he hugs her right back.
Luke comes down from the roof and distributes more big hugs. “How can I help?”
“Can you taste the vinaigrette and tell me if it’s okay?”
He puts his finger in the jelly jar on the counter. “Too much lemon.” I frown, and he says, “Hey, your brow furrows when you get stern like that. You shouldn’t frown. Those are wrinkles that will stick. All I have to do is add sugar and more oil.”
Macon holds out a spoonful of the chicken sauce for me to taste. “It’s perfect!” I say. “Sublime.” I can never use this word and not think of my mother and the day when the words crowded into my head for the first time before Luke’s play.
I was a girl with words on a chalkboard inside my brain. Sometimes, when it became too much and I wanted the words to stop, I went to my mother and asked her for help. She said we can’t fight our brains. That they’re bigger than we are. All we can do is try to divert them.
Sara and I bring the plates to the table, and everyone sits. “This is beyond delectable,” she says after the first bite. “Tell us your favorite food, Macon.”
“The next time, I’ll make you my grandfather’s stew. It’s not so different from this.”
“Your father lived where?” Rajiv reaches for the wine.
“My father began in Estonia. He migrated with other Jews to Canada. ‘Fled’ is the word I should use.”
“This is during the Second World War?” Gaird asks.
Macon nods. “The moment of truth for my family.”
“I’m not Jewish,” Gaird says, “but my parents had Jewish friends in town. The number of Jews was small—in the hundreds—but the Nazis found them, and this was horrible.”
“Macon, how old was your father when he arrived in Toronto?” Rajiv asks. “Did he get sent to a refugee camp first?”
“No camp. There was a boat to North America. Then a long trip up the St. Lawrence River. He was twelve. He didn’t speak the language.” I reach for Macon’s hand under the table. Rajiv and Sara and Luke are conducting a silent test of him. I know this. But I’ve already chosen Macon. There’s a humming sound inside my head because of how happy this makes me.
“Rajiv,” Gaird says, “how did you ever find your way to Oxfam?”
“It’s quite simple.” Rajiv carefully wipes his mouth with his napkin. “I grew up in a country where people were starving every day. I was lucky. I was sent from India to a college in the United States with a campus so beautiful it was what I’d heard Disneyland looked like. Privilege like this can alter you. After that, my path was clear. But you, Macon—how did you end up here?”
Macon smiles. “My mother was a visiting student from Paris in Toronto. I think my father had an awkward, eighteen-year-old-boy crush. She was dark-haired and striking. Everyone in my family says this. He walked her home after a chemistry class. They both wanted to be scientists. He played a very good accordion. Maybe this was it. They married. But my mother never stopped talking about Paris. Or how I had to live in the greatest city in the world. So I came for law school.”
Rajiv nods. “Why immigration law?”
“I needed money, frankly, and there was a posting at school for a job at the Legal Aid Center. They paid me a small wage to be a legal assistant for refugee boys from the centers. That’s when I learned that the centers were like jails and that children aren’t supposed to be imprisoned, according to French law.”
Rajiv bangs the table. “I get mad when I think about this.”
“I was enraged,” Macon says. “When my father landed in Canada, he couldn’t pronounce the name of the country properly, but he had a much better chance there than these kids do in Paris. I began working at the courts. I graduated. I took the law exam and did a tour of every single asylum center in France.”
“Wow,” Sara says. “That’s dedication.”
“When these kids talk to a lawyer or speak in front of a judge, they gain social capital if nothing else. There’s some power in getting to tell your story. Maybe you see that your life is not determined just by stars or fate. Because life is short, no?” We all raise our wineglasses. “I made Willie’s favorite for dessert,” Macon adds.
“You made flan?” I ask.
“On the top shelf of the fridge, behind the butter.”
“You live with a man who makes dessert?” Luke laughs. “I can’t get over your good luck.”
“I love flan!” Sara says.
“She could eat it at every meal,” Rajiv says.
“That’s because I made it for her in college all the time.” I go and find the flan and bring it back to the table. The candles taper down so we can hardly see our bowls, but the flan is perfect.
Gaird takes a bite, and his face changes. “You have made something delightful. I can taste the fresh eggs.”
“Four,” Macon says. “From the market at Gracieuse.”
I’m not going to worry about any of them getting along anymore. They’ve already found something that connects them, and it’s food.
16
Family: a group of people living under one roof
Then it’s Tuesday morning and I’m bringing Gita to the Academy of France for the first time. I get to Rue de Metz and there’s a thin Indian boy slumped in one of the chairs in the common room. Who’s he? He’s wearing a wrinkled white button-down shirt and black trousers, and he stares at Gita while she cries into her hand. Sophie keeps making this “tsk tsk” sound and passing Gita tissues on the couch. I stand in the doorway staring, until Sophie motions me in with her free hand. The boy and Gita appear to be having a fight in a foreign language that I can only guess is Hindi or some cousin of Hindi. He looks about twelve.
“Pradeep!” Gita stands up. Then she sits back down and begins with another torrent of the language I can’t understand. “Pradeep!” Maybe this is the boy’s name. Her brother? Pradeep. She’s written about him in class. She puts her hand over her mouth again and talks through it. The boy has her black hair cut high around his little ears and her same huge eyes. He looks away while she yells at him.
Then she stops and he fires back, talking just as loudly and quickly as she did. They volley like this until Pradeep stands and hands Gita an orange tin of what looks like dried fruit. She bursts into tears when she takes the gift. Then she reaches for her brother and holds him tightly. Pradeep sobs uncontrollably now. He doesn’t try to contain it. Gita makes a high-pitched shrieking sound until Sophie untangles them and takes Gita by the arm and walks her out the door.
In the hallway Gita yells, “Willow, please tell my brother he is wasting his time by coming here. Tell him he needs to be in school. Tell him he must never let my maa come here to see me.” She keeps calling out to me down the hall. “Willow, please.” The boy sits back on the couch and rubs his eyes. He looks much younger now. How do I talk to him? What can I say that he’ll understand?
Then I hear him say, “I want her to come back very much.” In perfect English.
“She can’t right now, Pradeep. I’m her teacher, and we’re trying to get her moved out of this center. Then you’ll be able to see her. There are problems in your apartment, Pradeep. Gita can never live there again with Manju. I’m not sure you know why this is.”
“I have been thinking it but not saying it out loud. I want to talk to my sister again. Please can I see her again before I leave? I have not told her that Maa will not cook. I need to tell Gita that.”
I r
each out my hand, and he clasps it in both of his. I say, “Thank you for coming. I’ll take your phone number. I’ll call you after Gita’s trip to the court. It won’t work to try to see her anymore while she’s here, Pradeep. But as soon as she’s out, you can.” The boy bows his head. Then we walk down the hall to the front door and I wait for Truffaut to let him out.
Then I go find Gita. She’s sitting on the stool in Sophie’s office with her eyes closed. It’s taken four forms in triplicate and several weeks, but today she can leave this building with me and begin an actual job at the academy. That is, if she’s able. Because her face looks so sad. “Are you sure you want to go today?” I ask her.
“I want very much to go to your school. I am ready.”
She smiles when Truffaut buzzes us out. Then we turn right on Rue de Metz and walk toward Boulevard de Strasbourg. “I am pretending,” she says, “that I am not coming back here anymore. I am pretending I am leaving the center forever.”
We take the No. 4 line to Rue St. Sulpice and we’re at the academy by nine forty-five. “Luelle,” I say when we get to the office. “Meet Gita, your new receptionist.”
“I am so glad to make your acquaintance, Gita.” Luelle speaks formal English with a Belgian accent. “I will have you help me sort through the invoices. We will do the unpaid and the paid piles. I will also ask you to answer the phone. In English, of course.”
“Thank you, Luelle,” I say. “Thank you so very much. You did not have to be so helpful.”
Then I walk to my office at the end of the hall and get ready for the ten-thirty class. Today we’re reading Anaïs Nin. Part of a poem called “Risk.” I start class by asking the girl named Virginie to read:
“Et le jour est venu
quand le risque à rester fortement dans un bourgeon
était plus douloureux que le risque qu’il a pris à la fleur.”
