The Innocents

by Francesca Segal

  He nodded. The rush of humiliation that he’d felt when she’d pulled away from him was subsiding.

  “Okay.”

  “Good. So let’s talk about other things.”

  “Okay.” he said. “You go first.”

  23

  They had left the station café and now stood outside so that Ellie could smoke. After the first cigarette she had moved on to a joint, covered as always in coconuts. Adam was holding Rocky’s lead and trying not to worry about being arrested, but he could not help wondering what the precise implications would be for a lawyer caught with someone smoking pot in the middle of a Paris street. It had taken all his self-control not to tell her to put it away but he was loath to waste a second of the time they had together, and he wanted her to learn to trust him so that she would allow him to guide her when it was important. He wanted to be a protective influence in her life. He would not give her an excuse to push him away by fussing like a Jewish mother. Let her be as she was. Instead he breathed in the sweet smell so evocative of Ellie, and tried to focus on what she was saying.

  “It’s inane if you make it inane. Or it can be creative and inspiring and collaborative.”

  “Don’t you get bored?” he asked.

  “I’m not going to say that only boring people get bored because I hate when people say that, it’s such a boring thing to say. But I guess it’s what you make of it.” Adam was leaning on an empty bike rack watching Ellie as she paced before him on the pavement. Rocky sat between his feet. “You can sit like a vegetable sending text messages while you’re in hair and makeup for three hours, or you can see it as time you’re being paid to sit in a chair and educate yourself. I’d read all of Dickens—including the nonfiction that most people never bother with—by the time I was twenty-two, and I was paid to do it. There’s no way I’d ever have plowed through Our Mutual Friend if it hadn’t been for Chanel, but then I was in Rome for them a few years before that and they also gave me Martin Chuzzlewit and I mean, what a fucking page-turner! And now it’s all there marinating and I hope—God, I hope—it will make me a better writer one day. At the moment, Balmain is paying me to read Tolstoy. I’m up to 1889 and The Kreutzer Sonata.”

  “So you still want to write,” he said, carefully. Jaffa had talked a lot about Ellie “throwing away her opportunities to make a smutty film”—he had heard it so many times that he had, he realized, assumed it was true.

  She laughed. A wind picked up, blowing her hair across her face. She turned up the collar of her leather jacket. “What, you mean do I still want to be a novelist even though Columbia University decided I was just a little bit too creative to get a master’s in creative writing? Yes. I know it’s crazy but I guess I just figured that some people have struggled by and managed to write fiction without a degree in it.”

  “Point taken. But why did you want to do the course in the first place then, if it’s pointless?”

  “It’s not pointless. It’s just not necessary. It was a time killer. I love learning, I love writing, and I didn’t want to do a master’s in literature that would have sucked all the joy for me out of any writer I chose for my thesis. And so it was a little counterweight to the modeling which always makes people assume you’re stupid. It was enriching my fabric, or whatever. Life experience.”

  It was Adam’s turn to laugh. “I’d say your fabric was pretty enriched already.”

  She smiled back. “Maybe. But who wants to hear the ramblings of a twenty-four-year-old? Give me a decade more and I’ll give it a shot. Maybe two. In the meantime I’m preparing.”

  “So what do you mean ‘up to’ 1899 and The Kreutzer Sonata? Do you always read chronologically?”

  She nodded. “Eighteen-eighty-nine. Always. I’ve always done it. I like to evolve with the author. I don’t want to know their futures before they do and if I’m really reading a writer, like, committed to reading their whole oeuvre, then I want to move through their life with them and their work. If I love someone I want to walk beside them from the first to the last.”

  A silence fell between them. Adam began to stroke Rocky’s fragile belly, gently, with his toe. The dog rolled onto his back, tiny legs splayed in undignified bliss.

  “My little comrade,” Ellie said, fondly. “You’ve won him over.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Five. I got him when I was on a job in L.A. They have this pet shop in the Beverly Center where they’ll let you play with the dogs—there was no way I was going to get a puppy and if I did then I wanted an Airedale, and a rescue, but then I met Rocky and it was done.” She looked down appraisingly at the small animal as if reminding herself of his attributes, cataloging the charms with which he had conquered her. “He’s been all over. He was in a shoot with me, once. For some cheap sunglasses commercial thing.”

  “We had an Airedale when I was younger,” Adam told her. “Called Norman Levene.”

  Ellie threw her head back with sudden laughter.

  “I never actually knew why his surname was different from ours. I suspect my sister had something to do with it.”

  “Your sister’s so cool. She told me to read The Line of Beauty when I met her and it was honestly life-changing. I’d never even heard of him and there he was—my favorite writer just waiting to be found. It was like the perfect shidduch.”

  Adam was surprised that Ellie had ever spoken to his sister, even more so that she had endorsed her, improbably, as cool.

  “I wouldn’t talk to Olivia about shidduchs.”

  “Yes, I had the impression there was some anxiety bubbling about her love life. I didn’t really get why it was anyone’s business.”

  “Everything is everyone’s business,” said Adam and then in case he’d sounded bitter added, “but if you know an eccentric medieval historian then give him my sister’s number.”

  “Not gay?”

  “No. Not to the best of my knowledge. My mother asks her once a week.”

  “Hmm. Well, I should find her a sexy French model then,” Ellie mused. “No need to condemn her to a man in tweed just yet.”

  Adam could pursue this line of thought no further, in jest or otherwise. The idea of Olivia with a male model was beyond the flexibility of his imagination.

  “Will you stay here in Paris, do you think?”

  She affected a nonchalant French shrug. “Qui sait?”

  “Don’t. Move back to London. Come back.”

  “Stop saying that when you know I can’t be in London,” she said, suddenly. “It hurts.”

  He looked up. Her voice had changed; she was no longer smiling. Her hands were in her pockets, and she looked cold. It had begun to rain, but she made no move to go back inside.

  “Don’t you think I would? But this isn’t about me, or about what I want. Who knows, maybe people who seem like they get everything get it because they do the right thing and deserve it.”

  “You don’t mean that, surely,” he asked, incredulous. “You don’t believe in karma and all that crap. What was it you said? ‘A firm belief in randomness.’”

  “God, I don’t know.”

  “It’s crap. Fine, you’re right in the sense that we should all work harder to be better but you can’t follow that argument through. It’s too cruel to say that bad things happen as punishment for things we’ve done, you can’t possibly believe that. It’s rubbish. Life is random.”

  “Okay, maybe. But there’s nothing wrong with saying that the looking after other people, the morality—that those things will make your life better, indirectly, because then you deserve better. There is so much bourgeois bullshit in Hampstead Garden Suburb and gossip and whispering but you know what? People there have values that make you sit up straighter.”

  “As long as it doesn’t leave you believing that you deserve the bad things,” Adam repeated, stubbornly.

  “No one deserves bad things.”

  “No.”

  “But some people seem like they are worthier of the good things than oth
ers,” Ellie observed.

  “Do you think?”

  “I don’t know. When I was younger I used to be so jealous of Rachel that I thought it would kill me.”

  Adam crouched down to stroke Rocky again, hiding his surprise.

  “Her life seemed so easy and perfect, and she gets everything she wants and it felt like my life was just the opposite. Like, I was watching her get everything that I wanted. She had Lawrence, who worships her. And then she got you. I just—I wanted to be her; I wanted everything she had. And now I think, well, maybe to be her I would have had to be her—remembering everyone’s birthdays and who doesn’t like mushrooms and volunteering in old people’s homes and teaching Sunday school and whatever else she did. Not karmically or mystically or whatever. Just—be good, think of other people, and maybe other people think of you. So this is me, thinking of other people.”

  By some unspoken agreement they had begun walking slowly back inside and through the station, and when they reached an empty bench in the concourse Ellie sat down and scooped the tiny dog onto her lap. He wanted to say—Rachel’s life isn’t perfect. She doesn’t have everything. After all, I’m here with you. Instead he said softly, “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.” She began to pick at the graffiti paint that flaked from the bench beneath them. Then she asked, “Is she happy, at least?”

  “Yes. I think she’s happy.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Adam snorted. He had felt so close to her seconds ago; now he felt light-years away. “How can you be so bloody stoic all the time? How can you be glad she’s happy? Are you happy? I’m not happy. I’m fucking miserable.” He looked at Ellie who had her little finger between her teeth, tearing at the skin around her nail. A bubble of blood formed and he winced; it was all he could do not to slap her hand away from her mouth to stop her hurting herself. She said nothing, and he continued, “You—you showed me just this tantalizing glimpse of how it could be and at the same time you expect me to keep everything from before exactly the same, everything I thought I wanted before I even knew that life could be any other way. I didn’t know, don’t you see that? I thought I wanted it but that was because I didn’t know there was anything else. You said I chose, but it wasn’t a real choice. She was all I knew.”

  It was a shock, when he finished, to realize that Ellie was crying. Rachel cried all the time; he was virtually immune to it. But Ellie crying—he could hardly bear it.

  “This is so fucked up,” she whispered, clenching her fists. A tear slid down her cheek, and she wiped it angrily with the sleeve of her jacket. “This is so fucked up. I can’t be near you. But I don’t want to go far away either.” She stood up to leave.

  He sprang up and caught her wrist, and her halfhearted struggle gave him courage. He had to make her promise; had to know that she’d see him again.

  “You punish yourself with comparisons but no one has everything. Rachel’s life is hardly perfect, is it? I’m here. I’m with you.”

  A strange expression came over her face; one that he didn’t recognize and couldn’t quite identify, but at his words he felt her slacken in his grip. She took a step closer to him. She had relented; he had won.

  “I’m coming back next weekend. I don’t care—cancel everything. I’m coming back next Saturday and I’m staying here, with you, and we’re going to be together. Enough talking.”

  He pulled her toward him until he could feel her breath, could smell perfume and smoke and the rain-wet leather of her jacket. He leaned forward and kissed her neck. And then, with all the strength he had, he turned and walked away from her, toward the platforms.

  Behind him he heard her say, quietly, “Okay.”

  “Adam!”

  Adam jumped. He had made it onto an earlier train—in the end he’d spent less time in Paris than it had taken to get there, and all in the Gare du Nord. Still, it was worth it. He had leaned against the window as the French countryside slipped past him in a blur and for the whole journey he had played their conversation over and over in his head, and the tears that had made him ache to comfort her now seemed like a victory. Ellie had been hurting too.

  He had stepped straight off the train and crossed St. Pancras, heading for the ticket office to book his seats for the following weekend. At the sound of his name he spun round, sure that his elation was written all over his face. He could feel it on his lips; it was in his stride across the station, pulsing in every cell. In front of him was Zach Sabah’s friend Ezra.

  “Adam Newman.” Ezra held out a hand to shake.

  “Ezra. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m everywhere, dude.” Ezra slapped him amiably on the shoulder.

  “I’ve been filming in Paris. Gay Paree—or at least it was for the two days I was in it. I love that city. I want to eat Paris.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “As are some of its inhabitants. I didn’t know you knew Ellie Schneider.”

  “How did you know I—”

  “I saw you two gossiping in the station café. I was going to come over but I was carrying all this gear”—he lifted both arms, from which hung a tripod in a case, several camera bags, and his luggage. On his back was a huge rucksack with a water bottle tucked into a mesh pouch on its side, so that he looked as if he were about to go hiking—“and I didn’t want to interrupt.” This was said without apparent subtext; still, Adam wondered how much he had seen. He tried to think back to any moments in the café that might appear suspect—only that single second when she had pulled away as he’d reached out for her.

  “How do you know Ellie? Or did you just recognize her?” Adam asked.

  Ezra began to lift off his various bags and pile them on the floor with relief. Adam saw that he was in for a longer conversation than he had the strength for—after having spent days irritated for not insisting that they go to Brooklyn to see Ezra’s play, he now wished that the man was anywhere but in front of him. His mind was still full of Ellie and he had not yet come up with a convincing explanation for why they had been together. And in truth, he didn’t want to. He couldn’t bear the idea of sullying their perfect morning by lying about her.

  “No, I know her, I’ve known her a long time. Trust me, there was a time when everyone in New York knew Ellie. Now you can’t sneeze without tripping over a poster of her but Ellie herself is nowhere to be seen. I was the photographer’s assistant on one of her first shoots.”

  “Oh, cool.”

  “It all looked very serious back there in the café—are you guys close? She’s behaving herself now, isn’t she?”

  “No. I mean, yes she’s behaving I think but no, not close.”

  “I sure hope she is. Sweet kid. Where are you going now? Do you have time for a drink? At six thirty I’ve got to meet with an accountant about some charity stuff I’m doing, but I’m totally free till then.” As he spoke he inclined his head first one way and then the other, stretching his neck and wincing.

  Adam mumbled an apology and left Ezra collecting all his bags again. He had hours before he was expected at home and he wanted to think his way back to where he’d been, in his head, before Ezra had called to him. He bought a ticket for the following weekend and then, instead of descending into the tube station, he left St. Pancras, turned up his collar against the rain that had started and began to walk home. It was only when he reached Camden Town that he remembered he had forgotten to bring back the macarons for Rachel.

  24

  Ziva’s birthday was a major event in the Gilbert calendar and Adam had always been moved by the enjoyment that it gave her. Ziva—ferociously rational and contemptuous of most other frivolities—glowed with pleasure at the sight of her own candlelit cake. This year she was turning ninety and despite many offers from Lawrence and Jaffa, was throwing her own party at home. No one else, she believed, would do it just so. Jaffa had worried about several aspects of this plan—about the elderly guests traveling so far when most of them lived in Golders Green; about her mo
ther’s terrible cooking and also about the alternative, that in all probability Ziva would commission the local takeaway to cater the party and that her ninetieth year would be honored with lukewarm curries in polystyrene. In the end, compromises were reached. Jaffa was granted permission to cook; Lawrence arranged for each of the younger guests to chauffeur the less mobile ones. Rachel ordered a new book of pastry recipes and had been fussing in the kitchen for days. Ellie had not been able to get out of a shoot for Balmain and so was still in Paris but had sent a towering, violet-iced cake from Ladurée, covered in scallops of cream and pearly sugared almonds and placed at the center of the dining table where Ziva would glance at it, intermittently, with pride.

  The older contingent were the fellow members of the Jewish Care Holocaust survivors’ group. At their lunches they did not talk about their experiences, Ziva told her family; often nothing was said at all. They spoke of politics, of literature, of their grandchildren. But to be there together was restful, in a place where volunteers ensured there would always be bread on the table. There was balm in their silences together, just as their listening offered balm to those among them who did decide to talk. Others thought they could imagine, but no one else could know. And here they all were—Ziva’s daily lunch companions, men and women shrinking with age but strengthened with pride at their own continued existence. To celebrate ninety when they’d faced death at nineteen, it was not nothing. They ate and they joked and they argued. And always in English, even among friends who shared a mother tongue.

  With unspoken consensus, everyone had converged on an Austrian theme to their catering. Lawrence had collected three old ladies from an assisted living center in Hendon, one of whom had thrust into his hands, without explanation or ceremony, two heavy oblongs of silver foil. These warm, sagging parcels turned out to be wide coils of apple strudel, rich with nutmeg and moist raisins. Michelle had bought Linzer tortes from Carmelli’s, filled with plum butter and sour cherries. From the new book, Rachel had made Sacher torte with bitter black chocolate and homemade apricot jam; another of the formidable Austrian ladies from the Jewish Care group had brought a box of rum-soaked petits fours iced in strawberry pink fondant and painted with arabesques of dark chocolate, Viennese delicacies that were apparently called punschkrapfen. Lawrence and Adam had both suppressed a smile at this name; Ziva had tutted and called them infantile and though the word punschkrapfen had been only mildly amusing, her chastisement ensured that when they next caught one another’s eye they both emitted infantile, strangulated giggles. Ziva, entirely aware of the effect this would have, said again, “Really, I do not see what is so amusing about punschkrapfen,” and left Adam and Lawrence collapsing with laughter in the kitchen.