Paris Ever After: A Novel

by K. S. R. Burns

  As two of the sub-knights begin to ease the door from its hinges, I inch forward, poising myself to rush past them into the study. I can’t allow Margaret to feel as if she’s being taken into custody for breaking some unknown regulation. She is innocent and good and kind, to her core.

  But when they lift the heavy door from its frame, the first sight we see is Margaret’s wide smile. She is sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the small office and is, fortunately, still wearing her robe. She’s not bleeding anywhere that I can see. She seems to have completely forgotten about Sophie and the shock and anguish of her sudden reappearance.

  Instead she’s clapping her hands with delight. “Les pompiers! Bravo!”

  I return to my corner. The sub-knights fall back as the head knight picks his way through the various shattered electronic devices and kneels at her side. He smiles, winks, and proceeds to take her pulse with a tenderness I wouldn’t have given him credit for.

  Margaret is captivated. She flutters her eyelashes at the head knight. Glances around coquettishly at the assembled sub-knights. And why not—they’re all super good-looking, which finally leads my exhausted and malnourished brain to cough up the information that “pompier” means “fireman.” Apparently in France firemen are just as hunky and adorable and beloved as they are back home in the States. It must be an international law.

  Manu grins at me. Margaret squeezes the head knight’s knee, which he accepts as his due, patting her shoulder and shifting to one side so that one of the sub-knights, maybe a medic, can move forward with a syringe and inject something into Margaret’s arm. She doesn’t flinch, so thrilled is she to be at the epicenter of a crowd of gorgeous men in uniform. A half hour ago the apartment echoed with screams of anguish, but now everyone is smiling and low-key and under perfect control. It’s all so French.

  The pompiers don’t take Margaret away with them, though a stretcher was part of the paraphernalia they transported up the three flights of stairs. After the medic gives her the injection, two of the beefier sub-knights pluck her up from the study floor and carry her to her room, placing her on her bed as effortlessly as if she were a doll. She lies back, smiling up at them like a trustful child. I spread the cashmere throw over her, sit down at her side, and take her thin dry hand in mine.

  My own trustful child stirs. How are you doing in there, little girl? You’re probably ready for some peace and quiet. And a snack.

  I sure am.

  thirteen

  Sophie throws a world-class hissy fit when Manu tells her she has to leave the apartment.

  “Mais non!” Her volume is loud for a French person, many of whom are so soft spoken I sometimes have trouble hearing them.

  Manu glances at the door to Margaret’s room. “Chut. Ta mère.” But he doesn’t need to worry. Margaret won’t be waking up anytime soon. I’m pretty sure the medic dosed her with a sedative strong enough to bring down a musk ox.

  “It is only for a short while,” he adds, returning to English. “You must give your mother time to recover. Your return—the surprise has been too great. Seeing your face distresses her. She does not know what is real.”

  Sophie hid out in the kitchen the whole time the pompiers packed up their gear and Manu and I cleaned up the broken glass in the study. But now she’s in full possession of the sitting room, pacing back and forth across the Aubusson carpet, picking up priceless knickknacks and tossing them from hand to hand before putting them down again, doing and undoing her ponytail, and in general behaving as if she could use a slug of whatever it was they gave Margaret. I would be glad to jab in the needle myself.

  Yes, Catherine’s impending arrival has made me resolve to be a kinder, better person. But still I don’t see how I could ever come to like Sophie. Maybe she grows on you. Manu seems to be devoted to her.

  “Je ne comprends pas,” she says.

  This is ridiculous. She certainly does understand. Or if she doesn’t, she should. Kidnapping or no kidnapping, you don’t just show up after years of unexplained absence and expect everything to be all hunky-dory. Not if the person you left behind is someone as emotionally fragile as Margaret. I keep my thoughts to myself, however, as some of those knickknacks are pointy and heavy, and Sophie is completely capable of hurling them in my direction.

  Manu stands up. “Ecoute. Listen to me. For now, you must go. You can stay chez moi. Just for one night. Perhaps two.”

  His words are conciliatory, but his tone is the exact opposite. In fact, I didn’t know Manu had that much steel in him. What is his history with Sophie, I wonder, that he can be so firm, even hard, with her? Wasn’t she the one who broke up with him? Now I’m not so sure.

  Sophie puts down the Lalique crystal vase she was waving about and glares at him. “D’accord,” she mutters and stomps off to her room, formerly my room. She doesn’t neglect to scowl at me as she passes.

  “Will you stay here?” Manu asks me. “In case Margaret awakens?”

  “Yes, absolutely. As long as you need.” I keep an eye on Sophie through the open door as she stuffs a pair of jeans and a clean top into an oversized handbag. Both items of clothing belong to her. At one point she changed out of the red Christian Dior tunic, so at least she’s back to wearing her own clothes. That’s a step in the right direction.

  As Manu ushers Sophie out the front door he flashes a smile at me over his shoulder, and my heart lifts. My failure to show up for the lunchtime deliveries yesterday is forgotten. We are a team again. I heave a sigh of relief.

  It’s awesome to be alone in the apartment.

  My first action is to head to my room. Thank God. My money belt is still right where I left it, in the bottom drawer of the armoire hidden beneath a wad of bras and camisoles. I fan through the bills—looks like it’s all there.

  Not long after my shotgun wedding, I got into the habit of asking for ten dollars cash back at the grocery store and five dollars cash back at the dry cleaners every week. It’s evidence, I guess, that from the beginning I failed to fully trust in the permanency of my marriage. But I never dared to analyze this behavior. All I knew was that the slowly accruing bills made me feel safer. Stronger. I kept them in a Tupperware container behind my cookbooks, where William (who keeps his recipes “in the cloud”) was certain not to look.

  As Kat used to say, you never know.

  I return the cash to the belt but not the belt to the drawer. It’s no longer a safe hiding place. Instead, I roll the belt into a tight ball and wedge it deep into one of my shoes—ugly, clunky walking shoes that Sophie would never be tempted to try on. That’ll do for now. I don’t want to have to wear the thing. It’s not comfortable around my stomach.

  My second action is to check my phone. It’s just past noon. But William still hasn’t responded to the text I sent him earlier this morning. Hard to believe he could still be asleep, but he may have been up late last night dealing with his work emergency. And there’s jetlag. It’s only his second full day in Paris. Whatever, his uncommunicativeness is a good thing. I can’t meet up with William now. I need to stay with Margaret until Manu gets back.

  My third action is to scramble myself a couple of eggs, which I eat standing up, gazing out the kitchen window at the flower boxes across the courtyard and feeling steadier with each swallow. When the eggs are gone, I wipe my plate clean with a bit of stale baguette and pop it in my mouth. Except for Hervé’s “industrial” madeleines from this morning, I haven’t had anything to eat since late yesterday afternoon.

  This is no way to run a pregnancy.

  I’m still hungry so I eat a banana. When that’s done, I pour myself a tall glass of orange juice and use it to wash down a prenatal vitamin. Finally, I put the kettle on, laughing quietly to myself because it’s what Margaret would do in this situation. In any situation, tea is Margaret’s go-to. Decades of living in Paris haven’t erased her intrinsic Englishness. We are who we are, at our core. If I were by some miracle to stay in Paris, I would always remain ba
sically American. The thought makes me feel sad and glad at the same time.

  Don’t ask me why. I wouldn’t know the answer.

  While waiting for the kettle to sing I find and eat three dates. It’s my latest food craze—dates and tea. Manu is teaching me to pay attention to the way flavors interact. In this case, the sweetness of the dates lingers on the tongue and mellows the flavor of the milky tea, turning it almost into a dessert. Margaret, not a foodie in spite of her fidelity to “superior” bakeries and the like, finds this all a bit silly. “It’s not what you eat,” she says. “It’s whom you share it with.” Exactly. Life is about other people, how you treat them, how you love them, how they love you in return. When William and I got married, I believed I loved him and he loved me. Somewhere along the road, things got muddled.

  I make the tea in my favorite blue-striped cup and wander around the apartment as I sip it. I check on Margaret, who is still sleeping soundly, her breathing regular, her mouth curved into a serene, Mona-Lisa-like smile. She looks almost like her normal self, except her face is thinner. Sunken. Like me, she hasn’t had much to eat in the last twenty-four hours.

  I know what I’ll do. I’ll make soup.

  Soup is my specialty. Back in high school, when all free time was devoted to taking care of my dad (who by that time was in the final stages of MS) we lived on take-out food and frozen pizzas. Except for Saturday night. That was soup night. Even in the dead of summer, when normal Phoenix residents subsist on salad and iced tea, hot hearty soup was my go-to. Salad is colorful and cool, and good for you if you don’t go overboard on the dressing, but soup feeds your soul.

  Both eating it and making it. And, as if by design, the tiny refrigerator in the kitchen happens to contain all the right ingredients for my famous homemade chicken noodle soup—chicken legs and wings and backs for the broth, eggs for the noodles, onions and carrots and celery for the soup itself.

  Perfect. I heap the chicken pieces into one of the round enameled cast-iron pots the French call a “cocotte,” throw in a quartered onion, two celery sticks with their leaves, three small carrots, a bay leaf, and add enough cold water to cover. I peel the carrots first, as carrot peels can make a broth bitter. I don’t put in garlic, as Margaret doesn’t care for garlic, but I do include a tablespoon of peppercorns tied up in a square of cheesecloth.

  While that bubbles I dump a few handfuls of flour into a deep narrow crockery bowl. I don’t measure. The proportion of wet ingredients to dry depends on the freshness of the flour, the size of the eggs, the time of year, the level of humidity in the kitchen, and—for all I know—the stage of the moon. Cooking is part science and part sorcery, unless you are William, for whom it’s all science.

  Poor William. He’s never approved of the way I cook, especially the way I make noodles. Not only do I not measure the ingredients, I use my bare hands to mix them. “Disgusting,” he said the first time he observed me doing this. But he’s not here, and it’s fun to plop the sunny yellow egg yolks, one by one, into the snowy flour and plunge in both hands, squeezing and mixing and kneading until the shaggy mess transforms into smooth dough. I use only egg yolks as the liquid for my noodles (no whites, no milk or water). It makes them richer and yellower.

  I push my hair back with an elbow. Cooking is the one thing in my life I’ve never had to work at. Cooking completes me. Too often I’ve lost track of this important truth about myself. In fact, for too long, food was my archenemy. I believed I had to battle it, tame it, the way you subdue a dangerous animal. I was afraid to love what I loved.

  Until I came to Paris and met Margaret. She was the one who taught me how what you think you fear is often the thing you love the most. She showed me that passion doesn’t need to slide into excess, and denial can be just as indulgent as indulgence. Despite her performance today, Margaret isn’t crazy. Far from it.

  I knead the noodle dough until it’s as smooth as a baby’s bare belly and cover it with a clean white tea towel. Time to remove the chicken and veggies from the pot and turn up the heat to reduce the liquid. It won’t be a true bone broth—those are simmered for ten hours or more—but this will be good as is and will allow me to use the cooked meat for the soup itself. The onions, celery, and carrots are spent, however, so I chop fresh ones and sauté them with a hunk of butter and a fearless amount of salt in a second cocotte.

  I’d love to add garlic and ginger, because onions, garlic, and ginger are a flavor triumvirate, but this soup is meant for Margaret, who dislikes “anything spicy.” So I restrict myself to a goodly amount of chopped parsley. Finally, I roll out the noodle dough, cut it into long thin strips with a paring knife, and spread the strips out to dry on the cutting board.

  It’s really not hard.

  For a couple of hours I’m so engrossed in putting together my soup that I forget my life is falling apart. Or at least transforming in some radical, as yet unpredictable, way. Meanwhile, Margaret continues to slumber. Manu is, I assume, once again doing the lunchtime deliveries on his own. William, despite the fact he obviously came to Paris to see me, remains as remote as the sun. And the whole apartment smells like home.

  But it’s not my home.

  I make myself a second cup of tea and take it to the room-that-is-no-longer-my-room, where my phone is on the nightstand, powering up next to the Waterford crystal clock. That’s yet another item that doesn’t belong to me. Margaret presented it last May with great affection and fanfare. But surely it’s the rightful property of Sophie, like the room and the clothes and the apartment and Margaret herself, whom I now feel slipping out of my grasp like a dropped silk scarf fluttering to the ground.

  Nothing stays the same. Nothing lasts. I put down my cup and pick up the clock, weighing its heft in my hand. It’s heavy for its size, but small, and would easily fit into my trusty tote bag. I could take this one little memento of my time here. No one would ever know.

  Except for Sophie. She would know. She would want it back. She wants it all back.

  Anyway, what would I do with an elegant clock with Roman numerals and thin delicate hands like Tinkerbell’s wand? If things go as I anticipate they will, I’ll soon be on my way back to life in Phoenix, Arizona, to my marriage, to William—who uses his phone to tell time.

  Speaking of which, my phone is now at one hundred percent power, which is more than I can say for myself.

  OK. William has been in Paris for nearly forty-eight hours. And he has to be awake by now.

  I carry the phone to the window and click on “Favorites.” Kat’s still there. She’s at the bottom of the list, when for so many years she was at the top. I haven’t been able to delete her, even though every time I see her name it’s like a dagger through my heart.

  Nowadays, Manu heads my “Favorites,” followed by Margaret, Hervé, and William.

  Who picks up on the fourth ring. “Finally,” he says.

  Finally? That’s my husband’s first word to me, after months of no words.

  “Will. Hello.” I almost say bonjour but stop myself in time. He would find it affected, and it probably would be.

  Our greeting hangs in the air. I guess we’re both remembering our last phone conversation, which ended in the rupture of our marriage.

  “So you’re in Paris,” I say before the pause becomes any more awkward than it is.

  “Yeah.” He clears his throat. “I’m—I’m staying in your old hotel.”

  Here’s a cool thing: William has an unusually beautiful speaking voice. It’s rich and melodious, despite the fact that William himself is not musical. His manner of speech is one of the many things that first drew me to him. Something about the precise way he pronounces the first and last letter of each word sends ripples of pleasure throughout my body. Even now.

  “Did you solve your work emergency?”

  “What?” He sounds surprised I would care. “Oh. Yeah.”

  “Good. Great.” I gaze out the window. The clear sky has now turned to silver, the buildings are ivory,
and the pavement is the color of a charcoal briquet. The only spot of color is a brightly painted porte-cochère across the street. Most doors in Paris are a serious and sedate bottle green. The door to Margaret’s building is. But the people who live opposite us broke what may very well be a rule and painted their entrance an incandescent hot pink. Kat’s favorite color.

  “Anyway,” I say when he doesn’t elaborate. “You’re here. We should get together.”

  A woman emerges from the hot pink door, attaches a chain to the collar of a honey-colored poodle, starts down the sidewalk, and is halfway to the end of the block before William responds.

  “If you want to.”

  Wait. What?

  William is the one who got on a plane and came all the way to Paris. To see me, I assumed. Yet he talks as if getting together is all my idea. It makes no sense. But often I don’t understand William, what he thinks or doesn’t think, what he feels or doesn’t feel. His interior life is like The Matrix. You can’t see it; you have only a sense of a vast universe existing beyond your sight and control. I’ve always found this intriguing as well as unsettling.

  “Well, we have to meet. It’s why you came, isn’t it? It would be the right thing.” I need to make an effort to maintain a neutral tone. “Don’t you agree?”

  “Yeah.”

  I wait for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, I pull the window open and lean out. It’s raining. The cool drops feel heavy and purposeful against my face. “Listen,” I finally say. “I can meet you later this afternoon. We can have coffee. I have some news for you.”

  Without intending to, I’m using my former human resources voice. It was effective at managing troublesome employees and may be equally useful for dealing with William. Maybe I should’ve tried this approach years ago.