Paris for Two

by Phoebe Stone

  “Um, actually Ava says I can borrow hers,” I say.

  “Well, isn’t that wonderful, my angel. I am so happy to hear that. And did you see Le Bon Bon and Marguerite? They are becoming good friends! I guess my work is finished here. Almost,” she adds, looking at me with a little bit of worry.

  “What do you mean your work is finished here?” I say.

  “Well, things are settling down, in a good way. A concierge always likes to see everyone in her building smiling,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say. “Of course.”

  “And what is this flyer I keep seeing with a picture of your shoe on it?” she says. “You must go over to the Hôtel Magique and fetch it.”

  “Never mind about that,” I say. “I don’t need that old shoe. And I do not want to run into Windel Watson and his mother.”

  “Ah, Windel Watson.”

  “He hates me and so does his mother,” I say, trying not to look miserable.

  “Well, you must go to the Stewarts’ for dinner. Is it tomorrow night? Going out will be nice, n’est-ce pas?” says Collette.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “Well, I must go now. I am pleased with the painting your mama did for Le Bon Bon. Madame Turpin is coming over to see it. And she is bringing Madame Poulin, who has a small pet turtle. Do you think your mama can paint a turtle, making it look just a tiny bit better than it really is? That turtle of hers is no beauty.”

  “Oh, I am sure she can,” I say. “Well, I am off to get some purple thread for my dress. Good-bye, Collette!”

  “Oh, don’t say good-bye, my little angel. We never say good-bye in France. We say au revoir. Do you know what that means? It means ‘see you again!’ ”

  “See you again, Collette.”

  “Au revoir, my little angel.”

  I am not sure where I can buy lilac-colored thread. I mean, they don’t seem to have any Ben Franklin stores around here. I go to the end of the rue Michel-Ange and look down the wide boulevard. Vehicles of all sizes, especially tiny three-wheeled trucks, go whooshing by.

  Maybe it’s the wind on the wide boulevard, making me feel tossed and tussled and solitary, but I see Ginger in my mind again. She’s standing in silence. No smile. No frown. On the table near her sits a crystal ball, of course. She doesn’t pick it up this time. It’s snowing inside the ball. Snow is spinning all around in there in whirls and eddies. Funny because this is Paris in July.

  Before the terrible basement incident, I can still remember the day it snowed in April. I had been listening to Windel playing the piano, sitting outside his door at the practice building. I think he was playing something called “The Seasons” because I remember peeking in the little window on his door and seeing the cover of the music on the piano before he started. The Seasons. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. All described and etched in sound as Windel’s hands flowed over the keys.

  Afterward I followed him outside into a surprise spring snowstorm. It was wet, heavy snow that stuck to everything. Trees and branches and leaves bent low with the weight. Windel stepped right out into the middle of the empty street and stood there, letting the falling snow gather all over him. I was hiding behind a tree but I had Ginger’s camera with me and I leaned out and got a photo of Windel from the back, standing in the snow with his arms outstretched, as if flying. It was a great shot. A rare shot of Windel alone. I actually still have the photo, even though it’s all wrinkled and torn.

  And then it hits me.

  I walk through the little park near our street with renewed awareness. Oh, moon and stars that change and move forward with our Milky Way! Oh, universe that Dad says is expanding and moving forward constantly! Everything changes and quivers and yet some things won’t budge. Like a crush that won’t quit. Try as I might to change things, I will always be in love with Windel Watson.

  And then I walk past a puppet show. Little French children are sitting before a painted puppet stage and laughing at a sad puppet clown, who is hopelessly in love with a beautiful ballerina puppet. The poor clown tries to win her heart, but he keeps getting knocked down over and over again by a suave prince with a big blue hammer. The sad clown must spend his life making others laugh while he gets pounded on the head. I definitely feel a kinship.

  Yes, Ava accepted an invitation for the whole family to have dinner at the Stewarts’ apartment. But how did Collette know that?

  Mom evened out my hair and Ava’s hair yesterday. She used a brand-new shiny pair of scissors. And last night she put Ava’s hair in curlers. Ava is so excited about the dinner. She was in the bathtub for hours this morning and Mom is now taking the curlers out of her short hair in the dining room. The pink spongy curlers drop away to the floor and Ava sits there with a white sheet over her shoulders, looking so much the same and so very different.

  It’s a hot summer evening. Dad and Mom and Ava and I walk a few blocks, headed for the Stewarts’ apartment building on the avenue Ingres. We pass a park. There is a merry-go-round there all lit up in the dark and a fenced-in ring next to it where a pony draped in flowers with a braided mane waits with his trainer for children who might want to have a ride.

  And when we bustle into the Stewarts’ building, some big puppy dragging a leash comes clumping down the stairs and rushes toward us. My luck, another dog.

  “Oh, come back here, you little rascal,” calls Mr. Stewart, lumbering behind him. “Catch that leash, will you?” The puppy drags the leash between our legs. But of course it gets tangled around mine and I slip and almost twist my ankle. Then the fluffy puffball starts barking at me. He nips at the edge of my skirt and tugs on it, pulling on me. “Grab that leash, will ya?” calls Mr. Stewart again.

  Dad leaps in and snatches the leash finally and we rein in Logan’s big puppy. But alas, I arrive at the dinner party somewhat shaken, with wet puppy teeth marks across my skirt. I suddenly get a quick flash before my eyes of Ginger again and a crystal ball that is rolling away from her. It’s rolling down a hill and Ginger is chasing it.

  The apartment is lit up with candles and all the windows are open and all of summery hot Paris lies below us, stretching far and wide, like an enormous paper flower covered in lights. I find myself on the threshold of the Stewarts’ salon ahead of everyone.

  “Oh, hello, Pet! Lovely to see you! Cute haircut! So happy about the show coming up,” says Mrs. Stewart, greeting me French style, a kiss on each cheek, and just when you think it’s all done here comes an odd third kiss for extra measure, leaving it all unbalanced and confusing. Just like everything in France.

  “Ava, dear, you look splendid. I love your hair! Did you two get cuts at Demander La Lune?” says Mrs. Stewart. “They do such a good job there. It’s just around the corner from your place.”

  “Not exactly,” says Ava, smiling at me.

  “Well, come in, everybody!” says Mrs. Stewart. “My dear friend Nan just called and said they are running a little late so let’s just relax and have some hors d’oeuvres, shall we?”

  “Nan? Nan Watson?” I say out loud, feeling like I got on that merry-go-round downstairs and it just broke off its track and is spinning off into the universe. How do you stop this thing? Screech! My eyes span the room, tumbling across the furniture, stumbling over all the faces.

  “The Watsons?” I say. But nobody hears me. My knees start trembling. There are lots of Watsons in the world. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Why do the very ones I don’t want to see have to be coming here tonight? And I thought it was just going to be a cozy dinner with the two families. I didn’t know the Watsons would be included. Why didn’t I stay home?

  Everybody is patting Logan’s puppy, who just came back in with Mr. Stewart. “We went to get him in Rouen. He’s going to be huge. He’s a baby Russian wolfhound,” says Logan, putting his arm calmly and surely around my older sister. I feel a swooning in my heart for Logan and Ava.

  “Russian wolfhounds make wonderful pets,” says Mrs. Stewart.

  “They’re especially wonde
rful in the middle of the night when they need to be walked,” says Mr. Stewart.

  “Logan wants to be a veterinarian, Dad,” says Ava. “He just decided. What do you think?”

  “Terrific,” says Dad. “Then I can go see him for free if anybody ever steps on my tail.”

  “Dad,” says Ava. “That is sooo lame.”

  “Ava,” I say in a low voice. “The Watsons?”

  She gives me a worried look.

  I now make a quick dash toward the salon. I need a place to hide. Under a table possibly? No, the baby Russian wolfhound would surely find me and start barking.

  Since I don’t see any caves or deep crevices around here, I sink down into the long-lost, lovable family couch. Oh, I have missed this American icon! A real couch! One to curl up on with a warm bag of fries and a cheeseburger in hand and a TV clicker and nowhere to go but down into its deep, fat, soft cushions.

  I look quickly around me and my eyes land on a big coffee-table book. I grab the book and pull it up toward my face. It is called The Paintings of Henri Matisse. The guy obviously did a lot of work in his lifetime. This book weighs a ton. Yes, Matisse the French painter, one of Dad’s buddies. Collette likes him as well. Now he is fast becoming my favorite too. I pull a small blanket over the rest of me and prop the book up close, squarely in front of my face.

  Soon enough I peer over the top of the book and see the piano in the corner. A piano plus the Watsons equals Help! What am I going to do? Mrs. Watson will be here. I mean, Nan. No! I don’t want her to report me to my principal. I want to continue my life somehow, like a normal girl, having sent in my schoolwork from here and hoping to move on into the eighth grade like everybody else this fall.

  Alas, moments later, I hear the front door open, followed by the usual hustle and bustle of arrival. The kisses and the gifts and the excitement. It’s always the nicest moment of an evening.

  Soon everyone pours into the salon and I begin studying up close one of Matisse’s paintings, really close. The one called The Red Studio.

  Logan pats Windel on the back. I hear the friendly thump of it and then Logan says, “So, Windel, you made it over the big pond. What, did you bring your piano with you on the plane? I bet that caused some major turbulence.”

  “Yeah, no, I actually left it at home. It was pretty heavy and wouldn’t fit in the plastic tubs at the X-ray machines,” says Windel.

  Ava laughs. Logan introduces her to Windel. The words he uses have a luster and a glow. They sparkle. “This is my girlfriend, Ava,” Logan says softly. And those words drift in the air like confetti.

  Then Mrs. Stewart says, “So, Windel, how do you like Paris?”

  “Well, whatever you’re feeling, Paris will double it. If you are happy, Paris will make you ecstatic. If you’re sad, Paris will make you sadder,” Windel says quietly.

  How true, I am thinking. My knees are still shaking. I look closer at the painting of Matisse’s red studio. It’s the reddest red I’ve ever seen. It’s a burning, beautiful, heartfelt red. I will float into the red studio and hover there forever.

  “It’s a good thing Windel is happy,” says his mother. “Because when he’s sad, his music gets morose and dark. Doesn’t it, Fritz?”

  “Yeah, but he is sad, Mom,” says Fritz, the little brother. “He wouldn’t go out yesterday for any reason. He just moped around the hotel all day.”

  “Speaking of music,” says Mrs. Stewart. “Honey,” she says to Mr. Stewart, “you know the CD I play all the time? My husband thinks I have lost my marbles but I listen to it constantly. This is the boy who wrote it. He wrote the song. Play some piano for us, Windel, will you? Maybe some of us will dance? Like say, perhaps, Logan and Ava?” I hear Logan and Ava murmuring and then the light notes of laughter. “Sing the song for that girl. Erin? You know the song you call ‘Small Surprise’?”

  “Okay, sure,” says Windel. He takes a kind of tall, baggy, corduroy bow and he goes to the piano. I peer over the top of the Matisse book. Oh, I know that stance, the way he leans forward and then throws his head back before he puts his hands on the keys. He always looks up before he starts, like there’s a smiley face on the ceiling above him.

  First he plays a short Chopin piece. Oh, I know this piece so well. So many times when he was practicing and I was crouching outside his door, he would start with that. How beautifully the music flows from his hands tonight, as if suddenly all of Paris has been fused and sealed into the notes, the rolls and the rises and the rain and the rushing of wind. I’m breathless and overwhelmed. Secret tears spill all over Matisse’s red studio.

  When the piece is over, Mrs. Stewart calls out, “Windel, you are a wonder. Isn’t he? And just thirteen years old! Please sing the song you wrote called ‘Small Surprise,’ the one for that girl. You told me her name is Erin, right?” she says, whispering to Logan.

  Logan whispers back, “Shhh. Yes, Mom. Erin Barslow.”

  “Well, you’ll have to forgive my singing voice,” Windel says, pushing up his long, grandfather’s sleeves and smiling again at the ceiling. Then Fritz comes over and sits with him at the piano and Windel puts his arm around him for one moment. And then he begins:

  You’re a dragonfly.

  You light up my eyes.

  You’re a butterfly.

  You’re my small surprise.

  The tall French windows along the wall are open and the lace curtains blow into the room like ribbons set free and all of Paris seems to pour in and swirl and billow through the room, wrapping itself around us, making everything flutter and move.

  You’re a dragonfly.

  You light up my eyes.

  You’re a butterfly.

  You’re my small surprise.

  Now Logan gets up and draws Ava out into the middle of the room and gently, easily they start dancing. She bends with him and he bends with her. They are close and tight and when I peek over the edge of the book, Logan’s face is lost in a kind of freckled, dreamy trance. His red hair is tumbled against Ava’s curly, cropped hair.

  You’re a dragonfly.

  You light up my eyes.

  You’re a butterfly.

  You’re my small surprise …

  Behind Matisse’s book, my heart turns and twists and breaks and breaks and breaks. Ava and Logan. Windel and Erin. I push my nose against Matisse’s easel in the middle of the red studio. I lean my cheeks against the red studio chair. My forehead is lying on the red painted ceiling. Erin Barslow must be the luckiest, luckiest, luckiest girl in the world.

  Suddenly the song is over and Ava and Logan come toward me. They flop down next to me, one on each side, and I get my breath back and I choke out a whisper to Ava. “Help! Get me out of here,” I say.

  “Okay, honey,” says Ava. “Done.” I look over the book and see all the parents lined up near the piano. They form a kind of wall around Windel.

  Then Ava whispers to Logan and he reaches around me and picks me up in his arms. For once I am glad to be small. I pull the blanket up over my head and I lie covered like a dead body as Logan carries me across the room.

  At the doorway Ava calls out, “Mrs. Stewart! My sister has a headache. Logan and I will take her home. We will be back in a flash, it’s only a few blocks away.”

  “Oh, honey, what a shame,” I hear Mom calling. “You’ll be missing dinner. We’ll bring you something, okay?”

  Fritz comes up to us. I hear the patter of his little feet on the parquet floor. He leans over me and says, “What happened and who is that?”

  And Ava says, “Oh, it’s nobody. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Nobody. Nobody at all.

  Unfortunately we pass Windel’s mother in the hall and she boldly lifts the blanket from my face and peers down at me. “Oh! Is she okay?” she says but her face seems to glare in a wordless, silent way, as if to say … Not you again! If you want to make it through school, steer clear … Stay away …

  Logan sweeps me forward and we hurry off. I push my face against h
is shoulder, thinking that Logan is fast becoming one of the best big brothers anybody ever had.

  In the rush of feet and doors shutting I hear other things too. Windel saying, “Will she be okay? Who was that?”

  “It’s Ava’s sister, Windel. She just has a headache. It’s nobody you know,” says his mother.

  Nobody. Nobody you know. Nobody at all.

  Now I’m in a complete desolate blur. Embarassed, humiliated, rejected. The three mainstays of a true bumbler. I hear more pieces and parts of conversation. Everything seems broken and mixed up, like sentences tumbling in a dryer. I hear Mrs. Stewart say, “Windel, that was wonderful!! WWW-dot-fantastic! Thank you for playing that. When is your performance in Paris? And who is this Erin Barslow?”

  And just as we are closing the door, I hear Windel’s voice saying, “My performance is next week.” I hear two chords playing. Then a single note. “And um, I don’t really know Erin. So, yeah, no. The song’s not hers.”

  I am sitting here in the hall this morning, staring at the landline telephone. How do you call the States anyway? How many numbers do I have to add and where does the zero go? Is Ginger asleep now or would she just be getting up? Or is it midafternoon back home in America? I am all mixed up.

  My hand hovers over the telephone with caution. The only time it ever rings is when someone wants to reach the Barbours, like people who call themselves friends and don’t even know the Barbours are in America. I pull my hand back.

  I heard from Ava last night that the party thinned out to mostly adults and wasn’t that great. When Logan and Ava got back to the party, Windel was gone. His mother and brother were there, though, and Mrs. Stewart left Windel’s plate in place, hoping he’d come back but he never did. I didn’t plan on the Stewarts’ party turning out badly. If I had known Windel was going to be there, I never would have gone. Honestly, Mrs. Watson. Nan. I do not wish to stalk your son anymore and it was completely by accident that I even went to that party.