The Map That Leads to You

by J. P. Monninger

  She reached across the table and squeezed our hands.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I am. Just don’t make a big deal of it, okay? Don’t ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen, and don’t get a worried look on your face every time the story comes up. It’s a fact of my life now, and it does no good to try to pretend anything about it. You with me?”

  We nodded.

  “I probably should apologize to Peter, though,” she said.

  “Fuck no,” Constance said.

  Coming from her, the word was such a shock that Amy and I both laughed.

  “He had a boner when he stood up,” I said. “He had it tucked into his waistband.”

  “Poor little idiot,” Amy said. “He thought he was getting some.”

  “Well, the thought had crossed my mind, I admit. Okay, I have to sleep,” I said. “I’m beat. I’m not used to drinking beer in the middle of the day.”

  I hugged them both. Later, I heard Constance talking to Amy about her wedding plans. I liked hearing their voices in the darkness.

  Paris

  48

  Paris again. Paris in spring. Paris when the chestnuts are in bloom. Paris when the Seine runs at its fullest, and when the cafés, sleepy from winter, begin to shed their weight and heaviness and waiters in white aprons crank up their awnings to let the new sunshine find their customers. Countless brooms whisk the cobblestones awake, and the oxidized roofs shimmer green as pond moss, and the tulips, thousands of tulips, surprise you with a wink of color and a promise of warmth. Women find clothes deep in their closets and pull them out, unsure, because the weather can still change, still turn chilly, but it is worth the risk to wear something you love, and hats suddenly appear, fantastic hats, and your eye is pulled this way and that because it is Paris and it is spring and you are young.

  In the days before the wedding, Constance is in love, about to be a bride, and she brings to everything such loveliness, such grace, that you think, This is how weddings should be, all weddings, and Raef, handsome Raef, dotes on Constance and does not leave her side, not for a second, not for a breath, and you wonder how this has happened, how Constance, the pale beauty on a Schwinn bicycle pedaling around a college campus less than a year before, has the maturity and wisdom to preside over these charming festivities, her sheepherder in her thrall. She strikes the perfect tone at each event, at the tea with the mothers as they meet for the first time, at the shops when ordering the last of the food for the ceremony, at the florist’s when she speaks in her eloquent French, bending beside the stout proprietress over flats of violets to smell the shy fragrance—who knew studying French would truly be useful in the end?—so that she herself at times seems a new growth, not a flower, but a sedge, a six-sided grass that arrives slowly and calmly in time at the edge of a meadow and whose beauty one must stop to appreciate. You stand beside her, a bridesmaid, and watch her prepare herself to love and to honor and to hold, and tears fill your eyes a thousand times, and Constance, sweet Constance, brings you and Amy to Notre Dame, where she kneels before her favorite statue of Mary and prays, not to God, maybe, not to any entity, but to the commitment she is making, to the desire to be good and kind in her marriage, to her promise to forsake all others and to become one flesh with the man she adores.

  A hundred instances of perfection, small, delicate tones that only Paris can offer. And Hemingway, your Hemingway, lived here in deep love with his Hadley, and you hate the bastard for leaving her, as Jack left you, and you love him for feeling life so deeply, as Jack also felt life deeply, and you feel fluttery and wild and happy being in this wedding, being beside your friends, waiting for the day. In Paris. Always in Paris.

  * * *

  In the three days before the wedding, I tried my best not to be haunted by Jack. I hated that I thought of him, that I placed him beside me, mentally, a thousand thousand times; I hated that Constance had to give a single thought to my position, my situation, because she had a billion details to occupy her, and she didn’t need to concern herself with my mental state. When we put up at the Hotel Sampson, a beautiful Edwardian building on the outskirts of the seventh arrondissement—the same arrondissement that contained the Eiffel Tower—I found myself entertaining the possibility that Jack might attend the wedding. I mentioned the thought to no one, because I understood, in a deep part of me, that it was my own invention. No one had spoken of Jack to me at all. My daydream was so pitiful, so embarrassing, that, if anything, I went overboard attempting to be the life of the party to compensate for my moody dream-state. Without meaning to, I came perilously close to being “that” wedding girl—the girl ready to do shots with the boy side of the wedding, to stay up and find a new bar in the center of Paris—how I loved being able to guide people in Paris!—the girl who sometimes looked a little rumpled, a little too partied up, a tad too tarty. I knew what I was doing, but I almost couldn’t stop myself from doing it. I felt as if I stood outside myself—a ridiculous image, I know—to watch this crazy girl behaving as if she belonged in Sheboygan, not Paris.

  Besides, who needed Jack? That’s what I wanted to prove to anyone who cared to notice.

  Long before the wedding date, Constance had mentioned a friend of Raef’s who would be my partner in the wedding party, and that, nearly as soon as we landed, became a standing joke. His name was Xavier Box, an absurd name that made Amy and me laugh whenever we spoke it aloud. He was a tall, severe-looking Australian, with blond hair and eyes so blue they seemed made of ice, whose angular appearance belied the sweetness underneath his exterior. One of the ridiculous side notes of the wedding—everything was graceful, everything was beautiful because of Constance, but still it was a wedding and there was plenty of wine—was Xavier’s ability to speak something he called “sheep talk.” Apparently, it was a thing in Australia—although I had never heard it from Raef—and it involved saying everything in a bleating voice that was, supposedly, the stuttering speech of a sheep. It made no sense whatsoever and was not in the least funny, except that Xavier, maybe six foot three and as thin as a greyhound, used it so often that it became funny despite its chunkiness. Pretty soon everyone had a sheep talk voice, so that, if you wanted a drink, you might say, “May I have a drinnnnnkkkkk?” with the tail of the sentence going up like the voice of a baby lamb calling for its mom. Who knows why things like that become funny, but it did, and it became the wavering lament that wove through the wedding despite Constance’s ethereal beauty.

  Xavier Box was the master of sheep talk—partially because he came from Australia but also because he looked a little goatish—and as partners in the wedding, we became adept at playing off each other. I spoke sheep well, and when we stood to say our toasts at the groom’s dinner held in a nearby pension (think checked tablecloths and grumpy waiters and wine bottles with straw bottoms) the night before the wedding, both of us managed to slip in a sheepish phrase. I said something like, Raef is the beeeessstttttttttttt man in the world, and Xavier topped me by saying, You beeeeeeetttttttttt.

  It was funny. It made everyone laugh. We almost came across as a couple.

  As I sat and watched Xavier finish his speech, Amy leaned over and told me I should sleep with him.

  “I am not sleeping with a man who speaks sheep talk,” I whispered to her. “Are you nuts?”

  “You need to get back in the game, sister. You’re going a little loopy. Constance says all you do is work and read.”

  “He’s way cute in a sort of sheep way, but he’s not my type. I do more than that, by the way.”

  “What exactly is your type? I’m looking around, and I’m not seeing him. You no longer have a type, Heather. You have an ice cream flavor that you like to eat late at night by yourself, but no boy type anymore.”

  “You don’t have a type around here, either, Amy.”

  “When has that ever mattered to me? Sleep with Xavier Box. You’re snakebit. You need to shake things up.”

  We both had had too much to drink. It wasn’t a great line
of conversation. Absurdly, I kept flashing my eyes at the door, half expecting Jack to show up. I had no idea what I would say to him if he did show up, or what I would do, but the idea of his potential arrival drove me slightly insane. It felt a little like anticipating a surprise party on your birthday, half hoping it doesn’t materialize, the other half wondering if this or that person wasn’t slipping off to buy a cake. After all, Jack could be impetuous. He liked to be dramatic.

  I still hovered in the no-Jack-land of speculation when a woman holding a baby sat down beside me. I had seen the woman over the last few days, had even been introduced, but I couldn’t recall her name. She had auburn hair with a wide, broom-like bang cut straight across her forehead. She looked to be in her midthirties, a Mom-a-saurus in training, and she smelled of lemon and baby powder. She was from Raef’s side of the wedding, and when she spoke she had a thick, adorable Australian accent.

  “Will you hold him?” she asked, extending the baby to me. “I need to run and pee. I won’t be a minute. It’s much easier without bringing him along.”

  “Of course,” I said, taking the baby and lifting him into my lap. “What’s his name?”

  “Johnny.”

  “Hello, Johnny.”

  Before I could ask any more, the woman slipped away. I had never been super comfortable with babies, but this one, I had to admit, was cuter than a box of puppies. He had a stout little body and beautiful eyelashes, and when I danced him on my legs, he smiled and gurgled and reached out for my hair. He couldn’t have been more than a few months old. He wore a sailor-type outfit, with a blue blouse and white shorts and cotton socks on his tiny feet.

  “You notice she didn’t give him to me,” Amy said, leaning over to look at Johnny, putting her finger in his tiny fist. “What a cutie pie.”

  “What a little man. What a perfect gentleman.”

  “He looks serious. He looks quite self-possessed.”

  Then Amy was called away, and I found myself, strangely, sitting alone with Johnny. Xavier had gone off to the bar, and most of the party had gotten up to stretch its legs, and I realized Johnny and I had the space to ourselves. I danced him on my lap, and he stared at me, apparently not for or against our association, and for an absurd ten count, I thought, Now is when I want Jack to walk in. I wanted him to see me with this gorgeous child, my maternal impulses on full display, though why I thought that would be attractive to Jack I couldn’t say. We had never even talked about children. I realized, thinking about it, that Jack was a virus that I couldn’t shake. I had officially gone crazy.

  Then all of that passed away, and I was left with Johnny, with his beautiful eyes staring into mine, with the simple fact of his personhood arresting me. He was not a “baby,” not a “rug rat,” but was, instead, a perfect little human, a sweet, adorable child who gazed at me to discover what he could trust. I had never experienced a moment like that with a baby before. Our eyes rested on each other for a long time.

  I lifted him carefully into my arms and held him against my chest. I felt close to crying.

  “Hi, Johnny,” I whispered. “You’re a beautiful, beautiful boy. You’re a sweet little boy, aren’t you? How precious are you?”

  I put my nose against his skin, the back of his neck. He smelled like the powder that his mother wore and also of that ineffable baby smell that was like no other smell on earth.

  “Oh, he’s taking to you,” his mom said on her return. She popped into the chair beside us. “He doesn’t normally let himself be held by strangers. You must have a good, solid character for a child to trust you so easily.”

  “I feel like I’ve known Johnny for a thousand years.”

  “Careful on,” the woman said. “That’s the way it starts. Next thing you’ll be married to a bloke and have six kittens to care for.”

  “Do you have six children?” I asked, shocked at the possibility. Maybe, I thought, I had misunderstood this woman.

  “No, no, no, just Johnny here. But he’s enough. He keeps me busy, but he’s a lamb, as you can see.”

  “He’s a beautiful boy.”

  “You know, I had one like yours,” she said. “A love, I mean. One that went away.”

  I looked at her over Johnny’s soft shoulder. Was my story that well known among the wedding party? It embarrassed me to think it might be. Did people say, “Gee, there goes Heather, who once had a man she loved leave her at the Paris airport?” Was that my legend at this wedding? I supposed it had to be for the woman to know my story. I imagined it was the capsule explanation: Oh, that woman next to Xavier Box, that’s Heather, her boyfriend was a friend of Raef’s, and he left her at the airport in Paris. It was a shorthand means of identification. There’s Raef’s uncle, and Constance’s cousin, and, oh, her, she’s the one who lost the boyfriend.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “Oh, I know. It’s painful. Mine was a sailor. He took parties out to the Whitsunday Islands. Ran them over to the Great Barrier if they liked. Oh, he loved being at sea. I should have learned from that, of course, but I ignored it. Ever notice how women who see almost everything can ignore the biggest clues imaginable? It’s always baffled me.”

  I held Johnny closer. I heard his breathing next to my ear.

  “People say you get over it, but you don’t. Not those kinds of men. They leave scars. I only mention it because I can’t talk about it to anyone else. It’s a taboo subject, you see? And I’m married. Happily so, honestly. But not a day goes by that I don’t think of my lost sailor.”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “I know, I know. It’s still raw. It will be for a long time, believe me. I actually felt sometimes as if I had been burned. It felt like my skin had to regrow around these horrible burns. I don’t mean that as a metaphor, either. It’s more painful than any metaphor could be. Great love inevitably carries with it great loss. That’s something I read. I’ve held it close to me ever since. I remind myself of it now and then. In our beginning is our end.”

  Then she reached over and held my hand.

  I almost pulled my hand away. I didn’t know her name. I didn’t know the first thing about her, honestly. She leaned closer to me and put her lips somewhere near my ear. It was as if she wanted to confide the most perfect secret to Johnny and to me. We formed a conspiratorial triangle.

  “It will heal in time,” she whispered. “Not entirely. It never goes away entirely, but you will go on, I promise. And Johnny’s a great love, too, so you see? More comes along, and it will; it will for you, too. It’s probably not fair to my husband to remember the sailor in such a way, but I do remember him, and it would be a lie to say I didn’t. Don’t ever think you’re alone in this. I’ve met many women who have had the great love walk away. You’ll see him all your life—at a bar, in an airport. Something will remind you, and it’s spark and flint again.”

  She smiled at me. Her eyes looked soft and kind and tired. Then she reached for Johnny and lifted him to her. I held on to his tiny fist until she smiled again and stood.

  “Thank you for watching him,” she said. “You have a good heart, I bet.”

  “Good-bye, Johnny.”

  She nodded and lifted him against her shoulder. Then she made her way through the scattered chairs, Johnny’s tiny face like a pale moon riding against her neck.

  49

  Constance’s parents knew the Jeffersons, part of the diplomatic mission in France, and it was at their temporary estate that Constance got married. It was a glorious location, with sumptuous grounds and a large, yellowish Georgian mansion made of pale stone anchoring the land at the head of a white gravel circular drive. Paul Jefferson had been a college roommate with Constance’s dad, Billy, and the idea that a roommate would be so kind to a roommate’s daughter—to host a wedding, albeit a small wedding—seemed somehow to confirm something about our own friendships, we three. We would do the same for our college chums, we knew, and when Mrs. Jefferson, Gloria, led us upstairs to help Constance dress in the late mor
ning on a perfect April Saturday, she opened the French doors communicating to the spacious grounds below, and for a moment we all stood on the balcony and watched as men in blue coveralls set up chairs and the florist misted the violets that Constance had chosen to commemorate the day.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Constance said. “I can’t thank you enough, Gloria. It’s what I’ve always dreamed.”

  “Oh, I’ve always wanted a wedding here,” Gloria said. “I’ve just had sons, I’m sorry to say, and they refuse to oblige me. Sons may be a little easier in some ways, but they’re not nearly as much fun.”

  She was a tall brunette, with a tight head of hair and wide, capable shoulders. She had been a swimmer, a breaststroker, and she had met her husband, Paul, at the Olympic trials one late winter. She still possessed an athletic body, and it did not surprise me when Constance’s mother, Gail, told us that Gloria swam every day to keep her form.

  Constance turned and hugged her. Constance, beautiful Constance.

  True to her nature, Constance did not want a makeup person or a hairstylist. She had selected her dress for its simplicity. It was a white shift, tea length, with a sheer lace bodice, and she wore white ballet slippers. When she stood in front of the floor-length mirror, her hands trembling slightly as they held her bouquet of baby’s breath and irises, she looked as perfect as a bride could be. Her mother had gone out of the room to find her seat, and we stood behind Constance, and she said nothing but moved her eyes from each of us to the next. Through the window we heard people assembling, and we heard the music—a jazz quartet, naturally, for Raef—begin to play lightly in the background, and Constance turned to us and spoke.