“It’s terribly hard to find you.”
David looked up; suited waiters had now arrived, bustling to and fro. Catherine stood above him, having changed into a simple black skirt and matching stilettos.
“I didn’t want to get in the way.”
“I’m so glad you came,” she said, reaching for his hand.
David smiled in spite of himself. When she stood in front of him, smiling and radiant, it was as though there was nothing else in the world. Everything had fallen away and they were free to be happy. It was like their first meeting in Black Paris, the memory of her walking through the crowds as he realized she was coming for him.
“Oh they’re here!” she said, catapulting to her feet.
He watched as she ran across the room and pulled her parents to her chest. Catherine’s mother beamed as she held her daughter’s face between her two small hands. The unmistakable and universal smile of a proud mother. Catherine jumped up and down like a giddy schoolgirl, bold in the shining light of her parent’s admiration.
“So you came,” another woman’s voice said.
David turned around. Guests were starting to arrive now and behind him stood a tall woman with blonde hair. She looked familiar.
“I’m sorry …” David said, motioning for the woman to sit.
“Isabelle. We met years and years ago. You had a swanky business meeting.”
“Oh yes.”
“She wasn’t sure you would come,” Isabelle said.
“Who wasn’t sure?”
Isabelle frowned and David recognized her at last. It was the eyes, how even when she smiled they looked incomparably sad.
“Catherine of course. She let it slip a few weeks ago. You hadn’t seen each other for a couple of months because she’d been gone touring the country. She regretted it, of course, but I pressed her. You two are getting close to ten years together and she’s a little nervous. You might never be more than you are. Marriage,” Isabelle added, seeing his confusion.
“Catherine knows where we stand,” David said coldly.
“Yes, I’m sure she does,” Isabelle said, sipping her champagne.
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then have a good evening,” he said, leaving the table.
Women were insufferable, he thought. The way they had to press into other people’s lives and gorge themselves on salacious gossip and pain. He wandered aimlessly through the crowd, nursing his annoyance and halfheartedly searching for Catherine. Isabelle’s words sat poorly with him. Catherine only mentioned marriage in passing. Had she been talking more with Isabelle? Had he finally fallen that far?
“ARE YOU HAVING FUN? I can’t eat a single thing, my stomach is all in knots.”
Catherine walked up to David and put her arm through his.
“It’s probably just nerves,” he said. “I saw Isabelle again.”
“I can imagine what she said. The poor thing is constantly jealous.”
“Why?” he said, inclining his head to watch Isabelle, still at the same table, swirling the last drops of her champagne, her head bowed.
“Men. They’ve always taken advantage of her. She was raped right before we started university and then just as she was starting to heal, she found someone. He seemed perfect. After a year or so she became pregnant and just like that, he left. She lost the baby not long after. I think the stress got to be too much.”
“That’s terrible,” David said, dropping his gaze.
“The hurt people can cause one another, you mean?”
“Yes.”
They were silent for a few minutes, Catherine’s words percolated between them. David didn’t know where to look, moving from person to person before settling on the hardwood floor. Catherine sipped her champagne in silence.
“What do you think?” Catherine said, waving her free arm over the teeming mass.
“It’s quite something.”
“You’re upset.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I know we haven’t seen each other much the past few months. Except for New Years,” Catherine said consolingly, patting his arm.
“You’ve been busy.”
“You will try to be happy for me?”
David looked back down at the floor, remembering the last time they had stood in this space together. Catherine had driven off into the night without so much as a goodbye, enraptured by the realization of her dreams. Even with the tight press of her guests all around them, David felt quite alone.
“Let’s get a few pictures of the happy couple,” a painfully short photographer appeared out of nowhere and pushed David and Catherine together. “Smile now!”
It didn’t require much acting, to be happy for Catherine. David smiled as the photographer danced this way and that, even snapping away next to his head. In the excitement of photos, Catherine was pulled away into the arms of smiling friends and family, one woman squealed to her about the beauty of the chandeliers.
David gave his empty flute to a passing waiter. The crystal clinked merrily against the silver platter. He pushed his way through the crowd, forced against velvet dresses and crisp suits and platters of passing food. As the door loomed he could sense eyes on him. Isabelle was stared, smirking drunkenly over her large glass of wine.
David pushed the door open, forcing himself not to snarl at the woman. The air was crisp and cool and full of the sounds of Paris. The music from Catherine’s restaurant echoed out onto the street and passersby stopped to listen and glance at the signs. One woman told her companion they had to try it out when the place was open.
“David!” Catherine came pelting out of the doors, her face flushed. “Where are you going? We haven’t even started the speeches yet!”
“I’m going home,” he said, holding out his arm to hail an oncoming taxi. She stood silent, her mouth wide, as he got in and gave the driver his address.
The car pulled away. David turned in the seat, hoping Catherine might be waving and crying for him to stop. But there was no one on the curb. No sign of Catherine’s white shirt. The entrance to the teeming restaurant was empty, barren.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
10 February 1979
WINTER SEEMED INTENT ON continuing its reign with a vengeance. A blizzard dropped a foot of snow in twelve hours. Trains in and out of the city were halted. David left his office, wrapped against the cold. It was the third day in a row that Gilbert had not been in contact. Two of his long-term clients had severed their contracts. In a few short weeks, his nephew was stopping in Paris on his way to Africa. Life was never simple.
“Catherine?” David sputtered.
He was completely thrown. Upon walking into his apartment he had found Catherine seated on the edge of the sofa.
“I need to talk to you.”
Her hands were folded demurely on her lap, but she sat rigidly. David leaned over to set his briefcase by the door. Still staring, he pulled a chair from the table and set it in front of her. She looked beyond him, her eyes fixed on the mantle.
“What do you want, David?” Catherine said.
Her voice broke the silence in the room like a gunshot in the night. She kept her seat, kept her close posture, and kept her eyes adverted.
“You’re the one in my apartment, Catherine.”
It was the precisely the wrong thing to say, Catherine’s eyes shot around, her lip curling.
“I have waited and waited for you to change, David. What do you want?” she repeated, shoving her finger at him.
“I have changed,” David said.
The situation was growing desperate, reeling out of control with every passing second. Catherine was slipping away, he could feel it.
“No, and do you want to know why? I am finally seeing it now. At first, I enjoyed it. I loved pulling you out of yourself, giving you a new life, and enticing you out of your hole. But now, you have taken everything from me and given nothing in return.
“I have nothing left for you. How long have we been together, how long have we loved each other, how long have you denied me any semblance of normalcy? I want a family. I want us to be a family. I want you to give up your pain and choose me. Because I can’t live like this anymore. I can’t be your savior. I can’t be her.” Catherine stopped and stood up, her eyes wide with pain and fear.
David stood as well, fighting to meet her eyes.
“Catherine,” he said, taking her hand, “I’m not the marrying type. I’m not ready to be a father.”
“You’re forty-five years old, David. You are responsible for your decisions.”
“I was honest with you. I told you I didn’t think I’d ever be ready, or even if it was something I wanted.”
The heat of his own anger rose in his chest. He wanted to scream at her. To shout and tell her how unfair it was that she chose to barge in like this without warning and suddenly demand a change of course.
“Yes, and shame on me for thinking that ten years might be enough to bring a man around to it. You’ve been happy taking everything from me. You’d go on doing that till we are eighty years old. I deserve an answer. Why? Why won’t you just choose me?” she choked out between sobs.
Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, her beauty unmarred even in such terrible pain.
“Why can’t we stay as we are? I love you and you love me. Isn’t that enough?” He couldn’t think properly, couldn’t form rational thought and the only thing that came to mind was the status quo.
“Because that isn’t enough. You have to be willing to sacrifice. You have to be willing to give to the person you love. What have you given me, David? I am hidden away every time a family member of yours comes into town. You refuse to live together because you’re afraid of what the family might think. And you refuse me. You refuse to give me children even though I will soon no longer be able to bear them. You have bled me dry, David.”
Her anger was all but spent. She stood there as limp as a rag doll, red eyes and pale skin, waiting. She was giving him the chance to mend or break their cord, giving him the opportunity and responsibility to make the choice: the chance to come to his senses.
“Why is a child so important?”
“Because it’s what I want.”
“What about what I want?”
“I have given you what you wanted for ten years. Why aren’t you listening? I gave you everything. I took you everywhere. I never asked anything of you,” she paused and then, with a steely glint in her eye, took a shuddering breath, and continued on. “You are a coward, David. A coward and I feel sorry for us both. You refuse to see what you’ve done.”
David stood dumbfounded as Catherine catapulted herself at the door. She shoved both hands through the sleeves of her coat, flipped her hair out from under the collar, and buttoned it to her chest with a barely bridled ferocity. David came out of his stupor, blinked his eyes stupidly, as the door creaked open.
“Wait … Catherine. Where are you going?”
She looked back from the doorway, without pity or anger or pain. “I’m leaving. Goodbye, David,” she said and began to shut the door. He vaulted over his chair, catching the side of the door before it met the jam.
“Catherine, please don’t.”
“I came to give you a last chance, and to tell you …” she seethed and then bit her lip. She paused, frowning into space, and then coming to a decision she turned and hurried down the stairs.
The heels of her boots echoed along with his frantic calls. Thirteen times they clicked before they disappeared with the quick snap of a door and a cold gust of wind.
DAVID LAY DRAPED ACROSS the couch like a forgotten blanket. Drool seeped out of the side of his mouth, drawing a dark line from his mouth to the squished pillow beneath his head. Three wine bottles were scattered on the floor and a he cradled a half empty whiskey decanter like a mother would her baby. The rest of the apartment was pristine, aside from the liquor and the blacked-out man on the couch, there would be no reason to suspect anything out of the ordinary had happened to the occupant.
The thoroughly hung-over man woke in the late afternoon to the sound of the bistro coming to life for the evening rush. He blinked disjointedly and rose a few inches before falling back into the couch. He stared at the ceiling, trying to force his mind out of this haze, and watched an apparition.
Across his hazy mind, a little boy with wavy brown hair ran across fields of wheat and corn, jumping over puddles, a black dog at his heels. He was a boy with two arms, bare feet that were as dark as the dirt he ran over, and a smile wider than the Illinois sky. This boy knew nothing of a war across a wide ocean or a crippling depression, which laid waste to entire countries. The boy just ran back and forth from home to the fields, carrying lunch pails, feeding chickens, and stealing food when his mother wasn’t looking.
The vision changed, pain appeared and clouded the entire world. All that existed was the pain. An operating room. Fear in everyone’s eyes. The loss of balance. A father’s disappointed and closed off gaze. A life of “women’s work” because he was suited for nothing else. A crushed soul, a crushed spirit. No more a relationship with his father or camaraderie with his much older brothers. A five-year-old boy with the weight of the world on a solitary shoulder.
It shifted again; his brothers left one by one for college and then after a year … were shipped off to war. He knew about the war at this point because everyone knew someone who was fighting and they all hated the Japanese for Pearl Harbor. He knew what met his brothers out on the open sea and in France. Loss and abandonment colored his life. Bullying became an inescapable torment. Adults couldn’t hover every minute of the day.
The vision changed one last time. A life of seclusion, living around others but never a part of them, never trusting them, never seeking their approval or love. He’d enjoyed it this way. He’d wanted to close himself off and not suffer the torment of his youth. He didn’t want to get too close and get rebuffed. It was a lonely life. An easy life. A hard life. Then the respite. His own Catherine The Great. The decade of bliss. And back again. Back to a hermit’s existence.
Catherine’s face stirred him, but for some reason he felt hollow at the thought of her, and he couldn’t understand why. The pounding in his
head, and the sloshing in his stomach made conscious thought difficult. Then, in a crushing blow, which sent him sprinting for the bathroom, it all came back.
Hovering over the toilet, choking on gush after gush of alcohol from his stomach, Catherine’s words echoed around and around in his mind. Stomach bile made it worse, it tore at his throat, dug its little claws into the crevices. He just wanted to collapse against the floor and cry. He hated himself. Hated what he had done to Catherine. Hated his insecurities and his family and his long dead arm and his own miserable self.
David jerked his head off the bowl. The smell of vomit swirling in the toilet was horrendous. His stomach churned again at the sight of the floating chunks, and he practically threw his hand at the handle. On shaking legs, he heaved himself up off the floor, rinsed out his mouth, and collapse into bed. He shook violently and clutched desperately at his stomach. The photo she had given him, ten years old now, looked blankly at him. The eyes were such a likeness. Many times he thought they might have moved, followed him around the room, sought out his soul for answers to her questions.
He called Georges and postponed, once again, his meetings for the week. His excuse of an acute illness didn’t seem that far off. He collapsed into the too short bed and didn’t move the rest of the day, preferring to nurse his pain alone.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
March 1979
“UNCLE DAVID!” A STRONG, sure, American voice rang out against the babble in the Charles de Gaulle airport.
David cracked his neck as he leaned around the milling Parisians. A light hand brushed his shoulder.
“Rick,” David said.
He’d been waiting in the airport for more than three hours for a de
layed US Airways flight to finally arrive in Paris with his nephew. Rick was eighteen-years-old: thin, with a scholarly air as if the smell of books and the glares of elderly librarians still clung to him.
He walked out of terminal with a bright smile. Rick smelled of hay and sun ripened pies and hot summer air. David smiled, soaking the young man in from the soft cotton button-up shirt, to the wrinkled jeans, and the unruly hair (rubbed upright in the back from long hours in an airplane seat).
“Everyone says hello,” Rick said, looking over his shoulder.
“Waiting for someone?”
“There are twenty-two of us that are here on a layover, almost eight hours,” Rick said, and as if summoned, a group came around the corner. In the corner stood teeming mass of the boisterous, the shy, and the annoyed: and most certainly American.
“What are they all going to do?” David asked, frowning at the mountainous pile of luggage being deposited in a nearby corner.
“Everyone talked about getting out to see Paris, but we can’t just leave the luggage. I talked to an airport official who said it was against policy. It sounded more like she didn’t want to be bothered.”
“So they won’t be able to leave the airport? We can leave yours at the apartment.”
“It’s a bit unfair.”
David watched as Rick’s eyes fell on a young woman with brown hair and even darker eyes. He recognized that look and thought he could even hear Rick’s frantically beating heart.
“Excuse moi,” he said, forgetting himself and slipping into French.
Rick watched as his uncle marched over to the nearest Air France desk and began a heated conversation. More than once he pointed toward the ceiling and then at the huddled mass of twenty-year-olds behind him. The woman’s head shaking became less and less impassioned before she finally nodded. Rick thought that she simply wanted to get rid of the man before her.
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