by Corine Gantz
“Not on my watch! None of that,” Annie’s neurons fired and bubbled, connecting thoughts, searching for the right things to say. “Are you coming to France, honey?”
“I... don’t think so.”
“Oh yes you are! Listen to me, why don’t you just pack your things, go to the airport, and stay there until a seat is available. You have a passport? Right? Okay?”
“I do... but I don’t...”
“Oh come on, give it a chance. You just call a travel agency and... forget it, my bad. Bad idea. No, just go to the airport and stay there until a flight becomes available. This time of year you’ll have no problem getting a flight. Take a direct flight, you hear me? To Charles de Gaulle Airport. It’s spelled C.H.... ”
“I know how it’s spelled.”
“And call me, anytime, collect, it doesn’t matter, and tell me when you’ll arrive. I’ll be at the airport to pick you up.”
“I’ll try.”
Annie shrieked. “I’m counting on you, Althea! Don’t let me down, sister.”
There was a long silence on the line, then Althea’s voice, flat. “Okay.”
“Good, very good, now give me your address and number.” But before she could finish her sentence, Althea had hung up.
Annie stared through her dark bedroom. WTF! WTF! She put her head in her hands. For all she knew, that woman was carrying a deadly virus. Or, more likely, she was dangerously unstable. Oh this was bad. Very bad. She’d never hear the end of it with Lucas. She looked at the clock. 4:00 AM. Couldn’t the inconsiderate have attempted suicide at a more convenient time? She got out of bed, wrapped her robe around her, turned on the light in her room and went to her linen closet to find sheets for Althea’s bed. She would give her the orange room. To cheer her up.
One day, Lucas thought, he would tell Annie that contrary to what he had told her, he was not an early riser. Every morning he fought the blaring alarm, confronted Paris’s pitch-black glacial streets and drove in a semi comatose state, all this to spend what amounted to perhaps thirty minutes of alone time with her. But these were not minutes he ever wanted to miss.
“You will not believe this.” Annie told him the instant he entered. Lucas removed his coat, folded it over a chair and sat at the kitchen table. The mug was already there. Coffee, in a mug. Only in America, he thought, not for the first time. Stoical, he began sipping the terribly acid brew, taking pleasure in watching Annie move in the kitchen. Today she wore those jeans he liked on her. She had such a lovely, feminine figure, not like those brittle Parisiennes that were his usual lot.
The hour before the boys woke up was their special time together. Now of course Annie had no idea just how special, and for this Lucas had no one to blame but himself.
This morning, Annie was in a good mood he could tell.
“Lola left the U.S. in a hurry and is hiding from her husband!” she said excitedly, “he’s a monster! Years of a violent marriage. Lola is a mess. She’s a complete mess.” Annie did not seem the least bit upset about this, he noticed. In fact she seemed more than in a good mood. She was upbeat.
“What are you making?” he asked.
“Brioche.”
“Ahh! Brioche,” he said. He got up, discreetly emptied the contents of the mug into the sink, and came close to her. He looked over her shoulder as she stretched the smooth golden dough and folded it over itself with complete economy of movement. Her hair was in her eyes as always, and Lucas thought of tucking it behind her ear for her. He could feel the heat from her body and the smell of yeast. Both had the tendency of working on him like an aphrodisiac, the yeast and her scent, always the same soap scent that smelled to him better than any perfume and he began to feel his erection. He folded his hand over his crotch and continued watching her hands as she worked the dough.
“Lola says she still loves him. What a crock of shit!” Annie’s eyes twinkled. “A mess, I’m telling ya!”
Lucas took a slight step back. “Why do I get the premonition of an impending circus?”
She gave him a dirty look. “What?”
“There will be Lola’s drama, and then your drama about Lola’s drama.”
Annie shrugged this off. “How old do you think she is?” she asked, her hands vigorously working the dough back and forth in a cadence of pushing and flapping. Flour was all over the floor, even in her hair. Above her lip was a little bit of sweat. Lucas sat down. “So?” she insisted. “Take a guess! How old do you think she is?”
“Well, hmm. Maybe twenty-five? Or thirty?”
“You know what?” Annie said, placing the dough in a brioche mold and covering it with a cloth, “I have extra dough, I can make cinnamon buns.”
“Cinnamon buns,” he repeated.
“It might sound harsh, but I have trouble respecting someone who’s been such a pushover for so long. On the other hand, leaving everything behind was maybe very courageous of her.”
“You, harsh? No,” Lucas said with what he meant to be pointed sarcasm. “What is that American expression? You don’t have a harsh bone in your mind.”
“You mean, in my body.” She took it literally and seemed pleased. “Well, I haven’t gotten the precise information out of her, but I bet she is older than she looks. She told me about her life, and I was adding in my head. She’s definitely older than I am.” Annie turned off the coffee maker with flour-covered hands, poured coffee into a small cup, placed it in front of Lucas and pivoted back to her baking.
From his chair, Lucas watched Annie’s profile concentrated on the effort of rolling raisins and cinnamon into the dough. He did not pay attention to much of what she was saying as she went on about Lola and her husband. His gaze followed her, and his mind wandered. Annie looked particularly sexy today. He would lift her hair and kiss her neck, and then he’d caress her buttocks lightly, then more insistently. She would start moaning...
“Couldn’t he?” Annie said.
He jumped. “Couldn’t he what?”
“Couldn’t her husband find out where Lola went by asking the airline?”
This Lola conversation was getting tedious. Lucas drifted back into his reverie. “Possibly.”
“So the Althea woman, you know, the suicidal one, called me finally and she will be landing at eight AM, which means I’ll really need your driving expertise tomorrow morning again, by the way. I’m giving her the orange room in the attic. It’s cheerful. I’d better get going on the cleaning.”
“I’m not going to the airport again.” He remembered the attic room. He would carry Annie up to the room and unbutton her jeans...
“I won’t be able to walk for a week,” he heard Annie say and he nearly fell off his chair. “I beg your pardon?”
Annie stepped toward him, holding her sticky hands up like a surgeon after scrubbing.
“Hellooo? Earth to Lucas? I’m saying could you please bring the vacuum cleaner upstairs. It kills my back every time.”
Lucas got up and walked to the closet where the vacuum cleaner was stored. “I was wondering,” he said. “You said you wanted four tenants?”
“Three now that Lola is renting two rooms. Why? Do you have someone in mind?”
Why did Lucas have to make things so difficult? Annie was thinking the next morning as she scanned the airport crowd for her new tenant. They both knew he was going to help her out, so why the charade? Her thoughts were interrupted and she instantly knew that the young woman coming up the walkway was Althea. Red Hair, she had said, and boy did this fit the definition. But the strangeness of her appearance? Annie had expected someone who looked depressed. What do people look like when they are depressed? They’d look like Annie did: normal. They wouldn’t look like this. This was something else. Something she clearly had no name for.
In the airport, people stared, as French people do, at the red-haired young woman who was advancing toward them. When she had first come to France, the stares had made Annie feel furious, violated. The staring included gazes that swept from feet t
o face and back down, taking in every detail, whispered comments, little face and hand movements. Men looked at women in sexual ways, and women looked at other women in critical ways. It was the way it was and had always been. It was all done in a very conspicuous way. A rude way, possibly? Annie didn’t know any better anymore; it had taken her a while to get used to it, but not long to emulate.
“Look at that specimen,” Lucas said with impeccable timing.
“Oh, shut up.”
“What?”
“That’s her, that’s what.”
“Carefully selected, over the phone, specimen!” Lucas said smugly and she did not have the energy to kick him in the shin.
Her hair was the first thing Annie noticed, and how she recognized her. “Red hair,” Althea had said. “I have a lot of long red hair.” Hair was hardly the fitting word. This was a mane, alive, profuse, lush, that came half way down her back and moved as one curly, bright red mass. But that hair of hers was all that seemed alive. As she walked up the ramp in her black sweater and black jeans, the young woman appeared breakable, lost in her clothes and in the world. She walked slowly, hesitantly as though she might retreat back and run away any moment. There was something of a pre-Raphaelite painting about her. Not a healthy pre-Raphaelite. She wore no makeup and her high cheekbones accentuated the triangular shape of her face. There were dark circles around her gray eyes, and her mouth was pale enough to blend with her skin. But even with serious mascara, lipstick, and some color, she wouldn’t have looked right. At the end of Althea’s long emaciated hand and collection of thin bones under translucent skin was a single suitcase. It was the hand that alarmed Annie the most. The hand was not right either. It alarmed her in ways she couldn’t have put into words.
Annie should have waved, called her attention, but she found herself needing time to adapt and gather herself. She crossed her fingers like a schoolgirl as she walked towards Althea, hoping it wasn’t her, knowing it was her. “Althea?” she called.
“Annie?” Althea smiled. She had the mouth movement down, but her eyes were not smiling.
Nervousness kicked in. Annie cringed at her own glibness, which had a life of its own. “Welcome to France!” she clamored. “We are so glad to see you. Did you have a nice trip? Here is Lucas. He’s got a horrendous French accent. He sounds like Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther,” she added with a big fake laugh. “His English is actually pretty decent, but you’d never know ’cause you can’t understand a word he says.”
Althea shook hands with Lucas and blushed intensely. Annie had never seen someone turn so red, so fast. That made her want to get rid of Lucas at once, but then she’d be stuck without a driver. Althea crouched in the middle of the airport and opened her suitcase, foraging for something. Annie whispered to Lucas “Elle est très timide. She’s very shy.” Lucas groaned and rolled his eyes.
“La panthère rose, hmm?”
Althea retrieved a small package, closed her suitcase, got up, and handed it to Annie.
“This is for you,” she said.
“Oh, dear, you didn’t want to...need to, have to I mean,” Annie said as she fumbled with the wrapping. Did that woman have parents, a family who would take her back? The package contained a bottle of expensive perfume, Nina Ricci’s Air Du Temps.
“Oh, honey,” Annie exclaimed. “Are you crazy? I mean...insane? Sick. Hum, huh...this wasn’t necessary!”
“I wanted to,” Althea answered with an enthusiasm that felt forced. “This is so nice to come to the airport and pick me up so early in the morning, especially with the traffic. I’m sure I really should have taken a cab. This is so inconvenient.”
Annie and Lucas waited for Althea in front of the restroom, and it occurred to Annie that they could escape and Althea would never find them. She didn’t even have the address. Lucas’s look of contrition encouraged Annie to convey her anguish. “She’s skin and bones,” she said.
“You’re speaking to her as though she is a child. A retarded child,” Lucas said.
“I’m certainly not,” Annie snapped.
“My dear, this, honey, that.”
“That’s how American women talk to each other. You’re just not used to it, that’s all.”
“Well, I would stop,” he said.
They walked out of the airport and towards the garage. Annie was ruminating over Lucas’s comment. What a jerk. She decided to aggravate Lucas by sitting in the backseat with Althea and shouting the address: “Onze rue Nicolo, dans le seizième, s’il vous plait, driver.” Lucas stuck his tongue out at Annie in the rear view mirror.
“Quel gamin!” Annie giggled.
“Tous les hommes sont des enfants,” said Althea.
Annie wailed, “Haaaa, she speaks French! Lucas, we’re so busted! Have we said anything totally embarrassing so far?”
“Non, rien Madame,” she answered like a good child. “So this is Paris!” she said, looking at the inside of the airport garage with apparent ecstasy.
Remembering her experience with Lola, Annie believed a disclaimer was in order. “First we’ll go through the suburb. The good stuff is coming up. If you’re not too tired, we’ll take the scenic route, won’t we, chauffeur?”
“Your husband took time off work to pick me up. That is so nice.”
“That’s not my husband, Heavens forbid! My husband passed away several years ago. A tragic accident. I haven’t driven since. Lucas is a doll to give us his time, nonetheless.”
“I... Apologize. Thanks. Sorry,” said Althea, who continued to blush unexpectedly at Lucas.
The entire way back, for a whole forty-five minutes, Althea spoke, seemingly without breathing, about her sudden decision to visit France, taking a sabbatical from her exciting career, saying goodbye to loved ones. She spoke in a rapid, excited, enthusiastic tone. Annie noted that Althea was saying all the right things, as if she really wanted to be liked, or blow smoke on the real issues that made her come here. Had she forgotten their middle-of-the-night conversation? Less than thirty-six hours ago, her life didn’t seem so rosy. Maybe she would get real once Lucas was gone.
They left the suburb and Lucas made the same detour through Paris he had for Lola. But unlike Lola, Althea hardly looked out the window and said not a word about the city. More bothersome, she hardly looked at Annie. Instead, she stared straight ahead as she spoke, lost in her words as though she was reciting a lesson.
After showing Althea the house and then her room, Annie ran back down to the kitchen to make lunch. The boys had walked back from school by themselves for the first time. Already, Annie could see the massive changes to their routines, and how it would affect them. Of course Maxence was old enough to bring his brothers the few blocks from school to the house. But to walk back alone only to find their house invaded by Lola and her children? She shuddered. No, this was better than moving to the suburbs, better than switching schools and her having to work a regular job. The boys would have ended up walking themselves to school then too. Life was hard. To expect it to be easy was to set everyone up for disappointment. It was a fine thing to empower Maxence. So why then did it feel like such an irreparable loss, a moment with her children lost forever, never to be recovered?
Lucas appeared in the kitchen. He clearly was expecting to stay for lunch. “This suicidal friend of yours seems to be in a jolly mood,” he said smugly, “and she’s quite the fascinating talker.” Annie took a deep breath, opened the refrigerator door and stared at its contents without understanding. “She’s weird.”
“Possibly you had meant to say that she would drive all of us to suicide?”
“I’m a little down right now and could do without the sarcasm.”
“Oh yes, honey, my dear!” he responded.
She turned to him, slammed the refrigerator door. “Lucas, why are you continuously trying to push my buttons?”
“Well, next time you need me, don’t hesitate to push my button. The word ‘chauffeur’ is written on it!”
Paul ent
ered the kitchen, came to his mother, hugged her tight around her waist, and then just as abruptly left the kitchen singing, “First-comes-love-then-comes-marriage-then-comes-baby-in-the baby-carriage.”
Althea stood in the center of the tiny bedroom. The white ceiling slanted toward a small window from which she could see only the top of brick chimneys and the bare branches of a tree where a dozen sparrows were making a racket. The walls of the room were a golden yellow, the bedspread a vivid orange and crowded with pillows covered in brilliant fabric. On the bedside table was a bouquet of silk gerbera daisies.
She stayed petrified for a few minutes, and then stepped toward the desk under the window. One by one, she lifted the scented candles and smelled them. On a hook behind the door was a fluffy white terry cloth robe. She put the candle down and took the terry robe in her arms and held it close to her like a teddy bear. She sat on the bed. The bed was soft. Her fingers brushed against the bedspread. She needed to remove her coat. She needed to unpack her suitcase. A spiral of panicked thoughts started emerging, and she braced herself. But there were loud footsteps coming from the stairs, screams and laughs and a huge knock at her door. Before Althea could react, there were five children inside her room taking over the space. Two younger boys sat on her bed. A young girl with a frown held the hand of a toddler. The oldest boy looked at Althea suspiciously. “Are you a vegetarian?”
“Are you a Republican?” another boy asked.
“Mom hates vegetarians,” the older boy continued.
“We’re supposed to tell you that dinner is ready,” the girl said.
“How long are you staying here?” Althea heard, but before she got a chance to answer, the children were galloping down the stairs, leaving behind two plastic swords, a wet but empty water pistol, and a crying toddler. Althea took off her coat, gathered the toys, took the toddler’s hand, plastered on a happy mask, and walked downstairs with him.
Mark was about to demolish the plane’s phone. “What do you mean they haven’t been home?”
