by Corine Gantz
Larry held the bag tighter. “Take it easy man, you gonna bust a knuckle.”
He didn’t drink. He didn’t screw around, and it’s not like there were no opportunities. Mark pummeled the bag. One two, one two. He was a happy guy. That’s what he fucking was. Mark let out a roar, and Larry moved away from the bag. Mark hit, hit, and hit again, out of control.
“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” Larry said.
He was happy. Mark was fucking happy with what he had and she was wrecking everything.
Lia, Maxence, Laurent, and Paul walked through the school gate and Lola followed the four backpacks on legs until they made the turn into the schoolyard. Lia turned and waved to her, and a minute later she was gone. Just like that. Lia had entered school today again without the slightest drama. Could it be possible that Annie’s strict rules and unwavering consequences suited Lia better than the respect and freedom she was accustomed to? Lola kneeled next to the stroller. “And you,” she said, readjusting Simon’s hat. “You’re turning out to be a model citizen.” She kissed Simon on his cold cheek. “You gave Mommy a whole night’s sleep.”
She pushed the stroller, light enough to float above the sidewalk. She had thrown all principles—all Mark’s principles—to the wind and had let Simon sleep in bed with her. Annie said that women had been doing that from time immemorial, and what was the big deal. Last night she had put him in his pajamas and lied down next to him in her bed and woken up in disbelief after eight hours of uninterrupted slumber. No screams, no bad dream, no night terror, just sweet sleep. She should have listened to her own instinct sooner and claimed her right to soothe her own child. So what if she was “creating sleeping issues.” Weren’t they knee deep in sleeping issues already? She pushed the stroller toward the post office rue Singer, took an envelope from her pocket and opened it. She read the postcard it contained one last time.
Dear Mark, The weather is warming up here in New York. I hope this postcard finds you well. The children are doing fine. Simon slept through the night yesterday! We miss you, but I really need this time for right now.
I will continue to send you news weekly. Love. L.
She slid the postcard into the envelope and added the note for Alyssa.
Dear A., Please mail as usual. How will I repay you for your help?! Love, L.
She jotted down Alyssa’s address in Manhattan, dropped the envelope in the slot, and walked away from the mailbox harboring a complex mix of guilt and satisfaction. By the time she reached rue Duban, Lola’s postcard to Mark was a vague, unpleasant thought that added to all the other unpleasant thoughts she worked so hard to ignore.
She entered the indoor produce market rue Duban and strolled along the crowded market aisles, marveling at the sights, the colors, the life of it. She wanted to get flowers for the house and took her time looking. She settled for an armful of pink peonies, some still in bud form, some already open and fluffy like cotton candy. She paid the price of gold for them. Mark would be surprised one day to find out she had money stashed away from her modeling days. That was probably a residue from what Mark called her “poor person mentality.” She had never told him about the account. It wasn’t a lie per se. It was an omission, her secret garden.
The fishmonger beamed his toothless smile at her when she bought half a kilo of shrimp for lunch. She knew her shrimp now, and favored the tiny grey ones so full of ocean flavor. People at the market and the bakery knew her now. They made conversation; they recommended their best products. She waited in line at the crèmerie and removed empty, washed glass jars from her straw bag. Simon saw his mother hand over the containers and receive her daily supply of fresh yogurt. He waved his arm at them. “Yayout! Yayout!”
“Simon! Your first French word,” Lola exclaimed.
She sat on a public bench outside the market, peeled off the jar’s thin metal seal, ran her hand around the bottom of her backpack, retrieved a plastic spoon, and licked it clean. She put a spoonful of raspberry yogurt on her tongue. “You’ve earned your yayout, sweetheart.” Here she was, feeding her toddler raspberry yogurt on a cold but clear morning in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris. Here she was, without make-up or acrylic nails, sitting on a stone bench, watching Parisians walk by with their arms filled with produce and bread. Here she was, light. Light as air. She felt tightness in her throat, that urge to cry. Was it sadness or was it relief? Could it possibly be both?
She ached for Mark far more than he would ever miss her and ache for her. Mark would be fine, really. Oh there was familiarity in that pain. It was the sweet pain of loving him, a sweet pain in feeling victimized by him even. In her life with Mark, Lola had grown to picture herself as someone who failed at everything and enjoyed nothing.
She could not remember a self that did not involve Mark’s vision of that self and the consequence, which was for her to feel hurt, neglected, unappreciated. Mark did not do this to her; most of the time, she did this to herself. It was a strange habit, a compulsion. Every decision, every emotion of every instant began with imagining what Mark would say or what Mark would think. But was Mark to blame? Now that she lived with Annie she had to wonder, because now there was a variation on the compulsion. It had become: How would Annie react? What would Annie say? What she needed to get to was: What do I alone think? What should I alone do? With the ultimate question being: Who am I?
She pushed away those thoughts. Right at this precise moment in time, she didn’t have a problem. The day was beautiful, Simon had slept through the night, and Parisians carried baskets brimming with produce from the market. Her Present was Paris. Her Present was her budding friendship with Annie and a new way to spend each day, which made so much more sense to her. This of course was temporary, this lightness, this break from the fear of disappointing Mark, this freedom of movement away from that tentacular Bel Air house. It was temporary but she needed to focus on the moment and just enjoy the fact that she breathed differently here. She even looked different. Her hair was bicolor now, black at the tip with the blonde roots apparent, which gave her a punkish look, an image of rebellion she liked. And she had stopped plucking her eyebrows, those perfect arches that betrayed tension and self-involvement. Here, no power was taken away from her. Here, she could let her baby crawl into her bed in exchange for a full night’s sleep. Here, she cooked and did the dishes and didn’t feel like a bump on a log. Here, she took care of her own children, and they were doing better than with the nanny!
Those thoughts of Mark were like the Sword of Damocles at times, but only at times. She realized there was something obtuse about the way she had just wished Mark away, or how strangely successful she was at avoiding thinking about disagreeable things such as the consequences of her disappearance, as well as what the future held.
Althea lay in bed, dressed in her coat, boots, and scarf. She was torn between the obligation to call her mother, something she had not done in days and felt guilty about, and the obligation to get out of the house so as to not appear strange. Those, she knew, were no obligations at all. She could stay like this and not make another decision all day. She could stay on her bed and daydream about Jared until night if she wanted to. She didn’t move when she heard a tap at her bedroom door.
“Althea? It’s Lola. May I come in?”
She felt too apathetic to get up. “Come in,” she said.
Lola open the door and looked at her lying in bed with a coat on. “Were you busy?”
“Do I look busy?” she said. She had not meant to sound antagonistic, yet she did not feel sorry she did.
“Do you want to do the makeover?” Lola asked, dangling a large Vuitton make-up case before her.
Althea wanted to say no, but instead took off her coat and followed Lola to the bathroom they shared but that Althea had come to consider as her own. When she had first entered it, the clutter had been a shock. A cornucopia of seashells and polished rocks marred every surface. The shelves were heavy with glass jars filled with sand and marked Biarritz,
Cannes, La Baule, and bottle after sticky bottle of various bubble baths. The bathroom looked clean on first inspection, but Althea had soon noticed mildew on tiles and dull grime hidden beneath the sink, the claw foot bathtub and the toilet. She had spent hours on her knees scrubbing the bathroom tile by tile with an old toothbrush. She had rearranged the blue and white room, polished the jars, even cleaned the seashells and rocks. It was Annie’s house, maybe, but the bathroom had become Althea’s territory. She liked to spend hours bathing in the massive tub or combing her hair as she sat at the antique vanity imagining she was lost in an entirely different place in time.
Lola, barefoot and in T-shirt and yoga pants emptied the content of the make-up case on the vanity. What must have been over a thousand dollars worth of beauty products—Dior foundation, Max make-up, Crème de la Mer, Estée Lauder anti-wrinkle creams, and twenty or so tubes of lipstick—fell noisily onto the wood. Althea sat down in front of the mirror and Lola began touching her hair, which surprised Althea and made her cringe almost visibly.
“I think you’re a spring,” Lola said, pulling Althea’s hair away from her face and holding it together with a clip. “You have beautiful bone structure and your eyes are gorgeous. And that hair! Your skin is dry. You need to consume more fatty acid. Omega, fish oil, and vitamin D. It’s the new fountain of youth.”
The warmth of a human body so close to hers felt terribly uncomfortable. Lola’s face came to within inches of hers, beautiful despite the thin wrinkles, the skin around her neck a bit tender and loose and betraying her age. Althea watched her face in the mirror as Lola added pink on the cheeks, red on the lips, and mascara. “You know, French women are no better than the rest of us but they know how to make the absolute best of what they have. That’s their secret. We have this idea that blonde, busted, and thin is what’s attractive, so we become blonde, busted, and thin. French women are individualistic. They would rather look unique than fashionable.” Lola was combing Althea’s hair now, softly, like Althea had done with her girlfriends when they were little and would go to each other’s house. But when it was Althea’s turn to have the playdate at her house, her mom refused. She didn’t like other children coming over. Althea wasn’t invited much after a while.
“Maybe they have good self-esteem,” Althea said.
“Annie says that French women always have seduction in mind. They are always open to temptations and romance.”
“It seems like too much effort.” She was becoming a rag doll between Lola’s hands. She felt bad about it somehow, but didn’t want Lola to stop.
“This is a new country and a new city. You can reinvent yourself. Find your inner Parisian, have a little fun, be playful. And never go out without lipstick, it will cheer you up, it’s automatic. And,” she added, smiling at herself in the mirror, “with the gorgeous Jared sleeping in the next room, it should give you some incentive, no? Lordy lordy, is he hot!” she said as she sensually applied lipstick to her own parted lips. “Voilà,” Lola said, pleased with her work. “You look just like a Barbie doll.” She waved at the mountain of make-up in front of Althea. “You can keep my make-up. It’s a gift.”
Alone in the bathroom, Althea studied her face. She looked like someone else entirely. What kind of world Lola lived in, a world where lipstick could cheer a girl up. She opened the drawers of the vanity and neatly organized the creams and make-up. When she was finished, she wiped the surfaces of the vanity and the sink with a tissue, all the while observing her face in the mirror.
She walked down the stairs, feeling like a cardboard cutout, and as stiff as one. Her eyelashes were heavy with mascara like small screens in front of her eyes. No one was in the living room. The only telephone in the house, besides the one in Annie’s bedroom, sat on a mahogany table that faced yet another mirror, and Althea watched the strange life-form wearing her hair dial a number and bring the phone to her ear.
Mars
Chapter 14
Halfway into bringing the groceries back home that morning, Annie noticed a few new things: The temperature was in the seventies, it wasn’t raining, and cafés and restaurant terraces were open. Everywhere, Parisians were flooding out of office buildings and onto the streets. Hems were up, coats were conspicuously absent, men had hungry stares, and women looked effervescent. Spring! She understood with a heavy heart. Soon enough she would have to face shedding layers of clothing and expose her winter lard. Winter suited her better, sweaters, pants, no need to tuck in her stomach. This spring would be even harder to circumvent with two skinny women in the house.
Spring was taking her by surprise. In the last month and a half she had barely kept afloat, cooking, cleaning, washing sheets, fighting, and putting up with Althea’s idiosyncrasies and Jared’s mysterious comings and goings. But she had also adapted to so much, so fast. Lia’s meltdowns, at first appalling and unacceptable, she’d come to see as part of the ebbs and flows of a week. She’d grinded her teeth during Simon’s night screams, then began sleeping like a baby herself for the first time in years at about the same time he did. She had gone from resenting having Lola as her second shadow, to feeling bored when Lola was out and about. She could compare that month of February to a slow incubation period. Like an incubation period, she had not known something was afoot. She had resisted February, all of it, but now that March was here, she had the feeling that things were different, that she felt different and that she might remain different whether she wanted it or not.
She entered the house and listened for signs of life but heard nothing but the low hum of the laundry machine. The kids were in school and Lola, who spent afternoons in subways, museums, gardens, and streets exploring Paris one arrondissement at a time with Simon, had long ceased asking if Annie wanted to come along. She entered the kitchen, her arms full of groceries and was surprised to find Lola and Simon there.
“It’s a beautiful day. We’re going out,” Lola said.
“See you later!”
“The ‘we’ includes you.”
“I don’t think so,” Annie said, her voice lacking conviction.
“Why not?”
“I have nothing to wear.”
They walked up to her room. This was the first time she let Lola and Simon in since the first day when she gave them a tour of the house. Simon climbed on the bed and used it as a trampoline while Lola foraged in her closet. In minutes, Lola had retrieved a pair of black pants, leather boots and her Burberry Trench coat.
“Here you go. Timeless classics,” she said. Annie watched Lola arrange the pants, coat and an orange twin set on the bed and then brandish a silk scarf. “Hermes?” she exclaimed. “You own a Hermes scarf?”
“Johnny was into that designer stuff.” Lola would have gasped at the quantities of purses, shoes and clothes Johnny had purchased for her and that she had taken to designer resale stores, partly for the money, partly because she wanted nothing to do with them. This scarf was one of the exceptions.
They walked down the many steps towards the Passy métro station and, judging from Lola and Simon’s confidence, it was clear they knew their way around and that Annie was to follow. Already, they were more Parisian than she was. She had avoided mass transportation just as much as she had avoided driving. She had avoided anything that took her more than half a mile away from her house. They squeezed into the already packed metro car. All these people! She held her breath for many stations, until people began getting off and she no longer needed to be body against body. No matter how inconspicuous Lola tried to be, faces turned toward her. A well-dressed man immediately offered his seat to Lola, who declined with a smile.
“French men are the best,” Lola said when they walked out of the station. “They flirt but there is a lot of respect. It feels just fun, relaxed. Not like Italians who are like little kids who haven’t been taught their manners. Men in some cultures are just frightening.”
“You don’t think American men are respectful?”
Lola dismissed it. “American m
en are a bore is what they are. They have no idea how to flirt. In the street they wouldn’t dream of locking eyes with a woman, unless they’re in safe accredited pick-up stations like bars or nightclubs. French men flirt easily, not to pick you up, but to give you a nice compliment.”
“Yeah, I remember those days. Now the lack of flirting is a slap in the face every time I go out of the house.”
“You hardly get out of the house.”
“Maybe now you understand why.”
“You might want to turn on the ‘I’m available’ signals.”
“I’m not available.”
“So they don’t flirt. This proves my point.”
They emerged Place Saint Germain Des Prés. Annie raised her eyes toward the Café Les Deux Magots. The best hot chocolates in all of Paris. Johnny would have espresso, she the hot chocolate. They would detail the Parisiennes passing by, and Annie would wonder how they did it. Clutching her own purse, she would wonder how, for another woman, it became a fashion accessory.
They walked though the cobblestone streets of Saint Germain des Prés, for a while, entered stores, and admired the buildings. Lola spotted an empty table at the terrace of the Café de Flore. They made their way to the center of the terrace. Next to them were four men at a table and another table with six women in their mid-thirties. Conversations slowed at both tables, and everyone took their time staring at Lola. Again. Annie glared at them and sat down. “When I was in my twenties, and, looking back on it, pretty cute, I’d get intoxicated by the way Parisian men looked at me too. All that sexual energy.”
Lola took Simon out of the stroller and let him wander through and under the tables. “Speaking of sexual energy, the testosterone level in the house has gone way up since Jared moved in.”
“Tell me about it,” Annie said mournfully. “But I wouldn’t get too excited about Jared.”
