by Corine Gantz
“I’m not excited, I just--”
“He’s trouble.”
“He is?”
“He’s had a sort of Dickensian childhood. Or more like out of Zola in his case. No one has ever found out who killed his father. He was raised in an area of Sarcelles, and that’s one nasty suburb where even the police don’t want to go. They say his father was murdered because of drug debts. Jared was a little kid then. It was all before I knew him. His mother raised him and his sister by herself. Not entirely by herself. They knew Lucas, and asked him if he could be Jared’s godfather. Lucas might well be the only person in the world who would take this kind of title seriously. So Lucas helped with money. I suspect he still does.”
“Lucas is such a good man,” Lola said. “He is,” Annie agreed, and as she said it, she realized, maybe for the first time, how true that was. “Jared was about eleven when his five-year-old sister was diagnosed with leukemia. She was gone very fast. That’s when Jared’s mother all but gave up on living. Jared’s way to deal with this was to take on the role of the man. He became her protector and caretaker when he was just a little boy. He dropped out of school, began painting and did very well. He had exhibitions right and left. And then last year, his mother died.”
“Is that when Jared stopped painting?”
“So I’m told by Lucas. He kind of dropped everything.”
“Is he any good?”
“His stuff isn’t exactly decorative. It’s on the tortured side. His dying mother was his preferred subject.”
They watched Simon totter around. He went from table to table, inspecting the sides of people’s coffee cups for forgotten sugar cubes. People smiled at him and gave him paper-wrapped sugar cubes just to watch the expression of joy on his face.
“It’s generous of you to let him live in your house,” Lola said.
Annie dismissed it with a wave of the hand. “I need the money.”
“I enjoy having him around for my own selfish reasons. Talk about eye candy. Just when I thought living in France could not get any better, here arrived Mr. Brun Ténébreux.”
Annie considered Lola with a frown. “Come on, you must have led a pretty sweet life in Beverly Hills, with all the money, the sun 300 days out of the year.”
“Let me tell you what it’s like for women like me,” Lola said. “In France, you’re only expected to look your best. In L.A., it’s mandatory that you remain young and splendid eternally. How about that for pressure? And you can’t imagine what it’s like to be watched, judged, and demolished by the wives.”
“The wives?”
“Women like me, women who married someone rich or famous. My friends, I guess. Women who want to see you fail.” Simon came trotting towards them and Lola pried a handful of sugar cubes from his hand. “It’s not even personal. In my world, witnessing financial or emotional collapses is a spectator sport.”
“How come?”
“Boredom? Or else competitiveness, narcissism. That’s the temperament it takes to land a wealthy man. Once those women do, their function in life thereafter is to shop. Accumulation as a raison d’être. All we talk about is weight, plastic surgery, and shopping.”
“But you must have friends. You’re so nice.”
Lola shrugged, “The only people I dare open up to are my personal trainer and my hairdresser. When your social circle is defined by tax brackets, looks, and social status, one has to pay good money to find a friendly ear.”
Conflicting thoughts went through Annie’s brain. One was that she too might be one of the friendly ears Lola was paying for. But then it occurred to her she was thankful for it. It occurred to her that she too had been terribly lonely and friendless.
“I was feeling so trapped,” Lola added. “I felt as trapped outside my house as I did inside. I think we aren’t always aware of the intelligence behind our actions. I thought coming to Paris was a spur-of-the-moment reaction. But I think I had put out this intention, you know, at the vibration level. I was asking the universe for a solution, and the universe answered.”
That sent Annie into a flurry of head shaking and eye rolling. “It’s hocus-pocus.”
“You’re out of touch with your spiritual core,” Lola said. “I think that full-blown depression was where I was headed.” A cloud passed over Lola’s eyes. She took Simon on her lap and held him tight. “I ran away just in time.”
Annie surprised herself by making a deliberate attempt to cheer Lola up. “Well, wherever you are headed now, there will be a place for you. Men are at your feet.” She made a joke of it. “All I’ve got is the butcher at the Boucheries Roger on the rue de l’Annonciation.”
“Now you admit it!” Lola laughed.
“Now I’m realizing it.” Of course this wasn’t true. The butcher had been courting Annie for years, and though his cheeks looked pretty much like his ground beef, she was guilty of a fantasy or two about being taken by him on the butcher block, amongst rotis de porc and côtelettes d’agneau.
“Maybe it is the spring thing,” Lola suggested. “Look around.”
At the terrace, the four men at the one table were now in full flirtatious conversation with the group of women at the next table. At smaller tables, couples were holding hands or gazing into each other’s eyes.
“It must be the spring thing,” Annie sighed.
Lola’s look was comical. Annie had taught her to gently fold in the egg whites so as not to break the air bubbles, and Lola, stiff, her T-shirt splattered with stains of every single ingredient in the recipe, wore a worried look on her face like she was diffusing a time bomb. Lola raised her eyes for some form of approval and Annie made a little sign in the general direction of Althea, who had stacked cut vegetables into neat little piles on one side and small mounds of vegetable peels on the other. Lola nodded her head in what seemed to be agreement. All week, Annie had pestered Lola about Althea’s strangeness and thinness, and finally Lola was acknowledging the problem, or so it seemed. Annie needed no more show of support to finally open her mouth.
“Althea, how come you’re this skinny?” she asked. The sentence wasn’t out of her mouth before Lola was giving her a look and shaking her head in an emphatic no.
“I’m not exactly skinny,” Althea responded as she peeled a potato in one long graceful ribbon. “There are areas that have cellulite on them,” she continued in a flat voice. “Like my inner thighs.”
Annie worked on her paella, coating the clams and shrimps evenly with juice with one hand while picking uncontrollably at the baguette with the other. “Your inner what?”
Althea wore jeans that were probably the equivalent of a size zero, yet were baggy on her. She stood from her chair and grabbed the inside of her pant leg.
“Here.”
Annie laughed, “Well, if you’re not skinny, then I’m obese.”
Althea considered that information. “I guess you’re...curvaceous,” she said with an oh-so-subtle grimace of disgust.
“Gee, thanks! I do like to think of myself as curvaceous. Curvaceous is good in my book,” she said, but her feelings were hurt. “Althea, how much do you weigh, exactly?” she asked. And then, unable to restrain herself another instant added: “Do you have an eating disorder?”
Lola gave her a very disapproving look. Althea grabbed a carrot angrily and began peeling it. “You’re not my mother,” she said, not taking her eyes off her task.
Annie wasn’t about to get scared away by this. “Do you?” she insisted.
“Annie and I are quite concerned with the fact that you live on apples and tea,” Lola said hesitantly, in the same tone of voice that never worked on Lia and was not about to get through to Althea. “People need protein and carbohydrates to maintain their health.”
“I’m very healthy.”
“You don’t look it,” Annie barked.
“Fine!” Althea said angrily.
“Don’t take it badly,” said Lola, “it’s just that--”
“I’m not even angr
y,” Althea said. “I mean hungry.”
“I’ll eat the salad spinner if you’re not both,” Annie said victoriously.
“I’m not angry,” Althea said, raising her voice. She looked at Annie defiantly.
“She’s not angry,” Lola echoed in a small voice.
“And what’s so horrible about anger? Is it too ugly for you? The point is, Althea, that if you’re doing something self-destructive under my roof, I think I have every right to know.”
“You’re not my mom,” Althea said again, but coldly this time. She wiped her hands on a towel, got up and left the kitchen, leaving her and Lola to stare at each other.
“Anger’s good,” Annie said, dropping her wooden spoon in the pan. “I’ve got it, Althea’s got it, and you’ve got it too. If you don’t let it flow out, it will fester inside. Look at the Parisians. They bathe in anger. They are very comfortable with it. I’m very comfortable with it!”
“Maybe,” Lola said in a small voice. “Or maybe you’ve lived in Paris too long.”
When she was upset, Annie liked to play scrabble. Lucas had finally understood this through hits and misses. He would come over for dinner and Annie would say “do you want to play scrabble?” and it would end with a fight which had little to do with the game itself, and everything to do with the fact that Annie was upset to begin with and was looking for something to get emotional about. For Annie, this was as close as she would get to therapy. The game was played absurdly, with no respect for the rules. Annie called this bilingual scrabble, and anything went, French, English, misspellings, proper names of people who did not exist. There was no point in trying to make sense of it. The point, he felt, was for Annie to cheat and then get furious as she accused him of cheating. They had barely laid down their first two words when Annie said:
“What are you waiting for? An end to world hunger?”
“Isn’t it your turn to play?”
“I meant with Lola. What is taking you so long to make a move on her?”
“What makes you think I want to?”
Annie moved her scrabble pieces around hastily. “Bat, boot, zoot. Is zoot a word?”
“Possibly in Chinese,” he said, looking up at her from above his reading glasses, searching for signs that she was about to work herself into a tizzy. She was wearing a white T-shirt that looked good on her. Her bare arms were strong and smooth over the table. Scrabble was good for her, like medicine. Also, he liked it when it was just the two of them, like an old couple. “What are you upset about?” he asked.
“What? I’m not upset. Maybe I’m just restless in comparison to her.”
Lola, he thought. Of course Lola. “No one is comparing the two of you,” he said.
Well, I am. I’m comparing. “I’m not like Lola. You know, sweet, positive, goody two shoes.” Annie peeled away strands of hair that had fallen over her eyes. “I’m going through a phase of...” She thought for a moment. “I think the word I’m looking for is discontent?”
Lucas studied the board. “That’s a long word. Where are you going to put it?”
“Discontent is how I feel. And this,” she said, laying down the letters Z-O-O-T. one after the other, “is my word.”
Lucas thought, and added A-N-G under Annie’s Z to spell Zang.
“Hey!” she said, her hands on her hips.
“It’s Cantonese for cheater.”
Annie held her face in her hands, her elbows on the table, searching her letters. “I’m just saying that she and I don’t raise our children the same way, that’s all. She doesn’t raise her children, in fact. She lets them grow rampant like... like crab grass. And Lia is rubbing off on Maxence. That weasel actually rolled his eyes to the ceiling when I asked him to help with the dishes last night.”
Lucas arranged his letters. “You can’t control everything.”
“That’s controlling of me? Controlling?” Annie put the word “nasty” on the board. “Lola gets beat up by Lia emotionally and physically and we are all witness to that, my boys included, but Lola never acknowledges it. Maybe she thinks that as long as she doesn’t acknowledge it, I won’t notice it. Lola has such a pattern of...avoidance! That’s the word. A pattern of avoidance.”
“How insightful of you,” Lucas teased.
“Call me Sigmund.”
“She may not like confrontations.”
“Oh no, she doesn’t. Next to her, I probably seem manic.”
Lucas looked up over his reading glasses. “Annie, you are manic.”
Annie froze and glowered at him. “Me?”
Lucas pointed his finger at her gently. “You.”
“When am I manic?”
“Most of the time,” Lucas said, and he put down a word, carefully, took a pen and pencil and methodically added twenty-three points to his column.
Annie looked like she was going to yell, or throw the board across the room. Instead, she pushed her letters away and put her head in her hands. “I’m not likable,” she said.
Lucas looked at her dumfounded. He hadn’t meant to make her feel bad. He had meant to state the obvious. He accepted her manic side, liked it in fact, just like he liked every side of her. Her manic side didn’t threaten him in any way. But how to say that and not...He sighed,
“Of course, you are very likable. Manic is the wrong word. I meant hurried. Reactive. Or maybe the word to use is unpredictable. You’re a little bit like having a grenade in the house.”
“So you’re afraid of me?”
“Me, no. Of course not,” he said, though it occurred to him that in many ways, he was. “I was thinking of Lola or Althea, or even the children.”
“Which kids? Not my kids?”
Lucas did not like himself very much when he said, “We’re all a little bit afraid of your reactions.”
Annie let out a huge sigh. She got up, sat down again, and then burst into tears.
“I’m a bitch.”
“Of course you’re not, Annie.” Lucas grabbed a box of tissues. “You’re just a little...intense. Where is all this coming from, anyway?”
“Lola told me I was a bitch.”
“Lola? Told you?”
“She insinuated. And she’s right. With Johnny, I was pissed most of the time.” Lucas tensed up like he did every time Annie brought up Johnny. He had told himself long ago, had made a pact with himself, to not say anything against Johnny. “I was just being insecure,” Annie continued. She blew her nose; he saw her determination to stop crying. “I was always worried about other women, suspicious. Maybe I don’t have a trusting nature,” she added.
Lucas took Annie’s hand. He felt her sadness. So much could not be said, and so many opportunities to tell her how he felt about Johnny, about her marriage to him, about his death, about the way he chose to conduct his life. So much had never been said that he burned to say. It remained unsaid out of fear. Out of respect for a dead man. Out of a pattern of avoidance. “To the contrary, I think you have a very trusting nature,” he told her, and he meant it.
“I’m frigging frozen in time. I don’t let myself have fun. I don’t even know why,” she said, sobbing.
“There is nothing wrong with wanting things, looking forward to things,” Lucas whispered, marveling at how the conversation had shifted to exactly what he wanted to talk about, what they were never allowed to talk about.
Annie cried softly as Lucas gently rubbed the palm of her hand with his thumb. “I’m so afraid to be disappointed that I don’t know the first thing about how or where to find it,” she said.
“What is it?” Lucas whispered.
“Happiness, I guess.”
“Sometimes happiness is staring you right in the face,” Lucas said, looking straight at her.
Annie wiped her tears angrily. She was becoming strong again, willing herself into being strong, detached. But Lucas did not let go of her hand. She would have to let go first. “I don’t just want to talk the talk,” she said. “I want to walk the walk. I find myself want
ing more of it for...me.”
“That’s good,” he said.
The phone rang and shattered the moment. Annie sprang to her feet. A moment later, she was handing Lucas the phone.
“It’s the commissariat de police. Looks like you’re going to have to postpone losing at scrabble.”
The cemetery had closed hours before. Jared knew precisely where all this was headed, knew it, expected the outcome, and didn’t care. He sat on a stone grave and laid a small parcel wrapped in white paper on the grass next to him. His mother’s grave had not completely settled yet; there was a perceptible line between the grass that grew on her grave and the grass next to it, as though his mother wasn’t entirely convinced she wanted to stay there. He pictured her full of exuberant energy, laughing out loud from wherever she was, laughing the way she used to when he and Sophie were little. Even after his dad was killed, his mom never stopped being strong. She had seemed invincible to him. But when they lost Sophie, his mom lost all her strength, all her joy. He often thought of the relief it must be for his mom, to finally be freed of the weight of her pain.
Before Sophie was sick, and even though their dad was gone and they had no money, things were still happy. On Sundays, there was a roasted chicken and for dessert, pastries, éclairs, always the same. He and his little sister both liked coffee éclairs and their mom liked chocolate. They stuffed the éclairs into their mouths trying to finish first. Their mom would eat slowly, and when they had gobbled up their pastries, she shared her éclair with them.
His mom had wanted so much for Jared to make her proud, and he had. He had felt that craving, had sought the success, the acclaim, the money. But he had wanted it for her, not for himself. He had wanted it to make her happy, but also to reassure her that he was fine, that he had a life purpose.
His mother’s illness they had called old age, but she was too young for old age. There was no cause of death, no deteriorating organ, no cancer, no tumor, no infection, only a heart that got tired of beating. It had begun when she had climbed into bed one day, years ago, and started to forget taking baths or eating. She had given up and he could not blame her. He had moved in with her and had painted her all the way through to her last dying breath. He understood only after her death how much of his work was connected to her, how it was she, not his art, that was his life’s purpose.
