by Corine Gantz
There was a strange hollow feeling in her stomach. She opened the door, climbed in and sat on the cold leather of the front seat, the van as familiar as the palm of her hand, yet so alien. The smell of the cold car, the dust on the dashboard, even the broken toys, her sitting in the driver’s seat, everything so terribly unchanged since that night exactly three years ago. She put the key in the ignition and the engine started. She rested both hands on the wheel and had the creepiest of sensations throughout her body. She quickly turned off the engine, put her hands back on the wheel, and tried to breathe.
Something awful was taking hold of her chest. Her fingers. All of a sudden she wasn’t sure she recognized her own fingers. Her vision blurred. Cold sweat sprang from the nape of her neck and her hands began to shake. The flu? Something she ate? A heart attack? Does a heart attack come with an abominable sense of dread? A scream threatened to come out of her, but her lips refused to open. She had the urge to jump out of the van and run! Run out, now! But she was powerlessly stuck, unable to feel her arms, her legs, her body, unable to move. She had enough presence of mind to realize what was happening to her. This had happened before. She knew what this was. The events of the day, the van... She was having a panic attack.
How could he? How could Johnny do this to her?
She waited. It would pass. She would die or it would pass. It had passed before. Where was Lucas? She needed him now. Cold sweat and shaking, nothing could be done about it. She waited, waited, waited. She wanted to scream but even that was impossible. And then, abruptly, it stopped. Her body stopped shaking. She could breathe again. She sat panting, her hands on the wheel. Sweat streamed down her face, and suddenly, tears sprang, bitter tears. Tears of rage.
Johnny had robbed her. He had died like a coward. He had died without explaining. He had quit. And she would never know. She would never find out who she was—the woman Johnny was leaving her for.
She began sobbing, each sob like a laceration in her heart. The children had been spared by Johnny’s death. But she hadn’t been. In the darkness of the garage, the scene unwrapped before her eyes. The lie, the reality she had created for herself and the children practically the moment when she saw Johnny’s corpse in the cold room. She would never tell a soul that Johnny was leaving them. The children would never have to know.
Three years ago to the day. Summer solstice. Fête de la Musique. Something was off that night, uneasy. She had spoken continuously in the car. He said he wanted to go out with her to discuss something important. She hadn’t let him. He said he wanted to go out to dinner. Did he really know her that poorly? She was far more likely to have a scene in a restaurant than at home where the children could hear.
She had felt close to him that night, that entire year, but it was the wrong kind of closeness, born from unrequited passion. Her parents had pointed it out early on in their marriage: Wasn’t Johnny a bit too handsome? It was a mismatch. The mismatch, so obvious to everyone, herself included, was apparently of no concern for Johnny. He had wanted to marry her, he had said. He had loved her. He had chosen her.
Then, just like that, ten years and three children later, Johnny had dumped her. In a van, in the middle of Paris, just like that. The words from that night seeped into her brain, invaded her heart, taking hold deep in her soul. Those malignant words of his, so carefully buried within her for three years. She had been driving the van through Paris while Johnny sat in the passenger seat, trusting her.
“Annie, I met someone.”
“Someone who?” She said as she drove. She was not going to understand easily.
“A woman.”
The dread had come upon her. It had to be a misunderstanding. She turned right at the light, any light. What street they were on, which city, which country, she could not have said. “What kind of woman?” she asked.
“A woman, Annie. I fell in love with someone.” He added, “I’m sorry.”
“Who is she?” She hadn’t wanted to hear the answer. Johnny said her name, but Annie didn’t know her.
“How old is she?”
It mattered without mattering. They had been together for two years, he said. In love, behind her back, a joyous, carefree betrayal. Tell her the prognosis. Cut the crap.
“We want to live together,” Johnny said.
We? A new we that did not include her. The cancer of his words was aggressive, spreading fast. Annie’s life as she knew it would never be the same. The horror of another woman jumped at her, filled her with poison. She drove mechanically as Johnny spoke in his warm reasonable, charming voice. You could not be mad at Johnny. No one could be mad at Johnny. Everyone loved Johnny.
It did occur to her to stop driving, every part or her still intent on going out on a date with him, only with a shattered heart. She had only allowed one thought to echo in her mind: she could, she would, win Johnny back from that bitch whoever she was.
“Annie, I want a divorce,” Johnny finally said.
The words barely registered. So she would have to fight harder. Johnny was smitten by this woman but he would not break up his family over her. But then he told her the terrible truth.
“We want to start over in Australia. She’s from over there. She can’t stay here, professionally and legally.”
There was Johnny, in the car, letting her drive, trusting her completely. Her man. Her funny, charming man. Her love, her best friend. He’d obviously had plenty of time to get used to the whole idea because he spoke with patience and compassion. He was putting himself in her shoes. To him, the news had been digested. He had become comfortable with the idea, with the logistics of abandoning her and the boys.
“But the boys?” she screamed. “Australia?” This couldn’t be. He could break her heart all he wanted. But her babies’ hearts?
The heat of the rage that followed was memorized in every cell of her body. How she had wanted to slam on the breaks to send Johnny flying through the windshield. How she had wanted to pierce his heart like he was piercing hers. How she had pictured glass shards deep in his chest. It would have only been fair. How else could he have felt the abject pain, the abandonment, and the battleground of their souls for the years to come. Instead, she had stopped the van in a street near Avenue Victor Hugo, any street, put the car in park and put her forehead on the wheel. He didn’t love her.
Johnny foolishly put his hand on her arm. “I realize I’m doing something shitty to you guys. But you’ll be fine. The kids need you more than they need me.”
“But that’s not true,” she yelled, yanking away from his hand. Johnny had the uneasy smile of the one who knows that shit would soon and inexorably hit the fan. “You have to live near them,” she cried out. “You can’t go away that far.”
But she had known he absolutely could. He had done it before, in fact. He had left his own family in order to move to France. He never called his parents. They called France and complained, and she’d be the one to shrug impatiently, the phone nudged between her cheek and her shoulder as she changed a diaper or cooked dinner. Couldn’t they just get over him, already?
She was the one who called Johnny’s parents with news. She was the one who remembered to send gifts, letters. She remembered birthdays, apologized, covered for him, protected everyone’s feelings the best she could. Johnny couldn’t be fenced in; couldn’t they see that?
In the parked van, somewhere near Avenue Victor Hugo, she began to scream, sounds that were not human. Her strength had not been human either. She punched him in the shoulder. “Leave! Get out! Out! Get out of my fucking car!” She watched powerlessly as Johnny got out of the van, and walked away on the boulevard, away from her, and toward his fate.
His fate happened two hours later, when Johnny was at the wheel of his brother’s car and drove it to his death. The very night she thought she would die, Johnny had ended up killing himself.
Oh, she had massaged that night over and over in her head. Every night of the last three years and almost every day. Was it her fault
, this accident, since she kicked him out of the van? Or was it his fault? Had she killed him or had he killed himself? If the boys knew, would they blame her? Would they hate him? Would they hate her? And again and again for three years: He didn’t love her.
Now that the panic attack subsided, a strange calm swept through her. She’d survived that one. She was alive and sitting in the driver’s seat of her van, which was still parked inside her garage. She breathed with relief, dug in her purse for a Kleenex, and wiped her eyes and nose.
Something felt odd, hollow. What now? Something was missing all of a sudden, but what was it? It occurred to her that she had in fact, for all intents and purposes, been stuck in that van ever since that night, that she had been sobbing inwardly for three long and lonely years. And she had been angry. So angry. But suddenly a long forgotten sense of lightness was emerging out of thin air. What was this? Something was not there anymore?
It took several minutes for Annie to understand that what was strangely missing was her pain.
It was past bedtime. She pictured the kids, their faces pale with exhaustion. The sandy eyes. This was mommy time, and they were piled up in Lucas’s apartment wondering about going home. Lucas. Johnny’s friend. Lucas knew about Johnny and that woman, but had never said a word. He had tried but she had not let him and now she knew why. By not letting him speak, she didn’t have to let him, or anyone, know what she knew. By not telling anyone she could keep Johnny intact, their story intact, for the children, and maybe, also, for herself. Lucas had let her keep her secret. A secret about being unlovable, carelessly tossed away. A secret much too heavy to carry alone.
Pain for the boys had come the morning after. Unfathomable pain, but a pain of a different nature. A pain possibly easier to digest for them, one day, than the trauma they would have experienced had Johnny been able to carry out his plan to abandon them all. As long as she would have a say in it, the memory of Johnny as a loving father and husband would be preserved. Not for Johnny. No, not for Johnny, but for the boys. So that they would continue to feel loved by him.
She turned the key in the ignition. “Fuck you, Johnny,” she wailed in the garage. “Fuck you, asshole, disgusting liar, cheater, coward, selfish bastard. You were right, loser! We didn’t need you after all!”
Annie started the engine and stormed the car out of the garage. She drove as the sun went down, radiating a red glow on the stones of the buildings. Music and warm air flowed through the van’s open windows, and her hair floated wildly behind her. She drove the van through Paris to take her boys to a weekend at the beach. She drove the van through Paris to meet her lover.
Jared waited for the nurse to leave his room to rip the IV needle from his arm. He stumbled out of bed and had to hang onto the wall not to fall, but by the time he reached the closet and found his clothes neatly folded, he was able to stand almost normally. When the nurse came back into his room, he was gone.
Minutes later he was riding a cab through dense traffic. The purple glow of sundown and the last of the day’s light reflected on the Seine, transforming it to a river of pure silver. The deep green sycamore leaves were almost black against the cobalt blue sky. The act of breathing alone was exhausting and his vision was still altered from the drugs he had taken and those they had given him in the hospital.
Tonight was the Fête de la Musique, he realized. He rolled up his window to protect his throbbing head from the discordance of competing music that came from every street, every house and every room in every apartment. The interior of the silent cab became a pocket of quietness that floated through the city like a bubble. The carved stones of buildings gleamed in the street lights, every light was a blurred star. The statues seemed alive, churches like giants in helmets and coats of armor, the wooden doors of century-old buildings like gaping mouths.
Had Althea been with him, he would have showed her the restaurants filled to capacity, people dancing and drinking at café terraces, awestruck tourists wondering where they had landed, wild kids zigzagging through traffic on their mopeds, hair in the wind, lovers walking hand in hand along the streets, body against body, kissing, waiting for the night, for passion. If Althea had been with him in the cab, he would have put his head on her lap and let her caress his hair until he drifted to sleep. But Althea was not with him and he needed to find her. The cab drove on boulevard Richard-Lenoir and suddenly, a hundred people on roller skates surrounded the car like a school of fish in the dark ocean. A girl tapped at his window and flashed her bare breasts. An instant later, they were gone.
Time away from Althea was wasted to him. He hated that she was fragile, and needy, and sick. But as fragile and needy and sick as she might be, he was going to find her despite the nurses making excuses, saying she had been transferred to another hospital they couldn’t disclose.
Sitting across from him, in that French Chinese restaurant, Lola had settled into her chair and had an air of contentment and serenity that maybe did not mean she was serene or content, now that Mark thought of it. There had been nothing to indicate she was unhappy with him the very day she left. Or so little.
Lola was even more breathtaking as a blonde, and he wanted to tell her that. It was strange to be in Paris, a city he had trouble understanding. People were still arriving for dinner at eleven at night accompanied by their dogs. This was a city where heterosexual men dressed gay, where sexy women of all ages danced in the street, where waiters ignored you and your empty plate, where Chinese restaurants had few recognizable Chinese dishes on the menu, and where the preferred modes of transportation were roller blades and mopeds. In Paris, music was everywhere.
Lola removed her jacket. She was luminous. He loved the soft caramel color of her skin, the roundness of her lips, the washed green of her eyes without makeup. Lola’s face was calm. Lola was always calm. Her calm had allowed him to act out his rage at the world with impunity. He wanted to tell her that, too.
It had been a while since the private investigator had given him Lola’s address in Paris. Mark had kept the address in his wallet and had looked at it several times a day to remember what he was doing and why he was doing it as he went through the work. Therapy, it was called, anger management classes where he had faced the depression and the rage. The depression, especially, seemed like a bottomless pit. Once he saw a problem he was not the kind to shy away from it. He tackled it head on, and methodically. Hired the best, gave it his best. He had taken the drugs they gave him and refused to lie to himself. He had done the group thing too, and had not needed more than that session to recognize himself in those men around him, out-of-control bullies guilty of emotionally battering their woman. Those were not facts he wished to advertise at the moment. He wanted to win Lola back as the new him. Besides, he wasn’t sure much would be gained from Lola learning he had turned into a wimp who cried himself to sleep.
Watching Lola, it was difficult to not display the emotions that overwhelmed him. Then he remembered what the shrink had said: To the contrary, he was supposed to be feeling the emotions, not bottle them in, which might have caused the problem in the first place. How to feel the emotions and not bawl like a six-year-old, that he had not figured out yet.
Lola drank her wine with small sips, her skin caressed by the balmy night air. “How did you find me?” she finally asked.
“Well,” he chuckled, “it was a bit of a challenge, but when you throw enough money at a problem, the problem usually disappears.”
“Not all problems, though,” Lola said, and she looked at him intently.
“No, not all problems,” he said.
The waiter removed Mark’s untouched appetizer and Lola’s empty plate, and brought their entrée. Mark was unable to swallow a bite, and here she was, eating happily, her head swaying faintly with the music.
“When did you find out where I was?”
Mark hesitated. “About a month ago.”
“A month?” Lola looked pained. “That’s a long time,” she said reproachfully.
Mark hesitated again. “I had stuff to take care of.”
“What kind of stuff?” she asked.
He watched the tip of Lola’s chopsticks go to her plate, expertly grab some food, and gracefully come to her mouth. “You know... stuff. I think what we need to talk about is what’s going on now and come to some kind of understanding about the future.”
“Things cannot go on the way they were, Mark,” she said, looking upset. “I’ve changed. I simply can’t go back to the old me.”
Mark shrugged. “You changed a long time ago. But you didn’t dare tell me, for some reason.”
Lola put her chopsticks down. “Some reason? And what reason might that be, in your opinion?”
Mark didn’t respond. They both knew the reason. Instead, he said, “I could have reported you. I could have sent the police after you dozens of times, and you know I didn’t. Obviously I care about you. I’m not some kind of monster. I gave you the space you needed and all. And I’m here to solve whatever little problems we might have.”
Lola’s voice became sharp. “Except they are not little problems, Mark. They’re huge problems. I don’t know that we can solve them.”
“I’ll tell you what. Nothing’s going to get solved between us as long as you’re in France.”
