Peaceable Kingdom

by Francine Prose

  Robin was tiny and startled-looking with spiky stand-up blond hair that didn’t quite go with her business suit and $200 high heels. As soon as the no-smoking light went off, Robin pulled down her tray, perhaps to hide what I’d noticed before: her hands just shook and shook. Her fingernails were airbrushed with swirls, top-of-the-line Korean. At least Robin wasn’t twenty, my father’s favorite age. He could let her be older than usual; she was smaller and more afraid.

  When Robin went to smoke a cigarette, I said, “She reminds me a little of Mom.”

  He said, “Do you know how long it would have taken me to talk your mother onto this plane? Everything just got to be too goddamn labor-intensive.”

  Robin ate the high-cholesterol stuff off my father’s food tray—quietly, efficiently, she just vacuumed it up. She said, “I have an insane metab,” and her hand shot up like a rocket. She said, “Obviously, so do you,” and then, “I’m sorry. Don’t you hate it when strangers act like they know about you? I mean, about your metabolism.”

  I said, “What’s your job, exactly?” My father was in advertising; he’d done the ad with the conga line of pineapples with little Carmen Mirandas on their heads. Now he was going over to tell the French how to make the American consumer stop associating mustard with hot dogs.

  “I’m a lawyer,” Robin said, “I can’t believe it, either.”

  “She’s my translator,” said my father. “She grew up in Quebec.”

  “What translator?” said Robin. “The mustard people speak English.”

  The movie was Fatal Attraction, which all of us had seen, a funny choice for them to show—there were little kids on the plane. Robin watched without the sound. My father read. I fell asleep. I had a dream about Jason. It was a kind of erotic, melting dream though nothing sexual happened. The general feeling of the dream was like getting a suntan.

  On the expressway into the city, I fell asleep again. I woke up thinking that I was back home and that I’d missed the whole trip. It took me a while to focus and see the French traffic streaming around us.

  The air in Paris was like airport air, complete with the fuel-oil smell. Walking outside was like being stuck behind a fucked-up Rabbit diesel. Hot as it was, all the kids wore leather, just like Ronnie had said. All I had were jeans and Jason’s big men’s shirts. I’d told Jason, “I couldn’t find someone else. I’ll be wearing your clothes.”

  My father and Robin were out all day. I slept till eleven. I liked the empty garden café on the hotel roof where I could spend an hour over breakfast and sign for coffee and croissants. I got a map, I walked miles, I took the Métro, it was easy. I went to Notre Dame and the Louvre. Afterwards I sat in the park and imagined a letter to Jason. “Today,” it said, “I saw a museum of Japanese tourist haircuts.”

  The next day I went to the Cluny Museum. There was almost no one there, except one punk girl near the carved stone tombs with the stone people lying on top. It was cool and quiet, with a damp cavey smell I liked. I began to go there every day as if it were a job. I sat with my back against the stones and wrote letters in my head. I went over every word until I had it perfect. I wrote Jason that when I closed my eyes I felt totally medieval; the world got slower and colder till it dropped off the edge of my brain. I hallucinated a chorus of monks, singing solemn hymns. It gave me a yawning, wide-open feeling, like after a shower or sex. The outside seemed to disappear, the cafés I’d had to pass, the tables of kids and glamorous grownups leading cool lives without me in them.

  Sometimes I’d go to cafés and order by pointing at people’s drinks. The green ones tasted like mouthwash, the brown like herbal cancer cures. I hoped someone would join me, even a scary Moroccan. I felt I could handle anything because I didn’t know French.

  One day two Haitian guys sat down, Jean Luc and Baptiste. They were young and pretty and had big Rasta hair. Jean Luc wore a flowing white shirt and pants and wanted to be a designer. Baptiste spoke the most English; he was a musician. Jean Luc commented on the passersby—he could tell where everyone got their clothes and exactly how much they’d paid—and Baptiste translated for me.

  When two policemen walked by, Baptiste said, “You must be very careful.” Then he told me a story about a girl they knew who’d been picked up by two gendarmes and taken for a ride and forced to give one cop a blow job, but she was smart, she had a paper cup in her purse, and after they let her go she spit the cop’s come in the cup and brought it in for protein analysis and the cop got busted. All this was surprisingly easy to say in Baptiste’s bad English. He asked me if things like this ever happened at home. I asked why she had a cup. Baptiste translated for Jean Luc and they looked at me and shrugged. “Be careful,” they told me when I left. I smiled and said I would.

  I went back to the hotel and watched a soap opera in French. The camera ping-ponged back and forth between an arguing man and woman. I went out of focus and fell asleep and had another dream. I dreamed Jason and I were in his bed; his parents were off at work. In my dream I kept waking up and going back into the dream.

  Finally Robin woke me, knocking on my door. She asked if I wanted to come next door and have a drink with them.

  My father had his jacket off. He was lying on the bed, his head propped up at the very same angle it always had at home. Seeing him, it was as if nothing had changed, or everything were interchangeable, Robin and my mother, Dan Rather and the news in a language I didn’t understand. I wondered: If I went back to sleep, would I dream about Jason again?

  Robin took off her heels and put on enormous furry brown slippers with plastic claws, like a bear’s. “From the Anchorage airport,” she said. “I take them everywhere. I’m terrified of flying.”

  My father said, “Jesus, it’s only an hour till we have to go out again.” To me he said, “You might like seeing a bunch of squeaky-clean French mustard yuppies.”

  “What kind of restaurant?” I said, though I had no intention of going. “Trendy couscous,” said Robin. “Isn’t that insane?”

  The minute they left I went back to my room and lay down and turned off the lights. I concentrated on Jason and got into my dream. Though maybe I should have done something healthy, gone out with my father and Robin, because now the dream changed, and Jason and I were the French TV fighting soap-opera couple. Only this time I knew what the argument was about: he had found someone else. There were no events in this dream either, it was only a feeling—as if the world were turning its back, shutting like a clam. I woke up sad and furious and reached for the phone.

  Jason and I had both had dreams in which the other person betrayed us. But it was completely different when you woke with the person beside you, or reachable by telephone, a local call away. I gave the operator Jason’s number. I didn’t care what time it was, he had his own phone. It rang twice and he answered. I said, “I had one of those horrible dreams, you left me for someone else.”

  He said, “This is really incredible. You won’t believe how incredible this is.”

  I said, “Come on. Is it true?”

  He said, “Later. We’ll talk about it later. I can’t deal with anything this incredible right now.”

  I said we wouldn’t talk about it later or ever, I didn’t want to be with him, no second chances on this one. We broke up over the phone. I hung up and after a while it rang. I let it keep on ringing. Then I called downstairs and told the clerk to please hold my incoming calls.

  The next day I realized I’d been processing Paris, shredding it up and spitting out mental letters to Jason. When I wasn’t writing to him in my head I didn’t know where to look. I don’t remember that day very well. Maybe I went shopping. I couldn’t do francs into dollars or tell if what I was seeing cost sixty or six hundred. I went out and I came back. I didn’t buy anything. The light on my phone was blinking. I wished I hadn’t gone out. If I’d been here I could have answered but I couldn’t call Jason back. When I called down they said my mother had phoned: call home no matter how late.

  I
said, “Hi, what time is it there? Did I wake you up?”

  “I don’t know,” my mother said. “Is everything okay?”

  “Fine,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “It’s Jason,” said my mother. “He broke into our house.”

  I had visions of really embarrassing things, like him stealing my underwear.

  “He dyed his hair,” my mother said. “In our bathroom sink. Brown,” she said. “Like his father. You’ll see when he shows up.”

  Apparently Jason had stolen his father’s passport and spare eyeglasses and dyed his hair like his father’s and charged a one-way ticket to Paris on his mother’s MasterCard. Everyone was positive he was coming to see me, but the jury was still out on why he’d needed our bathroom sink. My mother said, “What’s with you two?” I said, “I guess he must miss me.”

  I put down the telephone and waited to feel excited. But all I felt was embarrassment in advance, like when someone from one part of your life is about to show up in another. I knew that sleeping all day in a Paris hotel room so I’d dream about my boyfriend was a fairly pitiful excuse for a private world, but so what, it was my world, I had it to myself. I ordered a Coke from room service and double-locked the door. I felt like I was wanted by the F.B.I.

  That night I went to dinner with just my father and Robin. I made her come to the bathroom with me and told her on the way—just the part about Jason stealing stuff and being headed here. I could tell she was impressed that a boy would do that for me. She stopped right by someone’s table and asked what I planned to do. “I don’t know,” I told her. “Just don’t tell my dad.”

  Unlocking my door, I got a chill that Jason was already there, the same chill that I used to feel reaching into the potatoes. I thanked God for the light, the covers turned back, the little chocolate on my pillow. I lay down and thought about Jason. I wanted a dream in which it was warm and we were happy together, a dream from which I would wake not caring if he’d dyed his hair fiberglass pink. But I had the wrong kind of dream; in fact, the wrong kind of sex dream. I dreamed that Jason and some strange girl were naked in his bed. The creepy and perverted part was that I sort of liked watching. I thought about the Iroquois, how terrible it must be to live where everyone hears your dreams, and one night you have the kind of dream you could never tell anyone ever.

  When I woke it was daylight. I knew that it was Jason pounding on the door. I said, “How did you get here so fast? What happened to your head?”

  The top inch of his forehead was a root-beer brown, with a hard edge like a bathtub ring bleeding down from his hair. “I don’t know what went wrong,” he said. “Anyway, I’m sorry.”

  I said, “Doesn’t it wash out?” Then I said, “Who was it?”

  “Well,” he said, “it was Nan.”

  I said, “You’re kidding. That hog.” I couldn’t help seeing Jason and Nan, his body wrapped around hers, only now it wasn’t like my dream, not interesting but repulsive; sex seemed like a truly disgusting thing for two people to do. I thought of some little details I hadn’t liked about Jason, how sunken and white his chest was, a certain way he touched me that he didn’t know hurt. Sometimes when we were together I’d think about these things, and it was funny how they moved me, made me love him more. But I didn’t like thinking about them now, I was happy how bad his hair looked. I said, “This would be totally different if you hadn’t fucked somebody else.”

  “It was nothing,” he said. “I was mad at you.”

  “It was not nothing,” I said.

  He said, “I thought you’d believe me if I came and said it in person.”

  I would have died if someone had come down the hall right then. “You’d better come in,” I said.

  Jason sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t have a passport,” he said. “I was trying to cash a check at the bank and the teller got suspicious. She went off to get someone, and I just turned and split. She had my passport and traveler’s checks. I’ll bet I’m wanted by the cops.”

  “I can’t imagine how they’ll find you,” I said. “The guy with the two-tone forehead. Is that how you left my mom’s sink?”

  “Please don’t be angry,” he said. “Everything will be all right if I can just sleep for a while.”

  “Great,” I said. “A great idea. I’ll be back around dinner.”

  I went out and walked around. It was totally hot and polluted. I almost couldn’t bear it that Jason was back in my room. I felt like the world was a TV screen he was standing directly in front of. It completely skipped my mind that I had been lonely before; I felt as if I had friends in Paris that he wouldn’t let me see. I sat on the stones at the Cluny and thought about my father, that the way I felt about Jason now was how he’d thought of my mother and me.

  That made me feel instantly guilty and I went back to the hotel; this lasted until I saw Jason had got hair dye on my pillows. He said, “Jesus, I’m starving.” I said we could chance the roof café, and he fell back asleep. I was beginning to worry that the dye had bled through to his brain when he woke and got out of bed and raced me to the door. He wouldn’t have dared to tell me if he’d had a dream.

  Waiting for the elevator, I noticed it was evening. I wondered where the day had gone, where my father and Robin were. The roof café was different at night, crowded with glittery people. The twinkly lights of Paris looked like restaurant design. We didn’t have reservations; there were no empty tables. Just as we were getting ready to leave, I saw Robin sitting alone.

  Robin seemed glad to see me. She looked half blotto, but nervous blotto, talky and high-strung. “I’m hiding out,” she said. “He’s driving me nuts. He watches over me like I’m about to vanish off the face of the earth, and the thing is, I always think I’m about to disappear, and when he’s around and he’s thinking it, too, I get so I almost believe it.”

  “Disappear how?” I said.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Robin. “Vanish, vaporize maybe. Spontaneously combust. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I keep forgetting he’s your dad. He’s downstairs. He’s fine. He’s sleeping.”

  Jason said, “I was sleeping.”

  Robin and I stared at him as if he’d just appeared. “This is Jason,” I said.

  “Do you mind if I ask,” said Robin, “what you did to your head?”

  “Hair dye,” Jason said.

  “Serious fashion mistake,” Robin said. “Something’s got to work on that. Kerosene? Nailpolish remover?”

  Jason said, “I think I’d like to wait awhile before I give my head a toxic bath.”

  “It’s all a toxic bath,” said Robin. “Have you seen the moon?”

  Well, I couldn’t imagine how we could have missed it. The moon was gigantic, nearly full, half hidden behind a cloud, looming like another huge head just behind Jason’s right ear. Maybe the reason we’d missed it was: it was a frightening color. Actually, maybe we’d seen it and blocked it—it was kind of brown.

  “This is worse than New Jersey,” said Robin. “At least there you still get that great industrial orange.”

  “It looks like a potato,” said Jason. “The whole world’s a fucking tuber. Mondo Potato. Right?”

  Robin leaned very close to him and took his forearm in both hands. “It’s all right,” she said slowly. “Or it will be all right.”

  It bothered me for a second that she didn’t even know him and he was the one whose arm she was grabbing, pumping with sympathy. But why should that have surprised me? He was the one who deserved it, whose heart was being broken. He was the one whose story this was, the one who would get to tell about his first love and how it ended, how he made a mistake, dyed his hair, stole his father’s passport, went to Paris to find his true love, and lost her anyway. We were dividing everything; all of this was now his. From now on, whatever happened would happen to one of us at a time.

  Robin said, “You know what I wonder? If the earth looks like a potato, too, if it looks like Mr. Potato Head when you see it from the moon.
And the moon sees everything on earth like potato skin—potato ears and cracks and dirt, scaly spots on the peel.”

  “The potato pyramids,” said Jason. “The potato Grand Canyon.”

  I looked out at the lights of Paris and the traffic rushing beneath. When I closed my eyes the city noise sounded like waves on shore. I pictured one of those photos from space, I imagined rocketing off, the awe and homesickness of seeing Earth come up in your rearview mirror. I felt something cold rush past my cheek, a comet turning to ice. “The potato Eiffel Tower,” I said. “The potato Great Wall of China.”

  DOG STORIES

  SO OFTEN, AT WEDDINGS, one kisses and hugs the bride and groom and then stands there dumbstruck, grinning with dread. But today the guests congratulate Christine and John and immediately ask Christine, “How’s your leg?” If Christine’s leg didn’t hurt, she might almost feel thankful that a dog bit her a few days ago and gave her guests something to say.

  Hardly anyone waits for an answer. They can see for themselves that Christine is wearing a bandage but limping only slightly. They rush on with the conversation, asking, “What happened, exactly?” though nearly all of them live nearby, and nearly all of them know.

  By now Christine can tell the story and at the same time scan the lawn to see who has come and who hasn’t, to make sure someone is in charge of the champagne and the icy tubs of oysters, and to look for Stevie, her nine-year-old son. Stevie is where she knows he will be—watching the party from the edge, slouched, meditatively chewing his hand. The white tuxedo he picked out himself, at the antique store where Christine bought her thirties lawn dress, hangs on him like a zoot suit.

  Many of the wedding guests wear elegant vintage clothes, or costly new ones designed to look vintage: péplums, organza, cabbage roses, white suits, and Panama hats; it is late afternoon, mid-July and unseasonably hot, so that quite a few of the guests look, like the garden, bleached of color and slightly blown. For a moment Christine wishes they’d held the wedding in June, when the irises and the peonies were in bloom; then she remembers it wasn’t till May that they made up their minds to get married.