Paris Without Her

by Gregory Curtis

  Among such religious objects as medals, rosaries, incense burners, crosses, and icons, Georges Thuillier sells a large selection of santons. Tracy chose a “gitane avec ours”—a Gypsy with a bear—and a chicken coop. The latter was considerably more delicate and charming than it might sound.

  It was a bright day. Tracy was radiant in a black leather jacket, an Hermès scarf, and big, round sunglasses. Despite our sleepless night on the airplane, we were electrified by being back in Paris and ready to walk. Distances didn’t matter. From Georges Thuillier, we strolled on to Notre-Dame, where Tracy lit a candle and said a prayer for an elderly neighbor who had died the day before our departure, an artist who had become Tracy’s dear friend. We went on to the Île Saint-Louis and, after rambling around for a while, walked across the Pont de la Tournelle to the Left Bank and on to our hotel. It was only six, at least an hour before restaurants began serving, but we found a small Italian café on a quiet square and ate there. “This has been one happy birthday,” Tracy said. We drank a carafe of wine and then, back in our room, fell into bed with a weary sigh.

  The next morning, more careful about conserving our energy than we had been the day before, we took the Métro to the Louvre and the Palais Royale. But before entering the museum, we went around the corner to the box office of La Comédie Française, on the rue de Richelieu. We bought tickets for Tartuffe in eleven days, when we would be back in Paris after our travels across the Dordogne.

  We stayed in the Louvre until early afternoon, when we left to have a glass of kir at a café on the square across the rue Saint-Honoré, just south of the Place Colette. As often happened, we said hardly anything but were in constant communication. Under a warm sun, the square was crowded with an ever-changing mass of people of infinite variety. Clothes, attitudes, movements, postures, encounters, embraces, farewells—nothing was really unusual, but everything was both unpredictable and absorbing. Again and again, Tracy and I found ourselves watching the same person at the same time. After a few moments, we would turn to look at each other, eye to eye. By a slight grin, or a barely wrinkled brow, or gentle roll of the eyes, or a barely perceptible downward-turned mouth, we both knew what the other was thinking. Or, more precisely, we both knew that we were thinking exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. I felt these moments of mutual absorption as embraces, and I miss them as much as the physical embraces when we held each other close.

  I’ve had kir on that square several times since that afternoon, most recently just a few weeks before writing this. It’s something I try to do at least once each time I visit Paris. The conjunction of the Louvre, La Comédie Française, the Palais Royale, and various popular stores and restaurants still attracts a crowd that offers endless pleasure to an alert observer. I watch and silently consider each person I see. When I feel myself beginning to grin or opening my eyes slightly wider, I feel like Tracy and I are thinking the same thing at the same time, just as we did when we were sitting there together.

  * * *

  . . .

  We went on to Les Eyzies the next day, the first leg by train and the second by a rented car. It all began badly. I had always stayed at the Hôtel de France in Les Eyzies and been very comfortable there. It was a short walk downhill to the Café de la Mairie, a pleasant place that was the hub of life in the village. It was run by a married couple with two daughters, all of whom lived above the restaurant. I went there every evening after dinner to order a carafe of wine, write postcards home, and make notes about the research I’d done that day. Since I had been there during the late fall, which was an off season for tourists, I was often the only customer, except for family friends who showed up to have a glass at the bar and watch the soccer match on television with Monsieur. But Tracy took an instant dislike to the Hôtel de France. “You can’t write about this place for Gourmet,” she said. She had her reasons. Our room wasn’t really ready. There were no towels, no heater, no wastebasket, and she sent me down to the desk to ask for a hair dryer for her. The hotel gladly gave me one. On the way back to the room, I was most grateful that I wasn’t going to have to face Tracy empty-handed.

  Though she was glad to get the hair dryer, she remained upset. We ignored those storm clouds between us, just as we ignored the dark clouds forming in the sky overhead as we walked to have dinner at the Hôtel Le Cro-Magnon. It was suitably located on the Avenue de la Préhistoire, just a few blocks away, on the edge of town. The Abri Cro-Magnon was just behind the hotel. Here, as I’ve mentioned, was where the first bones of ancient modern humans, who became known as Cro-Magnon men, were discovered in 1868. The place wasn’t much in 2005, just a rock overhang with a plaque and a low rusted fence in front. Now there is a visitors’ center, and you have to pay to see the site. The hotel itself abuts a cliff, so entering it felt very much like entering a cave. The restaurant wasn’t enclosed at all except for long, clear plastic strips that hung over a frame of iron pipe. The strips shook and even whistled a little with the slightest breeze. By now the sky was covered with thick black clouds, which left the restaurant very dark. We were one of only two couples there.

  At the table, Tracy said, “I don’t know about all this. You were so happy here before, and now you’ve got me to please.” Just then came a deafening crack of thunder as lightning flashed. For an electric moment, the restaurant lit up as if it were noon. There was another crack, a sudden strong wind, and heavy raindrops began pelting the plastic ceiling over our heads. In the midst of the storm’s fury, the waiter appeared. The heavy rain splattering on the plastic was so loud that we both had to shout for him to hear our orders. Talking was impossible. We sat looking at each other. When the food arrived, it turned out to be better than we had any reason to expect. That dissipated some of the gloom. For dessert we split a nice crème brûlée. Then we drank wine until the rain stopped and we could walk back to the Hôtel de France.

  When we opened the door to our room, the first thing we saw was a pile of fresh towels. “Oh, okay,” Tracy said. “I’ll get off my high horse.” She seemed to consider for a moment. “But maybe you don’t want me to,” she said.

  “I don’t. I’ll get up there with you instead.”

  “That works,” she said, and the clouds that had been gathering between us vanished.

  The rest of the trip was idyllic. We visited every cave and archaeological site in the area, which required that we make leisurely drives across the lovely countryside. We ate at the best restaurants in Les Eyzies and in the towns nearby. There were surprisingly many, including one that had two Michelin stars. Late one afternoon, we drove to the motel on the outskirts where Vivian and I had stayed during our ride ten years before. By pure chance or by destiny—I guess it had to be one or the other—Annabelle and the randonnée she was leading were there, turning out their horses into a fenced pasture across the highway from the motel. She remembered Vivian and me and even mentioned the article I’d written. Her husband was there as well. Though he had been remote before, now he was suddenly full of good cheer and laughing, and made a gallant bow when I introduced Tracy.

  At one of the caves, we met a prehistorian whom I had known by reputation. She and her artist husband invited us to dinner at their farmhouse outside Les Eyzies. It was large and bright and comfortable. Exquisite art covered the walls, books lay all around, and a savory stew simmered on the stove. As we ate, we could see her husband’s graceful, colorful sculptures that he had placed across a meadow and among the trees on the edge of a forest. They had been married almost exactly as long as we had been and had raised their three daughters in this house. They said that they missed having a son, as we had had. I knew that Tracy was comparing their life together in this charming country house in France with ours in Austin, and she knew I was doing the same thing. As we drove back to our hotel, Tracy said, “Maybe in another life.” Then she added, “But I’m not complaining. I’m really not. I don’t have anything to complain about.”
/>
  There was a silent moment. “Pretty countryside, though,” I said.

  “Yes, pretty countryside.” There was another silent moment as we looked at the late sun slanting over the winding road. “Maybe in another life,” Tracy said again. We had sometimes talked about buying a place in Arles or in Paris, but now we knew we never would. That wasn’t sad, particularly. We really didn’t have anything to complain about.

  * * *

  . . .

  After ten days, we arrived back in Paris, on a Friday evening, too late for anything but a leisurely dinner near our hotel. The next morning, we walked across the Luxembourg Gardens. For a while we watched children sailing their toy boats in the pond and then just wandered on into the streets around the park. Our five-year-old granddaughter had asked Tracy to bring her a “standing lion” from Paris. We were both confounded by what this standing lion might be. The granddaughter, certain we would know, couldn’t give us any other clues, and there were no lions, standing or otherwise, in the shops we visited.

  That evening we went to see Tartuffe at La Comédie Française, congratulating ourselves for having had the foresight to have bought our tickets before we set off for the Dordogne. But we were soon to wish we hadn’t bothered. Whereas La Malade imaginaire had been a delight from beginning to end, this production was an agony to sit through. We were shocked and disappointed. In fact, we felt deceived to see with our own eyes that the productions at La Comédie Française are not dependably good. In this Tartuffe, each actor seemed to be doing a solo performance in a private play. There was no love in any love scene. No argument was really an argument, but instead whatever it’s called when two individuals shout independently into the void. The costumes were a mélange of styles across the centuries, from doublets to contemporary punk. And we had chosen seats badly as well. The first row of the balcony seemed appealing, but in fact there was a gap of only six inches or so between the seat and the railing, so that we had to sit sideways and couldn’t straighten our legs. Looking over the low railing across the audience below us to the stage gave both Tracy and me vertigo. At least it wasn’t raining when we finally left the theater.

  But the next day, Sunday, our last day in Paris, erased the disappointment of the night before. A breakfast at a farmers’ market on the Place Monge, a stroll down to the rue Jacob for a nostalgic return to see the Hôtel d’Angleterre and the Hôtel des Marrionners, lunch at Café de Flore, then across the river to stroll along the Tuileries Gardens, and back across to the Musée d’Orsay so Tracy could see Cézanne’s landscapes again, and then along the Seine to visit the Bastille Brocante, a huge garage sale. Tents lined both sides of the river for a mile or more. We looked and looked without buying until we came upon a display of key chains with the Peugeot logo, which is…a standing lion. Tracy bought one.

  “Could that really be what she meant?” I asked.

  Tracy said, “I don’t know if it is or isn’t, but she asked for a standing lion and she’s getting a standing lion.”

  We had dinner on the rue Mouffetard and walked along afterward, hand in hand, taking our time. The cafés were full of young people and noise and gaiety. I put my arm around Tracy’s waist and pulled her close to me and kissed her as we looked into the large open window of a café. A student with curly black hair, his face lit red from wine and excitement, raised his glass to us. Spontaneously, we both blew kisses back toward him. He and his friends all roared and raised their glasses to us in unison.

  Slowly, happily, we walked on. “I am filled with Paris,” Tracy said suddenly. She was talking both to me and to the whole city around us. “I’m satiated, I’m satisfied, I’ve done it. At last, I feel like I’ve done it. I can put my arms around it.”

  I was happy, too. The trip had given Tracy what she wanted. Now she was focused on getting enough sleep before the airport shuttle arrived at seven-thirty the next morning. That night, sitting on the side of the bed, she wrote a few final words in her journal: “Home to kids, grandkids, and CALVIN!!!!” Calvin was our black cocker spaniel, whom she adored.

  Our granddaughter loved her standing lion. That gentle spring evening in 2005 was the last time Tracy saw Paris.

  PART III

  The Woman in Saint-Eustache

  CHAPTER NINE

  Santons and Randonnées

  Often, in the weeks and months after her death, in idle moments in my office during the day or while watching my magic DVDs in the evening, I ruminated on the care Tracy had received at MD Anderson. Had those final weeks of painful treatments in Houston, which often left her glum and disoriented, been a big mistake? And what about the hours of driving, and the displacement from our own comfortable home, and her missing the congenial, reassuring company of our children and our friends, all of which made her final weeks lonely and isolated? Had all that effort and all that trouble been worth it? I thought often of that phone call from the cancer survivor, which I never mentioned to her or anyone else. I came to believe that the doctors should have made the very probable futility of her treatments clearer than they did. I even wrote a respectful letter saying so to her principal physician. Our oldest daughter, Liza, says that I shouldn’t think that way, that Tracy wanted the treatment no matter what and never wavered from that, even during the hardest days and the darkest hours. She is probably right. I was always going to let Tracy have her way. I had let her have her way throughout our marriage, so why not now? That’s the main reason I kept the phone call to myself. But my unquiet thoughts remained, as well as resentment toward the doctors for making her final days miserable for no very good reason. This remorse and these recriminations are one way my sadness emerged. I felt that sadness as a thudding vibration that penetrated clear through me.

  But that was only sadness. I could carry on in spite of it. Real grief arrived as a horrible, ghastly panic that could rise in a single moment, and without warning, from somewhere in the depths within me. I would become hopelessly and helplessly despondent as the waves of grief rolled over me. My stomach contracted painfully, and I thought my head would burst. Sometimes I would call one of our daughters, who were always calm and comforting. But often I didn’t want to burden them, and during those times alone I never knew how to mitigate the attacks. I just had to let them run on until I was completely exhausted. A random thought or a song lyric or a phrase in a book would make me erupt in uncontrollable tears. That continued for several years—less frequently as time went on, but with no less intensity when the agony did arrive. I’m sure grief is not through with me yet. It will come again, although I don’t know when. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a year or in five years, but it will come.

  When someone in your family is ill, you soon learn to stay clear of well-meaning casual acquaintances. They want to show their concern, so they trap you and ask a series of questions—always the same ones—which you have had to answer time and again with other casual acquaintances in similar situations. Often they want to tell you about an illness that happened to them or to someone in their family, and what the doctor said, and what treatment worked or didn’t work, and so on. I was surprised by how many people, always using an urgent but lowered and conspiratorial voice, had wanted to tell me about faith healers. These confidences always began with the same six words—“I know it sounds crazy but”—followed by “there is a man in Brazil who…” or “a friend of my sister’s went to a woman who…”

  Such encounters were an annoyance during Tracy’s illness, but they went beyond annoyance and led into dangerous territory after her death. Once, I entered the elevator in my building to go down to my car in the garage. Another man was already in the elevator. I didn’t know him but I had seen him often enough in the building. He was slender, about my age, and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, as I was. We rode in silence for a few moments. Then he turned to me and said, “I’m sorry for your loss and your family’s loss.”

  “Thank you.”

  “She
was a beautiful woman. And she was way too young. Way too young.”

  “Thank you,” I said and extended my right hand. “What’s your name?”

  He shook my hand and told me his name. It meant nothing to me, I didn’t know him at all, but suddenly I was overcome with grief. The elevator stopped and the doors opened. I ducked out ahead of him without saying anything. I didn’t want him to see me so emotional. When I got into my car, I was heaving, not nauseated but fighting for breath and feeling numb everywhere. He had been trying to be kind. I knew that, but I was still heaving.

  Since I couldn’t predict when wounds like that would open, I became wary of them and tried to avoid obvious traps or triggers. Even though I sometimes wanted to look through old photo albums, I resisted the temptation. After her death, on January 28, 2011, I began to dread the approach of Tracy’s birthday, May 11. Each year, Mother’s Day arrived around then, too, sometimes exactly on the 11th.

  When those two days arrived in 2011, it had been only a little over three months since I had last seen Tracy in her bed at the hospice. Together, her birthday and Mother’s Day combined to form a miserable combination of reminders. On the 11th, I met Liza and Tracy’s mother, Shirley, for lunch at a Mexican restaurant. Shirley could be difficult even in ordinary circumstances. Now she was trying to be nice, but it was clear that she had worn on Liza’s patience. They had just visited Tracy’s grave and planted a small laurel tree. Í decided to go visit her grave myself. I had not been there since the funeral. At the cemetery, I had some trouble finding her grave. At one point during my search, I had the strange premonition that the gravestones were going to start spinning, the way the scenery does in a B movie when a character is going insane. But, finally, I did find her grave. In my memory her gravestone was red granite, but in fact it was gray.