“Happy birthday!” Mom throws open the curtains and bounces on the bed. The light is blinding. I burrow under the covers.
“So what do you want to do, birthday girl?”
What I really want to do is ride around on the back of Hervé’s scooter all day with my arms around his waist, my cheek pressed against his back. I’d even be happy to hang out in the café, watching him bring sandwiches to others, if only he smiled at me from time to time. But he hasn’t called, hasn’t stopped by. And I wouldn’t be able to bear the sight of him with Celeste again. Another option? I’d like to mope around in this hotel room all day with the blinds drawn. Maybe eat a gallon of ice cream.
“Oh, I don’t know. How about we go see a movie?” I noticed theatre marquees all up and down the Champs-Élysées.
“All right! A movie it is!”
Mom is way too chirpy. She’s always a little weird on my birthday. Sometimes I even catch her crying. Not in front of me, but I might hear muffled sobs coming from the bathroom, or she’ll wake up the next morning and her eyes will be all red and puffy. I tell myself it’s because she can’t stand to see her baby girl growing up so fast, but maybe she’s remembering the shock she felt when the doctor told her I would never be normal.
I was a micro-preemie, born fourteen weeks too early, barely viable. My lungs hadn’t fully developed yet, so I had to have a breathing tube jabbed down my throat almost as soon as I was born. Except I guess it should have been sooner, because I didn’t get enough oxygen at first and part of my brain died.
Mom always says that it was a miracle I survived. The doctors gave me a thirty percent chance of making it through the first night. After that, the odds went up little by little. The baby in the incubator next to mine was almost four pounds, two and half more than me, but he died. I got stronger. I made it out of the hospital, and now I’m in Paris on my birthday.
Mom has already ordered breakfast from room service. This morning there is a basket of pain au chocolat, my favorite. There’s a rose in a vase next to my plate.
Mom opens our copy of Paris Time Out to the movie listings and hands it to me. It seems that just about every movie ever made is showing at one place or another. The French sure love their films.
I scan for The Song of Bernadette, but I can’t find it. Okay, well maybe one movie isn’t showing here. But there’s a huge selection of American chick flicks, Vietnam and Iraqi war dramas, and the latest sci-fi blockbusters, along with the local fare.
“How about a romantic comedy?” I rattle off a title.
“Oh, that sounds fun!” There’s that perky tone again. I wonder how long she’ll be able to keep it up.
The cinema is almost deserted on this midweek afternoon. We stake out seats in the third row and wait for the lights to dim. Before the main attraction, there are a few commercials. The first one is for orange soda. It features CG forest animals—a deer in a bikini, a bear in one of those diaper-like things that sumo wrestlers wear. They’re all dancing around. Pop fizzes out of the bottle at the end. There’s another for perfume, in which a woman leaps around a ballroom, her skirt billowing up so we can see her red panties. And one more for chocolate, in which a woman lying in bed takes a bite of her candy bar and starts moaning. Puh-lease.
In comparison, the American movie is pretty tame, but it’s a romance. My thoughts keep drifting to Hervé. In the movie in my head, we’re riding in a jeep across the desert, on our way to Dakar. He’s driving, I’m sketching. Every now and then, he leans over and kisses me. And because this is a fantasy, even though he’s not looking at the road, the car keeps going and we never crash.
Later, after the movie, we go out to dinner. In the restaurant, Mom picks up the salt shaker and puts it back down. She drums her fingers on the table, bites at a hangnail. She looks like someone who really needs a cigarette.
She asks the waiter for a bottle of wine and two glasses. She watches as he fills her glass. He hesitates for a moment, watching for her nod, before pouring a couple of inches into mine.
“Hey, I’m underage,” I say.
Mom shrugs. “The French don’t care.” She raises her glass. “Happy birthday, baby.”
I look around the restaurant. There is no one else here my age. There are no parents letting children sip from their goblets, no kids with fake IDs. No one seems to be watching us, either. I clink my glass with hers and take a small sip. It tastes sour, with a hint of cork. I’d rather have a Coke.
It must be good though, because Mom downs half a glass in just a couple of gulps. Then she starts to talk.
“I always promised myself that when you became old enough, I would tell you the truth about your father.”
I freeze, afraid that any sudden movement will make her change her mind.
“So,” she says, “do you think you’re ready to hear it?”
I nod, but a cold feeling starts low in my belly.
“I know it seems uncharacteristic of me, but sometimes people behave differently when they’re abroad.” She sighs. “It gives you a sense of freedom, don’t you think?”
I swirl the purple liquid in my glass without drinking. I think about riding on the back of Hervé’s scooter, of our talk in the park, of how I probably wouldn’t have even been able to look him in the eye back at school.
“Your father and I fell in love here. We were foreigners, both free in a way that we wouldn’t have been at home. Things were different when we went to Japan.”
The waiter arrives with our dinner, giving Mom a moment to collect herself before launching into the rest of the story.
She nods slowly, watching me. “We were planning on getting married, even before we knew that I was pregnant with you, but his parents said they would disown him for marrying a gaijin. A foreigner.
“You have to understand that he was all they had. They were afraid that I would lure him away, that he would abandon the family farm, that there would be no one to take care of them. He was a good son and he wanted to obey them. He knew his duty, and he thought that if we waited, eventually they would give their consent. And then we would get married. But they were stubborn.”
Here, she swallows the rest of her wine. The waiter comes over and refills her glass. After he’s gone, she continues.
“Your father said that they would soften up after the baby—after you—came. But then…”
Enough. I don’t want to hear any more. I have an idea of what comes next. Please shut up, I want to say, but the words don’t come.
“Your grandmother said that your disabilities were all my fault,” Mom goes on. “She said that I had brought shame upon the family. She gave me a big envelope of money and told me to go away. Your father was too… grief-stricken to disagree with her.”
“So you split up,” I say. My left arm jerks, rattling the bread plate.
Mom quickly moves my glass of wine out of range.
Suddenly I feel dizzy as if I’m the one who’s been guzzling Bordeaux. I haven’t really eaten anything, but I feel the urge to throw up. Control, control, I tell myself. Yet I want to overturn this table. My whole life has been a lie.
“You told me that he never knew about me!” I yelled.
Some diners look over. My mother starts crying. “I am so sorry,” she says. “I thought it would hurt you to know the truth.”
To know that my father was too weak to stick up for me? To know how my foreign mother and I were kicked out of the family?
“I want to go back to the hotel,” I say. “I’m not hungry anymore.” I’m angry at my mother for lying to me, at my father for not standing up to his parents, and at my grandparents for being so cold. I’m also angry at my body for not being perfect, and at my brother—my half brother—for leading the life I might have had. A torrent of fury is ripping through me. I can’t possibly eat. What I really want to do is get on a plane and go home. Alone. But I know that’s not possible. She’s the one with the credit card.
Mom dabs at her eyes and nose with her cloth napkin. “Okay.” She digs around in her purse, fishes out some crumpled euros, and tosses them on the table.
I get up and limp to the door.
I let her guide me to the curb and wait for her to flag down a taxi. We don’t say a word all the way back. I can’t even look at her. All I can think is that if I had been born perfect, then maybe I’d still have a family. And then I remember Lourdes. It’s a long shot, but look at John Traynor—miracles happen. Just a few weeks ago, I heard about a guy who was in a coma for nineteen years. He got knocked out in a car accident. Then, one day, he suddenly woke up and started talking to his mother.
Maybe something like that could happen for me. Maybe I could bring my family together again. Or not. But it’s worth a shot, and I have nothing left to lose. Plus, Mom owes me big time.
She seems to be thinking the same thing. I watch as she goes to the minibar in our hotel room and pours herself a drink. “Look, I know that there is no way I can make this up to you, but…”
Now. Here’s my chance. I take a deep breath and say, “Well, there is one thing,” This is the first time I’ve spoken in half an hour.
She looks up, surprised. “What?” Her voice is as soft as a feather.
I look her straight in the eye. “You can take me to Lourdes. I really want to go there.”
She gulps, and I realize that she’s started crying. “I love you the way you are,” she says. “I’ve tried to help you to love yourself. All of my art, all of my life has been about that. Didn’t you get that?”
She begins sobbing. Loudly. Her mascara is running down her face like mud. Her nose is red. She clutches at her head as if it’s about to fall off. I feel a little bit sorry for her, but then I remember her betrayal. Her lies. “So are you going to take me, or do I have to go by myself?”
Mom turns to the window and looks out at the city lights. She takes a deep shuddering breath, then snatches a tissue from the box on the table and blows her nose. “I’ll take you,” she says. “We’ll leave first thing tomorrow.”