The day after Fanny returned to Paris, she discovered an opened letter from Sam among other mail sitting on the entryway table. “When did this letter from your father come?” she asked.
“A week ago.” Belle and Sammy sat at a table near the window, playing with a traveling chess set Fanny had bought them in London. “He’s coming over in the spring.”
“When in the spring?” Fanny’s heart began to thrash about in her chest.
“Probably May. He said he would write soon with more details.” Sammy’s eyes lit up. “He said he bought a pony for me for when I get home.”
“A pony,” Fanny muttered. How predictable.
“YOU’LL HAVE TO be gone when he comes,” she told Louis when he came to visit that afternoon. They were sitting in the parlor of the apartment, speaking in low tones so as not to be heard by Belle or Sammy. “It must be done exactly the right way, or I shall be left with nothing.”
“I understand.” Louis shifted in one of the battered chairs. “I had my own letter today. From my father.”
“Yes? Is he coming to see you?” While they were in London, she had encouraged Louis to make amends with Thomas Stevenson. When his eyesight improved, Louis had written to his father, explaining that there were new complications in his life and inviting him to visit Paris.
“He’ll be here in March.” Louis took her hand. “Have I mentioned how brave you were to take me in like that when my eyes went bad?”
She nodded solemnly.
They had not talked about Louis living with her. He had stayed the night before when they got in. But it was clear, after their enforced separation in London, and after a night of passion and tender declarations, that neither wanted to be apart again.
“My father can be a reasonable man, and I believe he’ll help us if I ask. But I can’t present you to him just yet. He would love you, Fanny, he will love you when he meets you. But this arrangement”—Louis swept his gaze around the tawdry parlor—“he wouldn’t understand. It would work against us.”
Fanny winced at the remark. She fastened her eyes on his. “I don’t play the fallen woman very well. I have known the real type, and I don’t admire it.”
“It isn’t what I want, but I am asking you to trust me. Look at what you are asking of me—to disappear while your husband visits. Can you possibly think I am not offended by that prospect?” Louis’s frustration smoldered in his words. He struggled to calm himself. “Look, I won’t have to depend on my father much longer, Fanny. I’m going to support you and your children. I’m going to marry you and we’ll live together properly. For now, if my father gives me a decent allowance, I can cover your rent and have enough to tide us over until you can get a divorce.”
At that moment, Sammy came into the room. The boy looked at both of them and turned to leave.
“Come along, my friend,” Louis said, making his voice gay. “I am going to take you and your mother to dinner.”
“I HAVE HEARD they serve good food that’s not too dear,” Louis said of the café he’d chosen. When they entered, Fanny noticed the maître d’ was curt, as if he disapproved of something—Louis’s coat, no doubt, which was showing wear. The waiter was equally haughty. Almost in reaction, she suspected, Louis ordered a bottle of Clos Vougeot. It was an extravagant choice; they would be living on soup for a week as a consequence.
“It’s superb,” he promised Fanny, who knew little about wine.
Now the bottle was on the table. Louis sniffed the poured wine, leaned back in his chair, and crossed his arms. “It is corked.” His voice was matter-of-fact.
The waiter stiffened. He smelled the wine and insisted it was not.
“Indeed it is,” Louis said, his tone growing indignant.
The waiter turned on his heel and marched off.
“How infuriating,” Louis fumed, “to be treated like a gullible …”
“… hayseed,” Fanny said.
“It boils my blood.”
When the waiter returned, he placed a bottle in front of Louis and walked away. Louis tasted the wine, and his face flushed. “It’s the same goddamned bilious stuff he served before. He simply put it in a different bottle.”
Louis stood up from his seat. He called out, “Monsieur!” and “Monsieur!” again when the waiter did not respond. In a hot fit, Louis leaped from his seat, grabbed the bottle by its neck and smashed it against the wall next to the table. Fanny and Sammy ducked as glass chunks flew. All around them, diners ran from their chairs. Louis was shaking, staring at the bottle neck in his fist and the red streaks dripping down the yellow wall.
Fanny pulled Sammy up and put on her gloves. “I need to leave now.” She took her boy’s hand, swallowed hard, and walked past the staring diners and maître d’, out the door of the café.
“It was outrageous—” Louis began when he caught up with them outside.
Fanny shook her head emphatically. There would be no discussion on the way back to her flat. Louis hailed a cab, and they rode in silence. At the apartment, she sent Sammy scurrying up the steps. “I will be there in a minute,” she told him.
“What in God’s name happened in there?” She stood facing Louis, her hands curled into fists on her hips.
“I won’t stand by and let someone be taken advantage of,” Louis said, “including myself.”
“But that rage—it wasn’t moral indignation. It was an unholy tantrum. Completely out of proportion, and in front of my son.”
Louis’s shoulders sagged.
“You are feeling pressure. Well, so am I. That is life, my dear. You say you want to marry me, and then you act like that?” She shook her head. “You are a good man, when you behave like a man, but I do not need another child. Decide which you are.”