I’m glad I got to spend an hour in the Louvre, even though it was strangely lacking in inspiration for me. Too many of my shots were invaded by tourists taking selfies with their backs to the art — because, obviously, it is more important to record “I was here” than to connect with the artists’ works. But perhaps most disappointing is the last photograph I got, of the old couple on the bench. When I took it, I thought I had perfectly captured their detachment from the museum around them, their frailty within the healthy, thriving culture — a culture which is timeless in a way that people are not — but now that I’m looking at it, I’m just bothered by how out of focus the museum is and how clear they are. It’s basically just a photo of an elderly couple who could be holding hands in any room in any city in the world. That was not the point. My theme is supposed to be “Stories from Paris” — not “Stories of People Dying Slowly in Paris.”
I look up from the camera to Serena on the other side of the table in the café. From the way her eyebrows are raised, I gather she must have asked me something.
“I am sorry,” I say, putting the camera down. “I was distracted. What was the question?”
“How long have you lived in Paris? Your whole life?”
I shake my head. “Fourteen years. Before that, we lived with my father in New Jersey.”
“Oh, really? What exit?”
I don’t understand the question. I tell her this.
“You know, the New Jersey Turnpike,” she says. “That never-ending toll road from Hell. It’s in the opening credits of The Sopranos? Almost everyone in the state lives close to the Turnpike.”
“I do not remember it,” I say.
She seems shocked. “Seriously? What kind of Jersey Boy are you?”
“I suppose the exiled kind.”
Serena laughs as a waitress comes over and takes our order, in English — probably because she heard us speaking it just now. Serena asks for a chocolate crêpe and an espresso. That sounds good, so I ask for the same.
When the waitress walks away, Serena turns back to me. “So I guess you grew up speaking English?”
I nod. “Until we came here, obviously. I have been bilingual pretty much since birth.”
“I’m kind of jealous. I suck at learning new languages. How much do you remember about living in America?”
I shrug. “I have some memories, but they’re … muddled. The type of memories that could be real or could just be memories of things that other people have told me. But, to be honest, I try not to remember America all that much.” She makes an offended face — it might be sarcasm, but I don’t know her well enough to take the chance, so I jump in to clarify: “Because of my father, not the country. He was … not nice to my mama. I think he didn’t really want children — back then — and so was kind of always in a bad mood, you know? I remember my mother being sad, all the time.”
“He sounds kind of selfish,” she says.
“Yeah, that’s it exactly,” I tell her, nodding. “He’s selfish.”
She’s narrowing her eyes at me, her lips curling in a slow smile.
“What is it?” I ask.
“No, nothing,” she says, “just … there’re times when I can really hear an American accent trying to fight its way out of you.”
She’s smiling, like she thinks this is kind of cool — something that we have in common. I try not to let my annoyance show — even Mama occasionally likes to say that when we moved to Paris, we left behind everything but my accent. Since meeting Lara at the beginning of this semester, nasal vowels have started to escape my lips more than I like.
But I am not American. The only American in my life left long ago.
Serena’s peering at me. “You don’t talk much, huh?” she says.
Hmm. How long have I been silent? “That depends on who you’re comparing me to,” I say.
Her brow furrows, and I realize — too late — she thinks I am being unkind to her. Just then, the waitress comes back with our order, and when the clinking of plates and confusion of putting everything in its place is over, I feel awkward bringing up my silence again. When the waitress moves on, Serena picks up her espresso and turns to her side, facing the café as if she’s ending our interaction altogether.
“Excuse me for trying to make conversation,” she mumbles in between blowing on her coffee.
I could clarify that that isn’t what I meant, but something about what she just said irritates me. “Making conversation is what I tried to do when we were by the pyramid, but you wanted to get into the Louvre. Now, because I do not want to discuss weather, I am bad guy?” I may or may not be deliberately breaking my own English.
“I didn’t say anything about the weath —”
“Just because I do not talk so much, this does not mean I am not here. I think Americans must be, oh, what is the word” — I know what the word is, I don’t know why I’m pretending I don’t — “allergic to silence. You are scared of it. My father, when he calls me, he talks only about the weather, the price of airfare, what he should send me for Christmas. And he is spending money to do this, when he could be asking about …”
Despite the anger I’m feeling, I still can’t bring myself to finish that sentence. I look at the walls, at a framed photograph of a motionless, tranquil Seine River. I stare at it, as if I might be able to absorb some of its calm. I see the way Serena’s peering at me, as if she’s asking me, what is my problem?
I am being unkind to Serena, allowing a normal conversation to become “spirited” far too easily. Maybe this is a reflex, after Martine and all the impassioned arguments that were so frequent they became normal. Thinking of her seems to add weight to the cell phone in my jacket pocket. I expect I’ll see at least one missed call when I next check it.
Serena is still staring at me through the faint, spiraling curls of steam rising off her espresso. I get an urge to take her picture, but even I am not so dense about women that I cannot see this would be a bad idea. She makes a tut sound, looks down at the coffee. The silence is like an invisible hand on the back of my head, pushing it down. I do the only thing I know to do in awkward silences — I pick up my camera. I flick through the photos that I have taken so far today and try not to shake my head. It’s hard not to. There’s plenty of people in my photos, but maybe not enough of the city to make Monsieur Deschamps happy. And, looking at them, I don’t really know what their “stories” are.
I stop on a picture of Serena. She’s staring at a painting, and her eyes are bright and alive with … something.
I turn the camera to show her. “Do you know what you were thinking here?”
She is wiping her hands on a napkin after finishing her crêpe. She stares at the photo on the preview screen for a couple of seconds. From the way her eyes flicker, judder back and forth, I know that she’s trying to locate the memory. “I didn’t notice you taking this.”
“I am sorry.”
“No, it’s okay,” she says, never taking her eyes off the photo. “This was when I was looking at this painting, it was … Yeah, it was David holding Goliath’s severed head. Kind of gross, but it was one of the pieces in the Louvre that I actually got. I knew it would be something my dad would have liked. He loved stories like that — you know, combat and stuff? Heroism, underdogs … When I was little, he never read me girlish books about fairies or angels. He’d tell me stories about heroes and warriors — David and Goliath, Daniel in the Lions’ Den. This painting reminded me of him, of how it felt to be close to him. It was … a nice feeling.”
She stares into the distance for a second. Then she closes her eyes and shakes her head, as if resetting herself — not wanting to cry. She gestures at the camera, as if to ask if she can look through the pictures. I sit back in my chair. “Of course.”
The tension between us is draining away, and I am relieved. “I like some of these,” she says. “How long have you been interested in photography?”
This is actually not easy to answer, because — strangely — I do not get asked this question often. “Definitely since I was a child,” I tell her. “Mama says that I once told her I never wanted to forget anything for the rest of my life, and so I figured the only way to do that would be to take photographs of everything.”
“And you haven’t stopped since?”
“I guess not. Although, I do not take photos of everything anymore.” I feel a flush creep into my cheeks. I’m a little embarrassed by what I’m about to say, because I know it sounds kind of sappy. “I like to know that the memories are there for me. If I want to relive something, I can sort of do it, you know?”
I see her staring at me and know she has a follow-up question. But I don’t think my cheeks can flush any more without exploding, so instead I say, “So, Lara said you’re at Columbia, right? Have you chosen your major yet?”
She drains her coffee. Shrugs at me. “Physics … or Math. I’m still making up my mind.”
“That is your passion?” My face must show my surprise, because she rolls her eyes at me.
“Yes. People can get excited by things that aren’t artistic, you know?”
“I do, I do. Sorry, I did not mean to be insulting. What is it that you like about those subjects?”
“I like that, ultimately, your goal is to find an answer to a problem. And when you find it, the answer is the answer — it’s indisputable. Physics and Math aren’t messy. Well, Physics can be, but you know what I mean, right?”
I kind of don’t, but her eyes have a light in them now. I want her to keep talking, but she has turned her attention back to my camera.
“Are these all photos you’ve taken today?” she asks. I nod. “You’ve taken a lot — you like to leave your homework to the last minute, huh?”
I quickly take another bite of my crêpe, so that I couldn’t answer even if I wanted to. I can do nothing about the memory that marches through my mind, though. The memory of looking at exactly forty-four photos and realizing just how mediocre they are.
As I finish my crêpe, Serena’s eyes flash, showing interest, and I know instantly what she’s looking at … Before she has turned the camera around so I can see the preview screen, the blood is racing up into my cheeks, my shoulders hunching up by my ears, my eyes going back to that photo of the Seine on the wall. I feel like I could jump into it.
“Who is she?”
The photo is maybe a month old. Martine is reclining on the same chaise longue where Serena was sitting this morning. A shaft of light stabs through the dorm room window, turning her flame-colored curls into more of a blood-red, matching the tattoo she’d gotten the day before — a raven, suspended in flight, on the underside of her forearm.
I reach for the camera, but Serena leans back, holding it high and away from me. “Careful with that, please,” I tell her. “It is very expensive.”
“Is this your girlfriend?” she asks.
“She was.”
“What happened?”
“She became my ex-girlfriend.”
At first, I worry that my answer might make her angry again, but she just grins at me and goes back to flicking. “Okay, guess you don’t want to talk about it.”
She’s right. I do not want to talk about Martine.
“Oh, now, this one I like!” She’s turning the photo around so I can see it — the elderly couple, holding hands. I lean on the table to join her in looking.
“Really? You like that one?”
She makes a face at me, as if to ask if I’m being serious. “Yeah, it’s great. The way the Louvre is out of focus, like their love for each other makes a famous museum seem irrelevant.” She says this like she thinks that’s what I was trying to capture. I’m about to correct her and tell her all the ways in which the photo is failing the assignment Monsieur Deschamps has given me, when …
I see it. I see them. The way they hold hands lightly, secure in themselves, neither one fearing the other will suddenly leave, run away. My own hands instinctively flex, remembering how Martine would hold on to my hand so tightly my fingers would tingle with pins and needles for a long time after she let go. Serena has a point — I may not have intended to capture the moment, but I would be a fool to ignore it.
“You have a good eye,” Serena tells me. I have to clench the muscles in my jaw to keep from smiling too broadly.
“So do you, to see so much meaning,” I tell her, trying not to sound surprised that there is more substance to her than I expected. I should not be so quick to judge people, simply because they’re from America! And if Serena can find this much meaning in my work, then … “Maybe you’d like to come with me to my favorite art gallery. The street photography — it is magnifique. And it is currently running an exhibition of work by Noémie Dugarry. You may not have heard of her, but she is amazing.”
Serena looks at her watch, realizes she’s not wearing one, then reaches into her jacket for her cell phone. I see a folded piece of paper, which I know is a copy of her itinerary. I feel a twinge of disappointment. I barely know this American girl, and a good portion of our interaction has been strained — yet, I want her to be as excited by the exhibit as I am.
“Trust me.” I’m actually leaning across the table while talking. “Her work will show you why so many people love this city. And” — I gesture at the camera she was so keen to look through just now — “you clearly have an appreciation for photography. I really think you’ll like it.”
She looks at her phone, then at the piece of paper. Then she gives me a wary smile. “If you promise we can go straight to Shakespeare and Company afterward — remember, there’s something I need to get — then sure. Why not?”
*
Unlike the Louvre, there are no tourists in the Maison de la Photographie on rue des Saint-Pères. In fact, the only other person here is the owner, behind the counter — a man in a tatty tweed jacket that looks like it has never been washed. (Smells like it, too.)
The place is so deserted, the running commentary I am giving Serena on the Dugarry display sounds as though it’s coming through speakers. My voice rebounds off the walls and, ordinarily, I’d cringe at the volume. But I can’t help talking about how much I like her work, how much she inspired me when I first started thinking that photography was what I wanted to do. “Look at this,” I say, pointing to a photo of a tired-looking mother watching her toddler chasing a runaway tennis ball in a playground. The mother’s out of focus, the youngster’s in sharp focus and the yellow tennis ball is the only flash of color in the black-and-white image (as if the parent is watching her own childhood run away, while her present becomes drab, colorless). “This is just a park in some random part of Paris, and yet — to me — this is a shot that could only be taken here. It is the people who make a city … does that make sense?” She nods, and her eyes light with amusement at how passionately I am speaking. I feel the need to deflect. “You know, it probably wasn’t a good idea for me to come here. Duggary’s work is so far ahead of mine, simple and beautiful in its composition that it makes me a little bit angry. No matter how hard I try, I can’t quite capture the truth the way that she does.”
“Maybe it’s Paris,” Serena says. “Maybe you’re too close to it to really see its truth? Sometimes, when something is right there in front of you, you end up seeing through it, you know what I mean? Like, how I totally noticed what was going on in that photo of the old couple before you did.”
I snort, look at the ground. It seems she saw through me and knew instantly that all the stuff going on in that photograph was not my intention.
“You might be right,” I concede. “Even a great city like this, you can take it for granted if it’s around you every day. You forget to see it. It is amazing, non?” I wonder if, subconsciously, I am thinking about Martine here — how my heart suddenly seemed to just … forget how passionate we were for each other.
“I revise my earlier comment,” she says. “You do talk. Must be your American half, huh?”
I smile through my annoyance because I’m not all that annoyed. “If we’re talking about photography, art, you will start wanting me to shut up. I have a lot to say. I just wish that I could produce the kind of work that people want to talk about.”
She points at the camera around my neck — it’s starting to feel a little bit heavy to me now. “Hey, it might have been an accident, but still — there was heart in that shot of the old couple. It’s not like you can’t do it.”
“Fantastic,” I mumble, looking back to the exhibit. “Now I must hope for more accidents.”
There is a sudden flare of light that almost gives me a heart attack, a red-green glare like graffiti on my vision.
“No photos!” the owner calls out, in French. Serena lets the hand holding her phone drop to her side, raising her other hand in what I think is supposed to be an apology — but her expression is not sorry at all.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” she tells me. “The photos are great. I see why you like this place so much. But do you mind if we get going? I need to reconfigure my itinerary for the rest of the day.”
She’s looking at me with an energy that makes me vow to intervene if she tries to order any more espressos.
I lead her out of the gallery and back onto the street. The icy December wind is blade-sharp, and we both pull our coats tighter around ourselves. On the street, a taxi begins to slow down, mistaking us for fares. It speeds up and drives on by when my hands go into my pockets. On its side is an ad for a supermarket chain, with what looks like three generations of relatives around a dining table — the point apparently being that dinnertime is extra important for families in late December.
Maybe it is. But I know for a fact that, while there will be three generations of family sitting around our Christmas table this year, the scene will not be quite so happy.
Serena is staring at me — well, she’s staring at the picture of me that she has on her phone. She turns the screen around so I can see it. “I know I’m not a real photographer,” she says, “but I think this is pretty nice. I’d gotten so used to seeing you look serious and scowly that, when a real smile broke through and stayed there, I just … had an urge to capture it.”
I look at the photo. There’s me, almost in profile, staring at Noémie Dugarry’s work but not seeing it, the corner of my mouth just starting to rise, because at that second I was imagining sneaking up on people and taking their pictures.
I find myself agreeing with her — it is a good photo. And it makes me wonder … how long has it been since I’ve smiled like that?