34

May was stuffed with hot weekends. We’d wake up Saturday morning and the sun would be a heat lamp. Trees bloomed white and pink. With the whole day to ourselves, we’d consider walking across the city. Or maybe I’d go play tennis on one of the public courts beside the tenement buildings just outside the Périphérique—it was nearly impossible to book a court within Paris proper—and, if so, perhaps Rachel would phone Olivia, they’d go to the Palais de Tokyo and see the latest contemporary art expo, then maybe we’d all get lunch.

But on the day we decided to move back to America, we couldn’t figure out what to do, so we stayed in bed listening to Asif drink with some friends in the courtyard, then Rachel said, “Hey, what about Giverny?”

Giverny was half an hour from Paris by train. We caught the train, arrived in Vernon, then set out along a path through woods and fields. From the station it was about a three-mile walk to the tiny village where Monet had found his water lilies, full of blue lilacs and stone houses with wooden shutters. Occasionally someone passed us on a bicycle, or a tour bus honked around a corner, but mostly it was quiet, with a long green view dotted with yellow. Next to our path, flowers rippled in the marsh, bent by a stream going through the grass.

At some point, Rachel said, “We need to figure this out.”

“What exactly?” I said.

It came out halfheartedly; I knew exactly what she was talking about. We’d been building up to it separately for several weeks. Our adventures in Paris had often been disconnected, but when a big idea loomed between us, it would be in both of our heads. Rachel usually was the first one to put it into words.

“How long we’re going to be in Paris,” she said.

Two people jogged by with a dog, all three panting softly.

“Do you not like it anymore?” I asked. Technically it was a lob of a comment, and I wasn’t proud of it. But I didn’t want to reach the question that came next.

Rachel said, “It’s not like we moved here to live in Paris forever. Of course there are things I still like. And there’s a lot I don’t.” She added, “We don’t, I thought.”

“No, no,” I said distractedly, “I think you’re right.”

“Wait,” Rachel said, “who said anything about being right?”

We stopped in a small turn, where someone had built a bench. Rachel said after a long silence, “I mean, do you see us here for several years?”

It took me a minute. “I guess I just hadn’t thought about leaving yet,” I said. It came out more heated than I meant. I sat down, nervous and angry. I was transparent—in a way where I was the only one who couldn’t see through myself. We walked again for a little while, going in silence next to a soccer field and through some woods.

Then Rachel said in a nervous, sad rush, “You know I’m not the chick who lives in Paris and, whatever, while her husband’s working she decides to learn how to make pastry from scratch. I can’t be someone else,” she said.

“I’m not asking you to,” I said. “I can’t do it either.”

“But do you want to work in advertising?” We stopped again. “We barely see each other during the week. When we do have time together, you’re recuperating from lack of sleep. Meanwhile, either I’m at home with the noise, or I’m out in a city where I barely speak the language—and it would be one thing if we could afford for me to take classes again, but—”

“I know,” I said, “I see.”

Rachel said after a long moment, “We had a dream of living abroad. We accomplished it. What about your professional dreams? What about mine?” She paused. “I don’t think they’ll happen if we stay in Paris.”

And that was it, the truth. The sun bombed down. Up ahead was an outdoor pizza restaurant, more like a campsite, a small kitchen in a lean-to with plastic tables and red parasols provided by Badoit. It was empty except for a waitress who seated us by a creek, almost on top of it. The cook got up from fishing, sank his pole in a holster near the bank, and shouted, Bienvenue! The pizza was out of this world. Mine had wild mushrooms sautéed in garlic. We split a bottle of rosé, and we’d drunk most of it by the time we asked ourselves, sitting in the green and red shade, Did we really just decide to leave Paris?

End of June, my manuscript would be done. Assuming it was ready, my agent would send it around to publishers in July. I said I wanted to wait until then before I gave Pierre my three months’ notice.

“Do you feel comfortable saying that?” Rachel asked.

“I do,” I said.

*   *   *

That afternoon, we visited a museum up the road and napped in a field overlooking tulip gardens. By the time we got back to the train station, I was light and joyful. The heat seemed to inflate the air. People fanned themselves with tourist maps. We took a bench in the sun and I lay down to nap.

A minute later, I was approached by an elderly couple with New England accents.

“Now, if only this nice young man will move over a little,” the woman said loudly in English, bending over above my ear. “Oh, I’m afraid he’s asleep.”

Her husband shouted, “He’s asleep?”

“Well,” the woman said, “if this young man would be so nice as to move…”

“Is he going to move?!” yelled the husband.

“Maybe he will!” the old woman shouted.

“He doesn’t speak your language!” her husband shouted back.

I sat up, we squeezed together, and the woman thanked me. Her old man withdrew a butterscotch from his shirt, a travel shirt of a thousand pockets. Then five American women came out of the station to wait for the train. They were winded from hiking, but had no trouble speaking at a volume that in France was reserved for emergencies.

How immense Americans made themselves when abroad, how bullying when we roamed. Some teenage French boys appeared. They overheard the women and started addressing them in English, with attempted Southern accents.

“Hello, how are you?” one boy said.

“Hello, misses, how is it going?” said another.

The women ignored them. They were debating over which brasserie to visit that evening. The boys continued their lesson plans anyway. “Excuse me, is Jane in the garden?”

“Jane is in the garden,” another said.

“Do you have some milk?”

“The milk is in the refrigerator!”

I started laughing to myself. Maybe it was all the wine I’d drunk, or it was the Americans’ ankle socks and their forward-facing backpacks, but I couldn’t stop.

One of the teenagers caught my eye and winked, taking me for a coconspirator.

On the day we’d decided to leave Paris, I became French.