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Carol hurried across Rue de Rivoli and up Rue Saint Bon, a street in Le Marais that was too narrow for cars. Ahead of her, the window boxes on the stone wall of l’Église Saint-Merri flowed with pink and red clouds of trailing geraniums.
She turned right on Rue de la Verrerie and walked past closed shops and dwindling crowds in the cafés.
She figured the writers’ circle might be just the thing, in her desperate effort to get her creative mojo back. She had missed an evening with Louise, though.
She walked past a second-hand clothing store, known as a kilo shop because a shopper’s selections were weighed and sold by the kilo. She had grown up wearing second-hand clothes, so ashamed of it, so afraid that her schoolmates would find out and pick on her.
Carol remembered two children in her class at age seven or so, a brother and sister who looked ragged, dressed in worn hand-me-downs. They would stand back-to-back in the schoolyard. For some reason, Carol’s schoolmates had singled these two out, and quite a few of them harassed and bullied the two relentlessly every recess. Carol had joined in once. She had run at the two, shouting names in their faces.
That night, in bed, she’d felt terrible. So terrible, she knew she had to change. She resolved to show her parents what was happening at school so they’d do something to make it stop.
The next morning, she’d snuck into the hall closet and found her parents’ video camera, a great heavy thing. She stuffed it into her bookbag, which she took out on the playground at recess. The camera worked great as she filmed her classmates running at the suffering brother and sister, screaming names and swear words.
“Hey! What are you doing!” One of the playground monitors, who should have been protecting the victims, grabbed for the camera but knocked it out of her hands. It shattered on the asphalt. Bits of plastic and glass scattered everywhere.
Carol got a caning that night, and she could still feel it, here on the streets of Paris.
She had decided back then that she’d do something, somehow, to influence people to put themselves in the shoes of people like that brother and sister. I haven’t done it yet, Carol thought. I’d better get cracking.
She walked on toward her apartment—thank God she could afford to live in Le Marais. Weary from the long day, she couldn’t wait to get home. Her place was two flights up from a pricey boutique that never seemed to have her style.
Her building was on Rue Pavée; she liked that the street had been mentioned in a scene of the French Revolution in Les Miserables. She was exhausted, mostly because of guilt at being out all evening at the writers’ group, trying to save her career instead of being home with Louise. It remained to be seen if this group would be the answer.
She was doing this to keep her job, to provide for her daughter. Jeffrey made a salary, too, and paid half the rent, but Carol didn’t believe in relying on a man for income. She had to have her own money: you never knew what might happen.
Weariness started in her feet and worked up her body. Trapèze had been difficult all day—Gregoire had insisted that she make stupid changes to a script she had written, and she felt he was ruining the story, as usual—so she felt spent and in no mood to fend off the constant flow of Jeffrey’s criticisms.
She passed a corner where the streets came together at much less than right angles. In fact, there wasn’t a single right angle intersection anywhere in Paris. How could you position furniture in a room like that? Hard to imagine. She was happy with the apartment she was in. She had longed all evening to get home, and here she was, and sad to say not feeling much peace. She was just hoping that Jeffrey was asleep.
Jeffrey was such a critical bloke, she thought.
Bloke. What a useful word. Carol used slang from every level of British society. As a writer, she had an ear for great words and used them with relish, giving only a passing thought to what society-people would think of her for using them. Her attitude was, artists steal. They see an idea they like, they take it. They use every gleaming thing, like magpies lining their nests.
She let herself in her big old wooden door. Getting up the wooden circular staircase presented a new challenge. Each step had settled over the years at a different angle. The banister, polished with beeswax by the porter, was slick under her hand.
Her apartment faced La Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, a library built in the 1550s. She anticipated looking at that hotbed of French intellectual activity from the tiny balcony off her living room. Without Jeffrey.
She opened the door to her apartment. All was quiet. Perhaps she’d have a moment to herself, to gain a respite from the day. Then she’d sneak into Louise’s room and gaze for a moment.
Silently she dropped her purse among the pillows covered in fabrics from India, put her keys quietly in her bag, and bumped her knee against the coffee table, which was covered with more richly colored fabric. She opened the door to the balcony and stepped out. Footsteps and voices sounded in the Rue Pavée below, echoing against the stone walls of the bibliothèque opposite. She began to relax.
“Did you have a good writers’ group?” Jeffrey said behind her. He stepped onto the balcony. She felt herself tense up with fear that he would start in again. Keep your poise, Carol.
“Yes, I have a feeling I’ll get good ideas there,” she said.
“Louise was whining for you. You really ought to be here more.”
“I’d like to be, but I have to work,” Carol said. That was a bit tetchy, she said to herself. Put him in a good mood. “I’m grateful that you take care of her.”
“You should be,” he said. “I sometimes wonder if you don’t think you’re a better mother than you really are.”
This was the ten-thousandth in a long litany of criticisms he had leveled at her in two years. She had gently pointed out his tendency to criticize, had quietly asked him to consider her feelings, and when he had continued, had yelled at him to stop. He had just blithely kept doing it.
“Ouch!”
“Well, it’s true.”
“We’ve barely said hello and you’re already tearing me down. Can’t we just stand on the balcony for a minute without criticisms?”
“You’re the one criticizing. I’m not the bad guy, Carol.”
“Oh, for goodness sake, have mercy on my soul!” Carol brushed past him to go back into the apartment. She was tired: of his digs at her, of protesting, of how obtuse he was. She felt his fingers clamp on her wrist.
Carol had had enough. The longer she stayed with him, the lower her self-esteem—and her ability to be creative—became. And what about his influence on her daughter? Louise could hear the difference between how he talked to her and how he talked to her mother. Carol didn’t want her daughter to grow up thinking that this was what she should expect from men.
Carol had been thinking about all this for months now, and it flashed through her mind in a second. She tugged her arm, but he wouldn’t let go. She lifted her free hand as though to slap him. She halted the motion, staring at him. Then she worked at prying his fingers off her wrist.
“Jeffrey, you praise Louise, the little girl, to the skies, and that’s nice, but you criticize me, the adult woman, up and down, day in day out. What am I going to do?”
“Think hard before you say anything else. I mind your daughter morning and evening, and many weekends, while you’re working.”
“I know, I appreciate it, but—”
“I’m just telling you what I see happening. Louise needed you this evening.”
Carol knew that was true, and it fueled her anger. She tore at his fingers but couldn’t pry them off her wrist.
“I know, but I’m having professional difficulties, and—”
“What difficulties?” Jeffrey’s eyes narrowed. “If you think I’m going to carry this place alone, think again.”
“You know I don’t expect that. I’m going to this group because I need ideas for films that people will like.”
“You’d better figure something out.”
“Jeffrey, I just told you, I did figure something out. I’m going to this group.”
“Now who’s got the attitude?” He let go of her wrist.
“Oh, for goodness sake, Jeffrey, find something to do besides belittle me.”
Carol could tell their voices were carrying outdoors, reverberating along the stone walls of the bibliothèque and the houses opposite it. Every neighbor could hear them. And the argument might wake Louise up. She cringed inwardly, then whirled away from him.
“Carol.”
“What?”
“You know I love you.”
“I know, but please—”
“—We’ll discuss this later. Let’s go to bed.”
Carol took off her scarf, its cool silk brushing her flushed cheek. After all his snide comments, how could he truly believe she wanted to make love? Yet he did. He was lighting tea candles and putting them on the coffee table.
His lack of awareness of how he was hurting her was a nightmare that droned on and on. Yet what could she do? Louise loved him. Carol knew she couldn’t forget that breaking up with Jeffrey would rob Louise of the only father figure she’d known.
“Jeffrey, please put the candles on a plate or something. When the wax drips, it gets into the fabric that I lugged all the way from India.”
“You’re frigid, Carol, that’s the problem. You care more about fabric than sex.”
“I believe in candles and romance. I just don’t want to destroy the place!”
“We don’t make love enough.”
“Crikey!” That complaint again. “What on earth is wrong with once or twice a week?”
“You don’t like me lighting candles. You don’t want to make love.”
“Because you constantly belittle me!”
“I do not!”
“Yes you do, Jeffrey.” How could he be so oblivious? And yet he was. Just like her father.
“It’s time you left.”
Jeffrey’s eyes narrowed. “Be careful.”
“I’m sure.”
Carol wasn’t sure.
“Get out,” she said.
“What about Louise?”
“I’ll figure something out. Go. Now.”
Jeffrey stared hard at her. “You can’t accept the truth, that’s your problem.”
“Aargh!” Carol picked up an Indian pillow, its little mirrors and beads in paisley patterns gleaming in the candlelight. She whacked him as hard as she could with it.
“Ouch!”
“Go!”
“What about my stuff?”
Carol was desperate to be alone, to face what this break-up meant in peace. Every moment that he remained in her sight meant acute pain rather than dull pain. But she relented.
“Okay, pack a small bag. You can pick the rest up on Saturday at noon, when we’re not here. Give me your key. I’ll leave word with the porter to let you in.”
“Carol, don’t do this,” Jeffrey pleaded. “Think of me, of my relationship with that darling little girl.”
“This darling big girl can’t tolerate your criticisms anymore. Go get your toothbrush, and leave.”
“I want to look at Louise, I want to kiss her.”
“Oh shit! You’re making me crazy. Okay, Okay.”
Jeffrey loped down the hall and Carol hurried after him.
“Don’t wake her up!”
Jeffrey knelt beside Louise’s bed and took one of her small hands in his big ones. He kissed it. He stroked her hair. Carol saw tears in his eyes, and she felt grief in her throat. Poor Louise, losing Jeffrey. And what am I going to do without him here to care for her? Without someone to share my bed?
Jeffrey looked up at her, big glistening lines on his cheeks, like snail trails.
“Please, Carol, reconsider,” he whispered.
“You treat her the way you ought to treat me,” Carol whispered back. “I’ve been telling you to stop. I’m sick of telling you.”
Carol saw that his one moment of tenderness was over. His face hardened to its usual lines.
“Don’t get your knickers in such a twist,” he said.
Carol marched out of Louise’s room and into the bathroom. She grabbed Jeffrey’s toothbrush and shaving gear and jammed it into his travel shave kit, which was sitting on the back of the toilet. She returned to the door of Louise’s room.
He was still kneeling, stroking Louise’s hand. Carol went in and poked his shoulder.
“You’ve got to go,” she whispered.
Finally he stood up, but as he did he leaned one hand on the edge of the bed, and Louise’s small body rolled toward the depression he made. Her eyes opened.
“Hi, Jeffrey,” she smiled.
“Honey, Jeffrey’s leaving on a business trip, but I’ll be here,” Carol said. “You go back to sleep, okay?”
“Can I have some water?”
The water routine again. Carol wanted to curse him for waking the child. She was exhausted, and she still had to arrange a babysitter for tomorrow. No, she couldn’t get it arranged this late. She would have to call in sick. Her career was sinking, there’d be no man in the house, she’d feel all that misery again, she’d have to grieve the loss of Jeffrey, she had to help Louise grieve, too. Fuck! She went and got a glass of water, and let Louise sip it. The child of course knew something was wrong.
“Jeffrey, where are you going?” She sounded plaintive.
“I’ll be back, don’t worry.”
“You’ll see him in a day or two, honey, there, lay down, off to sleep with you.” Carol left the room to put the glass back in the bathroom. Please, Jeffrey, get out of there, she breathed. Please get out before I’m dead-exhausted. Please!
Carol sighed with relief when she saw him moving away from Louise’s bed. As long as he was in motion, it would be easier to steer him toward the door. It was when he stood, feet separated, hands on hips, that he was impossible to budge. Go! she whispered to herself. She headed to the apartment door, opened it, stood back. Jeffrey was moving slowly, hooray, as long as he was moving, there was hope, wasn’t there.
“Carol, are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Come back Saturday for your stuff.”
“I need a clean shirt.” He headed back down the hall, past Louise’s door to their room.
“Mummy! Jeffrey!”
Carol thought she would crumble right there on the floor. She had nothing left, yet she had to give Louise something.
“Louise, I’ll be right there. Jeffrey!”
He appeared with a small suitcase in one hand. Thank God, he was getting closer to the door again, a chance for relief, privacy, a moment in which to recoup some energy.
“See you, Jeffrey,” Carol said, exhausted and past caring what it sounded like to him.
“That’s all you have to say to me? After all I’ve done for you? Really, Carol—”
“Learn to stop criticizing with every breath you take. Until then, bugger off.” Carol closed and locked the door. Then she remembered something. Fuck, another chance for him to get back in the apartment. She opened the door again.
“Give me your key,” she called after Jeffrey, who was heading down the uneven staircase. He paused, turned, dug in a pocket and threw a key at her.
“You can’t do anything right, Carol, not even breaking up.”
“Shut up!” she shouted. Then she worried about Louise hearing her, and the neighbors who didn’t like the British.
When she started to regret this breakup later, she would remember this comment. Proof that she was doing the right thing. She locked the apartment door again, blew the tea candles out—he never had put them on a plate—and stood in the darkened room. She was quiet, feeling the difference, the empty space that Jeffrey had left in the apartment and in her heart.
“Mummy!”
She went to comfort Louise.
