| |
John had found a person who managed estate sales, and the sale was today. He made coffee and wandered around the spacious apartment. The remaining Baccarat lamp was priced at $7,000. A $3,000 loss from the original price. It was all a loss, this terrible swamp of stuff. The responsibility to care for it sucked energy from him with each footstep. He owned these beautiful things, and all they did was drain the life out of him.
Cassandra’s lawyer had sent a list of all the things she wanted from the apartment. John had tossed it away in a $1,000 antique brass spittoon converted into a wastebasket. Tough! He had acted fast so he could make cash before court orders and such nonsense started flowing in.
He had surprised himself when he realized that he didn’t have a sentimental attachment to a single thing in his apartment, that the one thing he wanted in all this mess was Emily. Oh, yes, and the sailboat. He dialed Emily on his cell.
“Hi, cutie,” he said when she answered, sounding sleepy. It was nine o’clock, time for her to be up so they could do things together.
“I’ll be there to pick you up in thirty minutes,” he said. “Didn’t your mother tell you?”
“My alarm went off, but I fell back to sleep,” she mumbled.
At least Cassandra wasn’t causing trouble about seeing Emily, John thought. Although she might when he sold all this crap she treasured. Well, he needed the cash, he was not calling off the sale.
“I have a big day planned,” he said. “Wear comfortable shoes.” He signed off with Emily as the door buzzer rang. He pushed the button to let the estate sales team through both the street and foyer doors and waited while they climbed the flight of stairs to his apartment.
He invited the team of seven to come in, one person to keep an eye on each room, and the French estate sale guy, Henri, who had a cashbox and a phone with a credit card cube attached. John offered them coffee.
He rummaged in the fridge, to see what he might make for dinner when he got home that night. He felt like eating a hamburger. He remembered asking the cook a year ago to make them for his family one night. He had expected his burger to taste of French beef raised on French grasses springing fresh and green from French soil, soaked with French rain from French clouds. It hadn’t tasted of anything.
But the cheese! That was a different story. Charles de Gaulle had lamented that he couldn’t govern a country that had more than 400 kinds of cheese. John had been back across the pond to New York City several times since moving to Paris. He had tried cheeses billed as French, and then had had them in Paris, on pain rustique, criss-crossed with lovely X’s where the crust had a chance to bake even crustier. The cheeses were better in Paris. He guessed that the hold of a ship crossing the Atlantic was not as beneficial to cheese as a cave in France.
He didn’t see much in the fridge to tempt him or Emily. They’d dine out, even if he couldn’t afford it now. He headed to Cassandra’s friend’s apartment, not far away in the Fifth arrondissement.
He had the street door code, and Emily buzzed him through the foyer door, so he started up the gray marble staircase. It was vastly wide, and a strip of green carpet went up the middle, anchored by brass bars. Cassandra wasn’t going to hole up in some dingy place while she waited for her divorce. He had canceled the joint credit cards, so his paying for Cassandra to stay at the George Cinq amongst Saudi princes was not in the mix.
Emily waited for him at the top of the first flight, propping the apartment door open with her foot.
“How’s my girl?” John swept her up in his arms and lifted her off her feet, Emily protesting, and the apartment door clicked shut by mistake.
“Everybody’s still in bed. They’re going to be mad if I ring the bell,” Emily said.
“Can you just go like this?”
Emily looked down at her jogging shoes, shorts, and T-shirt.
“My cell phone is inside. And my jacket for later.” Even in August, Paris could get cool at night.
“You can have my jacket. Let’s go!” John was glad to see Emily was willing to leave without her phone.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m going to surprise you all day long!” John said as they trotted down the stairs and out the wrought-iron door.
They strolled down Boulevard Saint-Michel past Starbucks and the traditional Paris cafés that Starbucks had originally been patterned after. Strange that Starbucks had come back to Paris. And been successful. It wasn’t allowed anywhere else in France, so as not to put mom and pop cafés out of business. The French government was not open to every market force on Planet Earth. John thought that was wise.
They turned left to walk past the bookstalls on Quai des Grands Augustins. It was way too early for the stalls to be open—they were locked up tight, perched on the stone wall above the embankment.
They crossed the Seine at Pont des Arts. The padlocks fastened to the chain link fence sparkled in the sun. John couldn’t look at them. He focused on Le Louvre and its ornate architecture ahead of him instead.
They queued up outside I.M. Pei’s pyramid in the courtyard of Le Louvre. John was aware that they were standing before one of the most photographed architectural sites in the world.
“I want to take a selfie of you and me and the Mona Lisa,” John said. “Us and her together.” Emily smiled.
“Another day I’ll take you to the Branly, to see the art of Aztecs and Mayans. And the Musée des Moyens Ages with The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries.”
“Okay.”
She didn’t sound all that enthused, but they had to go out and do something together, John thought.
When the line in front of the glass pyramid hadn’t moved for ten minutes, he got restless.
“Where did all these people come from?” He had never been to Le Louvre before. Never had time.
“This is tourist season.”
“Oh. I forgot. Well, let’s leave this and the Moyens and Mayans for wintertime and go do the next thing. Surprise destination.” In the past, he would have hailed a taxi, but they used the Metro.
They descended the stairs of Le Louvre Metro station. John reflected that the Paris underground system had no express trains. In New York City, he had to watch carefully which train he stepped into, because he could be whisked away by an express train to a stop 30 blocks or more from where he intended to be. But in Paris, every train made every stop. It was less stressful.
By accident, they ended up in the first subway car. Line 1 was automatic—there was no driver. So the front end was all glass. New York subways didn’t have all this glass in front, John mused, just one little window and whoever got there first could watch the tracks. But here, the view was accessible to anyone in front. New York subways didn’t have as much glass on the sides, either. More space for American advertising that way.
A train going in the opposite direction approached them from a distance, slowly, it seemed at first. John could see light spilling from the oncoming train, and people standing in the first car, getting closer, the tracks changing elevation a bit like a rollercoaster, and then whoosh! The two trains passed each other, so close! Two glowworms glissading past each in a dark tunnel. John watched as his train streamed toward the Tuileries station, which appeared as a pool of light far ahead in the black tunnel.
People had opened some of the small windows in the train, but it was still sticky and hot inside and smelled a bit too much of hot people. The French didn’t seem to mind stuffy air. Most people had a sheen of sweat on their faces but didn’t bother to open the window near them.
In summer in New York City, John reflected, the subway cars were crisp and cold but the platforms were insufferable because the trains dumped their air conditioner exhaust onto them. Here it was the opposite. The train was hot, but when he and Emily stepped out at the Champs Élysées Metro stop, the platform felt much cooler than the car.
They walked across Pont Alexander III admiring the life-sized gilt Pegasus atop each pillar, and the bronze gods and goddesses with gilt spears in their hands guarding the bridge. After they crossed, they descended the stairs to the Seine embankment. John looked back at the bridge.
“Look, Em! The sides are decorated like a wedding cake. Unbelievable!”
Emily took a quick glance, to please her father, John guessed, and then they walked to the Eiffel Tower. They queued again, but the line moved faster this time. To the middle level they went, and they gazed over the city. There was his fifty-nine-story Montparnasse Tower, looking like an ugly black tooth jutting up among the pearly white six-story buildings of Paris. People strolled on the Champ-de-Mars below looking as tiny as the little figures on a miniaturized train set.
Tourists kept pouring onto the observation deck. The platform was crowded, and people kept bumping John, quite deliberately, he felt, with a little message wrapped in each bump: You’re taking up my space.
“Someone’s going over the edge if they bousculer me one more time,” John said.
“We should do this stuff in winter.”
“You’re so right. Let’s go.”
“What’s next?”
“Surprise, ma cherie.”
Emily went along with grace.
Near the Eiffel Tower, but on the other side of the Seine, they clambered aboard a bateau mouche for a boat ride.
“Good thing we got seats,” John said. Emily was being nudged on the side opposite John by a German family. As the boat moved down the Seine, each member of the family saluted—with a snap—every single person on the embankment that was watching boats go by. The father was the leader in this silliness.
“Germans are martial even when they’re sightseeing,” Emily whispered to John.
“Funny, honey! I hope you’re having a grand day,” John said.
“Yeah, sure,” she replied dutifully.
“I didn’t understand before how many tourists were at these sights. I’ve been too busy working.”
“Everyone in Europe wants to come here,” Emily said. “I’ve heard Paris is the capital of Europe.”
“Well, that may be, but New York City is the capital of the world,” John answered. Then what was he doing here? Hunting oil-prince money. He hadn’t gotten very far.
When the boat returned to the quai it had started from, John was hungry.
“Let’s have lunch,” he said, and Emily nodded.
“Yours will be alcohol free,” John said, thinking of Philippe’s daughter. “You can have an Orangina.”
“I’d rather have a diabolo grenadine,” she said.
“Does that have alcohol?
“No!”
“So be it! Let’s get out of here.” They took line 1 east to City Hall, better known as L‘Hôtel de Ville, the big house of the village. Dozens of statues of venerable men of Paris stared down at them from their niches along the walls of City Hall. John steered Emily toward a café on Rue de Rivoli.
“Too noisy, too much traffic,” Emily said. “Let’s go into Le Marais.”
“Fine idea, young lady, how did you get such a good head on your shoulders?”
She smiled, and they walked away from Rue de Rivoli on Rue Vieille du Temple. The sidewalks were crowded with people peering into the boutiques, licking gelato on cones, and generally being a pain. One person bousculer’d John, but he was happy to have Emily with him and didn’t mind so much. They ended up picking out a café named La Chaise au Plafond, on Rue de Trésor. It wasn’t a rue, it was actually an impasse, a dead-end, and quiet.
“Ah, you were right, this is a much better place to talk,” John said. He liked Le Marais, which translated into “The Swamp,” his favorite neighborhood in Paris. It was full of unabashed gay men talking tête-à-tête over small café tables, and Jewish men hurrying to business or the synagogue with black hats and white prayer shawl fringe showing under their black jackets. John thought of it as the boundary crossers living in the same neighborhood as the boundary builders.
They sat under the trees outside and looked at the menu. John was not yet as practiced at austerity as he needed to be, and he ordered an item that cost eighteen euros, even though there were less expensive choices. He picked côte de boeuf extra rôtie, avec beurre marchand de vin. The menu’s English translation: chop of beef. Emily asked for rice avec champignons. When Emily’s drink came—a tall glass one quarter filled with a deep pink syrup, accompanied by a bottle of lemon soda to pour in—John insisted on having a taste.
“That’s good!” he said.
“Duh.” She gave him a reserved smile.
“What’s new with you?” John asked.
“Not much.”
“Well, I joined a writing group!”
“Yeah?”
“I’m writing exactly the kind of book that I think will sell. And the group is critiquing me.”
“Cool.” Emily shifted in her chair and took a sip of her drink. John thought, evidently she’s not too interested in my writing. Or in how much the critiques hurt.
“Tell me what’s new for you. Any boys you’re crazy about?
“Stop!” She looked annoyed.
“A girl as pretty as you must have them lined up! I remember a girl in high school—” and John was in gear, motoring through topics like a Saudi prince in a Bugatti blasting through Paris.
As John talked, a frown line appeared in her forehead, and then she wiggled in her chair. She sucked her soda dry with the straw and made a loud burble at the bottom of the glass.
“Emily, you’re not supposed to do that, it’s not polite,” John said. But it was half-hearted. He was so glad to see her, wanted so badly to connect with his daughter, needed so deeply to hold some sort of family together.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“We’re just getting warmed up, and you want to go? Okay, we’re going to Notre Dame.”
“Nah, Dad, I just want to go home. I’m pretty tired.” She slumped back in her chair as if to prove her point.
The fact that she called Cassandra’s friend’s apartment home stabbed John’s heart. He leaned forward across the table. He was afraid to ask, afraid of Emily’s response, but he would ask anyway.
“Listen, pumpkin, what if you were to come live with me?” He reached for Emily’s hand.
“Dad—”
“I know, you don’t want to hurt your Mom. But think about it. You’re sixteen, you can decide for yourself where you live. I want you with me.” He caressed her knuckles with his fingertips, then pulled his hand away.
Emily was silent, twisted her fingers in her lap, and looked down at them, frowning.
“In two weeks I’ll take you out on the Grey Skies!” John declared. He didn’t like her frown. He had to sell this idea, just like convincing a prospective client to invest with him.
“Can I bring a friend?” She looked up expectantly.
John no more wanted a friend of Emily’s along than he wanted Cassandra to be there.
“Couldn’t it be just us?” he wheedled. Why was Emily so withdrawn? Why did she tell him nothing? Suddenly John’s heart double-clutched. Maybe this was how it had started with Philippe’s daughter—closing up her life, not talking. Emily was headed for perdition, just like Meredith, John thought, and there’s nothing I can do about it because I can’t seem to get Emily to talk to me.
He looked at his daughter, who was staring toward the street. Hold on, John, you’re exaggerating. Aren’t teenagers known for their silence to parents? He wasn’t sure, this was his first teenager.
Still no answer. She was looking down again, scowling, as she did when she was a little girl and wanted her own way.
“Okay, a friend.” John was disappointed by Emily’s reaction but decided not to press for an answer. He signaled to the waiter and paid the bill. Then he tried to tempt her into not going “home.”
“I wanted to watch a movie tonight. They finally sell microwave popcorn in the food stores in Paris, we could have that and—”
Emily threw herself back in her chair, frowning.
“—Sorry, Dad, I’m not up to it this weekend.”
“Honey, I wanted so much to spend the day with you.”
Emily didn’t answer. She just glowered at her hands.
Disappointed, aching—thinking, this is how Philippe feels—John stood up to go, and he noticed that Emily leapt to her feet. He felt worse.
When they got back to Cassandra’s friend’s apartment in the Fifth, the security code worked and Emily whisked through the street door.
The second security code let them pass through the foyer door, from the mosaic-tiled lobby to the stairwell, just like thousands of apartment buildings in Paris.
“Bye, Dad, thank you,” she called as she raced up the marble staircase. When John knew that the apartment door had been opened to her, he closed the foyer door, then the street door, and walked away.
