That Sunday morning, William looked up from his book and gazed over the Parisian rooftops, the blue sky beginning to break through the haze. He and Nelson were planning to leave Paris in two days, heading to Rome, and they still had a list of museums to visit and sights to see. They had been moving at a fast pace, seeing as much as they could during each day, drinking long into each night.
In a little over a week, he would turn twenty-four. And here he was in an apartment in the sixth arrondissement. A little balcony overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens. The street noises floating up. The smell of burning leaves. William and Nelson there, together, the European trip that had been planned since they were young. Nelson was in between years at law school; William had accrued time off from the bank where he had worked since graduation. In the late mornings, before Nelson woke, William had taken to sitting out on the balcony, drinking a coffee and smoking a cigarette, one of the French unfiltered ones, the sun peering behind the ornate roofs. It was close to the Paris that he had often imagined. He didn’t want the trip to end.
The phone rang, and William knocked over his coffee on the way inside but Nelson got to the phone before he did, answering in his perfect French. He listened, turning his face toward William and raising one eyebrow in that way he does. “Your mother,” he mouthed. He nodded and held his finger up when William gestured for the phone. William knew something must be wrong. She would never call otherwise and certainly not so early in the morning. An aunt? Gerald?
Nelson handed the phone over.
“Mother,” William said. “What is it?”
He turned his back on Nelson as he listened to her, once again looking at the Parisian skyline, and he knew before she said it that Father was dead. A heart attack, while he was out working in the garden. Mother was crying now, and he tried to understand what she was saying. He tried hard to be patient. “Mother, please,” he finally said. “Just tell me the basic facts. I’ll come home as soon as I can arrange it.”
He kept nodding, trying to follow the broken conversation, but mostly he was ashamed at how angry he felt. Angry at Father for ruining this trip. He hadn’t wanted him to go. The way he looked at him when he told him about it. It was as though he was twelve again.
He cut Mother off midsentence. “I’ll send a telegram with my travel arrangements,” he said. He hung up after saying goodbye and turned around to look at Nelson. “My father,” he said. “Gone.”
“Shit,” Nelson said, and there were tears in his eyes. There were none in William’s. Nelson had known him almost as long. William felt oddly numb. “What now?” Nelson asked.
“I need to head home,” William said. “Mother’s a mess.”
He crossed the Channel on the night ferry. It took a bit of an argument, but he persuaded Nelson to go on to Rome as they had planned. “Look,” he had said, “you don’t need to be back until classes start up again. Go and enjoy. Who knows when we’ll get here again?” He’d heard again from home, a telegram from Gerald, and the memorial service wasn’t to be held until mid-September, to ensure that everyone at school could attend. He sounded in charge, Gerald did. He was the right one to be there, to help take care of Mother, to be the grieving face of the family. William knew he would only disappoint.
After he got off the train the following morning, he found his way to the ticket office in London and inquired about exchanging his passage for the earliest possible date.
“You’re in luck, sir,” the clerk said. “We’ve just had a cancellation. There’s a place for you on the ship this Wednesday.”
He handed over his ticket and his passport, and she wrote up the new ticket and handed everything back. This was why he had come to London; this was what he had hoped. He had two days until the ship was to sail. He wanted to be with Bea.