Paris Times Eight (14 page)

“Stunted, you mean.”

“No, lovely, and, well, let me finish, and at night you go walking and see men sitting on a wall camouflaged by them, dangling their feet, waiting for love, for a love adventure, behind the trees. Paris is like that, places where love happens.” What I was trying to say was, come to Paris, love what I love, love me.

The clatter stopped. She faced me, seizing the scissors that had been eluding her these few minutes.

“All right,” she said.

“All right, what?” I said.

“I'm coming.”

“Coming where?” I felt my stomach pitch and dive, blindfolded, into the depths of my being.

“To Paris.”

I stared, dumbstruck. I didn't think she would do it. But more to the point, I didn't think she'd do it then. “Um, you know that I am supposed to be meeting um, that guy I told you about, um, Sam? That I am supposed to, um, stay at his apartment?”

“I'm nobody's third wheel, I'll have you know,” she responded, sharply. “I'll get my own hotel room. Do Paris on my own. Don't you be thinking to be taking care of me.”

“Do Paris on your own?” I exclaimed. “But you don't even speak the language!”

“Before you were born, young lady, I was in London on my own. I managed there. I think it will be fun bombing around Paris by myself. I'll rent a car.”

“You can't drive in Paris!” I protested. “The driving there is treacherous!”

“You organize your trip,” she said, slamming a cupboard with a kick of her foot. “And I'll organize mine.”

True to her word, she stubbornly organized her upcoming trip without consulting me. In the phone book she found a Toronto travel agency specializing in trips to France, and thought it better to seek the advice of a woman squeezed behind a desk in a downtown office, instead of me. She also didn't ask me what to pack and so, when the time came, packed almost everything in her closet into four large suitcases plus a carry-on. She didn't ask me many questions about Paris at all, except for the details of my flight so that, on the plane ride over, we could sit together. I meanwhile telephoned Sam and told him of the change in plans. I wouldn't stay with him, but with my mother, in a hotel of her choice. He insisted we still rendezvous the first night and also the second, given that it would be the weekend. He said he wanted to meet my mother. He was organizing a night on the town. A threesome. My mother fussed for a few days about what she should wear ignoring all my suggestions. We took a night flight to Paris and sat next to each other in the dark, barely speaking.

FROM THE AIRPORT
we took a taxi to the Left Bank hotel she had booked. It was tucked away behind Saint-Séverin, one of the most beautiful churches in Paris, in the Latin Quarter. Situated near the lively Boulevard Saint-Michel, a hub for students attending the nearby Sorbonne, it was a good location if you were young, but hardly desirable if you were middle-aged and wanting sleep. As my mother quickly discovered.

She had booked a corner room on the ground floor, and the streets on both sides roared with the most ferocious traffic. I had never known Paris to be so noisy. Motor scooters ripped past, hauling hearts into throats. The bedroom held two double beds and a writing desk. The bed's coverlet was the knotty rayon kind that you see in cheap hotels everywhere. It looked worn and wrinkled. She sat down on it, and the bed seemed to sink with the weight of her disappointment. A television was mounted on the wall over the minibar. Soon after entering the room for the first time, my mother turned it on. I had never watched television in Paris before, and it shocked me. The screen showed images of Paris streets on fire. There were police cars and cordons and batons and blood. The telecast was in rapid-fire French. I could clearly make out the word
terroriste.
There must have been another bomb. But that's not what bothered me; it was that my mother had turned on the
TV
at all. Instinctively, like an old habit. This was not what one did in Paris—one did not replicate the customs of home. In Paris, one started afresh.

“You watch too much television,” I said, my voice dripping with disapproval.

“I do not,” she replied matter-of-factly. She had lain down on the coverlet, her legs stretched out before her, and she continued watching the screen.

“Why do you have it on when you don't understand a word of what's being said?”

In the silence that stretched between us, I heard my echo. I sounded intolerant and patronizing.

“It relaxes me,” she said, her voice steady but defiant. She aimed the converter at the screen and turned up the volume. A scooter zipped past the window.

I retreated into a sulk. It was morning, but she said she was too tired to go out and explore Paris right away. She suggested we both get some sleep, and rolled fully clothed on to her side, her back to me once more.

I had been sleeping only a short time when the phone rang. It was Sam, calling from Paris. Oh, but I was in Paris. I forced myself to focus. We were supposed to meet for dinner, Sam said. Dinner. I hadn't even had breakfast yet. My mother stirred next to me. “What is it?” she asked.

“My date,” I hissed. She laid her head back on the pillow. In Paris time it was past five o'clock in the afternoon. Sam wondered if I could be ready in an hour. I cupped the receiver and asked my mother if it was okay if I left her alone. She had said on the way over that she had no interest in going out with me, with him, that first night, saying she was no one's third wheel. Still, I didn't like the thought of leaving her alone. But she held her ground, or rather her pillow.

“Of course,” she replied, sounding suddenly awake. “It's why you're here, isn't it?”

I took a bath, hoping to wash away my fatigue. I had brought a black velvet dress for my evening out. I hung it up on the back of the bathroom door to let the steam from my bath smooth away its suitcase wrinkles. A tip I had read in a fashion magazine—how to look chic after a transatlantic flight, or something like that. Except I wasn't feeling chic. Getting ready for a man I barely knew felt like a chore. I dried my hair and applied my makeup. I looked at myself in the hotel-room mirror. The face looking back at me felt foreign.

Sam stood in the lobby with a black umbrella in one hand, a briefcase in another. It was Friday, and he had just come from work. In his pin-striped suit he looked more strictly controlled than I remembered. His round face was the color of the raincoat he had folded neatly over one arm. Both his brows and mustache were thick and black, dispelling any impression of blandness. His lips were thin, but his smile amiable and easy. When he saw me, his brown eyes danced. He dropped his briefcase with such a bang that it caused the woman behind the counter to utter a tiny scream. He reached out a hand to grasp mine. I saw the glint of his cufflinks, the stark whiteness of his cuff. His grip was strong, eager. An American in Paris, not afraid of a thing. “Hi,” he said enthusiastically.

He started walking out the door, expecting me to follow. I did. He walked briskly, and I had to hurry to keep pace. He asked me about my flight, about the weather in Toronto, about my hotel room. A siren wailed past us, a police car with blue lights flashing. I saw people rushing past. Sam grabbed my elbow, and continued walking. “We're going to have a great night,” he said determinedly. “As luck would have it, your street has a restaurant that I've been dying to try.” He came to a stop in front of a small bistro with large windows topped by an emerald-green awning. He pushed the door open for me and we entered a small, wood-panelled room that had just one other couple in it. The proprietor seated us in a booth so deep that my legs dangled.

“I heard the food here is to die for,” Sam said, cracking open the menu. “I suggest we start with
soupe aux choux,
which is cabbage soup,” he said. “I'm going for the
soufflé
au fromage,
which is made with cheese, but you should have the
poulet de Bresse au vinaigre,
which is chicken in a wine-vinegar sauce.”

I had put my menu down to watch him. Was he purposefully being condescending?

“For dessert, there's
poires à la beaujolaise.
”

“Pears poached in red wine,” I said, cutting him off. His face flamed red.

“Why didn't you stop me?” he asked.

“You didn't give me the chance,” I said.

“I feel foolish,” he muttered. “I forgot that Canadians are bilingual.”

“Well, some of us are,” I said. “I'm not. But I can read a menu.”

“How many times have you been to Paris, anyway?”

“This is my fourth time,” I answered. “But it's the first time I'm here with my mother.”

“There is so much I don't know about you,” he said.

“I know,” I said. And then he leaned across the table to kiss me.

He suggested that we take an eau-de-vie at his place, and so after dinner he hailed a taxi, and we went across Paris, passing through two police barricades to reach his apartment, whose large windows framed the Eiffel Tower. Soon to be mine, I thought. I was sleepy and yawning as he took me by the hand to show me the bedroom, with a queen-sized bed overhung with a portrait of the Madonna on the wall. In the dim light of the velvety room I also saw a crucifix and a portrait of the Pope. “They freak me out,” said Sam, raising an eyebrow in the direction of the icons. “I'm Jewish, but I have to sleep with them every night.”

My eyes were heavy, and my head light. With the mother of God looking down at me, I forgot all about my own mother, alone in her hotel room. I didn't remember her until the next day, when the phone rang. I blinked into the darkness. Where was I? A man's voice. I listened hard. Oh yes, Sam—I was at his apartment. In Paris. Where I was with my…
Holy shit!
My mother! I listened carefully to what Sam was saying.

“Yes. I look forward to meeting you, too,” he said with laughter in his voice.

What time was it? I had to know.

Sam tiptoed into the room, his steps muffled by thick carpeting. “Oh, so you're awake!”

He flew to my side, wanting to kiss me. I pulled away; I wanted to get out of the bed. I saw that I was naked. What happened last night? I could barely remember, but no need to be rude. “Um, good morning.”

“Afternoon,” Sam said, correcting me as he bent to nibble on my bare shoulder.

“Excuse me? Afternoon? Really? Please. What time
is
it?” I shuddered to imagine the answer.

“It is,” said Sam, lifting a wrist on which was a sparkling silver-plated watch, “one o'clock exactly.” He leaned in to kiss me again.

I inhaled sharply, a note of horror sounding inside my throat.

“Don't worry,” Sam said cheerily. “I just spoke to your mother. You never told me she was such a crack-up!”

I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to cover myself with a sheet. I wondered how she had gotten Sam's number. I remembered that I had left my day timer behind in the hotel room. She must have searched through it. I saw her in my mind's eye, turning the pages, frantic, and I felt terribly guilty. I must get back to her straightaway. Sam told me to sit pretty; he'd made coffee.

He left the room to get it, and I jumped out of the bed and looked for my clothes. They were spread around the floor. It was all starting to come back to me—the zipper on my dress becoming stuck, me forgetting to take off my shoes, his hands on my thighs. He knew me better now, I reckoned. I glanced nervously up at the Sacred Heart of Jesus. My eye fell on the closet. The door was open, revealing a wall of suits, black, charcoal, navy-blue. Just then Sam waltzed back into the room, balancing a cup and saucer. The coffee was inky black and went down like spring-water. I felt a tingling inside not entirely attributable to the caffeine. Sam had grabbed my face with his hands. He asked me to stay.

“I have to go,” I said, turning to pull on my pantyhose.

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“About last night,” he said, his voice revving to a low rumble of desire.

“Forget it,” I said, pushing him away. “Get me a taxi. You haven't a clue about my mother. Not a clue.”

I sat rigidly in the backseat of the cab as it drove away from Sam's apartment of privilege, anxious about returning to my mother in her paltry hotel. It was Saturday afternoon in late September, and the air was warm and hazy. I rolled down my window. A lemon sun hung in the sky, its rays igniting into fiery brilliance the bronze lampposts and golden sculptures on the Pont Alexandre
III
. As I inched toward the Left Bank, the city's glow intensified. The golden tip of the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde had also caught the sun and looked like a blowtorch singeing low-lying mauve clouds and turning their borders orange. Ahead of me was Peace in her chariot, flanked by the golden figure of
Victory
on either side of her at the top of the
Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel,
gloriously burnished. Paris
was
burning. I felt a commingling of fear and awe. I thought of my desire for Paris, how it was like a long, lingering flame burning inside me. A passion fired by longing. A dream that won't die. Its beauty was a higher standard, what I wanted for myself. But who was I kidding? Paris was eternal; I was merely human.

“I'm so sorry,” I blurted, tripping out of the taxi when I saw my mother sitting on the stairs of the hotel. I inwardly ducked. I expected her to verbally thrash me, right there on the street. But she looked up not for a fight. Her face at that moment seemed to carry the entire story of her years. Her skin was the color of the sidewalk, circles ringed her eyes. She had had a sleepless night, I thought.

“How was your night?” she asked, her voice curiously flat.

“Good,” I said, not wanting to say anything more. “Nice guy?” she said, looking at her nails. She was picking at them, making the skin look raw.