Plum Blossoms in Paris (17 page)

It takes something monumental to slip the knot.

I quicken my steps to keep up with Mathieu. “Of course, I keep forgetting that you’re American too.”

“Why would you say such a ridiculous thing?” he mutters, distracted.

There is a musical trio performing on the street corner ahead of us. Violin, cello, clarinet. They perform a Hungarian waltz that, like the pied piper, summons the rats, or in this case, tourists. A clutch of onlookers encircles the group, siphoning pedestrian traffic into the street. Sunlight finds the gold of bracelets dangling from a second-story window, as their owner tosses a coin to the street below. The people laugh and applaud. The violinist, wearing a head scarf, raises her bow and dips her head in acknowledgment, never losing the lilting beat.

I turn toward Mathieu. “I was just thinking of the headline in
Le Monde
after September 11: ‘We are all Americans.’ For a moment there, we belonged to the same nation.”

He frowns and tries to speed up, though we’ve hit the snarl of bodies. “That was a sentimental gesture, Daisy. I was not an American. Nobody believed that then, and certainly not now.”

Stung, I slow. “I was just trying to lighten your mood.”

“I am light.”

“So light you might float away?” I shout at his back.

Diverted, some of the people glance over at us, annoyed that we’ve strummed this minor chord.

He rubs the back of his neck and says over his shoulder, “I do not think we should go down this road.”

I slow to a stop. “I’m not going to censor my conversation because you have issues with your mother.”

Mathieu halts.

“My
mother?”
He backtracks to confront me. “You believe I have issues with your country because my mother went there?” Mathieu laughs and wildly scans the crowd behind me. “How optimistic of you, Daisy.”

Sarcasm is the cruelest first cut. I could gasp from the pain, if I had the breath in my body.

“Among other things,” I reply.

He wipes at his mouth. “These things you speak of.”

“What about them?”

“Were they responsible for your leaving America?”

I look at him in confusion. “No. Why would—no.”

“Maybe they should have been.”

“Mathieu, if every American who had a problem with Bush left the country, only the wackos would be left, and that would be a problem for you, too.”

“All right. So what are you doing to deserve to stay?”

My mouth opens, but only the music follows.

He shakes his head, gathering himself, before chucking me under the chin and producing a smile. “I am playing with you, Daisy.”

I knock his hand away. “No, you’re not.”

The trio wraps it up, and the onlookers briefly applaud before dropping away like bombs. I can feel the wind of their movement lick my back. We remain stalled. We could wrap it up too, drop away … explode in different places.

“I am simply tired of Americans using the cover of that day. It cast a long shadow over your country, but that is no excuse to plunge parts of the world into darkness.”

“I agree with you.”

He stuffs his hands into his pockets and rocks back on his heels. “And American suffering is no more legitimate than the suffering of Iraqi citizens.”

“Not at all.”

“In fact, compared to the trauma inflicted on Iraq, you got off easy.”

“Yes,
I
have.”

“It was such a foolish, unthinking calculation.” He places his shoe over the woman’s dropped coin, which bounced out of the cello case and onto the sidewalk. The musicians, packing their instruments away, do not notice.

“It always appears so from a distance.”

“Are you saying it was not foolish at the time?”

“I’m saying that nobody intended it to have the effect it did.”

Mathieu’s face grows red. “That is no excuse, Daisy.”

I grab hold of his hand with both of mine. “No, it’s not.”

There are tears of anger in his eyes. But I am not so foolish as to think they are directed at me, or even my country. Or that he will let them fall.

One day is all it takes for some people to forget geography. But there are those they leave behind.

“Mathieu, you don’t live in darkness anymore. You made your own light.”

He shakes off my hand, and bends down to retrieve the euro, smoothly pocketing it.

When he looks up at me, his eyes are like lead. “I do not know what you mean, Daisy.”

He turns and walks away.

I recall what it feels like to be alone, in this church called Paris.

“We are here.”

Yes, I followed.

Mathieu opens a heavy wooden door with rusted hinges and ushers me toward a winding walkway that bisects the courtyard. He does not look at me. And I do not look at him, though I am so conscious of not looking at him not looking at me that he is like a phantom limb I cannot see but still cruelly feel. I wonder if this is the beginning of the end. I am equal parts terrified and relieved. I do not like that I followed; I do not like that he took my following for granted.

The courtyard is tranquil and idyllic, like every secret garden in Paris. Ivy loops around and through the crumbling stone walls, waning blooms bob from imperfect pots, while the shadowy possibility of Parisian cats beckons at every turn. Once again, the sound of water, leaping from the lion’s mouth, attempts to soothe our pique as we venture deeper into this temporary asylum. An orange tabby, balanced on a windowsill, tracks us as we silently cross the cobblestone path. I feel nauseated and gray, the charm of the scene lost on me. With each step, I grow more aware that the physical magnetism Mathieu and I share, along with a wealth of good intention, may not save us from flaming out by the end of this golden, if fading, day. I am no longer merely adorable to Mathieu, and if part of me is proud, I also feel the loss of our childish delight in one another—the beautiful belief that we could shelter that spark of passion through all storms.

Mathieu suddenly sinks down on a lichen-covered stump and pulls me down beside him. Something catches in my throatat his touch, and I feel the warm weight of the stolen coin in my hand. I hesitate before allowing myself to look at him, but when I do, his eyes are drawn and sad, his face a collection of my doubts and miseries. What relief to find this reflection in the looking glass … and not one expressing scorn or anger. I let myself breathe. His hand finds my face, and I am solid again. I lean my cheek into his palm. We watch the flickering expressions, tender and doubting, erupt and pass over one another’s faces, like the rapid shedding of masks, until we are all that remains. There is a hypnotic vigor to his eyes that wipes the slate clean. To look into this face and not take refuge in ego through playacting, or retreat into self-consciousness, is the most freeing sacrifice to be made. We simply give ourselves to one another. It is the most difficult experiment of my life to be this frank with another soul. To not blink. There is no final answer to arrive at, no conclusion to reach, or punch line to deliver—just the generous gift of more questions to be raised. Something stirs in my gut, and there is an unraveling of fear into perfect peace.

There is one thing to say at a moment like this.

“I didn’t really like my grandmother so much.”

“I sometimes wish I believed in God.”

I rise and throw the coin into the bubbly water of the fountain. It makes a small splash and sinks to the bottom.

An odd kind of promise to make. But I sit back down, and we nod, like these pearly words were a vow and the coin toss the kiss that followed. It is the only pledge we can offer to one another. A promise to end all thought of promises. For our eyes are opened from this point on. We have traveled beyond words. The tree we rest on is as good as dead. The water behind us flows on and on and on and . …

I
am unprepared for his father’s place. Nothing about the innocuous building suggests the kind of luxury to be tiptoed over inside. The staircase up to the fourth floor (third European, though I refuse to concede the logic) is in need of refinishing, the wood starting to show gaps. I know because I clung to the banister as we inched up the stairs. Mathieu had some apologizing to do. At every stair, and landing.

When Mathieu opens the door with his key, I gasp. The apartment is sumptuous. I wish I could do it justice, but I have no vocabulary for these opulent objects. French furniture is particularly tied to its history, and I have no method for discriminating between a Louis the Something-or-Other chaise and a Third Republic one. They all look like something you shouldn’t sit on. If forced to make a stab, I would say that this place sings of the Belle Époque, with mismatched, eccentric bric-a-brac punctuating more elegant showpieces. There are elaborate moldings, Oriental carpets, crystal chandeliers, and gold-gilt mirrors stretching the length of walls. The ceilings are high and delicately bordered bygold-leaf vines, the fireplace mantel is a buxom slab of red marble, and the only sound to intrude upon the immaculate stillness is the uncollected murmurs of several clocks. Attractive ancestral portraits of ladies with taffy hair and gentlemen wearing riding outfits comingle with pretty landscapes in an aristocratic
joie de vivre
. An ivory tusk and African mask reside on a lowboy next to a maudlin Rococo figurine and a brandy snifter that sports some reddish residue. It is the only sign that someone could possibly live in this palace. There is no theme to tie a knot around everything except for a kind of dazzling, if dated, affluence.

Mathieu’s father’s apartment is an opera singer. She thinks a lot of herself, but the problem is, nobody much goes to see opera anymore.

“Geez,” I blow out.

Mathieu is busy looking through a drawer. “Yeah.”

“Does your dad actually
live
here?”

He does a quick sizing up of the place. “Of course.”

“And did you live here when you were younger?”

“Yes. From fourteen to eighteen.”

I nod and walk around, trailing my finger along the edges of furniture. There is no dust. He must have someone in to clean. Either she forgot the brandy snifter or she was having some fun. Good for her. This place could use it. I lower myself into a three-corner wooden chair, whose sided cushions depict birds imprisoned by flight. Sitting opposite a mirror, I rest my elbows gingerly on the chair’s coiled, decorative arms. I cross my legs, then switch them, and meditate uneasily on my reflection, which is distorted in the waxy glass. If I had lived here during my adolescence, I would have lost my mind and become a recluse, or lost my mind and run away. Live in a museum long enough and you risk growing an unhealthy attachment to
things
, or alternatively, you may feel suffocated by the sensation that you are just another object and flee to preserve your humanity.

I think it likely, from the way he grimaces and sweats over the files in the lowboy, that Mathieu felt compelled to run. It makes me ache for him—for the boy in him.

“I have to use the bathroom.”

“Down the hall and first on your right,” he replies, barely looking up. He will not tell me the reason for his errand. And I will not press him for it.

The bathroom was an excuse. I slip down the hallway on a mild prowl, pausing to peer in at the beamed kitchen overlooking the courtyard. A curmudgeonly oven range capped by an enormous exhaust system throws out some attitude, while the granite countertop looks like you could bash someone’s head in along its edge. An awesome collection of knives stands at razor-sharp attention next to an array of pill and vitamin bottles. Overall, the kitchen seems a threatening place. And that’s without any French cooking bubbling menacingly on the stove. The one note of interest is the scheme of decorative wine racks floating above the cabinets, in which every pod is occupied, like slumbering space travelers fixed in suspended animation. I would love to check the dates on the bottles, some of which look musty, but don’t want to overtly snoop. I give the kitchen up and come to a door on my right. The knob doesn’t turn, so I continue down the hallway. The adjacent door opens, and I stop short.

My pupils dilate. The heavy, stiff curtains are drawn over the window opposite me. I open the door further, allowing the natural light from the hallway to diffuse into the dimmed space. This is not the bathroom, but a bedroom of sorts. Except there is no bed. Or any furnishings. The entire room, probably fifteen by fifteen, is packed with paintings leaning stiffly against the four walls. They are protected with yards of bubble wrap, so I cannot detect the quality of what’s underneath. But I can make out what’s hanging on the white walls. And it sucks my breath away.

There is certainly a Monet over there; some of his haystacks, I think. Very probably a Toulouse-Lautrec to the left. A Degas opposite that, with those scrawny dancers of his. That small one near the corner might be a Morisot, though I could be inferring because it shows a seated woman with a parasol, like the one in the Cleveland Museum that I adore. And something that looks remarkably like a blue-period Picasso hangs to my right.