Plum Blossoms in Paris (2 page)

Okay, I lingered on it long enough to decide on a PhD at Harvard after a summer wedding and a honeymoon in Europe.

Just. That. Long.

We were a match, a team, a mission. Andy and Daisy. Daisyandandy.

I don’t know how to be alone
, I confided to the carpet, where I saw myself scattering into a thousand paisley pieces. Like a tree robbed of all its leaves, I was all nerves and no color.

Outside, the October air whispered, then shouted. I shivered.

It was the season of my discontent.

I
’m not terribly comfortable on my knees.

And so I struggled to my feet, brushed myself off, and fled back to the lab. My second home. The microscopes and slides, my extended family.

By the time I got there, the building was abandoned. Even Dr. Choi—a man so enraptured with work that he has been known to whistle “The Surrey With the Fringe On Top” while euthanizing turtles—appeared to have retired to his wife and five kids. I sequestered myself in the small fluorescent microscopy room and trolled through images that have soothed me before. But this night was different. In lieu of a beautiful, mysterious order, total anarchy flapped through my brain. I couldn’t decipher designs. I couldn’t see the familiar patterns connecting the inner ear hair cells, those precise instruments of spatial orientation we research. My mind kicked with too much stimuli, and my eyes unfocused in surrender. Eventually, I shut down the computer, throwing the room into darkness, except for the red lights blinking on the microscope’s instrument panel.

Which, because our minds claw meaning from sense, led me to sex.

Since Andy was my high school boyfriend, as well as my lone college and postgraduate lover, my sexual history is, well, limited. There’s a benefit to monogamy, of course: even if you suck, your partner, equally clueless of anything outside your distorted fish-bowl, isn’t likely to complain. I’ve often thought it similar to my short stint as a pianist, where my indulgent mother smiled at every missed cue, all along believing me to be the next Art Tatum. Once I played at my school recital and suffered the tight smiles and forced applause, I realized how sweetly delusional she was. And I understood that experience was essential to discovering the truth. That’s why I repeat experiments several times, always hoping to arrive at the same conclusion. Dr. Choi calls me The Machine. I try to take it as a compliment.

However, since Andy was even jealous of my perfectly healthy obsession with Daniel Day-Lewis (I begged Andy for months to don the
Last of the Mohicans
loincloth—big mistake to sacrifice one’s fantasy for parody), wider sexual experience was not an option. And that was all right with me. Andy was a considerate, if inarticulate, lover, and the two of us had come a long way from the first furious rubbings in the backseat of his Toyota Corolla.

Sitting in the blackness at the lab, pierced only by the red alarm of those buttons, I once again ached for those inexperienced hands on my body. His naiveté made me feel like a goddess, and as a seventeen-year-old male, he was obliged to worship at my altar.

“What
is
that crease right there?” he asked once, his adoring eyes fixed somewhere below my Wonderbra.

I peered down doubtfully. “What?”

“That crease, between your belly button and hip.” He ran his hand across the skin and marveled at the hollow.

It was rather remarkable. “You mean above the iliac crest?” I winced. Nothing dilutes the poetry of a thing more than naming it.

But Andy took no notice. He only had eyes for that moonstruck flesh. “Yeah. It’s like the one spot in the world where I could lay all my dreams.”

Okay, he didn’t say that. Andy wasn’t one for purple prose. But his eyes told me. I’d never felt lovelier in all my life, or more desired. We hadn’t even had sex yet, but it didn’t matter. He loved my body, and I loved him loving it.

Why did he stop? What led him astray?

I kneeled my head on the microscope panel and cried steel tears. Free-falling, I looked for answers in a lab that had always provided them. For the first time in a too lucky life, I came up with nothing but myself. The only thing I knew for certain was that I needed a soft place to land. A new place to look.

Down the long hall a door creaked open, then closed with a bang.

My neck lifted and tensed.

Footsteps followed. Then, whistling. George Gershwin, as interpreted by Dr. Choi. The notes soared and sank. Like a careless breeze.

“An American in Paris.”

Almost unconsciously, I started humming along. And then stopped.

Paris …

Paris.

A word that could split the night. Even
this
night.

“Paris.”

It felt good on my lips, too. In fact, they very nearly stretched into a smile.

I stood and started to pace my cage. My thoughts couldn’t pull me hard enough now.

I would take my honeymoon. I would wrench myself from the soggy ashes of this despair. After all, what remained for me here? I scanned the tight room, its silent weight of expectation anchoring a suddenly windy spirit. All this cold equipment was hatched from a desire to penetrate the truth—objective truths. Those tiny, impersonal mysteries supporting and binding us all. It’s noble work, and I’ve been proud to be part of it. But am I to spend my entire life, lids pressed against the microscope, never turning those powerful lenses around on myself?

No.

I braced myself on the desk and sucked a deep breath. Pouring clean air into my lungs.

Andy was the catalyst. But I would be the experiment. And what better laboratory for a girl in darkness than the shimmering City of Light?

“Daisy? What are you doing here so late?”

Dr. Choi sounded eager, in spite of the hour. Clearly, I wasn’t the only weirdo.

“Have you been examining those slides again?” he asked, unruffled by the fact that he was talking to my back.

I turned to face him, trying to offer a very human smile … of apology.

The slides would have to wait. This Machine had sprouted wings.

So, eighteen hours and one reprieve later, here I am. Sitting with my feet firmly planted on the floor of an Air France plane, nervously awaiting Toronto’s signal for liftoff.

It must be Paris. Daisy Miller, my namesake, went to Rome, but that was her fatal mistake. Rome is dead. It’s a city for archaeologists, for looking back. I’m looking forward. And though Paris, as Gertrude Stein eloquently put it, “was where thetwentieth century was,” I hope it will suffer this belated member of the Lost Generation. I already see myself sliding, like a seraph (for I am not quite real), into the Panthéon, bypassing the tombs of Hugo, Voltaire, and Rousseau, seeking the resting place of my own torchbearer: the indelible Marie Curie. I do not consider much beyond this, having only a rudimentary idea of the city cobbled from
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
, a Rick Steves travel show, and
Moulin Rouge
. I’m sure there’s more, but if so, it must be buried under the sad refrain of an Edith Piaf
chanson
. All I know is that Rick Steves can run circles around a city in the time it takes my mother to torch her
crème brûlée
.

But don’t we all know Paris? Skimming away the shell of that rich
brûlée
, hasn’t something more substantial lodged itself within our imaginations, like the germ of an idea waiting to take root? I’d wager that if you were to ask two people—one from blue New York, another from red Arkansas—where they’d most like to arrive in Europe, the answer would be Paris. And they might not have the foggiest idea why; the word will stumble to their lips like a forgotten reflex, emboldening a dreamy smile and a nagging nostalgia. For older folks, the melancholia of Bogart’s “We’ll always have Paris” might be enough, while for kids my age, it’s the iconic bohemian chase. The lament and the promise. Paris is the nutty center. Our journey. Picasso, who was not really Picasso until he arrived, may have been a Spaniard by birth, and Hemingway American, but they were Parisians by choice. Runaways welcomed.

Not that I’m comparing myself.

I have neither great art nor the scars from a war burdening me. I’m just trying to outrun a broken heart, which is nothing to sneeze at, for a broken heart breaks a person. Paris is my promise of rehabilitation. I vaguely hope, as the engines roar and I dig in my heels, that it will become my lament. There is an infinite number of paths, confluences of latitudes and longitudes, that might take me there. But this one is marked for me.

I place my palm on the cool Plexiglas of the window, leaving behind a sweaty imprint. I have passed the authority of my life into other hands. I hope these Icarus wings won’t melt.

“Are you going to Paris, then?”

It’s my jittery seatmate, who has been white-knuckling the armrests almost as tenaciously as I. He offers a guilty smile. He must be emerging from the fog of his own fear, ready to apologize for it by striking up a conversation that I know I will hate but can’t seem to avoid.

Should I be rude? I could really use the rest.

“Yep.”

Well, no use starting a trip feeling guilty.

He nods and snaps his gum, happy to have this in common with me, along with the other two hundred eighty people. “Me too, as well, I mean.”

“Yes, well,” I offer, pointedly looking down at Rick Steves’ smiling face on the back cover of my book, bought at the airport. He beams, trusting me to conquer Paris’s tourist attractions while ingratiating myself with the locals and ubiquitous “culture.” I have my concerns.

“I’m Cliff, by the way.” He sticks out his hand.

“Daisy,” I say and try not to redden. You’d think twenty-three years of a name would get you used to it. But I’m not quite there.

“Daisy” was my dad’s idea. He teaches American literature at a liberal arts college in Ohio and was emboldened enough by his love for Henry James to anoint me the spiritual descendant of this gauche, mindless flirt ridiculed by European society and, in her outcast status, stricken by “Roman fever”—malaria to us—dying without redemption at a tender and nubile age. My younger brother, lucky in his maleness, got by with “Henry,” which, while old-fashioned, has an urbane charm. If only my dad had beenmore taken with Emily Dickinson, queer old bat that she was, I wouldn’t detect that glint in a stranger’s eye whenever I’m introduced, as he tries to reconcile my dark, humorless looks with a name that conjures artless grace and a sunny disposition. As a child, I nearly got away with it. Now it’s a juicy offering for those who get off on irony. And don’t ask why my mom didn’t put up more of a fight. It’s still a sore point.

To be fair, Cliff doesn’t seem overly amused. In fact, I’m not sure he even heard what I said.

“I’m going to meet my girlfriend. She’s studying abroad and has no idea I’m coming. It should be a big surprise,” he continues, cheerfully ignoring my very faint interest. “I’m going to take her up the Eiffel Tower and ask her to marry me.” Busting to tell someone, especially an admiring female, of this ingenuous plan, he now looks at me for approbation.

“How romantic!” I assent.

“I’m glad you think so. The idea came to me all at once, while I was watching
National Lampoon’s European Vacation
. You know, when the Griswolds go to the Eiffel Tower?”

“Sure, sure.”

Smile, Daisy.
Smile
.

“Well, that scene, and the one where they’re sitting at their hotel and they see those newlyweds making out like, well, newlyweds, got me thinking. I kind of put the two together. After all, Paris
is
the city for romance, right?”

“Yes, that’s what they say … and sing.”

He looks at me sharply, and I show him my teeth. He nods, mollified.

“So where are you from?” he asks, after requesting a ginger ale from the flight attendant. I don’t drink, but order a vodka tonic. Since this is Air France, no one asks for my ID. Even though I’m twenty-three, I feel like I’ve gotten away with something.

I take a sip, wincing a little. “Cleveland.”

“Ah, American,” he pronounces, somewhat cuttingly. My curiosity is piqued by this sudden boon of superiority from a man inspired toward romance on the confused logic torn from a
National Lampoon
movie (a profoundly American piece of cinematic magic, by the way). I’m grateful for a distraction, so I start to dig.

“You’re not American?” I ask, smiling sweetly.

“No, no.” He coughs, looking forward. “Canadian. I live twenty minutes outside Toronto.” His goatee sticks out like an Egyptian pharaoh’s as his posture improves.

I know a little something about Canadians. I went on a two-week Contiki trip through Italy and Greece three summers ago (I recall little about the Medicis and their passion for the arts, or whether the Parthenon’s columns were Doric or Ionic, but that Aussies are the friendliest and most dedicated drinking mates on this planet is a comfortable stereotype I will take to the grave), and there was a tight clique of my northern neighbors on that trip. If they hadn’t repeatedly emphasized they were not American, we would never have noticed … well, except for the iconic maple leaf adorning their backpacks, jackets, and probably their underwear, if anyone had cared to look. I’ve never seen a group of people so terrified of mistaken identity or so proud of their murky heritage. Nor had I ever been bullied to listen to the Barenaked Ladies so repeatedly.