Plum Blossoms in Paris (34 page)

And now there is the politics of children gerrymandering us. How mundane for that to be the cause of our split. Not a clash of cultures, or egos, but a goddamn lifestyle choice. Yet it is a more impenetrable obstacle than his writing, for there is no compromise to be had. What other option is there but for me to eject myself from Mathieu’s influence? Before I, like the fallen Lucifer, start corrupting his urge toward creation, which my better angel assures me is the most sanctified instinct we overgrown monkeys enjoy, but which my devilish side observes, not unjustly, as the last barrier between it and heavenly bliss?

How did this happen? At which instant did time, which I feigned to ignore, betray me?

I don’t know, but Mathieu was right about my metamorphosis. What could be more French than thinking about Milton and Satan’s fall while riding solo on a Mad Hatter’s Teacup? I have succumbed to the circular bullshit. And I have petrified my day as a result. Turning the stubborn wheel before me, I start to spin, anxious for the torque to jettison these thoughts and feelings from my conscious mind, determined to become all feeling and action once more. The tiny stereocilia inside my ears, those precise instruments of orientation I abandoned, wildly respond, lighting up the vestibular sensors inside my cortex, which counsel me to stop the foolish spinning and come back to Earth. But I press on. Turning the wheel. Anxious for the next thing.

But I am not the god of this machine, and the ride stops. Dizzy and nauseated, I exit my teacup, a lone Alice following … what? A white rabbit? A grin without a cat? A dream?

Maybe it’s time to wake up.

Disneyland is a day trip.

m
athieu wants me to come to a dinner party with him. I am happy to go because it soothes me, somehow, to think of him with friends, to envision him looking more serene, relaxed, when of late he has been coiled like a rattlesnake threatening to strike. I hadn’t thought of Mathieu with any friends outside his books. He’s never mentioned anyone much, and besides, he has such high standards for things.

We haven’t talked about Disneyland, the Matterhorn between us. As two hyper-reflective people, this probably doesn’t bode well. To substitute, we have apparently decided to focus on sex. Big sex. Small sex. Loud sex. Soft sex. Sex that hurts, and sex that purrs. Sex as revolution, and sex as devolution. Sex, sex, sex. How much sex can one woman get?

Yesterday I craved Andy, that simpleton. Mathieu was exceptionally creative, yet I shrank from his artistry, desiring Andy’s workmanlike hands, making their abbreviated rounds (boobs, butt, boobs, repeat). I strained to hear Andy’s muffled climax—the Grunting Grizzly—in my ear. To see Andy’s pleased smile afterward as he dropped off to sleep. I wanted Andy’s innocence.

Which is not to say that I love Mathieu any less. Only that life is complicated, and I’ve been reading Anaïs Nin.

So this dinner party thing, while promising, also has me in stitches. And not the laughing kind.

“What should I wear?”

“Do we need to bring a gift?”

“What about food? Oh God, Mathieu, do we have to cook something?”

“Those fucking indefinite articles!”

“So they will speak French, right?”

“Of course they will speak French,” he finally replies on the day of, rolling his eyes.

“But I won’t understand a thing!” I wail, throwing myself down on his bed. Beckett opens her eyes. Perturbed by my histrionics, she looks balefully at me.

“You will understand more than you imagine,” he says, sitting beside me. “The body is more expressive than words can possibly be.”

“Maybe when flirting across a crowded room, but not when discussing the EU’s battle over farm subsidies,” I groan, flopping backward.

“I promise the subject will not come up.”

Laughing, Mathieu pulls me toward him, kissing me in the suggestive way that inevitably segues into fun and games. The man is insatiable. Beckett leaps off the bed in anticipation, holding her nose aloft as she makes for the bathroom mat. The little minx cannot stand competition. Once resistant to Mathieu’s charms, she, too, has been seduced.

Undistracted, I dodge his lips. “But something will, and I’ll look like the fool.”

Sighing, he pillows his head with his hands. “Your French is getting better.”

“Yeah, I can talk like a preschooler now.
Moi likey Paris. It israining. Do you have an umbrella?”

He smiles and, playing with my hair, says, “Maybe someone will bring up the weather.”

“It’s not funny.”

“What can I say, Daisy?” He shrugs.

That you’ll look after me. Protect me. Not because you’re the man, but because I am dependent on you for my survival here.

“They will know that you are American. So they won’t want to talk to you, anyway.”

I elbow him in the ribs.

“Besides,” he recovers, “it is a Friday night in Paris. What else do you have to do?”

This.

“Oh.”

And this. “Ah.”

We swallow this silence like a last supper.

“I was right,” he brags later, chewing on my shoulder. “Body language.” Hitching himself on a shaky elbow, he counsels, “Do that, and they will not care that you are American.”

What a gentleman.

The couple hosting the party knew Mathieu in college. He went for nearly a year. Evidently, a professor told him one day that he was aping Flaubert, and dismally, in his paper, so he quit. Not because of the criticism, which he now admits was just, but because Mathieu realized he didn’t much like Flaubert.

The couple, Ivan and Gabrielle, had no such aversion to Flaubert or securing their comfortable futures as a government administrator and a professor of French literature. They have a very smart, if modest, apartment in the sixth
arrondissement
, overlooking the Seine. Though the party was to start at eight o’clock, we arrive at 8:25 (I have started wearing my watch again), because to arrive any earlier would have been, in Mathieu’s estimation, “shocking.”

“Enchantés,”
I brightly repeat to my hosts, coloring to the exact shade of my new scarlet dress as we shrug out of coats. I still haven’t risen above the self-consciousness that comes with speaking French and limit myself to this one word that, I suspect, betrays not so much sincerity as desperation.

Fluttering for traction on this slick foyer floor, I think,
Oh, Lord, why did I choose to wear red tonight?
I thought it was a bold choice when I saw it in the boutique—the light, sexy material and asymmetrical neckline showing off my shoulders to good effect—and snatched it up without glancing at the price. Besides, it went with my heels, those four-inch pedestals that are elevating enough for me to be knocked down from later. I wanted Mathieu to be proud. Only now, next to Gabrielle’s chic black, I feel clownish and obvious. Like Joan Rivers at the Oscars.

Ivan and Gabrielle smile slightly, murmuring their greetings, and kiss me lightly on the cheeks before clasping Mathieu amid a flurry of rapid-fire French. It seems they haven’t seen him for a while. He smiles ruefully and shrugs.

It’s her. She won’t let me go anywhere without tagging along.

Is that so? What a bore. Why don’t you come without her, then?

(Helplessly) She withholds sex when I “misbehave. ”

What a little tease. These Americans with their sexual politics. I’m surprised she’ll have sex with you at all.

It’s not as often as I’d like. And pretty unimaginative when she does.

Americans are notoriously prudish, yes?

And gassy. She toots in her sleep.

How typical. Americans with their hot air and cold pussies.

(General, smug laughter)

Okay, to be fair, I think they might be discussing Justine because Mathieu looks defensive and Gabrielle concerned. Ivan places a hand on his wife’s shoulder in a proprietary way that makes me cringe a little and ushers us into the living area. Another couple is ensconced on the leather couch, a partition of silence dividing them. The man looks at the ceiling and draws on a brown cigarette while his blonde partner stands to greet Mathieu and me. Meet Nicole and Luc, shrouded in matching, noncommittal black, cradling glasses of red wine. I grin strenuously, determined to build a bridge of understanding across my pearly whites. My pits are clammy and my mouth tacky and pasty. It seems I am a virgin again. A French dinner party virgin. Not sure what to expect, but still eager to please. Excited … but tense. And pretty damn convinced that it will hurt more than I’d planned. To top it off, I was a little too aggressive shaping my eyebrows this morning, so now I look like a Vulcan. I had an evangelical classmate in the first grade who shaved off her eyebrows, explaining,
The devil made me do it, Mommy!
Clever girl. All I can offer is,
The insecurity made me do it, folks!
Not that I, even, would confuse the French for “folks.”

I sink into a leather sofa, which farts against the back of my sweaty legs, and hitch up my strapless bra, which is adorable, if elusive. The doorbell rings, and Mathieu abandons me to receive the final guest with Gabrielle. He is talking so enthusiastically in French as he leaves that I realize he’s been suffering without his native tongue during the past weeks.
I really need to apply myself more to my French lessons
. Somehow I haven’t—lately. Smiling vaguely about the room, I take a couple of deep breaths, trying to neutralize the acid pumping through my chest, and find my legs again.

Daisy, dear, your smiles don’t convince. Look like you don’t have a care in the world, and people will believe it.

I think my grandmother would have done well in France. I care too fucking much.

Ivan has gone to fetch Mathieu and me some wine. Luc holds his designer cigarette in a smoking place: his crotch. He raises an eyebrow at me and scratches his nuts in what can only be interpreted as a charming, come-hither gesture. Nicole, meanwhile, stares wistfully at Mathieu’s back with her limpid brown eyes as he slips from her sight. When he’s gone, she flashes her reproachful gaze in my direction before sinking her eyes behind the wineglass and backing into the loveseat, where Luc’s serpent arm slithers around her.

Oh God, not again.

I accept Ivan’s glass of wine, saying,
“Merci beaucoup.”
Taking a big gulp, I cough. It is not wine, but a deadlier liqueur. I should have noted the smaller glasses, but there’s the ticklish matter of Nicole’s perfume to distract me. Not vanilla, but musky.

Mathieu returns, smiling warmly at me. I glance at Nicole, but she is buried in Luc’s arm and staring impassively at the final guest to be welcomed.

It is an older man. Fifty-something, balding, and stuffed into an ice cream suit, coral scarf wrapped around his mottled neck. He presents himself as Henri, and as he kisses my hand (the first in France to do so, in spite of Chirac and Laura Bush), I can identify every hair follicle, each terrible in its specificity, wiring bravely out of his scalp, only to collapse over the scabs of his crown. Though it is cold outside, he sweats with the effort of walking and dabs at his glistening forehead, a slight wheeze whistling through his words. He might have been repulsive, or at least pitiable. But banish the thought, for he has a quick smile and easy manner that quickly puts me at ease. He speaks my language deliberately and beautifully, with a lilting grace that tells of time in England. I don’t feel like I’m talking to a Frenchman at all.

“Daisy, then. What a charming name, my dear.”

“Merci
. Um, thanks.”

“Named, perhaps, for your mother’s favorite flower?”

I shake my head. “Daisy Miller.”

He scratches his face while pondering this. “What a burden to place on a child,” he finally sighs.

“Yes!” I laugh reflexively and with relief. “I mean, thank you.”

He smiles and pats my hand. “But you are managing well, yes?” His eyes flash toward Mathieu, deep in conversation with Ivan, before swinging back around to me. “It is such a relief to see a lady who knows how to wear color.”

I smile gratefully and whisper, “Thank you.”

This gentleman could make an ice queen melt. I wonder if I still have Shoe Store Michelle’s card . …

“I’m sorry, but what is your relationship to Ivan and Gabrielle?” I ask him.

The air is warm, and the quiet chatter of strangers’ voices is the cushion I needed to lay down my defenses. Of course Nicole desires Mathieu. I feel sorry for her.

“I am Gabrielle’s latest project.” Henri winks at me.

“How do you mean?”

“My wife and I lived upstairs until a month ago.” He rubs his wedding band, a gesture that looks habitual. “Now it is only I.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Henri.”

He chuckles. “Caroline lives, my dear. Just not with me.”

“Oh.”

Sometimes there is not much to say. And sometimes there is, but we just can’t say it. What happened? I want to ask. Was it someone else? Or did she just tire of hearing your voice after a while? When did love come to mean less than something new?

“Yes,” Henri continues, “but Gabrielle has decided that I am not to be a hermit. She extends the courtesy of an invitation nearly every night. Even when the other guests are all half my age.” Hesmiles and sips his drink. “I must confess to never paying for a meal anymore.”