Plum Blossoms in Paris (36 page)

“I was supposed to tour the summer you were born. Your father and I were going to see how that went, as a kind of ‘test’ of our devotion.” Yielding, she jerked the diamond back on her finger, where it swallowed up the wedding band. I never understood why the engagement ring should be the prettiest. I assumed it had something to do with God.

“So when I found out I was pregnant, I panicked a bit.” She patted my shoulder. “I started exploring my options.”

Options?

Her grip tightened. “Honey, I’m telling you this because I’ve always stressed how important honesty is to a relationship. I waited this long because I wanted to make sure that you were mature enough to handle it.”

I nodded again, turning on my back and feeling vaguely heroic. Nightgown aside, I so wanted to be mature, to be worthy of Jane Eyre, nestled against my pillow.

“After a long and very painful deliberation on my part, during which I weighed all the pros and cons, I went to get an abortion.”

I stopped in mid-nod. “Wait, what?”

“I had an abortion, Daisy.”

I threw her a withering look. “Um, no you didn’t, Mom.”

“Yes. I did.” She tensed, and I felt her fingers nip into the muscles of my shoulder. “Well, I thought I did. It was later decided that I was pregnant with twins, and that they only got one of … you.”

One of
who?

“You know, your grandmother was a twin. Her brother died young, though.”

“What?”

“Of polio, I think—”

“Wait,
what?”
I threw back the sheet and shot up in bed. Jane succumbed to the floor.

“I understand that you’re upset.”

“You tried to
kill
me?”

She took my shoulder again, but I shook her off. “Now, Daisy, let’s not be overly dramatic about it. After all, you weren’t you yet. You were the size of a pea. You had no consciousness. You couldn’t feel—”

“Why the
fuck
are you telling me this?”

“I don’t think that—”

“No, no, no.” I shook my head. “What did Dad say?”

She looked down.

The tears hung on this reply. Please, God, don’t let him. He didn’t know.

“He agreed that it was probably for the best. We were both so ambitious and unsettled, Daisy. We didn’t know what we wanted yet.”

I reached up to touch my face. But my lips were woolly. So I looked to the floor.

Reader, I married him
.

Oh, Jane.

My mother grabbed my hand and cupped it under her chin. But I didn’t want to be claimed, not now. And I didn’t want to touch that mole, with its dirty black hair.

“Why isn’t he here?”

“He didn’t see the point in telling you. We were so h-happy, you know, afterward. We
are
so happy.” She bowed her head andstarted crying. But I couldn’t bring the tears. I wasn’t quite real, after all.

And ghosts don’t cry.

I looked down at her. Her hand fluttered against her lips as she struggled to gain her breath.

“I want you to leave now.”

She sobbed like a baby. But I had matured. Sprouted my first thorn. My eyes were bone dry.

Somehow, in spite of my parents, I was all grown up.

I linger in the bathroom, washing my hands again in the med school way Andy demonstrated over the summer (was it just last summer?)—working under the nails, circling my wrists, the hot water provoking the blood below the parchment skin. Looking at myself in the mirror, I blanch at my overly made-up face, wondering where I begin underneath all the war paint. Mathieu had been excited by the new look, stirred up. He called me his Olympia. I smiled, uncertain.

I do look almost beautiful tonight, my sharp features and full mouth a natural canvas for the reds and blacks that have cowed the imperfections and heightened the drama. But I’m tired. Of trying too hard. Of believing it means anything. Of fooling myself. Scrubbing my face with pink soap, I think of my mother again, and what she confided to me a few years ago:
I fell in love with your father because he was the first person who didn’t want to change me
. I was stunned to hear her speak of loving my father. I swam in those words, wrapped my limbs around them like a life preserver, until my parents’ next silence crashed to drown me in doubt anew. I recognized for the briefest of moments that I was not responsible for her slide into mediocrity, that I didn’t have that much power over another person’s life. She chose the life she thought she wanted, at the time. It didn’t work out the way she planned, but it was still hers. There is nothing shameful in that.

I still don’t know.

It’s not that Mathieu thinks to change me. He just doesn’t know what it will take for me to live here. He can’t. This is home for Mathieu. I’ll always be the tourist. The line will always be drawn closer to him. After all, evolution is stubbornly slow. Even a leap of faith is but one small step in a lifetime littered with footprints.

I wipe my hands.

Henri’s affable face greets me when I finally open the door. Surprised, I blurt out, “Oh! Are you escaping too?”

He smiles easily, not offended. “No, not escaping.” Chuckling, he explains, “I have the old man’s bladder, I’m afraid.”

“I’m sorry.” I sigh, placing a hand to my head. “I’m not normally this rude. I guess I’m out of sorts tonight.”

“Are you?”

I smile tentatively. “What do you mean?”

“It seems to me, my dear, that you know exactly what you’re doing.”

Our eyes meet and hold, until he laughs again and starts to turn away. But his eyes, absorbing the Grosz, stop him, and pin him to the wall behind me.

“How do you see it?” I ask him.

I feel humble before this contradictory man with the shrewd eyes and unassuming smile. He could be writing my story. I am amused at the idea, oddly solaced by the thought of being a character in his bulbous head, where whole libraries of stories must be gathering dust. Of having Henri invent me, and make my choices.

Daisy Lockhart
.

“It is quite powerful, I think,” he says, considering the reproduction. Smiling, he surmises, “One of Ivan’s, I imagine.” Henri shakes his head and continues, “But I do not like it.”

Stifling a smile at his offense, I ask, “Why not?”

“To be great,” he asserts, taking a rich breath and raising his hands, “a work of art must lift up the heart.” Turning toward me, eyes clear and lucid, Henri sags a little. “This painting damages mine.”

“Mine too,” I whisper.

“I am tired of always looking backward. The French are too—well, we must move forward, yes, Daisy?”

“But how do I—how do we know which way is forward, and which way is just standing still?”

“You always know. Can’t you feel the wind on your cheeks?” He smiles and touches me gently on mine.

“I thought I did.”

Or maybe it’s the illusory breeze you feel when spinning in one place for too long.

“So did my wife, I suppose.”

I squeeze his hand.

“Ah, well.” Pulling up, Henri nods at me. “If you will excuse me, my dear. It is certain that the others will be wondering by now.”

Touched by this antiquated social consciousness, I return his nod and offer my apologies. I return to the dining table, which is just a collection of stylish things and naked people wearing more stylish clothes … by which I mean that I have nothing to prove. Mathieu smiles at me solicitously before touching my knee, but he feels far away.

I am alone in a crowd. That’s all.

It’s my story to write yet.

W
e have collapsed in the living room after surrendering our stomachs to Gabrielle’s all-fronts culinary assault. The fashionable clothes are rumpled now, the conversation sloppy, some belly laughs easier to come by, if punishing to our grotesquely dilated diaphragms. I did not mentally prepare myself for the brie, I groan silently, sinking back into the sofa, or I might have paced myself better with the
poulet á la provençale
. The cheese course was a dolorous surprise. Poached pears with sorbet slid down only with some effort. I have no idea why French women don’t get fat. It could be all the fabulous shopping. More likely, it’s that food is simply a joy to be sampled, and not a societal obsession.

The eyes around me have a bright torpor shining through them, and I imagine their owners as nautical comrades to my youthful Saturday mornings spent watching Popeye and Brutus, the alcoholic tide rising to flood their irises and slosh around. Mine may be filled with the same lubricant, though I cannot find the corresponding anchor to any real conversation. The same cannot be said for Henri, who, having drunk quite as much as the rest ofus, still looks sober and dignified, perched on his leather chair, a wise prophet enlightening the rabble. Mathieu, lounging between Nicole and me, is smoking one of Luc’s ass-cool cigarettes. He has been good about not smoking in front of me, until now. I very gingerly cough.

After a brief exchange with his wife, Ivan grabs the remote and turns on the flat-screen television, rifling through a substantial video/DVD collection on one of the bookshelves.

“What’s he looking for?” I ask Mathieu, just to say something with this fat tongue.

Mathieu leans into my lap, smiling. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him so giddy. I wonder if these people are his real family, and if so, why he has never talked of them before. If he has clung to his friends the way I, even while renouncing them, have always clung to my parents, protecting them with his silence. If he worries over how to reconcile me into their hard knot of family, or if he is too busy enjoying their reunion to consider me at all.

“He wants us to see this panel show where Gabrielle was a guest,” Mathieu explains. “The host was so stoned he kept confusing Foucault with Baudrillard.”

“Stupid man,” I snark, flashing a disinterested eye toward the television.

“Is there something both—”

“Wait a second. Stop!” I yell to Ivan, putting up my hand and grimacing at the screen. My eyes have found an anchor. “Please.”

Everyone looks at me before swinging their eyes to the television.

That robed, gaunt figure. The perverted shaman. The unholy warrior. His mouth moves silently above the lectern while the half-lidded eyes remain hard and ruthless, like fixed tissue. The murderer disguised as diplomat. The piss-poor, A/V-club quality to the recording, to remind us that technology cannot trump will. He is as unintelligible to me as the people in this room, althoughthe words, “Allah,” “Bush,” and “the American people” track solemnly by on CNN International’s scroll. Like it matters what he says. Bin Laden has presence.

“And what effect this will have on the American election just four days away is anyone’s guess, Richard,” the attractive brunette split-screened with bin Laden says.

“Perhaps we are finally witnessing that October Surprise, Dalaja,” Richard agrees. “But the question remains: is Osama bin Laden tipping his hand in this video? And if so, who does he want the American people to vote for, come Tuesday?”

I slump into the couch, staring not at the television, but at Ivan and Gabrielle’s lovely Oriental carpet beneath my feet. Not paisley this time; more geometrical, modern. Hard as hell. I dig in my heels.

“What is it, Daisy?” Mathieu asks, placing his hand on my arm. Ivan stands with the video in his hand, looking uncertain for the first time this evening.

“I never voted, you know.”

“You never …”

“Voted,” I say, more strongly, my head snapping up like a hairpin trigger, just squeezed. “I never had the chance to vote. I should have gotten an absentee ballot, though it might have been too late.” I swallow something. “I just didn’t plan for it.”

“Why are you worried about this now?” Mathieu presses, the little line in his forehead troubling itself over me again.

“Don’t you see?” I ask him, and the room.
“Who does bin Laden want the American people to vote for?”
I shake my head, feeling faintly nauseated. This must be how soothsayers feel when burdened by a glimpse of the future. “This will be all there is for the next three days. Wolf and Candy on CNN, The Wingnuts on Fox, Bob and Betty on
Channel Four Eyewitness News
. Bin Laden wants Kerry to win, they’ll argue. No, no, he wants Bush. Back and forth, back and forth, until they’ve made the sale.”

Mathieu inches forward, his hand still resting on—no, re-straining—my arm. “But you said it, Daisy. It’s a deadlock. Which means Kerry will probably continue his slight push in the polls.” Mathieu waves at the screen with derisiveness. “Who would consider what a lunatic wants him to do, anyway?”

I look at him with a queer mixture of pity and wonder. “I’ll tell you who. The remaining 5 percent of the American populace who have their heads too far up their asses to make a decision on their own. Even now, they’re looking at bin Laden on their TV screens and quaking, ‘I’m scared. This cave man scares me.’ And who do children turn to when scared? Their daddies. The goons who have cultivated that fear and worked it to such gross advantage.”

I rise and walk toward the TV screen, their eyes tracking me. “I’ll tell you who bin Laden wants to win the election: it’s Bush, of course, his ultimate recruiting tool. The poster child for his propaganda war. And he is clever enough to know that the only people who haven’t made up their goddamned minds by now are the same nervous Nellies he can sway by sinisterly invoking ‘Allah’ a few times and working his madman magic.”