Capturing Paris (17 page)

Sometimes when Annie spoke French she felt like she was taking on a second skin, becoming someone else. It made her think of playing
dress-up when she was a child. When she put on one of Aunt Kate's ancient crinoline petticoats and spike-heeled shoes, both relics of the 1950s, she walked with a swing in her hips, tilted her head at a different angle, became a different Annie, someone wild and glamorous. Now, speaking French all afternoon with Paul, a language almost second nature to her, gave her a similar sensation. “Dinner is a good idea.”

Later that evening, seated side by side on a leather banquette, they studied the menu. A small lamp cast a warm glow on the center of their table and set them apart from the surrounding darkness. Paul studied the wine list.

“Qu'est-ce que tu préfères? Le blanc ou le rouge?”

She told him she liked red better, particularly on a winter evening. He signaled to the waiter and asked for a vin de Cahors. The waiter had recommended the cassoulet, a rich bean stew with sausages, lamb, and duck confit. They took his suggestion.

“My grandmother used to make a wonderful cassoulet.” Paul talked easily about his family. “She was from the Languedoc.” He explained that he was the only one living in Paris, but he went frequently to see his elderly mother, who lived in the south of France. His parents had retired there after Paul took over their publishing business.

The waiter returned with their wine and offered Paul the ritual tasting. The wine, an inky purple, looked dark in his glass.

“They call this
le vin noir de Cahors
,” Paul pointed out, referring to its almost black color.

The waiter looked at Annie and said,
“Pour vous, Madame?”
Annie nodded, indicating she wanted some wine, and while the waiter poured, it occurred to her that he might assume that she was Madame Valmont, Paul's wife. What would it be like to be married to him? At this moment he looked gentle, kind, somewhat rumpled but attractive. She thought of the pretty woman in the photograph on his desk. Had he ever turned away from his wife, shut her out, or refused to love her?

Paul lifted his glass. “To our book,” he said, and Annie clinked her glass against his, returning his gaze. His eyes were a deeper blue than Wesley's, the pupils rimmed with brown. Sitting next to him on the banquette felt romantic. She took a sip of her wine, set it down, and
smoothed her hair back behind her ears in a nervous gesture. “Do you like it?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Please, will you read to me now?” He spoke in English, perhaps to switch his brain over to the other language. “I want to get a sense of what we have so far.” He'd been enthusiastic about this first group of poems. His questions had been thoughtful, and the one change he'd suggested—in the Notre-Dame poem—hadn't bothered her. She'd worried about the final line herself, and his suggestion was a minor one.

Annie opened the folder and began to read the poems that she'd written so far. She knew most of them by heart, and lifting her eyes from the pages, she was able to watch his reaction. He was an attentive listener, nodding periodically, and he smiled when she read about an old dog in a café. When she got to the fourth poem, called “Parting Moment,” he closed his eyes. The poem was based on the picture of young lovers, arm in arm on the Pont Neuf, watching a barge pass on the river below them. She lowered her voice at the last stanza.

They will hold close the memory
Of nascent love begun,
The sound of fragile hearts still
Beating as one
.

Paul opened his eyes and sadness transformed his face, making him look tired and alone.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean to upset you.”

“A good poem should do that.” He lifted his hands and brought one to his heart. “If it does not make you feel, well then, it is not doing what it should.”

Annie nodded. The longing for his wife seemed to have settled over him like a cloud cover, damp and opaque. His grief belonged to him like the cold dark days belonged to a Paris winter. She tried to think of what to say. “You still miss her very much.” The words sounded pointless to her ears.

“Terribly.” He picked up the bottle and poured more wine in their glasses.

“You must have had a very happy marriage,” Annie said. “How many years?”

“Not quite twenty. And yes, we were happy.” He averted his face and drew his fingers across his forehead as if to erase certain thoughts. “Mostly, I remember the good times. She was so lively, full of energy. She often worked late into the night. You see, Marie Laure was a very ambitious woman.”

“Was she in publishing too?”

“She was a journalist. Wrote about politics. We did not agree on everything.” He shook his head and looked again at Annie. “She did not want to have children.”

“And you did?”

“Yes. It was a great disappointment, but I respected her wishes.” He drew his lips into a pucker, exhaled, and leaned back against the banquette. “I have never told anyone about this.”

Why wouldn't Marie Laure have wanted a child from this man? Her photograph portrayed a loving, warmhearted woman, but there was obviously a lot it didn't tell. “I'm very sorry,” she said.

“People assumed we were busy with our work, our careers, and that that was enough.” His expression darkened. “So many incorrect assumptions.” He reached for his glass of wine. “You told me you have a daughter?”

“Yes. But she's grown and living on her own now.” Annie told Paul about Sophie and her gradual departure from her life. “At least when she was in college she came home for long vacations. Now that she's working we hardly ever see her.”

“Ah, yes. The American system of only two weeks of vacation a year.” He shook his head. “Those terrible Puritans left your countrymen with a bad idea.”

Annie laughed. “It's not as bad as that. And eventually she'll have more time off. Actually, that's not really the problem. It's more getting used to the idea that she has her own life now; she won't come home again in quite the same way.”

“But you do not want that? Her living her own life?”

“Of course I do. We're very proud of Sophie.” She thought of Wesley. “It changes things within the family.”

“In what way?” he asked.

Annie considered his question. “I've been asking myself that. It's kind of like a balanced composition in a work of art. Think of the strength of the triangle in classical painting—each side pulls the picture together and makes it strong. The family is like that too, each person helping to create the balance.” Annie moved slightly on the bench, putting more distance between them. “When one person leaves, it can throw things off.”

He looked at her and shrugged. “But in art, you can also think in terms of two. One half balances the other half. So, all you need is two.”

“You're right. That makes sense.” She smiled again. “I think Wesley and I are just getting used to it. That's all.”

The waiter brought their dinner. The cassoulet tasted of garlic and rich, meaty broth. Both hearty and rustic, it was a comfortable dish to eat while sharing stories. Annie decided to direct the conversation to safer waters. She talked about Vermont and her life with Aunt Kate.

“We didn't eat a lot of cassoulet in Vermont,” she joked.

“Vermont,” he said with the French pronunciation. “Green mountain. I cannot picture you living there.” His accent made it sound remote and exotic, truly a lifetime away. When she spoke of her father, his depression and quiet death in old age, he reached over and patted her hand, a sweet attempt to console her years after the fact.

Later, in front of the restaurant, he helped her into a taxi. She wondered if he was going back to his office or home to his apartment, the new place he'd moved to to escape the memories of Marie Laure. Paul gave the driver her address, and before shutting the taxi door he reached in and drew his hand along the line of her jaw, the way a blind person would explore a face by touch.

Just as suddenly, he withdrew his hand, turned, and walked into the January night. The driver pulled away from the curb and drove toward the bridge that would take Annie across the river to her side of the Seine.

Annie sat propped up against the pillows in the middle of their bed, really her bed now. After just a few days, she was getting used to deciding
things on her own. She could turn out the light at night when she wanted to. If she awoke early, she could stay in bed and write. She had stopped cooking dinner since Wesley's departure and sometimes made a tray with soup, bread, and cheese for supper and carried it to her chair in the living room. She adapted happily to these small freedoms.

Wesley planned to be gone for close to three weeks, and he had timed his return to coincide with Sophie's visit at the end of January. He had been kind, not discussing the impending move, as if he knew that saying anything would upset her. They both had acted as if he were taking an ordinary business trip and not making a journey that might determine their future. He had told her that there would be a whirlwind of meetings and that any of his spare time would be taken up with a small project that he and the partners had already agreed upon.

Wesley had taken business trips when he worked for Wilson & James. They occurred infrequently, but Annie had come to enjoy the few brief periods of being on her own. When Sophie still lived at home, they called it their “girl time.” Having married Wesley immediately after her graduation from college, Annie had never lived by herself. There had been moments, particularly when her writing had been pushed aside to make room for family responsibilities, when she wished that she had waited longer before getting married. She used to imagine the luxury of time to herself when her only alone time was spent in an alcove off her living room. Now she did have time to herself and the kind of project that she never could have imagined. The thrill of the book had not worn off.

Her writing was going well. Since her visit to God House, it was like she'd discovered a vein of gold. Each photograph served as the beginning, the experience that launched her into the larger idea that would become the poem. From there the metaphors took shape and the images that carried her line by line brought the poem to life. Some days the words almost poured out. She felt like a marathon runner hitting a plateau.

Tonight she'd dined on a plate of pâté, bread, and apple slices along with a chilled glass of Sancerre she'd found already open in the fridge. The wind rattled the windows, so she put her dinner on a tray and
brought it into the bedroom, placing it on one side of the bed. Wesley didn't like eating in bed. She remembered visiting his family when they were first married. All the meals were served in the large formal dining room, painted dark green with white crown moldings and chair rails. There were portraits of narrow-nosed relatives staring down from within gilt frames above the sideboard and a worn Oriental carpet. The rest of the house, while cheerful, reeked of stiff-upper-lip propriety. At breakfast the entire family—mother, father, sister, brother—would appear exactly at eight, dressed, smiling, and ready for the day. No one questioned this routine.

When they got to Paris, Wesley had agreed that on weekends they could start the day with coffee in bed, but that was as far as he would go. This evening she'd surrounded herself with her poetry notebooks, the folder of François's photographs, a basket of mail, and a novel that Madeleine, Wesley's sister, had sent her for Christmas. She got under the covers, sipped her wine, and considered where to start. The mail contained nothing but bills. She remembered Wesley's admonition to be careful with money. Of course she'd be careful. If anything, she wished she could be more reckless. Being careful had been drummed into her for as long as she could remember.

She opened the folder of photographs and leafed through. She needed to start another poem but hadn't decided on which photograph to focus on next. She had copies of the entire set, now a total of twenty-one. When she and Paul had spent the afternoon narrowing the choices for the book, she hadn't seen the pair of nudes that had been there the time before. Had François taken them back, or had Paul? She leaned against the pillows. Paul Valmont had stroked her face. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the sensation. His gesture had been a shock to her, so unexpected that she almost wondered if it had really happened. The telephone rang.

“Annie, I haven't heard from you all week.” Daphne's voice carried clearly across the line. “I thought you were coming back to God House while Wesley was away.”

“I've been meaning to call.”

“Now that you're the famous poet, are you going to ignore me?”

“Daphne, don't be silly.”

“I'm joking, darling. I just hope you haven't forgotten how you loved working out here.”

“Of course not. And thanks to you, I have work to do.” Annie had called Daphne immediately when Paul asked her to do the book. Daphne had been thrilled for her. She had also left a message for Wesley in Washington, but he hadn't called yet to congratulate her.

“Well, come tomorrow then.”

“Tomorrow's not good.” She thought of all the work at the office. “How about the day after?”

“Super. I hope you're writing lots.”

“It's amazing. Having this project is so energizing.”

“See, I knew you could do it. How did your meeting with Paul go?”

“Great.” Annie could feel herself redden. “He's really pleased with the work so far. I'll tell you more when I see you.” The beautiful old house loomed once again in her mind. “I'll get up early and take a morning train on Wednesday.”

“Lovely. I'll fetch you at the station.”

Annie hung up the phone and tried to go back to the pictures in her lap. But now she saw only God House, the sturdy gray walls covered in ivy, the perfectly symmetrical house perched on the hill above the river. Here in Paris, the night was clear. Maybe there, the moon was shimmering on the river. She imagined walking into the peach-colored front hall; she could hear the echo of her footsteps on the black-and-white stone floor before going up the gracious staircase that led to what she thought of as her room, across the hall from Daphne. She wondered what Daphne would be doing on a night like this, all alone in the country.