Capturing Paris (35 page)

“I'll never forget this place,” Annie said.

“I know you won't.” Daphne tilted her head and surveyed Annie one last time, then thrust her hands into her pockets and turned back to the house. She offered a quick wave and closed the door behind her.

Annie proceeded down the drive and looked once more at God House. It was odd, but she felt the same sense of satisfaction now at the end of this spring afternoon that she felt when she finished a poem. There was a definite moment of completion, when she knew that the words were in place, when she realized she should let it rest and do no more.

“I have missed you,” Paul said. “You have been gone a very long time.” His face was tanned, as if he had spent quite a few sun-filled afternoons outdoors at a café. It suited him. He looked stronger, healthier, than when she first knew him.

“I was gone a long time,” she said. They sat at Café des Editeurs just off the boulevard Saint-Germain, not far from his office. She wanted to meet him in a public place, not quite trusting her resolve in the privacy of his office. She hadn't called him immediately on her return to Paris. She had let a few days go by, a few more, then a few weeks. She had been thinking mostly about Wesley, what he had offered, what he had said. She knew he meant it when he told her he would move back to Paris if she wanted it.

She had also thought about Paul. She couldn't deny the allure of resuming a relationship with him and seeing what would happen. It would be, in some ways, so easy to start over, to build something new.

Now, side by side, with a small round table wedged between them, they faced the street and its constant stream of motorbikes, small cars, and pedestrians. Annie reflected on how much of Parisian life took place on the street, on the sidewalks, and in the cafés that filled with people drinking, eating, talking, relieved to be out of their cramped apartments and crowded offices.

“Your daughter is well now?” Behind his solicitude Annie could tell that Paul didn't understand what had kept her away from him for so long.

“She's doing much better. She's staying with her aunt in Connecticut for the summer. She hopes to return to work in the fall. It's a great relief.” It was difficult to look at him. Still so handsome, with that touch of neediness. She longed to reach out and smooth his brow or straighten his collar.

The waiter appeared and set down their drinks, a small espresso for Paul, a sparkling water with a lemon wedge for her. He tucked the bill, a small white square of paper, underneath the ashtray and left them to idle away the afternoon.

Paul reached for her hand and drew it to his lips. Annie closed her eyes and for an instant imagined letting it all begin again. He lowered her hand but did not let go. The current was still there; it was unmistakable. Annie gently withdrew her hand and picked up her spoon to press the juice of the lemon into her water. The spoon tinkled against the glass.

“How is François?” François was recovering from a bout of pneumonia. He had been in the hospital while Annie was away.

“Still weak. He's gone to La Motte. He hopes the good air of the south will make him strong.”

“He's such a dear man.” Annie took a sip of water. She had walked all the way from her apartment, and the afternoon was warm. “Has he seen the proofs?” She loosened the silk scarf around her neck and unbuttoned her raincoat. She leaned forward to take it off, and he helped her pull it up and around her shoulders. He left his arm around her. She didn't move. The weight of his arm on her shoulders was making her uncertain.

“He is very happy. He thinks it is the best of his work, and your poems complemented the pictures exactly as he wished.”

“I'm glad to hear that.” Annie looked out toward the street. She felt his fingers softly stroking the back of her neck. She fought the temptation to relax to his touch.

“I think it was right,” Paul said. His fingers became still. “Our being together was the right thing. Perhaps now it is too late for you?” She felt his eyes on her.

She turned to face him. His brows had furrowed and there was a petulant curl to the corner of his lip. She saw flecks of brown in his
blue eyes. He removed his arm from her and touched her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw. She remembered that same gesture, months ago, when he had put her in a taxi.

“You have been with your husband again?”

“Not in the way you mean,” she said. The noise of two bikers starting their engines made it difficult to talk. “We spent a lot of time with our daughter, watching over her, and waiting until she began to get better.” How could she explain to him that kind of bond, how having a child with a man you had loved was something you would always share? A marriage by itself could end, but never the combined love of parents for a child. The love they gave to Sophie had been woven together, thread by thread, year by year, growing stronger, powerful, and intractable. To think that they had almost lost her, that the sudden terrible illness had nearly taken their daughter away.

Annie blinked back tears. “We stayed with Sophie at Wesley's sister's house, a lovely place in the country. It was nice to be a family again. It's quiet there, and I had time to write.” Annie smiled at him. “Surprisingly it came easily. I started several new poems.”

“What are they about?”

“Not Paris. I seem to be going off in a new direction. It feels good, but the work is still very new.” She shrugged. “I thought I needed Paris. I know it seems silly.”

“Annie, I know you have more to say than Paris. Your poems for François's photos are about much more than the place.” He shook his head and studied her face again, as if hoping to see some kind of change. “The final poem, ‘Place de Furstenberg,' it is about us, isn't it?”

“Yes.” She watched his hands, his fingers circling the rim of his coffee cup. “Yes, it is,” she said softly.

“You were telling me there is no future for us?” He sipped his coffee. “The poem is ambiguous.
Non
?”

Annie looked into his eyes and saw a flicker of hope. “You have been wonderful to me,” she began. “Having the chance to work from the photographs, the opportunity to do the book, it's really changed my life. But—”

“I know. I know what you will say.”

“I'm glad you know, because I don't really know. A part of me wants to be with you. Truly, I will never forget you.”

“My dear Annie. Please, say no more.” He put his arm back across her shoulders. “This is sad for me but no surprise.
Quoi alors, c'est le destin.”

Fate. She had thought a lot about fate recently. What if she'd never met Daphne? What if Daphne hadn't introduced her to Paul? Would he have found another English poet to do the poems for the book? If that other writer was a woman, would there have been the same kind of attraction? “I'm sorry it has to be this way?”

“That is life. Yes?” He sighed and shook his head in a wordless acceptance. “And what is ahead for you? Do you know?”

“Yes. I think I do.”

“I see.” They sat for a while longer, both looking out at the parade of Parisians hurrying home at the end of the afternoon. A few minutes later he reached into his pocket and placed the money on the table for the waiter.

“I must go,” he said. “But stay a while. I want to look back and see you sitting here in this place. Then, whenever I pass by it, I will think of you.”

“I'll stay a little longer then,” she said.

He bent down and handed her a package that had been tucked beside his chair.

“What is this?”

“Open it later,” he said.

“Paul, how very dear. I—”

He reached across, placed his fingers on her lips, and then kissed her.
“Au revoir, ma chère.”

He stood and she watched him join the crowd on the sidewalk. He looked back once, and she smiled. He disappeared from view. She wrapped her fingers around the slim package. The motorbikes continued to roar by, men and women hurried to shops and appointments, students shoved and joked as they passed. She wondered how long she would keep this memory of him. After all, she hadn't known him
long. What would fade away first? The shock of dark hair, the angles of his face, the full softness of his lips? He was a good man, she thought, a kind man, but a man she didn't love.

Annie leaned back in her chair and felt the last rays of sun on her face. She closed her eyes and let her mind wander back to Connecticut as she had done so often since her return to Paris. She had begun to sort the memories. The color coming slowly back to Sophie's face, Madeleine in the kitchen stirring oatmeal-cookie dough in an old-fashioned earthenware bowl, Wesley seated with them at the kitchen table, making lists, teasing his sister, kissing the top of Sophie's head. Wesley had figured out the complicated logistics of Sophie's absence from New York. He'd arranged for her to have time off from work, figured out her health insurance, and had gone into the city to get what she needed from her apartment. But it wasn't only the practical things. He was able to convince Sophie that she would eventually feel like her old self again. He had her laughing and took her on her first walks out in the garden. Annie loved watching them together.

One evening, shortly before her departure for Paris, Annie discovered them seated in the two wing chairs on either side of the fire. She could see the scene as clearly as when she'd discovered them there. She'd finished helping Madeleine with the dinner dishes and had gone to see if either of them wanted an herbal tea before bed.

“Moms, do you remember the time in Brittany when Dad found a rock in his plate of
moules
?” Sophie giggled. “God, that was the worst restaurant.”

“I do remember.” Annie had smiled and gone to sit on the arm of Wesley's chair. He had his long legs extended and the firelight flickered across his face.

“If I'm stronger by the end of the summer, Dad said it might be fun to go back to Brittany. Maybe rent a house.” Sophie smiled at her father. “I'm not ready yet for a transatlantic flight, but in a few months—”

“Well, if that doesn't work, maybe just a long weekend,” Wesley said. “We could try Cape Cod. My parents took us there a few times when I was a boy.” Wesley looked up at Annie, his eyes hopeful. “We'll wait and see how everyone is feeling later this summer.”

At that moment everything had felt right to Annie. She picked up Wesley's hand. His fingers wrapped around hers, firm and comfortable.

Now, sitting in the café, Annie contemplated the differences in those clasped hands: Paul's hand in hers, her hand in Wesley's. Each a different imprint, each a separate story.

Le Commencement

Annie pulled her robe more securely around her and opened the front door
onto Cambridge Place. The old brass handle was cool in her hand, and the door gave way grudgingly, with a few squeaks. The house, a nineteenth-century brick, exhibited its aches and pains in small ways, but for the world outside, it stood straight in the bank of elegant town houses. The bayed fronts made Annie think of tightly corseted bosoms drawn up and in, ready to face the world with propriety. She knew there were stories behind each well-maintained façade, but like proper Victorians, they kept these stories cosseted within, hidden behind the heavy oak doors and lush curtained windows that muffled the outside noise.

Annie bent down to pick up the paper. Her own body spoke to her briefly, a cracking in one knee, a slight ache in her shoulder, probably the one she'd slept on. She slept deeply in this tall, narrow house. These minor early-morning twinges would not speak to her in any significant way for at least a decade, perhaps longer, with luck on her side.

She didn't glance at the newspaper headlines. She preferred to distance herself from the world until later in the day; the newspaper would wait until her cup of tea at the end of the afternoon. Bringing in the paper was part of her morning ritual. She found it necessary to start each day with a breath of fresh air, a glimpse of the outside world. She spent her mornings and often the early afternoons in her study with the door closed. Her work was inside work, inside the house, inside the small room at the back of the house, inside her mind. She didn't allow the newspaper headlines or the mellow-voiced public-radio announcer to muddy the stillness that her work required.

She enjoyed taking a moment to witness the day, not from the window but full on, outside on the top of the steps facing the tree-lined street. The weather served as a touchstone, a launching point for her day. This morning the winter sky hung low, a cloud cover softening the sounds of the morning traffic a few blocks away. The dampness chilled her body, still warm from her bed. She breathed in the air, diesel-drenched, and was carried back to Paris. Yes, Paris on a winter day like this one, tight with wet cold, sad and yet beautiful, the light gentle and shadowless. Annie allowed herself another breath and noticed how the trees were completely bare, sharply outlined against the pearl-gray sky. She stepped back inside and pushed the heavy door closed, turning her back on the cold December morning.

Annie glanced into the living room where the pale peach walls defied the gloomy day, making it look like the sun shone as usual through the front bay windows. Annie was pleased with the effect of the peach paint, and she'd had the two armchairs recovered in a French Provincial print of the same shade. The country pine furniture, shipped over from the apartment on rue des Archives, looked surprisingly at home in this proper Victorian house.

She passed through the dining room and silently admired the huge basket of dried lavender she'd arranged in the fireplace opening. She'd been amazed to find five fireplaces in a six-room house, a small six-room house at that. The lavender reminded her of warm months to come and the garden that Madeleine was helping her plan.