The Expats (5 page)

She looked over Adam’s shoulder into the large two-way mirror,
behind which, she knew, was an array of her superiors, watching her. “I don’t know.”

“BOYS.”

“But it was Jake. He—”

“Boys.”

“Mommy: Ben took my—”

“Boys! Stop it! Right this second!”

Then there was silence in the car, the stillness of the morning after a tornado has torn through, big old trees uprooted, branches down, roof shingles blown away. Kate took a deep, deep breath, trying to calm herself, relaxing her death grip on the steering wheel. It was the bickering that she really couldn’t stand.

“Mommy, I have a new best friend,” Ben said, apropos of nothing, his voice light-filled and carefree. He didn’t care that he’d just been yelled at, fifteen seconds earlier. He didn’t hold a grudge against his mother.

“That’s great! What’s his name?”

“I don’t know.”

Of course not: little children know that it doesn’t matter what you call a rose.

“At the roundabout, take the. Second. Exit. And enter. The motorway.” The GPS device spoke to Kate in an upper-class English accent. Telling her what to do.

“Enter. The motorway,” mimicked Jake, in the backseat. “
Enter
. The
motorway
,” with a different inflection. “Enter. The
motorway
. Mommy, what’s a
motorway
?”

There was a time when Kate had studied maps; she used to love maps. She could drive anywhere, her internal compass never wavering, her memory of the turns and directions impeccable. But with this Julie Andrews–esque GPS leading her by the hand through every swerve and dip in the road, she was freed from using her brain, from making her own effort. This thing was like a calculator: faster and easier, but debilitating.

Kate had halfheartedly suggested that they could live without a GPS, but Dexter had been adamant. His sense of direction had never been good.

“A motorway is a highway,” Kate said, in an extra-patient voice, trying to bury her outburst, to atone. The niceness of her little boys melted
Kate’s heart, which in comparison seemed inhumanly cold. Her children made her ashamed of herself.

The low-hanging sun momentarily blinded her as she glanced to the southwest, at the oncoming traffic in the roundabout.

“Mommy, is this the motorway?”

“No. We’ll be entering it, after the roundabout.”

“Oh. Mommy, what’s a roundabout?”

“A roundabout,” she said, “is a traffic circle.”

She hated roundabouts, which seemed like an open invitation to sideways collisions. Plus they were semi-anarchic. Plus she felt like she was constantly swinging her children out of their car seats, as well as dumping over the grocery bags in the trunk.
Plunk
, and there went all the vegetables, the cherry tomatoes rolling around, the apples getting bruised.

In Latin America, the roads had been abysmal, the driving habits lethal. But she’d never had her children in the backseat.

“Mommy, what’s a traffic circle?”

They were everywhere, traffic circles, a new universal. Along with the window levers that were exactly the same, wherever she went. And the toilet flushes that were all built into the walls above the toilets. And the broad light switches, and the wrought-iron banisters, and the highly polished stone-tile floors.… Every fixture and finish seemed to have been granted to builders on an exclusive basis, monopolies by fiat.

“This is,” she said, trying not to become exasperated with all the boy’s questions. “This is a traffic circle, sweetie. And here in Luxembourg they call it a roundabout.”

What do you
do
with children, all the time? In Washington, she’d had charge of the kids on weekends; preschools and the nanny had borne the brunt of the day-to-day child-care responsibilities. She’d wanted more time with the kids, then.

But now? Now it was every day after school, every evening, every night, every morning, and all weekend long. How was anyone supposed to amuse them, without spending her life lying on the floor, playing with Lego? Without the kids killing each other, or making an unbearable mess, or driving her crazy?

Now that she had what she’d wanted, she was having her doubts. Which had been her worst fear about this whole thing.

“Mommy, is this the motorway?”

“Yes, sweetie. This is the motorway.”

The dashboard began to blink. The onboard computer regularly sent
her messages in German, tremendously long words, sometimes blinking, that she struggled to ignore. It was just a rental; they hadn’t yet tackled the task of buying a car.

“Mommy?”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“I need to poop.”

She glanced at the GPS: two kilometers more. “We’ll be home in a few minutes.”

The motorway ended and she was on a street beside the rail yard, side-by-side idle high-speed trains, then past the station’s clock tower, in the heart of the Gare district. Now she knew where she was going. She turned off the GPS, kicking out the crutch. The only way to learn.

“YOUR HUSBAND WORKED there for four years before he joined the bank?” Adam hadn’t looked up from his notepad, his pen poised.

“That’s correct.”

“He left one year before the IPO.”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t seem to be particularly, um, intelligent timing.”

“Dexter has never been much of a financial strategist.”

“Apparently not. So then at this bank. He did what, exactly?”

“He worked in systems security. His job was to figure out how people might try to breach the system, and prevent it.”

“What system?”

“The accounts. He was protecting the accounts.”

“The money.”

“That’s correct.”

Adam looked dubious. Kate knew that he was—they all were—suspicious of Dexter and this move to Luxembourg. But Kate wasn’t. She’d done her homework long ago, and Dexter was above suspicion. That’s why she’d let herself marry him.

But of course they wouldn’t know that. Of course they should be suspicious. Maybe even she should be suspicious too. But long ago she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t be.

“Do you know much about this type of work?” Adam asked.

“Practically nothing.”

Adam stared at her, waiting for more of an explanation. But she didn’t particularly want to give one, not aloud. She didn’t even want to spell it out for herself, in her mind. The fundamental truth was that she didn’t
want to understand Dexter’s world, because she didn’t want him to understand hers. Quid pro quo.

Adam wasn’t willing to take silence for an answer. “Why not?”

“As long as we didn’t talk about his work, we wouldn’t have to talk about mine.”

“And now?”

Kate stared across the table at this man, this stranger, asking her these intimate details, questions she didn’t even ask herself, answers she didn’t want. “Now what?”

“Now that you’re leaving us, will you tell him about your work?”

TODAY,
10:54
A.M.

Kate takes a step forward, and raises her arms to this woman. They embrace, but it’s guarded, cautious; maybe because they don’t want to crush each other’s obligatory scarves or perfectly arranged hair. Maybe not.

“It’s so good to see you,” the woman says, quietly and earnestly, into Kate’s hair. “So good.”

“And you,” Kate says, just as quiet, less earnest. “You too.”

As they break away, the woman leaves one hand on Kate’s upper arm. The touch feels like genuine warmth. But it could be that she’s preventing Kate from moving, pinning her in place with a grip that’s soft but unyielding.

Not only is Kate imagining that people are watching, she’s also doubting everything. Absolutely everything.

“Do you live here? In Paris?”

“Most of the year,” Kate says.

“In this neighborhood?”

Kate happens to be looking in the direction of their apartment, just a few blocks away. “Not far” is what she says.

“And the rest of the year?”

“We spent this summer down in Italy. A rented villa.”

“Italy? How wonderful. What part?”

“Southern.”

“Amalfi Coast?”

“Thereabouts.” Kate doesn’t elaborate. “And you? Where do you live now?”

“Oh …” A small shrug. “Still not completely settled. Here and there.” She smiles. Smirks, really.

“So”—Kate waves her arm at the little street, which is not exactly the Champs-Elysées or the boulevard St-Germain—“what brings you to this corner of Paris?”

“Shopping.” The woman hefts a small bag, and Kate notices that she’s wearing an engagement ring, a modest diamond, but no longer the gold wedding band that she used to wear. The disappearance of the band makes sense. But the appearance of the diamond is bewildering.

If there was one thing this woman enjoyed, it was indeed shopping, of the rue Jacob ilk: antiques, fabrics, furniture. Coffee-table books about antiques and fabric and furniture. But Kate had thought that was just an act.

It’s impossible to know which parts of the woman, if any, were real.

“Of course,” Kate says.

They stare at each other, smiles plastered.

“Listen, I’d love to catch up, y’know, fully. Is Dexter in town?”

Kate nods.

“Would it be possible to grab a drink tonight? Or dinner?”

“That’d be good,” Kate says. “I’ll have to check when Dexter can make it.” As she’s speaking, Kate realizes that the woman is going to press for an immediate phone call, so Kate preempts: “I can’t ring him right now.”

She rummages around in her bag for her phone, buying time while she thinks of a rational reason. “He’s at the gym” is what she comes up with. Good enough, and possibly even true. Dexter either goes to the gym or plays tennis every day. His full-time job of managing investments is, at most, a half-time job. “So give me your number.”

“You know what?” This woman cocks her head. “Why don’t you give me yours?” She reaches into her purse and removes a leather notebook and a matching pen. Precious little items, bought at the same boutique as the coat. This woman showed up in Paris and spent a fortune a couple blocks from Kate’s home. Can this be a coincidence?

“I can’t seem to find my charger,” the woman continues, “and I wouldn’t want a dead phone to cause us to miss each other.”

This is utter bullshit, and Kate almost laughs. But it’s fair turnabout. It’s tough to be angry with someone for lying while you yourself are also lying, for the same exact reasons. Kate rattles off her number, and the woman dutifully scribbles it down. Even though Kate knows full well that this woman doesn’t need to write down any phone number to remember it.

Kate marvels at how many layers of disingenuousness are passing between them.

“I’ll call by five, okay?”

“Wonderful.” They trade another embrace, another pair of fake smiles.

The woman begins to walk away. Kate finds herself watching her rear, larger than it used to be; this had once been a skinny woman. Not that long ago.

Kate turns and heads in the opposite direction, away from home, for no reason other than to put distance between herself and this woman. She struggles not to look back, not to follow her. She knows she shouldn’t. She knows she couldn’t.

“Oh, Kate?” The woman is walking back toward Kate, in no rush.

“Yes?”

“Could you give Dexter a message, from me?” Still walking slowly, nearing Kate.

“Of course.”

“Tell him,” she says, now upon Kate, one step away, “the Colonel is dead.”

4

“So,” Kate said, looking up from the coloring books she was arranging on the table in front of the boys. Another family dinner in another mid-price restaurant, the same three-week-old solution to the challenges of settling into a new life in a new home on a new continent. “You’ve already been working, quite a lot.”

Dexter raised his eyebrows, taken by surprise by the criticism—the complaint—in his wife’s comment. “There are a lot of things that I needed to take care of immediately.”

“And that’s going to quiet down, now.” A statement that Kate suspected was contrary to fact. But she wanted to make him refute it. Although their relationship had been good since the move, he hadn’t been as present as she’d hoped.