“Don’t cry.”
How could she not? They should have had a lifetime to share truths and secrets, to get to know each other. “I love you,” she whispered, remembering that time so long ago when she’d said it to him before. She’d been so young and shiny then.
“I love you, too,” he said, his voice breaking. “I did from the first minute I saw you. I thought I was protecting you by not telling you. If I’d known…”
How fragile life was, how fragile they were.
Love.
It was the beginning and end of everything, the foundation and the ceiling and the air in between. It didn’t matter that she was broken and ugly and sick. He loved her and she loved him. All her life she had waited—longed for—people to love her, but now she saw what really mattered. She had known love, been blessed by it.
Papa. Maman. Sophie.
Antoine. Micheline. Anouk. Henri.
Ga?tan.
Vianne.
She looked past Ga?tan to her sister, the other half of her. She remembered Maman telling them that someday they would be best friends, that time would stitch their lives together.
Vianne nodded, crying now, too, her hand on her extended belly.
Don’t forget me, Isabelle thought. She wished she had the strength to say it out loud.
THIRTY-NINE
May 7, 1995
Somewhere over France
The lights in the airplane cabin come on suddenly.
I hear the ding! of the announcement system. It tells us that we are beginning our descent into Paris.
Julien leans over and adjusts my seat belt, making sure that my seat is in the locked, upright position. That I am safe.
“How does it feel to be landing in Paris again, Mom?”
I don’t know what to say.
*
Hours later, the phone beside me rings.
I am still more than half asleep when I answer it. “Hello?”
“Hey, Mom. Did you sleep?”
“I did.”
“It’s three o’clock. What time do you want to leave for the reunion?”
“Let’s walk around Paris. I can be ready in an hour.”
“I’ll come by and pick you up.”
I ease out of a bed the size of Nebraska and head for the marble-everywhere bathroom. A nice hot shower brings me back to myself and wakens me, but it isn’t until I am seated at the vanity, staring at my face magnified in the light-rimmed oval mirror, that it hits me.
I am home.
It doesn’t matter that I am an American citizen, that I have spent more of my life in the United States than in France; the truth is that none of that matters. I am home.
I apply makeup carefully. Then I brush the snow-white hair back from my face, creating a chignon at the nape of my neck with hands that won’t stop trembling. In the mirror, I see an elegant, ancient woman with velvety, pleated skin, glossy, pale pink lips, and worry in her eyes.
It is the best I can do.
Pushing back from the mirror, I go to the closet and withdraw the winter white slacks and turtleneck that I have brought with me. It occurs to me that perhaps color would have been a better choice. I wasn’t thinking when I packed.
I am ready when Julien arrives.
He guides me out into the hallway, helping me as if I am blind and disabled, and I let him lead me through the elegant hotel lobby and out into the magic light of Paris in springtime.
But when he asks the doorman for a taxi, I insist. “We will walk to the reunion.”
He frowns. “But it’s in the ?le de la Cité.”
I wince at his pronunciation, but it is my own fault, really.
I see the doorman smile.
“My son loves maps,” I say. “And he has never been to Paris before.”
The man nods.
“It’s a long way, Mom,” Julien says, coming up to stand beside me. “And you’re…”
“Old?” I can’t help smiling. “I am also French.”
“You’re wearing heels.”
Again, I say: “I’m French.”
Julien turns to the doorman, who lifts his gloved hands and says, “C’est la vie, M’sieur.”
“All right,” Julien says at last. “Let’s walk.”
I take his arm and for a glorious moment, as we step out onto the bustling sidewalk, arm in arm, I feel like a girl again. Traffic rushes past us, honking and squealing; boys skateboard up the sidewalk, dodging in and out amid the throng of tourists and locals out on this brilliant afternoon. The air is full of chestnut blossoms and smells of baking bread, cinnamon, diesel fuel, car exhaust, and baked stone—smells that will forever remind me of Paris.
To my right, I see one of my mother’s favorite patisseries, and suddenly I remember Maman handing me a butterfly macaron.
“Mom?”
I smile at him. “Come,” I say imperiously, leading him into the small shop. There is a long line and I take my place at the end of it.
“I thought you didn’t like cookies.”
I ignore him and stare at the glass case full of beautifully colored macarons and pain au chocolat.
When it is my turn I buy two macarons—one coconut, one raspberry. I reach into the bag and get the coconut macaron, handing it to Julien.
We are outside again, walking, when he takes a bite and stops dead. “Wow,” he says after a minute. Then, “Wow,” again.
I smile. Everyone remembers their first taste of Paris. This will be his.
When he has licked his fingers and thrown the bag away, he links his arm through mine again.
At a pretty little bistro overlooking the Seine, I say, “Let’s have a glass of wine.”
It is just past five o’clock. The genteel cocktail hour.
We take a seat outside, beneath a canopy of flowering chestnut trees. Across the street, along the banks of the river, vendors are set up in green kiosks, selling everything from oil paintings to old Vogue covers to Eiffel Tower key chains.
We share a greasy, paper-wrapped cone of frites and sip wine. One glass turns into two, and the afternoon begins to give way to the haze of dusk.
I had forgotten how gently time passes in Paris. As lively as the city is, there’s a stillness to it, a peace that lures you in. In Paris, with a glass of wine in your hand, you can just be.
All along the Seine, streetlamps come on, apartment windows turn golden.
“It’s seven,” Julien says, and I realize that he has been keeping time all along, waiting. He is so American. No sitting idle, forgetting oneself, not for this young man of mine. He has also been letting me settle myself.
I nod and watch him pay the check. As we stand, a well-dressed couple, both smoking cigarettes, glides in to take our seats.
Julien and I walk arm in arm to the Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge across the Seine. Beyond it is the ?le de la Cité, the island that was once the heart of Paris. Notre Dame, with its soaring chalk-colored walls, looks like a giant bird of prey landing, gorgeous wings outstretched. The Seine captures and reflects dots of lamplight along its shores, golden coronas pulled out of shape by the waves.
“Magic,” Julien says, and that is precisely true.
We walk slowly, crossing over this graceful bridge that was built more than four hundred years ago. On the other side, we see a street vendor closing up his portable shop.
Julien stops, picks up an antique snow globe. He tilts it and snow flurries and swirls within the glass, obscuring the delicate gilt Eiffel Tower.
I see the tiny white flakes, and I know it’s all fake—nothing—but it makes me remember those terrible winters, when we had holes in our shoes and our bodies were wrapped in newsprint and every scrap of clothing we could find.
“Mom? You’re shaking.”
“We’re late,” I say. Julien puts down the antique snow globe and we are off again, bypassing the crowd waiting to enter Notre Dame.
The hotel is on a side street behind the cathedral. Next to it is the H?tel-Dieu, the oldest hospital in Paris.
“I’m afraid,” I say, surprising myself with the admission. I can’t remember admitting such a thing in years, although it has often been true. Four months ago, when they told me the cancer was back, fear made me cry in the shower until the water ran cold.
“We don’t have to go in,” he says.
“Yes, we do,” I say.
I put one foot in front of the other until I am in the lobby, where a sign directs us to the ballroom on the fourth floor.
When we exit the elevator, I can hear a man speaking through a microphone that amplifies and garbles his voice in equal measure. There is a table out in the hallway, with name tags spread out. It reminds me of that old television show: Concentration. Most of the tags are missing, but mine remains.