Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 23

The day after Fanny returned to Paris, she discovered an opened letter from Sam among other mail sitting on the entryway table. “When did this letter from your father come?” she asked.

“A week ago.” Belle and Sammy sat at a table near the window, playing with a traveling chess set Fanny had bought them in London. “He’s coming over in the spring.”
“When in the spring?” Fanny’s heart began to thrash about in her chest. “Probably May. He said he would write soon with more details.” Sammy’s eyes lit up. “He said he bought a pony for me for when I get home.” “A pony,” Fanny muttered. How predictable.

“You’ll  have  to  be  gone  when  he  comes,”  she  told  Louis  when  he  came  to  visit  that afternoon. They were sitting in the parlor of the apartment, speaking in low tones so as not to be heard by Belle or Sammy. “It must be done exactly the right way, or I shall be left with nothing.”

“I understand.” Louis shifted in one of the battered chairs. “I had my own letter today. From my father.”

“Yes? Is he coming to see you?” While they were in London, she had encouraged Louis to make amends with Thomas Stevenson. When his eyesight improved, Louis had written to his father, explaining that there were new complications in his life now and inviting him to visit Paris.

“He’ll be here in March.” Louis took her hand. “Have I mentioned how brave you were to take me in like that when my eyes went bad?”

She nodded solemnly.

They had not talked about Louis living with her. He had stayed the night before when they got in. But it was clear, after their enforced separation in London, and after a night of passion and tender declarations, that neither wanted to be apart again.
“My father can be a  reasonable man, and I believe he’ll help  us if I ask. But I can’t present you to him just yet. He would love you, Fanny, he will love you when he meets you. But this arrangement”—Louis swept his gaze around the tawdry parlor—”he wouldn’t understand. It would work against us.”

Fanny  winced at  the  remark.  She  straightened in  her  chair.  “I  don’t  play  the  fallen woman very well. I have known the real type, and I don’t admire it.”
“It isn’t what I want, but I am asking you to trust me. Look at what you are asking of me —to disappear while your husband visits. Can you possibly think I am not o?ended by that prospect?” Louis’s frustration smouldered in his words. He struggled to calm himself. “Look, I won’t have to depend on my father much longer, Fanny. I’m going to support you and your children. I’m going to marry you someday. For now, if my father gives me a decent allowance, I can  cover your rent and have enough  to tide us over until you can  get a divorce.”

At that moment, Sammy came into the room. The boy looked at both of them and turned to leave.

“Come along, my friend,” Louis said, making his voice gay. “I am going to take you and your mother to dinner.”

“I have heard they serve good food that’s not too dear,” Louis said of the café he’d chosen. When  they  entered,  Fanny  noticed  the  ma?tre  d’  was  curt,  as  if  he  disapproved  of something—Louis’s  coat,  no  doubt,  which  was  showing  wear.  The  waiter  was  equally haughty. Almost in reaction, she suspected, Louis ordered a bottle of Clos Vougeot. It was an extravagant choice; they would be living on soup for a week as a consequence.
“It’s superb,” he promised Fanny, who knew little about wine.

Now the bottle was on the table. Louis sni?ed the poured wine, leaned back in his chair, and crossed his arms. “It is corked.” His voice was matter-of-fact.

The waiter stiffened. He smelled the wine and insisted it was not. “Indeed, it is.” Louis said, his tone growing more indignant. The waiter turned on his heel, and marched off.

“How infuriating,” Louis fumed, “to be treated like a gullible … “ “… hayseed,” Fanny said.

“It makes my blood boil.”

When the waiter returned, he placed a bottle in front of Louis and walked away. Louis tasted the wine, and his face turned crimson.  “It’s the same goddamned bilious stu? he served before. He simply put it in a different bottle.”

Louis stood up from his seat. He called out, “Monsieur!” and “Monsieur!” again when the

waiter did not respond. In a hot ?t, Louis leaped from his seat, grabbed the bottle by its neck and smashed it against the wall next to the table. Fanny and Sammy ducked as glass chunks ?ew. All around them, diners ran from their chairs. Louis was shaking, staring at the bottle neck in his fist and the red streaks dripping down the yellow wall.
Fanny pulled Sammy up and put on her gloves. “I need to leave now.” She took her boy’s hand, swallowed hard, and walked past the staring diners and ma?tre d’, out the door of the café.

“It was outrageous—” Louis began when he caught up with them outside. Fanny shook her head emphatically. There would be no discussion on the way back to
her ?at. Louis hailed a cab, and they rode in silence. At the apartment, she sent Sammy scurrying up the steps. “I will be there in a minute,” she told him.

“What in God’s name happened in there?” She stood facing Louis, her hands curled into fists on her hips.

“I won’t stand by and let someone be taken advantage of,” Louis said, “including myself.” “But that rage—it wasn’t moral indignation. It was an unholy tantrum. Completely out of proportion, and in front of my son.”

Louis’s shoulders sagged.

“You are feeling pressure. Well, so am I. That is life, my dear. You say you want to marry me, and then you behave like that?” She shook her head. “You are a good man, when you behave like a man, but I do not need another child. Decide which you are.”