“For what?”
“For you, of course. You must stay in Paris. I know a place where all the American girls who come here live. You will live there too. We will tear up this letter and you will write to your mother and tell her you are staying.” He picked up the letter again and then let it fall from his fingers, as though it were as worthless as sand.
“I can’t stay, Sebastien.” In her heart, she was already saying au revoir to all the things she might have done when she was here, watching the sun rise on the Pont des Arts over the Seine, walking the narrow back streets of the Left Bank, eating pain au chocolat whenever she wanted, drinking wine and writing in cafés, beside the artists and writers who had made Paris the place to be.
“You must! Leaving would be a waste. A waste!” He stubbed out his cigarette, leaned forward, looked into her eyes with his brilliant green ones, placed his hand on hers, soft, the fingernails edged with tiny moons of paint. She looked down at his hand on hers, the quiet pressure. “What is waiting for you in America that you must hurry back?”
What was waiting for her? Nothing. Nothing she wanted. Her parents’ disappointment. Closed, stuffy parlors and embroidery. Ladies’ benevolent societies. Mr. Chapman. She looked past Sebastien’s face, both serious and pleading at the same time, out the window again. The bell in the church tower was calling out the noon hour. The child had distributed the bread to the pigeons and was now sitting with his mother on the bench, insistently bending her ear about some issue of crucial small-child importance. Across the street, a vendor had arrived and was carefully hanging bits of fabric over the church’s fence as though it were a display case, and a flower-seller was happily accosting people, thrusting bouquets at them as they alit from the Métro. She didn’t want to leave this, didn’t want to break the promise she had made to herself without even giving it a try. She didn’t want to go home yet.
Her parents would be furious. And they would refuse to support her. She had—what, a few hundred francs? And then it would all be gone. But he had said Paris was cheap. And she could work, and her French would get better. She would be independent, like those girls in the boardinghouse. She’d have her own money, her own job, her own life, and there would be no one to criticize how she spent her time or what books she read or who she was.
Sebastien was still holding her hand, keeping her in place as though she were a rare and precious bird who might fly away. She thought of Mr. Chapman’s dry, nervous hands, his chapped lips. She thought of everything she had yet to explore—the grand cathedral at Chartres, Versailles, the open-air markets.
Margie took a long breath, as though she were raising her arms in the air to dive into deep water. “All right,” she said. “Where is this place you say I should stay?”
eleven
MADELEINE
1999
When I dragged downstairs the morning after my argument with Phillip, my mother was already dressed (including full lipstick) and sitting in my father’s office making phone calls. A yellow legal pad sat in front of her, covered with notes written in her perfect penmanship, and as I came in, she hung up the phone and made another note.
“You haven’t brushed your hair,” she said, looking up at me.
“That was an actual life choice.” I’d woken up with it looking not half bad, and I’d been afraid to touch it. Of course it had gone into its natural curl, which my mother regarded as a failing on the same level of magnitude as, say, becoming a heroin addict, but I couldn’t do anything about that.
My mother glanced back at me, looking as though she had stepped in something. I lifted my voice and changed the subject. “So what are you working on?” I asked, too loudly.
“Don’t shout, I’m right here. I’ve been calling some appraisers.”
“Doesn’t Sharon do that?”
“Not for the house, for the contents. I know you think everything in here is ancient and worthless, but much of it is quite valuable.”
“Wait, where did you get that idea? I don’t think these things are worthless.”
“I’ve seen your house. It’s very . . . modern.” She said the word as though even having it on her tongue disgusted her.