“Let’s do it,” he says. “Let’s go for a week or two, just look around, see what the properties are like.”
Camille lances an endive and brings it to her mouth. It is inexpressibly tender. The space it leaves on her plate is like an opening to the future, a smooth white channel. She chews slowly. This is a moment to capture. The doctor is in front of her, staring in his turbid way, his protean face taking on new and amazing arrangements. His lips lift in a sly smile meant only for her, those devastating, cloven lips.
“We could look at Montmartre,” he says with a convincing French inflection. “Or the Marais. It’s very hip right now.”
Camille sips her Grenache. This bottle—his choice—is like none she’s ever tasted, with a palate of blackberry, chocolate, and things that couldn’t possibly be there, like roses and pine needles. She waits until the last of the taste has dwindled in her mouth before speaking.
“You should get to know Avis,” she says quietly.
The doctor takes a drink of water, nods.
“Maybe we could spend a Saturday together,” Camille ventures.
“That’s a fine idea,” he says.
When he drops them at the house late that night, he pets Avis on the head tentatively, and Camille thinks she sees something recoil in his eyes, as if he’s received an electric shock from her hair. This is to be expected, of course, from a man without children.
Avis pulls back and clings to her mother’s leg.
“It’s all right,” Camille says with a little laugh. “She’ll get used to you.”
The fact that he’s here is what matters. He does not need to be a father. Camille will make certain that Avis does not require more than he can comfortably give. She will make certain that this remains a pleasurable endeavor for him, all the way through.
It’s already October, but she puts on a Betsey Johnson ikat dress over leggings. Little girls are right, she thinks, to wear their Easter best to school. Why not be beautiful every day? Today, it pleases her to watch the other mothers’ eyes slide to her cleavage and vault back as if scalded. She feels sorry for them, without any hope of such regeneration in their lives. There is nothing newly available to these women, sunk as they are in the sludge of marriage and family, that could match this kind of elevation. Who can blame them for packing together like nervous ewes?
She has begun arriving a few minutes late for pickup to avoid the bleating flock. The school has yet to levy the ten-dollar penalty they are forever threatening. But today, the teacher meets her at the classroom door with a portentous smile. Camille prepares an excuse: broken traffic light, clogged parking lot.
“Mrs. Donovan,” the teacher says in her nursery school falsetto, “do you have a few moments to talk?”
Ten dollars, Camille decides, is a fair price to pay for the benefit she receives. She smiles deferentially and enters the classroom. Avis is involved with a dollhouse, a pathetic thing built of unvarnished wood. The teacher gestures to a squat little table, and Camille lowers onto a tiny chair, her knees jutting up. Everything in the room is custom-built for children, so that she feels like Alice in a dream.
The teacher is younger than Camille, dressed in head-to-toe L.L.Bean. “We don’t want you to be alarmed,” she begins, “but we’ve noticed that Avis seems to be having some trouble expressing herself verbally. Of course, our children are all at different stages of development, but at this age, we encourage them to make their needs known with words rather than screeching or pushing. But this can be difficult when there are underlying problems.” The teacher maintains sympathetic, professional eye contact as she speaks in her girlish voice. “We think it might be a good idea for you to bring her in for an evaluation.”
Camille nods. She should have known this might happen. Every child seems to be diagnosed with something these days. The classroom is crowded with physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists. There are new disorders now: attention deficit disorder, sensory processing disorder, oppositional defiant disorder. She supposes there’s money in it somewhere. It must behoove someone to capitalize on the micromanaging compulsions and amorphous fears of all these hysterical mothers.
“Professional guidance can make a meaningful difference,” the teacher continues.
“Thank you for the suggestion,” Camille says, rising from the midget chair. There are plenty of things she could say, plenty of ways she could poke holes in this girl’s authoritative facade, but it isn’t worth it. Soon they will be a thousand miles over the ocean.
She researches visa requirements and buys a French language book. If they end up staying in Paris, she’ll look for a waitressing job. Even better, the doctor will find a position in a hospital and she won’t have to work at all. They’ll hire a French nanny for Avis.
“When are you planning to do this?” Madeleine asks.