We shared a tomato and mozzarella plate. Then I had spaghetti with baby clams and red pepper, which I tried to eat as neatly and prettily as I could.
“It’s such a pleasure,” he sighed, “to be with a woman who actually eats. So many women just play with their food.”
I flushed as the specter of impossibly delicate Portia rose between us, batting pasta around into little piles with a silver fork. I wanted to be her, and I wanted to be the opposite of her.
I took a tiny bite and got a burst of garlic.
“Sensing my discomfort, he changed the subject, “What was your French family like?”
The question caught me off guard.
“They were great. My cousin Solange taught preschool and she was really energetic. And Jacques always made these corny jokes about how everyone in the world was really a Balzac character from The Human Comedy. He was a teacher too, a literature teacher in a lycée. And they had this wild son, Étienne, who I had this love-hate relationship with. They were lovely. I mean, they are lovely.”
“But you haven’t seen them yet? Not since you’ve been here this time?”
“How did you know?”
He smiled indulgently, tossed back a curl. “I know something about moving on. You’ll look back eventually.”
“There’s something kind of martyr-like about them that makes me sad. Maybe because they are so pure. Solange has these firm, busy arms, always in motion like the kids she taught. And Jacques is quieter, with a dark mustache and a slow smile and an absolute certainty that Balzac was the greatest writer in the history of the world. He knows it’s funny—he’s onto himself—but it does nothing to shake his conviction. They took me in when my dad was sick and made me so much part of the family that I felt kind of guilty for how attached I got to them, disloyal to my own parents.”
“But your own parents sent you away.”
“They had to,” I almost snapped. I stared into the olive oil shining up from my plate. Why had my parents left me in Paris for so long? In a trough between two waves? Learning French? Life had traded me fluency for my father’s last touch. Not the bargain I would have chosen. But, as Mom would say, there you have it. Instead of asking so many questions, go make something of your gifts.
“Sorry,” Olivier said. “You shouldn’t call them until you feel ready.”
No, I wanted to protest. Ready or not, I was going to call them later today.
“Although you may not get around to much of anything,” he continued, “after Lydia gets here. It’s hard to get out of her orbit once you get caught. She and the family can be pretty overwhelming. They can erase everything else.”
He told me that I would surely be conscripted to deliver letters between the offices of husband and wife, as they preferred to speak through third parties.
I replied that while Lydia remained mysterious to me, so different from anyone I had ever dealt with, Clarence was quite knowable despite being so erudite. He never appeared shocked by my ignorance. He often liked what I had to say. And he was available to me.
Olivier warned that Clarence could be devious and that I should be careful.
“You’re wrong there,” I said, refusing to get upset. “But then again he’s wrong about you too.”
“Oh, so he talks about me, does he?” Olivier grinned, suspending a fork full of penne.
“I’m sure it’s complicated,” I tried to sound light and knowing. “I mean, you’re dating his daughter. Fathers and daughters can be close.”
“I’m going to break up with Portia,” he declared, putting down his uneaten bite.
I dropped my fork. The wall between us crumbled to lace. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Why do you think, Kate?”
I thought of Portia’s voice, so taut and wiry, its oblique mentions of Olivier, never by name, making sure his luggage was in order, managing his shirts, having me go to Hédiard for a gift bag of foie gras and several jars of the jam of a green plum impossible to find Stateside. “Reines Claudes, they’re called. It can’t be any other kind of jam. And get goose foie gras, not duck. One bloc with truffles and one without. Make sure they put a bow on the bag. A red bow. The color is important. You can leave it on the dressing table in my room.”
The dressing table.
“Does Portia know you’re breaking up with her?” I asked.
“On some level. She can’t not. But you must have noticed that the truth is not exactly an obstacle in this family. Portia has inherited this sort of sad romantic version of her parents spoiledness. She’s really not a bad kid, and I care about her. But I can’t do it anymore. I can’t take the sense of entitlement, the cluelessness, the assumption that her jet-set intellectual parents make her someone. She’s always saying someone in italics to indicate all the people she hangs out with by proxy and all the parents at the New York prep school she went to. And I think she thinks I will be someone too by virtue of some inherent prestige. It’s all very flattering and pathetic and I want out. Besides,” he smiled, “I’ve met another girl.”
In spite of myself, the idea that I might be that girl washed through me, stunningly warm. I took a sip of water, choked, looked away from him.
“Wait. You’re not responsible for anything,” he said. “Don’t get that guilty wrinkle in your forehead.”
Was he already familiar with my facial expressions? Of course I was guilty. This conversation was wrong. But I was also elated. These were two feelings that should not exist in the same picture, a travesty. I was out of my depth.
He pressed on. “All I meant was, you opened my eyes that day we walked around together. You’re making your own way as your own someone and I’m impressed by that. You’re also very, very pretty. You have eyelashes like tarantula legs. And I’d love to spend a little more time with you before I disappear into the mines.”
The only release I could find was laughter, which he took as encouragement because he made me promise to meet him in the Marais the following evening at seven. There was a tiny horseshoe-shaped bar he liked, called Le Petit Fer à Cheval.
I said I would be there. I refrained from asking why we couldn’t meet tonight. Now that I was on this insane path, I wanted heedlessly to find out where it led. I was scared, and preferred to know the worst rather than be in the dark.
After lunch, he kissed me briefly on the lips.
We walked our separate ways down the rue du Cherche-Midi. I had to get back to my time lines for Lydia. He did not say where he was headed. I turned to look at him a couple of times, his back maneuvering through autumn’s trench-coated crowd, shouldering the duffel into which he had packed the clean shirts and the gifts from Portia, which now seemed pathetic rather than intimidating, her desperate stab at buying his waning affections.
Much to Clarence’s irritation, I had virtually emptied the “petty cash” drawer to pay for these presents. “Portia asked you to do what?! Poor thing …”
ten
Moments after I slipped back into the apartment, the phone rang. Clarence handed me the receiver in the kitchen. “A young man for you,” he said.
I was confused. The only young man I knew who had this number was Olivier, and Clarence would surely have recognized Olivier’s voice. I supposed my mother would have given the number to my ex, Peter, if he’d asked, but I couldn’t think what reason he would find to call me long-distance. He had never shown any urgency toward me. Why now? The mere thought of his indifference made me sure that no boy would ever telephone.