I'll See You in Paris (43 page)

This man, this skinny, tan-necked, buzz-headed, one-legged foreigner was Pru's fianc
é
. The one who was dead.

“You told me he'd been killed,” I said to her, eyes blazing.

Pru looked back, face as startled as if I'd struck her, which is what she said it felt like. I called her a liar, but I didn't care about the lie. One lie or a thousand, if this man disappeared all would've been forgiven.

“He
was
killed,” she sputtered. “That's what … no. Everyone go away.” She grabbed at the sides of her head. “This is not true. None of you are real.”

“Oh sweet Laurel.” Charlie lunged forward and grabbed her arm. “My poor girl.”

He pulled her onto the couch beside him. And, wouldn't you know it, she let herself be pulled. Once she made contact with the cushion, Pru buried her head in both hands.

“This must be surreal for you,” Charlie said. “We tried to find you but no one picked up the damn phone at your supposed number. Some friend of Mom's … Edith, I think … we thought she was messing with us. Giving us bogus information. So I flew over myself, as soon as I could. We were going to send a private investigator but I wanted to be the one to hunt you down. You are one hell of a slippery girl, I'll tell you that.”

“Hunting down women,” I said, trying to be funny, trying to be mean. “You Yanks are crafty, aren't you?”

“Who are you again?” Charlie said, squinting.

I noticed then his rumpled clothes, the scarred face. The man was a long way from posh Boston, to be sure. He did not look like someone who fit with Pru. Hell, he thought she was Laurel, when she'd come so far from that.

“The name's Win Seton. And I'm going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Whoa, that's quite a bold directive when a man's come back from the dead to find his true love.”

“True love?” I said. “The girl who waved good-bye as your ship sailed off no longer exists.”

“I was never on a ship.”

“She's not the same person.”

“Like I said, who are you again?”

“I'm Win Seton.”

“Yeah, I got that part. I might be missing a limb but my ears work.”

“I'm the owner of this apartment,” I said. “And she's my girl.”

Pru looked up then. Her eyes were red and streaky. I saw in them what I mistook as a promise but was instead a plea.

“They told me he was dead,” she said, voice quivering. “I saw him.” Pru turned back to Charlie. “Your ashes. Kon Tum. They buried you! There was a funeral!”

“I know. It's hella fucked up. A real botch job. The short version…” Charlie shrugged. “Wrong body.”

“Wrong body?”
I said, as disgusted as I'd ever been in my life. “How is that even possible?”

The explanation was horrific enough but, on top of that, he was talking about it like someone muffed his lunch order and he was therefore forced to eat chicken salad instead of tuna.

“Don't get me wrong,” Charlie said. “A bunch of men did die in the blast. The rest of us were captured. Uncle Sam tried its damnedest to match body parts with the list of those missing. But…”

He shrugged again. I wanted to punch him in the face.

Sixteen bodies were found after the attack, Charlie explained. Twelve were positively identified. The Department of Defense tried to sort out the leftover four and eventually used their best efforts to pin the parts on Charlie and three other men.

“Some guys reported as dead, like me, were POWs,” he said. “Some guys thought missing were already dead. A clusterfuck. No better way to explain it.”

It sounded so damned unbelievable at the time. But in the following years I'd come to learn this was not a one-time screwup. Bad luck, horrible luck, though not singular luck. Other misidentified bodies have been uncovered from that war, in the new millennium even, thanks to better forensics.

“They mixed up body parts?” Pru said, green-gilled and looking like she might vomit. “How does that even…”

“I guess, fundamentally, we were interchangeable.”

“And so you've been…” she stammered, trying to get a hold of what he was saying.

“In a POW camp,” Charlie finished for her. “Goddamned hellhole. Makes that decrepit mansion of yours look like the fucking Ritz. The shit I saw. The shit that happened. I can't even tell you. I will never tell you. But I will say this. On a good day I only ingested twenty maggots, and the pus on my wounds was allowed to ooze unfettered, no new wounds piled on.”

Charlie said nothing else, locking up the details in the steel clamp of his mouth. I was unnerved to see hostility in his eyes, which I attributed to my own demented jealousy. He was a romantic rival, infinitely more sympathetic and brave.

“So they let you out?” Pru said. “Just like that?”

Though she'd heard of Operation Homecoming, Pru had not been one of the four million people glued to a television watching the POWs come home. She had been in Paris, in love, with no time to brood over world affairs.

“I wouldn't say they let me out ‘just like that.'” Charlie smirked. “If you're curious, I had both legs when I went into camp.”

“God,” Pru said, and made a small gagging sound.

“No, miss. There was no God where I was. Not a hint of Him to be found.”

“I'm … I'm glad you survived,” Pru managed. She looked unsteady, unsure, a woman in high heels walking across the deck of a careening boat. “Your parents must be thrilled.”

Jamie and I exchanged looks. I'd never seen a homecoming that looked so far from home. In this I found hope, however short-lived. Pru was not overjoyed to see him. She didn't even seem especially relieved.

“They're happy of course,” Charlie said. “But, baby, it was
you
. Your face kept me going. I was only in the camp nine months, nothing compared to some of the guys, but it was pure hell. I thought of you the whole damned time. Hell, I thought of you before I was captured. The horrors I witnessed, the ones I committed myself.”

As Charlie spoke, veins lifted off his temples.

“You were right,” he said. “I never should've gone. But visions of you kept me alive. When I finally got out of the hospital and you weren't there … fuck. I wished I'd died. This time, for real.”

Pru struggled to inhale. She could not catch her breath.

“But that's over,” he said. “Because I found you and we're together at last.”

Charlie uncurled his fist, which was until that time balled into a knot. He stretched his fingers, reaching his hand toward Pru.

In the middle of his palm sat a ring. A platinum band with a four-carat diamond in the center, two-carat baguettes on either side. The privileged in England inherited titles. In America, it was grandmother's jewels.

“I'd ask you to marry me,” Charlie said, and let his eyes flick briefly in my direction. “But you already said yes. Nothing's changed. Unless you have something against cripples.”

“Charlie…” Pru said in a whisper. “Don't…”

“Come back with me. I've never loved you more than I do at this moment. We'll start over. I'll work at a goddamned desk, the biggest bodily threat a paper cut. Isn't that what you've always wanted?”

As Pru remained in a fog, Charlie leaned into her and glided the ring onto her finger. It was far too big. The diamond fell immediately out of sight.

“Come back with me,” he said again. “Paris is nice, Laurel. Paris is great, but God Bless America.”

 

Eighty-one

ÎLE SAINT-LOUIS

PARIS

NOVEMBER 2001

There wasn't a person in that apartment not floored to see Laurel standing in the doorway. Even Annie, who'd called her in the first place.

“I don't know what you're trying to pull,” Laurel said, face beating and hair chaotic around her. “But you don't go running off to foreign countries without telling me.”

Laurel ranted on for several more minutes, sounding like a top candidate for Strictest Mom on Earth. But Annie understood it was for show. Mostly Laurel lit into her daughter so she didn't have to acknowledge the other people in the room.

“I left you a message,” Annie pointed out. “So I did tell you. And what choice did I have? And, P.S., I'm an adult.”

“This is not like you, Annabelle. What were you planning to do? Sleep in some strange man's apartment?”

“He's not a strange man.”

“Well, we're both a little strange,” Jamie tried to joke.

Laurel closed her eyes. Around them the apartment creaked and sighed. Annie felt Gus quaking behind her.

“Well, now I finally get why you're so anti Eric,” Annie said. “Charlie? The dead soldier? He was my dad?”

“He was. And I am not anti Eric. I'm pro you.”

“These past few weeks,” Annie said. “I thought you didn't want us together because we didn't know each other. Then I thought it was because you were afraid I'd lose him. You had me questioning everything—me, him, whether we should even be together. But now I know. It's not that you were afraid he'd never come home. You were afraid that he would and I'd marry him anyway.”

It couldn't have been clearer if she'd written it out, or engraved it on a luggage tag. Laurel didn't love Charlie when she married him. She left with him out of guilt. Or nostalgia. Or because she'd loved him once.

Oh, her mother had tried. Laurel tried her hand at a bohemian Parisian lifestyle, but she couldn't make it stick. She was forced to act like an adult from a young age, after losing both parents, and then losing Charlie the first time. Responsible adult was how Laurel behaved, “doing the right thing” her default mode. Laurel's character and her personal history were too ingrained to overcome.

“Annie,” Laurel said, eyes avoiding Gus as if he were the sun. “Whatever you think right now, you're wrong. You don't know the whole story.”

“So where is he?” Gus asked.

Annie whipped her head in his direction and was surprised to find a different man standing there. She thought of Gus as tall, broad-shouldered, and strong. But he suddenly appeared thin, anemic almost. She wondered if he was ill.

“Where is Charlie?” he asked.

The muscles in Laurel's neck rose as she strained to keep her head from turning.

“Please warn me if a third member of this esteemed family is going to show up,” Gus said. “I can't do that again.”

“Not bloody likely,” Jamie mumbled. “Mate, he's dead.”

“He's dead?” Gus said, gaping. “When? How?
He's dead
?”

For real this time
was the question hanging in the air. But Gus did not dare ask it.

“January 1980,” Laurel said and at long last turned in his direction.

Gus jolted when her eyes landed on him. What must they look like to each other? As though they'd aged thirty years in one day? Or did they seem exactly the same?

“Pru,” he said in a whisper.

“Wait a minute,” Annie said. “He died when I was a baby? You made it sound like you left him.”

“I did,” Laurel said. She pulled her gaze away from Gus. “I left him when I was pregnant. I was alone when I had you and then I came here. Perhaps you two gentlemen remember the baby who was with me, though her hair is much better now, in that she actually has some.”

“Bloody hell,” Jamie muttered.

“So Charlie was gone?” Gus said. “When you came back?”

“He was alive but we were not together.”

“Listen, folks,” Jamie said. “I have a brilliant scheme. Annie, you come with me.”

“No way,” she said. “I'm staying.”

Annie wanted to see how this was all going to pan out. Not to mention, she had about a million questions to ask.

“Sorry, little lass,” Jamie said. “You're coming with me. We'll enjoy a glass of wine or three, let these two long-lost chums reconnect.”

“I want to know—” she started.

“And you shall know.” Jamie took her hand. “But they need to know first.”

While Annie's mouth remained open, he led her down the hallway and through the front door. As it closed behind them, she heard her mom let out a small cry.

“We'll give them an hour,” Jamie said. “It's the least we can do. After all, they have a lifetime to catch up on.”

 

Eighty-two

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

1973

And so Laurel went back to Boston with Charlie.

Charlie thought it was inevitable, this return. But as for Laurel, maybe she would've stayed in Paris had he not brought his grandmother's ring. Or if he'd asked for her hand a second time instead of reminding her that she'd already said yes.

Perhaps Laurel would've stayed if he'd shown up with two legs instead of only one. Or if he still displayed that old Charlie Haley swagger. Laurel saw from the start he had a few chinks in the armor, a handful of wires shorted out. Some part of her didn't want to tinker with the already-damaged man.

“I understand,” Win assured her when Laurel announced that she was choosing Charlie. “I understand completely.”

She was a runny-nosed mess as they sat on his bed—their bed—Charlie clomping up and down the hall outside the door as they said their good-byes. Laurel tried not to think of Win and instead her old feelings for Charlie. But they were too far down to reach.

“Don't cry,” Win said. “It's the right thing to do.”

He was strong. Stoic. Realistic. Nothing like the man Laurel loved. As Win would later tell his brother, he was a better actor than he was a writer. A better actor than he was a man.

“Win,” she said, crying into his shoulder, hands wrapped around his neck. “Convince me to stay. Convince me to hide out in this room until he leaves.”