The Light of Paris (24 page)

Margie's eyes widened, thinking of the gift Sebastien had for seeing stories and telling them through his paintings. He could capture in square inches of canvas what it took her pages and pages to put onto paper. And then she tried to imagine how many stories were in a landscape, in a vineyard, in the climbing vines and the earth and the burst of
ripe grapes. No matter how many, it would not be the same as the unending flow of humanity and its triumphs and tragedies as presented in a city. She tried to imagine Sebastien, who seemed to know everyone in Paris, and who, even if he didn't actually know them, had never met a stranger, living in the countryside. It seemed as unnatural as the expectations her parents had for her.

“That's so unfair,” she said softly, not sure whether she was speaking of Sebastien or herself.

“And yet it is fair,” Sebastien said. He had been staring thoughtfully into the fire. After the rush of the night, being out on the streets and then caught in the rain, Margie's sleepiness was beginning to catch up with her, and she saw a heaviness falling into his eyes as well. “They have always taken care of me. And when I told them I want to live in Paris, to study and to paint, they agreed. They said I could have five years here, before I go back and join them in business.”

A surprisingly strong wave of relief rushed over Margie. Five years was forever. What she would give for five years in Paris! “Well that's fine, then! You can stay and paint—why, in five years who knows what will happen? They might change their minds. And in the meantime, if you keep selling your paintings, you won't have to go back.”

In the firelight, Sebastien's eyes looked green and gold, the eyes of a cat. “Oh, no, no,” he said sadly. “I am not beginning my five years in Paris. They are ending. And I cannot complain. I have lived more here than many people will in a lifetime. I have met people from all over the world. I have painted more than I could have imagined, and I have shown and sold my paintings. And my family has been so generous. How can I turn down their request to come home, to be a part of them, to work to repay them when they have given me so much for so long?”

Margie wanted to object, wanted to argue, but she couldn't. There was an honor and loyalty in Sebastien's words that made her like him even more. So much about Sebastien seemed clear now—his endless
hunger for experiences, the way he always seemed determined to suck the marrow out of every night, fighting against sleep and good sense, his boundless energy. He was trying to live an entire life in five years.

Was this what Paris was to her as well? A moment of sunlight before she was thrust into darkness again? She had been having so much fun she hadn't stopped to think of what would come after. Her position at the Libe was funded for only three months, and it had been . . . well, it had been more than two already, hadn't it? She was shocked to realize so much time had passed, and then, thinking of Sebastien, she wondered if her own hourglass had been running the entire time as well.

“How much longer do you have?” she asked, a disquiet that was almost fear building inside her.

“Only a few weeks,” Sebastien said, and she could almost touch the regret in his voice.

They looked at each other across the sofa, the firelight dancing on their faces, the chill that had driven them inside gone and replaced with warmth and the sadness of the conversation. In his face, she saw not only the way he looked in the flicker of the fire, but the way he had looked the day they had first met, leaning forward to convince her she must stay in Paris, and the way he rested his chin in his hand when he was listening, really listening, to one of his friends at a café, or the way he looked in the lamplight when they strolled the streets at night, and the memory of those things coupled with the look of him at that moment, tragic and lovely in the firelight, made him irresistible. And he must have been thinking the same thing about her, because when she leaned forward, he met her halfway and they kissed, their bodies leaning toward each other without touching, their lips the only point of contact. The wine she had drunk with dinner, the touch of his clothes on her skin, the heat of the fire, and the taste of him made Margie feel giddy and overwhelmed, as though she had drunk a bottle of champagne, and when he pulled her closer, she came to him eagerly.

They kissed until the heat of their desire coupled with the fire was too much to bear, and then Margie drew back, and slowly, staring boldly into Sebastien's eyes as though it were a dare, she pulled the shirt he had given her over her head. Underneath, she was bare, and she felt her body respond to the rush of air. For a moment, he didn't break his gaze with hers, their eyes locked together, and Margie held her breath. Would he refuse her? Then he lowered his eyes and took her in, and she could see him breathe, long and slow, and he whispered something in French as he moved across the distance to her and lowered his mouth to her breasts.

She knew she was doing something daring, something shocking, even, but she felt no shame. Instead, she felt beautiful and desirable and powerful, as though there were nothing she could do wrong. And when he pulled off the rest of her clothes and she stood there, naked in the firelight while the rain beat on outside and he knelt as if to worship her, she felt reborn.

“Marguerite,” he whispered, his breath a kiss against her skin.

“Yes,” she replied, and she knelt down to meet him.

My mother and I had been at a committee meeting at Ashley Hathaway's house for approximately ten thousand years, and I was starting to act like a toddler, pulling at my mother's skirt and begging for us to leave. Ashley's house was exactly what I would have imagined it to be if you had asked me to draw it in the sixth grade. When we played MASH on the school bus on field trips, Ashley inevitably ended up living in a mansion, married to Scott Baio with four kids, which was pretty much how her life had turned out. Well, not the Scott Baio part exactly, but her husband was a good-looking doctor, so that was pretty much a wash. There were family portraits everywhere, sitting on the hall table where everyone had left their handbags, lining the stairs going up to the second floor, perfect black-and-white pictures of Ashley in her little cardigans, the boys and her husband in sweater vests, as though they were passing through on a visit from the 1950s. The familiar taste of copper sat on my tongue.

“Aren't you just the sweetest to stay and help your mother for such a long time,” Ashley said when my mother finally assented to leaving. She took me by the elbows and dropped air kisses on both my cheeks. I wrinkled my forehead at her. There was an insult in there somewhere.

I decided to return her backhanded compliment with one of my
own. “Thanks for hosting. Your house looks exactly like the Pottery Barn catalog.”

“Thank you!” Ashley said, clasping her hands together over her heart as though I had told her she had won the Miss America pageant. I should have known. Houses that look like the Pottery Barn catalog don't get that way by accident. I wanted to give her a hug and tell her it would be okay if little Grayson poured chocolate milk on the raffia carpet, or if she ate a pastry without feeling guilty about it for once. And then I wanted to hug her even more when I realized she wouldn't understand if I did.

My mother, spotting my sarcasm, changed the subject loudly. “You're doing really lovely work on this fundraiser, Ashley. I'm honored to be a part of it.”

“We're honored to have you, Simone. You always make such an impact,” Ashley said.

“Well, we'd better be going.” I picked up my clutch, which I'd left on the table in the foyer (Pottery Barn Sophia Console Table, $799 in the winter catalog).

“You don't have to be rude,” my mother said when we were outside, walking down the steep steps to the car. It was just like Ashley to buy a house on a hill, so everyone would be winded by the time they got to the front door.

“She started it.” I hopped off the last step onto the sidewalk and headed to the car. My mother stepped delicately behind me and clicked open the car doors with the remote.

“How long are you staying?” she asked, settling herself behind the wheel, avoiding my eyes by pretending to adjust the rearview mirror.

“Don't tell me you've already tired of my witty banter and charming company.”

“Be serious, Madeleine. You still haven't talked to Phillip, at least not that I know, and you haven't even mentioned going home.”

“Maybe I don't want to go,” I said sullenly, dragging my hand over
the seat belt so the rough edge grated on the tender web of flesh between my thumb and my forefinger. “Maybe I'll move back here. I'll live in the high-rise with you and Lydia Endicott. Won't that be a barrel of laughs?” I bared my teeth at her in an evil grin, but she was looking at the road.

Pulling up to a stoplight, she pressed her fingers against her temples. “So you're not going back to Phillip. Is that what you're saying?”

There was a rawness and honesty to her voice that made my guilt crescendo. She didn't want me to get a divorce. Everyone would know. Everyone would know I had failed, she had failed. But I couldn't stay with him. I couldn't live that way anymore. I hardly knew how I had managed for so long.

“I guess I am.”

She didn't reply. She unfolded her fingers from around the steering wheel, pressing her palms flat and spreading her fingers wide for a moment before taking hold again.

I spoke to fill the silence, to try to explain, the words tumbling out over themselves. “I was so lonely, and you wanted it so badly, and I thought—I thought it would be my only chance. I knew it was important to you, it was embarrassing I was the only one left. I know you wanted me to get married.”

“It wasn't an embarrassment. I was worried about you, yes. I've always worried about you, Madeleine. You're so . . . different. And different can be painful.”

I had started to cry, and I was trying hard to control it, keeping my jaw tight, blinking my eyes quickly. Being different, if she had just let me be different, if anyone had let me be different, would have been so much less painful than this, than trying to live up to some impossible standard, to become someone I literally could never be. “I was happy. I think I was happy. The only thing that made me unhappy was that I knew I was letting you down.”

“You haven't let me down.” She paused for a moment, flexed her
hands on the wheel again. We were driving, as my mother did no matter the speed limit, at a steady thirty-five miles per hour, winding through the leafy streets. The houses, grand and quiet, problems hushed and hid away behind hedges and money, sat quietly observing us. “I just don't think you're really giving things a try, here, Madeleine. You can't just give up. You need to see Phillip again. Give things a chance.”

I clenched my jaw, wishing she would listen to me, hear me for once. Clearly it was impossible for my mother to imagine what my life would be like if I divorced Phillip. The women she knew, no matter how miserable they were, didn't divorce their husbands. Which is how you ended up with someone like Betsy Lynn Chivers, who had spent so long in misery, waiting for her awful husband to die, that she honestly couldn't remember any other way to be. But I couldn't picture a different path for me either. Would I move back here, go to committee meetings at Ashley Hathaway's house, while everyone steered politely around me, giving me just enough berth to know they suspected divorce might be catching? Would I go back to work at Country Day, drafting politely guilt-inducing letters to people who received dozens of those fundraising appeals every day?

Or would I do something new? Would I dive into the Magnolia I had just discovered, this entire world that had existed beyond my peripheral vision for so long, where there were artists and musicians and people who didn't care what I looked like or whether or not I ate my dessert at lunch and wouldn't have blinked if I had told them I was going to art school and I didn't want to get married at all? Would I fall in love with someone like Henry, someone who wanted to feed me rather than starve me, someone who wanted me to paint and dance and be part of things I cared about?

That seemed like a terrifying leap to make without a net.

Because what if I were to leave Phillip, the world my mother had promised would keep me safe, and there was nothing out there? What if
no one fell in love with me and I spent the rest of my life alone? What if no one wanted to look at, let alone buy, my paintings? What if painting didn't fill the hole inside me? What if, without having Sharon or Henry by my side, no one wanted to know me, and I ended up just as lonely as I had been? What if I took a risk and where I landed was no better than how I had been living?

The devil you know, my mother always used to say, is better than the devil you don't. And what I was thinking of doing was completely unknown. It was the social equivalent of closing my eyes and taking a step off a cliff. But now that I knew what it felt like to be surrounded by life, by laughter and good food and art and the people I wanted to be with, how could I go back to the way things had been, the way I had been?

•   •   •

Late that night,
Henry and I were in my mother's back yard, on a small patch of grass between the rose garden and the orchard, the only space that had been spared from my mother's determined horticultural onslaught. The grass beneath my back was lush and soft, and the roses released their rich, sweet scent into the air above us, testaments to my mother's gentle hand. The spring bulbs had burst into blossom in the past few weeks, and the daffodils and tulips stood in pretty bouquets in the flower garden, drowning in the smell of the hyacinths between them.

Above us, the sky was bright with ambient light, and beyond that, the infinite sparkle of stars. I had been in the back yard, lying on the cool grass, when Henry had come padding through the soft dirt of his garden and jumped over the low fence to sit beside me.

There was a nervous flutter inside me, as though we were on a first date, as though something had shifted between us, or maybe it was just my thoughts, maybe it was just that I was imagining a future with space for someone like him—maybe even him—in it.

“So can I ask you a question?” he asked. His knees were drawn up and
his arms draped over them casually, and I was marveling at the size of his hands. As always, he smelled delicious—like rosemary and soap and wine, and when he moved, the scent wafted toward me and I closed my eyes and inhaled.

“Of course.”

“You're married, right?”

“Right.”

“But you've been here a long time. And you don't wear a wedding ring. And you never talk about your husband.”

Closing the tips of my fingers around the space where my rings had rested, I felt only the skin, smooth and pale and bare. It felt vulnerable, like the tender underbelly of an animal. “Is that a question?”

“Technically, no. I guess I was just wondering what's going on. If you need to talk about it or something. If I'm prying . . .”

“No, no, it's okay. It's—things are complicated. Being here has been a break, I guess.”

He nodded. “So it's a good thing, then? Taking a break?”

“Yes,” I said slowly. I couldn't explain it. There was too much. I couldn't explain how leaving Chicago had felt like releasing a weight from my shoulders, how the constant thrum of anxiety in my bones had faded, how I slept better at night and didn't feel the pull of exhaustion during the day, how I didn't wake up with a feeling of dread hanging low in my chest, how the stomachaches I had grown to accept as a constant in my life had disappeared since I had come here. It was odd, that the place I had avoided for so long, this town with all its ghosts and memories of my disappointments and my failures, with my mother's presence looming over it like a threat, odd that this place would feel like a relief. Odd that because of Henry in particular I would have discovered there was so much more to this place than I had ever anticipated.

“Have you ever been married?”

Henry nodded slowly. “I was. A long time ago. Didn't last.”

“What happened?”

“We were young. Too young. Young and stupid. I don't think either one of us knew what we were getting into.”

“Were you in love?”

“Of course,” Henry said, turning to me and giving me a confused look. “Or at least I thought I was. No, that's not fair. I was. Just because I didn't recognize the import of what I was doing doesn't mean I wasn't in love. There's different kinds of love, you know? And we were in the kind of love you can only be in when you're so young you don't know any better.”

I had never been in love like that. I had never been in love before Phillip, really. I'd had tremendous crushes, but had never had a relationship last long enough to call it love. And I had always attributed it to some failing on my part, proof I wasn't lovable, but what if that hadn't been the way of it at all? What if I had pushed them away? I had known falling in love would lead to marriage, and maybe I had known I didn't want to get married. My grandmother had been the same way, hadn't she? Swearing she would live in Paris and write and have a life different from the one she had been born into. And I had thought I would be the same way. And yet, both of us had ended up with exactly what we had promised we wouldn't have. I might have avoided falling in love because I knew what would follow after.

Henry continued his story. “We got married and we both realized very quickly it wasn't what we wanted. She wanted to travel, and I wanted to work. I wanted to make a name for myself quickly, and she wanted to explore.”

“Did you resent her?”

“At the time, probably a little. She certainly resented me. She said I was holding her back. But it wasn't that. Or it wasn't only that. We wanted different things.”

A car drove by on the street out front, and quiet fell again. In the city,
the noise was a perpetual unwelcome guest. Even in our condo, well above the street, there was an unrelenting blur of noise underlying everything. I had learned to tune it out, but if I stopped and listened, it came flooding back, and it was startling to realize how constant it was. Here I felt like I was a hundred miles from any distraction, the way the night and the stillness fell heavy and soothing around us.