A Summer in Paris (14 page)

* * * *

The light of the city so early in the morning, pale and uncertain as the sun cautiously made its way over the horizon, made the gray buildings of Paris look as if they were glowing. Nina sat at her bedroom window, her elbows resting on the sill,
gazing
out at the city spread out before her. Even now, after all these weeks, she was still overwhelmed by how breathtaking it all was: the graceful architecture, the narrow streets, the air of romance and beauty that lingered in the air day and night.

Oddly enough, she wasn’t at all tired even though she had not slept a wink all night. She had lain in her bed in a tangle of sheets, staring at the clock, at first trying to sleep, but in the end resigning herself to a long night of doing nothing but waiting for morning to come.

Yet it was not the beauty of the city that had kept her up, or got her out of bed just as dawn was breaking.

It was thinking about Pierre.

Now that they had admitted that they were in love, everything had changed. He was more than just a summer romance, a little flirtation she was having while she was in Paris. This was something much more than puppy love. It was real, and it demanded that she make a choice.

She knew what that choice was. In fact, it was what she had been agonizing over for hours, staring at the flickering shadows on the ceiling as she tossed and turned in her bed. Finally she had gotten up, gone over to her dresser drawer and taken the stack of letters tied with a ribbon. Then she sat down in front of the window, the letters in her lap, and thought.

Having to make a decision about what to do was not made any easier by recognizing that she was in the exact same predicament her grandmother had been in fifty years earlier. Like her grandmother, Nina had come to Paris to learn and experience some of life, never expecting anything more complicated than problems with the language or having to learn a new system of money. Like her grandmother, she had been totally unprepared for the emotional tidal wave that took her captive after she met a very special young man.

And again, just like her grandmother, Nina now had to choose between staying with that young man and doing what was expected of her—what had always been expected of her—by her friends, her teachers ... and especially her parents.

Her parents. She thought of them often, although not in the way she always had before. In the past, she had taken them for granted, seeing them as little besides her mother and her father. Now, suddenly, she saw them as two adults whose lives were the result of the decisions they had made. She realized that everyone, including them, constantly came to forks in the road, junctures at which they had to make choices. And very often, that choice was like the one she was now facing: a choice between what others wanted for her and what she knew in her heart was really right for her, even though it was bound to hurt those who loved her.

Her grandmother, Nina knew, had chosen the safer route, the one that was easier. True, it had caused her great emotional turmoil. It seemed, in fact, that she had never really gotten over the heartbreak of leaving behind the great love of her life. But at least she had escaped from having to take a real risk, of facing her family’s disapproval ... perhaps even their condemnation.

Nina sighed. The irony of having that same situation repeated all over again was not wasted on her. But it still didn’t make her decision any easier—nor did it make it clearer to her which path she should follow.

She leafed through the letters, hoping that, somehow, touching them, feeling the paper beneath her fingers, would help her. She was frustrated when she realized that all she held in her hands was a piece of someone else’s life.

“Grandmama,” she suddenly cried aloud, “tell me what I should do. Should I go back home and start college in the fall, the way Mom and Dad expect? Or should I throw all caution to the wind and follow my heart, staying on in Paris ... staying with Pierre?”

But there was no answer forthcoming. All there was was a stack of letters, the silence of the early morning, and the knowledge that this was one decision that could be made by no one but her.

* * * *

“What is the matter,
ma petite?”
Pierre asked, reaching over and stroking Nina’s hair. “You are so quiet tonight.”

He and Nina had just spent a long, busy day together, sight-seeing. It had been his idea that the two of them take in many of the city’s attractions that tourists usually headed to the very first thing but which Nina had put off. Immediately after her morning classes, they had had a quick lunch, then dashed around the city, with Pierre in the lead, seeing as many spots as they could.

They had started at the famous cathedral of Notre-Dame, the breathtaking cathedral in the heart of the city that had taken almost two centuries to build. They laughed together over the famous gargoyles, the statues of grotesque demons along the top of the building. Nina even bought a gargoyle candlestick holder from one of the tourist shops nearby.

Their next stop was a church that was smaller and lesser known, but certainly no less beautiful. Sainte-Chapelle was once a palace chapel, best known for its stunning stained glass windows, the original ones that had been built in the late 1400s. Then they crossed over the Seine River on a bridge called the Pont au Change, heading toward the controversial Pompidou Center,
Le Centre Pompidou.
This unusual contemporary building housed a permanent modern art collection, as well as numerous art exhibits that bordered on the unusual. The area surrounding the Pompidou Center was filled with trendy boutiques, and as tired as they were, they dragged themselves through the narrow streets to window-shop.

It had been fun, but Pierre had sensed that, somehow, Nina’s heart had not been in it. She was quiet and introspective, so much so that he had frequently stopped in mid-sentence as he was explaining some bit of history or telling an amusing anecdote about one of the sites they were visiting, saying, “Nina! Where are you, Nina? You are certainly not here with me.”

Even now, at the top of the glorious Eiffel Tower, for most people the very symbol of Paris, she was having a difficult time keeping her mind on what she was doing. As they gazed across the beautiful city spread out before them, starting to quiet down as dusk crept slowly across the cloudless summer sky, she found that tears were forming in her eyes.

“Nina, I have tried not to put pressure on you,” Pierre finally said, partly exasperated, partly sympathetic. “But all day you have been ... in another world. There is something wrong, isn’t there?”

“Not anything that hasn’t been wrong all along,” she answered enigmatically. She was staring off at the view, unable to meet his eyes.

Pierre, puzzled, cocked his head to one side.

Then he reached his finger under her chin and gently pulled her face up toward his.

“I do not understand,” he said. “What is this ... this thing that you claim has been wrong for such a long time?”

“Don’t you know?” she cried. “Why, the fact that in less than three weeks, I’m supposed to get on that plane and leave. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll just fly away, after saying good-bye to Paris ... after saying good-bye to you.”

With that, she burst into tears.

Pierre wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer to him. She rested her head on his shoulder, meanwhile letting the tears fall, tears she had been holding back for so long that it actually felt good to get them out.

And then she heard his soft voice, right next to her ear. “You know, Nina, you don’t have to leave.”

Nina pulled away, her expression suddenly serious. “I-I know we talked about that before,” she said haltingly, “but that was always just a fantasy ... wasn’t it?”

“For you, perhaps. But for me, it has always seemed like a very real possibility.”

“But my parents,” she argued, her voice choking. “I don’t want to hurt them.”

“How would you be hurting them? I am afraid I truly do not understand.”

“They expect certain things from me. They want certain things for me. They try to protect me.”

A small grin crept over his face. “Forgive me for smiling, Nina. But I can’t help wondering what it is your parents are so anxious to protect you from? Surely not from me, a poor but ambitious French painter who is said to have at least a little bit of talent?”

Despite herself, Nina laughed. “My parents are just used to doing things the way they’re supposed to be done. You grow up, you go to college, you establish a career for yourself—something practical like, like, oh, I don’t know, accounting or teaching—and then you try to meet a nice man so you can get married and buy a house and then you have children and ...”

Pierre burst out laughing. “You make it sound so dreadful! It doesn’t have to be, you know.”

“I know. And the truth is that it never seemed all that dreadful to me before. In fact, it all sounded kind of nice. Predictable and sensible and perfectly fine. But then....”

“But then?” Pierre repeated.

“Then came you. And Paris. And the whole idea of having a different kind of life. One that isn’t quite so predictable.”

“Wait a minute,” Pierre said teasingly, holding up his hands. “I don’t think there’s anything at all wrong with finding work that you enjoy, and finding a wonderful person to share your life with, and even having children one day. In fact, perhaps one day down the road you would find that I am too much of a stick in the mud for you.”

He grew serious once again. “But, tell me, Nina. When you think of staying here in Paris, instead of going back home to your parents and your college and your nice, predictable life, what exactly do you think of? What do you see yourself doing?”

Nina didn’t have to think twice. “Writing.” She could feel herself blushing as she went on. “You know that the idea of writing is something very special to me, something so special, in fact, that I hardly dare tell anyone about it for fear they will laugh and ... and try to talk me out of it.”

“It is true that it is not as practical as accounting,” Pierre said, only half-joking. “But if it is what you truly want to do, then
not
doing it will only leave you feeling dissatisfied.”

Nina nodded. “You know, Pierre, I keep thinking about my grandmother—”

“Your grandmother. Again!” He pretended to be exasperated. “What is it about your grandmother this time?”

But he put his arm around her, adding, “I know what you are thinking, Nina. That right now you are agonizing over the very same decision your grandmother made so many years ago. And I know that all your life you probably thought that your grandmother made the wrong decision.”

Nina bit her lip, then said, “My grandmother made the only decision she could. Things were different then. And ... and she was a different person from me.”

“Ah, yes. That is certainly true.” Pierre took his arm away and leaned against the iron railing that ran around the ledge of the topmost level of the Eiffel Tower. His back was toward the city, and his blue eyes were fixed on Nina’s.

“So what about you, Nina Shaw?” he said quietly. “What is your decision going to be? Are you going to do what your grandmother did? Or are you going to break with family tradition and do what you really, really want to do?”

Nina looked at him for a long time. There he was, Pierre du Lac, the young man she had always dreamed of meeting, the young man she had always known, somehow, that she would meet. And behind him was all of Paris, glistening like some wonderful jewel as the sun drifted behind it, holding the promise of a wonderful new beginning, a wonderful new life.

Could I ever leave all this? she wondered. Could I really get on that plane and go back to what I left behind, knowing that, once upon a time, I had a chance to make all my dreams come true?

It was at that moment, with Pierre standing before her and all of Paris stretched out right behind him, that Nina made her decision.

“Are you
sure
you wouldn’t just rather go to a movie?” Jennifer asked.

She stopped her primping in the mirror over her dresser just long enough to give Michèle a hopeful look. But the Cartiers’ pretty, lively granddaughter just laughed.

“Jennifer Johnson, sometimes you really surprise me,” she said in her thickly accented English. “You act as if you are this cool, confident American teenager who is so sure of herself that practically everything is—how do you say it?—underneath her.”

“I think you mean ‘beneath her,” Jennifer corrected her, not without great reluctance.

“Whatever. You act as if you don’t care about anything. But here you are, on the verge of going out to a small party to meet some of my Parisian friends, and you are so nervous that you are trying to talk me out of taking you there!”

“Me?
Nervous?”
Jennifer whirled around. There was an angry scowl on her face.

But it wasn’t long before she forced herself to laugh. It came out sounding weak and insincere, not at all the way she intended. “If you think I’m nervous about meeting a bunch of your friends, you’re crazy. The only thing I’m afraid of is that I’ll be bored to tears!”

Michèle’s dark eyebrows shot up. “Oh, this is something you will not have to worry about. In fact, I can practically guarantee that the one thing you will not be tonight is bored.”

Who cares about a bunch of French kids? Jennifer told herself as she and Michèle got off the métro on Paris’s Left Bank, in a neighborhood not far from the Sorbonne. So what if I don’t like them? And so what
if
they don’t like me? she thought with much less enthusiasm.

Even so, the argument she was having with herself wasn’t doing much to banish the butterflies from her stomach.

Jennifer was surprised when the door of the apartment was opened and she peeked inside. There were almost twenty young people packed into the living room, sitting on the couch or on the floor or standing around in groups of three or four. All of them were talking enthusiastically in French.

“Hello, everyone!” Michèle called gaily.