Bad Marie (7 page)

Caitlin could not walk fast enough for Benoît. He kept trying
to hurry her along. Caitlin stopped at every new thing that she saw, and they were passing through an enormous flea market; there were many things to see. They got stuck at the fish tanks, rows and rows of colored fish. Marie would not have expected it. Fish for sale on the streets of Paris. Benoît bought Caitlin an orange goldfish in a small glass bowl.

“I like it,” Caitlin said.

“You’ll have to carry that now,” Marie told Benoît.

She was disturbed by the tone of her voice. Like an angry mother. Like a wife. She understood that she was mad at Benoît, but despite herself, she couldn’t maintain a sense of righteous anger. The market fascinated her: live fish and also dead fish for consumption; all sorts of produce and cheese, meats, and then, farther down the street, stall after stall of books, used books, new books, art books, postcards, prints. All of this across the street from the Seine.

It was springtime, and Marie was in Paris, and she could not help it, she felt excited. She wanted to go everywhere, see everything, even though she didn’t know what everything was because Marie knew almost nothing about Paris. The Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. Marie also knew that she wanted to eat snails, dripping with garlic sauce. It was Ellen’s mother who had long ago urged her to try them, who had told Marie that her life would not be complete until she had. This was Marie’s life. She had made it to Paris, and the snails were suddenly possible. Marie had never thought she would make it this far. She had not thought about what would happen after prison. Who she would spend her days with. Caitlin loved her goldfish.

“I want to name him Paris,” she said.

“Like Paris Hilton,” Marie said.

Caitlin looked confused.

“No,” she said.

“Not like Paris Hilton,” Marie said.

Caitlin said nothing, her expression troubled.

“Like the name of the city we are in right now?” Marie said. Caitlin nodded. To Marie’s satisfaction, Benoît already seemed put out, carrying his daughter’s goldfish bowl. She watched with amusement as he used one hand to get a pack of cigarettes from his jeans pocket, then to extract a cigarette and try to light it. He did not ask Marie to hold the glass bowl and she didn’t offer.

Following Benoît’s lead, they crossed the street bordering the Seine, and then made it down a flight of stone steps to the river, Caitlin holding Marie’s hand, going slowly, one leg and then another on each wide step, step after step. She refused to be picked up, and Benoît walked quickly ahead of them, with purpose. Marie watched him walk away and wondered what would happen if they weren’t able to catch up. But he stopped not far from the bottom of the stone staircase, positioning himself on the end of a long line, and Marie and Caitlin were able to join him there.

“What is this for?” Marie asked.

“We will travel by boat, I think,” Benoît said. “It will be faster. You’ll like it. Trust me.”

Marie raised her eyebrow.

“You will like the boat,” Benoît said. “Americans do.”

Marie watched as Benoît Doniel paid for their tickets.

Her American dollars, so far, were still untouched.

They went to the top deck of the boat and sat on a wooden bench that looked out on the Seine. Benoît was right about something. Marie did like it. It was also a way to see Paris without walking, without Caitlin constantly slowing them down.

Coming up, she could see Notre Dame. Marie had studied the building in an art history class, in college, when she had been a different person, a student, earnest.

“Those are called flying buttresses,” Marie told Caitlin.

Marie was impressed with herself, that she had remembered the term. She had never felt the need to use it before in everyday conversation. Marie wondered what else was stored in her brain.

“Those are gargoyles,” Marie said, pointing to the monsters on the cathedral, too far away for Caitlin to see. “Those crazy monsters. Do you see them?”

“No,” Caitlin said, leaning forward, standing on the tips of her toes. “Where are crazy monsters? Where, Marie?”

Marie pulled Caitlin back. It was impossible for Caitlin to fall overboard, she was too small to make it over the railing, but Marie pulled Caitlin against her legs anyway and tickled her ribs. Caitlin laughed happily, forgetting about the monsters.

“No!” she screamed, delighted, as Marie tickled her.

Benoît stood next to them, leaving the goldfish bowl on the bench. He tried to light a cigarette and failed with the wind.

“That was awful. What you did. In front of me.” Marie looked again at the cathedral, but somehow, what she saw instead was the pink nipple of Lili Gaudet’s perfectly formed breast, the top half of her black lingerie hanging around her waist. Marie blinked and she could see the cathedral again. They were getting closer and closer. “I had assumed something about us, what we might mean to each other, and I guess that wasn’t true.”

Benoît Doniel said nothing. Not a thing.

Even Caitlin was quiet.

Marie had never had a fight with Juan José. She did not know how adults behaved in a situation like this. It had felt brave to Marie, to speak the unspeakable. She was giving Benoît Doniel an opening, a chance to defend himself. Earlier that same day, she had left him, turning street corners at random, moving blindly forward, but now they were on a boat together. It almost might have been romantic.

He could say something, Marie thought. Something. Anything. He had left Ellen, had left his wife, for her. Taken off with Ellen’s beautiful child and her credit card. Wasn’t that a sign of love? Of something? Marie turned from the view to look at him. The sight of him took her by surprise, the same wonderful face that she anticipated every morning after Ellen left for work. The author of
Virginie at Sea
with his swoopy hair and beaky nose. Marie felt herself swell with love looking at him. Even after the French actress. She loved him. A little bit. Though she also understood that Benoît Doniel was rotten. And it was not just for sleeping with the French actress, but also because he had slept with her, Marie, the babysitter.

The boat was now directly in front of Notre Dame and it seemed to Marie that this was an incredible waste of extraordinary scenery, to be having the conversation she had started.

“I didn’t plan that,” Benoît said. “I would take it back. How that happened. I did not mean to ever see Lili again. It was a surprise on the airplane. I wasn’t prepared. She wouldn’t let me go. You saw that, Marie. I don’t plan these things in my life. I never planned on you.”

Marie blinked. This was his explanation? This was his big apology? This was how he conducted his life? By accident? Had Juan José planned his bank robbery? Or had he and his partner just shown up, guns waving? Marie had no idea. Why hadn’t she asked him? Ellen certainly planned things. She had an elaborate plan for her life that included law school and careful control of Caitlin’s diet. Had Ellen planned on Benoît Doniel? It had been a mistake, obviously, Ellen’s chance encounter with her future husband in Paris. She belonged with someone altogether different, a man who dressed conservatively and kept a meticulous account ledger. Marie had never planned on running away to Paris with Ellen’s husband and her daughter. She wished they could go back in time, go back three days, and stay there, forever suspended in time.

“How?” Marie wanted to know. “How did you ever write a novel?”

“What?”

“If you don’t plan things?” Marie said. “How did you write
Virginie at Sea
? How did you write it?”

Benoît shook his head. He did not answer Marie’s question. Marie suddenly remembered Caitlin, realized that she was no longer pressed against her legs. Where was she? Marie would blame Benoît Doniel if something happened to her. It would be his fault that he had distracted Marie from what was important, from Caitlin, who had not disappointed Marie, who remained nothing less than wonderful, but Caitlin was sitting on the bench behind them, more interested in her new goldfish than the view.

“Hi Paris,” she said, talking to the fish in the glass bowl. Benoît still said nothing.

“You can’t write a book by accident,” Marie said.

“You’re right.”

“I’m right, what? You can’t write a book by accident? Then how did you write it?”

“I didn’t.”

Marie looked at Benoît, speechless, suddenly understanding the unmistakable truth of what he had just said. He hadn’t written
Virginie at Sea
. He had been lying to her, all this time. Marie bit her lip. She shook her head. She watched as Benoît tried, again, to light a cigarette. He was helpless, pathetic, the wind blowing out the flickering flame from his lighter. Marie was disgusted. She could not bear to watch him fail at this simple task, fail and keep on failing, and so she cupped her hands in front of his once beloved face, blocking the wind.

It all made perfect sense.

“Your sister wrote it,” Marie said.

“Yes.
Oui. Ma sœur.
”

“Nathalie wrote
Virginie at Sea
.”

The book that had spelled out Marie’s innermost thoughts, that had spoken to her soul. It had been written, of course, by a woman, a sad, lost, young woman, unsure if she wanted to live or die.

“I found it,” Benoît said, “after she killed herself. I found her book in a hatbox. She left me a note, telling me what to do. She left a list of publishers, their addresses, everything.”

Marie looked at Benoît, at his familiar face, the one she had first learned by heart on that worn book jacket, lying on the top bunk of her prison cell, fantasizing about an imaginary author instead of a dead lover.

“What are you thinking?” Benoît said.

“She wanted you to publish the book in her name?”

“She was dead.” Benoît Doniel was self-righteous in his defense. “She left me. Just checked out. Bye-bye. You understand this? How this feels? She left me with her body. I had to take care of her dead body. My
petite sœur
. I had to cut her down from the ceiling. She did not deserve to be celebrated. The book was a gift. Her gift to me. Because I had to keep living without her. It was only fair. Don’t you see?”

Fair. Maybe it was. In Benoît Doniel’s French fucked-up view of the world. But not even drinking coffee from a bowl, none of his ridiculous fop-headed charm, could minimize the hurt Marie felt.

“Who else knows?”

Benoît sucked on his cigarette, smoked down to the butt.

“Who?” she repeated.

“You,” he said. “You and me. No one else. You and me. You and me.”

The wind blew Benoît’s swoopy, idiotic hair into his eyes. He threw his cigarette butt into the Seine, polluting his own city. You and me, a pathetic attempt to save himself. If nothing else, Marie held Benoît Doniel’s future in her hands. She could ruin him. Or she could walk away. Take the high road. Except that she was trapped on a slow boat going down the Seine, surrounded by water and old-world architecture.

“Do they sell drinks on this boat?” Marie asked.

“Drinks?”

“Cold beverages. Do they?”

“I don’t know. They must.”

“Buy me something,” Marie said.

“What?”

“I don’t care. A water. An Orangina. Buy me something French that I’ve never had before. Buy me that. Get something for Caitlin, too.”

“What?”

“What? I don’t know. Anything. Get her a juice,” Marie said. “No, milk, get her some milk.”

“Milk,” Caitlin said. Marie had not known that Caitlin, safe on her bench, was listening. “I want milk.”

“Milk,” Marie said, though she knew Caitlin had already had too much milk. But Marie was not Caitlin’s mother. Not her mother. Though not her babysitter, either, anymore. “Get her something to eat, too. She must be hungry.”

Marie looked at Benoît and he looked back at her. She tilted back her head, made a drinking motion, and he left. Marie turned to watch him go and noticed, with satisfaction, a long line. She turned to look again at the view, to take in the flying buttresses and the gargoyles, to appreciate them, but Notre Dame was long gone. Marie could see the Eiffel Tower coming up instead. It seemed to be everywhere, taunting her.

The grandmother’s apartment was dark and dirty and smelled horrible, like a dead animal. It was on the sixth floor of an old apartment building.

After getting off the boat, they had left the splendor of the day and gone underground, riding the metro, taking two different trains to what Benoît Doniel said was the outskirts of the city, before waiting for a bus that took them someplace even farther. The look of the people in the streets had changed. There were fewer stylish white people, wearing scarves, walking poodles. Instead, Marie heard people speaking Arabic. Instead, the streets were filled with mostly blacks, blacks and old people. Benoît told Marie the name of the neighborhood, but it was in French, complicated, and she promptly forgot it. It was not where Lili Gaudet lived.

They had climbed six flights of stairs, steep, winding, narrow, uncarpeted stairs. Benoît continued to carry the goldfish bowl; Marie had Caitlin. She had carried her all the way from the bus where she had fallen asleep. They had missed her nap time. The stroller remained in the French actress’s apartment, as did the four suitcases.

“My
grandmaman
,” Benoît said as he opened the door, “went into a home. Not too long ago, I think. I don’t remember exactly. There is supposed to be a cleaning lady. It doesn’t seem like she has been here for a while, though, does it?”

Marie could see particles of dust floating in the air.

A spindly black cat with scabs on its back came rushing at them. Mucus was dripping out of both of the cat’s eyes. It went straight for Benoît, pressed itself against his legs and started to meow, the loudest meow Marie had ever heard a cat make. Marie had to suppress the urge to kick it. Benoît almost dropped the goldfish.

“Do you know this cat?” Marie said.