Broken for You (42 page)

"Ah! Very good!" the maitre d' said. "One moment,
s'il vous
plait."

Margaret adjusted the brim of her straw hat. She swayed slightly in her new floral skirt. She liked the feathery way it swirled against her legs.

The maitre d' returned and presented her with a small lunch basket crammed with fresh rolls, butter, jam, fruit, a carton of yogurt, a thermos of coffee, and a yellow rosebud.
"Voil
a
!"

"Oh! It's beautiful!
Merci, monsieur!"

"De rien, madame. Bon appetit!"

Margaret set off, city map and basket in hand.
"Bonjour!"
she said to each passing stranger, feeling braver and braver. How wrong could her pronunciation of such a small word be?
"Bonjour!"

It was the first time she had been alone in Paris, and the sense of freedom and relief was intoxicating. The morning, at last, was hers. If she tired, or if it grew time to meet up with Gus and Susan, she could always hail a taxi.

"April in Paris," she sang under her breath. "Chestnuts in blossom. Holiday tables under the trees . . ." She headed east on one of the major boulevards. After a few blocks she consulted her map and saw that on this side of the Place des Vosges was a northbound street that would take her almost directly to the Musee Picasso. She had plenty of time. She'd find a park and have her breakfast of bread and yogurt—and French coffee, of all things! Wanda would never believe it. Then she'd look for a street on her left called Rue de Turenne.

"God makes it so easy for us," Irma said offhandedly—as if it were a perfectly natural conversational segue, and she'd just been talking about religion instead of extolling the virtues of Dr. Scholl's shoe inserts.

"What?" It was midday and the group was taking a break, eating lunch at the picnic benches on either side of the trail they'd been working on.

"To do mitzvoth."

"Good deeds," M.J. said distractedly. "Is that what you're talkin' about?" There was that woman again, the tall one; she was sitting with a couple of twenty-somethings at a table on the other side of the trail.

"Yes!"

He'd noticed her taking meals alone in the dining room, or in the lobby at the end of the day, reading. She wore eyeglasses attached to one of those necklace-type things; it was strung with polished stones and beads, almost like a rosary.

"You, for example," Irma went on. "It wasn't as if I had to go looking. God practically dropped you in my lap. All I did was pay attention." "You've done a helluva lot more than that, Irma." "And you've done a few things for me too, boychick, don't forget."
MJ.'s attention was tugged to the other side of the trail again. The woman was laughing, but there was something muted and reserved about the sound of it, as if she was out of practice.

"You should go over there and introduce yourself," Irma said. "We're only going to be here for another few days."

"What are you talking about?"

"That woman. The tall one with the bracelet. You've been staring at her."

"No I haven't," M.J. lied.

"Fine, then. You haven't! Such an A.K. you can be sometimes."

"I don't even want to know what that means."

"Alter kocker!"
Irma barked. "You're right! You don't!"

They ate their lunch in silence for a while. Irma made a show of shifting around and sighing loudly, as if she were vastly uncomfortable. Finally she spoke up again.

"Just say this: 'Hello. My name's M.J. That's an interesting bracelet. What's your story?' How hard can it be?"

M.J. laughed.

"You want me to introduce you? Her name's Joyce Gallagher."

M.J. squinted. "You've met her already."

"Not everybody on this trip hides in their room at the end of the day. Some people actually came here to make friends."

"I have a friend: you."

Irma bulldozed past him. "We had a little chat in the ladies' room after dinner the other night. She's fifty-two years old, she's a professor of English, she teaches at the University of Idaho at Moscow—that's just over the border, you know, a stone's throw from Spokane—and she's divorced with two grown kids, Annie and Theodore. Annie's here too, but Joyce hasn't seen much of her because Annie brought her boyfriend. That's them over there with her." Irma waved and shouted. "Helloooo!"

"You learned all this in the ladies' room?"

"What, you think we just go in there to take care of business?"

Joyce smiled and waved back.

M.J. hunkered down and studied his pineapple juice.

"The thing is," Irma said, "God put you in front of me. I just used my eyes. Then I had a thought—that you were lonely, maybe, that you
needed a friend. Then I had an idea, an idea that I could do something about it, and after that there was no turning back, see?" "No. I don't."

"Once a person has an idea—to do a mitzvah, I mean—then it becomes a promise to God. And believe me, He hates to see us let a good thought slip through our fingers."

"How do you know my thoughts about her are good?"

"Very funny. You're not the big bad sinner you think you are. My point is, nothing makes God madder than when He goes to the trouble of putting someone in front of us and we don't follow through."

M.J. sighed. He knew that trying to explain for the umpteenth time that God didn't occupy a place on his moral compass would have no impact on Mrs. K. whatsoever; nor would it keep this conversation from continuing until dinnertime. "You're not going to leave this alone, are you?"

Irma smiled and took a bite of her fruit salad.

M.J. sighed. "Fine, Irma, fine. I'll go say hello to the woman."

"Good boy!" Irma shooed him off with a wave of her napkin. "You won't regret it."

He got up and started stomping across the trail, toward Joyce's table. "Idiot," he mumbled. His heart was pounding as if he were fourteen years old. "I'm an idiot."

"Will I see you guys at dinner?" he heard Joyce ask as he got closer. The daughter and the boyfriend had already packed up their gear and were heading off.

"Maybe," the daughter said. "Bye, Mom. Have fun." They hiked away, leaving Joyce behind to clean up the picnic mess. She watched them go, wearing a face that M.J. wished he hadn't seen— a brave, worn face that would take up at least three chapters in a book with a sad ending.

She didn't notice him until he was a couple of feet from the picnic table. "Hello," he said. "I'm a friend of Mrs. Kosminsky's"—he gestured— "over there."

Irma waved. They waved back.

"My name's M.J."

"Hello," she said. "I'm Joyce." Her hair was a white-and-auburn mass that went down to the middle of her back. It must have been neatly braided earlier in the day, but now there were fuzzy wisps—like dandelion seed
tufts—arching over her forehead. Not a large person, she nevertheless gave an impression of solidity. M.J. thought of lighthouses and docks— structures one could steer toward, tether to. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

She held out her hand; it was a temperate hand, in spite of the Hawaii heat, and when M.J. took it he breathed in the smell of something like mulled cider. But there was another scent, too; it had an arid, ashy quality, and he was startled by its familiarity.
Does loneliness have a smell?
he wondered.
The loneliness of resignation?
It did. He knew it to be so. He smelled it on Joyce, and surely his own skin was scented with it as well.

He noticed the wide silver bracelet Irma had mentioned, patterned with a labyrinthian design. "Is that Celtic?"

"Yes. I understand from Mrs. Kosminsky that you're originally from Dublin."

"That's right." She was wearing a sleeveless purple shirt—it was a good color on her; the shirt was open at the throat and revealed more freckles on her chest. M.J.'s mouth felt suddenly parched.

Joyce went on. "Did she tell you that I have a great love for Irish poetry? In fact, I'm working—ever so slowly—on a biography of your great kinsman, Mr. Yeats."

That old broad. What a trickster.
"No," M.J. said, smiling. "Irma didn't mention that."

Soon after she turned onto the Rue de Turenne, Margaret began to feel weak and unwell. She hailed a taxi. She directed the driver to take her to the Musee Picasso and then slumped against the car door in the backseat—next to Daniel, who was playing with a toy sailboat, and her mother, who was studying a pocket-sized Berlitz volume
of French for Travellers.

Maybe taking this trip was selfish,
Margaret thought.
Maybe everyone else was right.

"Ou est la theatre?"
Margaret's mother intoned with confidence. Her accent was terrible.

It's "le," Mother, "he theatre."

"Ou est la
—
le cinema?"
Margaret's mother looked up from her phrase book and inhaled deeply.
Foolhardy, perhaps. I wouldn't call it
selfish. Everyone should have at least one day in Paris, in the spring. Je adorez le France!

Margaret winced.

Her mother returned to her phrasebook.
"Ou est les archives?"

It's "ee," Mother, not "I. "And "sh." "Les-ar-sheev." "Ou sont les archives?" You can be very snobbish sometimes, Margaret. Are you aware of that?

Look, Mom!
Daniel cried.
It's a man selling balloons!

The taxi had stopped at a traffic light. Margaret glanced up and, sure enough, there was an old man wearing a beret and a dark woolen coat. He was holding two enormous bouquets of yellow balloons. Daniel waved. The man opened his hands to wave back. Instantly, the balloons floated skyward and revealed a modern-looking building at 37, Rue de Turenne.

"Let me out here, please," Margaret said sharply.

"Pardon, Madame?"

Margaret fumbled for the right words.
"Arretez-vous!"

Your French is good,
Margaret's mother said grudgingly.
I'll give you that.

The cabdriver looked confused. "This is not the Musee Picasso, madame."

"Yes, I see," Margaret answered, swiveling around in the seat. "What is that building?
Qu'est-ce que c'est
la
?"

"C'est le C-D-J-C.
" He gave the letters their French pronunciation, so to Margaret it sounded as though he said, "Say day gee say."

"Pardon? Plus lentement, s'il vous
plait.
"

"Le Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine."

"I'll get out here, thank you," she said.

"But, madame, it's too early.
C'est
ferme.
Closed."

"That's all right. I'll wait.
Merci."

Margaret got out, paid the cabdriver, and found a nearby phone. "Gus? No, dear heart, nothing's wrong. I'm fine. I'm sorry if you and Susan were worried. It's just. . . there's been a change in plan. Can the two of you meet me somewhere else?"

After hanging up, Margaret glanced at her watch; it was only just nine o'clock, and the museum didn't open until eleven. Still, she had no desire to be anywhere else, so she settled down on the front steps of the CDJC and opened up her basket.

A woman walked by, holding a curly-headed toddler by the hand.
"Vous choisissez un jour parfait pour votre pique-nique, madame!"
she said.

"C'est vrai!"
Margaret replied, without hesitation.
"Aujourd'hui c'est un jour parfait!"

The next morning at breakfast, Irma was writing postcards. She pushed a pile across the table to M.J. "Here," she said. "I bought extras, in case you want to send some."

"Irma," M.J. said. "Who am I going to write a postcard to? You're the only friend I've got, and you're sitting across from me."

"You're so wrong I'm not laughing," she said. "Rudy Hahn? Rudy's not a friend? The staff at the bowling alley?"

"All right, all right."

"The customers? Those nice girls, Carrie and Joanna, who take care of the kids? No friends, he says. What a bunch of baloney."

"But you're already sending them cards. Just say I said hello."

"That's a lazy attitude! Besides, a person can't get too many postcards from Hawaii. Here!" Irma jabbed a pen in his direction. "Get to it!"