Family Ties (13 page)

“You’re already grown up,” he reminded her. “You’re a mom, and you’ve been a wife … I’m just a kid.”

“I don’t care as long as you’re mine.” And then she said something that terrified him: “I’m never going to let you go.”

“Don’t say that,” he said softly as he dried himself and stepped into his clothes. He felt trapped when she said things like that, and he didn’t want to be her hostage, no matter how exciting she was. He wanted to be with her by choice. Sometimes there was an aura of desperation about Pattie that unnerved him. Their relationship was so much more intense than any he’d been in before.

“It’s true,” she said as she looked at him sadly. “I’ll die if you leave me.”

“No, you won’t,” he said sternly. “You have kids. You can’t think like that.”

“Then don’t leave me.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said softly, “but don’t say things like that. It scares me.” She nodded and kissed him hard on the mouth.

He left minutes before her kids got home, and hailed a cab to take him to Annie’s. And he turned back and waved as Pattie watched him from the window. Her eyes never left the cab until it disappeared.

In Paris, Jean-Louis and Liz were planning to pick up his son Damien to spend the day and night with him. They had had dinner with friends of Jean-Louis the night before. Lizzie had been having a wonderful time since she arrived. He had a beautiful little apartment on the Left Bank on the quais, with a terrace overlooking the Seine. She loved watching the boats drift by and looking across the city. When she came here to work, she stayed at the Four Seasons or the Bristol, but it was much more fun and more romantic staying with him. And she was looking forward to meeting his son. Jean-Louis was planning to take him to the park with her and had promised him a ride on the carousel.

Lizzie was getting ready in his funny old bathroom, with the round
oeil de boeuf
windows, when she opened a drawer looking for a fresh roll of toilet paper, since they were running out. She was startled to see several pairs of women’s underwear and a lacy black bra. None of it was hers. She wasn’t sure if it was a relic of his past, or something more current, but she took it all out and tossed it on the bed, where Jean-Louis was watching a soccer match on TV between Paris F.C. and Saint-Germain.

“I found these in the bathroom,” she said casually as he glanced away from the TV for just a second, and Paris F.C. scored a goal. He heard the crowd cheer and looked back at the TV immediately as he talked to her. He had seen the lacy underwear sitting on the bed. He looked undisturbed.

“You’ve discovered my secret,” he said, smiling at her. “I wear them when you’re not here.”

“Very funny,” she said with a faint tremor in her stomach. She was normally not jealous, but they had agreed to be exclusive, and she wanted to be sure they were still on the same page. “Do these belong to anyone you know?” It was unlikely that a perfect stranger had come to his apartment and left her underpants and a bra in a drawer.

“Probably Françoise. I’m sure they’ve been here for years and she forgot them when she left. I never look through those drawers. Just throw them away. If she hasn’t asked for them in four years, she doesn’t need them now.” Françoise was his son’s mother, and it sounded reasonable to Liz, and she smiled at him as she tossed them in a wastebasket under his desk. It didn’t look it, but he had a cleaning woman who came once a week. His apartment was as disorderly as his clothes.

“We’re out of toilet paper, by the way,” she informed him as she continued to get dressed, relieved by his simple undramatic explanation. She hated jealous scenes, and it was nice to know he wasn’t cheating on her. It wasn’t the love affair of the century, but it was a comfortable arrangement for both of them.

“There’s a roll in my desk. Bottom drawer.” The incongruous location for toilet paper was typical of him. His housekeeping skills were nil. “I know that sounds crazy, but I forget where I put it otherwise.”

She had put on jeans and a sweater by then, and sexy high-heeled boots, and she looked rail thin. She wound a raspberry-colored pashmina around her neck and put on a black fox coat she had bought in Milan. She looked very stylish for the park and the carousel, and he smiled at her admiringly as he turned off the TV and got up off the bed. He was happy—his team had won. He was taking her to lunch at the Brasserie Lipp before they picked up his son. And Liz was curious to meet the boy and get a look at his mother. She was an extremely successful model Jean-Louis had lived with for two years, and he had remained on good terms with her. They had split up before the boy was a year old, four years before, and she’d had several boyfriends since Jean-Louis.

Liz ate a salad at the famous old brasserie on the Boulevard St. Germain, while Jean-Louis ate a heavy German meal. And at three o’clock they were at the apartment building where Françoise lived on the rue Jacob. She was twenty-five years old, and she looked about fifteen when she opened the door. She was even taller than Liz and stood six feet tall in bare feet, with huge green eyes, flawless skin, and a long mane of red hair. Damien’s hair was the same color as his mother’s, but otherwise he was the image of Jean-Louis. He smiled up at his father with a delighted look, and then looked quizzically up at Liz, and Jean-Louis introduced her and said she was his friend. Françoise was looking at her with the same curious expression as her son. She shook Lizzie’s hand and asked if they wanted to come in.

The decor of her apartment was decidedly Moroccan, with leather poufs on the floor, low tables, and couches that had seen better days and were covered with colorful shawls. Her housekeeping skills were about the same as Jean-Louis’s. There were magazines, loose photographs, her modeling portfolio, half-drunk bottles of wine, and shoes everywhere.

Damien seemed like a happy, easygoing child as he ran to hug his father, and then kissed his mother when they left.

The two women had looked each other over with interest, but said very little. Lizzie had the feeling that Françoise wasn’t thrilled to see her, but she didn’t seem overly upset either. Jean-Louis had said that they had always had a very open arrangement when they lived together and had never been entirely faithful to each other. He had told Liz that she was the only woman he had promised monogamy to, and he considered it an enormous concession and a big commitment from him. Until then, monogamy, his own or his partner’s, had never been important to him. He believed in living in the moment, and seizing opportunities when they arose. And he teased Lizzie frequently about how American she was, and what puritans Americans were. But she stuck by her rules. She didn’t want her boyfriend sleeping with anyone else. She had never had any evidence to the contrary, and when she called him at home at night in Paris, when she was in New York, he was always alone. Liz had been intrigued to see him with Damien’s mother when they met. They seemed friendly and nothing more. He had told Liz right from the beginning that he and Françoise were good friends, and she trusted him. He had never lied to her yet.

They went to the Bois de Boulogne, and it was cold, but they ran around a lot and played ball with Damien. He was very cute, and Liz made a big effort to speak to him in French, and all three of them rode the carousel. And afterward they went to Ladurée on the Champs Élysées for hot chocolate and pastries. Damien loved it, and even Lizzie succumbed and had
macarons
and a cup of tea. They went back to Jean-Louis’s apartment after that, and Liz gave Damien the train she’d brought. He loved it, and once he tired of playing with it, Jean-Louis put on a Disney DVD for him in the bedroom, in French, and the two adults talked quietly in the living room. It had been a perfect day. Lizzie had wanted to meet his son for a long time, but it had never worked out until then. This was the first time she had had leisure time in Paris—she was always so busy when she came, organizing shoots and flying in and out with no time to spare.

“I wish he stayed with me more often,” Jean-Louis said wistfully. “He’s such a great kid, but I’m never here. Or not for long anyway. Françoise travels a lot too. Her mother comes up from Nice to take care of him but she’s been thinking about sending Damien to live with her, now that he’s really starting school. It’s hard for him to bounce around between the two of us, and her mother takes good care of him. Françoise was really too young when he was born. We thought it was a great idea at the time when she got pregnant, but we probably should have waited.” He smiled at Liz then. “But then he would never have been born. I guess destiny makes the right decisions after all.” It seemed odd to her to leave something as important as the decision to have a child to “destiny.” She had never felt ready to have a baby so far, and she couldn’t imagine doing that for many years. She was too involved in her career, and so were Françoise and Jean-Louis, but they didn’t seem to care.

“Won’t he miss you both terribly if you send him to live with his grandmother?” She felt sorry for the boy, being shuttled between two very independent people who had had him when they were too young, and a grandmother in another city.

“It would be better for him. She has more stability than we do, and Françoise has two sisters, in Aix and Marseille. He would see his aunts and uncles and cousins. We don’t have time to get him together with other kids, except at nursery school, or the day care where Françoise takes him. You were brought up by someone other than your parents. It doesn’t seem to have hurt you,” he said practically, but what he didn’t see and had never understood was how marked Lizzie had been by her parents’ death, no matter how wonderful Annie had been to them. It wasn’t the same as growing up with a mom and dad, and it had been a crushing loss for her. And perhaps it was even worse if your parents chose to send you away. How would you explain that to yourself later on?

“We had no choice. My parents died. But Damien might feel really abandoned by the two of you. I suffered terribly from the loss of my parents all through my teens. I think I blamed them for dying, although I loved my aunt a lot and she was terrific and like a mother to me. But she’s not my mother, she’s my aunt.”

“We’ll explain it to him later on.” Jean-Louis smiled at her as he lit a Gitane. “Françoise isn’t ready to give up her career. And she can only do what she’s doing, at this level, for a few more years. It would be a shame for her to stop now. And I can’t. I’m sure he’ll understand,” Jean-Louis said confidently. Liz wasn’t so sure how he’d feel later about parents who hadn’t been willing to make the necessary adjustments for him and thought only of themselves. In some ways she thought they treated him like a toy. She was still grateful for the sacrifices Annie had made, which she was even more aware of now. She couldn’t imagine what her life would be like if she had been raising three children now, of the ages she and her siblings had been when Annie got them at twenty-six. Liz didn’t think herself capable of it, now or at any age, which made her admire Annie even more for all she’d done.

“I couldn’t do it either,” Liz said fairly, “but I wouldn’t have a kid. I don’t want to screw up someone else’s life.”

“We’re not,” Jean-Louis assured her, blind to what they weren’t doing for the boy. And with that Damien walked into the room. The movie had finished, and he was hungry. Jean-Louis put some cheese and pâté on a plate for him, and opened a box of the
macaron
cookies they had bought that afternoon at Ladurée. And Damien seemed perfectly content with that. He lived on pizza and sandwiches when he was with his mother. His father always had better things to eat. But he didn’t look unhappy or malnourished, and he was easy to be with. He had learned early to adjust to the grown-ups around him and not cause any trouble. If he did, they sent him away. Liz thought it was a hard life for him and not one she would have wanted to give a child, nor the one she had had with her aunt, who had adjusted herself to them and given them a secure, happy childhood. Annie always talked about how lucky she was to have them. Lizzie was more grateful than ever for her now, in the context of her own life, and how hard it was for her to juggle what she had on her own plate. And she was sure it wasn’t easy for Françoise and Jean-Louis either. But Damien was paying the price for it. She never had. She had had a perfect childhood, under the circumstances. And even with that, she was shy of long-term commitments now. She had never told a man she loved him, for fear that if she did, he might die or disappear, and she didn’t think she had ever been in love. She was still asking herself the question about Jean-Louis. She was attached to him, and she enjoyed him, but to her love was something much deeper than this, from which there was no turning back. She had never given up her option to end a relationship or leave. And this was the extent of the commitment she wanted for now. She couldn’t even imagine having a child with him. And surely not at twenty, as Françoise had done. Jean-Louis often said that he’d like to have another one sometime. Liz was not planning to volunteer.

Lizzie played cards with Damien for a little while, and with his new train again, and then Jean-Louis put on another DVD. And eventually the irresistible little boy with the big green eyes and red hair fell asleep on his father’s bed, and Jean-Louis scooped him up and put him on the narrow bed he had set up for him in a tiny room, where he stayed when he was here. They were taking him back to Françoise the next day.

Liz and Jean-Louis spent a quiet evening talking and drinking wine after Damien fell asleep. They talked mostly about fashion, and the editors and photographers they knew, the politics at various magazines, particularly hers, and their careers. They were comfortable and compatible, had the same interests, knew many of the same people, and worked in the same milieu. It was an ideal situation for both of them. And a perfect way to spend New Year’s Day. She cuddled up next to him when they went to bed that night. She didn’t want more than this, and she liked staying with him in the funny little attic apartment in Paris, and the loft in New York. They didn’t make love that night because Lizzie didn’t want Damien to walk in on them, and there was only one bathroom in the apartment, although Jean-Louis assured her he wouldn’t hear anything and never woke up during the night, but she didn’t want to risk it and traumatize him. She felt responsible for him while she was there.