Hidden in Paris (14 page)

It seemed as though everyone, Lola, the children on the playground, passersby and their dogs, even the pigeons had turned to statues, all eyes and ears in their direction.

“At last!” Annie said.

“I don’t see a problem,” Lola said hastily.

“I’m without...hope,” Althea sobbed.

“Well, you’re in Paris now. A new life. A new you!” Annie suggested.

“I don’t... think so.”

“Bah, you’re depressed, that’s all.” Annie suggested. “What about Prozac? Xanax? It doesn’t make a dent for me, I’d be more of a horse tranquilizer type of girl, but you could try it.”

“I have no desire to live,” Althea said flatly.

Yikes. No desire to
live?
What did that mean? “It will probably pass,” she said for lack of a better idea. “I’ve buried a husband, and look at me, I’m totally fine now.” She looked up at Lola and gave her a look that said, “Say something!” But Lola had buried her nose in her turtleneck and was looking away.

Althea lifted her head. “I’m not going to be fine,” she said with such absence of passion that Annie’s arms covered with goosebumps.

On the way back home, Simon refused to climb in his stroller and instead took hold of Annie’s hand. She liked the small warm hand in hers, needed it, as Althea spoke about things Simon was luckily too young to understand. There were no more talks about teeth, only about depression and hopelessness. Maybe this was better. At least it felt real. And Althea was no longer talking to Lola. She was talking to her. Lola, she guessed was the perfect person to go to when you wanted to say nothing at all. Oh, she would not have minded being off the hook. She dug furiously in her brain for comforting notions to offer Althea, who countered each and every one. Words were futile in the face of Althea’s nihilism.

Far behind them in the street, having let the kids go ahead of her, Lola pushed the empty stroller, not even pretending to want to help. Annie could have maimed her. At last her house was in sight, her beautiful home. The carved stones, the massive front door, and the sculpted silhouettes of sycamores fed her strength and she started breathing again. Could it be that the beauty of the house, the street, of Paris was lost on Althea? How mistaken she had been. Paris was no bloody cure for anything, and she herself was the living proof of it.

The children climbed up the stone stairs excitedly. It was as though while all this was happening, the children had had a watershed moment and were now playing together. What had she missed? Simon looked happiest, still hanging on to her hand and taking large steps up the stairs. Inside the house, coats, gloves, and scarves were removed and the children ran upstairs to the bedrooms. That is when Lola finally turned to Althea and said brightly, “I know exactly what you need.”

“Do you now?” Annie said, as sarcastically as she could.

Lola chirped, “A makeover!”

Annie closed her eyes in disbelief and ran up the stairs to take refuge in her bedroom.

Annie had learned at the school of insomnia that the later she stayed up, the less hours of loneliness she would endure in the wee hours of the morning. It was past midnight. She was physically drained but her brain had never been more alert. There was no peace in sight. She was running on panic mode. In her pajamas and bathrobe, she sat at the kitchen table with only the light of a small table lamp over her and a pile of cookbooks at her side as she took notes for the next day, ingredients, quantities, recipes, nonsense. Planning a meal was how she muscled through the crisis of self-doubt, how she mapped out her day, her year, the rest of her life.

She had to send these people back. She had to send them all back from where they came. Perfect Lola back to perfect Lola land, doing cheerleading or whatever it was she did there, and Althea back to her cave. They would leave and take with them their children, their death wish, their messy lives, and their huggable toddlers. Maybe she’d go back home to the States too, sell the house, give up on Paris, renounce
huile de truffe and paté de lapin
. She could resume the life she had interrupted ten years ago. She’d live at her parent’s house, work at Starbucks, and go back to law school. Pass the bar exam. She wasn’t too old to crawl back into the womb.

She came to the conclusion that if there was to be any sleep at all, she would have to get a glass of something first. She closed her book, turned off the light, and left the kitchen in the direction of the living room and the liquor cabinet. How pathetic she was to resort to drinking alone in the middle of the night. The house felt so symbiotic that even in pitch black, she could easily move about it without bumping into things. Maybe it was the house that was the womb? She advanced in the dark, hearing only the shuffle of her socks on the wood floor. She was surprised to find the door to the living room open because she remembered clearly closing that very door an hour before. She stood, on hold. Something was not right. She heard the wood floor creak somewhere in the room. Someone was in there. Her heart thumping, she felt for the heavy vase on the table and waited on alert, prepared to take hold of the vase and crack it on someone’s skull. But then came the distinct sound of a bottle being uncapped. She moved her shaking hand to the light switch, adrenalin pumping, and turned on the light.

It was Lola in the act of nursing a bottle of rum. Lola’s eyes widened in shock when she saw her, but she continued taking a long swig from the bottle, like a child determined to stuff as much candy into his mouth before his mother takes it away. Annie put her hands over her pounding heart. “You scared the living crap out of me!”

Lola moved the bottle away from her lips and began laughing, laughing and coughing so hard that tears sprang from her eyes. “I’m not an alcoholic, I swear!” she said between snorts of laughter. Annie gravely reached for the bottle and took it authoritatively out of Lola’s hand, which made Lola laugh ever harder. “I must look sooo guilty,” she wept.

Annie looked at her in silence, frowning, as Lola doubled over with laughter. She pointed to the bottle in Annie’s hand. “I wasn’t quite finished getting plastered,” she said. Annie contemplated the bottle in her hand, wiped the top with her pajama sleeve, took a long swig, and coughed before handing the bottle back to Lola.

“Let’s do this properly, shall we.”

Annie turned on the fireplace and placed a fresh log in. She went to the kitchen and came back with a plate which held small French cookies, ladyfingers and
langues de chat
, and then sank to the couch. Lola curled on pillows at the coffee table and poured rum in small glasses. They dipped cookies in rum, letting the alcohol and the fire transform the room around them. The walls, the framed art, the photographs of the children, and the antique furniture took on an orange glow.

“When’s Lucas coming back?” Lola asked.

Annie shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“See, that’s so French, so modern. I love it,” She said, looking impressed.

Annie raised an eyebrow. “What is French?”

“You know, it’s totally not codependent. You don’t own each other.” She gave Annie a playful look. “Is it true that French men are better lovers?”

“Johnny was American.”

Lola looked dismayed. “Lucas? Isn’t he your boyfriend?”

“Of course not!”

“But he came to the airport.”

Annie laughed despite herself. “The airport, yes, that would be a telltale sign.”

“I figured...”

“Am I supposed to deny in advance everything people might imagine?” She realized she had no reason to be defensive and softened her tone. “He’s just a great friend of the family. There is nothing between us, of course.”

“I could have sworn.”

“Look, Lucas is a womanizer, and me, I’m one man’s woman.” She marked a pause, “One dead man’s woman. Besides, Lucas is rather out of my league, wouldn’t you say?” Lola seemed to consider that for a moment and didn’t contradict her. That alone pissed Annie off. You can never let your guard down around popular girls. Popular girls get that way by being cutthroat and eliminating the competition. And what better way to eliminate the competition than to make them feel two inches tall. “Lola,” she said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you a personal question. How can you be so
cold
and collected in the middle of this marriage crisis of yours?” Cold and collected. She was mostly referring to Lola’s behavior at the park. If Lola noticed her choice of words, she did not let on.

“I don’t feel calm or collected. I’m neither of those things,” she responded, her voice trailing a bit, the valley accent suddenly apparent. Annie didn’t know if it was due to sadness, or due to the rum.

“This morning with Althea, you seemed very... composed,” Annie said, tight-lipped.

“No way. I was totally, like, freaking out! I’m, like, the least qualified to help anyone. I can barely help myself,” she said, her valley girl accent taking over. “I have no control over my life, no control over anything, really. I’m put together and all but it’s all totally fake. Lying is, like...totally my life!” she added, biting her lip like she might cry. Annie tried to read Lola’s face. “How much booze did you have?” Lola widened her arms “A lot!” She continued in earnest. “Guess what?” she laid her upper body flat on the coffee table with complete abandon and whispered, “I’m not even a real brunette!” Come to think of it, Lola’s coal-black hair was surprisingly dark for her complexion. “That’s your big lie? I’m pretty confident you won’t burn in hell for that one.”

“No, no, you don’t understand,” Lola squealed. “I’m a tow head. I’m a real dumb blonde! Look at my roots!” She leaned over the table again and parted her short hair to reveal the odd sight of a pink scalp and very blonde roots. “It was dyed black for a photo shoot ten years ago, when I modeled, before I met Mark. It gave me instant character.” She snapped her fingers. “Poof, just like that! It’s been my hair color ever since.”

That would explain the green eyes, the pale skin, and the blonde children. “I’ll bet you look stunning regardless of your hair color,” Annie said, feeling magnanimous.

“Stunning, yeah, whatever good it does me. I’m thinking of letting it grow out. I really, really, really want to start over, you know. I want a new life. Completely brand spanking new. I don’t want to be Mark’s thing anymore. I don’t even want to be his type.” She sat straight, suddenly very serious, and whispered intently, “Some of the damage is irreparable, though.”

“Like?”

“Like this,” she said, jubilant. She unbuttoned her pajama top, flashed Annie her bare breasts, a pretty humongous set of fake breasts, closed her pajamas, and laughed like a hyena. Annie was speechless. “Not too organic, huh? Can you picture these enormities in Down Dog? They almost rub against my cheeks!”

“Doggy style?” Annie wondered.

Lola hollered with laughter. “Not doggy style!” She rushed to the floor, put hands and feet flat on the ground, her back and legs straight, butt elevated. “Down Dog! You know, in yoga?”

This was so interesting. Lola had fake breasts! Wait till she told Lucas. “I know why they invented yoga,” Annie declared. “It’s a hypocrite’s excuse to go into obscene positions with impunity.” And Lola’s breasts did get in the way, but she kept that to herself. “I’ve done yoga,” she continued. “It’s boring, and in my case, embarrassing.”

“Boring? Yoga?” Lola yelped. “Yoga is my
life
. You’ve got to do yoga.” Then she looked about to cry again. “I
hate
these fake boobs. I hate them,” she said, her voice trailing pathetically. “And what for? I mean sex has become so, like, bla bla bla all the time. What’s the word?”

“Perfunctory?”

“The boobs were all
his
idea. He used to pay some attention to my... hmmm...”

“Vagina?”

“But now... it’s like it never existed. He’s too into the boobs. But really, the boobs, they’re not me at all. Mark’s into the one part of me that has nothing to do with me. These days our sex is so perfunctory, you know, that I’d rather not have it at all.”

These days?
The words did not sink in immediately, the alcohol having blurred the edges of her reasoning. Weren’t Lola and Mark separated? She thought of pointing it out but instead said. “Maybe you should have let him know.”

“Let him know what? That he’s a lousy lay?”

“You could have taught him what you like.”

“It’s not like that... it wasn’t like that I mean. I think it’s more that all that good testosterone is used up with some twenty-five-year-old in his office.”

“You’ve caught him cheating?” she asked.

“Do I need to catch him in the act to know what he’s up to? He’s got looks, power, and money. Of course, he cheats on me.” Lola didn’t seem angry or resentful. Was she past those feelings or incapable of them?

“My husband had looks, power, and money too,” Annie said.

“They think with their dicks, it’s scientifically proven.”

Annie shook her head. “Oh no, not Johnny.” She felt worn out by the alcohol and the late hour. She could have easily curled into a ball on the couch and fallen asleep there.

“I hear adultery is de
rigueur
in France,” Lola said.