Hidden in Paris (39 page)

Had Althea been with him, he would have showed her the restaurants filled to capacity, people dancing and drinking at café terraces, awestruck tourists wondering where they had landed, wild kids zigzagging through traffic on their mopeds, hair in the wind, lovers walking hand in hand along the streets, body against body, kissing, waiting for the night, for passion. If Althea had been with him in the cab, he would have put his head on her lap and let her caress his hair until he drifted to sleep. But Althea was not with him and he needed to find her. The cab drove on boulevard Richard-Lenoir and suddenly, a hundred people on roller skates surrounded the car like a school of fish in the dark ocean. A girl tapped at his window and flashed her bare breasts. An instant later, they were gone.

Time away from Althea was wasted to him. He hated that she was fragile, and needy, and sick. But as fragile and needy and sick as she might be, he was going to find her despite the nurses making excuses, saying she had been transferred to another hospital they couldn’t disclose.

Sitting across from him, in that French Chinese restaurant, Lola had settled into her chair and had an air of contentment and serenity that maybe did not mean she was serene or content, now that Mark thought of it. There had been nothing to indicate she was unhappy with him the very day she left. Or so little.

Lola was even more breathtaking as a blonde, and he wanted to tell her that. It was strange to be in Paris, a city he had trouble understanding. People were still arriving for dinner at eleven at night accompanied by their dogs. This was a city where heterosexual men dressed gay, where sexy women of all ages danced in the street, where waiters ignored you and your empty plate, where Chinese restaurants had few recognizable Chinese dishes on the menu, and where the preferred modes of transportation were roller blades and mopeds. In Paris, music was everywhere.

Lola removed her jacket. She was luminous. He loved the soft caramel color of her skin, the roundness of her lips, the washed green of her eyes without makeup. Lola’s face was calm. Lola was always calm. Her calm had allowed him to act out his rage at the world with impunity. He wanted to tell her that, too.

It had been a while since the private investigator had given him Lola’s address in Paris. Mark had kept the address in his wallet and had looked at it several times a day to remember what he was doing and why he was doing it as he went through the work. Therapy, it was called, anger management classes where he had faced the depression and the rage. The depression, especially, seemed like a bottomless pit. Once he saw a problem he was not the kind to shy away from it. He tackled it head on, and methodically. Hired the best, gave it his best. He had taken the drugs they gave him and refused to lie to himself. He had done the group thing too, and had not needed more than that session to recognize himself in those men around him, out-of-control bullies guilty of emotionally battering their woman. Those were not facts he wished to advertise at the moment. He wanted to win Lola back as the new him. Besides, he wasn’t sure much would be gained from Lola learning he had turned into a wimp who cried himself to sleep.

Watching Lola, it was difficult to not display the emotions that overwhelmed him. Then he remembered what the shrink had said: To the contrary, he was supposed to be feeling the emotions, not bottle them in, which might have caused the problem in the first place. How to feel the emotions and not bawl like a six-year-old, that he had not figured out yet.

Lola drank her wine with small sips, her skin caressed by the balmy night air. “How did you find me?” she finally asked.

“Well,” he chuckled, “it was a bit of a challenge, but when you throw enough money at a problem, the problem usually disappears.”

“Not all problems, though,” Lola said, and she looked at him intently.

“No, not all problems,” he said.

The waiter removed Mark’s untouched appetizer and Lola’s empty plate, and brought their entrée. Mark was unable to swallow a bite, and here she was, eating happily, her head swaying faintly with the music.

“When did you find out where I was?”

Mark hesitated. “About a month ago.”

“A month?” Lola looked pained. “That’s a long time,” she said reproachfully.

Mark hesitated again. “I had
stuff
to take care of.”

“What kind of
stuff?
” she asked.

He watched the tip of Lola’s chopsticks go to her plate, expertly grab some food, and gracefully come to her mouth. “You know... stuff. I think what we need to talk about is what’s going on now and come to some kind of understanding about the future.”

“Things cannot go on the way they were, Mark,” she said, looking upset. “I’ve changed. I simply can’t go back to the old me.”

Mark shrugged. “You changed a long time ago. But you didn’t dare tell me, for some reason.”

Lola put her chopsticks down. “Some reason? And what reason might that be, in your opinion?”

Mark didn’t respond. They both knew the reason. Instead, he said, “I could have reported you. I could have sent the police after you dozens of times, and you know I didn’t. Obviously I care about you. I’m not some kind of monster. I gave you the space you needed and all. And I’m here to solve whatever little problems we might have.”

Lola’s voice became sharp. “Except they are not little problems, Mark. They’re huge problems. I don’t know that we can solve them.”

“I’ll tell you what. Nothing’s going to get solved between us as long as you’re in France.”

“I’ll come back to L.A., of course. I owe it to you and the kids. And I need to make changes in my life.”

Mark relaxed. “Yeah, you need a life. I get it. You want to work. Do your yoga, right?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think I can come back to that house.”

Mark raised an eyebrow. “You want to move?”

“I won’t go back to the marriage.”

Mark didn’t look at her. He was trying to hide the apprehension, the drop in his shoulders. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll come back to California, but,” she looked down at her plate, “I’m sorry Mark but I’ll rent a place somewhere.”

“Come on, Lola! I know that we both have our grievances. It’s not the end of the world!”

“No, Mark! It is the end of the world,” Lola said with such force that Mark hardly recognized her. Her eyes shone with anger. He’d never seen her openly angry. “How can I say it in words that you will finally understand? Especially if you refuse to hear me out.”

“Why do you think I came all the way here if it wasn’t to hear you out?”

Lola looked at him. “Very well, then. You say things changed after we had children. Well, that’s because you were just fine as long as my world revolved around
you
!”

Mark opened his mouth to respond, then closed it. Lola pointed her chopsticks at him angrily, her voice never rising as she spoke. “Do you realize how much of myself I’ve given up to be with you? And how much more I give up daily to meet with your approval? It’s always about you—your nice little shirts, your stupid house, your business trips I have to endure with you instead of being home with the kids. It’s about your ideas on entertaining and decorating, which by the way
suck
.” She whispered that last word, but she might have well been screaming it.

“I get it Lola. I get it. I’m an asshole.”

“I’m saying that if you don’t change, I will divorce you.”

Mark took a large gulp of his drink and said, “What kind of changes do you want me to make?” They both let those words, incongruous in his mouth, float between them for a long minute.

“Huge changes, Mark,” Lola shook her head. “I don’t know if you’d be up for the task.”

“I can change.”

Lola snapped. “Then why don’t you start right now, by apologizing for your uncontrollable anger? The yelling, everything you have put me through, and I...”

“I apologize,” Mark said.

Lola looked at him stunned.

“I apologize,” Mark repeated. He held her gaze now. “I’ve been everything you just said. I can change. I need to change. I’ve started to change.”

“You would need to see someone, a professional, about your anger.”

“I have already started. That’s the ‘stuff’ I was talking about. I’ve been going to this kind of program. I... I’ll do what it takes.”

Lola opened her eyes wide. “A program?”

“A program. Anger management, spousal abuse,” he smiled apologetically, “the works.”

“A program?” Lola said again, seeming completely shocked by his revelation.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Lola had stopped eating. A musician had set up a few feet away from their table and was playing something like flamenco on the guitar. They both watched the man’s fingers float over the strings. Of course Mark should have said more, but what? You can’t make someone love you. The dice had been thrown. It was out of his hands.

“All right then, maybe,” she finally said.

“Maybe?”

“Maybe if you’re willing. And able.”

His throat tightened painfully. “I’m willing. And I’m definitely able.”

“Maybe then,” Lola said again. She looked at him and had a soft smile, but her smile froze when she saw the tears well up in his eyes. He tried to hide them but it was too late.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

Mark stretched out his hand, and after a few seconds, Lola finally stretched out hers. They did a slow motion high-five, but Mark did not let Lola remove her hand. He entwined his fingers in hers and began weeping in plain sight in that Chinese restaurant in the middle of Paris.

Chapter 29

Lucas felt like a human being at last. The children were watching a movie and he had finally shaved, washed and changed clothes, all the while rehearsing how he would give Annie a piece of his mind for leaving him to fend for himself with five children. But when Annie arrived at his door, her face washed with tears, so distraught that she immediately threw herself into his arms, he thought she’d just been beaten or worse. Had Mark attacked her and then murdered Lola in a fit of
crime passionnel
? She stayed there against his chest, sobbing for a full minute he guiltily enjoyed. To hold this body in his arms felt so right and wonderful. Finally she gathered herself, dried her eyes, and to his silent interrogation she responded, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

She ran to his bathroom and emerged having washed her face and applied lipstick. She was strong again, or at least had decided to appear that way for the children. She peeked into the salon, which at the moment bore no sign of his afternoon ordeal. The children were piled on the sofa, all eyes riveted to the television set, except for the baby who had fallen into the deepest of slumbers two hours before. Maxence saw his mother, jumped up from the couch, and turned off the television, which seemed to raise her suspicion.

“What were you watching?” she asked as a form of hello.

“Nothing,” Lia and Laurent said together.

“
Arachnophobia,
,” Paul screeched.

Annie turned to him reproachfully. “You let the kids watch horror movies?”

“They-they said they do,” Lucas stammered. “They said you let them. All the time.”

“I sure would have expected better of you,” she told Maxence coldly.

To the news that they were leaving for a surprise vacation, the children jumped up and down crazily. “We’re giving your mom a lovely weekend to herself,” Annie assured Lia. They did last-minute bathroom runs, and turned off the lights. Lucas put sleeping Simon over his shoulder. They shut the front door and stepped into the elevator. In the street, they reached the van. Lucas fastened Simon into the car seat without him ever waking up, and the children piled in excitedly after.

The city was enthralled by the Fête de la Musique. The citywide party atmosphere affected the children in no time. They wanted, begged, to get out of the car and “see the music.” Annie simply said “not a chance,” and they stopped asking. How did she do this? He drove the van through Paris and Annie let the children open all the windows wide. The streets were closed to traffic in so many places that he wondered if they would ever find their way out of the city. Maxence and Laurent began to terrify Lia with imaginary tarantulas and her screeches went through Lucas’s brain like swords. Meanwhile Annie sat next to him in the passenger seat, her hands in her lap, lost in her thoughts. Now, how did she do
that
?

“I didn’t see your bag,” she finally said over the children’s screams. Her first sentence in the twenty minutes since they left his apartment.

Lucas pondered what she meant, then said in amazement, “Why, I believe I forgot to pack for the trip.”

“What?” Annie buried her head in her hands. “You forgot? How could you forget to pack?”

“This was a stressful day.”

“It sure as hell was, but look at me, I’m perfectly prepared.”

“You’d think you have nerves of steel when I see you with children, but the slightest little irritation coming from me...”

Annie made a quick turn, faced the children, and yelled, “Shut up!” The children went quiet instantaneously. They drove toward a huge moon. The city was far behind now, and the sky filled with stars. One by one, the children fell asleep. They seemed alone on the highway, aside from the occasional car that passed them at breakneck speed and made the minivan tremble.

“So how are you?” he asked tentatively when the children’s eyes were closed.

“Shh.”

“They’re sleeping.”

“Not Maxence. Not until he snores,” Annie whispered.

Soon they entered the
Département de Normandie
. Aside from the loud rumbling of the engine, the darkness and silence were almost complete. Lucas sensed Annie’s body beginning to relax. Her breathing became more peaceful and he felt his own stress dissolve with each of her breaths. He moved one hand off the wheel and reached for her hand, which was still in a tight fist on her lap. He brought her tense hand to his lips and kept it there until it became soft. This made Lucas very happy, happy to be here with Annie, at night, in the car, with five sleeping children in the back seat. Like a family. His family. No matter how messed up other people’s lives around him were, his was just starting to make sense.

He drove through the sleeping town of Honfleur, then slowed down and followed the small road he knew so well. He stopped the van in front of the property’s wrought iron gate, left the engine on, got out, and pushed the heavy gate open, got back inside the van and drove on the gravel driveway for a hundred yards under the bright moon. The night was clear and warm. Tomorrow would be a gorgeous day.

Annie’s eyes opened wide when she saw the small house, the dark half timbers alternating with white plaster that glowed in the moonlight. “Lucas, this is too perfect! Look at the climbing roses going all the way up the roof. It reminds me of Nantucket!”

“What’s that?”

“Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, Islands off Cape Cod.”

“This is much better,” he said.

Lucas parked the van by the house. Annie was out of the car before he even turned off the engine. The children were so deeply asleep no one noticed they had arrived at their destination. Annie was walking away from the car toward a dark expanse ahead. Lucas got out of the car and walked after her. A fresh breeze smelling of ocean, sand, and seaweed swallowed them. Annie pointed at the ocean. “You never said your house was on the beach! Right on the beach!”

“Why, yes.”

Perfectly prepared or not, Annie was wearing a sleeveless shirt and goose bumps covered her arms. Lucas removed his sweater and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“Let’s leave the kids in the car one more minute. They’ll be fine,” Annie said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yep.” She was joyous suddenly, and playful. She looked beautiful.

She grabbed his hand and started walking fast toward the ocean, and then they were both running. They reached the sand and she kicked off her sandals. They climbed up a small sand dune, pushing and shoving each other. The air cooled, but Lucas was hot. Annie kneeled and put Lucas’s jacket on the sand that was smooth and grey in the moonlight and still warm to the touch. She grabbed his hand again and laid down there, pulling him down beside her. Lucas’s pulse started to rise. He took her face in his hands and kissed her, and Annie reached for his belt.

The sun was blinding and Annie put on her sunglasses. Waves swelled in the distance only to end, docile, near her feet. The ocean air, rich and thin, swelled her lungs and her heart. She sat in a low beach chair in her retro red one-piece suit that made her look like a pinup girl, and buried her feet in the warm sand. Next to her, but not too close so as to not raise the children’s suspicions, Lucas, still wearing the clothes he had on the day before, sat in another chair. His unbuttoned white shirt billowed in the breeze, his pants, rolled above his ankles, were soaked and he squinted in the sun looking not unlike Clark Gable. A few yards away, the children glistened with sunscreen, water and sand. Maxence and Lia were up to their waists in a hole the children had dug in the sand. The two talked incessantly as they dug away. About what, Annie could not hear over the rumble of the ocean. It was amusing to watch how Maxence dispatched Paul, Laurent and Simon to get more water or seashells, making them run to and from the ocean with overflowing buckets as though their lives depended on it. It occurred to her that Lia and Maxence were absorbed in each other, oblivious to their surroundings, their desire to be alone together palpable.

Lucas’s foot began teasing hers under the sand more or less discreetly. That contact alone provoked immediate erotic sensations throughout her body. They had made love in the dunes the evening before, because
she
had initiated it. How deeply aroused she had been, baffled her. This was a beautiful moment, as beautiful a moment as there ever could be on this Earth. Lucas was a wonderful human being and a wonderful man, and he seemed to want
her
. He was the man she could start over with, the man who made her laugh
and
laughed at her angry jokes. The man who
got
her. The man who’d seen her whole, scarred, and flawed and was still interested.

But didn’t life remain picture perfect in movies only? In real life, summers ended, children went back to school, grew up, and left their mothers. Best friends ran back to their pathetic husbands. People collapsed of self-inflicted starvation or drug overdoses just when you thought you had
helped
them. Husbands betrayed you and then died. And new lovers found ways of nipping things in the bud before anything too intimate set in, before happiness lured you all the way, only to crush you later.

“Lucas, this is not going to work,” Annie said softly, her eyes scanning the shimmering waves. His own eyes still on the ocean, Lucas stiffened. He knew her well enough to expect this and waited. “What exactly did you have in mind?” she continued, aggressive. “I mean, this is all very cute and all, the house, the beach, the torrid sex on the dunes. But you and I know it is all a lie.”

“Who is lying?” Lucas asked after a moment.

“You, me. I mean, this was fun, but we know each other too well. This is almost incestuous, this relationship. I really like you... I mean. But I really like the way we were, you know, before.”

“When we were just friends?”

“Right.”

“You’re saying you’d rather stay friends?”

She hesitated, not long enough, “Yes, just friends.”

“Speak for yourself!” he said, gazing at the ocean.

She gave a little laugh. “Sex is not everything.”

Lucas got up from his chair. He walked away from her for a few steps and faced the waves. She thought he was about to walk away, but instead he turned on his feet and came toward her, then plopped down on the sand to face her. His chest hair was salt and pepper. She liked the lines around his eyes when he smiled. A happy person’s wrinkles. Right now, he was not smiling. He brought his hands to her glasses, took them off, and all of a sudden, she was exposed.

“Annie, I’m not interested in this. I don’t want to play
Le chat et la souris
.”

“I’m
not
playing cat-and-mouse,” she said, indignant, but she knew she was lying. She was playing hard to get. She was ready to throw everything out the window if need be. This was a test after all.

“Annie. This is not an accident. Maybe for you it is, but not for me. I’ve been waiting and hoping for you, for... years.”

She said nothing.
Please tell me more
.

“I was always hoping for more,” he added, searching her eyes.

“Always?”
Please tell me, tell me more
.

“Even when Johnny was alive, I had a crush on you.”

“A crush?”

“A big crush, Annie. Don’t make me use the word.”

“What word?” She quickly put on her sunglasses, because her eyes were like her feelings, blurred. Lucas was an expert at that, seduction. So many girlfriends. Of course he was an expert at appearing sincere. She’d seen him at work. All he wanted was to get his way.

“All you want is to get your way,” she exclaimed.

“
Bien sûr
, I want to get my way. And what do you think my way is? And could you please take off those glasses? They’re annoying.”

“Too bright. I’m blinded.”

“By the sun or the truth? Face it. Face me. Be blinded for God’s sake. Take off those ridiculous glasses.”

Annie did.

“You are crying,” he exclaimed. “I am relieved.”

“Relieved,” she echoed, unable to come up with her own words.

“You,” Lucas said, touching her nose, with his index. “You have feelings. For me.”

“What are you talking about? Of course I have feelings.”

Lucas wiped the tears off her cheeks with the back of his hand, and she could smell testosterone—his or hers?—and suntan lotion in that brief contact. She wanted him to bite the side of her neck and tell her that she was beautiful like he had on the dunes.

“You are beautiful.”

She laughed, she cried. “You are a womanizer. I would be crazy.”

“What? Was I supposed to stay celibate for the last twelve years?”

“You expect me to believe you were screwing around but that I was the woman of your dreams? Lucas, I’m not a teenager. I don’t buy this shit.”

“You need to buy it. It’s the truth.”

“The truth?”

“Okay, Merde!” He made a fist and punched the sand in front of her feet. “I want you,
tu comprends
? I wanted you. I couldn’t be celibate while you were a respectable and devoted wife, and then a respectable widow in mourning, all the while shaking that sexy ass of yours in front of my eyes all these years.”