Paris, He Said (10 page)

“Bonsoir,” she said to Jayne’s “bonjour.”

Jayne felt her smile stiffen. Was Laurent’s daughter correcting her? “Bonsoir,” she said. She knew that she should introduce herself, but in that moment she didn’t feel like being friendly.

Jeanne-Lucie continued to study her, still not smiling. “Mon père, il est toujours là?”

“… Votre père, c’est Monsieur Moller?” asked Jayne. Ill-tempered Butternut came to mind again; she couldn’t resist baiting Jeanne-Lucie. But Laurent’s daughter had to know by now exactly who Jayne was and what sort of relationship she and “Monsieur Moller” shared. Laurent had no reason that she could imagine to keep her a secret from his children, especially if one of them lived only a few miles away.

Jeanne-Lucie seemed to be struggling to keep a straight face. “Oui, Monsieur Moller.”

“Il n’est pas ici.” Jayne wasn’t sure when he’d be back either.

“Où est-il allé?”

“Je ne sais pas,” said Jayne. “Il m’a dit que …” She paused, groping for the words to finish the sentence. “Il m’a dit que … He said he had an errand to run, but that he’d return by seven.”

“We will be in the office until he returns,” said Jeanne-Lucie. She spoke British-accented English, brisk and precise. When Laurent had told Jayne that his daughter had studied for two years at the Royal Academy of Art in London, she’d been both impressed and intimidated. Jeanne-Lucie’s English husband was not an artist, but Jayne couldn’t remember what he did—importer of textiles? of construction materials? Something commercial, that was all she could recall.

“I’m Jayne Marks,” she said, offering her hand.

Jeanne-Lucie looked at her for a moment before shaking her hand. “Jeanne-Lucie Moller,” she said.

So she hadn’t taken her husband’s name. Jayne wondered how many Frenchwomen kept their maiden names now after marrying. Most of her married friends at home had taken their husbands’ last names.

Jeanne-Lucie pushed the stroller toward the back of the gallery and nodded to François, who straightened out of his slouch and greeted her politely as she passed. Jayne noticed that he also said
bonjour
, but Jeanne-Lucie did not correct him.

Moodily she followed Jeanne-Lucie to the office, remembering that her daughter’s name was Marcelle, and that she’d turned two in May.

André had gone home just before Laurent left to do errands, and Jayne was alone with Jeanne-Lucie and Marcelle in the back room, François the only other person in the gallery. Jeanne-Lucie smoothed her skirt and positioned herself in her father’s large black leather desk chair, unbelting her daughter and raising her onto her lap. The little girl turned her curly-haired head and peered up at Jayne, smiling shyly. She was dressed in a lemon-yellow pinafore and a white collared blouse, white lace-fringed anklets and pink sandals on her feet. She had chin-length brown curls and brown eyes that looked at everything with curiosity. Her tiny hands, each clasped over a knee, were so perfect that Jayne found herself staring at them.

“Salut,” said Jayne, breaking the silence. She waved at Marcelle.

“Salut, madame.” She giggled softly and looked up at her mother, who nodded at her.

Jeanne-Lucie glanced at Jayne. “Has my mother come by to introduce herself?”

“No, she hasn’t,” said Jayne. “Does she plan to?”

“I’m sure she will soon. She likes to meet my father’s girlfriends.”

Jayne regarded her. What did that mean? Did Laurent have other girlfriends now? They had that so-called agreement, after all.
Don’t worry about me when we’re not together. Everything’s fine.
But she had been with Laurent in Paris for almost three weeks now, and so far had seen no indication that he was having sex with someone else, unless he was such a skilled deceiver, having perfected over the years since his Bohemian youth his technique for delivering a whopping lie. He might be silver-haired and no longer young, but Jayne doubted that he would ever lack for amorous companionship.

“He’s the same age as George Clooney,” Melissa had once pointed out. There was a resemblance between the two men too, which had pleased Laurent when Jayne mentioned it, but she was sure that he had heard it before. If he dyed his hair, he would probably also have looked ten years younger. A part of her was grateful that he did not.

“My parents have been divorced for a while, but they’re still friends,” said Jeanne-Lucie. “I’m sure my father has told you.”

“We haven’t really talked about it.”

“That’s not surprising, I suppose. He’s a private man.” She paused. “That is what he likes to say. But I would say instead that he is a secretive man, which is not quite the same thing.”

Jayne hesitated. “That hasn’t been my impression.”

“But you haven’t known him very long, have you,” said Jeanne-Lucie.

All Jayne knew about Laurent, her feelings about his trustworthiness, her assumptions and prejudices, favorable or not, were each bound up in the present and very recent past: his age, his profession, his marital status, and the terms of his fatherhood; his slightly fallen arches, which required expensive running shoes as well as handmade dress shoes that he ordered from a Florentine atelier; his impatience with other drivers, though he drove infrequently; his black Jaguar, garaged two blocks over from their apartment; his preference for red wine rather than white. Red, he thought, demanded more from its admirers, more of an educated palate, and of course he had grown up in Burgundy, where his family had been vintners for several decades—though about this, admittedly, she knew little, only that he thought the region beautiful (but becoming too crowded), and his sister Camille and her husband hardworking.

He didn’t speak often of his parents but had told Jayne that his mother’s name had been Karine, his father’s Dominique, and that only his mother had gone to college, but she had left after two years to get married; they had hired seasonal workers for the harvest, some of whom had migrated north from Spain, others from Italy—or if the time for the harvest had come upon them suddenly, which had happened during seasons with stormy or otherwise unpredictable weather, they hired anyone they could and begged friends and family, near or far, to help. Other facts that Jayne knew: he did not like to sleep late, even if he went to bed late; he loved dogs but did not want to devote the time necessary to care for one. He loved his children and grandchildren too, and was in frequent touch with his daughter, his son a little less so.

“My father told me that you are an artist too,” said Jeanne-Lucie. “He said that you have shown him some of your work.”

“Yes, Laurent—your father, I mean—has been encouraging.”

“He said that you are very good.”

Her tone was conversational and friendly enough now, but Jayne perceived herself to be outclassed. It was the first time since coming to Paris that she had felt this way so strongly, although in New York she’d sometimes had similar feelings. It was money, mostly, the people who visibly possessed it; they made her aware, whether they intended to or not, that she did not really belong to their caste, despite her pretty face and college education. If she had been an established artist, or more fashionable, would the class divide have been less wide?

Jayne glanced at Marcelle. The little girl was watching Jayne and her mother closely, her expression animated and inquisitive. Like her mother, she resembled Laurent: the thin but shapely lips and nose, the dark eyes, and the brown hair Laurent had had before he’d gone gray. Jeanne-Lucie’s skin was olive-toned like her father’s but as yet unlined. She also had the Frenchwoman’s typical figure: slender and small-boned, not very tall nor markedly athletic. She looked as if she would be swallowed whole by Laurent’s chair if she hadn’t been balanced on its edge, Marcelle on her knee. Jayne was a couple of inches taller than Jeanne-Lucie; her arms and legs were more muscular too. In France she sometimes felt ungainly, though she was as fit as she’d been in college from her walks around the city and the runs she took along the Seine every few days, usually early in the evening, when Laurent was still at the gallery.

“He’s kind to say that about my work.” Jayne smiled at Jeanne-Lucie. Did his daughter know that Laurent had dangled the possibility of a show before her? He’d told Jayne that he’d never displayed Jeanne-Lucie’s work, though she wasn’t sure if this was because his daughter had refused his offer or if Laurent had never made one. “You’re an illustrator, aren’t you?” she asked. “I think your father told me that you teach art too.”

“You can call him Laurent. It won’t upset me.”

Jayne felt the same flare of annoyance that she’d had when Jeanne-Lucie had corrected her
bonjour
. Before she could say anything, Laurent was pushing open the office’s heavy steel door. His thick hair, which he hadn’t had cut in more than a month and a half, was tussled from the gusty day. How surprised she still was that a man like this had brought her to France to live with him. (“You lucky bitch!” a woman who had bought several pairs of shoes from her at the boutique exclaimed when Jayne told her why she’d be leaving the store. “Yes, that’s what I keep saying too,” Jayne said, though she was a little shocked by this wealthy, well-dressed woman’s crude familiarity.)

Laurent paused on the threshold and stared at the three of them, his expression guarded before it brightened.

“Ma chou,” he cried. For a disoriented second Jayne thought that he was talking to her.
My little cabbage
—she’d always thought it such an odd endearment. His granddaughter climbed down from her mother’s lap and charged toward his outstretched arms, almost tripping over her sandaled feet.

“Attention, chérie,” Jeanne-Lucie cautioned.

Laurent as grandfather and father—this was Jayne’s introduction to him in these roles, the latter defining him for more than half his life, but until now she had known him only as lover and gallery owner. The intimacy Jeanne-Lucie and Marcelle shared with him, the long-standing claims they had to his affections, made her a little jealous.

She looked over at Jeanne-Lucie, but she was watching her daughter kiss her grandfather on both cheeks, Marcelle clinging to his neck like a lemur. Laurent caught Jayne’s eye and smiled. Every female in the room adored him, circumstances he had probably long been accustomed to.

He’s so smooth, so confident
, she wrote later in an e-mail to Melissa.

How comfortable he seems to be with taking the things that women give him. I don’t want to worry about this, but sometimes I do, and there are times when everything feels a little perilous, like I’m walking on a patch of ice and if I’m not really careful, I’ll fall and break something that will take a long time to heal.

But in fairness to him, he’s very giving too.

Of the many things Laurent had said and done that had made an impression on her, she thought particularly often about a conversation they’d had after seeing two men, one skinny and middle-aged in a baggy gray suit, the other younger and burly in jeans and a black sweater, shouting fiercely at each other in the street near Laurent’s apartment. The curses erupting from their mouths made her want to flee, but Laurent seemed almost hypnotized by the scene. She finally had to grab his arm and pull him away. She wondered if he was recalling some fight from his past. Did someone hate him as much as these two men seemed to hate each other? The argument was about a woman—the middle-aged man’s girlfriend, who was also the younger man’s mother, from what Jayne gathered.

As they turned away from the arguing men, Laurent said something to her in a low voice that she had to ask him to repeat.

“If you are not taught kindness and good manners as a child,” he said moodily, “it is hard to learn them as an adult. Maybe impossible. I worry more and more about how angry people are. Your country has too many guns, Jayne. The younger man had one. I’m sure I saw its outline under his sweater.”

“What?” she cried. “If you thought that, why were we standing there so long?”

“It was only a few seconds, Jayne. I do not want people to be so angry all the time, but each year, when I look around, this possibility seems less and less likely.”

“You’re an idealist,” she said.

He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so, because I don’t expect the things I wish for to happen.”

Laurent insisted that they have dinner that evening with Jeanne-Lucie and her daughter, at a quiet restaurant near the gallery, their table in a room lit by candles and wall sconces that looked like miniature gaslights. Marcelle was so well behaved that Jayne kept checking to see if she had fallen asleep, and at one point it did look as if she might drop off, her chin easing toward her chest, but a man’s laughter at a neighboring table roused her, and she turned back to her plate of buttered noodles. When they said good-bye on the sidewalk in front of the café, they exchanged air kisses on both cheeks, Jeanne-Lucie not appearing to hesitate before she offered them to Jayne.

After their taxi deposited Jayne and Laurent on rue du Général-Foy, he said, “My daughter likes you.” They were walking into the courtyard, he half a step behind her.

“Really? I couldn’t tell,” said Jayne. Jeanne-Lucie had seemed only to tolerate her; she had not been particularly warm.

He reached for her hand, slowing her down to his pace. “Why do you say that?”

Jayne looked at him, surprised that he sounded concerned. Had he actually expected them to become friends so quickly, if at all? “I kept wondering if she thinks that I’m trying to take advantage of you. She barely smiled all night.”

“She knows that you couldn’t do that, Jayne.”

“She does?” How arrogant he was, this man who claimed not to need socks when it was cold but a moment later she’d hear him swearing in the next room as he searched for his slippers. He was confident, he said, not arrogant, something they had discussed early in their courtship, he often gliding into a crowded Manhattan restaurant without a reservation but managing to acquire a table without a debilitating wait, and sometimes, with no wait at all.

“My daughter knows that I know how to look after myself,” he said.

“Why did she say that her mother is going to stop by Vie Bohème to inspect me?” The question had been buzzing insistently in Jayne’s head throughout dinner, put there by Jeanne-Lucie, whether she’d intended to or not.