Paris Was the Place (41 page)

“Whoo-hoo! Tremendous news!”

“You sound strong. Good-bye, Luke. I love you. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m away.”

“Be safe,” he says. “I love you and be safe.”

I step out of the booth with a huge smile on my face. “He’s good,” I say to Macon. “He sounds really good. I’m so relieved.”

“I knew he would be. God, that’s great.” Then Macon recites the phone number in Chantilly to the incense man, who stands and dials it. He waves Macon over just as Delphine answers. I know it’s her because of the way Macon’s voice changes. It’s a voice I’ve never heard before. Even in court. Even when he’s been furious at me, he hasn’t had this kind of vacancy. His French is fast and defensive. Delphine has entered the incense shop. I can feel her in here with us. Macon listens with his eyes closed. She must take a breath because he tells her that he’s in good health and that my research is fruitful. He asks for Pablo. Then his voice rises. He asks for Pablo again. There’s a silence. He doesn’t say anything for a minute or so.

Then he yells, “Helloooo! It is Papa! I am calling you from India!” His eyes open wide. “Seven hours! The flight took seven hours! I am
taking photographs of everything for you! Elephants, yes! There were gigantic elephants in Jaipur. How was the beach? What was your favorite thing about the sand?” He listens. Then he says, “The sand is warm, yes. I like to lie down in it, too. Pablo, I miss you. Do you know how much I love you?” He smiles at me from the dingy phone booth. “Yes, that much. I love you that much.”

We walk back to the house holding hands. Both of us still lost somewhere back in our phone calls home and our missing. We use the flashlight to undress, because mosquitoes swarm when we turn on the kerosene lamp. Then we lie in the dark on the mattress. It’s too hot for clothes. “This has been a monumental day.” He takes my hand. “You have found the pages you were looking for, and you’ve made a friend.”

“I’ve met the daughter of a famous Indian poet. I’m not sure Padmaja would call me her friend.”

“She is your ally for life. I know it. Your co-conspirator. She believes in the poems.”

“I think the poems are her epistemology.” I kiss him. He stayed with me when I freaked out on the bus. He didn’t abandon me. “I think she loves to decipher what her mother meant with each word.”

“Take any simple word,” Macon says. “Like ‘edifying.’ ” He brushes his lips along my earlobe. “You are, for example, edifying to me.” Then he wraps his whole arm around me and pulls me closer. “This is good,” he says into my ear. “Edifying. The word itself. Your ear.”

W
E TAKE SHIFTS
in the library the next day watching the photocopying. It’s exciting and painfully boring. Each piece of paper is placed on the glass and maneuvered just so. There’s the slow whir of the machine. Then Gobal raises the top of the copier. The clerk retrieves the paper, and they start over again.

Padmaja doesn’t appear until after lunch. “I have a high tea,” she says. “With an adviser to the Dalai Lama. This was the work that my husband came here for. They still humor me by serving me biscuits.
You will need to buy a new piece of luggage for all this paper you are taking back to France, Willow.”

“You’re right, Padmaja.” I haven’t thought through the actual carrying of the manuscripts. But there are shops in town that sell the Tibetan rope bags.

She hands Macon a white envelope. “This is my phone number and my address. I am thinking of coming to France next June, if you are done with the book. This is the return address, here at the library, where you will mail all the materials back, along with the book. After I read it and approve it, I will come to you and we can give lectures together.”

Macon takes the envelope and bows his head for a moment. “Padmaja, it has been a delight. You are a very generous woman, and we will not disappoint you. Until next June.” Then he extends his arm and they stand holding hands for a minute, both of them smiling.

“I have a lot of work to do, don’t I?” I say. “You two get to wait and watch. I’ll be busy. Thank you, Padmaja. It’s more generosity than I ever dared to hope for.”

“Don’t disappoint me. After I read the book and approve it, I will come to the United States and you and I will give the lectures together. Work hard. Work very hard. Nothing good has ever come from not working hard.”

We land in Paris at dinnertime, and Charles de Gaulle is streaming with passengers. The arrivals terminal echoes with the sounds of so many reunions. July 21 and I can’t wait to see Luke. Macon kisses me good-bye in front of a line for cabs and goes to find the train that will take him to another train and Chantilly and, finally, Pablo.

Paris looks so stately out the cab window. So grand and orderly after the madness of Chandni Chowk, in old Delhi. I’ve got my backpack on and my white cotton skirt with blue elephants and my really greasy hair and my rope bag full of poems. Gaird meets me at the door on Avenue Victor Hugo. He smiles. “Who is breaking and entering?” Then he opens his arms wide, and we hug. “We are so glad you’re home, Willie.” I can tell he means it.

“Where is he? Where is the brother?”

I find Luke on the living room rug cutting bolts of gray chenille into thin strips. “You’re back! And you’re not wearing a sari! Gaird and I took bets on whether you’d be in one. I said yes. I thought surely you would put one on for us.”

I sit down on the rug and hug him. He’s still intact and the sun has been kind to his face. His hands shake when he holds the scissors. “You look great. You feel great, too?”

“It’s been good. Paris gets so quiet in July. Only the American tourists are here, and I love the heat. There is nothing like dry heat to make you feel healthy.”

“May I ask what you’re doing?”

“Flowers. There’s a girl in the movie who’s meant to be making cloth flowers for hats. She wants to sell hats to help her father.”

“Why the father?”

“Because he’s paralyzed, of course. I didn’t think you were ever coming home.”

“I have the manuscripts now. I can write the book.” I take the other pair of scissors and begin cutting strips with him.

“I knew you should have gone. So tell me about India. I want to hear about the desert and the temples and the food!”

I stare at him. He’s alive. And vibrant and hopeful. I was grieving for him while I was gone. Letting myself feel nostalgia for him in India, and for our childhood, as if he’d already left me. This seems like treachery now. Look how determined he is to live. “You would love it there.”

Gaird comes back to the living room. “The water is boiling. Who wants tea?”

“That would be lovely. I could use a cup.” I follow him into the kitchen.

“He’s not going to tell you how he really is,” Gaird says. “He’s not going to mention that his lung is acting up again and he’s having some trouble breathing. He has some infection. Some yeast. Something called candidiasis. It’s serious. It’s spread to his esophagus. I think his whole throat hurts. Those sores on his chest? You know those sores? They are on his back now, too. It makes it hard for him to lie down at night. But he didn’t want me to tell you about this. He is declining much more quickly than Picard ever thought. Sometimes I think that AZT is making him sicker.”

I’d forgotten the mesmerizing singsong of Gaird’s voice. All I can do is nod at the bad news. “It’s peaks and valleys,” he says. “That’s what Picard told us last week when we saw him. But AZT isn’t the drug we thought it would be. Sara is very agitated.”

“So you saw Dr. Picard?” Sometimes, when I wasn’t grieving for Luke in India, I almost convinced myself that he couldn’t die, which masked this horrible fear that he will die.

“Dr. Picard has nothing more for us right now, Willie. He said he was out of good ideas. He wished Luke and me good luck.”

I go back to the living room and look at my brother again. The virus is deceiving. He’s so thin, and there’s the shock of that after not seeing him for days. The skin on his face is reddish. That’s the AZT. What does he want out of life? How does he want to live? I get out the silver bracelets I bought in Dharmsala—simple cuff bracelets for each of them. “They’re really great.” Luke puts his on.

“Will you actually wear them?” I ask. “Did I choose well?”

“We’ll wear them, won’t we, Gaird?”

“Thank you, Willie. It’s lovely,” Gaird says. “Please stay for dinner.”

“The jet lag is starting to hit. I think I need to go home and pass out. Come to us for dinner tomorrow. That would be great. We’ll eat on the roof and tell you our India stories.”

“We’d love to,” Gaird says. “We haven’t been getting out much.”

M
ACON STAYS
in Chantilly with Pablo for the night, and I fall asleep on the couch in my apartment. I wake up at three in the morning and wait for the sun to rise. Paris is so much louder than the woods in Dharmsala. Car horns. Truck brakes. Airplane takeoffs. I fall asleep again around five, when the pigeons begin cooing. The sun is high when I wake up again. I walk out to Rue Monge and get a coffee and two poached eggs. Then I buy cod at the market at Gracieuse. The fish lie on beds of crushed ice, with unblinking eyes.

I talked to Rajiv last night, and he gave me my shopping list. He’s going to help me cook tonight. I also buy chicken and chilies and coriander and turmeric and greens, plus three ripe mangoes. The thought of all my favorite people at the table tonight makes me smile to myself. It makes Paris feel like home—more than it ever has. I walk the streets around Boulevard St. Germain and feel a quiet happiness.
The French women in their beautiful sandals and sunglasses are out, and they remind me of my mother when she was young.

I’m the foreigner. I don’t talk to anybody, and no one talks to me. But my brother and my friends are coming to dinner. I get home around noon, starving for lunch. There’s African music on the stereo and I hear Macon talking in the kitchen. I poke my head in. He’s putting a crêpe on a plate with the metal spatula. There’s a woman there too, who reaches out her hand to grab the plate from him and laughs. Pablo’s up on the counter next to the sink with a glass of orange juice in one hand. The woman has a boy’s haircut and a thin face with full lips. The first thing she says when she sees me, even before hello, is “I’m leaving. I’m leaving for the Louvre right after we eat.”

Macon’s head is in the fridge, and he stands up. “Surprise, Willie! Pablo wanted to come for the dinner tonight!”

I can’t take it in. What are they doing here? They’re making tons of noise in my kitchen. What are they laughing about? It’s a scene I’ve imagined—Macon and Delphine and Pablo cooking food together, except now they’re standing in my apartment and I can’t find words for it. Pablo jumps down and hugs me. I pick him up and kiss his face and cry a little, just because I’m tired and I’ve missed him and he’s sweet. A sweet boy.

I don’t want to do this—to show Delphine how much Pablo means to me. Because her eyes don’t convey affection easily. She puts her hand on top of his head. “You’ve grown again, Pablo,” I say. “How do you keep doing that? Do you feel it while you’re growing?”

“I just do it.” He laughs.

Macon says, “Now we eat!” He brings the crêpes to the dining table. I go along with it, because what am I going to do? But he won’t sit. He brings mugs in next and pours coffee and cream. Where are we? Why is Delphine here really?

“This was all Pablo’s idea,” she says, looking at her plate. “He insisted. I never would have come.”

“Pablo,” Macon asks, “will you draw us a picture of your favorite rocket ship?” Pablo has his markers and paper out and is already deep at work on a drawing of an airplane. He nods his head.

“You have a very nice apartment, and Pablo has always liked coming here. I wanted to meet you, too,” Delphine says. “I needed to meet you.”

Delphine is in my home. What to say? “Pablo is a delight.”

“Pablo is good enough to eat.” She smiles at me for the first time. “Everyone always thinks so.” Both of us watch him get up and walk to the windows behind the table.

Macon pours more coffee and goes into the kitchen. Why does he keep abandoning me at the table? “We have brownies,” he calls out. “I forgot that Pablo and I made brownies this morning at the house.”

“I’m so sorry that your brother is sick,” Delphine says. “Macon has told me.”

I don’t want to go to this place with her, so I close it off. Then she can’t take anything from me that I don’t want to give her. She’d like to keep Macon somewhere for her own—this is her nature. She may not even be aware she’s doing it. I don’t think she’ll ever stop trying. Not because she still loves him but because she can’t let go. I can tell this about her. It’s easy to read—the way possession comes so naturally to her. There’s a quiet tension over this in the room, but my fatigue makes me less attached to it.

“Macon is always so happy to have Pablo here,” I say. “Thank you for coming.”

“This is not easy for me.” She looks down at her lap. “I’ve worked on this.” On what? I want to ask. Worked on what?

Macon’s never told me how beautiful she is or how boyish. Her hair is shorter than Pablo’s. “Come here,” she calls out in French. “Come to me.” Pablo runs to his mother and buries his head in her lap.

Macon takes my arm then and walks with me back into the kitchen. “Surprise,” he says again.

“Where did they come from, and why are they here? Delphine doesn’t seem very impressed by either you or me. What is happening?”

“I wanted Pablo to come to dinner.”

“And Delphine?”

“She really wanted to meet you. She’s getting married to Gabriel,
and that has something to do with her coming here. Though I’m not sure quite what. Pablo’s going to sleep over, and she’s going to leave. We’re going to go back out there and finish our lunch. Don’t let her scare you. Really. Eat the brownies. Then she’ll leave. We can do this together. We can face anything when it comes, no?” He kisses me and I let him. But my brain’s fogged by Delphine. She takes so much energy from me, just by being in the apartment.