Paris Was the Place (47 page)

Then one day I get dressed. I don’t know why. I just do. I knew Luke better than anyone else in my life. Getting out of bed isn’t going to change that. It just changes the shape of the grief. I call Sophie at the asylum center and hang up when the phone starts ringing. I’m afraid of what she’s going to say. I dial her again. It’s Tuesday morning, and she answers on the third ring. I don’t hang up this time.

I lean against my kitchen counter with my eyes closed. “Sophie, it’s Willie.”

“Willie,” she says flatly. “It’s a busy morning here. How are you? I’m not sure I have time to be talking.”

“I’m calling to tell you I’m sorry. So very, very sorry.”

“Oh, you caused me some trouble. I had the OFPRA people here every day for weeks. They checked everything. All the sign-in sheets and the surveillance footage, and we had so many meetings you don’t even know, about protocol and training and how to hire responsible volunteers. Of which I thought you were. Lord above, I really did. But this has also been my fault. My education. Macon told me about your brother. I have been praying for you.”

“Gita was the first person who ever asked me to help her like that. I wasn’t thinking about anything when I let her go. I wasn’t trying to deceive you.”

“I know about this. You got swept away on emotion, and there’s enough emotion for us all in here to drown. You’ve got to stay the teacher. Not the friend. She won’t be the last girl to ask you for help. Oh, the headaches you caused me.”

“I hope you can forgive me someday.”

“You should be asking God for forgiveness. You should be asking
Gita’s mother. Because that woman must be worried sick about her daughter. You turned everything on its head.”

“I think about Gita every day.”

“By the grace of God, we hope she’s okay. We hope all the girls here are okay.”

“How is Precy? Is Precy still there?”

“Gone. Back to Monrovia. Oh, it was a hard day. Esther is here. She is the only one left from when you started teaching. She is the only one they can’t find any family for.”

“Is she speaking any louder?”

“She whispers. She needs you to come back and get her to tell some more of her stories. She spends too much time in her head. There’s more pain in there than a girl should have to live with. So why don’t you do that? Why don’t you come back and teach a class for Esther.”

“You would have me back there?”

“There is no law I am aware of that says volunteers can’t be rehabilitated. You will be on probation. Do you think you’d be able to handle it again? Can you find a way to be just their teacher?”

“I can do that. I can get your trust back.” I’m so grateful to her for giving me a second chance.

“God gives and he takes away and that is in the past now. Esther will be so happy to see you.”

I
WALK TO
the metro at Place Monge on Thursday and get on the train and take it to the St. Denis stop. I make it to Rue de Metz and stand outside the orange door and wait. This has been my orbit—all winter and spring and the route is engrained in me. I can’t stop myself from ringing the buzzer. Sophie opens the door. “Dear God, child, get in here. You cannot stand outside here and cry.” I didn’t even realize I was crying. The tears just come sometimes.

She pulls me inside and puts her arms around me in the hall, and I can’t speak now because I’m crying so hard. I’m so happy to be with her. All the time that Gita’s been gone, Sophie’s been the person
I wanted to cry with. She’s the one who understands. She opens the door to her office. I sit on the stool. It’s a small homecoming. She hands me the box of tissues and laughs so loudly. “Girl, you are going to make me cry.”

“I’m crying because it’s good to be here. You’re kind to have me back. Have you lost people in your life, Sophie?”

“I lost people in Egypt before we got to France. Uncles. Cousins. My grandparents. We kept vigils. It was God’s work—the taking of them. They are all busy in heaven.”

“My brother died, and I tell you, some days I can’t figure out how I let it happen. I was right there with him.”

“God took your brother from you, but you cannot sit here in my office and pretend to yourself that you didn’t do everything you could to save him. You would be lying to yourself, and you know how I feel about lies.”

“But I did that, too. I lied to you.”

“No more. We’ve covered it. You made a mistake. This is forgiveness.”

“I can’t get Gita out of my mind.”

“You need to let her go now, too.”

“I think maybe she’s in Lyon. Maybe Toulouse. Or Rennes. I keep waiting for a sign. I’ve never stopped thinking she might contact me.”

“You sent her off with a good boy. I want you to stop worrying over her now. Do you hear me? We have other girls inside here. Many of them.”

I’
M IN MY BED
again when Sara calls. “What’s the news?” Every day she asks me the same thing, and every day I’m grateful for it.

“The news is that it’s colder outside than I thought and I forgot my sweater when I went to Rue de Metz and I’ll start teaching there again next week.”

“This means you’ve gotten out of the apartment! This means you’ve taken a shower! This is big. This is the first real news we’ve had in months!” The baby cries in the background.

“Which means you don’t need to call so much, because I am now a professional grown-up.”

“I like to call you. I like to talk to you. It’s four o’clock and I love you, and the hope is that Rajiv will work from home the rest of the day and take the baby so I can meet you for a run in two hours. I need you to babysit for me on Saturday night. I need you and Macon to come, because I want to go on a date with my husband. I haven’t talked to him since the baby was born.”

I put my running shoes on while I listen to her. I haven’t gone for a run since way before Luke died. I say, “I’m leaving for the river now because I have to stay far, far away from my bed. I’ll meet you there.”

On my way to the Seine I see a tall man with long brown hair walk out of an apartment building on Rue St. Michel, and I run toward him, sure that it’s Luke. It isn’t possible that my brother could be living in a single-family home near the intersection of Rue des Écoles. But it also isn’t possible that he’s gone from the earth. I want to turn around and go home. I want to go back to bed. Where are my brother’s hands? And his eyes and hair? But I make it to the river. I don’t wait for Sara. I can’t. I run alone and it feels okay and I don’t stop.

I call my father that night when I get home. He picks up on the second ring. “Jack Pears here.”

“Dad, it’s me. Willie.”

“Well, is it now? I’ll be damned.”

“Dad, where have you been? How are you? I’ve been trying and trying the phone for days.”

“Where have I been? Well, that’s a funny question for a woman who never calls.”

“It’s good that you answered. I was beginning to worry.”

“Well, it’s timely, because I just returned from a walkabout. I was out near the Nevada border.”

He isn’t going to ask me how I’ve been. Does this make him a bad person? There’s silence on the phone. “I wanted to let you know I was okay.”

“Good, good.” My father coughs. “I was just getting ready for a
zucchini casserole. Your mother’s gardens have gone hog wild. Did I tell you about the maze I’ve made out there?”

“You didn’t, Dad.”

“Well, it’s big. Enormous changes. You’ll have to come and see. I think your mother would really approve.”

“You said you were thinking about some stones or something.” I close my eyes. He’s going to talk about the stones and act like we do this all the time—call each other on Thursday nights to check in before bed. But he’s asking me to listen. I can do that.

“Well, I ripped up most of the flower beds. It was a hard decision—all the azaleas and phlox and the lilies and irises. But it was time, and now it’s much easier to walk out there, and I think, frankly, the vegetables get more sun. Everything was too crowded.”

“That’s good, Dad. That sounds fine.” It’s heartbreaking to hear him try to go on without Luke. And brave, I decide. He’s brave. Because he’s a passionate man, and holding in such a great sadness alone can unhinge your mind. He’s tending the sadness. Tending it. But privately. I know how private he is. How much he lives in his own head. And how stubborn. The tears start down my cheeks for how old he is now and how much he’s working on the gardens and trying to change them into something new. Something my mother would love. More vegetables.

“The zucchinis are certainly happy. Everyone in one piece there?”

“Yes, I think so.” I stare down at my feet. “Well, I can only speak for me.”

“It’s good that you called,” he says. “You should have called sooner.”

But I did call. I tried several times. He never answers the phone. It’s hard to win with him. “I’m glad for that then. That’s all I wanted to do—call and tell you I’m going to be okay.”

He’s the parent. I’m the child. He needs to do the things that parents do. My mother used to call me “lovey” and make me tuna fish sandwiches, and she also used to take to her bed. We grew up together in a way, my mother and me, and I can forgive her for that, too.

“Of course you’re going to be okay.” Dad laughs. “You’re a force,
you know. Always much stronger than you think. Paris is your place now, isn’t it? You’ll stay there, even now that Luke’s gone?”

“I think it is, Dad. Macon’s here. And Sara and Rajiv and the baby.”

“Then really make it your place. Know it. Like the back of your hand. All the coordinates. All the side streets. Never feel like you couldn’t find your way home. It may be a life’s worth of work. And don’t forget your brother’s birthday next month.”

“Dad, I would never do that.” I feel sadness for both of us then. But I’ve got the tiniest bit of distance on my grief. People are allowed to fall apart sometimes. People get damaged, and they’re allowed to go to bed. Then they get up. It doesn’t mean they stop grieving. They just get up. “Dad, call me before you go on another walkabout alone.”

“Will do. Will do,” he says. “All right then.”

O
N
S
ATURDAY NIGHT
Macon and I take the train to Sara and Rajiv’s to babysit. I don’t want to be out after dark. It feels like too much—the walk to the metro station and the cold wind. I’m nervous on the street. Tense. “Let’s just go home,” I say in the station. “Can we do that? Sara won’t really mind, will she?”

“Sara will become homicidal if we don’t go. I was the one who talked to her last night. She’s counting on this.”

We take the No. 10 and switch to the No. 8 and get off at the Lourmel stop. Then we walk to Rue Lecourbe in the fading light. Rajiv meets us at the door with Lily in his arms. It’s the greatest thing to see the baby. She’s almost four months old and holds her head up and stares right at me with her beautiful moon face and chubby little feet, and I take her in my arms and laugh.

Sara walks out of the bedroom with a brown clip in her mouth. She sticks it in her hair and says, “The nannies are here!”

“Are you actually going to leave us?” I rock the baby in my arms in the kitchen. “You’re really going to trust us? I don’t think I’ve babysat in maybe fifteen years.”

“Well, here is the name of the restaurant.” Sara shows me a notepad
by the phone on the counter. “And here is the phone number. You’ll be fantastic! I’m going to have dinner with my husband. I might not come home for weeks because that baby girl right there never sleeps.”

I know what Sara’s doing. She’s working hard to make this feel normal. We’re all finding our way without Luke—adjusting and searching for ways to cover our gaping loss. Because we have to live without him. We can’t just stop. And sometimes, like tonight, it’s better not to name the loss. I can see that now.

“We would be very happy to move in here and take over for you,” Macon says, looking at the baby. “She is lovely, Sara.”

“Just wait until you hear her scream.” Rajiv smiles. “If she doesn’t get her milk, she gets very mad, and she really doesn’t like the bottle, so I wish you luck.”

They leave, and I stand in the kitchen with the baby asleep in my arms, and I don’t speak. I don’t want to wake her. I smile at Macon. I see that I’m going to live and that Luke has died. If I begin to talk about it, I’ll ruin it. But I see it. I’ve lost my brother, but he hasn’t blurred like I’d expected. Certain things, like his long hair and his generosity, have taken shape in my mind. I don’t have to hold on to him so tightly. This is how his death is going to become less frightening to me.

I go back to the academy on Monday. The woman they’ve had filling in for me has gotten through Albiach and is halfway through Anaïs Nin. It’s good to be on my feet, circling the classroom. Then I spend three hours in my office, sorting through the Sarojini papers. It will take months. That’s okay. Sarojini was such a fighter. I try to imagine the Indian prison she lived in for almost two years. Then I read her poem about “high dreams” again and smile. How could I have inflicted it on the girls at the asylum center the way I did? It’s hard for even me to understand the language. Or what Sarojini really means with these dreams. Maybe one high dream is her faith. Maybe another is her courage. My book will be about sorting all of this out.

Then it’s Thursday, and I wait on the stoop at Rue de Metz. Someone has added to the wall of graffiti. There’s an orange bird of peace there now. At least, I think it’s a dove. And doves mean peace. And there’s an electric-blue fish, and this feels right, too. The wall looks perfect. Truffaut buzzes me in. I walk into the common room and put my bag down on the floor. I get out the mithai I’ve brought and unwrap the plastic and put the sweets down on the table. Then I wait for the new girls.

Sophie comes and sits with me. I’m very nervous. She says, “The girls are always changing faces. You’ll see these girls need your help as much as Gita did. As much as Moona did or Rateeka or Precy or Esther.”

Here’s what I think happened to Gita. She and Kirkit left Paris that day as planned. It would have been a scandal for them to be traveling alone like that in India—an unmarried girl with an older, single man. But they were in France, and they could flout Indian customs. They went to Kirkit’s aunt’s apartment. Then south down through the working-class neighborhoods where the new immigrants live. I’m betting Kirkit’s aunt had other friends in France—people she knew in the central cities. I can see the couple there: both of them working at a restaurant not unlike Ganges. Kirkit is the cook. Gita helps people find their tables. She would be good at running a dining room.