Plan C (28 page)

But Madeline had taken up the argument again yesterday, when we had a three-way conference call with her sister, Scarlett - the one who had only managed to show up just once a year for the past five years and only in time to carve the turkey, yet never staying long enough to clear the table. Scarlett said, “It’s one Thanksgiving, Madeline. You won’t
die.
Why can’t Mom do what she wants for a change?”

“What are you, kidding?” said Madeline. “Since when do you care?”

I was impressed. Suddenly Scarlett seemed to get it, though the argument didn’t stop there.

“You’re being a brat,” said Scarlett. I listened while tossing a collection of woolen sweaters into my suitcase.

“Really?” said Madeline. “I’m a brat. Does Mom know you’re smoking cigarettes now?”

“What?” I ask. “No, Scarlett! You can’t take up smoking in your twenties, especially when you’re on birth control pills. It will cause blood clots, strokes, heart attacks and…” “

Did you have to tell Mom that, Madeline?” said Scarlett. “Now I’ll never hear the end of it. But does Mom know you skipped classes last week to hook up with some ghetto dude?”

“What?” Madeline, no! Not you, too,” I said in shocked disbelief.

“He’s not a ghetto dude. He’s just
not
in college,” said Madeline.

“What do you mean not in college?” I asked.

“He works full time.”

“Yeah, as a bouncer at a nightclub,” said Scarlett. “They met at a beer drinking tournament.”

“So at least he
has
a job!” said Madeline.

“Yeah,” says Scarlett. “Unlike the last guy you hooked up with who said he plans to find a way to capture lightning.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a scientist,” said Madeline. “Mom, he said, ‘If I could find a way to harness lightning for energy, we’re on to something.’”

“Well that’s lovely, honey,” I said, “And he’s right.” I have to wonder how many joints they smoked before coming up with
that
idea.

“You’ll like my new Jamaican boyfriend, Mom, I promise,” said Madeline.

“Baby boo I’m looking for you,” said Scarlett in her best Jamaican accent.

“At least he didn’t dump me for a girl still in high school like
some
people’s boyfriends did…” said Madeline.

“Really? Does Mom know about your degree?” said Scarlett.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “She’s going for her Bachelor of Science.”

“Yeah, more like her Bachelor of
Smoothies
,” said Scarlett.

“Madeline, what is your sister talking about?”

Madeline went quiet.

“Oh no, let
me
tell you mom,” said Scarlett. “When your youngest daughter graduates from college she’s opening a smoothie shop -- in Jamaica.”

“I didn’t
say
Jamaica!” barked Madeline. “It could be Barbados…” As though Barbados would make a difference.

“Mom, don’t listen to her,” said Madeline. “I love college. I finally feel like a real student.”

“That’s a good thing,” said Scarlett, “Since the semester is
over
in a
week.”

“I’m working on my final paper for English class now, so mind your business,” said Madeline.

“Oh, you mean you aren’t studying your usual book?” asked Scarlett. “
The Bartenders Guide to Mixing 600 Cocktails.”

“I said to mind your business,” said Madeline.

“Madeline,” I said, “Just be sure when you’re done writing that paper you attach a nice note to that Professor telling him how much you enjoyed his class.”

“You mean the note that says I would have screwed you if you didn’t fail me?” said Scarlett.

“I didn’t say he was hot,” said Madeline.

“Yes you did!” says Scarlett.

“It’s the Economics teacher who’s hot!”

As the two girls carried on, I felt myself moving further and further into the distance - yet miraculously closer and closer to my luggage clasps.

“And you still go to tanning booths!” said Scarlett. “Mom says you’ll get cancer!”

“At least I’m not getting a tattoo on my…”

‘Girls! Girls!” I said. They fell silent. “You could try being with your father this holiday.” The moans ensued. “Oh, it won’t kill you. I love you. I’ll send you a postcard. Au revoir and I’ll see you sometime in the new year.” And just like that, I hung up.

*

Kitty’s hand suddenly reaches out and touches my left wrist. She offers a weak smile and speaks from under her eye mask. “Before my sleeping pill kicks in, I want to say…on that thing you said before….”

“That I’m glad I’m with you?”

“Yes. That,” says Kitty. “I’m glad I’m here, too. But let’s sleep. That’s why they call it a red-eye.” And then she adds, “Besides, I have a
huge
moment riding on Helmut.”

“As it were…”

But she doesn’t laugh at my joke. She’s already asleep. I close my eyes, too, reclining in my contoured seat. We’ve just reached cruising altitude.

Until you’ve lived in Paris, and had your very own apartment there, you can’t imagine the thrill of throwing open your twenty-foot-high double atrium windows to reveal a rusted metal window box that’s covered in a year’s worth of pigeon droppings. Simone wasn’t kidding when she said she never has time for Paris. But I do, and here it is, right in my face – Paris, alive and singing, completely and utterly at my disposal. It’s like the red carpet but without the velvet rope.

I can see Notre Dame’s steeples just above the buildings since I’m only one street over from the Seine, just as Simone said.

I’ve always loved Paris, but this time is different. This time I can place my suitcase down and call it home.

Simone wasn’t kidding about the flight of stairs, either. The white stone steps form a spiral that tilt as you go up getting narrower with each tread. One of these evenings, undoubtedly after too many glasses of Lillet with a twist of orange, I’ll go spiraling down, destined to reach the bottom the hard way.

I roam from room to room. It’s all mine for an entire month “or two” she had said, “Stay however long you like.” My fingers caress the rose-and-daylily fabric wallpaper
that feels like an inside-out birthday present from turn-of-the-century in America. Only yesterday I felt like some pathetic woman aging in a turn-of-the-century novel. Today I feel like Francoise Sagan! And I’m sure I could come up with one of her over-the-top quotes of the day.

My long, hot bubble bath is accompanied by the classical music that seeps down from the upstairs apartment. When the bubbles are dissolved, I rise from the settled water, wrap a plush towel around my torso, unlatch the bathroom window and watch the vapors escape in a swirl above the other rooftops. Across the way, I spy an architect sitting at his desk gazing up at me. I move carefully behind the etched glass so he can only see my naked silouette as I slather almond body butter on my freshly shaven legs.

Ten minutes later I’m wearing a forgiving baby doll black dress. Turning left and right at the closet door mirror, I’m inspired by Francoise Sagan to change my mind… “A dress makes no sense unless it inspires a men to take it off of you.”

Now then…No more nicey-nice. No more mom. No more age-appropriate. I’m in Paris now. “Je suis a Paris!” I scream to the ceiling. I want to be young, rebellious and uninhibited. I rip off the sweet dress, unsnap my bra and stare at myself in the mirror naked. Not bad. As long as I don’t turn around to see my fat ass. Then I lower the lights, close the drapes slightly and return to the mirror, backwards. Okay, it’s fat. There are worse things.

I reach up to the shelf to where I’ve folded several pair of skinny AG jeans purchased on credit from Bergdorf Goodman just before I left Manhattan. Pulling them on, I like the way they hug my hips, and caress my ass - like a glove. Carefully I unwrap the beaded, animal-print, tank top with a Robert Cavalli label, still in tissue paper with a
price tag. I tear it off and toss the tag in the basket - no need to remind myself how much it cost me. I can’t afford it anyway. So what if my daughter’s college meal card was cheaper? The way I see it, if you haven’t risked missing a mortgage payment by the time you’re forty, what the hell are you waiting for?

I pull the tank top over my head and stand back admiring myself. It flows perfectly over my perky breasts and carves my waist to slimness. A burgundy knotted scarf around my neck to top it off and then the final touch: I slip into my one big, guilty pleasure – my Hogan boots.

Grabbing my jacket from the chair, I spy my wristwatch on the table, but ignore it. What does it matter? I’m on my own time now. I pluck the house key off the marble table, clomp down the circular stairs – much easier than climbing up – and jump-land off the final three steps to the cobblestone inner-courtyard below.

The massive red metal door leading to the rest of France is a chore to pull open, but once I do, I’ve entered paradise. A man whisks by me on a bicycle - the kind with a wicker basket – but not before turning his head to holler out, “Bonjour!” to which I reply, “Bonjour!” with a grand air of confidence. I can do this. I can be Audrey Hepburn in Paris. I can be Catherine Deneuve in “
The Umbrellas of Cherbourgh
.” I don’t need Ben and his perfectly fluent French to survive here. I have three years of Pimsleur French CD lessons under my belt. And my attitude is that of an explorer ready to set sail into this New World. This city of lights.

Seconds later I’m across from the Pont Neuf admiring the willowy and old trees that dot the Seine. They stoop like a drunken grandfather - like something straight out of a Pissarro painting. I bet that very Pissarro picture is housed in the Louvre museum I’m
staring at right now, this very second, just across the river. Oh, my God! I’ m here. I’m in Paris! “Je suis a Paris!” I say again and again, clapping my hands with girlish delight and jumping up and down.

Golden leaves twirl at my ankles and I fiddle with my new Canon camera, snapping photos of the architecture lining the Seine. Their buildings are centuries old and meticulously thought out - twenty different shades of yellow, beige, crème, white, bisque, parchment. Nothing on earth could be this romantic or historic yet at the same time feel so current and real. Anybody who tells you a weekend in Paris is enough… is lying.

The French say, “un coup de foudre” – love at first sight - and just like that, the rules of my life seem suddenly suspended. Its been one day and one evening since my arrival, and, with only a ten minute catnap in between, I’ve covered the length of the Left Bank, crisscrossed back and forth from the George V on the Right back to the Musee d’Orsay on the Left again, passed the Louvre, cut through the Ile de la Cite to Saint Chapelle and into the fashionable Marais, where the mood turns to creative and spontaneous. Paris is like a Hollywood movie studio as you zig-zag from one stage set to another, visually changing with each arrondissement.

And the best part of all….I don’t have to get back home to cook dinner, go over homework papers, get to bed early for that staff meeting at 8 a.m. No more life on a clock. I can stay out all day. Or all night. There’s nothing to worry about but selfish ole me.

A boy bangs into me. “Pardon,” he says, smiling, as he joins a group of teenagers crammed at a traffic light smoking. Their attitudes could resemble any fifteen- year-old-
American, their voices highlighted with defiance. One boy talks about the fence he scaled to avoid an ex-girlfriend. He’s talking too fast for me to grasp all the details though I’ve gathered that he “je ne veux jamais encore la voir” – he never wants to see her again. Perhaps he’s onto his Plan B?

Then he stops talking. And stares at me, sensing my eavesdropping. He blows smoke rings toward my face.

“Salut!” I say, daunted by his attitude.

“Salut!” he hollers back, suddenly pleased that I’ve acknowledged him. He gives me the once-over. A look that says, “What a silly American woman.” Yet apparently I pass French teen-boy inspection, because he’s holding out the remains of his cigarette toward my face, twisting the filter toward my mouth to take a toke. Like a kid spending third period behind the bleachers, I puff on it, then return it to him. The only thing missing from the memory is the soundtrack to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” He looks me over some more. Now his eyes seem to say, “Hot older woman,” though I don’t know what that would be in French. I smile and we have an understanding, me and the high-school cigarette boy. He hands it back to me, and I inhale again, holding the smoke and gazing into his eyes. He then turns young. Very young. He guffaws at me insisting that I keep the cigarette so I nod and say “Merci” before walking away, flicking the ashes into the wind. The nicotine gives me a high, and I’m loving it. And this is where my Plan C begins.

*

This most arrogant city in the world has every right to be. Until you’ve lived in Paris you can’t quite understand how spoiled, anxious, and inexperienced we American pilgrims are. Compared to the French with their culture and their couture dating back centuries, there’s only one thing we have in common: we each have a very cool President. Who has a very hot and very cool wife.

Otherwise, they have it all over us. Look at the ninety-two types of yogurt and meringue in the grocery store dairy case that I counted just this morning when I went to pick up some farm-fresh eggs. Even their eggs put ours to shame.

Suddenly the temperature turns chilly but I don’t feel cold. And I don’t feel the raindrops as they fall on my chest and cling to my shirt - although my breasts have become a major French tourist attraction for the three men who have just passed me. The drops turn into a steady downpour. Now I’m completely wet in a way that suddenly makes me feel exposed and vulnerable. If only a sexy man would appear under a black umbrella. I’d kiss him as I tip my right leg up to the back of my thigh, like in all those photos in the rain.

But my daydream vanishes amid the pelting drops. Alone, I pick up my pace, running with the boundless energy of a dog off a leash. I long for another cigarette. Damn that high school punk.

The cool drizzly air makes its home in my nostrils. Rain is like nature’s surprise - like a lover on your doorstep with a dozen roses and a box of chocolates. The scent intensifies everything into something fresh and new, into what is known as April in Paris, except that this…is November.