Without Reservations (12 page)

Now, of course, I look back on those walks as a time of profound sharing. As we walked, we’d break into laughter at the posturing of some conceited neighborhood cat or another; try to spot the first snowdrops or last rose; comment, sometimes wickedly, on the outfits worn by innocent, unsuspecting pedestrians; pick out the houses we liked best and least (we favored designs, though that word was never used, incorporating large bay windows and façades of whitewashed bricks); all the while listening to the sounds of dinner plates being set on tables inside kitchens, radios tuned to afternoon soap operas, and children practicing scales or playing some easy beginner’s tune like “Who-o Goes the Wind.”

And so it was with Naohiro as we walked along the Seine, laughing and talking and stopping to look at the view or examine
the antique postcards and used books peddled by
bouquinistes
from their zinc-topped boxes. I could feel it: the same subtle casting of lines between us, the same kind of connection I remembered from childhood.

Finally, we reached the Pont Saint-Louis, the tiny bridge just behind Nôtre-Dame cathedral that connects the Île de la Cité to the Île Saint-Louis. We walked over it behind a tall, dark-haired girl carrying a cello. As we reached the other side we passed an elderly woman accompanied by an overweight bulldog, a package wrapped in bloody butcher’s paper clamped between his teeth.

Naohiro and I exchanged glances. “His dinner?” I wondered aloud.

“Or her dinner?” said Naohiro. Either way, we decided, it was a unique French twist on the concept of carry-out food.

We reached the café—Le Flore en l’Île—and took a table overlooking the Seine. It was quiet and uncrowded on the small island, one of the few areas in Paris with no Métro stop. Only six blocks long and two blocks wide, I’d always thought of Île Saint-Louis as a lovely floating village, moored to the banks of the Seine by ropes of bridges. Always in past visits to Paris—hectic visits, during which I tried to cram six centuries of culture into a week’s stay—the day eventually arrived when I needed a brief vacation within a vacation. And always I’d head for an afternoon on the island.

Naohiro and I had just ordered a bottle of wine when we heard the music: the sounds of a cello, soft and pure, hanging in the air, then drifting out over the Seine toward the Left Bank. It was the young woman we’d followed across the bridge. Seated at the corner of the long, narrow street that runs through the island, she was playing, head tilted down, her black hair spilling like ink over her shoulders. Back and forth she drew the bow, releasing a sound of sweet innocence, like that of a child singing a nursery rhyme.

As she played, I suddenly heard the high, childish voices of my sons saying good night as they did so many years ago.
Good night, Mommy
, they’d sing down from their rooms. The sound echoed in my head—
Good night, Mommy, Good night, Mommy
—until I heard the last note reverberating from the cello into the air, where it echoed briefly before disappearing.

I sat silent, ambushed by love for my sons. And by regret. Regret for the past, when I didn’t or couldn’t give them the nurturing they needed, and regret for what they—and I—could never have back. The irony was that now, when my sons no longer needed it, my love for them was unconditional. But the past, I knew, still had the power to cast its long shadow. Sometimes, when either of my children came up against a thorny problem, I found myself worrying: did I give him what he needs to deal with this? Could I have done better?
I could do better now
, I thought.
Now that it’s too late.

“What do you think of?” Naohiro asked, moving his chair closer to mine.

“Of my sons. And of my regrets about the things I’d like to do over again as a mother.”

“But when you speak of your sons it is always with admiration. Is it true you would like to return and do things that might change how they are?” Naohiro asked, smiling.

I laughed. He was right.

But so was I. There were quite a few knots I wished I could go back and untie. Still, it helped to remember how honest and funny and decent my sons were and how fortunate I was to have had them as traveling companions for so much of my life’s journey.

But I also thought of the next part of my life, and wondered if I would travel it alone.

It was not a question about Naohiro, although I didn’t doubt that the closeness between us had nudged it to the foreground. It
was really a question about me. Sometimes I feared I’d grown too comfortable with my independence to relearn the give-and-take that intimacy demands.

I liked being in control of my life; of where I went and what I did, of going to bed late and getting up early, of eating meals that suited me when it suited me. Sometimes when I looked back at the days of being a wife and mother, one of the things that most amazed me was that every day I was the one who made the decision as to what three other people would eat. It tired me out now just to think about the effort it had taken over the years to come up with the thousands of meals that would meet the different requirements of my husband and sons. And while I knew that the care and feeding of children was behind me, my fear was I’d grown too selfish—when I was in a better mood I thought of it as having become “set in my ways”—to sustain a life with even one other adult.

But lately another thought kept presenting itself. I’d begun to wonder if my enjoyment of the independent life was more complex than just a matter of selfishness. Perhaps, this line of reasoning went, I was simply a person who, because of age and inclination, had changed her idea of what constituted a satisfying life.

Naohiro and I spent the rest of the day walking. To the busy, trendy Marais district, where the scent of baking bread and spiced meat from kosher delicatessens followed us down the street. To a unique Art Deco synagogue designed by Hector Guimard, the man responsible for the sinuous Métro entrances. To a locksmith museum that featured iron chastity belts and Roman door knockers. To a pawnshop, where we witnessed a sad auction of wedding rings and
engraved silver baby bracelets and heart-shaped necklaces complete with pictures of once-loved faces. And finally to the oldest and most beautiful square in Paris: the place des Vosges.

“It is one of my favorite places,” Naohiro said, as we strolled beneath the sheltering arcades that line the square’s pale, salmon-colored brick mansions. “The first time I came, many years ago, as a student, I was thinking of studying architecture.” He laughed. “Instead I went to business school and learned how to build corporate structures.”

Beneath the laughter, however, I detected a note of regret. I asked if this was so.

“I do not believe in regret,” he said, somewhat curtly. “Regret is an illusion. It depends on what might have been. And that is a waste of time.”

The sharpness of his reply surprised me. It also annoyed me. Surely he must remember that earlier in the day, when I’d expressed to him some regrets about my sons, he had responded in a sympathetic way. Was his pronouncement that regret “is a waste of time” a subtle rebuke directed at me? A tiny surge of doubt crackled through my thoughts about Naohiro. Had I misread him? Or was it simply the first sign of reality intruding into our idyllic relationship?

We lingered in the place des Vosges late into the afternoon, sitting in the park, wandering in and out of its shops, stopping to peek into the inner courtyards whenever someone entered or exited through the large wooden doors hiding them from view. We spent a long time gazing in the window of a classy real estate office, studying the photographs of exquisite apartments for sale.

“Which do you like best?” Naohiro asked.

“That one,” I said, pointing to the picture of a spacious, beautifully decorated living room with high ceilings, honey-colored parquet floors, and extraordinary floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the city of Paris. It cost in the millions of francs.

“What about you?” I asked, turning to look at him.

“It also is my favorite.” He paused, then in a wry voice asked, “Shall we buy it and live happily ever after?”

“Yes, let’s,” I said, trying to match his wry tone. “But we’ll have to get rid of all those tacky Oriental rugs. Maybe replace them with tatami mats.”

He laughed. Then without warning he took my face in his hands and gently brushed back my hair. He repeated the delicate movement several times, his hands fluttering like doves about my head. Dizzy, I leaned against him; his body was surprisingly strong and muscular. He leaned back. For several minutes we stood like that, under the arcade of the place des Vosges.

For the second time that day I felt something shift between us. But whatever it was, now I liked it.

When we left the Métro at the rue du Bac, the sun was already moving west, past the Eiffel Tower. We had just passed Deyrolle—an incredible museum of a shop where earlier we’d spent a long time studying hundreds of pansylike butterflies so exquisite that even Nabokov would have been ecstatic—when Naohiro stopped. “Look at that,” he said, pointing. “What is it?”

Immediately I saw what Naohiro had spotted: the green carpet lining the sidewalks at the corner where the rue du Bac and the rue de
l’Université meet. I had forgotten to tell him about my discovery that morning of the mysterious
Les cinq jours de l’Objet Extraordinaire.
When I told him now what had been told me, he was as puzzled as I.

I looked at my watch; it was just 7:15, a time when most shops would have locked their doors for the day. Instead, we noticed that visitors were streaming in and out of the small galleries along the streets. The mood was festive. Outside, silk banners bearing the words CARRÉ RIVE GAUCHE fluttered in the breeze, and gardenia plants and pots of flowering jasmine scented the moist evening air. Inside the shops, people drank champagne from sparkling glass flutes, laughing and chatting, underlining their remarks with the typical Gallic hand gestures and shrugs.

We stopped on the rue des Saints-Pères, in front of a gallery that featured a huge, ancient-looking urn in its window.

“Shall we go in?” I asked. “It seems to be open to everyone.”

Naohiro nodded. We walked in. Immediately someone handed each of us a glass of champagne. Naohiro turned to me and raised his glass: “To the future.”

I was about to return the toast when a Japanese couple approached us. The woman was quite striking. Dressed in a tailored, ivory silk suit, her dark hair held back by two carved ivory combs, she presented an interesting combination of modern western couture and ancient eastern allure. The man, bowing slightly to both of us, turned to Naohiro and began speaking in Japanese. The two conversed for a few minutes—occasionally, the woman would join in—and as they spoke, I studied Naohiro. His presence here in the real world—as opposed to the one he and I had created for just the two of us—only confirmed my estimation of his grace and intelligence, of his desirability. He dazzled me.

Of course, I knew what lay beneath the dazzlement. Or at least the sensible, no-nonsense, feet-planted-firmly-on-the-ground part
of me was wise to what was going on.
It’s all romantic idealization and adolescent infatuation
, this part of me said.