The Futures(62)

“It sounds great,” I said, reaching for the wine.

“You studied in Paris, didn’t you, Julia?”

“Yes. Spring of junior year.”

“I remember that. Your mother told me how much you loved it.”

Well, of course she did. My mother had studied in Paris during her Wellesley days, too, and she laid out the reasons why I ought to go; she was the one who pushed me from hesitation to action. At first it felt like I was just doing the sensible thing, following in her footsteps, making her happy. But I had loved it—that was true. Not instantly. It was a love that came gradually, and it felt sweeter for it.

I went in armed with a plan. My first week in the homestay, before classes began for the semester, I’d get up early and make an itinerary for the day: museums, scenic routes, famous patisseries. My hostess encountered me on one of those mornings as I was scrutinizing a guidebook over breakfast. She looked baffled when I explained: I had a long list of sights in Paris that I wanted to see. I’d use this time, before school started, to knock out as many as possible. She stubbed out her clove cigarette and sat next to me at the kitchen table.

“Julia,” she said in a thick accent, preferring her bad English to my even worse French. “This is not what you do. You come to Paris to live. Alors.” She closed the guidebook firmly. “You do not use this. You walk the city and you see it. You understand, yes?”

I took her advice, and I walked through the city for the first time with no plan and no guidebook. It was a cold, miserable, wet January day. I’d worn the wrong shoes, and my feet were soaked and freezing within five minutes. I went into a café for lunch and ordered an omelet, and the waitress smirked at my pronunciation. The food sat strangely in my stomach, and jet lag trailed me through the afternoon. When I was waiting at the crosswalk on the Rue de Rivoli, a bus roared past and soaked me with puddle spray, and that’s when I lost it. I was homesick and lonely and I missed Evan so much, and I was crying, and all I wanted was to go curl up on my narrow bed in the homestay. But going back felt like admitting defeat. So I kept walking. I crossed the Pont Royal and wound up at the Musée d’Orsay. My feet were still soaked, and my clothes were, too. My eyes felt gritty and puffy, and I was so tired I thought I might pass out. This was distinctly not how I’d imagined it—my first week in Paris, my first visit to the famous Orsay.

I sat on a bench up on the fifth floor and let the crowds slide past, obscuring then revealing the artwork on the walls. It felt good to stay in one place, to sit and get warm. The light grew dimmer from the afternoon sunset—January in northern France. I’d been sitting on the same bench for at least two hours. Eventually the crowds thinned, and I had my first uninterrupted view of the art in front of me. There was a Monet that I recognized. The Parliament building in London, silhouetted against a reddening sky, the sun reflected in the water. A painting I’d studied before, in class. That day in Paris, I stared at it for so long that it changed into something else. No longer a specific building in a specific place but a mixture of color and movement that the eye could interpret any way it wanted. It was like when you say a word over and over and it becomes strange and new, a collection of sounds you’d never thought to question before. When you learn that there is something to be gained by examining what’s right in front of you.

I lingered until a security guard told me to leave. I bought a postcard of that painting in the gift shop, and when I got back to my homestay, I tacked it up on the wall next to the photograph of my mother, the one I’d found a few weeks before. My mother as a younger woman, before her life had solidified onto its current course. Every morning during that semester in Paris, those images were the first things I saw when I opened my eyes. I began to think of them as a pair, as a symmetry. The past, the present. They reminded me of the gift I’d been given: time. Time to do nothing, or time to do whatever I wanted. I didn’t need to have it all figured out. The uncomfortable feeling that had plagued me through sophomore year, that had made me feel strange and restless—it had taken a while, but it had finally evaporated. I was okay, right where I was.

Mrs. Baldwin was regarding me with a quizzical expression.

“I’m sorry?” I said, emerging from the undertow of memory.

“I said, you’re living with your boyfriend in New York, isn’t that right?”

“Right. Right, yes. We went to college together. He works in finance.”

Those data points rendered him acceptable. Mrs. Baldwin didn’t need to know any more. She started telling me about her son’s wedding over the summer—it was just the loveliest wedding, they were married at the Cloisters, the bride’s parents were famous-ish, and the mayor came. I refilled my wineglass again, then again. The memories of Paris had made me melancholy, had reignited a longing for some vanished chapter of my life. It was a feeling too big to hold on to.

“You okay?” Elizabeth said between dinner and dessert, after we had gotten up from the table to load the plates into the dishwasher.

“I had too much wine.”

She snorted. “Sitting next to Mrs. Baldwin? Next time I’d go for something stronger. Heroin, maybe.”

“How was your end of the table?”

“He kept touching my hand. Like, to make a point in conversation. But he was leaving it there a little too long.”

“Dr. Baldwin? Ugh. Creepy.”