The Light of Paris(34)
She had written those things with the expectation that her relationship with Evelyn would get better—that Evelyn would behave better—when they were on land. But of course nothing had improved, and Margie was left with an overwhelming fear that this adventure might be over before it had truly begun, that Evelyn’s behavior would mark Margie as an unsuitable chaperone, that her parents would demand she return and everything would go back to the way it was before, the musty parlor, the clock on the mantel chewing away the hours, the awkward dinners with desperate bachelors or widowers, and the endless growing sadness inside her as she realized there was no escape.
Well. Enough of this. She had been looking over her Baedeker, and she had decided she would go out on her own, Evelyn be damned. As long as she returned before dinner, she would be sure to catch Evelyn preparing for her night out, and the two of them would have a conversation. Margie would allow her this time in Paris, but when it was time to leave, it really would be just the two of them, as planned. When she pictured it in her mind, she was firm and strong, and Evelyn recognized the wisdom of it and nodded agreeably.
Outside, her confidence faded. In the hotel, most everyone had spoken at least some English. But here, on the street, she heard nothing but French. Margie panicked slightly at the sound—she had studied French in high school and college, but hadn’t spoken it since, and she longed for the artificial environment of the classroom, of the single, American-accented dialect, of the slow, steady speech of her teachers and professors. She had never imagined the different accents she would need to contend with, the people who mumbled or spoke quickly, or that when she descended into the Métro station and asked a question about which platform the train might be on, she might be answered with anything other than the orderly dialogue laid out in her textbooks: Où est le train? Le train est là. Instead, the man at the ticket window released a torrent of rapid French, of which Margie caught only the words for “right” and “left,” and, unable to remember which was which, she retreated, burying herself in a crowd of people and praying they were going where she wanted to go.
But she did find her way, unfolding the maps from her guide book and, when she got close enough, following other people who seemed to be slightly less lost than she. In the Louvre, she found herself tagging along after groups of Americans as though she belonged, attaching herself at the end, listening to the comforting width of American vowels, the drawls and sprawls of Southerners and Bostonians alike. The museum’s floors creaked and groaned pleasantly beneath their feet as they moved through, and Margie found her mind wandering away from the art to the palace itself. She could picture the courtiers, the kings and queens, moving along the same floors, and she closed her eyes and tried to feel their steps beneath hers. In the larger halls, she imagined people arriving for balls in the grandest, most extreme costumes, saw herself stepping out of a carriage in a high, powdered wig, her face stylishly made up, her ball gown shimmering, and there would be a handsome man to greet her—a prince!—and he would . . .
“Pardon, mademoiselle.”
Margie opened her eyes to find herself standing in a doorway while a couple, attempting to pass by, stared at her curiously. She shook her head, breaking free of her daydream’s spiderweb strands, and stepped aside, offering a sheepish smile. Still, she kept looking for her prince as she moved through the rooms, her eyes dropping on one young man or another, picturing her hand in his as they strolled together, on his in a courtly dance, or resting on his face during a caress. She was awful, she knew; she should have been paying attention to the art, should have been improving herself, but her imagination always seemed to carry her away.
She walked home through the Tuileries, moving as though she were drifting, the afternoon sun falling across picnickers, strollers, young children carrying ice creams. Maybe this was why they called Paris the City of Love—its languid beauty gave her the feeling of endless summer, an eternal freedom, making love impossible to suppress. She smiled her way through the gardens, emerging to the rude insult of the traffic around the Place de la Concorde, buses and motorcars and horses and wagons all in chaos, and drifted her way dreamily back to the hotel.
It was late afternoon, and the light was strange and golden, a hint of violet in the sky and a stronger yellow where it fell across the endless rows of Haussmann buildings, their black balconies and windowsills spilling over with flowers, red and purple and blue and white. The people moved more slowly than in Washington or New York, strolling along the streets instead of hurrying, and everywhere were cafés and restaurants, people sitting at tables on the sidewalks, eating, or drinking coffee and smoking and talking. As she walked, she watched the crowds, the faces passing by, the people in the restaurants or at their own windows. The smell of food was overwhelming—mussels in butter and garlic sauce, their shells gaping open at the sky, warm bread, yeasty and steaming, the sharp snap of fresh green beans.
She felt, wandering through the city, as though she were a part of it already, as though it belonged to her now that she had seen it. When she didn’t actually have to speak to anyone, she rather liked the French wafting through the air around her, the snatches of conversation she heard as she passed by a café, the occasional sharp shout like an arrow—a mother calling out the window to a child, or a workman barking a warning. And being alone felt strange and new. Had she ever been alone this much before? Even when she locked herself away in her room, feeling very much like Emily Dickinson as she scribbled out her stories, she was not alone. She could hear her mother and the maid moving around the house, the clatter of dinner being prepared in the kitchen below, or, while she read at night, the murmur of her parents’ voices in the parlor. Here, too, she was surrounded by people, yet separate from them. She felt pleasantly anonymous, isolated by language and culture but mostly by choice, and she moved through the city streets as though she were held in a globe of glass. She ate an early dinner in a café, she drank a rich, red wine, she finished with crème br?lée, heedless of her waistline, and walked home to the hotel in a pleasant sugar haze.