The Light of Paris(35)
Margie had lingered over dinner, and when she returned to the hotel, she could see Evelyn had come and gone already; the mess was slightly disturbed, and the air smelled of Evelyn’s perfumes and lotions, of lemon and rose and lavender. She might have gone to look for Evelyn, but where would she begin? The city was wide and busy, opening itself to the night, and her cousin could be anywhere. As the evening fell, the cafés came alive, the streets, which had gone quiet for a time, filled again. In the other buildings windows glittered in the fading light, blank faces hiding their secrets, and Evelyn could have been behind any one.
Across the street, music drifted up from a basement, and Margie saw people descending the stairs to enter. A nightclub, then, though the people going inside looked utterly normal, far unlike the degenerates she had always been warned about. She could go, couldn’t she? No one was stopping her. But the stories she had been told froze her there, the pleasure of independence she had felt a few hours ago swallowed by the habit of fear. What if she went out and were mugged? Or mistaken for a lady of the evening? What if, once they were inside, those utterly normal people turned into angry, violent drunkards? But oh, that music. She’d heard so little jazz—her parents certainly didn’t listen to it at home, nor was it played at any of the parties she went to. But didn’t it make you want to dance? Margie leaned against the window, looking down, her feet moving sadly on their own, wishing she had the courage to go out and be part of things.
That was how it went. Evelyn came and went when Margie wasn’t there, and Margie began to suspect more and more that Evelyn was avoiding their inevitable confrontation. Margie woke early, walking through the streets when they were still quiet, the trash men and the bakers about their business, the rest of the city stirring sleepily. She went to the places she had read about, had dreamed about—she walked through the Luxembourg Gardens, envious of the lovers who lingered there between the statues, who kissed underneath the shade of the trees, making her blush and look away as she hurried past. She climbed the endless stairs to Sacre-Coeur and sat on the steps with a hundred other people, watching the sunset, all of Paris spread out below her like an offering. She walked across the Pont Saint-Michel, waving to the boatmen who passed below, and lingered in the tiny shops on the ?le de la Cité and then disappeared into its crooked, ancient streets, so quiet it was as though the entire town had paused around her and was holding its breath. She fell a little bit in love with every young man she saw, and she sat on the steps of the Panthéon, its columns soaring majestically behind her, and wrote imaginary love letters and lines of poetry to try to capture the ache of emotion in her heart. She never wanted to leave.
In this way, a week went by, and then one night when she went back to the hotel, scurrying home as the city turned into the night version of itself, the darker side that still made her so afraid, she found Evelyn waiting for her in their room. To her surprise, Evelyn was packed, though they weren’t due to leave Paris for another week.
“Hello,” Margie said tentatively. Closing the door behind her, she let her hand linger on the knob, as though she might need to make a quick escape.
Evelyn was dressed to go out, and Margie, who had been, as usual, floating along in her own daydream in which she was as beautiful and stylish as any of the women she passed on the street, felt suddenly sad and dowdy. Evelyn was wearing white, sheer and gauzy, like a fairy’s dress, covered with beads of starlight. Her white wrap was trimmed with ermine, and though Margie’s mother would have raised an eyebrow at wearing fur so close to summer, Margie thought it added to her glamor. Evelyn looked like one of the lost Russian princesses, like a creature formed of snow, all magic and sparkle and the promise of dreams to come.
“Hello,” Evelyn replied. Her eyes flicked impatiently up and down, evaluating Margie and, clearly, finding her lacking. Margie hunched her shoulders, wishing she hadn’t worn this dress, these shoes, wondering if her stockings were bagging around her ankles, her face red, her hair messy.
“Have you been having a nice time in Paris?” Margie asked politely, and immediately hated herself for the question. There was so much she ought to have said, and yet she couldn’t seem to summon the nerve to say it.
“Look, Margie,” Evelyn said, her mouth set tight, “I’m leaving. I just came by to pick up my things and get my spending money.”
“Leaving?” Margie asked weakly. The cheese she had eaten for lunch, a pleasant picnic by the Medici Fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens, which had seemed such a romantic idea at the time, churned in her stomach. “Are you going home? Are you ill?” She felt herself still clutching the doorknob, her hand wound into a claw, and she forced herself to let go, to step forward.
Evelyn shook her head. “I’m not ill, Margie. I’m leaving Paris. And you,” she added, as if to make things clear. “Now, if you’ll give me my share of the money, I’ll be on my way.”
“Wait, where are you going?”
“Nowhere that matters to you.”
“Of course it matters! I’m responsible for you. Your mother would never have let you come if it weren’t for me. We were supposed to travel together.” She sounded wretched, she knew, whining, as though she were in the wrong. She stood in the middle of the room, fists balled up by her sides, her knees shaking a little underneath her dress. This was not how it was supposed to go. She had been giving Evelyn a little freedom, that’s all, and then when she had gotten this silliness out of her system, they would begin the trip their mothers had sent them on. The trip Margie had been dreaming of, with rich paintings and nights at the opera and handsome unexpected princes in castle gardens.