The Light of Paris(36)

“I’m not a child,” Evelyn said, and now she was whining too, though Margie didn’t want to point it out. “I don’t need a chaperone. And I certainly don’t need you, with all your guide books and your boring history. You may be an old maid, but I’m still young, and I want to enjoy it. I don’t want to see a bunch of fusty old castles or museums. I want to see what matters now.”

But all those things did matter now, didn’t they? Margie wanted to ask. She thought of how she had spent her days, wandering around those fusty museums and lingering in the gardens of Le Palais Royal, looking for the romantic ghosts of nobles past, and she felt ashamed. Oh, she was boring, wasn’t she? She and Evelyn were never going to get along. Any change she had hoped for she now saw clearly was her own imagination, yet another unfulfilled daydream.

“I’m not an old maid,” she said, finally, miserably.

Evelyn stood. Shrugging her wrap onto her shoulders with a sigh, she shook her head, her bobbed hair moving slightly, then falling perfectly back into place. “I’m not staying with you one minute longer, Margie. Can’t you take a hint? You’re like a puppy following me around, and I don’t want you. Now give me my money and let me go.”

“What should I tell your mother?”

“Tell her whatever you want. What’s she going to do? Come over here to fetch me? She’s too scared even to leave New York. I’m not going to be her. I’m not going to live my entire life wishing I had done things—I’m going to do them. And I’m not going to drag you around with me. You’re deadweight.”

Margie thought of the plans, the telegrams, the letters written, the hotel arrangements, the itinerary, the list of places she was never going to see now. She thought of the promise this trip had offered her, the relief, and she thought of getting on the ship alone to go home, now weighed down not only by the future that awaited her but by the heaviness of this failure, her inability to control one silly, spoiled girl. Anger welled up inside her, resentment toward Evelyn for her selfishness, her childishness, her ungratefulness for all she had been given, for how easy it had been for her, how luminous and golden her future was, how she was sure it was okay to do anything she wanted, while Margie’s own future looked dark and uncertain as a wave.

To her own surprise, her anger roiled out of her, her voice and her hands shaking in equal measure. “You’re spoiled, Evelyn. You’re spoiled and selfish and cruel, and you always have been. Go on, go on to your silly parties with your silly friends. But I’m not lying for you, and I’m not protecting you. I’m writing our mothers in the morning and I’m going to tell them the whole story, and you can go right ahead and deal with it yourself.”

Evelyn huffed in a breath as though she were about to respond, and then clamped her jaw shut so strongly Margie could hear the click of her teeth. Her own heart was pounding so loudly she was sure the entire hotel could hear it, and the furious blood rushed in her ears in waves that sounded like the buzzing of bees. She felt a little faint. Had she ever spoken so plainly before? Ever stood up for herself before? She couldn’t remember a time. “Agreeable,” people had always said. “Dreamy.” Too lost in her own fantasies to make a fuss. But here she was, making an absolutely enormous fuss.

Apparently Evelyn was equally shocked. Her delicate nostrils flared so she looked uncharacteristically unattractive and bull-like, and her eyes were hard and angry. Margie braced herself for a torrent of abuse, but Evelyn finally simply reached out, grabbing for Margie’s bag. She shook it out onto Margie’s neatly made bed, picking up her passport and the wad of money Margie had carried so carefully, so safely until now, turned on her heel, and stalked off. She put her hand on the door handle and then turned back. The last of the light fell through the window, making her skin glow, her dress glitter. Evelyn always knew how to make the most theatrical presentation. “Go home, Margie. Paris isn’t for someone like you.” And then she opened the door and let it slam shut behind her.

Margie stood there, her heartbeat slowing, her anger abating, Evelyn’s words ringing in her head. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t. Paris had opened its arms to her over the past week. It was far more her city than it was Evelyn’s. And now it didn’t matter at all, she thought bitterly. Because without Evelyn, she had no reason to stay. She was going to have to go home, and she would never see Paris again, and she would never, ever be the woman she had known Paris would let her become.





nine





MADELEINE


   1999




When I thought of Chicago, I could picture only its gleam—the glare of the sun on the water, and the thousands of windows in the skyscrapers, nothing but brilliant glass, reflecting and refracting the light back in an infinite loop. It seemed white in my memory, its brilliance blinding.

The seasons were short there, except for winter. It always seemed to be cold, to be frozen, so far north it might as well have been a city of ice, rather than glass and steel. It was the ice I remembered more than the snow. Fall came and went in a moment, the trees turning brilliant overnight, a hopeful blast of color, spring in reverse, and then, just as rapidly, winter would come, and ice would cover the city, nature adding its own glimmer to those shining silos of glass lining the streets. The ice coated the pavement in thick sheets, alluring and dangerous, before the leaves had been swept away, so walking down the street you were likely to see them frozen there, the burgundy and gold of fall overlaid with the cold blue of winter, like an insect trapped in amber, a curiosity from a foreign and forgotten time.