Paris by the Book(102)
I did lie, or maybe it wasn’t quite a lie, when Ellie said, “so it’s our choice”—that is, our choice to believe whether or not Robert was alive. I said yes, even though I wanted to tell them that it wasn’t, it hadn’t been, that Robert had chosen and, for his own terrible reasons, not chosen us.
One conversation, of course, with Ellie and Daphne did not settle the matter of their father’s disappearance or “death.” Neither did fifty. Skype conversations with a Seattle psychologist Eleanor found for the girls did help, and still do. To hear the girls describe it, they’ve reached a truce. Not their word at all, but it captures things for me: a truce with their father, with the truth, with the psychologist. The good doctor will not insist their father is dead; they will not insist on continuing to search Paris for him.
The psychologist says this is healthy, that the time for searching is past. The psychologist doesn’t know about the spoofed e-mails to the publisher and nor do the girls; when Ellie and Daphne asked how the book came to be, I said it seemed as though their father had finished and sent the publisher a manuscript before he disappeared, and that now, the publisher couldn’t find him, and neither could I. If pressed, I repeat the psychologist’s mantra. The time for searching is past.
But they don’t press often. Because they know someone else is.
* * *
—
Eleanor searches. She tells me to tell the girls she doesn’t, but I don’t, and they wouldn’t believe me anyway. She has searched online and offline. She has hired two private detectives, fired both, and is constantly interviewing for a third. She is using her university access to audit courses in criminal justice, French, and, “just in case,” forensic anthropology. She has come to know an unsettling amount about jawbones. I often see her using her own when we visit via Skype; for “efficiency” she likes to dine while we talk. Her breakfast is my dinner. I tell her she’s nevertheless welcome to join me in a glass of wine. She says she’s eating healthier. This explains, though not fully, why I have occasionally caught her eating Robert’s brand of granola.
* * *
—
Declan and I dine together not infrequently. After the hotel down the way redid one of its cinema rooms as a “Late Edition” room, they began asking if our store did tours related to the book. I’d called Declan, said I had a business proposition, and then he laughed, and then we were doing tours. Ours is purely a professional relationship now, and better for it, we both agree. We toast to it, in fact, each time he takes me out to dinner, which is every time I pay him. We no longer eat for free; rather, he always tries to spend the exact amount on dinner that I’ve paid him that week. We keep having to find more and more expensive restaurants. Paris obliges. And so does Declan. He’s waiting, and so am I, and neither of us knows quite for what, quite yet. In the meantime, we toast and laugh and drink. And sometimes I hear a three-wheeled minicab whine by, and my pulse goes chasing after it, and I take another silky sip because it’s easier than looking at Declan at just that moment.
Declan, I should point out, does not appear in the book.
* * *
—
Robert does. Does and doesn’t. In Robert’s book, the family lives happily ever after. No posthumous bestseller comes to rescue the store; it makes of itself an old-fashioned success. Week after week, more and more people visit and buy more and more things. Enough money is made that, in one late chapter, the family vacations in the south of France. In another, they take the train to London. There is talk of a trip to Stockholm, but I’ve already told the girls—don’t believe everything you read.
When Eleanor first read the book’s flap, she insisted we call the publisher and have every copy seized and the jacket bio changed to something like “Robert Eady is a pseudonym and any resemblance to persons living or dead is . . .” Fat chance. Besides, I’ve read more than one blogger—for this has become a book everyone has to have an opinion on—who says a good chunk of the book’s sales are due to that tragic bio. And I do occasionally see a glistening eye come up to the register if I’m in the store. Though because of sales, I spend fewer hours there. Like everyone else, I now hire aloof French twentysomethings.
But when some sad American does find me and says I’m sorry for your loss, I simply thank her—I really try to be sincere—and say, it’s okay. And then, if the conversation needs to go on—some grab ahold of me and will not let go—I say, and he’s not really gone, is he? Because I’m really not sure he is. But I don’t say that. I say: he’s right here in this book.
What I believe: that Robert meant to somehow redeem himself by publishing the book—to the degree that the book’s royalty stream could absolve him of his failures, including to provide for us for so long. But it’s a false absolution, isn’t it? Early on, we had the prize money, yes, but beyond that, we largely provided for ourselves (with help from George, Eleanor, and, if I’m being charitable, Madame). I don’t begrudge Robert the attempt, though, because it’s a painful absolution as well: here, at last, has come success beyond measure, and enjoying it lies just beyond his grasp. Eleanor says it wasn’t the world’s recognition he ever wanted, just ours, just mine, just to the point that he left clue after clue. Or so we decided; we’d scoured those one hundred manuscript pages before realizing that the girls and I were the book’s best clues, and the book’s second-biggest mystery: what were we doing in Paris?