Paris by the Book(43)

“That’s gotta be hard,” he said. “And with kids . . .”

Kids, yes. The girls. A steady anxiety, but also a handy transition, and so I launched into a single-parenting confessional I hadn’t known I’d had in me: something about food, cooking, diet, dieting, everyone ate well in Paris but me. I should do better by my girls. And those twins.

“It’s like they speak a different language, kids,” Declan said. “I mean, I’m not that old. . . .”

He paused. I’m not sure if he wanted me to ask, or protest, or—what I felt most keenly—if he wanted me to blurt out my age. I did not.

“You’re making an odd face,” he said. Odd? I wanted a mirror to see what odd meant. How many wrinkles crosshatched the corners of my eyes, my mouth.

Declan’s own mouth was slightly agape now; he was waiting for me to say something. Anything.

I opted for the latter.

“Well, speaking of odd,” I said, “of different languages? Up in the park, you spoke this beautiful French to those policewomen who were hassling you, and then you changed something, not just your accent but how well you spoke. You suddenly sounded like you didn’t really know French well. You sounded American. You sounded like—” I was going to say me, but his face had turned “odd,” too, that open mouth now closed, lips set in a line.

“Whom they preferred me to sound like,” he finally said.

“Why would they not want you to speak French well? I’m sure the one thing this city wants from me more than anything else is to speak French perfectly.”

Declan leaned back. I thought I saw a smile arrive, but then it left, and he looked somber. “The ‘city’ wants different things in different places. From different people.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Not okay,” Declan said. “The problem up there in Ménilmontant is that I was speaking French too well. I was speaking like I’d been speaking it all my life, like I’d grown up in Africa. And for Africans here—hell, even black people born in Paris—it can sometimes be a rough ride. As you saw. So I put on my American accent.”

I picked up my cup to sip at it, to stall, but among the many French skills I’ve not mastered is how to nurse a drink—coffee, wine, whatever—two, three slugs, and I am done. Part of the reason is the dollhouse crockery used here. Part of it, then, was how thirsty I was.

“I get taken for American all the time,” I said, “and that’s not always great.”

“Your country has done a lot of stupid shit.”

“But you’re American, too.”

“I’m a black American. Paris has been better to, and for, black Americans for years. Jazz, G.I.’s, but even before that. It’s not parfait—”

“Though your French is,” I said.

“It’s good. I’m proud of it. Look, I am fluent,” he said. “But I still make mistakes. So does France. So does Paris.” He took up his café. “I suppose I shouldn’t love it. And sometimes I don’t.”

“And now?” I said.

“Now,” he said, “I do.” He looked at me.

I stared at my cup. Empty, no reflection, and none needed. I knew how I felt: embarrassed. And excited.

And suddenly, quite young.

“How old are you?” I said.



* * *



—

“Forty?” Daphne said later that night after I’d returned home. In the wake of Declan’s visit to the store, Ellie had asked how old he was, and Daphne had ventured a guess after the twins, who had guessed 107.

“Thirty-one!” I said. Daphne was too young to be a good judge of age, but I corrected her too rapidly. Not so much that she noticed, but Ellie definitely did.

“You asked him his age?” Daphne said.

“It came up,” I said.

“That seems like a very personal thing to ask,” Daphne said.

“Did you tell him how old you were?” asked Ellie.

“How old are you?” asked Peter.

“We’re getting off topic,” I said.

“No, you are,” Ellie said. “I thought we were looking for Dad.”

“Our dad is in Beijing!” Annabelle said.

“Ellie,” I said, “listen.”

Ellie shook her head and, as had become our custom for discussions involving the ever-absent George, took Peter and Annabelle over to an old globe that spun in a corner of the store.

“It wasn’t a date,” I said to Daphne, though I needed to say it to Ellie, now out of earshot.

Daphne looked confused. “What wasn’t?”

“Coffee with that man, the man who helped me. Declan. He was just saying thanks.” Or was I? I couldn’t remember the cover story.

Daphne nodded, looked over at Ellie, who still had her back to us.

“Did you tell him about Dad?” Daphne asked.

Even a split-second pause would say the wrong thing, so I immediately said yes.

Which turned out to be the wrong thing.

Daphne smiled. “Good,” she said, and pulled a much-folded piece of paper from her pocket. A new clue? “Because it sounds like he could help us find him.”

It was not a clue, but a map, albeit one Daphne thought might just lead us to more clues. The map appeared on a flyer that had been dropped off at the store earlier, advertising an opportunity to “walk in the feetsteps of Madeline.” Never mind that in his books, Ludwig Bemelmans sent Madeline and her classmates back and forth across all Paris, gamboling in the Tuileries on one page and then three kilometers away atop Montmartre the next. Never mind that an obsession with Bemelmans ran deeper in Ellie than Daphne. I’d followed my obsession with Lamorisse to Ménilmontant, and I’d not come back with their dad.