Paris by the Book(49)

My old boss, the university president, never, ever understood the importance of a dramatic pause. What, precisely, is the point? she would say. And I would say, it’s the entire point; a pause tells the audience, “get ready.”

But my boss’s point: she didn’t want anyone to be ready. A pause would only give someone in the crowd an opportunity to shout, to heckle, and thereby throw her off balance.

Which is precisely what Daphne did.

Three letters, a single syllable: Dad!

Ellie spun.

Dad? The word delayed me a crucial half second. But not Declan, who moved like he’d heard nothing, like he really thought he’d catch Ellie before she fell.

He did not. She dropped too fast.

I sprang to the spot she’d just left.

More magic: she’d only fallen three feet. A broad outer lip extends beneath the railing, and that’s where Ellie now stood, relieved. Peter and Annabelle clapped. Everyone did. Ellie looked down at the stony surface that had saved her, and so did I. It was about two feet wide, sloped slightly toward the river’s surface, and was tinged with a green that must have been mold or algae or moss—something slippery, anyway, because the moment she extended a hand to me (though Declan’s was closer), she disappeared from sight.



* * *



—

What next? Someone screaming (not Ellie); Declan restraining Daphne, Peter, and Annabelle; me running. And shouts and horns and whistles and, somewhere in the distance, growing louder, a two-tone siren, and then another, sharp-flat, sharp-flat, the sound that always reminds me I’m not in Milwaukee anymore, and haven’t been for some time.

Ellie chose a good spot to fall into the river, just one hundred meters shy of a fireboat station where frogmen were testing new gear. Wiser still would have been to evade the frogmen and let her mother rescue her, but I’d run down the closest stairs, which led to the wrong bank, and so was unable to intercede when, after plucking her from the water, the firemen turned her over to the police.

Declan, Daphne, the twins, and I caught up with Ellie at the local station—an ornate petit palais that looked like an outbuilding at Versailles—where, after a brief reunion, Declan went to work. On the way over, he’d reassured us that he’d extricated many a young American from worse. While the rest of us sat on a bench in a two-story arcaded atrium—the lobby, though it feels silly to call it that—Declan moved a few steps away and argued our case.

Ellie refused to speak to me beyond muttering that she hoped this didn’t take hours. I secretly wanted it to; I felt I’d need at least that much time to sort out what had happened. What had Daphne shouted? Who had seen what?

Here is what I’d seen: a bigger drop from bridge to water than Bemelmans’s drawing makes it out to be, though not so big that college students (reported Declan) and the occasional fifteen-year-old American girl can’t navigate the plunge with élan. The only real challenge—apart from avoiding boats, which luck had allowed—is getting out. The current runs faster than it looks. But Ellie never panicked; I may even have seen her smile, which I think she did once she realized she had chanced into a stunt I’d never have allowed. Never mind that the river, though not as polluted as it once was, was not safe for swimming: the appeal was that what she was doing was forbidden. That the frogmen from the tidy red-and-white plants-in-pots-on-the-roof Brigade de sapeurs-pompiers barge who rescued her later emphasized this point seemed only to please her more. (Though what may have pleased her most was how handsome her young rescuers were; many, many selfies were taken aboard the boat with the crew, who looked, in the pictures, a bit too obliging.)

Here is what I had not seen, not on the bridge, in the water, at the police station after: Robert.

I pretended I’d heard Daphne wrong. She hadn’t yelled Dad—or if she had, neither Ellie nor the twins had heard her, because that’s all they would be talking about now. And I didn’t want to bring it up because—because I didn’t want to come off as crazy. Not in front of the police, not in front of my daughters.

And not, come to think, in front of Declan, who returned to us with a thin smile—he’d gotten them to waive the fine, he said—

“There’s a fine for accidentally falling into a river?” I said.

“No,” he said. “But there’s one for standing on the rail. Anyway, doesn’t matter.”

“Thank you,” I said, rising to go.

“In exchange, though . . .”

So there was a fine. Or there was something about the visas George had mysteriously acquired for us. If so, that would be worse than a fine.

“Girls,” Declan said. “You just have to talk to someone, okay? Your mom will be there for it. Part of it.”

“Who?” Daphne said, worry spreading from her eyes to her forehead, her whole face.

“A psychologue,” Declan said to me. “A psychologist.”

“A what?” Ellie said.

Declan explained that he’d had more than one of his study-abroad students routed through and out of the police station this way. Just avoid talking about politics, he said: the only time he’d ever had trouble was when a drunken student confessed ardent admiration for Margaret Thatcher. Otherwise, Declan said, thirty minutes, tops.

Daphne said something then that was so quiet Declan had to have her repeat it: “Did you tell them about”—she paused again, and I waited for her to say something about her father, but she didn’t. “Did you tell them about the tour?” Daphne asked. “Madeline? That we run a bookstore?”