Paris by the Book(65)

“Are you sure?” I said to Eleanor quietly.

“It’s really so unusual,” Eleanor said. She was staring at a bust of Charlie Chaplin with garishly roughed cheeks. “I bet the kids will find it fun.”

“Madame?” the man at the desk said.

Switching to French, I quickly told him that Eleanor did not have kids, but did have a reservation and wanted to check in.

He answered me in English. “Reservation is good.”

“Well, let’s get on with this, then,” Eleanor said.

And they did. More staff appeared, in 1930s-era movie palace livery—tarnished-button tunics, tiny hats—and swept away Eleanor’s luggage. She was issued a pair of “celebrity sunglasses,” a gift of the hotel. They looked like Audrey Hepburn’s, circa 1961. I shook my head. She tried them on. I started to follow her bags up the stairs, but Eleanor took off the glasses, sat heavily in a chair in the lobby, and patted one beside her.

“I’m sure you’re exhausted,” I said.

“I am,” she said.

“Why don’t you go up and rest? In fact, we’ll just take it easy tonight, and we’ll have our grand reunion tomorrow.”

“We are having a grand reunion right now,” Eleanor said. She patted the chair again. “Do you think they serve popcorn?” she said. I shook my head. “Pity,” she said to the air. And then to me: “Leah, sit, or risk being judged more nervous than I am.”

“I’m not nervous,” I said, though I was. I’d let myself think that all those Skype conversations were just as intense as being interrogated by Eleanor in person. They were not. “Wait,” I said, and sat. “Why are you nervous?”

She drew a deep breath and then coughed. Dust swirled around us. “Because I do want to talk about Robert. And then I want to talk about him with your girls. He’s been gone for so long that—it’s time to—”

“Eleanor—”

“Leah—”

“Eleanor,” I said. “What else do we ever talk about—”

“It’s different now,” she said.

“It is different now,” I said. “You’re also exhausted now. I’m exhausted now. And if you think you’re going to say one thing to that poor child just days out of a hospital bed, or her sister—”

Eleanor smiled as much of a smile as her exhaustion would allow her, which wasn’t much. “You sound like me,” she said.

I looked out to the street, where scarf after scarf passed by. No one looked in. I noted this phenomenon when I was in my own storefront, and it always upset me. All these wonders lining Paris sidewalks—corny wonders, as here in the cinema-hotel’s overstuffed lobby, or civilized wonders, as in my tumbledown bookshop—and no one but the occasional tourist even turned to look in the window? I myself spent my entire Paris existence not looking where I was going, but rather casting my eyes right and left. Here was a take-out pizza joint the width of a pizza box. Here was a storefront of puzzles. Another featuring aluminum canes and walkers and oxygen tanks painted a blue Yves Klein himself would have envied. Madame Grillo’s world-class mops up the way. The painter’s abandoned stepladder in the storefront down the block.

I thought I’d assimilated so well to Paris life, but this must have been how the city read me for what I was, a visitor, a tourist, someone who looked in windows. A widow.

“Can I make you a deal?” I said.

“Probably not,” Eleanor said, “but you are welcome to try.”

“Let us not do this today,” I said. “You are tired, I am tired, and I don’t want to just start in on this with the girls now, not like this. I want to talk with you about what to talk about . . .”

Eleanor closed her eyes and leaned back into her director’s chair. “The thing is,” she said, “I loved you both. I loved the idea of you and the actuality of you. That you existed, the two of you, and the daughters you made, and the cooking shows I celebrity-guested on in your very kitchen—you all were a favorite text of mine. Forgive me for that. For being so captivated by such a family.”

“I thought we weren’t going to talk about this yet,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m so tired I don’t even know what I’ve been talking about.”

Ellie saved us. She came down the street, and she looked in the window. Not entirely me nor entirely Robert. I spent a second or two admiring this creation beyond the glass.

Eleanor was watching her, too, but absently.

“It’s true, what they say,” Eleanor said. Either she was more exhausted than I thought or she really didn’t recognize Ellie. “Absolutely everyone in Paris is more beautiful than anywhere else on earth. Just look at this girl.”

I laughed. “I do,” I said, “every day.”

Eleanor looked at me and then stood and stared out the window.

“Good god,” she said. “This is Ellie? You’ve been gone months. She’s aged years!”

Ellie caught sight of Eleanor and burst into the hotel, acting for the first time in months like the daughter I had once had in America.

“Auntie El!” she said.

“My dear girl,” Eleanor said.

They hugged for long enough I almost thought it was a competition—had Eleanor given me the longer hug, or Ellie?—but they didn’t let go, they held on and on, and I realized that Ellie had won, and easily.