Paris by the Book(84)

“The Marines have more important things to do,” I said.

“Is there anyone?” Eleanor asked.

I thought of Laurent. George. My three customers. Declan.

“No,” I told Eleanor.

“We’ll make do, then,” Eleanor said: a park, not too big, not too small, one with people. And benches. I would sit on a particular bench, and Eleanor and/or the cavalry would sit on another bench nearby.

I told Eleanor that a husband and wife should be allowed some time à deux.

“But,” Eleanor said, “I just want to be there, to see . . .”

I waited.

But she just repeated herself, to herself: “To see,” she said softly.

And that broke me. She wanted to be present for me, but she also wanted to be there for Robert. That she would be there, in close physical proximity, to support me in the aftermath of whatever happened would be a boon. But that she would see him, too—that was the real reason she wanted to go to the park.

And, I saw now, the real reason she had come to Paris. If she’d really, truly, exhaustively thought he was dead, she’d have sent the forms right away, just as she’d once sent that unfinished manuscript, the pages that once proved to her that he was alive.

“So be it,” I said. “But you can’t spook him. I’m certain that if he sees you—or a passing policeman, or a strapping crew-cutted Marine lounging nearby, bayonet fixed—he’s going to keep walking.”

“He won’t see me,” Eleanor said. “I shall be wearing the sunglasses the hotel gave me.”

“Parfait,” I said, and rose, feeling confident. This lasted until I was standing. I felt dizzy.

“Why now?” Eleanor said. “I can almost understand everything but that. Why does he want to come back and talk with you now?”



* * *



—

Perhaps he wanted to know why the magazine had taken so long preparing that piece. At the time, they’d told us the issue would be out in mere weeks. Robert, knowing what he knew of publishing, didn’t believe this, and given my old neighbor’s plaintive e-mail to Eleanor, it seemed like he’d been right not to believe her.

But back then, it was rush, rush, and the reporter, exceptionally eager, exceptionally young, sent Robert—his hero, it turned out—that early draft, sans photographs, just days after the visit.

Robert hated it, especially the tone.

Well, I didn’t like Robert’s. It was late at night, I’d been asleep.

It’s like the writer thinks he knows me! he said. On the basis of one afternoon!

And one pony, I said. I didn’t open my eyes. I could feel him sitting on the edge of the bed. The mattress slouched toward him.

How does anyone get a right to say who you are, what you are? he said.

I opened my eyes. I married you, I said.

Leah—

For who you are.

Were, he said.

Husband. Father. Are. I closed my eyes again.

You married a writer, he said. And I don’t think I am anymore.

I married a shoplifter rehabilitationist, I said. A kid-friendly kitchenista. A children’s-stories-set-in-Paris connoisseur.

(And he was all those things. And more. Some days, it was impossible to think about leaving him. Other days, it was all I thought about.)

I mean, he said.

I waited.

At heart, he said.

I waited.

I married you for your heart, I said. You, your heart, mine. Your dreams, ours. That’s what I mean, mean . . .

I trailed off as mean began to mean its other meaning.

I felt, heard him stand.

I miss when—when we—I miss you, he said softly.

I wonder now if he meant “her,” that other wife, the one I once was, the one who’d fallen for the flicker in his eyes, the one who hadn’t worried what kind of fire such a flicker would start, what it would burn, how long it would take to fully catch fire.

Or the wife he later imagined, from that other life, that other Paris.

That other book.

But I’m right here, I said, and rolled over.

That’s what makes it so hard, he said.



* * *



—

Eleanor reluctantly went back to her hotel to prepare. She’d wanted to stare over my shoulder as I drafted my reply, but I repeated my earlier refusals and somehow finally struck a tone she found worth heeding.

After two minutes passed before an empty screen, I was even more glad Eleanor wasn’t by my side. And here I’d been worried she would second-guess everything I’d say. Instead, I found I had nothing to say whatsoever. I heard the bell over the door jangle; for the first time, I did not answer. Or rather, for the first time, I didn’t feel guilty about not answering it. Let the customer feel ignored. Let the customer ransack the store if she wanted to. I’d hire on Molly full-time.

Allo, allo? I heard after a minute passed. Then the floor creaking its pirate-ship creak. Then muttering. Then the bell again as the customer left.

Robert never suffered writer’s block, or so he once claimed in a five-year-old interview published in a magazine that actually was printed: I do not understand what people mean by writer’s block unless it’s a real, physical thing. If it’s in your mind, great—that’s where the words are, too. Just peer over the wall. He got plenty of mocking hate mail after that; one student even gave him a brick that he’d labeled with a Sharpie: writer’s block. Robert used it as a bookend.