Paris by the Book(86)

Now my phone rang. Robert? (How?)

No, just Eleanor.

To have not greeted one customer so far that day was a forgivable lapse, at least for an expatriate American shopkeeper. To have let two enter the shop without my calling out the required bonjour was almost grounds for deportation. But if I didn’t take Eleanor’s call, she’d only call again. And again.

I shouted a bonjour to the invisible woman (just a guess; it was quiet; men are noisy). No answer. She must have been in the far front corner or have climbed the stairs to the children’s area. “Je suis désolée, I just have to take this call,” I announced as I maneuvered out of the tiny back office. “Une minute.”

I answered the phone. “Bonjour,” I said. “I’m sorry; hello. I’m juggling things here.”

“How many things?” Eleanor asked.

“Just—a customer, somewhere—”

“I’ve been thinking about our—about your plan,” Eleanor said, “about leaving the girls out of the meeting. I think this is wrong. This is not just about you—it is about all of you, as a family. He needs to realize that.” She paused again. “You need to realize that.”

“Eleanor—” I said.

“No,” she interrupted. “I’m certain about this. I think there’s a way to stage-manage it so that you—so that you meet him first, but then—and we don’t have to do this with a lot of spycraft—you and he meet on some bench, and the girls and I will be at a playground a short distance away with the twins, unless, and I advise this, we redeposit the tiny two with their own feckless father for the day, but in any case, once contact has been made, once you are absolutely sure it is him, you just—walk him on over to us.” Off-loading the twins was a good idea, but otherwise, I hated this plan, and I’d told her so earlier. “Do you understand?” she asked.

“Eleanor—” I said, and broke off, finally having encountered my customer.

“Say you’ll meet him after school, today. And you know what? It’s fine if we have the twins in tow—let him think you’ve been busy. Because you have. And don’t worry for a moment that you are hallucinating when—if—you see him, because I shall be there, too.”

I had not been breathing then, not for a long while, and now finally drew a very deep breath in order to speak. But I couldn’t.

“You forget, my dear, how easily I contend with silence,” Eleanor said. “So it’s agreed. I’ll meet the girls right outside the door of the school and the twins outside theirs, Ellie and I will sort this all out, and then we’ll go straight to a convenient, strategic park or square. I have a map. I have your brilliant girls. Okay, Leah?” I said nothing. “Oh, you’re impossible. Here’s what you say now: thank you, Eleanor, sounds good, good-bye.”

“Good—bye,” I said, my voice hoarse and high.

And she may have said something else; I don’t know, because I put down the phone, facedown, as though it was an old-fashioned handset, the kind that used to have a cord and a cradle and a reliable, expectant dial tone.

I heard such a tone now, it was all I could hear, and it was so loud it felt like I was vibrating, like the whole store was vibrating, like I might fall if I didn’t grab hold of something, so I did—that is, I grabbed hold of my customer, not a woman but a man, one who seemed as stunned as I was.

So I hugged him. I hugged him on and on, until, finally, slowly, fearfully, as though one or both of us might break, Robert hugged me back.



* * *



—

I was hugging a stranger. The spread of his shoulders was wider, his chest thicker. His chin found my shoulder where it should have, but it only rested lightly there, it didn’t fit. His hair, thinner, didn’t smell like him. He didn’t smell like him. When he spoke, though, the voice was his, and so, too, the eyes . . .

It wasn’t a hallucination. He was real. He was Robert, and he was no longer my husband.

“Welcome back,” I said, almost inaudibly.

He shook his head, almost invisibly.

“Welcome to Paris,” he said.

And I laughed, one laugh, which became crying, which became hacking bent-over sobs. I hadn’t cried like this since my parents’ funerals and I’m not sure I cried as hard then. I cried so hard now it hurt, burned my throat, burned the muscles of my abdomen, my ribs. Seeing Robert for the first time in forever: he hadn’t died; I was about to. It was too hard. It was too much.

He didn’t know what to do. He said my name softly, he put a tentative hand on my shoulder, he finally went in search of tissues, and then I had my breath again. I couldn’t speak, but I could see him, and the tissues, and it was better. I closed and opened my eyes. Still there, Robert. So, too, the roar in my ears, though subsiding. Not quite enough to make out what he was saying, but enough to hear my own heart, thump, thump, thump, enough to hear me say, “Robert?” And then the roar subsided further, and I could hear him speak.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I nodded.

“Are you—are you all right?” I said.

I looked at him looking at me. It was him, but it was also not him. He looked concerned, but also curious, like, hey, this is interesting. As opposed to, hey, this is Leah.