Paris by the Book(92)

Eleanor proposed a compromise. They would go to the park first, and then, if there was time, to the train station to look at a “high train.” Peter didn’t budge until Eleanor wondered aloud if they might take the Métro to the park? Sold. Even Daphne agreed.

Not Ellie. She looked up the route on her phone and announced that the Métro made no sense: getting there would require three trains and thirty minutes; walking would take hardly half that time.

Eleanor said she would buy Ellie “whatever you want most in the world” if she accompanied them on the Métro. After some reflection, Ellie agreed.

I wonder what Ellie—or Daphne—thought of as they descended into the Métro and wove their way through the crowd to the platform. What they wanted most was not for sale.

Nor was what Peter wanted—“to take the TGV under the sea to New York”—but before Ellie could explain this was impossible, Peter and Annabelle disappeared.

Not poof, like magic, but slam, like the subway car’s door muscling closed on the late-afternoon crush, splitting the group: the twins inside, on the train; Eleanor, Daphne, and Ellie on the platform, screaming. Impossible.

As the train slid away, the argument began. Daphne said everything would be okay; the plan had only been to go one stop before changing trains. Ellie said Peter wanted to go to New York; the plan should have been to walk. Daphne pointed out that there was an avenue New York across from the Eiffel Tower; Ellie said the TGV didn’t go there.

Daphne said there was a system, a family emergency plan, for this specific scenario, which called for whoever wound up on the train to get off at the next stop, whatever that stop was, and wait, for however long that took.

Ellie said Daphne had confused something she’d read in a book for real life, which made sense because Daphne was the most like Dad and had lost a lot of her grip on reality at the hospital.

And then Daphne had done something awful . . .

“What’s going on?” Robert whispered.

“The twins . . .” I said. I held the phone to my chest to mute it. “They’re—they wanted to get on the TGV—but they got on the Métro—and—”

“Twins?” he said.

“Kids. Little. We watch them. For money. Because—”

“The girls were coming to see—me? Us? Here?”

“For fuck’s sake, Robert,” I said. “Eleanor was taking them to a neutral space, a park. She thought if we—if we all met there—”

“Meet them, now?” Robert said, nervous in a new way, scanning the store, even backing up a pace.

I shook my head. My great moral conundrum of moments ago had been transformed into logistics. “They got on a train to go to the park, the doors closed too soon, and the twins’ train left the station.”

“How old are they?” he said.

“You don’t even remember,” I said.

“The twins,” he said, quietly adding, “Ellie turns sixteen in the fall. Daphne turned thirteen this spring.”

I heard Ellie’s voice shouting at me from the phone. I lifted it back up to speak, but when I did, I heard Eleanor.

“Okay, okay,” Eleanor said. Her department meeting fracas voice. “Ellie is fine, okay?” Eleanor said. “Moving on.”

“Wait, what happened to Ellie?”

“Daphne pushed her; she fell. Near the tracks, so it was dramatic.”

“Oh my god—”

“Not onto the tracks, just near the edge of the platform, which Daphne should not have done, as many people then pointed out to us in various tongues. But Daphne was angry and scared, and my goddaughter was in one of her less helpful moods. Anyway, to review: Ellie is fine, and it was all to the good because it finally got us the attention of a policeman, which had been rather hard to do. They’ve issued a lost-child alert, or so I am given to understand.”

Ellie broke in. “Mom, the gypsies—” Her slip told me that she was as panicked as I.

“Ellie,” I said. “Did Peter and Annabelle know where you were going? Would they know to get off?”

“It was so stupid. Three trains to go five hundred meters,” Ellie said. “I don’t know—he was talking about the TGV, and Grenoble”—and New York, called Daphne from the background—“I don’t even know if they know our phone numbers.”

“I’m coming to meet you,” I said.

“The police say to go home,” Eleanor said.

“Please tell them off in your best department-chair voice,” I said. “Ellie, do not call George.”

“Leah,” Eleanor said. “I know this has been a lot, of late. I know you’ve been through a lot, but this is out of our hands now.”

“George is their father,” Ellie shouted.

“Leah,” Eleanor said. “I need to ask—”

I pressed the red FERMé button on my phone.

And then, another surprise, quieter, but in its way, no less startling. Before me stood the old Robert, in full. Calm and overly earnest, entirely and unemotionally focused on the task at hand.

“Leah, what shall we do?” Robert asked.

It almost worked. The sudden return of the man I’d married, and fought with, and made love to, and had children with, and wrapped presents with, and held birthday parties with and for, toasted to through one success after another after another after another until there was nothing left to toast with, or to—had this been the man I’d come to Paris with, not in misguided pursuit of, this would be the moment we’d embrace and cry and set about finding these children.