A Paris Apartment (37 page)

“Tell me, Marthe, do you normally find it your duty to report on the dalliances of Parisian society?”

“No,” I said and pursed my lips. “But I thought since you were still newlyweds and your wife one of the prettiest women in all of France”—oh how it hurt me to cough out those words—“I thought you might like to know!”

The man smirked and took a few steps toward me.

“Well,” he said and reached for a hand. “She is rather lovely, but I find her beauty no match for yours.”

I was a goner after that one! Between the humiliation of Boldini
painting
another woman and the realization my name meant nothing to Jean-Baptiste, to Jeanne, to their household, I readily accepted what he wanted to give me. Namely, the full breadth of his manhood!

We did the deed quick and dirty on the floor of the parlor, me spending more time staring at the ceiling mirrors than into his face. It was not an altogether terrible experience, and there was a pleasant ninety-second slice of time somewhere amongst the grunting. This was the perfect revenge, I decreed: for Boldini, for Jeanne, for anyone who doubted my ability to improve my station in life. There I was, copulating in the parlor of the most famous woman in all of France! With her husband, no less!

Revenge. So many people are looking for it. So many people exact it. Yet no one ever tells you how empty it is. All this time I thought I’d feel better after putting one over on Jeanne. Is it possible I actually feel worse?

Chapitre LIX

Paris, 7 May 1898

There are delicate ways to state things and not-so-delicate ways. It is my journal, so I choose to be indelicate.

I am pregnant.

Even as I write the words, even as I wrote them one hundred times last night to make my brain believe, they still seem foreign. I never intended for this to happen. I never wanted children. Then again, I’d never taken a second to think about it one way or another.

Alas, here I am. Since the day I turned fifteen, my menses have been more regular than the calendar. When I woke up on a Tuesday morning, expecting, and nothing came, I thought perhaps I had my days mixed up. When it didn’t arrive the next day, or the day after that, I realized something was amiss. I went to the doctor. The position of my cervix and uterus told the story. I was with child.

Of course I immediately started a course of
emménagogues
to entice my late cycle. The girls at the Folies have myriad suggestions for curing irregular periods, but mine was determined to stay away. I even visited a so-called doctor who worked out of a potions shop in Montmartre. He explained his procedures for encouraging menstrual flow and then showed me the required instruments.

“Do you aim to give me an enema?” I shrieked. “Because that’s what it looks like!”

“It requires the same equipment,” he said. Then, noticing the stunned looked on my face asked, “Are you all right?”

“I’m not sure,” I told him.

“What are you thinking?”

“That I’m going to have this child.”

That was that. My fate was sealed.

Dear God, there will be a little person living with me! A helpless person who will require my attentions on a near-constant basis! Rooming with a squalling child cannot be much different than rooming with Marguérite, but there is no chance of this miniature human becoming a contortionist and moving into its own flat!

Marguérite was so thrilled with the news she promised to help in whatever capacity required. Honestly, I think she merely wants a playmate. According to her we can stagger our shifts so someone is always available to care for the baby. Plus we have the baby’s father. Men are horrible child minders, but Boldini could do in a pinch, at least according to Marguérite.

What Marguérite doesn’t know is I haven’t made love to Boldini since I discovered he was painting Jeanne—something to which he has not yet confessed! It was a sexual standoff, a duel. If only I’d relented. If only he had not been so long in Monte Carlo beforehand! Tonight I must rectify the situation. I must lure Boldini into my bed. Even if he is not this baby’s father. I would like the chance for it to be so.

Isn’t this just my luck? All these years I’ve been so careful to use
redingotes anglaises
, the so-called English ridingcoats, insisting even when my partner refused. Yet here I am. The one time I eschewed preventive measures I am struck with child!

There is no use wishing for more caution where caution I did not take. It is over! Done with! It happened, and I have the swelling belly (and breasts!) to show for it. Now is the time for practicality, which means first a romp with Boldini. What I ultimately tell him of this baby’s parentage remains to be seen. Perhaps I will come clean, explain what happened and why. He knows my disdain for Jeanne. He knows he’s kept at least one secret from me! Plus Boldini was away for so long. In all that time I only lay with one other man, and him only once! Frankly, it was quite the heroic effort on my part.

Then again, I do not want to risk Giovanni’s spurning me. However angry he was about
Le Comte
, he could be doubly so now that there’s a child involved. This is why I must lie with him tonight. Perhaps I will tell him the truth. Perhaps I will not. I only need the chance to say either thing. While the most important thing for a woman to have is money, the second most important is options. A lady must have her options.

Chapitre LX

April didn’t sleep on any of her flights despite the fact that Troy insisted on first class and she therefore crossed the Atlantic in an aircraft with fully reclining seats, little cocoon-beds of silence into which everyone but April fell.

Instead she sat upright and sipped wine, read Marthe’s journals, and stared blankly out the window at the nothingness below. As she exited the last plane in San Diego a male flight attendant touched her arm and promised it would all be okay.

April trudged down the gangway and out toward airport security, wondering who might greet her on the other side. It wouldn’t be Troy. “I’ll try to fly in for the funeral but I have a deal to close.” It wouldn’t be her father. “You know I hate to drive, kiddo.” April thought of all the times she returned from college, from living in Paris and in New York, only to muddle through crowds of hugging families on her way out to the taxicab area, where she’d wait in line like a tourist or a business traveler, not someone returning home.

Near the escalators the clamor of travelers intensified. April stopped and peered over the bridge to the “ground transportation” sign below. Around the luggage carousels people huddled as they waited for their bags. They kissed and laughed and a few cried, all of them glad to return to earth and greet the people they loved.

Sighing, April stepped onto the escalator. Then she glanced over and saw, beside baggage claim number two, a lone person. The man wore a T-shirt, board shorts, and a tight smile.

“Brian!” she shouted.

He saluted. April’s eyes filled with tears, and she tumbled down the moving steps, shoving at least two kids, one mom, and an oxygen tank out of her way. (Where was Montesquiou’s cane?) After landing at the bottom, April threw herself into her brother’s arms. He was not a tall man, but Brian felt strong, sturdier than she remembered. He smelled like the ocean.

“Whoa, that is some greeting!” he said, squeezing her tight. This, her little brother. “Either you’re psyched to see me or things have really gone to shit.”

April pulled back, smiling weakly. “Gone to shit”? Yes, yes they had. She pointed to the black mascara imprints now staining his white T-shirt.

“You’re a marked man,” she said. “Sorry about the shirt.”

“It’s cool.” He shrugged. “Tears from April Potter. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Ha. They’re there, all right. They’ve always been there.”

She rubbed her nose with the corner of her cashmere wrap. Standing across from her brother in his frayed shorts, flipflops, and sunglasses, April suddenly felt ridiculously overdressed. It was a land of bikini tops and surfer shirts, and she showed up with high-heeled boots and a concerted effort at accessorizing.

“You look good,” she told him. “Très Californian.”

Brian did look good, precisely because he looked the same: tanned, fit, salt from the ocean smudged near his temples.

“Thanks, Sis,” he said. “And you look skinny.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“Oh. Well. Thanks anyway. Not to worry. I’ve been eating plenty. I’ve taken more than my fair share. “

April thought of all she consumed at the firehouse. She thought of all she consumed later that night. More than her fair share indeed.

“You are definitely
too
skinny,” Brian said. “Emaciated. You have very angular features to begin with, and now you look even taller and sharper and more severe.”

“Severe. Thanks. Way to make me feel like a crone.” She pictured Delphine Vidal then, a person who did skinniness right. “You know, among Parisians I’m considered a ‘bigger girl.’”

“Good thing I’ve never been to Paris. They wouldn’t know what to do with this squatty body,” he said and flexed his calf muscle.

“You would love it there,” April said. “Though no surf. So, shall we go?”

“Your luggage?” Brian pointed to the nearby carousel where a security guard was trying to dislodge someone’s jelly-faced three-year-old from the silver chute before he got pummeled by black wheeled suitcases.

“Luggage? You’re looking at it.” She tapped the Louis Vuitton duffel dangling at her side. “This and my purse. That’s it. I’ve learned to travel light.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I take it you’re not planning to stay long?”

“I can’t. I have to wrap up in Paris. But I’ll be back after that. Promise.”

“Whatever you say, April.” Brian reached out and grabbed her duffel. “Let’s go, Louis Vuitton. It’s time to head home.”

Chapitre LXI

April followed Brian through the automatic airport doors and out into the California sunshine. The glare hit her retinas, burning April’s eyes all the way to the back of her brain. The sun was different here, brighter, more intense.

“Jesus,” she muttered, fishing around her purse for a pair of sunglasses. “It’s so goddamn sunny here.”

“You should work for the Chamber of Commerce,” Brian said and laughed. “Come to San Diego. ‘It’s so goddamn sunny here’!”

“I’m serious. There’s something depraved and very deal-with-the-devil about it.”

“So says the woman fresh in from Paris.”

Paris. Instantly April thought of Luc. Then again, maybe she thought of Luc because they were right then walking by a pack of shame-smokers congregated around a concrete trashcan. Despite the advertised hazards of secondhand smoke, April inhaled as she passed. She missed the familiarity of the smell.

“Good grief, it’s so excessively hot!” April said as they made their way into the parking lot, the sun beating down on her head. “How far away did you park?”

“Not far. Wimp.”

“Hey, I’m wearing boots. I’m also wearing my hair, in other words, a long, heavy, brown blanket draped over my head. I think I’m getting sunburned. How ‘not far’ exactly? I don’t see Betty’s car? You brought the rustmobile, non?”

If in the last twenty years their dad had one thing going for him, it was their neighbors. They paid him to fix things that probably didn’t need fixing. They loaned him lawnmowers and hedge trimmers and probably, April feared, also sometimes cash. The first day of junior year April found a sack of clothes sitting on her bed, courtesy of Betty Wedbush who was the most giving of all the givers.

Mrs. Wedbush (it was still so hard to call her Betty) lived across the street. In addition to ensuring that April maintained some semblance of sartorial coolness, she also generously loaned out the decrepit gold-and-rust Cadillac that otherwise resided in her front yard. It was the car April got her license in. It was the car that dropped her off at the airport when she left for college, when she said good-bye almost forever. April always thought Betty was holding out to be a replacement mom. She felt kind of sad that Mrs. Wedbush never had a real shot.

“Non?” Brian said and grinned over his shoulder. “Well,
non
worries, princess. You will not be subjected to the Betty-mobile. We drove. Hope my Subaru is an acceptable mode of transportation.”

April should’ve known he’d bring his own car. The drive down from Northern California was long but had many prime surf breaks. April smiled when she noticed that his was the only car in the lot with a surfboard strapped to the top.

“So where’s Allie?” April asked as she stepped inside the wagon. The heat from the black vinyl seats singed her hand. Brian threw her bag on top of a wetsuit April hoped was not actually wet.

“At home with Dad.”

“He didn’t want to come?”

Brian turned on the car.

“Airports,” he said and revved the engine. “Not Dad’s style.”

Soon they were through the airport gates and cruising along the harbor. The water glittered in the sunlight. In the distance April spotted a cruise ship, an aircraft carrier, and several small fishing vessels. Having grown up a few blocks from the ocean, it was hard to believe she’d spent months without going near the sea. Brian never could’ve handled it.

As they crossed over the bridge into Coronado, April glanced down at the boats beneath them, then over to the shore and the island’s boxed little streets, its boxed little houses. Her childhood home would still be there, same as always: pink, square, and with a patchy yellowed lawn. It was a time capsule compared to the multi-million-dollar, shingled, lot-consuming behemoths constantly popping up around it. The Potter residence remained unchanged in thirty years. Not as long as Marthe’s apartment, but the woman had competition.

The car eased down off the bridge and onto Coronado. The place was as utopian-looking ever. The cute houses, the Americana streets, all sequestered from downtown’s steel gaze leering from across the bay.

“So how’s Allie?” April asked as they stopped at the time-suck of a light at Orange Avenue.