Beautiful Americans (27 page)

Well,
I’ve
already seen the Eiffel Tower,
I think, but hold my tongue.
And I never got to see the other Statue of Liberty. I was practicing for auditions the whole time
, I remember bitterly. Our trip to New York in eighth grade had been a disaster—my mom decided she couldn’t handle me living so far away so young, after a brutal week of trying out for New York school.

It’s not like the Eiffel Tower is anything special, just a bunch of twisted metal that Parisians used to say was ugly when it was built for the World’s Fair a million years ago.

To my mom, though, it
is
special. She takes about a hundred photos of us in front of the thing—Vince and Livvy at the Eiffel Tower, Mom and Dad at the Eiffel Tower, Livvy and Brian at the Eiffel Tower, and on and on. I feel guilty being so resentful of doing the things she wants to do. My mom is obviously having an amazing time so far, and to be fair, this is the first vacation she’s had since that New York trip.

After Brian’s shrieking at the top of the Eiffel Tower gets us all kicked out for good, I strike a deal with my parents. Vince and I will hang out with Brian doing things that are more to his liking, such as long walks and eating sandwiches on the quiet banks of the Seine while bundled up in our jackets, and my parents can go explore Paris on their own.

Brian can’t handle the crowd scenes of places like the Louvre or Les Halles a week before Christmas, and to tell you the truth, neither can I.

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” I check with Vince.

“I just want to be with you,” he whispers, wrapping me up in his arms.

My parents are now gratefully and energetically touring Paris by themselves, showing us a slideshow of everywhere they go on their digital camera when they return to the hotel at night. I urge them to wander Paris, let themselves discover the wonders of the city slowly, patiently, but their pictures prove that they are pouncing on Paris with a voracious appetite. My mom brings to her trip to Paris the same rabid organization that she brings to Brian’s specialized education, to my dancing and the UCLA scholarship. Her Lonely Planet Paris guidebook is carefully flagged and highlighted to all the places she can’t miss—the Musée d’Orsay, Notre Dame, the Moulin Rouge (though not, of course, to see the risqué revue—just to take a photo of the windmill on the top), and everywhere else all the tourists go.

The French Lycée operates much like Thomas’s classes at the Sorbonne when it comes to the Final Comp. Rather than have class this week, they give us all week off to study on our own. I have to say I haven’t been studying as hard as I could be, even before my family and Vince got here. Something about the offer from the Paris Underground Ballet Theatre made me not as nervous about the test. I spend the free time this week hanging out with Vince and Brian each day, and meeting up with my parents at night for dinner. I tell my mom I have dance class every day at three, but really I take the #7 metro down to the Place d’Italie and dance my heart out learning Henri’s intense new routines.

Vince is too polite and too good a friend of Brian’s to say so, but I can tell he wishes we could be alone. It would be more romantic, but at the same time, I like that Brian is there. Sometimes I wish Brian and I could be alone, wish that we could be rid of Vince. Brian’s a good listener and certainly understands more than people give him credit for. There’s so much that I want to tell him.

“What do you want to do today?” Vince asks me on Wednesday morning when I get to the hotel. My parents have already left for the day.

“I don’t care,” I answer. “It’s not like we’re doing anything. Just the same thing every day.” It comes out more bitterly than I meant it to, but I’m too weary to spend another quiet day alone with Brian and Vince, wandering around the wealthier arrondissements and stopping for coffees and sandwiches and bathroom breaks.

“Livvy,” Vince says, careful to speak in a low voice so Brian wouldn’t hear, “you were the one that suggested that we hang out with Brian. You yourself said you preferred it.”

“I know,” I grumble.

Hanging out with Brian isn’t the problem. The problem is Vince. All day, I feel like we run through the things we have to say to each other really quickly, usually before lunch time. Then every moment is agonizing after that, trying to have a good time. If we could go to a museum, it might provide us with some conversational fodder.

We leave the hotel after pulling Brian away from French cartoons in the mid-morning. As we have all the other mornings, we find a pastry shop and get breakfast. This one is full of locals, lingering over buttery croissants and coffee and reading the papers. The blustery winter day keeps people inside for much longer than perhaps they would normally spend. We’re lucky to get a table.

“Livvy!” Vince exclaims after we place our order. “You drink coffee now?”

I’d ordered a café crème without even realizing it. I miss the Café Dumont, where I haven’t been in forever. I’m longing for Alex’s bouncy cattiness and Zack’s acidic banter. I miss PJ’s wry smile and easy companionship, the way she refrains from inquisitiveness and yet focuses her unflinching attention to whomever she’s with.

“Oh, yeah,” I say, not sure why I ordered it. “I wanted to try it. Alex, Zack, and PJ are always getting them. I want to try one, I guess.”

“You’re not going to like it,” Vince tells me. “Trust me.”

“How do you know?” I say, suddenly defensive. “Just because you don’t like coffee, I won’t either?”

“Whoa, Liv, calm down,” Vince says.

We sit in silence. The waitress brings over our food and drinks. Vince is right. The foam on top of the café crème tastes good, but the coffee underneath it is gross. I pour a bunch of sugar in and take a thick gulp so Vince won’t be able to tell he was right.

“You should invite some of your new friends to hang out with us,” Vince pressures me. “It would be fun to meet them.”

“Oh,” I defer. “They’re all really busy studying for the Final Comp.” Though I know Alex and Zack would be over the moon to get a good look at Vince after hearing about him for so long, Brian’s condition would surely weird them out, no matter how hard they tried. I don’t want to risk the discomfort of us all hanging out together.

At the mention of my friends at the Lycée, I feel distracted wondering whether Alex has worked her way back into George’s good graces and worrying about her if she has not. I wonder about poor Zack, and what’s been getting him down lately.

“Hey,” Vince says after a while. “It’s cool if you want to drink coffee. Everyone else in the world does it. I just noticed it was something different about you.”

Brian chews his Danish. I know he can tell things are tense between us. I feel really, really bad all of a sudden.

“Hey, Bri,” I say to him. “How’s your breakfast?”

He takes a while to answer. “Good.”

“That’s good. You want to walk down by the river today, watch the boats?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds great,” I say. I look at Vince.

“I’m sorry, babe,” I say, taking his hand. “I’m just stressed about the Final Comp.”

“No worries,” Vince says. “We’re gonna have a great day. How’s your café crème?”

“Disgusting,” I laugh.

“Thought so,” he says. “I know you too well.”

 

By the time Friday finally comes, I’m actually looking forward to the test and going to school. Everyone’s a little hyper from lack of sleep and too much caffiene. We’re all wondering if the rumors are true, that you’ll really be sent home if you don’t pass the test. There’s a nervous energy in the air as we wait by our lockers for the bell to ring and Mme Cuchon to let us into the classroom.

“Good luck,” I tell Alex, giving her a hug. “You’ll be great.”

“Oh, I know,” Alex says. “I’ve been speaking French—”

“Since you were a baby?” Zack finishes the familiar sentence for her. “Don’t blow this, Alex.”

“
You
don’t blow this,” Alex sneers. “I have to go pee. See you guys in there.”

“Seriously, Livvy, she didn’t study at all,” Zack confides, keeping his head down. “What if she fails?”

“She won’t fail,” I assure him. “You’re sweet to worry, but Alex always keeps her head above water.” I’m feeling surprisingly confident. Last night after rehearsal, Henri told me I was in the running for a lead in a spring dance performance. The formal auditions were going to be held after the New Year, but he told me he had been thinking of me.

“It’s got to be weird to have your parents here,” PJ remarks as we file into the classroom, “not to mention Vince.” PJ avoids looking at me, but I feel accused by her mention of him.

“It’s not weird, it’s great,” I answer her. “Everyone I hold dearest in the world is in Paris right now—why would that be weird?”

As Mme Cuchon passes out the scantrons and the blue books for the test, I think for the first time how I know nothing about PJ’s own relationship to her family. I don’t even know if she has any brothers or sisters. How odd. Even Alex, in all her bravado, has told us of the troubles she has with her mom, and of course her father, who she jokingly refers to as “The Invisible Man.” But PJ might as well be an orphan for all that we know about her life at home in Vermont.

 

Wearing my pants from Zara again, this time with a grey turtleneck sweater, I meet my parents for a celebratory dinner at their hotel. The Final Comp flew by, and I think I’m finally ready to tell them that I’ve joined the Underground, as I’ve learned is the way everyone refers to the troupe.

I burn with embarrassment at all the other Americans in the dimly lit restaurant, ordering hamburgers and fries with extra ketchup and demanding to have more ice in their water glasses. Even though I’ve definitely been known to order extra ketchup sometimes, too.

“Oh, Livvy,” my mom says, her cheeks flushed red with happiness. “You must love it here so much.”

“I do!” I tell her brightly. “I really, really do.” This is a perfect time to tell them, a perfect time to segue into my news that I’m staying indefinitely, as long as the dance troupe will have me. Not just till June, but through the summer, and until I’m too old or too injured to dance anymore. That’s how much I love Paris, I will tell them. That’s how much I long to stay.

“It really has been so lovely to be here with you,” my mom gushes. I want to roll my eyes, since we’ve barely seen each other since she arrived, but I also know how much this all means to her. She so rarely gets to do the things she wants to do.
Especially since I left for Paris,
I think with a cold flash of guilt.

Just do it
, I think, unable to even look at Vince. My mom is one thing, she’ll be disappointed, yes, but also proud of me and my dancing. She’ll relish telling her friends and the other parents at Brian’s school about her talented daughter the ballerina in Paris. Vince, on the other hand, will look even more the fool, waiting years for his girlfriend to never arrive at UCLA.

Just before I can say anything, my mom starts to cry. My dad looks at her, then back at me with a horrible grimace. “We want you to be happy—” he starts.

“Oh, Livvy, my baby,” my mom says, pulling me into her arms.

“What’s going on?” I say loudly, looking at Brian with alarm. Is someone sick? Is something wrong with Brian? With mom? With me, and I don’t even know it yet?

My mom’s voice cracks, “We want you to come home.”

I look around at all of them, and then back at my mom. “What?”

My mom covers her face with her hands. “Livvy, it’s been just awful without you. Brian’s been steadily declining since you left—his teachers think he’s been horribly depressed without you.”

I think of Brian happily slurping sticky lemon sugar from his crèpe as he, Vince, and I strolled around the Jardin de Tuileries. “He seems okay to me,” I protest. Right now, he’s humming and staring at his plate.

“That’s because he’s with you,” Vince says, speaking up for the first time.

“Stop talking about Brian like he’s not right here!” I snap at Vince. “How would you know, anyway? You’ve been in L.A.!”

“It’s true,” my mom says sadly, wiping at her smeared makeup with the white cloth napkin. “We’re not doing good at home, baby, not without you.”

It’s then that I feel it, all the energy flowing out of my body like a balloon deflating. It’s sort of like when I step down off the points of my shoes and walk off the dance floor on my flat feet.
The show’s over
, my shoes clunk awkwardly as my body winds down from the routine.

Now it’s Paris, the dance troupe, my new friends—the show’s over, time to go home.

It was a show,
I realize regretfully.
This was never my real life. I never belonged here, as much I always wanted to.

“Okay,” I say finally, refusing to look at any of them except Brian. “I’ll come home at the end of the term.”

Why did I even bother coming to Paris at all? Why would they let me fall in love with something
, I think with a hard lump in the back of my throat,
if they were just going to take it away?

“I better go tell my friends,” I say, putting my napkin on the table. “They’re all going to be really disappointed.” I actually just want to go back to Mme Rouille’s apartment and be alone for a while. But I want my mom to know that there are other people in my life besides the ones sitting at this table.

“Livvy, wait!” my mom cries.

“Just let her go,” my dad advises. “Just let her go for one night.”

Too Many Belles at the Ball

A
fter the Final Comp, my feet drag all the way to the train station. The train feels like it is hurtling at breakneck speed toward Bordeaux, then Perigeaux. I drink several cups of bad coffee from the café car on both trains, feeling like I need to sharpen my senses, stay on track, do all the right things when I arrive.