Hidden in Paris (20 page)

Lola gave her a very disapproving look. Althea grabbed a carrot angrily and began peeling it. “You’re not my mother,” she said, not taking her eyes off her task.

Annie wasn’t about to get scared away by this. “Do you?” she insisted.

“Annie and I are quite concerned with the fact that you live on apples and tea,” Lola said hesitantly, in the same tone of voice that never worked on Lia and was not about to get through to Althea. “People need protein and carbohydrates to maintain their health.”

“I’m very healthy.”

“You don’t look it,” Annie barked.

“Fine!” Althea said angrily.

“Don’t take it badly,” said Lola, “it’s just that--”

“I’m not even angry,” Althea said. “I mean hungry.”

“I’ll eat the salad spinner if you’re not both,” Annie said victoriously.

“I’m
not angry
,” Althea said, raising her voice. She looked at Annie defiantly.

“She’s not angry,” Lola echoed in a small voice.

“And what’s so horrible about anger? Is it too ugly for you? The point is, Althea, that if you’re doing something self-destructive under my roof, I think I have every right to know.”

“You’re not my mom,” Althea said again, but coldly this time. She wiped her hands on a towel, got up and left the kitchen, leaving her and Lola to stare at each other.

“Anger’s good,” Annie said, dropping her wooden spoon in the pan. “I’ve got it, Althea’s got it, and you’ve got it too. If you don’t let it flow out, it will fester inside. Look at the Parisians. They bathe in anger. They are very comfortable with it. I’m very comfortable with it!”

“Maybe,” Lola said in a small voice. “Or maybe you’ve lived in Paris too long.”

When she was upset, Annie liked to play scrabble. Lucas had finally understood this through hits and misses. He would come over for dinner and Annie would say “do you want to play scrabble?” and it would end with a fight which had little to do with the game itself, and everything to do with the fact that Annie was upset to begin with and was looking for something to get emotional about. For Annie, this was as close as she would get to therapy. The game was played absurdly, with no respect for the rules. Annie called this bilingual scrabble, and anything went, French, English, misspellings, proper names of people who did not exist. There was no point in trying to make sense of it. The point, he felt, was for Annie to cheat and then get furious as she accused him of cheating. They had barely laid down their first two words when Annie said:

“What are you waiting for? An end to world hunger?”

“Isn’t it your turn to play?”

“I meant with Lola. What is taking you so long to make a move on her?”

“What makes you think I want to?”

Annie moved her scrabble pieces around hastily. “Bat, boot, zoot. Is zoot a word?”

“Possibly in Chinese,” he said, looking up at her from above his reading glasses, searching for signs that she was about to work herself into a tizzy. She was wearing a white T-shirt that looked good on her. Her bare arms were strong and smooth over the table. Scrabble was good for her, like medicine. Also, he liked it when it was just the two of them, like an old couple. “What are you upset about?” he asked.

“What? I’m not upset. Maybe I’m just restless in comparison to her.”

Lola, he thought. Of course Lola. “No one is comparing the two of you,” he said.

Well, I am. I’m comparing. “I’m not
like
Lola. You know, sweet, positive, goody two shoes.” Annie peeled away strands of hair that had fallen over her eyes. “I’m going through a phase of...” She thought for a moment. “I think the word I’m looking for is discontent?”

Lucas studied the board. “That’s a long word. Where are you going to put it?”

“Discontent is how I feel. And this,” she said, laying down the letters Z-O-O-T. one after the other, “is my word.”

Lucas thought, and added A-N-G under Annie’s Z to spell Zang.

“Hey!” she said, her hands on her hips.

“It’s Cantonese for cheater.”

Annie held her face in her hands, her elbows on the table, searching her letters. “I’m just saying that she and I don’t raise our children the same way, that’s all. She doesn’t raise her children, in fact. She lets them grow rampant like... like crab grass. And Lia is rubbing off on Maxence. That weasel actually rolled his eyes to the ceiling when I asked him to help with the dishes last night.”

Lucas arranged his letters. “You can’t control everything.”

“That’s controlling of me? Controlling?” Annie put the word “nasty” on the board. “Lola gets beat up by Lia emotionally and physically and we are all witness to that, my boys included, but Lola never acknowledges it. Maybe she thinks that as long as she doesn’t acknowledge it, I won’t notice it. Lola has such a pattern of...avoidance! That’s the word. A pattern of avoidance.”

“How insightful of you,” Lucas teased.

“Call me Sigmund.”

“She may not like confrontations.”

“Oh no, she doesn’t. Next to her, I probably seem manic.”

Lucas looked up over his reading glasses. “Annie, you
are
manic.”

Annie froze and glowered at him. “Me?”

Lucas pointed his finger at her gently. “You.”

“When am I manic?”

“Most of the time,” Lucas said, and he put down a word, carefully, took a pen and pencil and methodically added twenty-three points to his column.

Annie looked like she was going to yell, or throw the board across the room. Instead, she pushed her letters away and put her head in her hands. “I’m not likable,” she said.

Lucas looked at her dumfounded. He hadn’t meant to make her feel bad. He had meant to state the obvious. He accepted her manic side, liked it in fact, just like he liked every side of her. Her manic side didn’t threaten him in any way. But how to say that and not...He sighed,

“Of course, you are very likable. Manic is the wrong word. I meant hurried. Reactive. Or maybe the word to use is unpredictable. You’re a little bit like having a grenade in the house.”

“So you’re afraid of me?”

“Me, no. Of course not,” he said, though it occurred to him that in many ways, he was. “I was thinking of Lola or Althea, or even the children.”

“Which kids? Not
my
kids?”

Lucas did not like himself very much when he said, “We’re all a little bit afraid of your reactions.”

Annie let out a huge sigh. She got up, sat down again, and then burst into tears.

“I’m a bitch.”

“Of course you’re not, Annie.” Lucas grabbed a box of tissues. “You’re just a little...intense. Where is all this coming from, anyway?”

“Lola told me I was a bitch.”

“Lola?
Told
you?”

“She insinuated. And she’s right. With Johnny, I was pissed most of the time.” Lucas tensed up like he did every time Annie brought up Johnny. He had told himself long ago, had made a pact with himself, to not say anything against Johnny. “I was just being insecure,” Annie continued. She blew her nose; he saw her determination to stop crying. “I was always worried about other women, suspicious. Maybe I don’t have a trusting nature,” she added.

Lucas took Annie’s hand. He felt her sadness. So much could not be said, and so many opportunities to tell her how he felt about Johnny, about her marriage to him, about his death, about the way he chose to conduct his life. So much had never been said that he burned to say. It remained unsaid out of fear. Out of respect for a dead man. Out of a pattern of avoidance. “To the contrary, I think you have a very trusting nature,” he told her, and he meant it.

“I’m frigging frozen in time. I don’t let myself have fun. I don’t even know why,” she said, sobbing.

“There is nothing wrong with wanting things, looking forward to things,” Lucas whispered, marveling at how the conversation had shifted to exactly what he wanted to talk about, what they were never allowed to talk about.

Annie cried softly as Lucas gently rubbed the palm of her hand with his thumb. “I’m so afraid to be disappointed that I don’t know the first thing about how or where to find it,” she said.

“What is
it
?” Lucas whispered.

“Happiness, I guess.”

“Sometimes happiness is staring you right in the face,” Lucas said, looking straight at her.

Annie wiped her tears angrily. She was becoming strong again, willing herself into being strong, detached. But Lucas did not let go of her hand. She would have to let go first. “I don’t just want to talk the talk,” she said. “I want to walk the walk. I find myself wanting more of it for...me.”

“That’s good,” he said.

The phone rang and shattered the moment. Annie sprang to her feet. A moment later, she was handing Lucas the phone.

“It’s the
commissariat de police
. Looks like you’re going to have to postpone losing at scrabble.”

The cemetery had closed hours before. Jared knew precisely where all this was headed, knew it, expected the outcome, and didn’t care. He sat on a stone grave and laid a small parcel wrapped in white paper on the grass next to him. His mother’s grave had not completely settled yet; there was a perceptible line between the grass that grew on her grave and the grass next to it, as though his mother wasn’t entirely convinced she wanted to stay there. He pictured her full of exuberant energy, laughing out loud from wherever she was, laughing the way she used to when he and Sophie were little. Even after his dad was killed, his mom never stopped being strong. She had seemed invincible to him. But when they lost Sophie, his mom lost all her strength, all her joy. He often thought of the relief it must be for his mom, to finally be freed of the weight of her pain.

Before Sophie was sick, and even though their dad was gone and they had no money, things were still happy. On Sundays, there was a roasted chicken and for dessert, pastries, éclairs, always the same. He and his little sister both liked coffee éclairs and their mom liked chocolate. They stuffed the éclairs into their mouths trying to finish first. Their mom would eat slowly, and when they had gobbled up their pastries, she shared her éclair with them.

His mom had wanted so much for Jared to make her proud, and he had. He had felt that craving, had sought the success, the acclaim, the money. But he had wanted it for her, not for himself. He had wanted it to make her happy, but also to reassure her that he was fine, that he had a life purpose.

His mother’s illness they had called old age, but she was too young for old age. There was no cause of death, no deteriorating organ, no cancer, no tumor, no infection, only a heart that got tired of beating. It had begun when she had climbed into bed one day, years ago, and started to forget taking baths or eating. She had given up and he could not blame her. He had moved in with her and had painted her all the way through to her last dying breath. He understood only after her death how much of his work was connected to her, how it was she, not his art, that was his life’s purpose.

He had never been in love. His life did not allow for that kind of attachment, and now he wondered if the strange way he felt, his fascination with Althea, was maybe what love was supposed to feel like. Was love supposed to feel like a macabre obsession? Was he capable of an obsession that wasn’t macabre? He had no map for this. He could clearly see what she was doing to her body. It filled him with anger and at the same time made him want to rescue her. He did not accept his attraction because he did not feel sexually attracted to Althea. She looked sick. Did he see her as his little sister? No it wasn’t that. She was beautiful and looking at her was like being punched in the gut. If there was such a thing as passion without lust, then this was it. Could the lack of lust be an elevated form of love?

Jared unwrapped the white paper parcel and took out a coffee éclair. Sitting on the cold stone, he ate in silence, absorbing the wetness of the air, the smell of distant spring. In the distance, flashlights were advancing in his direction. He was able to make out the silhouette of the two guards, dark against dark. A moment later they were standing, towering over him.

“Monsieur can’t learn to be here when the place is open like everyone else?” the skinny one said.

“No, he is too good for that,” the fat one continued.