Hidden in Paris (5 page)

“Peel these oranges, will you.”

Althea curled up on a kitchen chair, took the sharp knife her mother handed her, and began cutting a shallow groove in the peel around each orange. She detached each peel with her thumb and laid it on the table, one orange peel spiral after another, and racked her brain for something interesting to say. “Sandra told me she overheard I wouldn’t receive a bonus this year. Anything she can say to upset me.”

“Sandra? Is that the girl with the gorgeous skin?” her mom asked.

“That’s the girl who’s jealous of me, you know, because of her obesity.”

Pamela grabbed the orange peels from the table and dumped them into the trashcan. Althea’s mind raced, madly searching for what in that story had displeased her mother. She handed Pamela the last peeled orange and laid both hands flat on the kitchen table, the knife set vertically between her hands. There had been no such exchange with Sandra; in fact, she had never spoken to her in five years at the company. Sandra was just a person in a cubicle. Althea was here to give her mother a reason for living by swallowing her food and bringing her the exterior world. But she felt so disconnected from the exterior world herself that she had to make things up as she went or there would truly be no point in her coming here week after week. “Sandra has no self-control with food. It’s tragic!” she said.

“But she has such a lovely face!” Her mom always sided against her, defending perfect strangers.

“She’s a backstabber,” Althea protested weakly.

“Everyone is a backstabber to you.”

Pamela dipped the raw duck into a casserole where margarine and oil had begun to bubble up and turn brown. Grease particles exploded around the stove. Althea recoiled in her chair.

“How’s that ex of yours behaving these days?” Pamela said. “He could be spreading nasty rumors about you.”

“Tom was a loser. You were so right about him.”

“I told you it wouldn’t last,” her mom said, delighted.

It was true that pretend-Tom had to be dumped. It was getting too pretend-serious, and Althea was running out of plot for that character. The break up gave her an excuse to skip a few visits to her parents while she grieved the imaginary relationship. Those few weeks without the dread of the parental visit had been a relief. She had felt lighter at first, but then heavier than ever when she realized her parents did not feel the urge to call or visit her. Were they too depressed, too deadened or too selfish to bother themselves with her wellbeing? For as long as she could remember, it had been her job to worry about theirs.

At lunch, Althea devoured everything and flooded her mom with the required compliments about her cooking. Twice during lunch, Althea excused herself and went to the bathroom to vomit. When she got back to the table, flushed, neither parents lifted their gazes from the TV set.

Chapter 4

If Annie rented out three rooms, she’d make enough to cover all her expenses. Renting out the fourth room would be gravy. It solved so many problems, it was a thing of beauty. No need to sell the house, no need to move, no need to work, no need to go back to school. And like Lucas would probably say—and she could hear him from here—no need to go out of the house ever again. Her plan would keep her financially afloat, and terrifyingly busy, which was the name of the game. As a bonus, the plan would freak Lucas out. A thing of beauty indeed. The plan wasn’t without a glitch. She would be forced to deal with actual people. Actual people invading her space. That nagging thought kept buzzing about her head but she waved it away angrily like she would a mosquito.

In the kitchen, she adjusted the angles of the grow lights over the seedlings. Her chest fluttered with anxiety, her brain on overdrive. Could this be done? It had to be done. Had to. In her head, she rehearsed what she would tell Lucas. Trying to virtually convince him helped her convince herself. The fact that he would be against it fueled her determination. There would be people, yes, people. Strangers, in her home. Didn’t she used to be gregarious? What had changed? Was this the new her? The permanent her? Strangers would be fine. Just fine.

The first miniature tomato leaves were unfolding already. She had grown vegetables even when Johnny was alive. She liked to get her hands in the dirt, a primeval compulsion of hers she had not discovered until adulthood. Johnny had loved to poke fun at her ordering of rare seeds in the dead of winter, at her schlepping of store-bought soil and organic fertilizer. Later, in the summer, he’d say, “Could you pass the fifty euro tomato slices please.”

Growing the seedlings was her way of fighting winter blues. Tomatoes, especially, gave her a sense of hope. Tomatoes meant summer, sunlight, heat, the children home from school for nearly three months. She clipped a few leaves with her nails. The scent of tomato leaves suddenly threw her back to a few summers ago, her on her knees picking tomatoes in the garden. She was tired, hot, and dirty from the gardening but loving it, loving being eight months pregnant, with two little kids running around, loving living in France in her beautiful house, but furious at Johnny for being gone all the time, for not helping more. Johnny had been nearly impossible to fight with. He was the kind of man who could charm you out of wanting to kill him. But that day, she had had it. He was gone on a seminar for the weekend, again. This combined with all the evenings when he didn’t come back from work until late in the night. She was tired of being a single mom and tired of his excuses. Yet she remembered her anger at him transforming to joy when he surprised her by arriving in the garden dressed in a white cotton shirt and cream linen pants.

“I remember you,” she had said. “You’re my husband, the one supposed to be at a seminar all weekend.”

“I’m blowing it off.”

“You are?”

“I felt like being with you.”

Oh those sweet words. But not this time. No, this time she was mad. “How come you’re dressed so fancy? You look suspiciously gorgeous.”

Johnny had lifted her, taken her in his arms, tipped her backwards and planted a kiss on her lips. “You’re the gorgeous one.”

She had tilted her neck back to be kissed there and whined. “I’m fat.”

Johnny whispered in her neck. “You’re pregnant. What? Didn’t anyone tell you?”

“Pregnant? I thought it was the damned French food,” she had moaned. “I hate the French.”

He puts his hands all over her. “I like to have yummy things to hold on to.”

In the light of her bio bulbs, Annie shivered. She cleaned up the dirt around the pots, added the emulsion of fish and kelp, and wiped her hands on her jeans. Her fat jeans, without the excuse of being pregnant. She wasn’t exactly morbidly obese; maybe thirty pounds over her ideal weight, but even her ideal weight was unacceptably plump by Parisian standard. The chance of her finding someone, a man, so to speak, who’d be into her the way she looked, was, unlike her, pretty slim. Not that she was looking. Besides, this was Paris. Every woman out here was more put-together, more flirtatious, and more self-confident than she was.

She contemplated the neat little rows of seedlings. At least something in this kitchen was growing in height rather than width. These days, she felt a different kind of kinship with her house: she identified with it. Like her house, she badly needed some T.L.C. Like her house, it required just the right kind of person to see the beauty within. Like her house, she appeared to stand strong, but cracks were appearing everywhere. Like her house, it felt that just below the surface, everything could erupt or unravel without notice.

Ten years into the remodel, the house was greatly improved, livable, full of charm, but still falling apart at the seams in too many places. Even the plumbing was antique, though not in the noble sense of the word. But Annie didn’t mind the imperfections. Her house was like a demanding child, and she was going to love that child, take care of that child and above all else, accept it just the way it was, leaky plumbing and all.

The question was: would her tenants share her taste for charm and whimsy over modern comfort? Her decision to not rent rooms to French people had been immediate. She’d had enough of their cigarettes, and their complaints. Complaining in France, as she had discovered over the years, had nothing to do with negativity.
Au contraire
, it was the sign of a discriminating mind. Complaining was an art form here. Her house was her turf, and she intended to remain the complainer
En Chef
. Not only that, but a French or even a European tenant would have all those annoying rights, whereas she would have no problem kicking out a fellow American if things didn’t work out. And because of the language, renting out rooms to Americans was the logical thing to do.

She had feverishly typed numbers on her calculator all morning. She needed three tenants to make the money work. She had four rooms she could rent out, but could do with three tenants. She was also sure of one other thing. They had to be women. She wasn’t sure she liked women strangers so much better than men strangers, but women felt safer as far as having them under her roof and in contact with her boys. She had boasted to Johnny once, “I can beat the shit out of any woman, if need be.”

“Or given the opportunity,” he had suggested.

So maybe she had been antisocial even before Johnny was gone? Had she been less angry then? Her mind was teeming with images of perfect tenants. Why did they all look like herself, plump, in their late thirties, dowdily dressed, hair troll-like? The ideal woman would be single, of course. Not an adventurer. Maybe she had a child. The thought of additional children in her home reassured her. Kids running around, that was the salt of the earth. In her head, she was composing an ad, the kind of ad that would appeal to just the right person. A woman in need was something she could wrap her mind around. Not someone too needy, but someone vulnerable. Someone gentle. There had to be women out there looking for a chance to start fresh, and not everyone was the fighter that she was.

She would open her home, help them out. It would keep her busy, and if it all worked out, this spring, her tomato seedlings would find their home in the backyard again. But first, she had to face Lucas.

“Well, of course this is indeed the worst idea I have ever heard,” Lucas said. “
Une très mauvaise idée
.” He coughed, took out a handkerchief and dabbed his eyes. A real-life handkerchief, Annie wondered in amazement. Lucas recouped, put on his reading glasses and ceremonially opened his menu. “I’m told the braised
foie gras
is divine,” he said.

They were sitting at one of the most sought-after tables at Gourmet des Ternes, a restaurant as expensive as it was exclusive, and one
of the perks of having Lucas as a friend. At the next table, quintessentially chic Parisian women chatted as they ate. Annie stared down at her white blouse for stains and realized the last wash had shrunken it a bit and her boobs were threatening to burst out. They very well might before the end of the meal. The waiter took their order with the manner of a funeral director. Lucas matched his tone, prompting Annie to stuff her mouth with too much bread. When the waiter left, she spoke with her mouth full. “For months now, you’ve been telling me I need to do something about my financial situation, and now that I do, you’re pissed.”

Lucas stooped as though he carried France’s national debt on his shoulders. “I said do
something
. Not do
anything
. Strangers are going to invade our—your life, and once they’re here, living here, you won’t have any way to get rid of them.”

Annie swallowed her bread and held her chin high. “I’ll select them very carefully.”

“On the phone?
Carefully
on the phone?”

“I can tell a lot about people on the phone. I’m pretty perceptive.”

Lucas shrugged for the tenth time in the conversation; a very French expression of disapproval combined with exasperation, adding to that shrug a grunt and an eye roll for added weight.

“I am. Don’t patronize me.”

“
C’est une très mauvaise idée,
” Lucas said, almost desperately.

The appetizers arrived, crudités for him, and for her, foie gras and another half a pound on each thigh. She watched Lucas eat and had to hide a smile. Lucas was slightly inbred, but in a good way. He wasn’t bad looking at all. He had style, definitely. He was tall, lanky, and awfully proper. On paper, he was a catch, but he gave out that subtle vibe, an interesting mix of womanizer and gay-in-the-closet, a type found a lot in Paris.

Lucas had been Johnny’s good friend, and she had known Lucas for twelve years now. But it was only since Johnny’s death that Lucas had become a friend to her. When he was Johnny’s friend, she had mistrusted him. Too well dressed, too blue blooded, a playboy who had never married and wasn’t committed to anyone in particular. And then there was the politeness, the careful diction, the insistence on kissing her hand like she was the frigging queen of England, and all those big words, which she now realized were not an affectation. Was it his fault he’d had a semi-aristocratic upbringing? But now that they were friends, the other side of Lucas had revealed itself: the humor, the hilarious naiveté, the patience, the unwavering dependability, and what she valued most, the blunt honesty.

Lucas lived alone in an atrociously expensive apartment in the seventeenth arrondissement. Old Madame Dubois cooked his meals and pressed his laundry, as she had done for the last twenty years. Lucas had love interests, but too many of them. His excuse was that he was forever searching, relentlessly hunting the perfect woman. The relationships lasted long enough for him to regale Annie with stories that involved mystical themes such as his sex drive and the size of his penis—large, allegedly.

“And how are you planning on finding lodgers?”

“I ran the ad in Chicago, L.A., and Cincinnati papers.”

“Americans!” he moaned, “
Pourquoi
?”

“Chicago because of the Bulls, Los Angeles because of the Lakers, and Cincinnati because of the Reds. I had to start somewhere.”

“This is doomed. Doomed.”

Reminding herself that this was actually a fight, Annie took the high road for once. They were, after all, in an exclusive restaurant. She made her voice calm but firm.

“You’ve always been very supportive. I need you to help me make this work. I’ve made up my mind.”

Lucas’s pale blue eyes were sad for a moment. He brought the fork to his mouth, chewed slowly, and said, “You and the boys could come and live with me. You could rent out the house until it sells.”

Calm but firm
, she thought, then she yelped, “Three active boys and me, your sloppiest friend, living on top of each other in your annex of the Louvre?” To demonstrate her sloppiness, Annie made a big gesture that tipped her precious glass of Château Margaux. The red wine had barely hit the white table cloth when three waiters materialized, one to fill her glass, one to place a napkin over the injured tablecloth, and the third possibly to serve as a kind of visual shield. An instant later, they had disappeared.

For a moment, Lucas seemed to consider the image of Annie and her boys ransacking his apartment. “If your house sells as well as it should, you could rent a two-bedroom outside Paris and live reasonably well on a small income.”

“Outside Paris!
La banlieue
?”

“My dear, have you become one of us Parisian snobs?” Lucas expertly weaved crudités onto his silver fork and added, “That of course takes into consideration reimbursing all your credit cards and the backlog of electricity and telephone. I was thinking, perhaps a translating job, something that would allow for a flexible schedule.”

“Translating? In the suburbs?” She had spoken too loudly. The women at the next table looked at her ever so slightly, then looked away.

“A snob indeed.” Lucas said.

Annie felt her eyes moisten. She hated that about herself. She got so frigging teary. “My house is my life and you know that.”