Paris Was the Place (20 page)

“Do you know why I never want people in any of my stories at bed, just animals?” Pablo asks. I can’t tell if I’m supposed to laugh. “I only want animals in the stories because I don’t want anything scary to happen to people I know.”

“I think you’re smart to do it that way.”

“Very smart,” Macon repeats as we walk toward the cheetahs.

“Did you know I learned to blow air up my nose with my mouth?”

“Oh, Pablo,” Macon says.

“I can do it! I can do it! Watch me.”

The cheetah enclosure is bigger than anything the poor peacocks could dream of, with low-limbed scrub and river rocks to bask on in the sun. But even this feels too small. A cheetah needs open plains and rivers and miles to roam. Pablo stands as close as he can to the moat and stares at a cheetah, and the cheetah stares back.

“The cat’s not moving,” Macon says. “It’s made of stone. It can’t be real.”

“It freezes,” Pablo says without looking up at his father. “Until it sees prey, and then it pounces.” The big cat leaps to a rock above the moat like it’s trying to attack something up there—a piece of wood or the fake rabbit. It’s so close now we can read its spots.

“That’s it!” Pablo yells. “That’s how he gets his prey!”

“He’s beautiful,” I say.

“Every cheetah has different spots,” Pablo says. “There aren’t any cheetahs with the same pattern.”

“How far can a cheetah jump, Pablo?” I ask.

“Very, very far,” he says with certainty.

Has one ever tried to jump this moat? Because it looks so easy to escape. I turn to Macon and whisper, “I wish they were all in the wild, where they belong.” Macon smiles, and I want just one quick kiss.

Pablo runs ahead of us around a small hill inhabited by birds. We catch up with him at a sign that reads
MOUFLONS, MARKHORS, ET VULTURES
. Then we head to the snack bar. “He’s pretty amazing,” I say.

“Yeah.” Macon smiles. “It’s a weird thing to have people tell me about my child. I wish I could take credit. I wish I could say every bit of him is my DNA. But I’d be lying.”

“And you never lie.”

“I don’t.”

“He is so together.”

“You mean even though Delphine and I have done our best to screw him up by divorcing and living together, he seems okay?”

“Exactly.”

“It’s luck. Or maybe a great deal more of parenting than I ever knew is just about showing love. Delphine doesn’t approve of us, you know. I told her she could go fuck herself and her boyfriend, Gabriel, too.” He smiles.

“You could have said something nicer.”

“I’ve tried nice with her. She thinks we are moving too fast. I’ve thought about it. I think fast is okay, if you agree. I am unwilling to lie to make her feel better. There’s too much to be done in a day and not enough time to lie.”

“Fast is good if you make sure to call the other person every few days. Because last week we were two people who’d made love in La Napoule more times than I could count who were then separated by a very long phone line.” I’m trying to trust him. Trying to stay at the zoo with him and not go far away in my mind.

We catch up to Pablo at a small crowd of kids watching a mime twist balloons into animal shapes. The man hands Pablo a miniature blue dachshund. He brings it to me. “Daddy told me you woke up in California once and a mountain lion was eating your dog.”

“Daddy told you this?” I forgot I’d told Macon this story. “It’s true. It was horrible.”

The story goes that my father brought a cocker spaniel puppy with him when he moved back in with us. Luke and I left the dog outside by accident when we went to town on our bikes. We rode into the yard an hour later, and there was blood and most of the head was gone, but you could make out the puppy’s spine. Mom sat on the steps with her face in her hands and cried. Dad yelled at everyone. Then he cried, too.

I cried for the puppy, but first I cried for my mother, because I knew how much she’d missed Dad when he was gone and how she’d worked to keep things together at the house. I thought I knew what the puppy meant for her—some kind of symbol of Dad’s return. I hadn’t separated from her yet. I still believed she and I swam in the same water. I thought I felt all the things that she felt.

Pablo and Macon and I eat hot dogs at the snack bar and drink warm Coke from paper cups filled with crushed ice. Then we head out of the gates toward the metro station. “What I really want to do,” Pablo says, “is count to infinity.”

“You’re getting smart on me.” Macon squeezes Pablo’s hand tighter.

“I’ve been practicing.” He counts out loud while we walk past the lake toward Porte Dorée. It takes him longer than I thought it would to get to one hundred, and he skips ninety-nine. I want to hug him when he finishes, or hug Macon and say, Look at us! We’re talking about infinity on our way out of the zoo—can you believe this? A portal into the world of children. It’s been here all along, but I’ve never had access.

Pablo reminds me of Luke when he was a little boy—his upturned nose, the smooth skin under his eyes. We stand outside the station and the good-byes come fast. It’s quicker for me to walk home than to take a train. So I’ll head to the river on the Quai de Bercy, past the park there. But I want more time with both of them, more assurance from Macon about what we’re doing. I kneel and say good-bye to Pablo and
get a quick hug, which he gives so naturally—arms open wide, as if we’ve always hugged and known each other like this. Then that’s it. That’s all. Pablo jumps into his father’s arms, and they wave at me. Macon turns and walks down the stairs into the metro station, and they’re gone.

H
E CALLS
the next morning. “Where can I find you tonight? When can I see you?”

“This is what I was talking about.” I smile. “This invention known as the telephone. This is progress.”

He’s outside my building at four o’clock. I run down and let him in. He presses me against the mirror at the back of the elevator and kisses my neck and eyelids. We get inside the apartment before he lifts my T-shirt over my head and unzips my jeans. My clothes are off before we make it to the bedroom, where we stay for hours.

It’s important to have him here, where I live, where I’m most myself. It makes what’s between us real. I don’t want to know what time he has to be home. I can’t figure out how the operation works over there in Chantilly. I’m so hungry I finally sit up in bed.

“I’m starving.” It’s way past dinnertime.

“Tell me what you have in the fridge.” He kisses me and stands.

“Very little. But wait, there’s chicken. I was supposed to be roasting a chicken today.”

“Where there’s chicken, there’s often potato.” He steps into his jeans.

“And I may even have spinach.”

“I’ll conduct an investigation.”

“I didn’t know you cooked.”

“There are many things you don’t know about me.”

“More wives? More children?”

“Not funny.”

When I walk into the kitchen, he’s leaning against the counter barefoot, chopping garlic. He kisses me on the mouth. “We’re going to make my grandfather’s chicken-potato stew. Do you have nutmeg and tomato?”

I reach for the bowl of cherry tomatoes by the sink. “Tomatoes.” I find nutmeg in the narrow cupboard next to the oven. He cleans the bird and dresses it, then heats the skillet and throws the garlic and potatoes and tomatoes in. When they’ve stewed he spreads it all over the chicken and places the casserole in the oven.

“It’s a dish they ate all the time in Estonia.” He opens the cupboard and pulls down two white bowls. “Do you believe in love?”

I’ve lived alone in Paris for over seven months, and no one except Sara and Luke has ever cooked a meal with me in this kitchen. I’m trying to keep up with how fast Macon’s moving. I’m sort of delirious. “My greatest surprise,” he says, “is that my marriage dissolved. And that I didn’t have the strength to fight for it.”

I don’t want to talk about his marriage. I want to eat dinner and make love again. I smile at him and nod and go take a shower. Then I put on my mother’s kimono. When I come back into the kitchen, he’s peeking into the oven.

“It’s ready. Bubbling.” He reaches in with the oven mitts and pulls out the casserole. “It’s very hard to explain divorce to Pablo.”

“I wish people married for life. I really do. But I’m glad you didn’t.” I lean over his shoulder. He spoons stew into each bowl.

“I never considered divorce until the very end,” he says. “I’m not how I appear. I’m serious about the vows. I’m serious about you.”

I smile. I can’t help it. What he says makes me very happy. He follows me to the couch. “The only thing this stew is missing is anchovies. My grandfather used to fish them an hour north of Tartu. Big schools of them. Sometimes you could grab them with your hand. When he was tired of catching them, he would drive home and chop them and add them to my grandmother’s chicken.”

We drink red wine, and the meat is tender and falls away from my fork. There’s a warm trace of nutmeg. The potatoes are brown and slightly crispy on the outside. My mother’s kimono is one of the few things I have of hers. After she died, my father let the church-women come and clean out her closets. I haven’t been able to forgive my dad for this. I was lucky I already had the kimono on permanent loan in Oakland, pink with bright tangerines and deep blues running
through the lighter-blue origami flowers. It smells like my mother—like green grass and lemon—and also a little like a woman in Japan we’ll never know.

“You’re not wearing any clothes underneath.”

“This is true.” I touch his forehead with my hand. Then I bend toward him and he opens the kimono and places his hand gently on my stomach. He reaches to kiss me on the mouth.

But then he leans back against the couch. “Is this crazy for me to be here? What am I doing?”

I wrap the blanket around myself. “It’s too difficult?” He’s not going to turn back now? “Should you go? Tell me this is okay?”

“It’s simple when I’m here. It’s so easy to be with you. But it’s hard to explain to Pablo where I go. I’m abandoning him.”

“I know what it’s like to have a father who left, so I can’t tell you anything about it that will make you feel better. I hated it when my father was gone.”

“Pablo says he won’t go to sleep until I tuck him in every night. We have songs we sing in a certain order. There is a way he likes to have his back rubbed.”

“Right now he would probably like his back rubbed.”

“Right now.”

“You should go.”

“No, I should stay. Delphine is there.” He takes the blanket off me and smiles. “I needed to hear myself say what Pablo wants from me. Now you know.”

We make love on the couch, and afterward we lie in the dark. Each time a car passes by on the street, the windows pulse with refracted light. “You know, I think about Pablo, too. I want to make this okay for him.”

“I am trying to figure out how to tell him where I go when I come here.”

“Tell Pablo you go to the house of your friend from the zoo.”

Everyone wants to meet Macon then. Sara is adamant. She won’t give up. And Luke is beside himself. I hold them off until Saturday night. Which is why Macon stands in the kitchen wearing my long green apron tied around his waist like a skirt.

“Should I be nervous?” he asks.

I open the wines. He adds sea salt to the tomato sauce. Then I put my arms around his neck and kiss him on the cheek. “Don’t be nervous. Luke doesn’t bite. He’s very, very kind. But Gaird I can’t speak for entirely. He will grow on you. Sara and Rajiv are two of the nicest people you’ll meet in your life.”

I climb up on the counter and pull down Fiesta Ware plates from the highest shelf. Luke found these for me at the Clignancourt flea market. They’re almost identical to ones we had growing up. “Though a little bit of suspicion is warranted.” I hand Macon the plates. “I never know exactly what any of them will say.”

Then someone’s banging at the door like they’re trying to break it down. I open it, and Luke’s standing there, bottle of red wine in one hand, yellow baking dish covered in tinfoil in the other. He’s about to ram the door again with his shoulder. Gaird waits behind him, his face hidden by a huge bunch of red tulips.

“It smells so good in here.” Luke walks right past me. “Where is he? Where is this man who’s become your personal cook?”

Gaird steps inside and kisses me on both cheeks and hands me the flowers. “Dutch.” Then he loosens his thin black tie.

“Thank you so much, Gaird. They’re very beautiful.”

“Ah, Willie, it’s my pleasure to make you smile.” He winks at me.

Macon comes out of the kitchen and Luke lifts him off the ground in a hug. “He feels solid.” Luke smiles at me. “He’s got a nice build, and he’s not afraid of a little physical contact. What could you possibly be cooking that smells so delicious?”

We all follow Macon into the kitchen. “It’s chicken Marseille, right?” I ask.

“It’s called Everything We Needed to Use Before It Spoiled.” Macon smiles.

Luke frowns. He can be a cooking snob. I want Macon to explain how much time he’s put into the sauce and to show Luke and Gaird that the meal matters to him. I want more than anything for them to like each other.

“Where do we smoke?” Luke asks. “This has been horribly nerve-racking. Bathing. Dressing. Meeting Macon. I need to go up on the roof.”

I have a skylight in my apartment that opens to the roof. What someone has done—the landlord? a previous renter?—is nail a ladder to the wall outside my bedroom so I can climb up and push a spring-loaded lever, which causes the skylight to open slowly. There are two wooden benches up there and a round metal table.

“Go.” Macon waves us away. “I need ten more minutes with the sauce.”

But there’s more banging on the door. Sara and Rajiv stand with their arms interlaced in the hall. She’s almost all stomach. A big, round belly on her tall, thin frame. It’s a fantastic thing to behold and I swear she’s glowing. Beaming. I double-kiss them both. Then Rajiv moves toward Gaird with his hand outstretched. I take Sara’s arm and walk her slowly toward the kitchen.