The Life Room (10 page)

“I don’t expect happiness.”

He lifted his brush.

“I don’t try to control meaning. I don’t like to put feelings with labels on them in their own little boxes. As a painter you want to create a scene or moment that is so alive and complex that when someone comes to it they are shaken. Filled with their own associations.”

“Are we talking about art?”

“Is there a difference?”

She watched the intensity in his face as he painted. She watched his jaw and the movement of his hand. If she put all her faith in what they were doing together, in the way he saw her and attempted to translate what he saw, then she did not feel simply herself anymore; she was a part of something other. She felt more confident, and with it came more freedom, as if she’d opened herself to express it.

He saw that she looked at him differently. She meant for him to see it. He put down his brush and knelt down before her in front of the daybed.

“You don’t see it. Do you?”

“See what?”

He pointed toward the canvas. “See the look in her eyes. She drives me crazy. I want every man that looks at this painting to see it. A woman who awakens conflicting instincts to protect and conquer in every man who enters her unsteady field of force.” He looked into her eyes, lifted her chin, and kissed her passionately. Her mother’s loneliness, her consuming memories of William, her perplexing thoughts about Stephen—all of it vanished as she disappeared into the darkness of his kiss.

The flight to Paris began its descent. Eleanor was exhausted by her memories. It was as if they were in pieces, and by remembering them she was stitching the pieces together, arranging them like a patchwork quilt. She combed her hair with her fingers, raked through her purse for her tube of lipstick. It was eight in the morning, Paris time. By the time she arrived in the hotel, unpacked, and took a nap, it would be almost morning in New York; she could call home and hear her family’s voices.

Michael was a loving father. The boys were well cared for and she knew she needn’t worry, yet she did. She hadn’t traveled abroad alone since she’d been married, and as she faced getting off the plane, she wished that Michael was with her. When they traveled as a family, Michael dealt with foreign currency and exchange rates, booked the hotels, paid for the meals. She tried to prepare herself for being alone in a strange hotel—no children running around the room, testing out the locks on the hotel door, flicking on the television, distracting her as she tried to get dressed.

She stretched her back and tilted her head to loosen the cramp in her neck. She thought about Michael again and hoped he had understood why she needed to go.

Outside the terminal she looked into the gray, bleak sky of Paris: Everything looked unreal—the way people dressed, the compact cars, the narrow road circling behind the terminal. She was across the ocean from her husband and sons and she felt strangely as if they did not exist, that the years in which they had become the central focus in her life were years that did not belong to her anymore but to a different woman. The thought frightened her.

She inched forward in the cab line, took a compact mirror from her purse, and stared at herself in the glass. She was the same person, with the same almond-shaped eyes of blue and green, small nose and mouth, and electric red hair pulled back in a ponytail.

Ahead in line a young couple was kissing. Eleanor looked at them the way she had once stared at the couple in the library. She, too, was a half of a couple, though, suddenly thrust into a foreign city after the long trip, she felt stripped of her attachments. She told herself she’d feel better once she slept. Yet, she kept glancing at the couple engrossed in each other, and she felt a strange ache.

She thought about her friend Jordan Klein, whom she had known since graduate school and who was one of her closest friends. She’d had a quick coffee with her the day before she was leaving. Jordan was tall and elegant, with straight black hair styled geometrically around her face. She had astonished Eleanor by telling her that she had taken a lover the last time she was in Europe. She had met him when she was on a Fulbright in Rome six months before. She said she hadn’t planned for it to happen. That slowly they’d fallen in love. Eleanor had looked into her penetrating eyes, surrounded by eyeliner, and felt a surprising stirring of envy, even though part of her had disapproved of her friend. She had always thought that Jordan had a good marriage and now wondered how well she had known her. How well she knew anyone, really. When she’d asked Jordan whether she was happy, her face had brightened. “It’s complicated.” Eleanor’s heart had gone out to Jordan’s husband. Her daughter was the same age as Nicholas. She had a two-year-old boy. “I know I’ve disappointed you. I can see it in your face. I’ve been wanting to tell you for months.” Jordan struggled to find the right words. “I didn’t expect it to happen.”

“But look what you’re jeopardizing. Passion is transient.”

“Or that’s what we tell ourselves. Maybe it’s because we haven’t experienced the kind of passion that can withstand time that we doubt it. But what if you had a chance to experience it again? Do you think you could walk away?”

“This isn’t a novel we’re talking about. People in novels don’t have their children to bathe and get ready for school.” She was flustered. “Well, you know what I mean.” She realized how empty her words sounded once she said them. She could tell that something had changed in Jordan. Jordan looked different. Her face was flushed. Her eyes sparkled. She told Eleanor the details of the affair and how they’d met. “It’s too late,” she’d said, her eyes turning dark. “Even if I wanted to walk away, I’m not sure I could.”

Jordan’s bold nature had made Eleanor feel that she was too cautious and careful, a person who had stopped taking chances. “It’s the most intense sex I’ve ever had. It’s not just the sex. We connect. I’ve never felt so alive.”

After coffee, on the way home, Eleanor stopped and sat on a street bench in front of a church. She sat still in one place, looked at the intricate building, at its masonry its magnificence, to quiet the unrest.

She slipped into the back of a cab and told herself to stop thinking about Jordan. What Jordan decided to do was her own business. She told herself she’d call Michael as soon as she was in the hotel and she’d feel more herself. She looked out the cab window, and as they entered the city, the pale buildings with shutters on the windows, the gray sky, the small curving streets brought tears to her eyes.

The hotel was near the Boulevard Saint-Germain. The conference had reserved a block of rooms for the participants. Eleanor noted from the schedule that they were to meet for a brief dinner that night in the hotel. She was grateful for the hours in between to catch up on sleep. The hotel room was small, with a queen-size bed and a little French desk by the window, a reading chair and a lamp, and a tiny bathroom with a bathtub in place of a shower. She unpacked her toiletries and hung up her clothes. She was in Paris, and yet inside the quiet of her room she could have been in a hotel room in any city. Yet a sense of unease washed over her. She missed her husband and children.

They came to her looking for their lost shoes, wanting her to cut the crust from their sandwiches, to bandage them when a knee was scraped.
Keep the light on, Mommy, I’m afraid
, the little one said.
Rub my back
. She collapsed on the hotel bed. She heard Noah’s voice in her mind, pictured him slipping his hand in hers like he did when he thought no one was watching when she dropped him off at school. She thought of Nicholas’s serious face. Who was she without their breaths, their wants and fears inside her? She turned over and reached out her arm, amazed that the space next to her was empty.

She had fallen asleep on top of the bedspread. When she awoke her head was heavy. She looked at the clock on the bedside table. Only a half hour had passed. She slipped underneath the cold, crisp covers of the hotel bed with the blue fleur-de-lis wallpaper, brought the unfamiliar white down comforter up over her shoulders, and tried to fall asleep again. The most seductive sleep was when she had too little time, and afternoon naps were always the deepest. She felt as if she were plunged into the darkest layers of her being. When she awoke it was as if she had experienced a lifetime. Her sheets were damp, her skin hot. Her dreams had been strange, though she couldn’t quite remember them.

She looked at the clock. Two hours until she had to get up and greet the other conference participants at dinner. She lay in bed and thought about how long it had been since she had allowed herself the indulgence of sleeping past the hour of waking, past the sun rising, past the sound of the alarm, past the schedule of everyone rushing, and wondered how much she had missed.

She lay on the bed and watched the wind play with the long, sheer drapes, watched the light as it danced through the threads of cotton and made patterns on the honey-colored floor. The long flight the night before, the separation from her family, her convoluted dreams, and the sudden flood of memories that seemed now to come at her with new meaning, left her disoriented. She thought about how long it had been since she had allowed herself to remember her past. She felt unsettled, as if she didn’t know who she was—the open, vulnerable woman from so long ago or the woman she was now, overscheduled, tense, and leading a conventional life she had not been fully aware she’d chosen. She took a bath to awaken fully. When she stepped out, she put on the hotel’s white terry cloth robe and went back into her room to unpack. She smelled smoke and parted the curtains of the window. A fire was ablaze in the apartment building across from the hotel. She stood by the window watching the flames destroy the building. Glass shattered as the windows caved in. The smell was suffocating. She picked up the bedside phone and called the hotel desk. The concierge reassured her that they were aware of the situation and the fire appeared contained. The sound of fire trucks bled through the street, soon joined by police sirens.

The smoke wound into the French windows and she closed them, drew the curtains, and then she heard a voice inside her.
I’m glad it burned. I never liked that playhouse. Now I can see through our yards to your house without it blocking the view, l like knowing you’re in the house in front of me, Eleanor. Sometimes I can’t fall asleep until I see the light in your window go off
. The disconcerting memory ran through her mind again.

With some people it was better to leave well enough alone. She wished her mother had not given Stephen’s mother the name of her hotel. She hoped he wouldn’t call her. She vaguely remembered their last encounter, before she’d gotten married, when she had gone to visit him in Colorado. But she didn’t want to think about it. It hadn’t ended well, that much she remembered. She had not thought of him for years. And she didn’t want to. Soon she would have to emerge from her room and greet the other guests in the hotel lobby and she had to prepare herself. There were many steps to climb from her solitude of the last twenty-four hours.
He won’t call anyway
, she thought. She put mascara on her lashes and combed her hair. Outside, the fire engines had departed. The air still smelled of something burning. Across the street the Paris light shadowed the beige bricks and soot-covered shutters of the burned facade. A spark from the debris danced in the air and extinguished itself on her windowsill.

My first morning in Paris is like being inside a dream. Everything is drenched in history; the streets are of a bright and cheerful narrowness, as if concealing something clandestine and private. Everywhere are children, parks, gardens, museums, palaces, and a grand cathedral. I imagine I’m in a novel in which some inevitable knowledge will be bestowed and that I, the heroine of the novel, have not yet fully comprehended it. I am keeping a notebook so that I will not forget anything. So that I will understand the nuances and not push away their meaning. I want to look at things closely. To see paintings and record what I recognize in them. I feel so alive.

As I walk the narrow streets and the long width of the avenues, every storefront entices me with its artistry: In the chemist’s shop the bottles are arranged neatly and spaciously on glass shelves. The houndstooth combs and brushes and barrettes all of the finest quality. Each clothing shop has its own particular style and distinction, so unlike the shops in New York, where every shelf is crammed with the same merchandise. Everything is beautiful—the architecture of the buildings; the narrow, cobbled streets; the open markets; the painters and artists sketching along the banks of the Seine. The light.

This morning I took a walk in the Luxembourg Gardens. Even the wind carried with it a scent of the linden trees and lavender from the Parisian gardens. I watched the carousel and thought of the boys. I love all the small things, the shutters and terraces, the flower boxes in the windows, and then the grander mansions and museums, the energy in the cafés. Everything about the city exudes the feeling that art, literature, history is at the forefront of society. I walked past the Café de Flore with its red leather chairs and booths and square tables on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Just down the street, Les Deux Magots, the two cafés separated only by a tiny, narrow street. I imagined Oscar Wilde, Joyce, Hemingway, Simone de Beauvoir drinking white wine or dry sherry at their open tables. The sounds of French conversation, with its lovely cadences and aristocratic sounds, the leisurely feel of the city, and its fashionable presentation stirs me. The women look aloof and flirtatious in their stylish dress. It’s delicious being alone in a foreign country. Something has changed.