Out on the street, it was as though I had emerged tattered and blinded from a manhole after a year in the sewers. But at the café it was the same severe waiter who brought me, unasked, a tartine au beurre and coffee, the same flow of strangers washed by, surging down into the Métro station or up from it like waves in a rock cleft. I couldn’t drink the coffee or touch the tartine, and a bottle of mineral water did nothing to settle my stomach. A half carafe of red was not enough to stop my hands from trembling. “Night shift at the factory?” the waiter asked, or rather said, setting a second carafe on the table and turning his back before I could invent an answer.
—
Was I waiting for someone, she asked, or was the waiter just protecting the dignity of the establishment when he set out two wineglasses?
Reggie, remember? Reggie Short, Reggie-short-for-Regina. From the bookstore.
Oh no, no Budweiser for her. That was just her line with American guys. She’d have what I was having.
Did I live near here?
What was I doing in France anyway?
A psychoanalyst, for real? That’s heavy. I didn’t look like a shrink.
Shrinks she knew looked more…she didn’t know…air-conditioned, maybe. Anyway, she was done with shrinks, especially psychoanalysts.
Also: She was done with France. Had she mentioned that? She believed she had, on a previous occasion. As for her, she lived with her mother.
Of course her mother was American. Her father too, though he was in Tunisia.
Oil wells. He was an oil guy. The company had sent him to Tunisia three years ago, so his stint would be over soon. The first year, she’d stayed here, then gone back for college. Austin. UT. Hook ’em Horns. She was almost done, only had a few credits to finish, but her mother had made her come back to Paris. Her mother was helpless, hopeless, a lush, and yet had somehow managed to shop Paris blind. To get out of the house, Reggie had taken a job in a bookstore. That was the only place the mom wasn’t likely to show up.
Cigarette?
Obviously, she was done with her mother too. She should add she was done with French boys. She divorced them one and all.
Her friends, though, her potes, those she would miss.
Was I always this quiet? Was I feeling all right?
Well, then I should order us another vat of wine.
Dad had started out as a roughneck—didn’t I just love the word?
Fuck if she knew. Something complicated, new oil from old wells. It made a killing. At least her mother acted like it did.
No, no thanks, she had to work tomorrow.
Oh fuck it, why not?
She was done not just with French guys, she was done with the French tout court. She’d divorce every last one of them. Of course, it was easy to be done with them while she was still in Paris, with someone pouring free wine into her head. The minute some Texan sorority twat tried to evangelize her she would probably run screaming back to Paris.
Would I be here then?
What did I mean I didn’t know?
Who cared anyway? En tout cas, we should draft a prenup. Before we divorce each other for good, we should agree that her complications were hers and mine were mine. Her recommendation was to go ahead and label everything ahead of time.
No, really, she had to open the shop in the morning. It was time to scoot, to skedaddle.
No, she hated the Métro. She would walk.
Goodness, what sudden gallantry. Why, of course, Doctor, if it was no trouble.
Was this where I lived? Here?
Was it as depressing on the inside as it was on the outside?
Well?
Well, apparently I needed some help.
If we were actually going to get divorced, weren’t we missing some preliminaries?
Such as, jeez, she didn’t know, didn’t I have some tropical fish?
Okay, no fish then, what about etchings?
Etchings like etchings, etchings of whatever, of Mount Vesuvius, of tropical fish for fuck’s sake—didn’t I have some etchings I wanted to show her?
THIRTY-THREE
As Clementine grew into adolescence, her curiosity subsided for long stretches. Then it would return abruptly, as though the narrative she had assembled to her satisfaction had suddenly broken down like a machine in need of a new part. One evening when she was fourteen or fifteen, she broke a long silence at the supper table: “So what’s in that box in the back of the hall closet?”
“Which box? Probably process notes from my sessions,” I said, and it was true that regulations required me to keep all notes for five years. “Could be drafts for articles, tax forms, bank statements, that sort of thing. Why?”
“But there’s a box from France too. Is it Mom’s stuff?”
“Since when did you start snooping around in my closet?”
“Since when was it your closet? Is Dan hiding something? And for your information I was looking for an empty shoebox for flash cards, if you have to know.”
One of the boxes in the closet had come over with us from France, and like the others, it was heavy with files. I had been advised to keep those papers too: the deposition transcripts, affidavits and disclosures, the copious correspondence with lawyers and notaires, as well as the final decrees. I had planned to get rid of it all as soon as possible once I got to the States, but Clementine was still in diapers and I was scrambling to build my practice. When I thought of the box at night, or unbidden as I listened to a patient in my office, I told myself there would be time. Process notes, however, had piled up along with article drafts, and soon enough the box was just one among many.
The day after Clementine asked about the papers, I waited until she was at school and then hauled out the box.
