“I do like Paris. I love it. But I'm not French. I don't want to be told what's wrong with my country, how obnoxious Americans are, or that I don't understand anything because I come from a different country, which is uncivilized anyway. Matthieu put half our problems down to ‘cultural differences’ because I expected him to get divorced in order to live with me. Call it old-fashioned or puritanical, I just didn't want to sleep with someone else's husband. I wanted my own. I figured he owed me that. But he stayed with her.” It had been more complicated than that, particularly because of his position in the government, but his insistence about it being okay to have a mistress had been typically French, and always upset her deeply.
“He's free now. You wouldn't have to deal with that. If you love him, I don't understand what's stopping you.”
“I'm too chicken,” Carole said miserably. “I don't want to get hurt again. I'd rather walk away before that happens. It always does.”
“That's sad,” Stevie said unhappily, looking at her friend.
“It is sad. It was sad fifteen years ago when I left him. It was sad as hell. We were both devastated. We both cried at the airport. But I just couldn't stay anymore, the way things were. And maybe now it would be something else. His kids, his work. His country. I can't see him living outside France. And I don't want to live here, not full-time anyway.”
“Can't you two compromise in some way?” Stevie asked, and Carole shook her head.
“It's simpler not doing it all. No one will get disappointed, or feel they got less than they deserved. We won't hurt each other, or insult each other, or disrespect each other. I think we're both too old.” She had made up her mind and nothing was going to change it. Stevie knew how she was when she got that way. Carole was stubborn as a mule.
“So you're going to be alone for the rest of your life, with your memories, seeing your kids a few times a year? What happens when they have lives and kids of their own, and hardly have time to see you anymore? Then what? You do a movie every few years, or give it up? Write a book, make a speech now and then for some cause you may not even care about by then? Carole, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.”
“I'm sorry you feel that way. It makes sense to me.”
“It won't ten or fifteen years from now, when you're lonely as hell and have missed all these years with him. He may even be gone by then, and you'll have missed your chance to be with a guy you've already loved for nearly twenty years. What you two have has already stood the test of tragedy and time. You still love each other. Why not grab it while you can? You're still young, and beautiful, and have some life left in your career. But when that goes, you'll be all alone. I don't want to see that happen to you.” Stevie was deeply sad for her.
“So what am I supposed to do? Give up everything for him? Stop being who I am? Give up doing movies entirely? Give up the work I do for UNICEF? And sit there, holding hands with him? That's not who I want to be when I grow up. I have to respect myself, and honor what I believe in. If I don't, who will?”
“Can't you have both?” Stevie said, looking frustrated. She wanted Carole to have more in her life than her charity work, making the occasional movie, and holiday visits with her kids. She deserved to be loved and happy too, and have companionship for the rest of her days, or however long it lasted. “Do you have to be Joan of Arc, and take a vow of celibacy to be true to yourself?”
“Maybe I do,” Carole said through clenched teeth. Stevie was upsetting her, which was exactly what she hoped to do, but she didn't think she was getting through to her.
The two women went back to reading the news papers, frustrated with each other. It was rare for them to disagree to that extent. Neither of them spoke to each other until the doctor came to see Carole at noon.
She was pleased with Carole's progress, and with all the walking she said she'd done. The muscle tone in her legs was better, her balance was good now, and her memory was improving exponentially. The doctor was confident Carole would be able to go back to Los Angeles when she'd planned to. There was no medical reason why she couldn't. The doctor said she'd come back to see her again in a few days, and told her to continue what she was doing. She said a few words to the nurse, and then left to go back to the hospital.
Stevie ordered lunch for Carole after the doctor left, but she left her alone at the table, and ate lunch in her own room. She was too upset by what Carole had said to her to be able to make chitchat with her over lunch. She thought Carole was making the biggest mistake of her life. Love didn't come along every day, and if it had landed in Carole's lap again, Stevie thought it was a crime to waste it. Worse yet, to run away because she was afraid to get hurt again.
Carole got bored alone at the lunch table. Stevie had said she had a headache, which Carole suspected wasn't true. She didn't challenge her about it, and after pacing around the living room of the suite for a while, she finally called Matthieu in his office. She thought he might be out to lunch, but called him anyway. His secretary put her through to him immediately. He was eating a sandwich at his desk, and had been in a rotten mood all day. He had bitten his secretary's head off twice, and slammed the door to his office after talking to a client who had annoyed him. He was obviously not having a good day. She had never seen him like that. And she was cautious when she told him who was on the phone. He picked up the call immediately, hoping Carole had changed her mind.
“Are you too mad to talk to me?” Carole asked in a soft voice.
“I'm not mad at you, Carole,” he said sadly. “I hope you called to tell me you had a change of heart. The offer still stands.” He smiled. It would stand forever, for as long as he was alive.
“I didn't. I know I'm right. For me. I'm too scared to get married again. For now anyway. And I just don't want to. I talked to Stevie about it this morning, and she tells me in ten or fifteen years I'll change my mind.”
“By then I'll be dead,” he said matter-of-factly as Carole shuddered.
“You'd better not be. What was that? A short-term offer, or a long-term one?”
“ Long-term. Are you playing with me?” He knew he deserved it. He deserved everything she dished out to him now, after what he'd done to her in the past.
“I'm not playing with you, Matthieu. I'm trying to find myself, and honor what I believe in and who I am. I love you, but I have to honor myself, if not, who am I? That's all I have.”
“You always did honor yourself, Carole. That's why you left me. You had too much respect for yourself to stay. That's why I love you.” It was a catch-22 for both of them, for him then, and her now. They were always trapped between impossible choices that had to do with respecting both others and themselves, sometimes both at the same time.
“Will you have dinner with me tonight?” she asked him.
“I'd love to.” He sounded relieved. He'd been afraid she wouldn't see him again before she left.
“The Voltaire?” she asked him. They had been there a hundred times. “Nine o'clock?” It was the standard Paris dinner hour, even a little early.
“Perfect. Do you want me to pick you up at the hotel?”
“I'll meet you there.” She was far more independent than she had been in the old days, but he loved that about her too. There was nothing about her he didn't love. “One condition,” she added suddenly.
“What's that?” He wondered what she had come up with.
“You won't propose to me again.”
“Not tonight. But I won't agree to that long-term.”
“All right. That's fair.” Her answer led him to hope that he might convince her someday. Maybe after she'd recovered fully from her accident, or after she finished her book. He was going to propose to her again one day, and hoped that eventually she'd accept. He was willing to wait, they already had for fifteen years, a little longer couldn't hurt. Or even a lot longer. He refused to give up, no matter what she said.