She unpacked the few things she'd brought with her, and hung them in the closet. She bathed in the enormous tub, and reveled in the thick pink towels, and then put on warm clothes. At two-thirty she was walking across the lobby, with a handful of euros in her pocket. She left her key at the front desk. The heavy brass tag on it made it too cumbersome to carry, and she never took a handbag when she went out walking. They always seemed like too much trouble to her. She dug her hands into her pockets, pulled up her hood, put her head down, and slipped quietly through the revolving door, and as soon as she got outside, she put on dark glasses. The rain had turned to mist by then and felt gentle on her face, as she walked down the front steps of the Ritz, and out into the Place Vendôme. No one paid any attention to her, nor recognized her. She was just an anonymous woman in Paris, going out for a walk, as she headed to the Place de la Concorde on foot, and from there she wanted to head toward the Left Bank. It was a long walk, but she was ready for it. For the first time in years, she could do whatever she wanted to in Paris, go wherever she chose. She didn't have to listen to Sean complain about it, or entertain her children. She didn't have to please anyone but herself. She realized that coming here had been the perfect decision. She didn't even mind the light November rain, or the chill in the air. Her heavy coat kept her warm, and the rubber-soled shoes she'd worn kept her feet dry on the wet ground. She looked up at the sky then, took a deep breath, and smiled. There was no more spectacular city than Paris, no matter what the weather. She had always thought the sky there was the most beautiful in the world. It looked like a luminous gray pearl now, as she looked past the rooftops as she walked along.
She walked past the Hotel Crillon and into the Place de la Concorde, with the fountains and statues, and traffic whizzing past them. She stood for a long time, soaking in the soul of the city again, and then set off on foot toward the Left Bank, with her hands dug into her pockets. She was happy she had left her handbag in her room. It would have been a nuisance to carry it with her. She felt freer this way. And all she needed with her was enough money to pay for a cab home, if she strayed too far from the hotel and was too tired to walk back.
Carole loved to wander in Paris. She always had, even when the children were small. She had taken them all over the city, to all the monuments and museums, and to play in the Bois de Boulogne, the Tuileries, Bagatelle, and the Jardins du Luxembourg. She had cherished their years here, although Chloe remembered very little of it, and Anthony had been happy to go home. He missed baseball, hamburgers, and milkshakes, American television, and watching the Super Bowl. In the end, it had been hard to convince him that life was more exciting in Paris. It wasn't, for him, although both children had learned French, and so had she. Anthony still spoke a little, Chloe none at all, and Carole had been pleased to find on the plane that she could still manage fairly well. She rarely had a chance to speak it anymore. She had applied herself while they lived there, and became completely fluent. She no longer was, but she still spoke it very well, with the expected le and la mistakes that Americans made. It was hard for anyone who hadn't grown up in the language to speak it flawlessly. But when they lived there, she had come pretty close, and impressed all her French friends.
She crossed to the Left Bank on the Pont Alexandre III, heading toward the Invalides, and then headed up the Quais, past all the antiques dealers she still remembered. She turned down the rue des Saint Pères, and wended her way toward the rue Jacob. She had come back here like a homing pigeon, and turned into the little alley where their house was. For the first eight months of her time in Paris, they lived in an apartment that the studio rented for them. It was small and cramped for her, both kids, an assistant, and a nanny, and eventually they had moved to a hotel briefly. She had enrolled the kids in an American school, and after the film was finished, when she decided to move to Paris, she had found this house, just off the rue Jacob. It had been a little gem, on a private courtyard, with a lovely garden behind it. The house had been just big enough for them, and had endless charm. The children's rooms and the nanny had been on the top floor with oeil de boeuf windows and a mansard roof. Her room on the floor below it had been worthy of Marie Antoinette, with huge, high ceilings, long French windows that looked out over the garden, eighteenth-century floors and boiseries, and a pink marble fireplace that worked. She had an office and a dressing room near her bedroom, and a huge tub where she took bubble baths with Chloe, or relaxed on her own. On the main floor there was a double living room, a dining room and kitchen, and an entrance to the garden, where they ate in spring and summer. It was an absolute beauty of a house, built in the eighteenth century for some courtesan or other. She had never learned its full history, but one could easily imagine it being very romantic. And it had been for her as well.
She found the house easily, and walked into the courtyard, as the doors were open. She stood looking up at her old bedroom windows, and wondered who lived there now, if they were happy, if it had been a good home for them, if their dreams had come true there. She had been happy there for two years, and then at the end very sad. She had left Paris with a heavy heart. Just thinking back to that time, she could feel the weight of it even now. It was like opening a door she had kept sealed for the past fifteen years, and remembering the smells and sounds and feelings, the thrill of being there with her children, of making new discoveries, and establishing a new life, and then leaving finally to go back to the States. It had been a hard decision to make, and a sad time for her. She still wondered at times if she had made the right decision, if things would have been different if they'd stayed. But standing here now, she somehow felt she had done the right thing, for her kids, if nothing else. And maybe even for herself. Even fifteen years later it was hard to know.
She realized now that this was why she had come. To figure it out again, to be sure she had been right. Once she knew that, in her soul, she would have some of the answers she needed for the book. She was traveling backward on the map of her life, before she could tell what had happened. Even if the book was fictionalized, she needed to know the truth first, before she could spin it into a tale. She knew too that she had avoided these answers for a long time, but she was feeling braver now.
She walked slowly out of the courtyard with her head down, and bumped into a man walking through the gates. He looked startled to see her, and she apologized to him in French. He nodded, and walked on.
Carole walked around the Left Bank after that, looking into antiques shops. She stopped at the bakery where she used to take the children, and bought “macarons,” which she carried out in a little bag, and ate as she walked. The neighborhood was filled with bittersweet memories for her, which rushed over her like an ocean at high tide, but it wasn't a bad feeling. It reminded her of so much, and suddenly she wanted to go back to the hotel and write. She knew what direction the book should take now, and where she should start. She wanted to rewrite the beginning, and as she thought about it, she hailed a cab. She had been walking for nearly three hours, and it was already dark.
She gave the driver the address of the Ritz, and they headed toward the Right Bank, as she sat back in the cab, thinking about her old house, and the things she'd seen that afternoon as she walked. This was the first time she had wandered around Paris and allowed herself to think of those things since she left. It had been different when she'd come here with Sean, and the avalanche of grief she'd experienced when she'd come to close the house with Stevie. She had hated to give it up, but there was no point in keeping it. Los Angeles was too far away, she was working on one film after another back to back, and she no longer had any reason to come to Paris. That chapter was over for her. So she sold the house a year after she left. She flew in for two days, told Stevie what to do, and then went back to