“Call it an awakening,” he said. He was holding a book in one hand, his finger in it to hold his place, and now he held it up to show her that it was one of the books by the brothers Cohn-Bendit. She recognized their names, but didn’t know the French title. “I have decided to join Tomorrow,” he said. Everything he said seemed to have trumpets behind it, except that all these declamations were announced in a brisk matter-of-fact way, as though he himself didn’t see any drama in his statements at all. “At the moment I’m recruiting Charlie.”
“We’re — talking things over,” Charles said. He seemed to be apologizing for something.
“Well, good luck to you both,” she said, and to Charles she said, “Is your mother around?”
“I think she’s in the sitting room. Down to your right and through the bedroom.”
“Thank you.”
Ann Gillespie was there, knitting and watching television: I Love Lucy, in French. Once a government opens the floodgates, as the French government finally and reluctantly had done, daytime television is the same everywhere.
The sitting room would have to be called cozy. It too had the park view, but was a much smaller and dimmer room, with more of a feeling of warmth and safety to it. Evelyn found herself smiling as she walked into the room, and it was for the room more than for the occupant. “Hello, Ann,” she said.
Ann looked up from the set. “Well, Evelyn! Carrie said you were coming to Paris. Is Bradford with you?”
“No, he had his meeting.” Ann hadn’t risen, and now Evelyn sat in a chair which gave her a view of Ann and the park, but not the television set. “This is a comforting room,” she said, over the chatter of French.
“I love it.” Ann was in her early forties now, a pleasant but washed-out looking woman, who wore no makeup, did her hair sensibly rather than fashionably, and dressed in drab but sturdy clothing. She was the kind of woman about whom the word most frequently spoken was reliable. She said, “Does Carrie have anyone interesting today?”
“Edward.”
Ann smiled, but she’d glanced at the television set and it was hard to tell if the smile was for Evelyn or Lucy. She said, “No one else?”
“Not really. There’s one sleazy little Frenchman who wanted to know if I was attached.”
This time the smile was clearly for Evelyn. “Isn’t that terrible?” Still smiling, Ann shook her head and said, “Carrie won’t turn anyone away, not anyone. I talk to her, but you know how it is to take care of an older person. They will have their own way.”
“Yes, won’t they,” Evelyn said, smiling back and thinking indulgently of Bradford. An anecdote about Bradford’s willfulness entered her head, and she was about to relate it when with a sudden shock she saw herself from outside, she saw herself as Ann was seeing her this minute — as anyone would see her this minute — and she sat back, her mouth open, and stared past Ann at the far wall.
“Evelyn? What’s the matter?”
Evelyn shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Excuse me, it’s—” She shook her head again.
Is that what’s happening to me? “You know how it is to take care of an older person.” But isn’t Ann an object of pity, a timid lifeless woman who buried herself under her mother-in-law’s wing at the age of twenty, widowed and pregnant, and has never lived her own life again? That isn’t me, for God’s sake, I don’t dress like that, I don’t look like that, I don’t hide myself away in cozy rooms.
Don’t I?
“Evelyn, are you sure there’s nothing wrong? Should I have Charles get you a brandy?”
Ann has her Charles, I have my Dinah. Ann has her Carrie, I have Bradford. Ann lives in the middle of Paris, but for the amount of use she makes of it she might as well be living in Eustace, Pennsylvania.
“Evelyn?”
Fred died a year and a half ago. What happened to the time in between? Can it all go like that, and all at once you’re in your forties, there’s no need to wear makeup any more, no need to keep up with the new fashions, no point in ever going out of your cozy rooms?
She got to her feet, suddenly frightened, feeling inanely that if she didn’t move at once, at once, she would grow roots, or become paralyzed, or lose all will to move. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I need some air.”
Ann still didn’t get to her feet, but genuine concern was on her face. “Was it the flight?” she asked. “I understand some people are affected by jet travel that way.”
“That must be it,” Evelyn said. “Excuse me, I’ll see you again later.” And she hurried from the room.
The apartment didn’t confuse her now. All she wanted was to get out of it, without saying goodbye to anyone. She headed directly for the front door.
The little Frenchman was sitting on one of the spindly valuable antiques in the foyer. He was obviously waiting for her, and he leaped to his feet when she entered the room. “Madame,” he said. “You are indisposed?” He was at least two inches shorter than she.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m going back to the hotel how and rest.”
“One will drive you,” he said. He smiled helpfully, and he was looking at her mouth.
“No, that’s all right, really, I’ll find a cab.”
“No,” he said. “A taxi in Paris? It is not right when you are indisposed. My car is outside. Madame is staying at Georges Cinq?”
vi
She had known how it would end, that was the worst part. She had known, and watched it all with a knowing eye, and did nothing to stop it.
His car was a Simca, small and black, dusty and rather old, with cigarette burns on the seat back. He said, “A ride through the park will refresh Madame, yes?” And insisted it would be no trouble at all, he had nothing to do this afternoon anyway.
And it was pleasant, after the dehydrated feeling of Carrie’s apartment, to drive through the park. He drove the Simca quickly but well, down Boulevard Anatole France to Porte de Boulogne, then into the park on Allée de la Reine Marguerite, switching to Route de Suresnes and emerging at last on Avenue Foch, flanked by the long sweep of gardens, with the Arc de Triomphe at the far end.
His next suggestion, of course, was a drink. “I know an excellent little place on the Left Bank, where the tourists never go. Madame will be refreshed.”
She didn’t agree, but she didn’t say no, either. The little Simca scooted down the Champs Elysées, crossed the Seine on the Pont de la Concorde, and raced the rest of the traffic along the Boulevard Saint Germain, finding a parking space at last half a block from Boulevard Saint Michel, known as Boul Mich, the tourist and bohemian center of the Left Bank.
The café to which he took her, his hand a polite pressure on her elbow, was no different from any other in the Fifth Arrondissement. The Sorbonne was a few blocks away, so many of the young people around them were probably students there. At least half a dozen of the older customers were American tourists, and the rest were probably local people. It was the equivalent of a neighborhood bar in the United States, the sort of place into which she would never have gone, and it was basically insulting of him to think her the sort of wide-eyed innocent to be impressed by a tavern simply because the tables were on the sidewalk and the language spoken by the waiter was not English. But she didn’t bother to be insulted, and she didn’t even laugh at his attempts to convince her he was showing her the real Paris. But hadn’t he heard Edward parodying just this very thing not an hour ago?