“My marriage had fallen apart. I’d just had this baby. I couldn’t bring myself to live in the rue de Saintonge apartment after everything that had happened there. And I felt like moving back to the States.”
“So how did you actually do it?”
“We stayed with my sister for a while, on the Upper East Side, then she found me a place to sublet from one of her friends. And my ex-boss found me a great job. What about you?”
“Same story. Life in Lucca just didn’t seem possible. And my wife and I…” His voice trailed off. He made a little gesture with his fingers as if to say farewell, bye-bye. “I lived here as a boy, before Roxbury. And the idea had been passing through my head, for a while. So I finally got ’round to it. I stayed at first with one of my oldest friends, in Brooklyn, then I found a place in the Village. I do the same job here. Food critic.”
William’s phone rang. The girlfriend, again. I turned away, trying to give him the privacy he needed. He finally put the phone down.
“She’s a little possessive,” he said, sheepishly. “I think I’ll turn it off for a while.”
He fumbled with the phone.
“How long have you been together?”
“A couple of months.” He looked at me. “What about you? Are you seeing someone?”
“Yes, I am.” I thought of Neil’s courteous, bland smile. His careful gestures. The routine sex. I nearly added it was not important, that it was just for the company, because I could not stand being alone, because every night I thought of him, William, and of his mother, every single night, for the past two-and-a-half years, but I kept my mouth shut. I just said, “He’s a nice person. Divorced. A lawyer.”
William ordered fresh coffee. As he poured out mine, I noticed, once again, the beauty of his hands, his long, tapered fingers.
“About six months after our last meeting,” he said, “I went back to the rue de Saintonge. I had to see you. To talk to you. I didn’t know where to reach you, I had no number for you and couldn’t remember your husband’s name, so I couldn’t even look you up in the phone book. I thought you’d still be living there. I had no idea you’d moved.”
He paused, ran a hand through his thick, silver hair.
“I read all about the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, I’d been to Beaune-la-Rolande, and to the street the stadium was on. I’d been to see Gaspard and Nicolas Dufaure. They took me to my uncle’s grave, in the Orléans cemetery. Such kind men. But it was difficult, hard to go through. And I wished you’d been there with me. I should never have done all that alone, I should have said yes when you asked to come along.”
“Maybe I should have insisted,” I said.
“I should have listened to you. It was too much to bear alone. And then, when I finally went back to the rue de Saintonge, and when those unknown people opened your door, I felt you’d let me down.”
He lowered his eyes. I set my coffee cup back in its saucer, resentment sweeping through me. How could he, I thought, after all I’d done for him, after all the time, the effort, the pain, the emptiness?
He must have deciphered something in my face because he quickly put his hand on my sleeve.
“I’m sorry I said that,” he murmured.
“I never let you down, William.”
My voice sounded stiff.
“I know that, Julia. I’m sorry.”
His was deep, vibrant.
I relaxed. Managed a smile. We sipped in silence. Sometimes our knees brushed against each other under the table. It felt natural, being with him. As if we had been doing this for years. As if this was not just the third time in our lives we were seeing each other.
“Is your ex-husband OK about you living here with the kids?” he asked.
I shrugged. I looked down at the child who’d fallen asleep in her stroller.
“It wasn’t easy. But he’s in love with someone else. Has been for some time. That helped. He doesn’t see the girls much, though. He comes here from time to time, and Zoë spends her vacations in France.”
“Same thing with my ex-wife. She’s had a new child. A boy. I go to Lucca as often as I can to see my daughters. Or they come here, but more rarely. They’re quite grown up now.”
“How old are they?”
“Stefania is twenty-one and Giustina, nineteen.”
I whistled.
“You sure had them young.”
“Too young, maybe.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I sometimes feel awkward with the baby. I wish I’d had her earlier. There’s such a gap between her and Zoë.”
“She’s a sweet baby,” he said, taking a healthy bite out of his cheesecake.
“Yes, she is. The apple of her doting mother’s eye.”
We both chuckled.
“Do you miss not having a boy?” he asked.
“No, I don’t. Do you?”
“No. I love my girls. Maybe they’ll have grandsons, though. She’s called Lucy, then?”
I glanced across at him. Then down at her.
“No, that’s the toy giraffe,” I said.
There was a little pause.
“Her name is Sarah,” I said quietly.
He stopped chewing, put his fork down. His eyes changed. He looked at me, at the sleeping child, said nothing.
Then he buried his face in his hands. He remained like that for minutes. I did not know what to do. I touched his shoulder.
Silence.
I felt guilty again, felt as if I had done something unforgivable. But I had known all along this baby was to be called Sarah. As soon as I had been told it was a girl, at the moment of her birth, I had known her name.
There was no other name my daughter could have had. She was Sarah. My Sarah. An echo to the other one, to the other Sarah, to the little girl with the yellow star who had changed my life.
At last he drew his hands away and I saw his face, wrecked, beautiful. The acute sadness, the emotion in his eyes. He was not afraid of letting me see them. He did not fight the tears. It seemed that he wanted me to see it all, the beauty and ache of his life, he wanted me to see his thanks, his gratitude, his pain.
I took his hand and pressed it hard. I could not bear to look at him any longer, so I closed my eyes and put his hand against my cheek. I cried with him. I felt his fingers grow wet with my tears, but I kept his hand there.
We sat there for a long time, till the crowd around us thinned, till the sun shifted and the light changed. Till we felt our eyes could meet again, without the tears.
Acknowledgments
Thank you:
Nicolas, Louis and Charlotte, Hugh Thomas,
Andrea Stuart, Peter Viertel
Thank you too:
Valérie Bertoni, Charla Carter-Halabi, Suzy Cohen,
Valérie Colin-Simard, Holly Dando, Abha Dawesar, Violaine and
Paul Gradvohl, Julia Harris-Voss, Sarah Hirsch, Jean de la
Hosseraye, Tara Kaufmann, Laetitia Lachmann, Hélène Le Beau,
Agnès Michaux, Jean-Claude Moscovici, Emma Parry, Laure du
Pavillon, Jan Pfeiffer, Susanna Salk, Karine and Ariel Tuil-Toledano
Thank you especially:
Heloïse d’Ormesson and Gilles Cohen-Solal
Tatiana de Rosnay
