You Deserve Nothing (22 page)

N
othing was the same.  
We’d never see each other outside of the apartment. She’d come over and lock the door. We watched movies together. She complained about her parents.

“You’ll survive it all,” I told her.

All month it was cold and gray outside. She walked around the apartment naked. She called me an old man. One Sunday morning we woke up and she said, “I love you.”

She shook her head. “I know you don’t love me. But I love you. Will you fuck me like you love me?”

I didn’t say anything. I was as gentle and kind as I knew how to be. I touched her as softly as I could. I kissed her slowly.

“Make love to me,” she said. And I did. As best I could.

After she came, she cried and I held onto her. She pressed her head against my chest. I kissed her hair. “It’s O.K.,” I said. “It’ll be O.K.”

“I love you, Will. William.” It was the first time she’d called me by my first name.

We lay there for a while in silence. “I’m going to get us breakfast Marie. Stay here. I’ll be back.”

I climbed out of bed, got dressed and stood in line at Carton. As I was leaving the bakery, Julia Tompkins and her mother walked in.

“Oh my God, Mr. Silver!”

She hugged me. Mrs. Tompkins smiled. “Having a nice Sunday, Mr. Silver?”

I imagined Marie asleep in my bed.

“I can’t believe you live around here.” Julia laughed. “We live like five seconds away. We come here all the time. They make the best bread in the world. We’re totally neighbors.”

Mrs. Tompkins shook her head at her daughter’s enthusiasm. “Julia’s a big fan. I’m sure you know that by now.”

“Shut
up
, Mom.”

“Both Rick and Julia are big fans.”

I forced a laugh.

“I should get back,” I said holding up my bag of croissants.

“Have a great rest of the weekend,” Mrs. Tompkins said.

“See you on Monday, Mr. Silver.”

When I arrived home, Marie was standing at the sink, washing dishes.

“Hi honey,” she said. “How was work?”

I spooned coffee into the old Bialetti and she wrapped her arms around me.

We drank our coffee and ate the croissants with raspberry jam. They were playing an old Sidney Bechet concert on TSF. It had begun to rain.

“Will, I’m so happy,” she said. “I’ve never been so happy. Never.”

I smiled at her. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair a mess. She was naked beneath one of my old shirts. She looked prettier than I’d ever seen her.

We lay in bed listening to the rain, the street noise outside. Marie told me how she wasn’t afraid of anything. How powerful she’d begun to feel, how confident.

“You see the way I walk around your apartment, Will? Like nothing can go wrong. Like I’m the queen of the world, the smartest, toughest, most beautiful woman in the universe? I’m going to feel that way in the street someday.”

I smiled at the ceiling.

“Laugh all you want, asshole. You’ll see.” She sat up and looked at me. “You know what I’m going to do? One day?”

I shook my head. It was hard to resist her when she was like this.

“You want to know what I’m going to do when you’re old, I mean even older than you are now? When I’m even
more
beautiful and you can barely get up those fucking stairs?”

I laughed. “Tell me.”

“I’m going to have my own school. Outside Paris. Like in Saint-Denis for poor kids who are getting fucked by France and it’ll be full of teachers like Ms. Keller and you.”

I watched her and listened. Her eyes so full of light.

“You think now just because I’m who I am at ISF, I won’t be someone else later? You think that, don’t you?”

“I like who you are now, Marie. More and more to tell you the truth. And I know you’re right. I know you’ll do all of it. Everything you want to do. I just have to look at you to know.”

“Queen of the fucking world, Will. You’ll see.”

“I believe you, Marie.”

She lay back down, resting her head on my chest. “You’ll see. A beautiful school. And out there, I’ll feel every day like I feel in here.”

I held her tight against me.

“Are you happy?” she asked.

I looked at her, touched her face, and said, yes.

It was true.

* * *

For a while there were days like these. Afternoons after school watching movies, making love in a chair by the window, lying in bed awake together in the early evening, watching the room darken.

Marie came after school and late on Saturday nights when she’d arrive long after I’d gone to sleep, bringing the smell of evening with her. She’d slide beneath the blankets, waking me with her cool body. We’d tear at each other and, particularly when she was drunk, she’d push herself against me desperately. And on those gray Sunday mornings, I’d play music she’d never heard—Keith Jarrett, Dinah Washington. It was always cold outside and there was never any sunshine—only the dull Paris grisaille and often, the steady rain falling against the roof like gravel against a drum.

Once, I was waiting for the doors of the train to close when Mia and Marie walked into the car. The three of us sat together—Mia at my side, Marie facing us.

“So what are you doing on this train?” Mia asked.

“Shopping with Ariel, hot chocolate at the Flore,” she answered, looking Mia in the eyes.

So she can lie, I thought.

* * *

Days later, I had lunch with Mia at La Palette.

“You seem better,” she told me.

“I am,” I said.

“I’m glad.” She looked at me briefly and then cast her eyes away. “You can tell me anything, you know.”

I nodded. “I know, Mia.”

“Are there a lot of things you don’t tell me?”

“I guess there are a lot of things I don’t tell anyone. Like most people.”

She touched my hand. “You’ll be all right, Will.”

“How are things with Olivier, the lawyer?”

She shrugged.

The café was filling with people. Charlie Parker came on playing “Lover Man” and the dark-haired woman reading the paper behind the bar turned it up loud. We listened to the music, looking at each other, our empty plates in front of us.

“You could come home with me, you know. Spend Christmas with my lunatic family.”

“Mia,” I said.

“You could come, Will. I don’t know, we could . . . ” she trailed off.

The next day she left for Chicago and I stayed in Paris.

* * *

A few days before she left to go skiing with her family, Marie came over and wouldn’t sit down. She paced frantically around the apartment. She pushed me onto the floor and rode me angrily. She looked down at me, her eyes narrowed. I never saw her blink.

“Hold my hair,” she said. “Pull it.”

Afterward there was blood on her knees.

We lay together until we got cold. She stood up and wrapped a blanket around her body.

“Ariel thinks you’re so hot,” she said.

“I doubt that.”

“Don’t. She told me. She says it all the time.”

“She’s pretty horrible to me in class, Marie. I doubt—”

“Probably because you’re sleeping with me and not her, Will.”

I sat up. “Marie, have you told her?”

“Jesus. No. It was a joke, a fucking joke.
Putain!
Calm down. She hates her dad. That’s why she’s always so pissy. It’s nothing to do with you, Will. Believe me, she’d fuck you in a second. She told me yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“On the phone.”

“How’d that come up?” I watched her biting her nail.

“She brought you up, I guess. She wants you. What’s the big deal?” She glanced up and looked at me, “Does that excite you Will? Would you like to fuck Ariel?” She stared at me.

“No, Marie.”

She was walking around the apartment, picking things up, pretending to look at books on the shelves.

She went to the window and looked out at the city. I watched her standing naked, the curtains falling around her. Then she turned. She was shivering.

“Once, her father tried to seduce me.” She crossed her arms across her chest.

I didn’t say anything, just pulled the blanket around my knees.

“I was in Ariel’s bedroom waiting for her to come home from a run. I was sitting on her bed. He came in and tried to seduce me.”

I nodded, watching her.

“But then Ariel came home and caught us. Well, caught him.”

“Doing what?”

“Nothing. He was just sitting on the bed with me. He said he’d help me with my homework. He had his hand on my leg when Ariel came in. That’s it, O.K.? But she was so mad. She didn’t talk to me for like two weeks.”

She sat down on the floor next to me. I pulled the blanket around us and stroked her back with my hand.

“But that was all? Nothing more? Just his hand on your leg?”

“Nothing more, Will.”

“Does Ariel know, Marie? I mean about us. Have you told anyone?”

She looked at me briefly and then turned to the window where the light was flat and weak.

“Just tell me, Marie. I need to know.” I took a slow breath. “Please, Marie tell me if—”

“No,” she whispered pulling away. “No one knows. I haven’t told anyone. O.K.?”

“O.K.,” I said. “O.K.” I pulled her against me.

“I’d never tell anyone, Will,” she said beginning to cry. “Never. I know what it would do. To you. To us. Why would I? Fuck, Will why would I?”

“It’s all right. Forget it.”

She was sobbing, her body shuddering. I held her and I knew.

Soon, Marie went home and I stayed on the floor.

* * *

Those weeks I sat in cafés reading. I went to the movies. At night I went to La Palette and drank. I slept late, often until the afternoon. I missed Marie and as the city emptied, the streets quieter and quieter the closer we came to Christmas, the more I wished she’d return.

She wrote messages to me. I love you, Will. I miss you, Will. God, I miss your body.
Comme tu me manques!

I picked at a roasted chicken on Christmas day and drank a bottle of Bordeaux.

When they were alive, I’d sit with my parents around the tree and we’d open presents. On Christmas Eve, a few months before they died, we drove up to spend a week with them. The four of us had dinner while it snowed hard outside.

My parents. Me and Isabelle.

My dad built a fire after dinner and we all sat in the living room eating pecan pie. Afterward, Isabelle lay on the couch with her head in my lap. The four of us stayed up for hours watching the snow fall out of darkness through pale porch light.

Now I sat at the small table in my apartment. There was the hum of the room. The sound of the blade cutting through the chicken. The sound of wine in my throat. Returning the glass to the table. I tried to be perfectly still. I held my breath and imagined myself alone in Paris. In a room in a city holding my breath.

* * *

A few days after Christmas she sent me a message.

I was alone in a café reading
Hopscotch
.

I’m pregnant.

MARIE

W
e went to Megève for Christmas. The whole family thing. My sister was there. The four of us. My parents had rented a chalet for the break. It was cozy with a wide stone fireplace and everyone was happy. I loved being with my dad who’d promised to stay the entire time. Sometimes we skied together, just the two of us. He was very sweet. He drank less than usual. He asked about school and I remember wishing I could tell him everything about my secret life. We’d sit on the lift together, warm in the sun, all wrapped up in our parkas, and talk and talk. He made me laugh. He told me stories about China, where he’d been spending most of his time. He’d been gone so often I’d forgotten how much I adored him and I kept wanting to tell him the truth. Somehow I don’t think he would have been angry. He would never have made a scene, or gone to the school or anything like that.

It doesn’t matter. In the end I never told him.

* * *

I was late.

I stayed home that day and while everyone else was skiing I went to the little pharmacy on the square by the church and bought a pregnancy test.

I took it home and sat in the bathroom and when I saw it was positive I went numb. After a while I sent him a message. I can’t imagine what it did to him. All I wrote was, I’m pregnant. That’s it. I mean after all the messages I’d been sending—I miss you, I miss you. And then this. But it was what I could manage. Maybe I wanted to punish him, I don’t know. I didn’t say a thing to anyone. I kept it to myself until one night I didn’t think I’d survive. I got out of bed and snuck out of the house. It was late. Cold. The streets were covered with fresh snow and there was that round silence that comes in the winter at night in the mountains. I walked and walked and then I called him. He sounded so far away. But he was nice to me.

You couldn’t have asked for more. He said he’d be there. We’d get through it together. We’d do whatever I wanted. I needed to think about it. To really think about it. I told him I didn’t want to think about it. I told him I wanted
him
to tell me what to do and he said he couldn’t do that. He said it wasn’t his choice, that it was my body, and all that. I was standing in the snow crying, feeling the way I’d felt on the bridge the night I’d called Ariel a bitch. He said, Try to sleep, Marie. I’m here for you. I’m right here, he said, in the saddest voice I’d ever heard.

The next night I called back and told him I didn’t know what to do and then he said that he didn’t think it was a good idea to have the baby. Something like that. He kept saying, But Marie I don’t want to push you to do anything you don’t want to do. He said over and over again, I’ll be there no matter what. I mean, he was perfect. His words were perfect. But it was also as if he was reading a script. Part of me just wanted him to say, Get a fucking abortion goddamn it. You know, to prove that he cared at all. I mean about anything. But all he said was, I’m here, Marie. I’ll be there the whole time. No matter what happens. Which is what you
want
someone to say to you. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling, that same feeling that I’d had from the beginning, that he was only a ghost, vacant, repeating lines.

For the rest of the time we were in Megève I tried to pretend it wasn’t there. And I could do it during the day. I skied hard and stayed as close to my dad as I could. Sometimes on the lift, when it was just the two of us, I’d lean my head against his shoulder while he looked at the map and I’d cry beneath my goggles.

Then at night I’d lie in bed and try to imagine a child inside me, what it would look like, how it would resemble him, you know? Slowly I began to love it. Slowly it took on a personality. It had a face. I began to see it as a boy and then I imagined him with eyes just like his. Despite all the panic and dread of those last few days in the mountains, I was able to find a sort of center of warmth in this fantasy that I would give birth and the three of us would live together in his apartment in Paris. It’s what kept me alive.

* * *

He insisted I see a doctor as if there might be a doubt. I knew. I was pregnant. There wasn’t a question. But in Paris I went, for him. The day we got back I told my parents I was going to see Ariel and I went straight to the clinic. I waited there alone for hours. I was in a trance. I sat staring at the wall numb and frightened. He wanted to come but I told him not to. I think I was afraid he’d be angry, that he’d hate me for being pregnant.

By the time it was over it was nearly dark, and I had to go home. They did the tests and handed me the papers and I took them to school, which was the first place I saw him after break. It was terrible. We walked around and around the field with kids whispering and looking at us and me handing him the papers like we were doing some illegal business deal. I couldn’t even touch him. I couldn’t even look at him really. It was cruel and it was brutal. Walking there together, this baby inside me, his baby, and I couldn’t even touch him. My God, you should have seen his face.

That afternoon I took the train straight to his apartment where we got into bed and I cried and cried. Then I sat up and looked at him. I’d never felt so hopeful in my entire life. It only lasted a moment. I was so happy for those few seconds, a sort of short burst of hope, of joy. As if we’d be O.K., the two of us. Together. Me and him.