Tangled Hearts Unraveling

Mavis and I walked into the Shakespeare & Company café next to the bookstore. The place was relatively quiet at ten-thirty on a Tuesday morning, so we had our pick of tables. We chose one outside to take advantage of the cool September weather and sat, already discussing what we both wanted to order. 

France - and Paris, especially - holds a special place in my heart because my late husband was French. I never learned the language, unfortunately. Not for the lack of love, but for the fundamental reason that I just wasn’t linguistically inclined and wasn’t confident enough. I tried to learn, to be fair, but could only manage one word answers. I could never figure out when an object is male or female, and could never string a proper sentence together unfortunately. When Emily in Paris came out on Netflix, I admired the girl’s determination to pick up the language and how comfortable she was at making mistakes. I was too self-conscious, constantly afraid of making a fool of myself in front of my husband. I regretted it so much later when he got sick and I realised there were things that were difficult for him to express in English and I couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell me in French. Now at sixty-five years of age, learning a new language is next to impossible.

I had a lot of mixed feelings coming here to Paris. There were a lot of memories, both happy and sad. My emotions ran from feeling melancholic, to contentment, to a deep sadness I thought I was done feeling. I learned that we grieve differently for the people we truly loved.

Mavis ordered a flat white and a bagel du jour while I got a hot chocolate with oat milk and a toastie. While waiting for our orders to arrive, we started talking about the people we used to know back in the day. Mavis and I worked together in a marketing consultancy firm for a short period of time in our late thirties. She left shortly after I joined, but for some reason, we kept in touch and became close friends over the years. Both of us had just retired about six months ago - me at sixty-five and she at sixty - and we were doing the predictable retiree life, travelling carefree while our bodies could still manage plane rides.

We were in the middle of discussing an ex-colleague who used to give us so much trouble when suddenly, Mavis raised her hand and called out to a lady walking in our direction.

“Keira, hey!” Mavis called out.

The lady’s expression lit up on seeing Mavis. 

“Mavis, hi! Oh my goodness, fancy seeing you all the way here!” she exclaimed as she walked over.

“This is Jade, Jade, Keira. Both of you are my ex-colleagues from different places,” Mavis introduced us.

We shook hands and said our pleasantries.

“What are you doing here?” Mavis asked Keira.

“Oh, just holidaying,” Keira replied. 

“Well, if you’re not in a hurry to go anywhere, why not join us?” Mavis said. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea, since we had not concluded our trip down memory lane and I rather enjoyed doing that. I was hoping that Keira would decline the invite. I mean, normal people would, right?

“Oh, are you sure you don’t mind? I wouldn’t mind some company,” Keira smiled, looking a little hopeful and apologetic.

“Sure, please,” I waved my hand toward the empty chair opposite us. I hope my expression didn’t betray me.

Keira sat down, placing her mini taupe Céline belt bag on the chair that already had our bags on it. My humble little Tory Burch black backpack and Mavis’s non-branded brown leather crossbody that we got together on our last trip to Chiang Mai. They looked like they both shrunk a little next to the Céline.

Keira ordered a cappuccino with the waitress when she served us our orders, and we continued to make small talk. She, like us, retired a couple of years ago and was doing freelance work, mainly in real estate consultancy. She was doing a little mini tour around Europe for the next couple of months, and France was her first stop. She had arrived about a week ago, five days ahead of us.

”So, what do you recommend we do for the rest of the trip? We have about two weeks here,” Mavis asked. I was a little annoyed at the question. Yours truly had been to Paris so often I could have answered the question easily. And I thought Mavis knew it. 

“Oh, I’m not sure if I’m the best person to ask, really,” Keira said. “I guess the usual, if you’ve not been here before. The Eiffel, the Louvre, the Jardin du Luxembourg, maybe?” She raised her eyebrow and frowned.

”Ah, it’s okay, I think I’ve got it figured out,” I said.

”My ex-husband would probably be ashamed of me. He’s passed on now, so I guess it really doesn’t matter,” Keira said suddenly. The moment she said it though, she looked like she wished she hadn’t. 

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear,” Mavis offered. “Were you close after the divorce?” 

“We were friends. Took me some time, of course, to get over it. We managed to become friends much later. The situation was difficult for me but I eventually recovered and let the whole thing go. He loved my dog, and I think my dog missed him too. So I let him take care of her sometimes. Oh, he was French and we used to travel here a lot. That’s why I said he would be ashamed of me for not remembering what’s good here,” Keira explained.

”What dog do you have?” I asked.

”A Dachshund. She just passed on, actually, like, two months ago. I had an older one who passed a year before that,” Keira looked like she was about to cry.

I, however, started to feel my pulse quicken. But I silently took a deep breath to steady myself. I started to study Keira closely. She had on a camel brown long coat that was now removed and hung on the back of her chair. She was dressed in a beige turtleneck sweater and tapered white pants that reached just before her ankle, and she paired the ensemble with dark brown criss-cross sandals with heels about an inch tall. Her greying hair was cut in a shoulder length slanted bob style that framed her oval face. She had high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes that I guess must have looked pretty when she was young. Her full lips were tinged a slight shade of deep blood red. This woman looked like she belonged in Paris. 

”I’m so sorry to hear. I understand what you’re going through. I myself lost both my Cavalier mix and Cavalier King in the last few years,” I said, even as I was processing the situation in my head.

”Ohhhh, Browniieeee,” Mavis said, sighing. “I loved Brownie.”

”And Latte?” I asked 

“She too, but Brownie is everyone’s favourite,” Mavis smiled, seemingly forming a picture of Brownie, my Cavalier Shih Tzu mix, in her mind.

“She was,” I said, sadly.

Keira started tearing suddenly. Mavis and I looked at each other and at her, unsure of what to say.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice breaking as she tried to breathe to stop a full blown outburst. “Losing Kiki somehow just reminded me of Émile, I don’t know why.” She stopped, then took a deep breath. “Sorry, Kiki was the Dachie I just lost and Émile, my ex.” 

Mavis opened her mouth, wanting to say something but changed her mind and turned to me instead. Her eyes widened and she stared at me, while mouthing something I couldn’t quite catch. I frowned at her with a questioning face, raised my hand slightly and turned to Keira.

“Keira… I’m not sure how to say this and I think this is the weirdest situation and the worst time, but… My late husband’s name was also Émile, and… Dachshunds…” I started then stopped, unable to continue the sentence.

Keira’s eyes widened as she stared at me.

“Oh my God,” she said, covering her mouth. 

Now it was my turn to start crying. 

I met Émile in my late twenties and we got together after a quick courtship. But not two years later, one day he said he realised he also had feelings for his ex-girlfriend. She had reached out and had wanted to get back together with him. So he left me and got back together with her. Fast forward four years, they had gotten married and I had moved on with my life. And one day, I bumped into Émile when I was out with my friends. Long story short, we kept in touch, we started an affair and he eventually got a divorce and we brought the relationship into light. We had only gotten married in my late fifties, purely for administrative purposes. 

The whole thing was long-drawn and filled with emotions that ran the gamut from deep anguish, to exhilaration and euphoria, to contentment for all parties involved. And now here sat Keira, the woman whom I had never wanted to meet this whole time but spent so much time thinking about in the early years. I had not even wanted to know her name, and judging from what I had just witnessed, I guess she didn’t have much information about me either. 

Oh Émile, I thought, your tightly wounded worlds are unwinding and coming together now. What must you be feeling if you were alive right now?

We sat in awkward silence. The sounds around us suddenly became louder, clearer, more important than just ten minutes ago. That table next to us ordered a croissant. The lid on the teapot didn’t fit so well, it kept clanging against the pot as the waitress carried it to the table near us. 

I wished we had gone to this other café on my list, just a fifteen minute walk away. Why didn’t we want to walk?

Mavis cleared her throat.

“Um, should I leave the table?” she asked quietly.

I turned and stared at her.

“Okay, no.” She looked down at her feet.

“So, what now?” I asked Keira.

She shook her head. 

“I had wanted to find out who you were and I don’t know. I was so angry,” she started. I nodded.

“Well, I was angry too. You had broken up with him, what, how long ago? He had someone. He had me. And yet you…” I stopped and turned my eyes away from her.

“Okay, I guess we’re even then,” came her reply.

I looked back up at her face. Her expression revealed the same pain I must be feeling.

“He loved the dogs so much,” I said suddenly, after a long silence. A slight smile came to her face, and she nodded.

“He would come and take Kiki out some Sundays,” she said. She suddenly looked up at me, and asked, “What did he tell you? Did you know where he went those Sunday afternoons?”

I smiled and nodded.

“Yes, I thought he should spend time with Kiki nevertheless. The kids are innocent,” I said. 

Keira laughed. 

“Indeed,” she said. “This is so crazy!”

After a pause, she asked, “What about your dogs? Brownie and Latte, you mentioned?”

Mavis looked from me to Keira, and back to me. She had a look of amazement on her face and started to smile too.

“I’m sorry to break the moment, but I never knew this whole time my world was connected in this sad, crazy way,” she said. “Jade, I didn’t know your Émile was Keira’s man! This whole time!” she exclaimed.

I looked at Keira, who was looking right back at me.

“I was so angry. I had no idea who you were, what you did, what you look like, your name, everything,” she started. “So naturally, I formed this image of you. Trashy. Some young thing. Maybe not even a local. Maybe a bit dumb. Because who does this?” She took a deep breath. “I thought I would never be able to forgive either of you. And I didn’t. But like they say, time has a way of making people forget things, I guess. I don’t know if I really forgot, but I found a way to move on, and I found a way to be happy too. I thought I would still be angry at you, but now, after all these years…” She looked at me. “And suddenly, here you are. I realised I’m not angry anymore. I guess I’m also too tired to be angry and life is too short now.” 

 I kept quiet for a while and thought about what I wanted to say. Then I just said the things that have been living in my head for years.

“For the longest time, I was the other woman. I was the one people pointed their fingers at. I imagined so many things at night when I go to sleep, for many years. I pictured you together with him. Your wedding, your life together, all that. I didn’t know if everything was perfect. I didn’t know if I was really the one destroying anything you both have. But some days I reminded myself that you took him away from me too.

“I cycled through a myriad of emotions in a single day because I was the other woman. I don’t know if you know what that’s like. Everyone blames the other woman. An affair is the ultimate betrayal in a marriage. People must be angry for you, for what you suffered when everyone knew what happened. Only my friends were angry for me, and even then, my friends thought I was rather stupid for staying with him.

“But at the end of the day, we both suffered because we wanted the same thing - a life with the same person. Perhaps things would have been different if one of us had learned to let go earlier, but neither of us did. And so, here we are.

“I guess we can only move forward. I have been trying to move forward everyday, even more so for the past three years since he was gone. Being able to be here and sitting with these emotions, I think I have done pretty well.”

After a long silence, Keira put her hand out.

“Truce?” she said.

I looked at her, smiled, and took her hand.

Mavis clapped her hands together.

“I have a great idea. Why don’t we find a super nice restaurant that serves super good wine for lunch?” she said.

We all laughed and agreed.

As we left the café and followed Mavis to the next place, Keira started asking Mavis about our trip so far. I fell behind the duo and slowed down my pace a little. I looked up at the bright blue sky as we walked, hands in my teal coat.

Who would have thought? I had imagined this moment so many times when I was younger, but in none of the scenarios did it end like this. Life really does come full circle, doesn't it? Either that, or age does something to you.

It definitely did something to me.