Beware Paris

Beware brides upon the Seine, perfumed with river water, whose veils catch the wind like white flags of surrender. They will trip along the cobbles with their arms full of roses, and the petals will find you with all the softness of forever. The brides alone feel the thorns.

Beware the Latin Quarter with its songbirds and bistro tables within kissing distance. Do not be tempted here to make a beautiful acquaintance, not over a bottle of wine, not over a shot of espresso, not even over a love song.

Beware the dreamers of Montmartre who create en plein air and pick muses from stoops and shadows. They will climb on braids of ivy to your window and perch on your sill. By moonlight, they will stain you with watercolours and sign you in illegible cursive.

Here, there are hearts ripe for picking.

Never has a city hungered so badly to ruin you.

———

The mother’s hands are on her phone. The father’s hands are in his pockets. The Rodin’s hands are white stone, a bridge formed where their fingers intersect. Beneath the tenderness, a wide and hollow space between the palms. 

———

The daughter is worried she does not have role models for being in love. 

Her parents are passionless. Their kisses are closed-mouthed and fleeting, platonic pecks. When the daughter is in love, she decides, she will surrender herself to it, damning decorum on a voyage through desire. She will reject anyone who loves her less than the ocean loves a ship. She will be taken naturally, entirely, and dangerously. There will be no escaping it. It will take her apart. It will break her bow and soak her sails and sink her til she is just bones mired in blue.

———

The mother and father were not young when they met. They’d both had their hearts broken several times by then—with small fractures, piercing wounds, closed fists, open palms, and the sharp beak of a cooing dove. They’d known reckless loves, thrown stones in glass houses, and burned bridges.

They were ready for the cushion of a forever love. Not as a ship and its waters, but as wind and sand: a love that lifts and dances in endless embrace.

Their students were above them studying Water Lilies. Matin dans le matin. The shallow ponds reflected dawn-brushed clouds. Willows dipped their long, thready branches into the indigo pools. Lily pads created a soft place for sunlight to land. The water did not move. The students took selfies.

The mother was downstairs with a Cézanne. The father stood beside her. They looked at the still life, and the still life looked back at them.

For a long time, they were silent, and then the father said, “Yum.”

He was so American. Then again, so was she.

———

The son is old enough to drink in Paris but too young to drink at home. He orders une bière in clumsy French, but cannot follow the waiter’s next question. His cheeks flaming red, he points at the menu: Kronenbourg. 

The waiter slaps his notebook shut officiously, then bustles on to the next table. The son doesn’t look directly at his parents or his sister. He’s ready to step into manhood and afraid they can see how he’s stumbling.

———

The mother pats her hands dry on her pants. Outside of the bathroom, everyone is abuzz about the Mona Lisa. In every language she has ever known of, in husks, in singsong, in dialect, they talk about the smile, the smile, her smile.

The mother smiles.

It hurts her mouth. Her lips have become so tight over the years that something as elastic as joy doesn’t keep; it wants to snap back and burn the skin. 

Her daughter will be on her phone, though staying connected brings out the worst in her. She sulks that life at home carries on. If she could, she’d trap it in resin and force it to hold its shape until she’s back.

Her son will be standing apart from his sister and father. He has come to Paris to pretend to be alone.

Her husband will be out with his spool, running circles to bind them together with fragile thread. Only the mother knows he’s trying to apologise. Sometimes, she wants to let him rope her in with the lot of them, tie the family prettily with a bow. 

Other times, she hopes he’ll trip.

———

The daughter once heard her parents making love through the wall. She was curious and disturbed and yanked her sheets and pillow off her bed hastily. When she was rearranged on the basement couch, she thought as loudly as she could to cover up the memory.

——

The father tilts his head to Nike of Samothrace. Automatically, he calculates her attractiveness. He registers her pleasing, hourglass figure. Her proud chest pulls his eyes, modest where the marble sheet clings to her, though not so modest that he cannot see the suggestion of her nipples. The exercise is so ludicrous that he wishes he could laugh, tell someone that he is assessing a headless statue’s sex appeal.

There is no one to tell. He’s made slow progress in his amends and can’t afford to remind his wife of other women, even those who are impossible and sexless.

“Wonder what she’s thinking about,” he jokes weakly and hates himself. He hates that he can no longer make his children laugh. He hates that, the longer it’s been since he has, the worse his attempts become.

“Arms,” his daughter humours him without looking up from her texts.

His son says nothing. He stands several feet away, brow furrowed studiously. The father’s heart aches when he sees his boy pantomiming a man.

His wife reappears. She doesn’t look once at Nike. “What did I miss?” 

She’s never missed anything, especially not when the father is looking at another woman.

———

The son will never tell the daughter about the woman who drove their father home under a velvet night sky. He will never tell their mother that, while he watched through the window, the woman leaned over the console and pecked their father on the cheek, then let her mouth linger on the corner of his.

The son turned the TV off and ran upstairs before his path intersected his father’s.

He will never tell.

Every night that passes, he convinces himself a little more it was not what he saw, but what he imagined.

———

The daughter declares she cannot look at another museum or she will die. Instead, they sit on a second-rate bench in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe. To a symphony of traffic and horns, they sample pastries from the Champs: an almond tart with vanilla bean mousse, rose-flavoured macarons, moist cake with mango gelee. 

The desserts lift everyone’s spirits.

The daughter has a little pink crumb above her lip. “Is it how you remember it?”

——

The mother remembers falling in love like this:

Sitting across from the father in a bistro crammed with patrons and candlelight, grateful for an excuse to crush her legs into his under the table. Browsing the les bouquinistes for an English title, turning pages made delicate with age. Leaning against the balustrade, blue sky around them and boats below, a croissant in her hand. His eyes on her face, warming her like the sun. 

The father remembers falling in love like this:

Staring at the wall she built between them. The top lined with barbed wire so he cannot climb over it. Unable to reach through, even as the mother’s saying, “I can’t be with you anymore.” Trying to promise her “I love you more than anything,” when he means, “I can’t lose you,” and doesn’t understand that isn’t the same thing.

——

They cross a bridge heavy with initialled padlocks. The daughter thinks it’s the most romantic thing in the world. More quietly, so does the son. 

“We had a lock once,” the father recalls, but neither he nor the mother can remember on what bridge. 

Stars peek down through the gauzy sunset. With age and vantage on their side, they remember perfectly.

“I hope,” the father says, “it hasn’t been cut off.”

——

Their children are above them in a pool of Water Lilies.

The Cézanne is more vivid than the mother remembers it. She counts the yellow apples among the red. The father stands beside her. She reaches for his hand.