Hidden In Paris Part 30

"Why, yes."

Perfectly prepared or not, Annie was wearing a sleeveless shirt and goose b.u.mps covered her arms. Lucas removed his sweater and wrapped it around her shoulders.

"Let's leave the kids in the car one more minute. They'll be fine," Annie said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yep." She was joyous suddenly, and playful. She looked beautiful.

She grabbed his hand and started walking fast toward the ocean, and then they were both running. They reached the sand and she kicked off her sandals. They climbed up a small sand dune, pushing and shoving each other. The air cooled, but Lucas was hot. Annie kneeled and put Lucas's jacket on the sand that was smooth and grey in the moonlight and still warm to the touch. She grabbed his hand again and laid down there, pulling him down beside her. Lucas's pulse started to rise. He took her face in his hands and kissed her, and Annie reached for his belt.

The sun was blinding and Annie put on her sungla.s.ses. Waves swelled in the distance only to end, docile, near her feet. The ocean air, rich and thin, swelled her lungs and her heart. She sat in a low beach chair in her retro red one-piece suit that made her look like a pinup girl, and buried her feet in the warm sand. Next to her, but not too close so as to not raise the children's suspicions, Lucas, still wearing the clothes he had on the day before, sat in another chair. His unb.u.t.toned white shirt billowed in the breeze, his pants, rolled above his ankles, were soaked and he squinted in the sun looking not unlike Clark Gable. A few yards away, the children glistened with sunscreen, water and sand. Maxence and Lia were up to their waists in a hole the children had dug in the sand. The two talked incessantly as they dug away. About what, Annie could not hear over the rumble of the ocean. It was amusing to watch how Maxence dispatched Paul, Laurent and Simon to get more water or seash.e.l.ls, making them run to and from the ocean with overflowing buckets as though their lives depended on it. It occurred to her that Lia and Maxence were absorbed in each other, oblivious to their surroundings, their desire to be alone together palpable.

Lucas's foot began teasing hers under the sand more or less discreetly. That contact alone provoked immediate erotic sensations throughout her body. They had made love in the dunes the evening before, because she had initiated it. How deeply aroused she had been, baffled her. This was a beautiful moment, as beautiful a moment as there ever could be on this Earth. Lucas was a wonderful human being and a wonderful man, and he seemed to want her. He was the man she could start over with, the man who made her laugh and laughed at her angry jokes. The man who got her. The man who'd seen her whole, scarred, and flawed and was still interested.

But didn't life remain picture perfect in movies only? In real life, summers ended, children went back to school, grew up, and left their mothers. Best friends ran back to their pathetic husbands. People collapsed of self-inflicted starvation or drug overdoses just when you thought you had helped them. Husbands betrayed you and then died. And new lovers found ways of nipping things in the bud before anything too intimate set in, before happiness lured you all the way, only to crush you later.

"Lucas, this is not going to work," Annie said softly, her eyes scanning the shimmering waves. His own eyes still on the ocean, Lucas stiffened. He knew her well enough to expect this and waited. "What exactly did you have in mind?" she continued, aggressive. "I mean, this is all very cute and all, the house, the beach, the torrid s.e.x on the dunes. But you and I know it is all a lie."

"Who is lying?" Lucas asked after a moment.

"You, me. I mean, this was fun, but we know each other too well. This is almost incestuous, this relationship. I really like you... I mean. But I really like the way we were, you know, before."

"When we were just friends?"

"Right."

"You're saying you'd rather stay friends?"

She hesitated, not long enough, "Yes, just friends."

"Speak for yourself!" he said, gazing at the ocean.

She gave a little laugh. "s.e.x is not everything."

Lucas got up from his chair. He walked away from her for a few steps and faced the waves. She thought he was about to walk away, but instead he turned on his feet and came toward her, then plopped down on the sand to face her. His chest hair was salt and pepper. She liked the lines around his eyes when he smiled. A happy person's wrinkles. Right now, he was not smiling. He brought his hands to her gla.s.ses, took them off, and all of a sudden, she was exposed.

"Annie, I'm not interested in this. I don't want to play Le chat et la souris."

"I'm not playing cat-and-mouse," she said, indignant, but she knew she was lying. She was playing hard to get. She was ready to throw everything out the window if need be. This was a test after all.

"Annie. This is not an accident. Maybe for you it is, but not for me. I've been waiting and hoping for you, for... years."

She said nothing. Please tell me more.

"I was always hoping for more," he added, searching her eyes.

"Always?" Please tell me, tell me more.

"Even when Johnny was alive, I had a crush on you."

"A crush?"

"A big crush, Annie. Don't make me use the word."

"What word?" She quickly put on her sungla.s.ses, because her eyes were like her feelings, blurred. Lucas was an expert at that, seduction. So many girlfriends. Of course he was an expert at appearing sincere. She'd seen him at work. All he wanted was to get his way.

"All you want is to get your way," she exclaimed.

"Bien sur, I want to get my way. And what do you think my way is? And could you please take off those gla.s.ses? They're annoying."

"Too bright. I'm blinded."

"By the sun or the truth? Face it. Face me. Be blinded for G.o.d's sake. Take off those ridiculous gla.s.ses."

Annie did.

"You are crying," he exclaimed. "I am relieved."

"Relieved," she echoed, unable to come up with her own words.

"You," Lucas said, touching her nose, with his index. "You have feelings. For me."

"What are you talking about? Of course I have feelings."

Lucas wiped the tears off her cheeks with the back of his hand, and she could smell testosterone-his or hers?-and suntan lotion in that brief contact. She wanted him to bite the side of her neck and tell her that she was beautiful like he had on the dunes.

"You are beautiful."

She laughed, she cried. "You are a womanizer. I would be crazy."

"What? Was I supposed to stay celibate for the last twelve years?"

"You expect me to believe you were s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around but that I was the woman of your dreams? Lucas, I'm not a teenager. I don't buy this s.h.i.t."

"You need to buy it. It's the truth."

"The truth?"

"Okay, Merde!" He made a fist and punched the sand in front of her feet. "I want you, tu comprends? I wanted you. I couldn't be celibate while you were a respectable and devoted wife, and then a respectable widow in mourning, all the while shaking that s.e.xy a.s.s of yours in front of my eyes all these years."

"The nerve! I never...I never shook."

"Oh, you shook."

"The nerve." She laughed out loud. He found her big a.s.s s.e.xy.

"But, you know, it's not just your body. I like everything about you, even...even your extremely difficult personality. And I'm not giving up. I'm not going to be a friend. I want to be your lover. If you let me."

"Oh, all right, dammit," she said.

Lucas put his hand near her neck as though he was considering strangling her. "All right what?"

"I'll let you."

"At last!" Lucas took her chin in his hand and kissed her.

In the distance, she heard Lia's clear shriek. "Look, Maxence! Lucas and your mom are kissing!"

And she couldn't care less.

Juillet.

Chapter 30.

The women here were as sick as they were desperate. Only six months ago, Althea would have been in no better shape than they were. Six months ago she too would have lied to the staff and to herself. She too would have secretly burned calories by walking around the hospital corridors or by taking her showers cold. She too would have cheated on the amount of food she was ordered to eat, and she too would have perceived the program as an impediment to her deepest and most profound compulsion, which was to not eat. But things were different now. She wanted to resist eating with every fiber, still, but she could no longer ignore the pathology of it. This, this disease, could kill her, was killing her and might as well because living with it was h.e.l.l.

Also, things were different because, unlike six months ago, she now wanted things. There were more things she wanted than she ever would have thought possible.

She did not want visitors. She was doing this alone by choice. Annie had called her parents to let them know what was going on with her. Where was her mother right now, she wondered. Where had she been her entire life? She tried to imagine a future without her mother, and the ultimate of all rejections-the rejection of a child by her mother. This had been at the heart of all her fears and now that she was facing it, she felt safer rather than more vulnerable.

Abandoning the toxic connection to her mother was a death of sorts, and her only chance for freedom. This desertion allowed for something new, a reinvention. But despair came as she tried to envision a future that did not include Jared.. If she were to live at all, she would need to believe that, for a brief moment, in that chaste and careful way of his, Jared did love her. But most importantly, believe that she loved him--that feeling of love that had eluded her was something she was capable of.

Althea left the bedroom she shared with Valerie, a forty-year-old mother of three who never talked but spent her time doing push-ups and sit-ups in her room even though it was against the rule. She and Valerie were the oldest women in the department. Valerie's teeth were rotted out from years of self-induced vomiting. Valerie scared her, disgusted her as only a person who represents your future can. Althea moved through the familiar white corridors of the hospital. In the elevator, she stood next to Veronique, a sixteen-year-old, eighty-two-pound girl with a head too big for her body. Another sick girl. The girl and Althea didn't acknowledge each other. Althea tapped on a door and let herself in. She sat in the chair across from Madame Defloret's mahogany desk, brought one knee to her chin, and waited for Madame Defloret's phone conversation to end. Even here, the window had bars. Behind the bars, under the canopies of trees in the hospital's garden, mentally ill people strolled.

Madame Defloret hung up the phone and smiled at Althea. "Althea, you have been with us ten days already. You've done well, my dear. You are a brave and strong young lady."

Althea measured those words. Brave and strong. Yes, she had been brave and strangely strong. "Thank you," she smiled. "It's been as good as mental illness gets."

"I can see you have a sense of humor. That's wonderful! It takes a lot to embrace the concept of an illness as unflinchingly as you did. Not everyone dares."

"Thank you." Althea understood that she had been ready, that the shift had happened over the last six months without her even realizing it. Without living in Annie's house, that crazy house where people argued, and food was rich, and children played, without Jared painting her and kissing her, without Paris and the abundant messy life of it, she would never had been ready.

"You and I have talked about a plan to move you to outpatient as soon as we, you and I together, would feel ready." Madame Defloret added, "I suggest that the time has come."

"I'm not ready to leave!" Althea said, suddenly terrified.

"You will need extensive therapy, but you don't need to be hospitalized. It will be a long hard journey, at least as long as it took you to get here. Don't expect immediate results, but I believe you can do it."

"But I..." Althea's throat was useless. "I can't do it alone."

Madame Defloret smiled kindly. "Things will be different now. We've discussed creating a support system that--"

"My parents didn't even call. They don't care."

"In the interest of healing, you need to spend your focus those who do care." The ringing of the phone interrupted her. "Yes," Madame Defloret said. "In the waiting room please." She hung up the phone. "As a matter of fact, you have a visitor."

Althea looked at her hands, at the bars at the window, at Madame Defloret. "I don't think I'm ready to see anyone."

"Visitors can be an olive branch."

Mom! Althea felt nauseous. "It would be throwing me into the lion's pit."

"He's certainly not taking no for an answer," Madame Defloret said. "Should I let him in?"

He? Althea curled up in her chair, ready to lick her wounds. Her hope was formidable. "Yes, please."

The door to Madame Defloret's office opened.

Jared seemed taller maybe, or thinner. He was closely shaved and had dark circles under his eyes.

"I'll leave you two alone," Madame Defloret said as she got up and left the room.

In her chair, Althea didn't budge. She had the sensation of sinking.

"No one wanted to tell me where you were," he said with an awkward smile.

"Why? Why not?"

"They said a drug addict is bad for you."

"Oh, Jared. I'm so sorry." She didn't know what she was sorry about.

"I looked for you. Then I went to rehab for a few days. Now I'm here."

"Oh, that's all right," she whispered. "I understand, of course."

Jared kneeled next to her chair, took both of her hands, and brought them to his face. "I'm crazy. You're crazy. Together, we would be less crazy. What do you think?"

Althea fiercely fought tears of yearning, despair, and joy all at once.

"But you have to promise me to get better," he said.

Althea looked at his beautiful, manly hands encircling her thin wrists. A wave of disgust shook her. Of course, she had to get better. She had to stop this right now. The old way wasn't necessary anymore. She was no longer alone. He wanted her whole, not broken. Not sick. She was going to do this for him, for herself. Althea stood and let Jared hold her in his arms. The scent of his shirt was like coming home. She looked out the window, and it all came rushing in, the warmth of the sun like a caress, the sound of the birds, the wind coming through the trees, the smell of the wet gra.s.s that was being mowed. Now. Right now. It was so simple. And she could feel all of it.

Lola's hair stuck to the back of her neck with sweat. She had hurried up and down the stairs, washed several loads of laundry, finished last-minute shopping, her heart bouncing in her chest from activity and fright. Everything was coming together; everything was falling apart. Jared and Althea had emerged from their respective treatments and announced they were moving in together in Jared's apartment on rue de Cambronne. Annie and Lucas were careful to show no signs of affection in public, but the pink on their cheeks and the smiles on their lips showed how thrilled they were to be catching up with ten years of unattended l.u.s.t. Annie's happiness was a beautiful thing to watch. Was her own life coming together or falling apart? Lola wasn't sure. All she knew was that she, Mark, and the children were going home. They were leaving Paris the next day.

Of course, Mark's arrival changed absolutely everything. Had he not found her, she might have stayed in Paris eternally. But he had found her. As long as she was away from Mark, it had been possible to convince herself that running away was a legitimate response to her problem. But watching Mark be reunited with Lia and Simon, she was appalled by her own cruelty to him and the children. Her cruelty and selfishness, she realized, had been a by-product of fear. The fear had led to what Lucas called cowardice. Yes, she had behaved in a cowardly way that now disgusted her. But if there was one thing that those six months in France had changed about her, it was that she now realized she never needed to feel like a victim again, or act like one. She could take action, make demands, draw lines. She had made a pact with herself to never be a coward again. That which she feared most, she must now do. What she feared most to say, she must now say.