GOOD AMERICANS GO TO PARIS WHEN THEY DIE by Howard Waldman Page B

sidewalk café
table staring at the gaudy cabaret entrance with her name in
medium-size print. She removes Guy’s arm. What’s the matter? Guy
asks alongside her in the cab. Nothing’s the matter, she
says.
    She returns to the jewelry shop. Yes? he
says, looking up from papers on his desk and then back again. I
forgot to thank you, she says. She adds: That wasn’t my artistic
dance. I do that just to earn my living. Why doesn’t he look at
her? Why doesn’t he say something? Of course you go to the ballet,
he says finally. All the time, she says although she never did. He
invites her to the ballet.
    She feels deeply humiliated by that
controlled perfection on the stage, no wailing clarinet. He
maintains strict distance from her in the dark during the
performance. After, he comments on the dancers, using terms she’s
never heard of. He shakes her hand and says good night to her
before her hotel. The ballet invitation was to humiliate her. Back
in her furnished room she weeps bitterly, no effort at all, the
effort is to stop. But three months later Jean Haussier offers her
a gold ring like the one she’d tried to take but with a much bigger
diamond on it. She accepts it but not the permanent thing that’s
supposed to accompany it. She’s already met Harry, no, George,
Harry was later.
     
    Why didn’t I? she now thinks, stumbling down
another shadowy corridor. Everything would have turned out
differently in her life. And the idea occurs to her too: if by some
second miracle she could return out there and back then (she’s been
given the marvelously renewed body for it), wouldn’t it happen all
over again? Except that this time, guided by miraculous hindsight,
given a second chance, she would know what to do and what not to
do, would know that she should say yes this time to what Jean
Haussier offered with the gold ring and the two-carat diamond.
     
    For Helen, it’s a bright windy October
morning in the Luxembourg Gardens with Richard, in one-sided
discussion of guide-book places for the third afternoon of their
honeymoon. She suggests the Eiffel Tower and gives many reasons. He
wants the Catacombs and gives no reasons. He stares at the basin
and the well-dressed children with gaffs sailing sleek model
sailboats. The wind pushes the splashing jet about. Sudden gusts
decapitate it to spray with a hint of a rainbow. The spray wets the
billowing sails of the veering sailboats.
    “ They’ll swamp if they let them sail into the
fountain,” he predicts somberly. Certain days he sees disaster
everywhere. She asks him, not for the first time that morning, if
he’s taken the pills. Usually she makes sure he does, looking at
his throat to make sure he’s swallowed them, swallowing herself to
encourage him to, like a mother with a small child. He still
doesn’t answer her question. He keeps on staring at the sailboats.
She tucks in his blowing tie and combs his blowing hair with her
fingers. I look old, don’t I? he says. On the bad days he thinks
he’s getting old and ugly, his bones brittle as chalk. He’s
twenty-six. The handsomest young man on earth, she says
sincerely.
    After a while he gets up and goes over to the
basin. He tells one of the children that his boat is heading for
disaster. The child doesn’t understand English. Richard takes the
gaff out of the child’s hand. The child protests. The mother rushes
up, pop-eyed with outrage. What are you doing, are you drunk? Are
you crazy? Luckily Richard knows almost no French, not even easy
words like “ fou .” He leans over the
rim, trying to grapple the boat away from disaster. Helen tells the
woman that her husband is just trying to be helpful. She’s already
used to explaining him. The boat tacks about, heads straight toward
them and bumps against the rim of the basin.
    Helen gently takes the gaff out of Richard’s
hand and gives it back to the child. The mother comforts her child,
explaining: foreigners. Helen comforts Richard, explaining: