I had no response. All these years the only comfort in my memories of Gerard was that I’d done the right thing by staying on this side of virginity. I had left Paris with a broken heart but with my morals still intact. Yet Amy was right. I’d given Gerard the freshest, most vulnerable and eternal part of me, and he had rejected it. I’m not sure I ever gave that part of myself away entirely again. Not even to my wonderful husband.
I leaned back, stunned to realize how guarded I had been in all my relationships. I loved and gave and confided in the small circle of those closest to me. But I’d never entered in emotionally at the same level I so willingly had with Gerard.
This was staggering news. It meant that I had successfully guarded myself by taking only the smallest and most predictable steps in my relationships. The result was that I was rarely hurt. Rarely disappointed. And rarely as happy or alive as I’d been that one week with Gerard. It seemed as if I’d only half-lived.
This is really hard.” I told Amy, sinking into my chair at the tiny restaurant and dabbing the corners of my eyes with the cloth napkin.
“You’re doing great.” Amy leaned in compassionately. “Don’t run from this now. I’ve waited years for this conversation, Lisa. Please don’t shut down. Please. You’re almost there. Keep telling yourself the truth.”
The tears were coming in a steady stream now. “The truth really hurts,” I whispered.
“I know. It also really heals.” Amy sat across from me like the Rock of Gibraltar. I knew that nothing I told her would change her view of me or alter our friendship. She was the picture of grace upon grace. All I had to do was tell myself the truth. I strung the words together in my mind and let them trail out of my mouth for the first time ever.
I told Amy about how Gerard and I rode the train to Chantilly. He showed me all the tourist spots, and then we found a little restaurant and ate under a grape trellis by candlelight. We whispered, laughed, and cuddled all the way back to Paris on the train. He told me I was enchanting and that he wanted to wake up every morning to the sunshine fragrance of my hair.
“Then he asked me to go back with him to his apartment that night. I said I couldn’t. I had one more day before I flew home. I was expecting him to ask me to change my ticket and stay longer. That’s what I was planning to do the minute he asked me. I was ready to give our love all the time it needed to grow.
“When we got off the train at Gare du Nord, I thought we would go to a café for coffee and sit and talk, like we had all the other nights. Instead, he asked again if I would go back to his apartment. I said no, even though I wanted to say yes. He let go of my hand and said, ‘I did not expect this of you. Since your answer is no, then my answer is the same.’ He kissed me on both cheeks and looked as if he was about to cry. He said, ‘I’ll never forget you.’ Then he turned and walked away.”
“He walked away? Just like that? He left you?”
I nodded.
“And you never saw him again?”
I nodded again. “I was so shocked I stood there for a long time. People walked past me like I was a statue. I waited, thinking this couldn’t be happening. This was too bizarre. It couldn’t be over. Surely he would come back. I told myself he had only gone to buy me a flower or he was playing a joke on me. Finally I went over to a bench and sat down. I stayed at the train station all night, waiting. But he never came back.”
There it was. The truth. Out in the open. My humiliating story. “I was such an idiot.”
“No you weren’t! Lisa, listen to me. You were not an idiot! You did nothing wrong. Gerard was the idiot. He didn’t treat you honorably. What a cowardly way for him to end the relationship! Please tell me you haven’t been thinking all these years that you did something wrong. Lisa, you did nothing wrong.”
A wall inside me burst, and a torrent of tears surged forward, determined this time to break down the Bastille of my emotions and release all their fellow captors on the rally toward freedom. I made a mess of the beautiful cloth napkin. I also began to believe for the first time that I wasn’t a fool. Amy’s simple words of truth were stronger than the lies I had believed for so long. Gerard acted cowardly, not me. Amy was right. There was no shame in falling in love. I had naively floated around for a week in a fairy-tale dream that didn’t end happily ever after. That was that. I wasn’t a fool. It wasn’t my fault. It was just what it was. And it needed to be over inside me.
“Lisa, listen to me. Everything you hoped for in lasting love is possible. It just wasn’t possible with Gerard. Everything you felt was true. Don’t disregard the depth of your emotions. You placed your hope on the wrong person, that’s all.”
“I know. I should have saved my emotions for Joel. Then I could have given him my whole heart without all the scars.”
“No.” Amy’s eyes widened. “That’s not what I meant. I was trying to say that the only One who will never leave you and never disappoint you is the One who made you. God. He’s the only One who can fill the depths of our hearts. When I realized that my sophomore year of college, it … well, I’ve told you before. It changed everything. Lisa, there’s a big difference between knowing about God and opening yourself up to Him so you can really know Him.”
Amy’s words didn’t settle well with me. Of course I knew that God was supposed to be the most important relationship in my life. Wasn’t I the one who took her to a church that taught that? Wasn’t I the one who gave her first Bible to her? Why was she telling me that I had to open my heart to God?
I felt as if I had to get out in the cool night air to clear my thoughts. “Amy, I’m ready to go. Are you?”
“That’s pretty abrupt.” She leaned back, studying my posture. “Are you sure you want to go? We can stay and talk some more if you want.”
“No. I’m not trying to be abrupt. I’m just exhausted. Is it okay if we go?”
Amy honored my request, and we left the solace of the special restaurant by thanking our waiter many times over and receiving his assistance in putting on our jackets.
We rode silently in the taxi back to our hotel and went to bed without talking any more about Gerard, love, or telling ourselves the truth. My mind overprocessed everything that night in my dreams. Instead of dreaming of Jerry Lewis directing traffic and Johnny Depp giving Amy a ride around Paris on the back of his Vespa, I dreamed of Joel. I was holding hands with my husband and laughing with him, and he was kissing me on the neck.
I woke up from the sweet dream smiling. All the churned-up feelings that had dominated our dinner were dissipating. In their place I felt hope coming in like morning light through a mist.
I can’t say that opening up about Gerard healed me or smoothed away the rough memories. But telling my story had broken down an ancient prison inside me and set my thoughts free. My insides seemed to echo now with the vastness of the open spaces the cleaning out of lies had left.
Amy smiled at me from across the room. She was sitting by the open window reading her Bible. “Morning. How are you feeling?”
“Good.” I sat up and smiled at Amy. She was wearing her new cashmere sweater set with her silk scarf around her neck. Obviously, she was ready to go.
“Thank you for listening last night. I probably should have told you all of that a long time ago.”
“Don’t start blaming yourself for something new. You’re too hard on yourself, Lisa. Whoever said you had to be the first perfect human who ever lived, or that you couldn’t make mistakes and figure things out as you went along?”
“My mom,” I said without missing a beat.
“Well, your mom isn’t here, and she isn’t part of the Trinity the last time I checked, so you only have to answer to our heavenly Papa. If His Spirit is telling you that you missed the mark somewhere along the way, fine. Agree with Him. Confess what you did that was out of line. Then thank Him for His generous forgiveness and move on. Don’t get stuck. Part of you got stuck here.”
“I know.” I drew my knees up under the sheet and hugged them
. “I knew that yesterday at the Louvre.”
“Is that why you cried?”
I nodded.
Amy’s smile curved up with a Mona Lisa twist of knowing and tenderness.
“What? What are you smiling about?”
“God is doing something new in you, Lisa. He’s onto you. He’s pursuing you. I love watching Him do that to people. He’s so patient with us. Yet so persistent.”
I lowered my voice the way I used to whenever Amy and I told each other secrets. I confided to her the mysterious something I felt at Angelina’s when we were having our chocolate party with Jill. I told Amy how I felt as if God was coming to me, brushing past my spirit. I described how I felt like a maverick, doing whatever I wanted while all the molecules between God and me were doing what they were supposed to do and that’s why the universe still held in place.
“You’re right. We are the mavericks,” she said. “All the rest of His creation does what it was designed to do.”
“Even gravity,” I added with a grin.
“Even gravity,” Amy repeated. “But not us. Yet He still comes after us.”
We sighed in harmony.
I said I’d take a quick shower so we could get going.
“You should choose where we go for breakfast this morning,” Amy called out.
I knew exactly where I wanted to go. A certain sidewalk café on the Champs-Elysées. The one Amy had pointed out a few days earlier. To lift my confidence even more, I donned my pink Parisian top with the black bow at the neckline.
We emerged from the Metro stop a little more than an hour later and were greeted with a fine spring mist coming from puffed-up gray clouds overhead. I stopped at the cart of a sidewalk vendor peddling all the usual souvenirs and purchased a beret. A black one. Classic. Amy followed my example and bought a beret, too. Only hers was pink. And fuzzy. It was kind of funny, and I think she knew that because she tucked it in her purse. I popped my beret on my head and strode toward the café with a certain savoir faire.
“Here,” I said, showing Amy my intended destination. “I want to sit here at this table and drink coffee and …”
“And what?” Amy asked after we were seated under a protective awning.
“I don’t know exactly. Put to rest an old fantasy, I guess. This is where I decided I was in love with Gerard. I want to sit here and think.”
“Okay. Would you mind if I ordered something to eat while you think?”
“Order two of whatever you get, please. And a coffee, of course.”
Amy engaged the waiter in a quick request for our breakfast while I took in the view. Yes. This was approximately where we had sat. I drew in a deep breath and concentrated. Car fumes and wet oil on the wide road that separated the two sides of the street. Dark, strong coffee. Slight scent of fresh-baked bread. Heavy, sweet scent of aftershave wafting from the man sitting closest to our table. Cigarette smoke from the man in the suit reading the newspaper. A faint trace of wet dog hair. Floral soap fragrance on the woman moving past our table.
Were these the warm tones and base notes of the elixir that drew young hearts to Paris so they could fall in love? Had I been intoxicated with this scent?
“What does it smell like to you, Amy?”
She sniffed the air slightly and gave me a shrug. “Morning in a big city?”
I looked up and down the boulevard. Morning traffic. Taxis honking. Women with petite umbrellas protecting their hair from the rain. Men in dark business suits looking straight ahead. An ethnic mix of college students standing in a group of four with backpacks on, all studying a map. A small boy in a stroller leaning forward and looking at his little red rain boots. Tulips in bloom in a planter at the shop next to the café.
It was a city. That’s all. Not a magical land of love potions in the air. It wasn’t Paris that had made me fall in love. It wasn’t Gerard. It was me. I fell in love. It just happened to be here. My first brush with heart-searing love happened in Paris. And I happened to fall in love. There was nothing wrong with that.
“Guess what, Amy? I fell in love in Paris.”
“So you said last night.”
“And so I’ll say it again. I fell in love in Paris. There. That was it. No shame in that. It wasn’t the fault of Paris or Gerard or me. It was just what it was.”
Amy’s grin was broad. “Bravo, mon ami!” She lifted her coffee cup to salute my brave step in dismantling a tangle of old lies and owning my history without trying to defend or justify it.
“May truth and freedom prevail!” Amy sipped her coffee in my honor.
The man with the newspaper looked over at us with an air of disapproval.
“Why did it take me so long to say that? Why did I cover it up for so long? It’s a small truth. A simple reality. What was I thinking?”
“Why did Eve sew fig leaves together and hide behind the bushes?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Adam and Eve. What did they say when God came looking for them, and they were hiding?”
I took a stab at answering a familiar Bible lesson that I should have known by heart. “They said they had sinned and that the snake had tempted them. Then they received their punishment.”
“Ooh,” Amy said, with that expression on her face that had appeared the night we were eleven and I was so sure I knew where babies came from.
“What? I know the story very well. Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden of Eden because of their disobedience.”
“Right. But even after they disobeyed, God came to them. He pursued them. My question to you is, what did Adam and Eve say when they were in the bushes, covered up with the little leaf-outfits they had made for themselves?”
“Is this a fashion question?” I said, trying to take the attention off not knowing what Amy was getting at.
“No, it’s not a fashion question. Adam and Eve said they were afraid so they hid.”
“Afraid of what?”
Amy’s dark eyes glowed with a warmth that showed up whenever she was very happy and about to get something she had wanted for a long time. “When you know the answer to that, Lisa-girl, you’ll have the missing piece you’ve been looking for. That’s when the truth will set you free.”
I looked at her over the top of my glasses, trying to make sure I read her expression correctly. “What’s with the riddles? What missing piece?”
“No riddle. You asked a good question. You asked why you hid from the truth for so long. If I tell you what I think the answer is, you may not remember it. If you seek the answer, it will come and stay with you.”
“That’s another riddle.”
“No, it’s not. You’re so close, Lisa. It will all come together for you. Just trust me.”
“Oh, I see,” I said with a tease in my voice. “This is your chance to finally get back at me for something.”
Amy laughed. “No, this is just God doing something new in you, and me trying not to get in the way.” Leaning over and sounding confidential she said, “So how am I doing?”
“You’re ticking me off,” I said with a grin.
“Good.” Amy’s grin was pure satisfaction. “I wouldn’t want today to be any different from any other day.”
The morning sky was still a little weepy as we paid for our breakfast and headed for the Metro station and the underground train that would take us to the low hills north of Paris.
Amy and I knew from our abandoned attempt a few days earlier that Montmartre was the hot spot for the Bohemian movement in the 1800s. Starving artists such as Picasso, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec gathered there because rent was low. Vincent van Gogh lived here with his brother for two years. Jill had told us that, when van Gogh came here, he was transformed from a Dutch painter stuck with a pallet of blues and grays to an artist who felt free to go wild with colors and textures.
We also knew about how all manner of debauchery could still be found in the district where the Moulin Rouge dance hall still stood. This was the birthplace
of the cancan and the graveyard of a thousand shattered dreams.
I didn’t know what to expect when we exited the Metro. What we encountered were more steps than either of us had climbed so far on the trip. We climbed up and up out of the earth and yet once we were out of the Metro station, we still had dozens of steps to climb to reach Sacré Coeur, the “Sacred Heart” white stone church that stood like a beacon at the top of the hill.
“Beautiful,” Amy said, panting along with me as we gazed up at the Roman-Byzantine basilica. “Look how beautiful this is!”
“The tour book says that for five euros we can experience a claustrophobic climb up spiral stairs 260 feet to the top.” I paused to catch my breath and keep the page from flapping in the tour book. “It says we will be rewarded with a commanding panoramic view of Paris from the dome.”
Amy turned around. “I’m looking at a pretty commanding view of Paris from right here.”
“Me, too. How are you doing with all the stairs?”
“Much better than I’d be doing if we had to climb ladders to get here. And much, much better than I would have been if we had taken this trip a year ago before the aerobics classes.”
We stood in the fine drizzle coming from fast-moving clouds overhead and looked out over Paris. The view changed as the clouds broke open and made room for the sun to spotlight certain districts.
“Let’s go find the artists,” Amy said.
We followed the map in our tour book and walked several blocks around the large church’s back side. Coming into an area that was swarming with tourists, we knew we were in the right place. A restaurant- and shop-lined square was alive with dozens of artists.
Despite the drippy weather, they stood easel to easel under canopies of plastic tarp or wide café umbrellas. Some were young with pleasant expressions and straight postures. Others were closer to the end of their life journeys, heads tilted one direction, clothing and hair expressing their individuality, a look of hazy disconnect in their eyes.
Available artists asked Amy and me in French and then German and then English if we would like our portraits painted. Politely declining each master who stood ready, we strolled around the court, making one big box with our steps. Each artist had a different look or technique. Most had finished works for sale that depicted familiar Parisian sites. Those works were propped up waiting for buyers.