Early Warning

In the meantime, since they had come in the winter, they were surrounded by French people, not tourists, and though Janet’s French was good, and people smiled at her and were helpful, Frank was a little nettled by Janet’s loud voice, Richie’s and Michael’s exaggerated movements, Andy’s endless observations. It was this last that was a revelation — Andy had always kept her thoughts to herself, except when she had been drinking, and she only drank at home. But now that she wasn’t drinking, she talked all the time — what an elegant building, is that really Napoleon, I thought he was short, oh, there were more Napoleons than the one, look at those horse statues on that pillar. The French didn’t stare at her, the kids didn’t seem to care (though Janet answered a lot of her questions), but it drove Frank crazy. The thing he couldn’t stop noticing was the way her mouth worked. All around him, Parisians hardly moved their lips, and their words issued forth in a liquid stream. Andy’s mouth was like the mouth of a puppet flapping, revealing the empty cavern within. For ten days, he felt as though his glance was shifting between her mouth and momentary glimpses of Lydia disappearing around corners, up steps, and over bridges. By that time, too, all five of them were expressing the opinion that two weeks was too long — you could only go to the Galeries Lafayette so many times, only appreciate so many paintings of the long, pale body of Jesus, his eyes closed, being taken down from the cross, or of a short man in a fancy outfit sitting on a small, bouncy horse. Janet thought they could have spent the second week in Nice; Frank wondered why he had forgotten about Rome; the boys wished they had gone skiing; and Andy wondered when she would ever get to Madrid.

The evening of the tenth day, Janet talked them into going over to the Rive Gauche and trying her favorite Vietnamese restaurant, a cheap place where she and some of her fellow students went every couple of weeks. Richie and Michael hated the food, Andy hated the toilette, which was a hole in the ground in a room with the lightbulb burned out. Frank thought that Janet used her chopsticks in a superior way after showing off about the menu. Then she wanted to take the Métro rather than a taxi, and Richie and Michael thought they would use the map and walk — either down the Quai d’Orsay and across the Pont de l’Alma, or over the Pont Neuf and then down the street where the tumbrels had rolled, taking the condemned to the guillotine. Janet said, “That would be the only thing you two know about Paris,” and Andy said, “Isn’t it a little dangerous?” as if the two of them could not take on any muggers in the city of Paris. Look at them — they even looked threatening. So they ended up walking, freezing to death. Back at the hotel, Frank went to bed, and got up a couple of hours later, and there was Janet in the living room of the suite, wrapped in a blanket and hunched over a book. When he came in, she glanced up and then turned her whole body away.

“That’s nice,” he said.

“Don’t take it personally, all right?” But she sounded irritated that he had even walked into a room he was paying three hundred a night for.

“I think I will,” he said.

“Fine, be my guest.” She lifted her book slightly. It was a Proust, in French, Sodome et Gomorrhe, which he thought was both shocking and pretentious. He must have harrumphed, because she looked up and scowled, and he reflected that she had always preferred Lillian and Arthur. In their family, she was a boarder who deigned to be supported in luxury, but she gave back nothing except a sort of I-told-you-so perfection of academic performance that was showing off rather than pleasing. He said, “What’s eating you?”

“Well, since you ask, I can’t stand how you elbow Mom out of the way every time you are walking along. It’s very rude. Men here actually have manners.”

“Oh, do they?” said Frank. “I didn’t notice.”

“No,” said Janet, “you didn’t.” She slammed her book shut. “But they notice you. I watch their heads turn.”

“Your mother has been talking a lot.”

“So what? She’s interested. Not all disdainful, like you, or just completely heedless, like Michael and Richie, though I admit Richie looks around every so often.”

Frank said, “When did you turn into such a little bitch?”

Janet’s face registered shock, and it was true that Frank had never called her a name before — he mostly left the discipline to Nedra and maintained his distance. But she was not intimidated. She said, “About the time I realized that you spend every single minute of your working day stoking the war machine and trying to figure out how to slaughter Vietnamese peasants more quickly and efficiently.” Her mouth snapped shut, but then she had another thought, and said, “And profitably.”

“Thank you, Joan Baez, for your input.”

“I take that as a compliment.”