“How did you pay the hospital bill?”
“Um. We didn’t pay it, actually. Like, we got out of there before they tracked us down.”
“That’s when you left?”
“Nicolette was a month old. We waited around and gathered some cash. I mean, we weren’t supposed to have our own money, but Kurt would run the till at the farmers’ market, so. And he wrote to this friend in Paris who helped us. Which is who he ended up marrying.”
“Honey,” Fiona said, “I’m just glad you’re out.” She meant both things—the cult and the relationship.
Claire said, “I was working in an art supply shop for a while.” She smiled. “You would’ve liked it. It’s been around for two hundred years. Monet bought his brushes there.”
“Which one?”
Claire looked at her strangely—why would Fiona know the names of art supply shops in Paris?—and instead of telling her she’d searched them all, looking for her, Fiona said, “Aunt Nora might have shopped there.”
Claire said, “It was a good job. And then Kurt stole from the store. He came in when I was closing up, and he took stuff, a bunch of times. I didn’t know he was doing it. I still got fired. But I didn’t get arrested. He did. Which is when we broke up.”
“Is he on drugs?”
“He’s totally clean now. I wouldn’t let him watch Nicolette if he weren’t.”
Fiona gave her a look.
Claire said, “Mo-o-om.” An imitation of a whiny teenager. It would have been funnier if she hadn’t been a teenager the last time Fiona saw her. She said, “What brings you to Paris?” No irony in her voice.
Fiona said, “I just thought it would be fun to spend three years and several thousand dollars tracking down my daughter. You know, and see the Eiffel Tower too.”
“Oh.” Claire looked annoyed, but also like she was trying to hide that she was pleased. “You didn’t need to come all this way.”
“Claire, you have a kid now. Do you not get it? Wouldn’t you—if your daughter—” Fiona couldn’t bring herself to say the child’s name. It would be an invasion, a privilege she hadn’t been invited to enjoy.
Claire said, “That’s different.”
An accusation, maybe, but instead of taking the bait, Fiona said, “Your dad is fine.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“I mean, we have Google here. You can see when he’s doing lectures. And your store seemed okay, so I figured you were fine.”
Fiona wanted to ask if she understood that she had denied her parents the right, for the past three years, to know if she was alive or dead. She wanted, at least, to know why. But that was something to work out down the road. In this conversation, it would be a bomb.
She said, “Karen has breast cancer. That’s why he’s not here. She’s starting radiation.”
Claire looked only mildly concerned. “Is it bad?”
“I mean, it’s cancer. But it sounds treatable.”
“She’s gonna get way too into that pink ribbon stuff, isn’t she. She’s gonna go on all the marches and never shut up about it.”
Years ago, Fiona might have admonished her—she’d always been careful to speak respectfully of Karen, maintain good relations—but she let herself laugh, and it felt wonderful.
Fiona took an envelope from her purse and wrote Damian’s number on the back. “He’s going through a lot,” she said, “and if he could hear your voice I know it would help.”
Claire accepted the envelope noncommittally, stuck it under the band of her apron.
Fiona whispered. “Are you here legally?”
“It’s complicated. I’m not about to get arrested or anything. I’ve overstayed. But I can get it sorted out.”
“Why not just come home? To Chicago?”
“Tell me you didn’t keep my bedroom preserved.”
She hadn’t, thank God, or that would have stung. Claire’s bed was still there, and her dresser and her books, but right after she first took off for Colorado Fiona had moved the sewing table in there, and then things had spread.
Fiona said, “I’ll be here another week or two. Do you remember Richard Campo?” It was a silly question. A photo that Richard had taken of baby Claire crying in Damian’s arms was one of his more canonical works. It still hung in MASS MoCa. Claire wrote her college essay about that picture. “He has an opening at the Pompidou on Monday. I’m staying with him.” She was tempted to imply that this was the main reason she’d come over, that Claire was secondary, but why? For pride? It had been her failing with Claire all along—pretending not to love her as much as she did. Trying to steel herself against a broken heart, the way she would with a boyfriend. (The first time she and Damian had gone to couples therapy, the therapist had finally said, “What are you afraid will happen if you open yourself up to him completely?” And Fiona, already crying, had shouted: “He would die!” It clearly wasn’t what the therapist had expected to hear. He hadn’t been a very good therapist.)
She said, “I’ll be here at least that long, to see his show. I’d like for you to come home with me, but—” she put up a hand to stop Claire’s wide-eyed protest “—if that’s not an option, I’d like to stay a while. Maybe I can help with the baby. Will you give me your number at least?”
“She’s not a baby. She’s three.”
“I’d love to help, sweetie.”
Claire would not give Fiona her number, but Fiona could come by again in two days, they agreed, and they’d take things from there.
The woman behind the bar called to Claire, pointed at her watch, and Fiona wondered if this wasn’t prearranged: Call me back after six minutes unless I give you the signal.
Claire said, “I don’t mind you being here, but we’re fine.”
“I know you’re fine. I can tell. You were always going to be fine.”
Part of her actually meant it.
1986
Yale kept wishing Julian would leave the apartment, but Julian didn’t want to risk being seen. He wanted to hide here till Sunday, when his flight would leave for Puerto Rico. He had a high school friend out there to stay with—and after that he wasn’t sure, except that it would be somewhere warm. “Maybe Jamaica,” he said, and Yale said, “Julian, they kill people like us in Jamaica.” And Julian, disturbingly, had shrugged.