Chapter Six

Joanne thought about her mother, so young, booking passage on an Atlantic-crossing ocean liner. Shortly after her honeymoon, her new husband had returned to France, and she found herself pregnant. Joanne imagined the zygote that would later emerge as her newborn baby self. That tiny natal almost-creature, swimming in its amniotic sea, even as her mother traversed across miles of a gray and green, gargantuan other.
A woman was supposed to join her husband, that’s how it was in those days, her mother had said. "That’s what a young wife was expected to do."
But she was alone. And she would remain alone most of the time she lived, and gave birth in France. There in Mayenne, little more than a farming village, she cared for her two babies. She grew fluent in French, putting to use the four years of Catholic high school language classes. She walked into town to buy baguettes, fruit, vegetables, meats, and cigarettes. The butcher called her la jeune americaine. He was kind to her, gave her special cuts and savory sausages.
Joanne took out a couple of old black and white snapshots of the young family. One was of her mother, leaning against a rough wooden fence, a chiffon scarf wrapped around her hair, enormous dark sunglasses, a tailored, short-sleeved, button-down shirt, and capri pants, although her mother called them pedal-pushers. In the other two, Joanne, a fat, bald baby with huge dark eyes, was perched on the cap of her father’s knee. A cigarette hung out of one side of his mouth, and his hair was thatchy from a crew cut that was half-grown out. He wore a striped boat-neck sweater, dungarees cinched by a large belt, the end of which hung below the buckle, and ankle-high leather lace-up boots with big round toes. Joanne wondered for the thousandth time, what kind of work did her father do there? Based in that small French town, in the chill of the Cold War, was it something to do with arms deals and rebels in the north of Spain? Driving trucks full of guns into the Pyrenees, maybe? Did she remember something he told her, something like that, once?
The waiter tapped Joanne lightly on the shoulder.
“Mademoiselle?”
Am I a mademoiselle? she wondered, as she looked up at him.
“Excuse me,"he pointed at her papers.
English again, she thoguht. How do they know I'm not French? Everyone speaks to me in English.
“Yes,” she nodded, “but I am American." she added a weak smile.
“Oh no, that is very good."
“Yes?”
She almost said, "You think so?"
Her phone rang.
“Oh, sorry.” She flipped open her phone. “Hello?”
“Joanne!” Mikhail yelled. “Where are you? I must tell you. I have to do something tonight. I go to a boring party, for the maybe future ambassador to Spain.”
“Where are you?” she forced the interruption, or he would scream at light speed, making little or no sense.
“I am at Clignancourt. I get chairs. Kolya, he has van. He brings chairs to apartment. But I go, I go to ambassador’s house.”
“Wait, wait..."
“What? Yes. But Rainer, he calls me. He calls Kolya, And Kolya, he calls me. Now Rainer, he wants to see you.”
“Mikhail, what?”
“Yes, yes, yes!”
My god, with the ‘yes’s,’ she thought.
“So, so, so.”
And now with the ‘so’s.’
“Yes. So. I go to ambassador. But you meet Rainer. You go to dinner with him.”
“Really.” She was nothing but skeptical. “Are you pawning me off or pimping me out?” It was so like him to make or change plans in an instant.
“Joanne! Good! I promise! I give him your phone number. He calls you, yes? Then you call me.” He clicked off.
She looked at her wristwatch and was surprised to see that it was edging on five-thirty. She looked out the window to the boulevard, and noticed that street lamps and headlights lit the evening. The pavement glistened. People hurried along the wide sidewalk, heads down, loaded with twine-wrapped parcels and plastic-net shopping bags. Something about the street outside felt familiar, but that couldn’t be possible. Her mother might have brought them through Paris when she was three or four years old, in the winter, before they returned to New York, right in time for Christmas. Maybe that was it.
The waiter returned to her table. Early evening patrons started to gather at the bar. She looked up at him, “Yes, the bill, I think. Just the bill. Thank you”
“Oui, ah bon.”
He returned a moment later, and Ann sorted through the euro notes and coins, leaving slightly more than the expected “round-up” to the next whole figure. She wanted to thank him for allowing her to sit there for a couple of hours.
“Merci, mademoiselle," he nodded as she gathered her belongings and made for the door.
“Merci,” she responded.
Her phone rang.
“Hi, Joanne? It’s Rainer.”
She felt her stomach clench, almost the same sensation anytime she thought she misplaced her wallet.
That errant condom.