Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (9781455517763) Page 13

  In her chest her heart pounded pounded pounded. She found the flat of a damp slick wall and she pressed herself up against it, cheek to the chill. Her head felt light, so light, like it would rise up from her shoulders and float away.

  She had a dim sense of a hand curling over her arm.

  “Madame?”

  *

  “Breathe, Becky.”

  Becky clutched a fistful of Monique’s yoga pants, stumbling in her wake. Her heart still raced in her chest. It didn’t help that she was speed-walking through the tunnels on bruised knees and rubbery legs, twisting and turning following a path she couldn’t see. She concentrated on lifting her feet with exaggeration so she wouldn’t catch the edge of her sneaker on an uneven surface or a random stone. She wanted to stop and suck in a lungful of air, but she wanted to race away from her shame more.

  “Beck,” Monique repeated, “breathe.”

  “I’m trying.” She focused as Monique had ordered, drawing deep breaths as she plowed forward. “I…just…don’t understand…what happened to me.”

  She’d found herself kneeling on the ground, with a guard gripping her upper arm and talking into his walkie-talkie. She didn’t understand a word of French but she’d slowly come to understand that people had gathered, staring. She’d dug her fingers into the grit of the floor so she wouldn’t lose consciousness.

  “You had a panic attack.” Monique’s pace was unforgiving. “It used to happen all the time in the ER. A guy would come in gray as paste clutching his chest, and everyone thinks it’s a heart attack. But if they’d talked to the guy for five minutes, they’d find out he’d just been fired, or his wife asked him for a divorce, or he’d just been diagnosed with something nasty. Like retinitis pigmentosa.”

  Waves of shame washed over her. She’d been frightened in the dark before. Tripping over Brianna’s bike left in the middle of the driveway as she tried to drag the garbage out to the sidewalk on a Sunday night. Trailing her fingers against the car on the way back to guide her to the back stairs, sixteen steps beyond the end of the azalea bush. This hadn’t felt like that. This had felt like she’d been trapped in a tiny closet and seized by the throat until she lost consciousness.

  “I thought you were right there, Becky.” Judy panted right behind her, half running to keep pace. “I thought you were right beside me. And then you weren’t, so I thought you went ahead with Monique.”

  “You were with me.” Monique veered to the left and then centered again, and Becky felt the splash of water as she stumbled into a puddle. “You were there, with me, and then the crowd came, and I tried to get that stupid picture of the sepulchral lamp before someone rushed in front of my camera. When I looked up you just weren’t there anymore.”

  “Monie and I were two chambers over,” Judy said, for the tenth time, “before we realized we’d lost you.”

  “I looked for you.” Monique’s voice was tight. “I scanned the whole room before I went to the next one. I don’t know how I didn’t see you there.”

  “For goodness sake,” Judy exclaimed. “How many miles is this place? That guard said it was not even a kilometer to the exit.”

  “And you, Judy.” Monique twisted a little; Becky felt the shift of Monique’s spine against the knuckles of her hand. “You told us you couldn’t speak French anymore.”

  “I don’t.”

  “What the hell was that, then, you babbling to the guard? Were you speaking in tongues?”

  “I just told him she was blind. Aveugle. I didn’t think I knew that word. It popped right into my head.”

  “It wasn’t one word. You were having a whole conversation.”

  “He wanted to call in medics. I told him you were a nurse. It was all present tense, French one-o-one.”

  “You couldn’t step in while we were in Luxembourg when I was talking to that guy at the counter, trying to find the platform for our train connection?”

  “You did fine.”

  “Or at the Metro this morning, asking for directions to the Château de Vincennes?”

  “The French always answer me back in English.”

  “So?”

  “That’s Parisian for ‘your French sucks, lady, so please stop torturing my language.’”

  “Tonight you’re the one calling the airline to make sure our flight to Zurich is on time.”

  “Sure, if you want me to screw it up. Oh, damn it.” Judy groaned as they took another sudden corner. “More freakin’ stairs.”

  Monique didn’t pause. She took a little leap up the first step. “How are you doing, Beck? We’re almost out.”

  It couldn’t be soon enough. The air was sticky. It was hard to draw in, harder to push out. Becky flailed with her free arm until she felt the slick wall against her fingers. The stairs had high risers. She stumbled on the first, but Judy was right behind her, steadying her with two hands on the small of her back.

  “If you fall, Beck, we’re all falling together,” Judy said. “And it ain’t going to be pretty, the three of us a pile of old bats at the bottom.”

  Monique tugged on the waistband of her yoga pants. “And I’d like to keep my pants on, thank you very much.”

  They ascended the stairs, brisk but steady. She vaguely remembered something about there being eighty-four steps down or one hundred and sixteen up, she couldn’t remember which or whether that memory was from reading about the catacombs or about the stairs to the tower of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. She just wanted to see. She wanted to drink with her eyes all the light she could. She wanted to shake this panicky sense of choking, of being locked in darkness.

  “Go on ahead.” Judy abruptly let go of the tail of Becky’s jacket. “I have to rest my knees a minute. I’m right behind you.”

  When Judy let go, it was like shedding a weight dragging her back into the tomb. Monique was a steady, strong climber leaning forward and Becky put her trust in her. She fought down her irrational anxiety that she’d never find her way out of this place. The sweat coming out on her was hot now, not the cold dank sweat that burst all over her skin but the kind that pooled and fell down her spine, the kind that made wet spots just beneath her breasts.

  “Can you see it, Becky?”

  She glanced up and saw a little vertical strip of brightness, like a crack in the ceiling of the world.

  “Steady,” Monique said, as Becky’s toe slipped off the edge of the stair. “Almost there now.”

  Almost there.

  Becky sucked in a deep breath. She smelled car exhaust. From above came the muffled rhythm of footsteps, a burble of language, and a muted jingle of a bicycle bell.

  “Judy?” Monique called over her shoulder. “You all right down there?”

  Judy’s voice, from deep below, was pained. “I’m at half speed. Don’t worry, I’ll see you outside.”

  Then the stairs ended abruptly. Monique swung the doors open to bright light. Becky blinked and the room came into focus. Monique swung her daypack onto a table, where a guard in a black polo shirt searched it. A pile of bones lay in a box by his side. Becky gave over her own backpack and then, abandoning it, strode through the doors that led to the street.

  She stood in the middle of the sidewalk as people streamed around her. She dropped her head back and blinked up to the cloudy sky. She watched the flight of a bird. She blinked and blinked, taking in the soar of a streetlamp, the six stories of building, the wrought-iron railings across every window, the geraniums hanging limp from a few. She took in the tiny cars zipping across the roads. A jingle as a man walked by, playing with the keys in his pocket, a red scarf flapping about his neck. She walked out of the crowd to the edge of the sidewalk, wishing she could get drunk on this light.

  “You don’t look so good, Beck.”

  Monique sidled up beside her with both packs in her hand. Becky didn’t want to look at her. Fear pulsed through her whole body. The terror she’d tried to tamp down all these weeks battered in her throat. She couldn’t do this anymore. She could
n’t pretend everything was going to be all right.

  Abruptly she turned to Monique. She watched two lines deepen between her friend’s brows. Becky had been a fool, thinking she could keep the truth from Monique. Those hazel eyes knew everything.

  The words lurched out of her. “How long have you known?”

  The little lines between Monique’s eyes softened. Her expression shifted from concern to a deep, green sorrow. She tilted her head on that long, long neck and pressed her lips together in a way that showed she did know, and she had no words.

  “Their eyes are brown,” Becky retorted, as Judy exited the building and limped toward them. “Both Brianna and Brian have brown eyes, just like Marco’s. So that means they must have Marco’s eyes.”

  Monique dropped the packs by her feet. “It doesn’t work that way, Beck.”

  “I have to go home.”

  “It’s not inevitable.” Monique gripped her shoulders. “It’s very complicated. The disease may be genetic but—”

  Becky raised her palm. “I need to go home,” she stuttered, “before both my children go blind.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Monique sat on the edge of the bed. Her cell phone lay on the bedside table, open to her favorite photo. Three-year-old Kiera sat upon Lenny’s shoulders, gripping his ears in her little fists. The light shone on Lenny’s skin, emphasizing the spray of freckles on his cheeks and forehead, like fresh-cracked pepper.

  On her lap lay the crinkled bucket list, now stained with café au lait and sticky in a corner with German apple strudel. Behind her, in the hotel bathroom, came the spitting sound of the shower as a desolate Becky used up what was sure to be the last of the tepid water. Through the window seeped the noises of the Marais neighborhood. High heels clicked lonely on cobblestones. A shopkeeper whisked the first falling leaves off the sidewalk. A Frenchman called bon soir from down the street, chatting with familiarity before he continued on.

  Monique took a long look at her husband and then let her eyes flutter closed against the late afternoon light. For the moment she was blessedly alone. After the experience at the catacombs, not one of them was up for a fussy, linen-napkin dinner or even a bite in a brasserie, so Judy had gone off to find the makings of dinner since this hotel didn’t have room service.

  Monique took a deep breath. The room smelled odd, a mix of freshly baked bread from the boulangerie across the street and chemicals rising from the hair salon just beside it. She was used to sensing Lenny in the familiar confines of her home bedroom. She was used to smiling at his teasing directions delivered from the backseat of her minivan while she drove alone. She and Lenny hadn’t spent a lot of time in hotel rooms, which she supposed made this harder than usual. They’d always been housecats. Purring and comfortable in their den.

  She wanted to talk to him about so much. About Becky. About the view of the city from the London Eye and the surprise of the castle on the Rhine boat trip, the beauty of the bike ride along the Moselle, and the pan-seared turbot with crayfish and mushrooms à la riche she’d savored at Le Jules Verne. She needed to talk to him about Kiera, to whom she’d texted about the catacomb experience, including a photo of piled bones…and who’d responded with a terse congrats for crossing it off the list.

  Monique tried to push that worry aside. She waited for that oh-so-familiar whisper. With her eyes closed, she flattened the palm of her hand on the bedspread and anticipated the sag of the mattress. She ached for him to come to her. A breeze filtered in from the window, and with a tingle of excitement, she raised her face to the chill. She perked her ears to the rustle of the sheer curtains. She waited for the smell of him—hungry for the fragrance of cut grass and Brut, of warm flannel and man.

  The breeze faded, the curtains settled.

  A key rattled in the lock.

  Monique jerked at the sound and then quickly shoved the list back into her daypack, open by her feet. Damn. Would she ever get a moment alone? It felt like she hadn’t connected with Lenny for weeks. She was thrown off by the foreignness of the rooms they stayed in, and the unpredictable interruptions. She glanced at the picture on her phone just as the door opened, only to find that the screen had gone dark.

  “Bon! Je reviens!” Judy swung in, a bag in each hand. “On va manger bien ce soir.”

  Monique twisted, lifting a knee onto the mattress. “I assume that’s French for we’re not having Chicken McNuggets.”

  “I’ve just spent an hour picking through a boulangerie, a charcuterie, a caviste, and a pâtisserie, all within two blocks of here.” Judy dropped the bags onto the bureau by the TV, and then glanced at the bathroom door as the shower turned off. “Have you and Becky settled everything?”

  Monique stood up and smoothed her yoga pants over her thighs. “Not really.”

  “Uh-oh. Problems getting a flight?” Judy pulled a loaf of French bread out of a bag and slipped it onto the table. “There should be a red-eye to LaGuardia or Kennedy at least. On a Thursday night out of Paris-Orly I wouldn’t think it would be full.”

  Monique pulled out a chair. “Well…I don’t really know.”

  Judy paused, a wine bottle halfway out of the bag. “You didn’t call, did you?”

  “Nope.”

  “You were waiting for me to unfurl my suddenly volcanic French?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “I hate to tell you, Monique,” she said, placing the bottle on the table and then tapping her watch, “but if we don’t get on this soon, there’s a possibility Becky won’t be able to get on a flight tonight.”

  “Bingo.”

  Judy eyed her as she unzipped her belly pack and pulled out her Swiss Army knife. She cast a glance toward the closed bathroom door as she tugged the corkscrew free. “Dangerous move, mon amie. Beck’s got that look about her. You know, that rigid, tight-faced, don’t-even-breathe on me look, like when Marco took Gina off to his mother’s for a couple of mysterious weeks. One probing question and the poor woman may shatter.”

  “You don’t think she did just that, in the catacombs?”

  Judy peeled the casing off the neck of the bottle and dropped it onto the table, her eyes averted and her voice low. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me weeks ago?”

  “She wasn’t ready to talk about it. It’s not my terrible news to share. And it didn’t feel right to hash it out behind Becky’s back.”

  Judy pinned the cork with the tip of the corkscrew, blinking rapidly. “I won’t believe it. It just can’t be true.”

  Monique thought of the two Lorenzini kids, squealing as they swung on her backyard swing set. Brian a blur of energy and motion, a roaring rough-and-tumble boy who loved nothing better than to roll around with Judy’s big, gentle dogs. Brianna and her collection of blue jay feathers, the agate marbles she loved so much, the way she gently pinched you, nudged you, made funny faces, always eager for attention.

  “It may not be true.” Monique rubbed the bridge of her nose. “That’s just the problem, Judy. When it comes to genetics, there are so many variables.”

  “She’ll know when she gets the results of the genetic tests, I guess.”

  “Who said she tested them yet? She and Marco don’t communicate that well these days. And genetic testing is expensive.”

  “Marco still has medical coverage—”

  “—which may not cover something so exotic. And just think about this: Would you test your kids for a disease that cannot be prevented and has no cure?”

  Judy started to argue—Monique could almost hear her thinking of vitamin A supplements, retinal transplants, experimental gene therapy, homeopathic remedies, and all the possibilities of future medical science—but then, mute, Judy dropped into the chair, still gripping the wine bottle.

  Monique let her absorb the shock, just as she herself had when she’d first researched the disease and realized the implications for the little boy and the little girl who affectionately called her Aunt Monie.

  Judy absently pulled the cork and then pla
nted the bottle on the table. “Just when I thought Becky was starting to get a handle on her situation.”

  “Becky is a slave to her own stubborn independence. She wasn’t ready to share something so horrible. She’d just been keeping a lid on the boiling pot.”

  “But she was like a kid at the Château de Vincennes this morning. And yesterday, so absorbed in sketching at Notre Dame.”

  “Which means we succeeded, a least for a little while, in what we intended to do all along.” Monique pulled the little paper caps off three of the room’s four water glasses. “We found her plenty of distractions.”

  “It doesn’t help that the woman is neither here nor there. She knows she’s going blind, but she’s not blind yet.”

  “Degenerative diseases suck.” Monique reached for the wine.

  Judy slapped Monique’s hand. “Not yet. You have to let it breathe.”

  “Wow.” Monique ceded the bottle. “You remember that you can speak French, and the next thing you know I’m rooming with Julia Child.”

  “Save the wine for the meal.” Judy planted the bottle on the other side of the table. “And for Becky. Because she’s got it the worst. You and I, we already know what we’ve lost. What we loved is already gone—poof.”

  Judy twisted her hand at the wrist, imitating a bird flying away. Monique lifted the glass to her lips and sucked down the teaspoon of wine that had splashed into it. The tannins must be getting to her, because he couldn’t figure what else was causing this burning in her chest.

  “But that woman,” Judy continued, pointing as she lowered her voice to the still-closed door. “She still has the thing that, someday, she is going to lose. That maybe her own kids will lose. And every little reminder, like that fiasco in the catacombs, is a fresh new shock.”