Anna and the French Kiss

chapter seventeen

The pâtisserie has thick planks of creaky hardwood and a chandelier draped with tinkly strings of topaz crystals. They glow like drops of honey. The women behind the counter lay extravagant cakes into brown-and-white-striped boxes and tie each package with turquoise ribbon and a silver bell.There’s a long line, but everyone here is patiently basking in the ambience.

Mer and I wait between tiered displays as tall as we are. One is a tree made from macarons, round sandwich cookies with crusts as fragile as eggshells and fillings so moist and flavorful that I swoon on sight. The other is an arrangement of miniature cakes, gâteaux, glazed with almond frosting and pressed with sugared pansies.

Our conversation is back on St. Clair. He’s all we talk about anymore. “I’m just afraid they’ll kick him out,” I say, on tiptoe. I’m trying to peek inside the glass case at the front of the line, but a man in pinstripes carrying a wiggling puppy blocks my view. There are several dogs inside the shop today, which isn’t unusual for Paris.

Mer shakes her head, and her curls bounce from underneath her knitted hat. Unlike St. Clair’s, hers is robin’s egg blue and very respectable.

I like St. Clair’s better.

“He won’t be kicked out,” she says. “Josh hasn’t been expelled, and he’s been skipping classes for a lot longer. And the head would never expel someone whose mother is . . . you know.”

She’s not doing well. Cervical cancer. Stage 2B. An advanced stage.

Words I never want to hear associated with someone I love—external radiation therapy, chemotherapy—are now a daily part of St. Clair’s life. Susan, his mother, started treatments one week after Halloween. His father is in California, driving her five days a week to radiation therapy and once a week to chemo.

St. Clair is here.

I want to kill his father. His parents have lived separately for years, but his father won’t let his mother get a divorce. And he keeps mistresses in Paris and in London, while Susan lives alone in San Francisco. Every few months, his father will visit her. Stay for a few nights. Reestablish dominance or whatever it is he holds over her. And then he leaves again.

But now he’s the one watching her, while St. Clair suffers six thousand miles away. The whole situation makes me so sick I can hardly bear to think about it. Obviously, St. Clair hasn’t been himself these last few weeks. He’s ditching school, and his grades are dropping. He doesn’t come to breakfast anymore, and he eats every dinner with Ellie. Apart from class and lunch, where he sits cold and stonelike beside me, the only times I see him are the mornings I wake him up for school.

Meredith and I take turns. If we don’t pound on his door, he won’t show up at all.

The pâtisserie door opens and a chilly wind whips through the shop. The chandelier sways like gelatin. “I feel so helpless,” I say. “I wish there was something I could do.”

Mer shivers and rubs her arms. Her rings are made of fine glass today.They look like spun sugar. “I know. Me too. And I still can’t believe his dad isn’t letting him visit her for Thanksgiving.”

“He’s not?” I’m shocked. “When did this happen?” And why did Mer know about it and not me?

“Since his dad heard about his dropping grades. Josh told me the head called his father—because she was concerned about him—and instead of letting him go home, he said St. Clair couldn’t fly out there until he started ‘acting responsibly’ again.”

“But there’s no way he’ll be able to focus on anything until he sees her! And she needs him there; she needs his support. They should be together!”

“This is so typical of his dad to use a situation like this against him.”

Gnawing curiosity gets the best of me again. “Have you ever met him? His father?” I know he lives near SOAP, but I’ve never seen him. And St. Clair certainly doesn’t own a framed portrait.

“Yeah,” she says cautiously. “I have.”

“And?”

“He was . . . nice.”

“NICE? How can he be nice? The man is a monster!”

“I know, I know, but he has these . . . impeccable manners in person. Smiles a lot. Very handsome.” She changes the subject suddenly. “Do you think Josh is a bad influence on St. Clair?”

“Josh? No. I mean, maybe. I don’t know. No.” I shake my head, and the line inches forward.We’re almost in viewing range of the display case. I see a hint of golden apple tarte tatins. The edge of a glossy chocolate-and-raspberry gâteau.

At first everything seemed too sophisticated for my tastes, but three months into this, and I understand why the French are famous for their cuisine. Meals here are savored. Restaurant dinners are measured in hours, not minutes. It’s so different from America. Parisians swing by the markets every day for the ripest fruit and vegetables, and they frequent specialty shops for cheese, fish, meat, poultry, and wine. And cake.

I like the cake shops the best.

“It just seems like Josh is telling him it’s okay to stop caring,” Mer presses. “I feel like I’m always the bad guy. ‘Get up. Go to school. Do your homework.’ You know? While Josh is like, ‘Screw it, man. Just leave.’ ”

“Yeah, but I don’t think he’s telling St. Clair not to care. He just knows St. Clair can’t deal with things right now.” But I squirm a bit. I do wish Josh would be supportive in a more encouraging way.

She opens her mouth to argue when I interrupt. “How’s soccer?”

“Football,” she says, and her face lights up. Meredith joined a local girls’ league last month, and she practices most afternoons. She updates me on her latest adventures in soccer drills until we reach the front case. It shimmers with neat rows of square-shaped tarte citrons, spongy cakes swelling with molten chocolate, caramel éclairs like ballet slippers, and red fruity cakes with wild strawberries dusted in powdery sugar.

And more macarons.

Bin after bin of macarons in every flavor and color imaginable. Grass greens and pinky reds and sunshine yellows. While Mer debates over cakes, I select six.

Rose. Black currant. Orange. Fig. Pistachio. Violet.

And then I notice cinnamon and hazelnut praline, and I just want to die right there. Crawl over the counter and crunch my fingers through their delicate crusts and lick out the fragrant fillings until I can no longer breathe. I am so distracted it takes a moment to realize the man behind me is speaking to me.

“Huh?” I turn to see a dignified gentleman with a basset hound. He’s smiling at me and pointing at my striped box. The man looks familiar. I swear I’ve seen him before. He talks in friendly, rapid French.

“Uhh.” I gesture around feebly and shrug my shoulders. “Je ne parle pas ...”

I don’t speak . . .

He slows down, but I’m still clueless. “Mer? Help? Mer?”

She comes to the rescue.They chat for a minute, and his eyes are shining until she says something that makes him gasp. “Ce n’est pas possible!” I don’t need to speak the language to recognize an “Oh, no!” when I hear it. He considers me sadly, and then they say goodbye. I add in my own shaky farewell. Mer and I pay for our treats—she’s selected un millefeuille, a puff pastry with custard—and she steers me from the shop.

“Who was that? What did he want? What were you talking about?”

“You don’t recognize him?” She’s surprised. “It’s the man who runs that theater on rue des Écoles, the little one with the red-and-white lights. He walks Pouce in front of our dorm all the time.”

We pick our way through a flock of pigeons, who don’t care we’re about to step on them. They rumble with coos and beat their wings and jostle the air. “Pouce?”

“The basset hound.”

A lightbulb goes off. Of course I’ve seen them around. “But what did he want?”

“He was wondering why he hasn’t seen your boyfriend in a while. St. Clair,” she adds, at my confused expression. Her voice is bitter. “I guess you guys have seen a few films there together?”

“We watched a spaghetti-western retrospective there last month.” I’m baffled. He thought St. Clair and I were dating?

She’s quiet. Jealous. But Meredith has no reason for envy. There’s nothing—nothing—going on between St. Clair and me. And I’m okay with it, I swear. I’m too worried about St. Clair to think about him in that other way. He needs the familiar right now, and Ellie is familiar.

I’ve been thinking about the familiar, too. I miss Toph again. I miss his green eyes, and I miss those late nights at the theater when he’d make me laugh so hard I’d cry. Bridge says he asks about me, but I haven’t talked to him lately, because their band is so busy.Things are good for the Penny Dreadfuls.They’ve finally scheduled their first gig. It’s just before Christmas, and I, Anna Oliphant, will be in attendance.

One month. I can hardly wait.

I should be seeing them next week, but Dad doesn’t think it’s worth the money to fly me home for such a short holiday, and Mom can’t afford it. So I’m spending Thanksgiving here alone. Except . . . I’m not anymore.

I recall the news Mer dropped only minutes ago. St. Clair isn’t going home for Thanksgiving either. And everyone else, his girlfriend included, is traveling back to the States. Which means the two of us will be here for the four-day weekend. Alone.

The thought distracts me all the way back to the dorm.