Death in Paris

Dream:

Paris was burning.

 My mother and I were traveling, and we'd gone to a distant suburb to visit an Algerian marketplace. "This will be like two trips in one," I told her.  "North Africa and France." It was late by the time we sat down at a long wooden table under an enormous tent. We'd gotten a bit lost on a dark narrow street that seemed more like a tunnel than a street. The food stalls were steaming with things we wanted to eat, and I'd almost decided what to order when, in the distance, the blue dome of a mosque crumbled--its minaret falling end over end. There was a rumbling beneath our feet, deep and long, like thunder coming from the depths of hell. My mother heard and saw nothing. It was the collective gasp of the crowd of diners that brought her to her feet.

"What's happening?" she asked me. Before I could answer we werre swept into the crowd, ebbing and flowing first one way, then another, engulfed by a burgeoning panic. Through the window of a bar or maybe it was an apartment, I could see a TV. All of Paris was in flames. The crowd kept swirling, and I wondered if whoever was leading us was as lost as my mother and I had been earlier. I was worried about my mother's feet and how tired they must be getting. I turned to the woman next to me and spoke to her in French, asking her if she would be our guide. No, she said, she couldn't take that responsibility. And besides she had a big day tomorrow. It was her entrance exam for the university. "What will you be studying?" I asked her, wondering why she thought we'd survive to see another day.
"Pharmaceuticals," she told me.

Explosions turned the sky orange. We're probably going to die, I thought. I looked at my mom. I was not afraid. Two old ladies, I thought. And then I realized how different I would feel it was the arm of one of my daughter's that I was holding. 

Falling Apart

Dread. That was what I felt all week waiting for the mediation. Dread like you'd feel if your teeth were furry and you were scheduled for a cleaning. This will be unpleasant, I said, but good and necessary.

The personal statement of appreciation I was instructed to prepare had to take one of those little numbered tickets and wait as if the muse had a crowd of people lined up. Finally the number was called at 7:30 that morning, and I had something to say that was true. I wrote it down:

I appreciate the innocence of a clean-cut kid who didn't know enough about working in a big law firm to wear dress shoes with his suit. I appreciate the way that innocence mingled with his sense of humor and led him to hang a long neglected formal portrait of a deceased founding partner above his desk, and his blissful un-informedness that allowed him to believe that new associates really were entitled to an entire month of vacation. It was on that very vacation that our first daughter was conceived. Both of our daughters carry their own versions of that happy wackiness, the ability to be comfortable in their shoes, to amuse themselves, to recreate full out, and to promptly seize not just the day but an entire month.

I arrived at the mediator's office first. Not nervous. Not angry, not sad. "I'm hopeful," I told her.

I choked up when I read my statement, but I got over it. Moved on to the crucial stuff. There was a smidgen of drama. Not much. We agreed to meet again.

I was lost when I came out of the mediator's office. Not lost as in upset. Just lost. I could not get my bearings--so I walked to a Starbucks and took forever deciding that I wanted a dulce cinnamon latté and then stood looking out of the windows. I drove down Lake, I said. I turned on Green. Green is a one-way street. From Green I turned right. I had it all figured out then.

I sat at my desk when I got home talking to a friend on the phone about books and cakes and stress and yoga. I decided to have a party to celebrate the end of all this wrangling. But a minute after I hung up I was cold and shaking.

Hours later, finally out of bed, the man who loves me called for the second or third time, and said we should go to a movie. That Woody Allen Paris movie. I don't know, I said, is it a romance? Oh I get it, he laughed, you don't know what to do with emotional involvement right now. I don't know what to do with Paris, I said. And a wail came out of me and the wailing wouldn't stop.

I woke up under two blankets on my couch wearing a sweater, and a sweatshirt and a terrycloth bathrobe. The man who loves me said it was a seductive look. I took a long hot shower. We made dinner. And then I was pretty much okay for the rest of the night.

But I still don't know what to do with Paris.

Photo credit: idle-thoughts-elcees.blogspot.com