‘During the next ten years, we lived in three different places, each time buying a new house, settling in, then being moved again. We lived in Atlanta, Georgia; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Probably none of these names mean anything to you, Mirabelle, but they were all far apart from each other.
‘My job was constantly changing. I was on what they called the fast track. They were training me for upper executive or management work and moved me around to see how I adapted. My performance ratings were good.’
‘But, Jacques, you were a big success. How does this story get you to being a painter on the streets of Paris where we met?’
‘Be patient, Mirabelle, that part comes soon enough. Or perhaps we should wait for another time when I can tell you more of my life. It is dark now. I can see nothing. I’m sitting in the dark and I can’t see you.’
‘Perhaps that is best, Jacques, to sit in the dark, if you do not mind. Please go on, you cannot just stop here. Have some more coffee, it is not too cold yet.’
She pours without hesitation. I can just make out the cup in the dark.
‘All right, now comes the difficult part. I don’t know if I can tell this so you will understand. Listen carefully and tell me what I did and why I did it. Please, Mirabelle.
‘During all this time, as my career progressed, as I became more and more important in the company, Lorrie and the children suffered terribly, and I didn’t even notice it. I wasn’t as aware as I should have been to the way their lives were affected.
‘It’s so easy to become involved in a way of life all day and, artificial as it is, it becomes your real life, taking the place of your family, your true life.
‘In some strange way, MBI, the people I worked with, became my family. I don’t know when the competition for getting ahead of the next guy, holding on to my position or improving it, began to become more important than the work I was actually doing, or, even more difficult to understand, how I lost contact with my wife, my real life, my children, making a home, love, being together, doing things together.
‘I would be at work before seven in the morning, trying to be the first one there. I’d leave before the children were awake, then not be back until after eight in the evening. The children, usually, would already have eaten; sometimes, when they were young, were even in bed. Lorrie would wake with me mornings, then stay up to eat late-evening dinners. It must have been hell for her. And I wasn’t even noticing!’
I try to pierce the deepening gloom of the room to see if Mirabelle is understanding. Her eyes are only dark holes in an indistinct paleness. I’m wishing I hadn’t started this whole thing. Maybe there are some private aspects to life one should keep to oneself.
But that’s what I’m trying to avoid now. I want to be vulnerable, to be known. I don’t want to hide my feelings anymore. I’m sure it’s part of what I did wrong. I sigh again, drink the last of the cold coffee in my cup.
‘But I was making a considerable salary, Mirabelle, a salary I could never have dreamed of. In 1970, only five years ago, when I was forty-four, I was making over a hundred thousand dollars a year, plus stock options. We each had a car. I had a little Porsche and Lorrie had a big Chrysler station wagon. She needed it to haul the kids back and forth to all the softball games, dancing lessons, swimming lessons, tennis lessons, horseback riding; to deliver or pick them up at friends’ houses. We had a five-bedroom, three-bath house in a good section of Minneapolis. It was the success about which we’d been taught to dream. We had it, or at least, I thought we did.
‘Then one day my boss called me in. He came around his desk and shook my hand. I was suspicious. With a big outfit like MBI, it’s a bit like being in the army; often the worst blows, the most horrible assignments, are delivered with smiles and congratulations. I waited.
‘“Well, it’s confirmed, Jack. It’s just been posted. You’ve been reassigned to … Paris, France. It should be at least a three-year assignment. You know what this means. This is the big test to find out if you’re international-quality material. You’ll be attached to MBI France and you’ll be chief of personnel there. It’s the big plum. You really are on the fast track, congratulations.”
‘God, I’m wondering, how am I going to break this to Lorrie? She’s just feeling settled in, here in Minneapolis. She has a group of women friends she meets with every two weeks or so, where they let their hair down, sort of work out all the things that bother them, she calls it her support group. The kids are all happy with their schools. Jack is supposed to graduate from high school this year. He has a good chance to be valedictorian and he’s captain of the track team. I try to keep a smile on my face.
‘“Thanks for letting me in on the good news, Fred. Of course, I’ll need to check it out with the family first. It’s going to be quite a shock.”
‘“It’s the chance of a lifetime, Jack. If you don’t grab the brass ring now, you’ll just be on this merry-go-round here, along with me, until they give us the old engraved gold watch.”
‘I work my way out of Fred’s office. I know he’s keeping a stiff upper lip. This means he’s been passed over, for me. I should be happy but I dread going home. I decide not to phone but just clean things up on my desk, and go home early. I want to be home at four just when most of the family will be there.
‘And so, when I get home and everybody settles down, I tell them. Lorrie cries. Jack stomps up the stairs. The other three seem stunned. Lorrie recovers first.
‘“How soon would we need to leave? Will Jack have a chance to graduate?”
‘I’d checked. They wanted me there before the end of April. That was only a month away. Like the army again, with MBI it was so often hurry, hurry, hurry, to wait. I was sure there couldn’t be any great emergency or situation for which I was needed in Paris. I tried to tell Lorrie this.
‘“But it’s so unfair, Jack. They’re all happy here. We’ve paid our dues. You should be allowed to settle in for a while, especially with kids all in high school. Isn’t there something you can do?”
‘“Well, I can say no, Lorrie. But then I’m ceilinged. This is MBI’s way to find out if I’m top-grade material. I hate to miss the chance, but we’ll do whatever you say.”
‘That wasn’t fair of me, Mirabelle, I know it now. Lorrie loved me too much, knew how involved with the company I was, to refuse.
‘The next morning the kids stayed home from school and I stayed home from work. We talked it over. I tried to point out what a tremendous chance it would be to spend some time in Paris, to learn French. They’d go to the American School there, and it had a good reputation. Jack, our oldest, wanted to stay on, living with friends, but Lorrie said no, whatever we did, we did as a family.
‘That week we started packing. I came over to France and found us a house in a place called Le Vésinet. It wasn’t far from the American School and was a suburb not much different from where we lived in Minnesota, except the houses were more like little châteaus than modern ranch houses or English town houses. Everything was close together. But the house I found had a big lawn and it looked okay to me. The rent was outrageous, but MBI would take care of that. I came home with pictures from the realtor. Lorrie could have gone with me to make the choice but didn’t want to. She said she had too many things to do at home first.
‘So, by the last week in April, we were here. The company’d packed and sent all our furniture. I was swamped right away with the new job and began to find how hard it was to work here in France. I’d never really done any work in personnel before, either; that was Lorrie’s specialty. The guy who had this job before me was French and all the Frenchmen I worked with hated my guts. I guess they were afraid for their jobs.
‘Somehow, Lorrie had the new house fixed up in about a month. She’s tremendous at that kind of thing. She says she hates it. Her claim is she always knows when MBI’s going to transfer me. It’s just when she gets the drapes hemmed. After the first two moves, she began hemming with temporary stit
ches. She said this time she wasn’t even going to put up drapes.
‘A bad part of this job was that I had to travel so much. There were branches all over France and I was the one in charge of all personnel: hiring, finding housing, arranging for French lessons, firing, making changes when there were severe personality clashes, and, more than anything, keeping the French and Americans from each other’s throats.
‘Most of the French were fairly reasonable. MBI has a good name and they were making outstanding salaries, with better incentives and perks than they’d get with any French company. It was mostly the Americans who were trouble.
‘Some of them couldn’t adjust to the French way of doing things. A lot of them just hated France and the French. More often, it was the wives. They didn’t know what to do with themselves. Some of them had held good jobs at home and were forced to give them up. There was much resentment.
‘Then there was the adaptation to the schools. They had a choice of going to a regular French school, which was free, but awful by American standards. Or they could go to the Bilingual School, taught in English and French, but the kids had to wear uniforms. There was also the International School, which was small and in the center of Paris with no real campus. But the best choice, from what I could learn, was the American School of Paris. It was in the western suburb where we were living, but was expensive. Luckily, MBI paid the tuition. This American school was the only one run according to an American curriculum and was the one most of the MBI people chose.
‘Our children were accustomed to a typical big American advantaged, suburban-type school and, to them, this school looked like a painted-over concentration camp, a narrow, pie-shaped campus with a muddy football field, no yard-stripe markings, and a track around it looking as if it had recently been plowed.
‘The high-school classrooms were all about the size of closets compared to what they’d had in Minneapolis. Also, on one side of the school was a high-speed highway, and on the other, a railroad track with trains passing every twenty minutes. Our kids couldn’t believe it when they actually saw it.
‘But we were there. I felt guilty. I should have checked out the school situation better. From the beginning, I spent more time than I wanted fielding complaints about the school from other MBIers. I volunteered to serve on the board of trustees at the school and see if something could be done. It would also look good on my C.V.
‘I talked to our kids and to Lorrie. I said it was something we’d just have to live with. I knew they had no baseball team, no regular football, only soccer, no swimming pool, and so forth, but it had a good reputation, academically, and after all, that’s what school was for. I didn’t get very far.
‘We slowly settled in. Lorrie was great about it. She tried to make the best of things. The kids gradually were integrated into the school and enjoyed being big fish in a small pond rather than the way it was in Minneapolis.
‘My work was a constant challenge, more than I really wanted, and there wasn’t much reward. Lorrie wasn’t very interested in Paris. We’d go in on weekends to visit the sights, but this was mostly for me. I was excited by the museums, the galleries, the power of the city. The kids, in general, were bored. They liked going up the Eiffel Tower, visiting the Arc de Triomphe, a few things in that category, but Minneapolis hadn’t exactly prepared them for a cultural experience such as Paris. And there were no McDonald’s or Burger Kings.
‘One of the things they hated was learning French. The school had a rule everybody must take an hour of French every day. In general, they had French people teaching the French classes. That made sense except they didn’t understand American kids. A good part of our kids’ complaining was about their French teachers.
‘Teaching French to the American MBI executives and their wives was one of my big headaches, too. MBI had hired a private firm to tutor our people on a one-to-one tutorial basis. Within the year, I began to see this was a serious problem. The company used attractive young women to teach the men and handsome young men to teach the wives. There’d already been some trouble before I took over the job, and we’d had to make two transfers back home to alleviate domestic situations. Mostly it was the men getting involved with the young, good-looking teachers, but there were two cases of the women having affairs with their French tutors.
‘I had enough to worry about without this. I called in the man who ran the French teaching program for us. I suggested that, for reasons of domestic tranquillity, he assign men to teach men, and women to teach women. He gave me a classic French shrug.
‘“But, monsieur, they will not learn as fast. We have had much experience.”
‘I checked the files and found my predecessor had run into the same problem, made the same suggestion, and it was as this professional had suggested.
‘I pondered, and wrote a carefully worded memo regarding socializing with the French tutors. It was definitely to be discouraged. I hoped that would be the end of it, but feared it wouldn’t.
‘I was right. In two months, we had two good men, both with top-flight recommendations, records, get involved. I hired an American therapist, with a specialty in marriage counseling, to help out.
‘Finally, I calculated that with the amount of effective work time being lost, the cost of the tutors, the cost of the therapist, and all the disturbance in the staff, it wasn’t worth teaching French to our American employees and their wives. Most of the French who worked with us spoke English, anyway. But the powers-that-be in MBI were convinced a knowledge of the national language was necessary, so we continued. I was already beginning to look forward to any other assignment.’
I sigh and look around at the dark surrounding me. I can hardly see Mirabelle at all. Those two narrow, dirty windows in this room don’t let in much light even in the daytime; now it’s almost pitch dark.
‘Mirabelle, I’m tired, I can’t go on. Maybe I can tell you more tomorrow while I’m painting you.’
Her voice comes out of the darkness.
‘As you say, Jacques. Your voice does sound tired and it begins to sound sad. When do you want to continue our painting?’
‘I’d like to paint you in the morning light, or in the early afternoon light, whatever is convenient for you.’
‘I do my yoga and exercises in the morning, then I take care of my pigeons. Perhaps you could déjeuner with me and after we can do the painting. I remember the light comes in the windows better in the afternoon than in the morning anyway.’
We agree to that. She suggests I leave the paint box and canvas; that’s great with me. She asks me to stay and have a small souper with her, but I want to get home to my attic. Inside, I’m upset from telling what I’ve told. I feel empty and naked. I’m eager to leave.
‘All right, Mirabelle, I’ll see you there by the statue of Diderot, then, just as the bells are ringing.’
I stand, start feeling my way toward the direction of the door, bump against the table.
‘Oh, I am so sorry, Jacques, it is dark, is it not, you cannot see. Let me switch on the light.’
She goes to the light switch and, of course, nothing happens. As I suspected, this light is burned out, too.
‘Did the light go on, Jacques? I do not feel the warmth.’
‘No, Mirabelle, I think all your light bulbs are burned out.’
She’s silent for a moment. Then she starts making a strange sound. At first, in the dark, I can’t recognize it, then know she’s giggling, giggling like a little girl.
‘Oh, is this not terrible, Jacques? I never thought about that. You have been sitting in the complete dark talking to no one. Is that not true?’
‘No, I knew you were there, Mirabelle.’
I start laughing myself. We giggle and laugh together in the dark. I feel her coming toward me.
‘I am sorry. I did not think. Would you please buy some ampoules so you will not be blind with me. I can give you money now if you want.’
‘No, I won’t need any money, Mirabelle. Remember I??
?m a rich man.’
That starts us laughing again for no reason. She’s close enough now so I could touch her. She reaches out with her hands and puts them on my arms. I smell her pale perfume, like a fading, light yellow rose.
‘There would be nothing wrong if you kiss me on the cheeks in the French style, would there, Jacques? I would like it very much.’
She leans forward, and in the dark without much to aim at, I kiss her on each cheek and she kisses me on mine. We stay just a moment like that.
‘I must go now, Mirabelle. I am so tired I can hardly stand. Because I do not need to carry my box and paints, I shall take the bus. Thank you for listening to me.’
‘Thank you for telling me about yourself. I have much to think about. I know it is hard for you to speak of these things from your past. I thank you, also, for painting me. A demain.’
I find the door and open it. I push the button for the minuterie in the hall, and the stairway lights up. I feel as if I’ve regained my sight. I know she’s at the open door listening to me go down the steps and I turn to wave, realizing, at the same time, she cannot see me.
At home, I just pull down my sleeping bag and stretch out. I light one candle but don’t do anything else. I’m not hungry. I only want to stop my head from going, to find oblivion. I undress, climb into the bag, and find it more quickly than I thought I would.
Blind Reverie
It was terrible to realize that Jacques had been sitting in the dark while I was not noticing. He is such a gentle man and so kind telling of the happiness in his past life, telling it to an old blind woman in the dark. I do not know what I can do to make him know I understand, understand as only a blind person knows darkness.
It sounds as if he loves his wife and children very much. What could have happened to bring him here to Paris, living almost as a clochard in the streets? Perhaps there was a terrible automobile crash or something which took his loved ones. I cannot even think what it could have been.
He seemed so weary, so tired of everything, as he spoke, even at the happy parts, parts of which he should have been very proud. It is difficult to understand.