The Hands of Strangers Read online

  5

  It is dark by the time Jon reaches his street and he avoids M. Conrer’s and goes upstairs. Estelle is gone, a note next to the telephone saying she is at the grocery. He goes into the kitchen and pours a glass of water, then takes a black marker and puts an X on the map across the eighteenth arrondissement.

  He drinks the water, then goes into the shower. He takes the water as hot as he can stand it, leaning his head forward and allowing the stream to run on his neck and down his back. He looks at his hands. Feels as though there should be dirt under his fingernails. After the shower he puts on a robe and goes into the bedroom and lies on the bed. He turns on the television to watch the news but the evening edition is over and he will have to wait until eleven o’clock. The apartment door opens and he turns off the television, rolls on his stomach, and pretends to be asleep.

  Estelle comes in with her arms filled with plastic grocery bags. She puts the groceries away, unaware Jon is in the apartment until she sees the X on the map. She calls for him but he doesn’t answer. She looks in the bathroom and the shower curtain is wet, then she goes into the bedroom, notices his eyes closed, and she sits down beside him and puts her hand on his back.

  When Jon’s father passed away, he inherited little, but included in a box his mother had prepared for him was his father’s portfolio from the modeling years. It was three inches thick of his handsome dad—the tight jaw, tailored shoulders, sandy hair stiffly parted. Jon only looked at it once and put it away, but once he met Estelle, he shared it with her on a lazy evening as they sat in his apartment listening to the rain. Estelle glowed as if in love when she saw the photographs, the ads of Jon’s father propped on a sleek car with a cigarette dangling from his fingers, or holding hands with a pretty girl as she twirled an umbrella on her shoulder. She glowed because the man in the photographs was so similar to the man sitting beside her and it gave her the notion she was on her way to spending her life with an undiscovered star.

  She hasn’t thought of the portfolio in a long time but she thinks of it now as she looks at Jon, his body stretched long, his face turned sideways on the pillow. She runs a finger along his temple, down his cheek, around his earlobe. He doesn’t open his eyes and shifts and she leans down and kisses his ear, then she pulls the robe away from his neck and kisses the back of it. He shifts again and grunts and he has moved enough to where she can reach around and untie the robe.

  He holds his breath, grunts again, his eyes shut tightly until she begins to kiss his stomach and he can only see Iris and he jerks and looks at her with his eyebrows raised in panic. Estelle says, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “I’m not scared,” he says, and after a pause she leans over to kiss him and he pulls away.

  “Not right now,” he says, but he doesn’t have to say anything, as the indifference is enough. She forgets the portfolio, forgets the rush that she barely recognized, and she gets up from the bed and walks into the living room.

  “Estelle,” he calls to her, but she doesn’t answer. He gets dressed and asks if he can make dinner but she says she’s not hungry. She stretches out on the couch under two blankets and changes the channels. For the rest of the night, he periodically asks if he can get her something to eat and she says no each time, until he gives up and is back in the bedroom watching the news. If a body has been found, he expects it to be a lead story. But there is nothing. To be certain, he watches through the weather and the soccer scores until the charming news crew signs off and promises to be back at seven in the morning. He gets up to check on Estelle and she is asleep, the remote nestled in her arms as if she loves it.

  On Friday morning he fills the duffel bag and takes the poster tube and kisses Estelle good-bye. She gives her cheek and he hopes that by the evening she will have forgotten last night. Today is the last day of his free week and they have blanketed the city with the new photographs of Jennifer. Detective Marceau was in the habit of speaking with them at least once a week but he hasn’t called in nine days. The weather has broken and the day is warm, the weekend looking even better, and the parks and streets will be filled with laughter and dogs and children. Jon takes off his coat as he walks back toward the metro. The cool morning air reminds him of walks with a young wife and a stroller, of kicking a ball with a little girl and the weight of the ball knocking her off balance, of playing hide-and-seek around the trunks of large trees and playground equipment. Of a green-eyed girl learning to read on a park bench, reciting colors and letters and looking up at her father to see if his head was nodding in approval. The small voice sounds in his head and he nods.

  He comes to the metro but instead of going where he’s supposed to go, he takes the train back to Abbesses. He walks to Iris’s building and passes by. After several blocks, he comes to a church and a square courtyard is next to it, surrounded by a head-high, black iron fence with crosses on the top of each bar. A statue stands in the middle of the courtyard and the trees are bare but have the beginning of buds on their limbs. He opens the gate and follows a narrow gravel path to a concrete bench facing the statue. The sun shines on the face of the saint and the months of winter rain have streaked it gray. A book is tucked under the saint’s arm and birds rest on his shoulders.

  Jon wants to ask him about Jennifer but he knows what the saint will say. He thinks about praying, but what for? Please forgive me for screwing Iris and please bring my daughter home. He knows that isn’t the way it works and he can’t convince himself to ask for help. So he takes one more look at the saint and then he gets up, suddenly uncomfortable surrounded by such defined lines of right and wrong. He walks back into the street, and in another block, he sits down in a café that is just opening and tries to put it together.

  He orders coffee and before it is gone he has decided to go back and see Iris. To ask again if she will paint his daughter. This time he will offer more money. Or supplies. Whatever someone like her needs. There is a jingle and a middle-aged couple walks in the doorway and sits at a table next to him. The woman’s right hand quivers and she holds it across the table. She lets go momentarily and takes three bottles of pills from her purse and sets them on the table. Then she holds his hand again.

  Jon watches as the waitress brings them water and coffee, then the woman gives her husband a handful of pills. He swallows one at a time, smiling in between. When they are gone, she smiles back and says, “Good.”

  He looks down at his coffee cup and wonders if he and Estelle will ever be there.

  One goddamn moment of peace. That’s all I wanted, he thinks. A moment he doesn’t need now. He sees the star between her breasts and he feels Estelle crawling into the bed and that moment of peace has turned out to be a bad deal. But didn’t he know it would be? That somehow, it would end up in a bad deal. He wonders if coming clean would be the best thing. Don’t let it linger, go home and tell her. Estelle understands many things, is patient, forgiving. But not that patient and forgiving and how would he explain pulling Iris to the floor in search of that glorious moment of peace that has no more luster. He watches the couple and they don’t speak, their eyes up and around the café walls, out into the street, back and forth from each other. Content eyes. Passive eyes. Eyes resting comfortably in a lazy morning, unimpeded by the clutter of words. Jon shifts in his chair and his foot bumps the duffel bag. Then he kicks it and the couple looks at him and his eyes aren’t the same as theirs and they both turn away quickly.

  He raises his hand and orders whiskey and the waitress laughs until she realizes he’s not joking. He drinks and tries to decide between a friendship with Iris that might lead her to painting Jennifer, or breaking into her apartment and taking a few women for ransom until she agrees. This routine continues until late morning, and when he tries to get up and leave, the room spins and goes cloudy and he falls into an empty table. Other customers in for an early lunch look at him and cut their eyes at one another, shake their heads. The waitress helps him back
into his chair and asks if he would like a glass of water. He brushes her off, mumbles something, gives her money. Then he picks up the bag and tube and makes for the door, his stride wobbly and the bag heavier than he remembered.

  He weaves along the sidewalk, his throat burning and the glare of the sun forcing his eyes downward. Shoppers see him coming and move out of the way. At a tiny grocery he buys sunglasses and cigarettes, and when the cashier tells him to have a good day, he says, “Did you know that over thirty thousand people are reported missing in France every year?”

  Out in the street he puts on the sunglasses and lights a cigarette, then unzips the duffel bag and pulls out a stack of pamphlets. “Look here! Win fifty thousand euros!” he says as he passes people walking along the sidewalk, getting off the bus, standing in the entrances of doorways. “Win fifty thousand euros! Make your dreams come true! Take that vacation you’ve always wanted to take! All you have to do is find the little girl!” Most step around, a few take the pamphlet. Two teenage boys follow behind him entertained, mocking the wobble in Jon’s walk. He catches them in a store window and turns around. They back away but he holds out a pamphlet and says, “Here, here. No certain age required to be a winner.” One of them punches the other in the shoulder and they turn and run away.

  He starts along the sidewalk again, promoting the prize, shoving the pamphlet into purses and coat pockets of those who try to move around him. An old woman screams, “Police!” and then Jon screams back at her, “Yes! Police!” Soon he is giving the pamphlets away in handfuls, dropping them in mail slots, throwing them into the open doors of boutiques and restaurants. Voices threaten him but he ignores them and moves on, yelling, “Win fifty thousand euros!” and at the end of streets he takes lefts and rights without regard to direction until he has left a crooked trail of Jennifer’s face through the once-quiet neighborhood. He stops twice to have another drink, proclaiming louder than before after each break. The lunchtime traffic comes and goes, and by the early afternoon, he runs out of pamphlets. He holds the duffel bag upside down and shakes it and one more falls out. Standing in the middle of the sidewalk, he holds the pamphlet above his head, then throws his head back, stretches out his arms, and yells toward the cloudless sky, “This one is for you! Fifty thousand big ones in the offering plate at Sunday mass if you would just set her on our goddamn doorstep!” Then he tears the pamphlet into pieces and tosses it into the air.

  He lights another cigarette and keeps walking, quietly this time, until he finds a café. He sits at the bar and orders a beer, then he takes off the sunglasses. His head bobs forward and back and he nods off. The bartender sets the beer in front of him and claps his hands and Jon sits up straight. “You can’t sleep in here,” the bartender says. Jon stretches, makes fists and rubs his eyes. “What street is this?” he asks, and the bartender slides him a pack of matches. Le Café Perdu, 61 rue Abbesses. He looks around and a reddish-brown dog with a white nose lies at the end of the bar next to a bowl of water and a bowl of food. On the wall to the right of the bar, the woman leans against the rock, the waterfall behind her. Jon mumbles something and the bartender says, “Do you need a taxi?” He shakes his head and pays for the drinks and walks to Iris’s apartment. She opens the door and he comes in without a word, lies down in the middle of the floor, his arms and legs spread wide like an X marking the spot.

  6

  Estelle takes the map from the wall and folds it, then she holds the handful of markers together and wraps a rubber band around them. She places it all in a shoe box and puts the shoe box on the top shelf of the hall closet. They have done all they can in one week and she has decided to put the plan away for the weekend. She ate lunch downstairs at M. Conrer’s café and he urged her to get out and take a walk in the sunshine, and standing at the living room window, feeling the warmth on her face, she decides to take his advice. She puts on a sweater and leaves the jacket behind. When she walks past the café, she waves to M. Conrer through the window and he smiles back at her.

  As she walks she remembers an afternoon like this, two, maybe three years ago, sitting on a blanket with Jon watching Jennifer play her first soccer match. The young girls moved in a pack around the ball, a shifting, awkward crowd that never moved very far in any direction. Parents cheered but mostly laughed and no one cared when the game ended without a score. Particularly Jennifer, who asked her father as they walked home, “Who won?”

  It was during half time of the game, after Jennifer had run over and taken a drink of water from a squeeze bottle that she had declared necessary, that Estelle said to Jon, “She runs like you. With her knees nearly knocking together.”

  “Thank my father for that,” he said. “Those fancy pictures make him look like a movie star but he had legs like a giraffe.”

  The game continued and Jon and Estelle snacked on sandwiches and Estelle occasionally called out to Jennifer, who would turn and wave, momentarily falling away from the pack, then she’d turn and run with wild knees and elbows to catch up. During a time-out close to the end of the game, Estelle lay back on the blanket, looked into the afternoon sky, and said, “You know, on days like this it feels like God has His finger right on top of your head, guiding you around like a stage puppet.”

  Jon looked at her, took a bite of sandwich, and said, “No more soccer games for you.”

  She reached up and tackled him down with her and said, “You understand what I mean. Don’t you, Mr. Serious?”

  “Yep.”

  “Yep? What is yep?”

  “A lazy way of agreeing with you.”

  She took his hand and said, “Just look at the sky. It is empty. Only blue. It is nothing, but it is everything. I see everything in that sky.”

  A whistle blew and play continued and Jon said, “So you feel the finger of God on your head?”

  “Yes. And not the pinkie, but the big finger. And it’s on your head also whether you know it or not.”

  They heard the voices of parents and coaches shouting encouragement and they sat up and watched, neither of them speaking again until the game was over and Jennifer stood in front of them, asking if they could stop for pizza on the way home.

  She remembers the day and she rubs the top of her head. She feels no finger. But the fresh air, the sunshine, escaping from the apartment—it gives her the idea that it may be close, hovering twenty or fifty or a hundred feet above her. Close. She stops at a magazine stand and buys a lottery card and sticks it in the back pocket of her jeans.

  She has felt her faith renewed this week though no one has called and nothing has changed. Nothing but Jon. She has watched him leave the apartment each morning, the duffel bag filled, his shoulders drooping a little more today than the first of the week. She knows he tries to hide it but his eyes, his sighs, the monotone sound of his voice—it all suggests he is losing hope. Or has lost it. He is lying in the street, the taxi gone. She smells the liquor on his breath when he comes home, the mouthful of gum a sad defense. She wonders if her newfound optimism is enough for both of them. Or if he’s the one that has it right.

  She walks until she is close to the river. Detective Marceau has asked twice if they want it to be dragged and both times Estelle said no. He has convinced Estelle he is a good man—a father himself, a thin man with soft cheeks, a touch of empathy in his voice each time they speak. But she finds herself awake at night, wishing he were more like the men in the action movies, gruff and fearless and certain they will fix what is wrong.

  She reaches the river and walks to the harbor. Long, expensive boats with their sails down sit close to one another, the water calm and the sun glaring across the clean white decks. Birds perch on masts and here and there men and women sit on deck at tables for two with bottles of wine and late lunches. She walks down the concrete stairs of the quay and along the row of boats. Despite the recent rain, the water has the stale smell of a shallow pond, and after admiring several of the larger boats
, she climbs the stairs and sits on a bench that overlooks the harbor. She takes the lottery card from her pocket. Again she looks up for the finger.

  It is early spring that always makes her think of the family flower shops, the doors wide open, the purples and yellows and reds, so true they looked fake. That smell of a thousand flowers that she would anticipate on her walk after school to the shop where her mother worked. Saying hi to everyone, asking for her father. Dropping her school bag in front of the cash register and her mother telling her to move it. If her father was there, at the end of the day he would let her spray the bouquets that sat in round black tubs on the sidewalk. Not too much, only give them a dew. Then later, as a young girl, running the cash register, making deliveries, finding streets she never knew existed. She looks across the harbor and hears her father’s voice—keep the colors fresh, Madame So-and-So prefers the yellow lilies to the white and Monsieur What’s-His-Name will be in twice a month for roses for the vases of his restaurant. Treat the bride-to-be as if she were inventing the idea of marriage. Don’t let the employees smoke in the store. Pay the bills on time whether you have the money or not. Don’t let your mother give away the store because she will, especially in the summer when the mothers walk in with their small children.

  If she had the business now she wouldn’t need the lottery ticket. But she let her parents sell and retire to the northern coast. Jon had come along, then Jennifer, and she didn’t think running the business would be the same without her parents there. Jon told her she was making a mistake. She used to walk past the stores with Jennifer in a stroller, tell herself she hadn’t.