The Hands of Strangers Read online

  “It’s the first miracle,” Estelle had said to M. Conrer that morning as she sat at the bar and drank her coffee. He nodded his approval, squeezed her hands, sat with her at the bar while the boy made espressos and served bread to the regular morning traffic. It was M. Conrer who had suggested to her weeks ago that finding Jennifer would be a series of small miracles, a trail of the unexplained that would come in small bits, forming the whole, not the grand spectacle of the movies. “You have to see the little signs, the little miracles that will happen along the way,” he had told her. “Don’t wait on the big dose.” And she believed that Detective Marceau’s message was the beginning. At least there is hope she is alive. A woman saw her and called to her and she turned her head to answer but was hurried away by those who have claimed her. It was real. It came from the mouth of the police. It happened and it would happen again. M. Conrer felt a sense of pride as he watched Estelle revel in the belief that a miracle had occurred.

  She sat in the café through the morning and then she ate an early lunch and went upstairs. The first miracle, she repeated to herself as she picked up around the apartment, washed a load of clothes, cleaned out the refrigerator. She liked the way it sounded as it moved from her throat into the silence. The r’s gave it a solid foundation, the five syllables gave it a rhythm. The made it official. The first miracle.

  Once the chores were finished, she sat on the sofa, propped her feet on the coffee table, and smoked a cigarette. Jon wouldn’t be home for several more hours and she wasn’t sure if she should let her enthusiasm run its course before he arrived or if she should hold it over, force-feed it to him, make him see it her way. Repeating the phrase again, she became certain that she had seen things his way long enough. “Here, Jon,” she would say. “Open up. Wider than that. Wider. Now take this. Swallow it. It’ll make you feel better, I promise. No, no, don’t close your mouth. Chew it. Chew it up and swallow. It’s for your own good.” She put out her cigarette and laughed sarcastically. He wasn’t that easy. She had already tried M. Conrer’s theory of small miracles on him one evening over dinner and Jon had said, “I didn’t know miracles came in degrees.” She didn’t argue. The next evening she brought it up again and he said, “Well, if they’re so small, aren’t they coincidences instead of miracles? Like when two people who don’t know each other find out they both know somebody else. Ask Conrer that. I bet he sees it as a miracle if he finds an umbrella on a rainy day. When there’s a miracle, we’ll know it. We won’t have to look for it.”

  The following morning she asked M. Conrer Jon’s question. And that’s when he said, “Jon is waiting on a crash of lightning or a chariot arriving from the sky with Jennifer holding the reins. It is hard to hope when you wait on that kind of answer. That places a large wall between yes and no. Too tall to get over on a regular day.”

  M. Conrer’s answer was enough for Estelle and from then on she waited. Waited, with her eyes open and alert, for the first domino to fall. And as far as she was concerned, it had. If Jon didn’t want to accept it, no matter. For the moment, she believed.

  She got up from the couch and walked to the bookcase in the corner of the room and looked for the Bible. She had found it on the shelf nearest the floor, tucked between a cookbook and a travel guide. The Bible belonged to her and it was black with gold leafing and a bookmark was placed in Psalms. She again sat on the sofa and opened it and it was stiff and noisy. She turned to the bookmark and she didn’t recognize a passage and she wondered why the bookmark had been placed there.

  She knew the Bible was filled with miracles but she didn’t know where to find any, so she turned to the index in the back and ran her finger past the Ks and Ls until she arrived at Miracles. Under Miracles was a list of passages half a page long. The Gospels held the most references and she chose the book of Matthew. The first reference led her to chapter eight. Her Bible used headers to separate the topics of each passage, and the heading of chapter eight was The Man with Leprosy: “A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, ‘Lord, if you are willing, make me clean.’ Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be clean.’ Immediately he was cured of his leprosy.”

  Is that it? she thought. No crowds? No applause? No oohs and aahs?

  Chapter nine, Jesus Heals a Paralytic: “Some men brought to him a paralytic, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.’ ” Again, Estelle wondered if that was all there was to it? She kept reading, and several verses later, Jesus tells the paralytic to get up, take your mat, and go home. And the man got up and went home.

  She continued through chapter nine to A Dead Girl and a Sick Woman: “A ruler came and knelt before him and said, ‘My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live.’ Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples. Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.’ Jesus turned and saw her. ‘Take heart, daughter,’ he said, ‘your faith has healed you.’ And the woman was healed from that moment. When Jesus entered the ruler’s house and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd, he said, ‘Go away. The girl is not dead, but asleep.’ But they laughed at him. After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up.”

  She continued to read about the blind and the mute, about the healing of two demon-possessed men, about the fever of Peter’s mother-in-law. The sentences sounded the same in each of the miracles. Do you have faith? Yes. Then you are healed.

  The passages were concise. The action fundamental. The result a reward. There was no prestory, no explanation of how those that were healed came to need healing in the first place. Only that He walked among them and rewarded their faith. It seemed too basic. But that was what M. Conrer had said. Look for the miracles in the everyday, in the basics. Don’t wait on the crash of lightning. There hadn’t been with Him, so why should there be now? That’s what she would tell Jon.

  Estelle spent the rest of the afternoon reading and rereading the miracles. She moved from Matthew to Mark to Luke, the authors different but the language the same. Once she was finished, she closed the Bible and returned it to the shelf, then she stretched and walked over to the window and opened it. She looked down at the tops of passing heads. Fewer hats every day. Longer light every day. She noticed the tables on the sidewalk of M. Conrer’s café and the boy wiping them. Jon would be home any minute. She closed the window and leaned her head against it.

  Do you have faith? she thought. Yes. Then . . .

  Much left to be answered. Keep trying. But for her, the first miracle had occurred. She moved away from the window, went to the kitchen, and peeled an orange. As she sat on the sofa eating the orange slices, Jon called from downstairs and asked her to come and have dinner, that M. Conrer wouldn’t let him take no for an answer. She got up, changed her clothes, went to the bathroom and brushed her hair, cleaned and fixed her face, all the while looking at herself in the mirror with uncertainty, unsure if it was okay to feel optimistic about what was to come.

  And now, in the middle of the night, she gets out of bed, covers her naked body with the black sweater, and goes to the glass door that opens onto the small balcony of the hotel room. She pauses and looks at Jon, asleep on his back, and she believes she has seen the second miracle in the look on his face in the café. The lack of cynicism when she offered hope, the simplicity with which he sat with her, and talked with her, and walked with her, and made love with her. She hadn’t said a word about her afternoon with the New Testament books. She hadn’t used one of the bits of ammunition she had prepared to bring him to her side. All she had done was walk down to the café and he was changed. All the way? Probably not. Some? Yes. Increments, she thinks. Small, small steps to the end.

  She walk
s onto the balcony. Four blocks to her left is their apartment. She feels the same breeze, looks at the same lights across the same city. The same quiet of the deep Paris night surrounds her. She has sat with it over and over, hour after hour, looking into the dark, wondering. She takes a long breath as an empty taxi turns onto the street and passes underneath her. The wind is cool and slides up her leg and she wraps her sweater tightly and folds her arms. Jon coughs in his sleep, then tosses and turns for a moment before settling, but she ignores him, doesn’t take her eyes away from the dark that will soon again be light.

  9

  She has the windows open for the first time of the season and a bluebird sits on the window ledge. Iris dabs the brush onto the canvas, then tilts her head, steps back, and analyzes the part in Jennifer’s hair. The apartment door is also open and an easy breeze makes its way from room to room. She has been working on the portrait for a week straight, taking no breaks to work on the other women, typically with both the apartment and bedroom doors locked, but this afternoon is too clear, too new to keep closed up. It has been a couple of weeks since she has seen Jon. She doesn’t expect him and she works comfortably in the spring air, unafraid of being found out.

  She has made changes to Jennifer’s image. The child’s hair is pulled back in a ponytail in the poster photograph, but Iris has let it down and it reaches Jennifer’s thin shoulders. In the poster photograph, the background is nondescript, but Iris has placed Jennifer in the beginnings of a classroom. Over her left shoulder is a bookshelf not yet filled with books. Over her right shoulder is what appears to be a teacher’s desk, littered with papers to grade, a coffee cup filled with pencils, and a pair of eyeglasses. Iris has also bared the child’s neck, which is covered in the photograph with a turtleneck sweater. For Iris, Jennifer wears a tank top, and her neck is long and pale and unblemished.

  She goes into the bathroom and washes the brush, then she shoos the bird off the ledge and closes the window. She leaves the apartment without locking the door and walks to a sandwich stand. She takes a ham and cheese sandwich and a Coke and she walks until she comes to a quaint, square playground, budding trees standing at each corner of the surrounding fence. Wood chips cover the ground and a bicycle with its front tire missing lies next to a seesaw. The playground is empty in the midday and Iris sits down at the base of a silver slide and unwraps the sandwich.

  The playground is where she watches. Every week, she comes to the playground and stands on the sidewalk, with her arms propped on the waist-high wooden gate, and watches the women who watch their children. Their one eye always just over the top of the magazine. Their hand dangling over the crossed legs. Their cigarette burning to a nub. Their short, sure commands that make children change directions. She has watched the women and taken them with her back to the apartment, where they fill her days and nights. Where she gives them something other than children and wedding rings as she lets them question from behind the black faces. They do question, don’t they? she has asked herself. Or do playgrounds and sack lunches answer their questions? Is it as simple as they make it seem as they wipe noses and kiss bumped heads and hand out cookies?

  She breaks off a piece of bread and tosses it toward a pigeon poking around in the wood chips.

  Jon has come to her door. Several times. She has not mentioned the painting that he took and neither has he. They sit in the middle of the floor and share a glass of wine and he mentions the places he has been with the posters and she nods and fills his glass when it is empty and she waits on him to reach over for her but he hasn’t. She wants him to keep coming back. She wants to ask questions about Jennifer, to listen to him talk about her, to know more of the story. She wants him to be vulnerable and sad. With the women it was always the same—she took them for boring, numbed creatures and in her self-proclaimed graciousness she offered them an air of the mysterious. With Jon, she has the living, breathing unknown. She has the questions. The big questions. She believes he will come back and she hopes he will come back unchanged so that the intrigue and the hurt will remain.

  She finishes the sandwich, tosses the wrapper and empty Coke into a garbage can next to the gate, and leaves the playground. Walking home, she passes people sitting outside at the cafés, having lunch and coffee and soaking in the warmth. When she comes to Le Café Perdu, she steps inside and looks at the woman she had forgotten about until Jon asked to buy her. She sees what he saw—her waiting, her anxiousness. A waitress approaches Iris and asks if she would like to sit and she says no, takes one more look at the painting, then makes her way for the apartment. She walks quickly, feeling a need to get back to Jennifer.

  She enters her building and climbs the stairs, and when she gets to her apartment, the door is pushed open. She steps in and calls out, “Hello?” No answer. She moves through the great room and looks in the kitchen and there is no one. She calls out again and still no answer and she makes her way to Jennifer’s room and the door is closed. She reaches to turn the knob and it is locked.

  “Hello?” she says and receives no reply. She puts her ear to the door and listens for movement but the room is still. She tries to turn the knob again but it doesn’t move. Then she knocks on the door and calls out more forcefully, “Who is in here?”

  She waits for a moment, then knocks again and says, “I can call the police.”

  “Call them,” a voice returns.

  She touches the door with her fingertips, leans her head against it, and says softly, “You were not supposed to see until I was finished.”

  Again, quiet follows. Iris sits on the floor, facing the door. She scrapes paint from the palm of her hand with her fingernail. She doesn’t know what to say, so she doesn’t say anything and waits for Jon to make the next move. Minutes go by and the room on the other side of the door remains as still and quiet as an empty church. Iris crosses her legs and leans back on her elbows. She then stretches her body out in the hallway, her head resting in the palms of folded hands. Finally, she hears footsteps, but they are random, only side to side instead of toward the door. She stares at the ceiling and to pass the time she clicks her tongue on the roof of her mouth.

  “Be quiet,” Jon says and she stops. Again there are footsteps and Iris sits up and scoots over to the door. She puts her head to the floor and under the doorway she sees Jon’s feet close to the door, almost close enough to reach with her fingers. She thinks of wiggling them underneath, but decides he might stomp them. So she stands and holds the doorknob and says, “Do you want to open the door?”

  She hears a sigh, then feels the weight of his body fall against the door. “You’re a liar,” he says.

  “I thought you worked during the day,” she answers.

  “Cut the bullshit, Iris. I swear to God I’m going to rip her into a hundred pieces and throw her out of the window if you don’t tell me the truth.”

  She knows it is a bluff but isn’t brave enough to call him on it. “Okay,” she says. “I will not bullshit.”

  “Good.”

  “Open the door?”

  “No. You haven’t answered me yet. Why did you lie?”

  “Because. Because I changed my mind. I told you it was possible.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did. You didn’t listen.”

  “How many times have you seen me since you started?”

  “If you will open the door I can explain better.”

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  “One day.”

  “That’s another lie.”

  “Jon, it’s not a lie. I only needed some time. Now, please. Open the door.”

  He moves back and bangs his fist on the door and Iris jumps back and lets out a quick scream. “Some time for what?” he yells. “She doesn’t belong to you!”

  She starts to answer but hears him move away from the door and across the room. “Jon, don’t!” she calls out, and then
she is interrupted by the easel hitting the floor. She calls out to him again and she knocks on the door. “Jon!”

  “I’ll do what I want,” he answers calmly, and the next sound she expects to hear is that of the canvas ripping.

  But instead, the rush of noise is followed by the same stale silence that was there before. As if the room were empty. She presses her cheek to the door. Holds her breath. Waits for what to do next.

  “I’m sorry,” she says involuntarily, as if it escaped from somewhere other than her mouth. She touches the doorknob again, only to hold it for a moment, then she backs away from the door and walks out of the apartment, closing the apartment door loudly so that he will know she is gone. Out in the street the day feels different than before, the satisfaction of the perfect hours of morning work far away. The smoothness of the sunshine, of her walk, of her smiles that fell on strangers is replaced by an uncomfortable gait with folded arms, by bothersome clouds hovering in the once clear sky. She returns to the playground and the bicycle is gone and a teenage babysitter and a child sit on a bench with a frizzy-haired doll. A café is across the street from the playground and she sits and asks for a small carafe of wine. A thin, young man moves from his table and sits with her and smiles a hopeful smile, but she doesn’t smile back and he doesn’t sit long. After the second glass of wine is finished, she walks back to the apartment, figuring the painting of Jennifer is gone with Jon. Maybe he will keep her, she thinks. Maybe he will roll her up and carry her around and look at her when he needs to. Maybe I can start again. I know where to find another poster. She comes to her building and climbs the stairs reluctantly, her legs heavy as if tree stumps. She enters the apartment and walks straight to the back room. The door is closed and she wonders if he is still there. She doesn’t call out but tries the doorknob and this time it turns, and she pushes the door open and peeks inside. The easel is again standing and Jennifer sits in the same spot she has been sitting all along. She approaches the painting and finds it unscarred. A scrap of paper sits on the easel at the base of the painting and she picks it up. On the paper, Jon has written three questions.