Chapter 12 #3
“No, I have dancers. That is much more complicated than children!” They laughed and Olivia knew it was true.
There were some divas even in the small ballet company she worked with.
They talked about dancers they knew and had lost sight of, and the cities he worked in, Paris, London, Berlin, Moscow, and New York.
He said he was always on the move and he liked that.
Listening to him, Olivia knew she had done the right thing when she freed him.
Francois had a big life and enjoyed it to the fullest. He couldn’t have done that if he was taking care of her.
The early years after the accident had been rough.
Her mother had done everything for her until she learned to do it herself, and now she preferred it.
“And you,” he said softly, “in that chair…you have no pain? Do you suffer?” It haunted him when he thought of her.
“Not at all. I’m fine. I have no pain. I can do everything, except walk.
I live alone and I manage well.” And then, she felt so comfortable with him that she shared her most private wish with him.
He had been the love of her life, and she had never been as at ease with anyone else.
“I’m thinking about having a child. More than thinking. I’m planning to.”
“You have a good man in your life?” Francois frowned. He had such an expressive face, every emotion was there.
“No. No man. I’m going to do it alone. I’ve been thinking about it for a year or two, and when my mother died so tragically, I realized that you have to take life by the horns and not waste a minute.
I thought she hadn’t really lived, but she did.
She had work she loved, a home she loved, and a wonderful man, and they adored each other.
So I decided not to let anything stop me, and I’m going to have a child.
” She looked determined. Francois knew that look.
“Are you able to have one yourself?” he asked her, unembarrassed.
“Supposedly, and if it doesn’t work I’ll adopt.” It was obvious she’d given it a great deal of thought.
“And the father? A friend? A man in your life?” he asked her again.
“There’s no man,” she said simply. “I’m alone and it’s fine. I can have a sperm donor, a stranger. You pick them on paper, kind of like computer dating. You never meet and you don’t know each other’s identities. I’m a little iffy about that, but people who meet in bars take bigger chances.”
“But if they meet a bad man in a bar, they don’t see him again. If you have a child with a bad man who lied, you will have his child forever.”
“I know. And if it doesn’t feel right, I’ll adopt. I would be happy with that too.”
“It’s a very big decision. You have not been idle, my darling Olivia.
” She had always liked her name with his accent, which was pronounced, but he spoke fluent English, German, French, and Russian.
“You’re a very brave woman. Sometimes too much,” he said.
Then he spoke softly. “I still think of you all the time. You never left my heart. You will always be there.” Olivia couldn’t imagine that his wife liked knowing that, but she was touched, and he hadn’t left hers either.
It was just a fact of their lives that they couldn’t be together, but they still loved each other.
She knew that now, seeing him. It was no longer a knife in her heart, it was a soft, ever-present feeling of a special part of her, locked away, that belonged to him.
It wasn’t painful but it was real. She was used to it, like her chair.
She lived with it, without letting her injury stop her or deprive her of anything.
At ten to eight, Francois looked at his watch with deep regret. “I have rehearsal in ten minutes. I hate to leave you, but I’m going to be late.” There was always more to say. There always had been. They talked as much as they danced, and laughed a lot. “When can I see you again? Do you have time?”
“I do, and I’ll make time.” It was like being with her best friend, only better. “But I don’t want to cause an awkward situation for you,” she said. It had troubled her before she saw him.
“How? What kind of awkward situation?” He looked surprised.
“How does your wife feel about our seeing each other? I don’t want to screw anything up for you,” she said, and he looked blank for a moment and then laughed.
“You mean Natasha. I was an experiment for her. She wanted to see if she liked men as much as women. She didn’t.
And she needed a French passport. It took two years to get it.
We’ve been divorced for three years.” Olivia looked relieved at the news.
She had felt guilty about it. “I’m glad you said that.
So now that’s out of the way. And you have no boyfriend? ” he asked her to be certain.
“No.”
“Good. Then we can eat caviar together again,” he said, and she laughed.
“Or hamburgers. I want an American hamburger again before I leave. And a corn dog.” She remembered that he had a passion for American junk food.
“I’m in rehearsal tomorrow until eleven at night.
Is that too late for you? Can we have a hamburger tomorrow night at eleven?
Do you remember that place we went to once? JG Something?”
“JG Melon,” she said, it had been the chic, trendy place for great hamburgers for decades.
“That’s it. There was a trucker’s diner too, but that was a little rough.”
“Yes.” She laughed at him. “Let’s do JG Melon after your rehearsal. I’ll reserve if you want.”
“Perfect.” Olivia slipped into the chair while they were talking and Francois didn’t attempt to push, remembering that she did it herself.
They stood on the street for a minute before he left her for rehearsal a few blocks away.
“It was wonderful seeing you, Olivia,” although he was sorry about her mother.
“I’ll tell Natasha you asked for her,” he said, laughing, teasing her.
“Oh, shut up.” Everything was the same as it always had been between them, as if no time had passed.
“See you tomorrow,” he said, and hurried into the crowd on Fifty-Seventh Street, and she stood there smiling.
He was still the same crazy wonderful best friend and best man she had ever known.
It was nice to know he wasn’t married. She refused to pursue the thought any further.
It was a simple statement of fact with no innuendos or illusions. He was divorced.
—
Francois was in New York for seven days.
The rehearsals went smoothly, and the performances were extraordinary.
He got Olivia tickets backstage for all three.
They managed to see each other for some amount of time at odd hours every day.
He had a day off on the last day, and they were all over New York, doing errands he hadn’t had time to do.
He loved New York, and they ate at a diner on Second Avenue on the last night.
He had a triple cheeseburger with everything on it, although he was very thin and usually careful about his weight, and they shared a banana split.
“Thank God you’re leaving. I’d get fat if you stayed.” Olivia went to the gym every day to exercise her upper body, but she couldn’t exercise the lower part. She had no muscle strength and no sensation in her legs from her spinal injury. Her legs were very thin from lack of use.
They went back to her apartment afterward to talk.
Francois was leaving the next morning. They hadn’t crossed any lines, and he had been careful not to cross her boundaries.
He knew what they were. They were two best friends, celebrating each day, enjoying each other, and living life to the fullest in the moment.
He brought out the best in her, and he said she did the same for him.
“I want to make you a proposition,” he said, careful not to use the word “proposal” so he didn’t scare her.
They were having a wonderful time together and he didn’t want to spoil it.
“I want you to have my baby, not some total stranger as a sperm donor who might be a serial killer, or hate ballet. Our genes are perfect for each other and we might be the parents of the greatest dancer that ever lived. Consider it a genetic experiment, for the benefit of future dance companies. I would like to be your sperm donor, on one condition.”
She looked thoughtful as she listened, cautious but intrigued. “What’s the condition?”
“You marry me to do it. I don’t want the brilliant dancer we give birth to to have unmarried parents.
It won’t look good in his or her biography in the dance program,” he said seriously and she giggled.
“I’m serious,” he said. “So we get married, you have your baby. We can live together or not. Or I can live in Paris and on airplanes, and you live here in this incredibly tiny apartment.”
“I’ll get a bigger one if I have a baby,” Olivia said.
“That’s good to know. And if you hate me, or decide that I have an intolerable personality, you can divorce me whenever you want. Natasha can tell you I’m very easy to divorce. So that’s my proposition.” She loved the idea of having his child, but she looked suspicious.
“And if we live together? What would that be like?”
“You make the rules. I travel all over the world for work. It would be like now, best friends who love each other. I would be honored to be the father of your child,” he said gently, and she was touched.
Francois had found a way to package it in such a way that she didn’t feel like she was ruining his life being married to an invalid, which she wasn’t.
Having his baby would be her dream come true.
“How would we do that?” she asked him.
“You have to ask your doctor. I don’t know what the mechanics are in our situation,” he said honestly.
“No, not that part.” She laughed at him again. “I mean you’d want to get married first, before the baby. Like when?”