Chapter 33 C’est la mort
C’est la mort
Jamie
“What are you eating right now, Jack?”
With his mouth full, the youngster smiled brightly as he answered, “A croissant!”
“And you like it?”
“I love it,” he said. “There’s so much good bread in France, Eve!”
“But you know that we have these back home, right?” Jamie asked. “And that you’ve always refused to eat them?”
“The ones back home don’t have chocolate in them.”
“Some of them do,” Jamie said.
“Oh. Well. I didn’t know that.”
Jamie laughed and turned the camera back toward himself briefly. “Four days in another country and the thing he’s been most excited about is somethin’ he can get at home.”
“They taste better here!” Jack insisted, despite never having had one in the US. “This is the real thing.”
Jamie turned the camera back on his son. “What else have you discovered in France?”
“Orangina!” Jack excitedly held up his bottle of the carbonated citrus drink.
“Anything not related to food?”
He gasped before replying, “Oh, I met Mickey and Minnie. And Buzz and Woody, and all the Disney princesses,” he went on, his enthusiasm growing with each syllable. “They all spoke French! And there’s a whole Marvel part of the park that we’re gonna see today.”
“Tell Eve about your favorite ride,” Jamie suggested.
“Pirates of the Caribbean! Eve, it’s the best ride,” Jack shouted.
“When you first walk in, you’re in, like, this dungeon, and they show all these skeletons of prisoners that died in their cells.
And then, the actual ride is this boat, but it’s like a roller coaster, and it takes you through a whole exhibit and you see pirates and more rotted skeletons and shipwrecks and stuff from the movies.
It’s so creepy and cool,” he said, grinning.
“I can’t wait ’til you get here so you can go on it with us. ”
“And how many times have you been on it already?”
“Six times!” Jack said. “And the line is always so long. But I promise it’s worth it!”
“Today’s gonna be our first day not going on it,” Jamie commented to the camera, “so we’ll see how that goes.”
“I don’t know if I’m gonna make it, Dad,” Jack said with another big bite of his croissant. “I miss it already.”
“We should actually be getting ready to go,” Jamie said, “so I’m gonna hop in the shower. Say goodbye to Eve.”
Jack waved at the camera with a chocolaty grin. “Au revoir, Eve! Joyeux Noel! Hope you’re having fun in New Jersey!”
“New York,” Jamie corrected him in a whisper.
“But Eve said she was flying to New Jersey.”
“But she’s from New York. They’re very close.”
“Okay, New York,” Jack said. “I can’t be expected to remember the states, Dad. I’m French now.”
Laughing, Jamie turned the camera back on himself and blew Eve a little kiss, finishing it with a wave. “Merry Christmas. We miss you. See you soon.”
Jamie hit send on the video to Eve as soon as he finished reviewing it for sound and content.
His intent was to supply Eve with daily recaps, but he’d been busier and more exhausted than expected at the end of each day; plus, with the time difference, they kept missing each other’s calls.
Hopefully, a Christmas morning video from Jack would make up for it.
He still texted Eve frequently, regaling her with details of his adventures in a foreign country, discovering a different culture, fascinated by even the tiniest contrasts between France and the States.
He told her of how he always attempted French when asking questions of the locals, but many didn’t have the patience for it and generally ended up communicating in English anyway.
He was also surprised that most French people didn’t hate Americans as he assumed; in fact, many seemed to find him interesting somehow, wanting to know more about his life in America.
The day before, walking through Montmartre, he’d met a woman with a son around Jack’s age; they shared a cigarette while their kids played, and after telling her about his time at Dollywood, she swore her next trip to the US would be to Tennessee.
He told her she might regret it, but she was convinced.
Jamie didn’t mention in his texts how unsophisticated he often felt there, despite all the effort he’d put into appearing otherwise, from his elevated wardrobe to the upscale hotel he’d chosen.
How surprised he was when Delta served dinner and breakfast on the plane.
Or, conversely, how dopey he felt when he asked for ice water at a restaurant and learned how obnoxiously American it was.
And maybe it was good that he had so much left to discover about the world, but he certainly wouldn’t be reminding Eve that he was an absolute rube.
While Eve adored the video of Jack, she said what she really wanted for Christmas was FaceTime, and Jamie agreed they were past due for a catch-up.
They’d been inseparable since Thanksgiving, and he liked life better that way.
So on Christmas night, Jamie stayed up until 2:00 a.m., despite yet another entire day at the park, waiting for Eve to return from her parents’.
And given what he knew about her relationship with them, he was fully prepared to lift her spirits, if need be.
“Did you open my gift yet?” Eve asked. Posted in front of a fuchsia wall in her best friend’s apartment, she was beaming, wearing a Santa hat that barely covered her fluffy curls.
Her merry smile lit up his iPad screen, doing everything in its power to close the 3,500-mile distance between them.
He missed her, and the impersonality of video messaging only sharpened that twinge.
“I was waiting until I could do it with you.” He proudly held the unopened package to the camera as proof.
“You sure can wrap a present,” he added, examining the lovely black-and-gold paper, a satiny golden ribbon tying it all together under an ornate bow.
Even after traveling across the Atlantic, it was perfect.
Grinning, Jamie untied and began to strip the paper from the flat package.
He let the wrapping fall to his bed and carefully opened the box, pulling from it a six-by-eight-inch wooden picture frame, painted lime green.
His heart grew three sizes when he viewed the image inside it: a picture of Eve and Jack, posed in front of the Dollywood sign.
Jack was wearing the wonderfully garish butterfly sunglasses Eve had picked up in the gift shop, and his grin, with all his missing teeth, was as wide as the frame.
Eve, with her tongue sticking out and a smile sparkling in her eyes, looked so happy. Downright ebullient.
“It’s perfect,” he said. It was especially touching when he considered just how long she avoided even the subject of his son.
Her heartache had dimmed her light, but he’d always been able to detect something in her beyond that sadness on the surface.
It was a delight to witness her free herself from that pain.
Eve let out an audible sigh. “Yeah?”
He nodded, still studying the snapshot. They’d taken hundreds of pictures that day, and he loved them all, but this one, this gesture from Eve, was tangible evidence of just how far she, and they, had come.
“I’m so glad you walked into my life that day,” he said.
“I’m so glad you saved mine,” Eve said.
There was an immediate prickling in Jamie’s cheeks, and a cursory glance at his image in the corner of the screen confirmed his pinkened face.
He was uncomfortable with taking credit for such a thing.
“Same here,” he said. “I was just…existing. Jack was my life, he still is, but…it wasn’t until you came along that I realized just how much I was missing out on. ”
Eve shook her head again, her bright smile dimming slightly. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
“I wish I’d come with you.”
“It went that bad at your parents’, huh?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her grin disappearing completely. “I’m not sure what I was looking for here. I thought I missed them . I thought coming home would smooth things over, I guess. But I should’ve known they’d never make it easy on me.”
Jamie stared back at her, the dejection on her face making him wish he hadn’t let her do this alone. They didn’t know each other well enough for him to accompany her home, not really; but still, he should’ve. “Fuck parents,” he said. “You already know how I feel about my mom.”
“It’s funny how when you’re a kid, you think your parents know everything. We’re deluded into believing they’re always right. And it’s a little astonishing to come to terms with the fact that they’re just people, too.”
“I worry about Jack realizing that about me…”
“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
“That’s bleak,” Jamie chuckled. “That’s exactly why we don’t do DC around here.”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think you, or Jack, have to worry about that.”
“His mother, on the other hand…”
“I mean, no one’s got it all.”
They laughed, leaving Jamie sighing a bit wistfully as he gazed out the window ahead, the City of Light staring back at him.
He wasn’t used to anything so vibrant at three in the morning.
When he stood on the terrace, he could practically reach out and touch the Eiffel Tower—it was the very reason he chose the Shangri-La hotel, and still, he sat in disbelief that he was here.
Before Eve, the notion had never even crossed his mind. Traveling outside the country was nothing more than an abstract concept, sitting on a shelf he always thought was out of his reach. Corny as it sounded, she’d actually changed his world.
“I um…I hope there’s some way you can get your gift before you leave,” he said, snapping out of his trance.
“I can’t exactly buy it on Amazon.” Eve’s face wrinkled with what he initially perceived as intrigue, until it clearly transformed into something else that he couldn’t pinpoint but worried him all the same. “What is it?”