6 A DOOR SLAMMED SHUT
6
A D OOR S LAMMED S HUT
Working from home had its upsides. Barbara didn’t waste time traveling back and forth on a crowded bus, she didn’t have to put on makeup, she could wear comfortable shoes, she could have whatever tea she liked, she saved herself from the biting cold of early March—the worst predictions said it’d only get worse—and she didn’t need to talk about her coworkers’ every ailment, worry, and sickness. There were also drawbacks. Sometimes the doorbell would ring, as it was now. Barbara had quickly learned how much of a pain it was if the doorbell of the Montmartre apartment rang when she wasn’t expecting anyone and suddenly had to go open the door in the middle of a video call. This time, after the third ring, she hesitated. She didn’t know if she should leave her chair in the middle of selling the rights to Anne Delacourt’s work to a relatively interested Swedish publisher; she could say, in her best English, that someone would not stop ringing the doorbell, and that she’d go get it and be back in no time. She wasn’t expecting a package. She wasn’t expecting anyone. But whomever it was would surely get tired of waiting.
Barbara ignored the ringing for the time being. “Anne Delacourt is, day in and day out, Giresse and Trésor’s star writer. Later on, I’ll send you an Excel sheet with data that the Society of Editors collected. Actually, I’ll write down a reminder. Anne is one of the bestselling authors of the century in France. This novel may reach the top ten.”
“We see. But ...” The representative from the Swedish publisher, who was a couple of months away from retirement, stroked her chin, searching for the right words. “The topic worries us a little.”
“What do you mean? Dystopian stories are selling right now. They’re selling, and selling, and will keep selling. They’ll be trendy soon, you’ll see. One day, they’ll make a television series based on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale , a phenomenal book, and then everyone will want dystopian stories. And this is a good one, trust me. Delacourt is ahead of her time with this one; only she could have produced something like this.”
“Yes, yes, we looked at the dossier you sent us, and we’ve read the book. We received a positive report on it. We like how she writes ... short sentences, to the point.” She scrunched her nose. “But the topic ...”
“The topic? That’s the best part. Tomorrow is singular. It’s topical. Right now there are more mothers in the world serving as wombs-for-rent than there are mothers giving birth for themselves. It’s a global shift. Surrogacy. This is a sharp yet elegant critique of consumerism followed to its ultimate ends. Children don’t get kidnapped anymore—anyone can write that story. Children are being bought now. It’s a world of wombs-for-rent. The poor half of the world gives birth to the children the rich half of the world want without having to put in any work. It’s a staggering story.”
The Swedish editor raised a finger so Barbara knew she wanted to interrupt.
“I don’t know if that appeals to our audience.”
“The reviews are unanimous. They’re saying everywhere that Delacourt has done a meticulous job of addressing a subject that ... that is delicate? Yes ... delicate. But between the two of us, it’s something only a woman could have written—a feminist woman with experience and a career like Anne Delacourt. That’s why I find it strange that your Swedish readers haven’t heard of her yet.”
The steaming mug on the Swedish editor’s desk fogged up her screen. She took a sip, buying some time to think.
“If we bought the rights, hypothetically, she ... Do you think she’d come to Stockholm to do promotions and interviews? Two days, some touring—”
“Of course.” She didn’t let her finish. “Look, Anne is very much like that. Very normal. This novel was published in 2006, and the publishing rights have already been sold in thirteen different languages across Europe alone. Five or six of them have already been released, and the rest are being translated as we speak ... even into Portuguese. And now you can have the distinction as the first Nordic country with Tomorrow . The first. Next month, I’ll be meeting with Frode Arnesen, the Norwegian from Cappelen, who’s coming to Paris for the same reasons, to consider purchasing the rights. Maybe it won’t be a bestseller in Sweden right away—though I think it will be—but I guarantee it will be a long-seller, which is what we love most, right?”
“But does she travel or not?”
“So far, she’s gone everywhere she’s been invited. She travels everywhere in Europe. Sometimes I go with her. Her last trip was to Barcelona because she had a simultaneous release in Spanish and Catalan. They do it that way so that no one gets upset.”
“We’ll look at the numbers, Barbara, and think about it.”
“You’re going to sell so many books, we’ll be deforesting the Amazon.”
“Excuse me?” She raised her head as she was searching through the steam for the button to disconnect.
“Nothing. Nothing. It’s just a saying.”
The sound disconnected first, then the video. Once Barbara knew that all communication with Sweden had been cut, she buttoned up her pants and rushed to open the door.
There was no one on the landing. There was no sign of movement in the stairwell. There wasn’t even a package on the mat. She pushed the intercom but gave up after her third hello. Whoever it was would come back.
Later on, she thought to call Jasper, in case it had been him and he needed something.
“All good here, thanks,” he responded, a little bewildered, in his idiosyncratic accent. “I haven’t gone outside today. I’m here with Hulshoff.”
She felt a bit more at ease.
When Mamie Margaux still lived in the apartment, Jasper, who lived on the second floor, would sometimes come up to visit her. He never showed up unannounced. He had a well-mannered habit of calling ahead. Never wanting to bother, he’d visit only when Mamie was in the mood and invited him to join her for five o’clock tea. Jasper was a redheaded man born on the outskirts of Amsterdam. He’d come to Paris in the mid-1950s with his wife, Hilde, to work as a manager for a Dutch cheese business. The company had rented him the two-bedroom apartment for twenty-four months; now all alone, Jasper had spent the next fifty years—more than half his life—between those four walls.
After spending some time in Montmartre supplying red-paraffin-wax-wrapped Edam cheese all over France—and achieving quite the feat of selling foreign cheese to a country with twelve hundred of its own varieties—Jasper changed careers. He was named general director of a French company that exported Camembert all over the world. On an executive’s salary with a twenty-year mortgage, he and Hilde were able to purchase the apartment they’d been renting. Other than Mamie Margaux, Jasper and Hilde were the longest-tenured residents of the building, photographed so often by the tourists who managed to look up from their own feet. The apartment building wasn’t too dissimilar from the others in the area—whitewashed, with chipped walls on the lower levels and slightly irregular windows that had wood pleated shades. Its location at the intersection of three streets caused pedestrians to inevitably notice it. If you looked upward toward the attic’s huge observatory windows, there was an illusion of a massive ship with a figurehead sailing above.
Jasper and Hilde never had children. They had cats, and always two at a time: one dark and one light. One for each of them. When it came time for the sad and inevitable moment of having to put a cat down, they began the search for another just like it. After Hilde died following a bizarre fall between the first floor and the ground floor, Jasper traded in the cats for a dog. He needed companionship and loyalty, and Hulshoff, a Labrador with a kind face who’d grown old with him, satisfied those needs.
On the April day Margaux had left for the retirement home, Jasper and Hulshoff saw her off at the doorway. Standing respectfully at one another’s side, they waited as Barbara helped her grandmother into the car. Once she was inside, Jasper approached to blow her two kisses. Words couldn’t explain the sentiment. The beginning of the last chapter in a person’s life story calls for respect. And that implicit silence encompassed that respect. Everyone understood it wasn’t a morning for words. Anything would sound too final. But even Hulshoff, who sat and watched the whole ceremony on his hind legs, sensed that his fifth-floor neighbor would never again climb those same stairs she once had so effortlessly. He might never see her again. Jasper would. He intended to visit her at the Viviani Retirement Home only from time to time, so as to not be a burden.
Roger returned home in the middle of the afternoon, after the glacial cold had frozen his fingers. He entered the apartment without announcing himself, unzipped his jacket, and messed with his hair with both hands. When he realized he wasn’t alone, he greeted Barbara, who was picking up a catalog she’d left open on her desk.
“Maybe I should wear pants made for winter,” said Roger, who was trying to warm his thighs by rubbing his jeans. “I’ve been freezing my ass off in these all day.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” said Barbara, grabbing Tuesday’s edition of Libération.
“By the way, I’ve been waiting for a package delivery from DHL. It’s already a little late, but I’m expecting them to come today.”
“A what?” Barbara sat on the red sofa and began perusing the newspaper.
“A package. I ordered a lens from a catalog. A German lens. They’re the best.”
“Of course.”
“They promised me it would be here today.”
“I haven’t left the house all day,” she said, looking down at an interview on the inside cover.
“And no one’s come by?”
“No ...” She cleared her throat. “No one’s rang today.”
“That’s strange.”
“What is?”
“You said no one’s come by, and I ... never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“What? Tell me,” she inquired, without looking up from the newspaper.
“I got a call from DHL. I can even look up when they called. They told me they came by but no one answered the door. They asked me if I wanted them to leave it on the landing and I said no, because a lens like that costs a pretty penny. But obviously if you were home ...”
“Well, if they did ring, I didn’t hear it.”
The mood in the house shifted.
“That’s why I’m saying, it’s really strange ...”
“Maybe they did. But look, I’m in my own home. I’m not your maid, and I don’t owe you any explanations.”
“Come on.”
Roger rolled his eyes, which he knew from past experiences annoyed people more than any bad word. When he didn’t like something, when he was disappointed, when he caught someone in a lie, he would lower his eyelids slowly and condescendingly. He had noticed that the spontaneous and unrehearsed look sometimes irritated his opponent more than an insult would. He couldn’t help but do it, even if people didn’t like it, because it happened automatically.
“‘Come on’ what?” Barbara rebuffed. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, I’ve been here for a week now—ten days to be exact—so I know you’re not my maid. Or my mother.” Roger grabbed his coat and headed to his room, grumbling. “Even though at your age, you could be.”
“What’d you say?”
“Nothing.”
“No, tell me. What’d you say to me?”
“That it doesn’t matter. They’ll come back and bring me the stupid package.”
She got furious.
“Hold your horses, honey. You didn’t just say that.”
“And you didn’t feel like opening the door when they brought what I ordered.”
“I was working. I’m sorry.”
“You see! I knew it. They did come.”
“I was in a meeting.”
“Of course.” He rolled his eyes again in disbelief.
Barbara took a deep breath to try to keep her cool.
“How old did you say you were?”
“Thirty-three.” He said it with some force. “And what about you?”
“Forty-one, and at forty-one, I couldn’t be your mother, you got that? And if you’re not comfortable in your brother’s room, you know where the door is, because I’m all good here on my own.”
The fight hardened like a callus.
“Can I say one last thing?”
“No,” she said harshly.
“It doesn’t seem like it to me.”
“Seem like what?”
“Like you’re all good.”
Roger knew it would hurt her, because it was true.
For Barbara, there was no proverb to calm her aggravation. Paris was like a door slammed shut for her, the end of a past life. People came to the best city in the world for the lights, the paintings, the sky, the boulevards, the museums, the nights, the love ... For her, it was the opposite. Paris was just her escape from the nightmare that was Maurice. It was distance from the anger, and it was the opportunity to process the sudden expiration of a marriage that had ended in the worst of ways. Leaving Arles and moving to the capital, to Mamie Margaux’s apartment, was a chance to flee from the humiliation and to break away from her past, of course. She was starting all over again in her forties, when she’d least expected it, in a new place. At least she was lucky when it came to work. She really enjoyed selling the foreign rights for her authors. She liked it, and it kept her distracted. At least for a couple of hours, she didn’t have to think about Maurice. Or about that fucking bitch. Because every single day, something became clearer: the only thing worse than him was her.