Little Death by the Sea Read online

  “A little something I don’t want anymore. Maybe you will like it now, no? With the compliments of Gerard Dubois!” He slammed the door shut and drove off with a squeal of tires. Maggie watched, shocked and aghast as he drove away, leaving the lumpish bundle of clothes, arms and legs in a heap on the ground. She stared at the body. It twitched slightly and then moaned.

  Quickly, Maggie jumped out of the car and ran to the body of the woman on the ground. For now it was clear that it was not a child at all.

  “Hello, can I help you?” Maggie knelt next to the woman and touched her shoulder gently.

  The woman moaned and struggled to raise up on one elbow. Maggie could see she’d scraped her arm in her forced exit from Gerard’s car, but her hair hung in tangled sheets of brown snarls, obscuring her face.

  “Are you French? Parlez-vous anglais?” Maggie scanned the darkened parking lot for any sign of another person, perhaps a cruiser? Security?

  “I am American.” The woman croaked out the words as if unused to speaking. “Where...where am I?”

  In an instant, Maggie grabbed the woman’s arms and pulled them away from her face, the woman weakly resisted her as she did so. Maggie touched the ravaged face, pulling it towards her, her fingers pressing into the woman’s skin. Their eyes met, one pair hunted and cloudy, the other wide and disbelieving.

  It was Elise.

  PART II

  “Rose-Lipped Maids Are Sleeping...”

  Chapter 6

  1

  Maggie stood quietly in her living room, a bulky cardigan pulled tightly around her. The heat of the Southern night had given way to a chilled moistness—a result more of her spirit (or lack of it) than any actual temperature fluctuation. Twice, she’d nearly picked up the phone to call her parents and twice she’d stopped herself. She rubbed her arms as if to bring a surge of warmth back to them and looked down at her sister sitting on her couch, her feet tucked up under her.

  Elise looked like an older version of herself. Like a police rendition of her sister as a hag or a bag lady. At twenty-nine years old, she looked nearer to fifty. Her hair was dry, probably hadn’t even been combed in months. Her face was lined and haggard as if it had formed every possible exaggerated expression of woe and mirth and had no elasticity left. She was thin and her clothes smelled as if she lived in them. But it was her eyes that were the worst. Protruding in their sockets, they looked at Maggie with hunger and despair.

  Elise clutched a coffee mug upon which was scrawled: Smart Ass White Girl. Maggie tried to remember where she’d gotten the ridiculous thing. Elise’s lips were cracked and sharp like a bird’s beak, she drank as if she’d not quite mastered the skill.

  “I wish you’d sit down.” Elise’s hands clutched the cup as she brought it to her lips. Maggie wouldn’t have been surprised to see the mug shatter between her fingers.

  “Are you in any pain?”

  Elise looked up at Maggie and smiled. Her eyes were filled with such angst that Maggie wanted to weep for her. Oh, Elise, what happened to you?

  She had bundled her sister into her car and home in a fluster of tears and questions and hugs. Elise had been too weak to do much but simply receive Maggie’s barrage of affection and queries. She had dozed on the short ride back to Maggie’s apartment.

  Maggie had prattled and wept and rejoiced as she drove, quickly imagining her parents’ joy, their self-absolution to learn that Elise was back and alive. Even little Nicole would be cured, Maggie felt, when she was reunited with her Maman. And, as she pulled into her apartment driveway, her right hand still holding tightly Elise’s bony, withered one, Maggie knew they would help put her right. Whatever was wrong with her, whatever was hurting her, would be banished and eliminated.

  Now, as she sat watching Elise in her small living room, Maggie felt her whole world move into place with a resounding, satisfying “click.” She thought of her parents’ pain this last year, of how far they had come in saying good-bye to the daughter they believed they had failed.

  “Elise, Mother and Dad have been so...” Maggie screwed up her face to keep the tears from coming.

  “I know, Maggie.” Elise set the mug down on the coffee table as if it were Spode china. She looked up at Maggie, her face an encyclopedia of suffering as if to say: what is the pain of these rich people compared to drug addiction? The loss of one’s baby? Degradation? What do you know about pain?

  Maggie felt her sister’s indicting gaze and turned away from it.

  “I don’t know what all you’ve been through, Elise. But I know what our parents have been through.”

  “And none of it was necessary.”

  Maggie turned to regard Elise and her sister smiled at her. Maggie sat down slowly on the couch next to her.

  “You’re...you’re not in pain right now?” she asked softly.

  “I’m a junkie, Maggie. That’s not clear to you?”

  The words stabbed at Maggie’s heart. Other people, Elise. God, other people.

  Elise laughed and rubbed her hands across her face. She looked around the room, smiling cheerlessly as she did so.

  “You’ve got sort of a knack for color, Maggie. I’m surprised, I guess.”

  “Elise, I need you to tell me what happened to you. What happened to you over there? I don’t know anything. You were out of touch for so long. And Gerard. God, explain to me about Gerard. I guess you know Nicole is with us?”

  Elise stared at the room.

  “Your room at home was always so...orderly and organized. You’d always have everything in its place.” She shrugged sleepily and reached for her empty coffee mug.

  “I’ll get some more.” Maggie got up and walked to the kitchen to pour another cup.

  “But no style. No color or flair or...life.”

  Maggie returned with the steaming mug and handed it to her.

  “And your room was a shambles,” Maggie said.

  “Full of life.”

  “Yeah, teeming with it.” Maggie smiled nervously at her and Elise smiled back. She felt in awe of her sister back from the grave. It occurred to her that so completely had she accepted Elise’s disappearance and probable demise that she had plunged headlong into the process of grieving her, so that she now felt off-balance and inadequate.

  “I loved him,” Elise said. “From the moment I laid eyes on him.” She looked directly into Maggie’s eyes. “I loved him and I needed him.”

  Maggie swallowed painfully.

  “And all you see is this...miscreant that could dump me out of a car or beat me up, oh yeah, he did that a few times. Nicole, too, for that matter.” She shrugged. “Enough times.” Her eyes returned to their casual inventory of the living room. “She was born with a heroin addiction, you know. Such an awful thing to endure...the sound of a helpless baby screaming, not for food or to be changed...” She looked back at Maggie and smiled weakly, sheepishly. “But because she needs a fix.” She drank her coffee in silence.

  Who are you? Suddenly, Maggie wanted to leave, not to have to hear everything she knew Elise was going to tell her. Not to have to keep it all from her mother—through the happy times, warm times, close moments that she was sure were still ahead of them. To listen to Elise—and she had to listen to her—was to help her keep her awful secrets for the rest of their lives. And to continue to love her through it all.

  “She was such a sweet little baby,” Elise said moodily. “I’ll be needing some stuff, soon, Maggie. I’m sorry, darling. You’ll have to help me.”

  Maggie didn’t know what to say. Need her to help kick the addiction or need her to help score some drugs? She decided not to push it until the actual moment was upon them.

  “Gerard was...he became everything to me. I don’t suppose you can understand that. Oh, especially since you probably think he’s this terrible monster, but even if he were the neatest, sexiest guy in the world, you still wouldn’t understand throwing yourself totally into him, would you? Just devoting yourself.” Elise sounded very satisfi
ed with that phrase. “I was devoted to him. And it felt wonderful, Maggie. Better than any accomplishment. Better than painting something wonderful or feeling like I looked beautiful or better, even, than when Nickie was born. I’d never be able to explain it to you.”

  “He was like a drug.”

  Elise looked over at her.

  “Maybe you do understand. Yes, exactly. Like a drug.”

  “And even when the drug turns bad, lets you down, hurts you...”

  “Ahh, well.” Elise shrugged and set her coffee mug down again.

  “How did you get here? To the States? Why did Gerard bring you with him?”

  “I scored the money for the tickets. But you’re right, he didn’t have to bring me. He could’ve taken the money and gone without me. I think he was delivering me back to my family. To your care.”

  “Maybe he thought he could humiliate you this way. Or us.”

  Elise just smiled.

  “How did you score the money?” Visions of Elise wheeling and dealing with nefarious underworld characters for the price of cocaine and smack alongside Mediterranean piers and ports sprang quickly into Maggie’s head.

  “I may not look like much to you now, Maggie, I know. You have a memory of what I used to look like, I suppose.”

  My God, she sold herself. Maggie nodded to indicate she understood.

  “You really don’t want to hear where I’ve been, do you, big sister?”

  The tears formed at the rim of Maggie’s lashes.

  “Yes, I do, Elise,” she said. But her heart whispered, no.

  “When I first met Gerard,” Elise said, burrowing into a little nest of cotton throws and satin pillows that studded Maggie’s plush couch, “I knew he would be my future. I saw him on the Rue de la Paix. Can you believe that? You know, the café where they say if you sit there long enough you’ll see someone you know? Well, I saw him and I knew him. In my heart.”

  Maggie settled back into her own chair.

  2

  Elise smoothed the creases out of her wool skirt and looked again at the young man who stood watching her from across the crowded outdoor café. She sipped her demitasse and wondered, well? Is he going to come over or not? She knew she looked very French yet with a certain piquancy that only an American living-in-Paris-for-the-first-time can possess. After her art classes were over for the afternoon, she’d taken to spending an hour or so at the Café de la Paix with her sketchpad getting ideas for her next canvas or for class assignments. She knew what sort of picture she presented, with her golden blonde hair tucked under a coal black beret, her sketch pad at the ready, and her intense blue eyes (everyone always said so) scanning the crowds for the next worthy subject.

  She’d known from years of drawing that everyone wants to think you will want to draw them. Women pushing baby prams always slowed in front of her as if to say: You want to draw something, Mademoiselle Artiste? Wait till you see me. Or my baby. Elise had loved the thought of selecting and rejecting. It was a game, a transaction of sorts and the whole world was open to playing it with her.

  And he was not the first young man to stand watching her, wanting to be noticed by her, to be with her.

  When he approached her table, gently tossing down his cigarettes and matches as if to claim possession of it and her, she had kept her smile far away from her eyes.

  “You are an artiste, oui?”

  He was narrow, almost delicate, with strong, white teeth. The better to eat you, she had thought excitedly. His clothes were shabby but clean. He was a student, like herself. Young, good-looking and in Paris with no job or responsibility to make him boring. They both had the freedom to flirt and make love and dream unachievable dreams of a life together. A life filled with healthy, cherubic babies and the world wanting to buy her paintings and wanting to read his books. Gerard was going to be a great French novelist.

  Gerard Dubois. From the moment he saw her sitting there at the famous café—and she never went back again—he had captured her.

  “I am a painter, yes,” she had responded carelessly.

  “Americaine?”

  “I live in Paris.” She loved to hear the sound of it. J’habite á Paris.

  “In the dormitory, yes?” His eyes loved her, lapped her up, seemed to glory in her.

  “Mais, non.” She began sketching him, afraid her hands would shake too much to make anything but a mess, but not caring as long as it made her look more the fantasy she believed he had already created of her. “Je vis seul.” She looked up from her sketch to find his eyes. “Alone.”

  “And you are to become a great artiste, non? Paris is the city for the artiste and for lovers, of course. Gerard, he was born in Paris.”

  “How wonderful for you.” And she’d meant it. How extraordinary to claim this city, the City of Light, as the one that gave you life.

  “For an artiste, Paris is the only one, n’est-ce pas?”

  “It’s why I’m here.”

  “And you must not leave. Not ever.”

  She stopped drawing.

  “I never will.”

  “Toujours, petite Americaine. You will always stay in Paris.” You will always stay with Gerard.

  “Toujours.”

  From there they had been swallowed up in a spin of activities belonging strictly to lovers. They visited the flea markets on Saturday mornings, fingers intertwined tightly, huddled into their greatcoats against the drizzle of winter days. They claimed quiet, early-afternoon cafés as their special snuggeries, slept late every morning in Elise’s tiny one-bedroom flat on the Left Bank near Notre-Dame, and before the gold had left the autumn skies to reflect the famous green-gray ceiling of Paris in winter, Elise had stopped attending classes at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts and had stopped writing or answering letters from home.

  She had found a world, finally, that understood her. A world she had defined but never knew existed. She wore black, as she always had growing up, but now her world encouraged the black to be the limp, thread-bare ebony fabrics that draped off one like graceful spills of Spanish moss from a tree branch. Her new world explained that grime and the absence of care gave her wardrobe the desired patina that all her painstaking fashion planning could not. She learned to let go. She had smoked marijuana in high school, but her new world was too sophisticated to be impressed. The people in her new fraternity used needles. Silver-thin, beautiful spines that pierced her unpocked flesh in an experience that made her high school pot-smoking look sophomoric and ridiculous.

  She was an artist and she saw the world differently. Finally, she was living in a world that understood her vision, encouraged and inspired her brilliance. And Gerard applauded louder than anyone. Gerard with the milky-white skin, the doe-brown eyes that spoke love even in the throes of a crack-induced half-coma, even when he was hurting her. Because that was a part of her new society too. To be truly wretched, to be honestly and completely in despair was a feeling of pleasure to Elise that she found nearly unbearable. And she sought this drug, the singular intensity of this high more earnestly than any other. And Gerard, beautiful, sensitive, loving Gerard was the only pusher in town for this particular brand of agony.

  She used to believe, long after she stopped painting and all her brushes and canvasses and oils were gone, that if she had never gone to Paris, never met Gerard, she would simply have walked through her life in America, in Atlanta, like some servomechanism or automaton going through the motions of eating, and painting and loving and dreaming...with some essential core inside her faulty or nonoperable. When she thought of how closely she’d come to living a bored life, a pedestrian life of appointments and movie dates and Sunday dinners, she trembled.

  3

  “I’m sorry about Mom and Dad.” Elise picked at the cheese sandwich Maggie had placed before her on the coffee table. They’d switched from coffee to decaf, although it was pretty clear nobody was going to be sleeping that night. “I think I thought I was doing them a favor by dropping out. I had this idea that no
w they could just mourn me and put me out of their lives.” She made a gesture in the air of wrapping up a box. “All the embarrassing questions and stuff, just tidy it up, cry some, and make it go away. Did they not do that?”

  Maggie looked at her and licked her lips. They fell apart, Elise. Your little experiment in pain-management for other people just about killed Mother.

  “You don’t remember them very well, I guess,” Maggie said.

  “Ahh, that must be it. Very good sandwich, little sister. I don’t usually have much of an appetite. Perhaps you’ll change me all around....”

  Maggie shook her head.

  “I loved you,” she said, letting the tears come. “I was glad you went to Paris but I always thought you’d come back.”

  “I know, darling. But coming back wasn’t good for me.”

  “And this is? What you are now is better?”

  “What am I now? Maggie, it’s not better for you, I know, or Mother...”

  “Or Nicole! Ask her how much better it was for her when she was going through withdrawal and couldn’t even ...or now! Ask her now, Elise. The kid’s a basket case. You know she doesn’t even speak? Won’t even talk?”

  “She doesn’t speak English, I’m afraid, darling.”

  "She doesn’t speak anything, Elise. Not English, not French, not baby-talk.”

  “I don’t believe it. Nicole is a normal child—“

  “Normal? She was born a dope addict!”

  “She’s not addicted now, Maggie. That was years ago. She’s a normal little girl now. She talks as much as—“

  Maggie leaned forward toward her sister. “Elise, I know you love Nicole. But Nicole is not normal. You’ll see for yourself soon. I guess, now that you’re back, things can start to be better for her.”

  Elise didn’t answer, her Mona Lisa smile firmly back in place.

  “Will we ever understand each other, will we, Elise?”

  “I don’t think so, darling. Is it important?”

  Maggie cleared away the sandwich dishes and coffee mugs, and carried them into the kitchen on a tray. She caught a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror as she returned to the living room and was surprised to see how fresh and relaxed she looked. She didn’t feel that way at all.