Paris by the Book: One of the most enchanting and uplifting books of 2018

Whom was Daphne addressing? I didn’t know, and so I hovered over her, wondering how to let her know she was loved, she was safe, she must never, ever wish for death—sweet girl!—

And studying her in those brief seconds before I saw she saw it was me, when I was still just some strange dark figure looming, I saw her eyes brighten with fear, and relief, that her prayer was being answered.

I heard a quiet, insistent knock at the front door minutes later.

Though it was almost midnight, I didn’t even bother with the peephole. Was it—?

Eleanor.

I’d made the discovery earlier that evening. The note. But not Robert’s usual kind, and not in the usual place. Before I shared it with the police—much less the girls—I wanted to discuss it with her, especially as it required some of her expertise, very close textual analysis. I’d suggested we meet the next morning, but Eleanor had said this called for a meeting, wine, immediately. Now that she was here, I tried to wave her off; I told her about Ellie, Daphne, the cones, the phone, the street. Now was not the time, I said.

After Eleanor confirmed everyone was physically okay, she said that this was exactly the time. More to the point, past time.

“So again,” Eleanor said. “This was where?”

We were in the kitchen. She’d brought a paper-bagged bottle but ignored it as soon as I gave her the “note.” Not the usual three words, be back soon, but, as I said, just six letters: CWTCCJ.

“In the granola,” I said. I went to get the box, but she flicked an impatient wrist. I returned and continued. “The weird organic shit that he was forever buying but never ate. Certainly no one’s touched it in the four weeks since he’s been gone.”

“Until today,” Eleanor said.

“Until today,” I said.

“Because you were hungry?” Eleanor said.

I nodded, because that was easier than admitting I didn’t have the stomach for almost any food those days, that I’d gone to the granola for the most pathetic of reasons: I’d accidentally washed his clothes. Right after he left, I’d discovered some shirts of his in the laundry pile, and set them aside for the police to inspect. Which they declined to do, because, as they gently asked, what would that tell us? I was too dazed to know how to answer, though in the subsequent weeks I did: it would tell you who he was. I kept the shirts in a pile on the floor, sometimes buried them beneath a pillow as I slept. I smelled them and remembered, until one sleepy morning I forgot what I was doing and dumped them into the washer with everything else. And out they went with the Tide. I panicked, I pretended I wasn’t panicked, I went through his closet, some drawers, but the scents there were too faint, too clean. And in the kitchen, looking for some noninebriant that would make me hungry again, I found his granola. It smelled stale. And then I saw the slip.

“So my idea,” I said. I was still wobbly from Ellie’s close call, but Eleanor was here now. She had her reading glasses on. Time to work. “It’s a rhyme scheme, right?” I said. “He loved puzzles? Words? A poem? I mean, you’re the expert, but . . .”

Eleanor turned it over. Nothing.

“Not a poem,” she said.

“Well, it’s not from the granola people,” I said. “This is a thing of his. You know him. He loves hiding notes for the girls.”

“Do you have a laptop?” Eleanor said.

“Google had nothing,” I said, which wasn’t entirely true. After I’d failed to find anything with those six letters, I’d set Google to another task, which led me to a French firm that offered to make a perfume from a DNA sample, which they could collect from a variety of sources, like, say, an old piece of clothing, the more unwashed the better—

“Maybe you asked Google the wrong thing,” Eleanor said, and found a stool. “Get your computer and let’s visit some airlines, starting with the ones that fly out of Milwaukee. Failing that, O’Hare.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because six dollars says it’s a confirmation code, dearest.”

Which was how Eleanor reminded me that most of Robert’s puzzles were solved easily; recognize the frame or context and then everything flopped into place. CWTCCJ wasn’t an anagram or rhyme scheme but an itinerary. And so we tried one airline, and then another, and then there it was, a three-week trip to Paris. Departing the first of August.

“Surprise,” Eleanor said.

Robert had been due to go to Paris in late summer, as Eleanor knew. Earlier in the year, for the sake of cash flow, he’d written an article about children’s lit and Paris, and a small publisher who’d seen it had asked if Robert thought it could be a book. With maps. And directions and addresses and opening hours and URLs. And there’d be an advance, some money for expenses.

Great, Robert told me, I’ve graduated to writing guidebooks.

Really great! I said. Because I wanted some kind of light on his horizon, someone other than me telling him, you’re good. And I didn’t ask, is there enough money to take me? the girls? because I knew there wasn’t.

But I had wanted Robert to ask, to explain, to renew the promise that someday we’d go to Paris. Honestly, at that point, I would have smiled at an invitation to return to Paris, Wisconsin, either one, so long as doing so would return to me some older, less wise, less weary, less wary Robert, one who said, “sure,” “why not,” and “we’ll figure it out,” and once, when I was in the midst of stealing a book, “I think you forgot something. . . .”

Because I hadn’t. I forget nothing. Not the number of cats in The Red Balloon or the color of the picnic table where he’d proposed, nor that he’d once upon a time promised to take me to France.

Paris in August is terrible, he went on.

Really? I thought. But what I said was see? You do sound like a guidebook author! He turned away, I turned it on: a real artist would say, “a few weeks, on my own, in Paris? I’ll buy the ticket tonight.” After a few hours of furious silence, he said he would. And don’t tell the girls, he said, it would be a surprise.

The next morning, the surprise came when he told me he hadn’t bought the ticket, and wouldn’t.

“You had no idea?” Eleanor asked, peering at the screen. I peered at her, curious how the blame that had pooled just moments ago at Robert’s feet was somehow seeping toward mine.

“Eleanor,” I said.

Not only had he booked himself a ticket—he’d booked tickets for all of us.

Paris. I would finally—

He had finally—

We would all go to—the actual place. The city. Not the one with the cornfield and the water tower, not the wayside with the picnic table and trash barrel, not any Paris on this continent, but the real city, Madeline’s city, Lamorisse’s city, mine.

Paris.

Eleanor watched me, waited, but I couldn’t speak. So she did. “We’ve learned two things, then,” she said. Her seminar voice. She folded away her glasses. “One, he booked flights—including for himself, I see—and two, he had—has?—a credit card you don’t know about.” (Had, it was later determined. The trip was the last thing charged on it; before that, a year or so of little purchases—gas, food—that roughly corresponded with his various prior absences.)

I picked up the little slip of paper. I now almost wished it were a rhyme scheme, an acrostic.

Can’t

Write

Think

Can’t

Crashed

Jumped

I felt the world rushing up at me—and I mean that, not the floor, not the carpet, but the world, all of it, including Paris, where I’d wanted to go for so long, and now here it was, the code, the key, the passageway—

I did not want to go anywhere, except maybe to bed or outside to scream. I wanted a glass of something, something worse than wine. But I couldn’t get any farther than the sink. I watched myself turn on the water. I watched myself bend to the tap. What was I going to do? Drink, apparently, right from the faucet. I drank for a long while and then turned it off and dried my face. Eleanor waited quietly, hands in her lap.