Page 34 of Across Time

Marie raises an eyebrow. “What about heaven?” she counters. “Do you desire to go there, or would you prefer somewhere a little warmer?”

I ignore her. “Can’t you just tell everyone I went to Paris for the day? Surely when people visit here, they sometimes go elsewhere?” God knows I’d be on the first train to Paris right now myself, if it were a possibility.

“I will very reluctantly stay home with her,” Henri says with a gallant bow. “Otherwise they’ll wonder how she got there.”

Marie shakes her head vehemently. “And how do we explain it if someone stops by, or sees the car here?”

“We could actually go?” I venture. "To Paris, I mean. I'm dying to see it before the war.”

Henri shakes his head. "You’re on crutches and I can’t be responsible for two of you in Paris. You'll attract too much attention."

"I can’t go anyway,” says Marie. “I'm helping Father Edouard set up the small social after mass. But the two of you feel free, since you’re so ambivalent about where you’ll spend the afterlife."

Ignoring this, I turn to Henri. “I’ve gotten so much better on the crutches,” I say eagerly. “I think I’ll be fine.”

I fully expected him to object and am delighted when he shrugs in agreement instead. "A day in Paris always beats a morning at church. Yes, little thief. Even one spent with you."

* * *

The next morning Marie wakes me early, giddy with excitement on my behalf. She makes me wear a different dress – baby blue serge, with a v-neck and collar. “I took up the hem a bit last night after you went to sleep,” she says. She forces me to wear hose and garters with it, acting like going into Paris without hose would be the equivalent of going there nude, and also insists I put my hair up.

Because I refuse to cut it, which is the style here, she uses curling tongs to roll it under at the nape of my neck so it looks as if I have shoulder length hair, along with a few waves on top. When she's done and she’s got me in the dress, she claps her hands together. "You look like a movie star," she says with a dreamy sigh. "Henri, look at our Amelie," she says, turning me to face him. "Does she not look like Carole Lombard?"

I find I am waiting for his response more anxiously than I should. How could his opinion possibly matter, especially when it's bound to be negative? He reluctantly glances up from his newspaper, and I see something on his face I can’t quite read—as if he’s looking at me and thinking hard at the same time—before he looks down again. "Yes," he says. "Perhaps a little."

Marie grins, turning me back toward her as Henri walks out to start the car. She fixes a bobby pin in my hair and beams at me. "Did you hear that? He said you looked a little like Carole Lombard! He thinks she’s the most beautiful woman alive.”

I laugh. “Yes, because you specifically asked him if I did. What else was he supposed to say?”

She gives me a look. “Are you seriously under the impression that Henri wouldn’t have said no to that question if he could have? Have you found him to be a man who minces words?”

Hmmm. I suppose she has a point.

* * *

We leave for Paris down an unpaved road which, I realize with a sudden start, is the same highway that ran alongside the train tracks for much of my trip to Saint Antoine. I struggle not to bounce in my seat, like a child headed to the circus. Here I was, merely hoping to see pre-war Saint Antoine and now I’m getting Paris in its place, with almost no begging or wheedling. I’m still a little shocked by the ease with which it’s all happened.

"What would you like to see today?" he asks.

"Everything. I came straight to Saint Antoine from the airport so I still haven’t set foot in Paris. And I do need to get a few things."

He snorts. "You get the chance to see the most beautiful city in the world and you want to shop while you're there."

"If you had to wear a bra that’s several sizes too small, you would too," I reply. The tiniest hint of color grazes the top of his cheekbones. "Oh my God. Have I made the impenetrable Henri Durand blush?"

"In my time, a lady does not discuss her undergarments in mixed company."

I roll my eyes. "You're very hung up on this whole being a lady business."

He gives me one of those smirks that makes me want to laugh and punch him at the same time. "You might benefit by becoming acquainted with it."

"Being a lady is just one of many ways you subjugate women,” I reply. “It's an unequal paradigm for behavior.”

"Unequal paradigm for behavior?" he repeats with a small laugh. "Where did you come up with this theory?"

"I learned it in a women's studies class last semester," I admit.

"Women's studies?" he asks incredulously. "It must have been a very short class. Marie Curie, Mary Cassatt, Mary Shelley. There, I've provided you a nearly comprehensive list of women who've made any kind of contribution to the world, if you really want to consider Frankenstein a contribution."