Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [19]
We made the boarding gate in time. It was an early-morning flight. I listened to music and slept. He worked.
“Can we call Mom?” I ask him now as he finishes his call.
“No. I’m sure you remember what Dr. Becker said.”
I sure do. We were in his office yesterday morning. After we said goodbye to Mom. We left her in her room, sitting on the edge of her bed, sedated. She was wearing a pink hospital-issue sweat suit. She hates pink. Almost as much as she hates sweat suits.
I asked Dr. Becker for the number of her room phone so I could call her from Paris. He said the rooms didn’t have phones.
“So how do I call her?”
He gave me a standard-issue mental-patient smile then said, “Andi, I think it’s unadvisable—”
“Inadvisable.”
The smile slipped. “I think it’s inadvisable for your mother to take calls for a few days. Perhaps in a week, when she’s settled in and has accepted her new surroundings. I think you’ll agree with me that it’s in her best interest.”
But I didn’t agree. With him. With anything. I didn’t agree with the needles and pills. I didn’t agree with the peach walls. The floral curtains. Or the picture on her wall. I especially didn’t agree with the picture.
“You have to take it down,” I said.
“I’m sorry?”
“The picture. The one that’s bolted to the wall of her room. The cottage with the purple sunset. It’s nauseating. It’s a mind-numbing, middlebrow triumph of mediocrity. Where’d you get it? Paramus?”
“Andi!” Dad barked.
“Do you know what she looks at all day? Do you know what’s taped to the wall where she works? Cézanne’s Still Life with Apples, Van Gogh’s Blue Enamel Coffeepot. His Still Life with Mackerels—”
“Stop it right now,” Dad said to me. Then to Dr. Becker, “I’m sorry, Matt, I—”
“Take it down,” I said, my voice cracking.
Dr. Becker held up his hands. “Okay, Andi. If you would like me to take the picture down, I will.”
“Now.”
“Damn it, Andi! Who do you think you’re talking to?” Dad shouted.
“I can’t do it right now,” Dr. Becker said. “I need maintenance to do it. But I give you my word that it will come down, all right?”
I nodded stiffly. It was something. Some small win. I couldn’t protect my mother from Dr. Feelgood but at least I’d saved her from Thomas Kinkade.
The traffic jam gives a bit. We pick up speed and a few minutes later, we’re on the outskirts of Paris. The road to the city is lined with shabby stone houses, used-car lots, falafel dens, and hair salons, their signs all shining garishly in the dark.
“It might do you good, you know,” my father is saying as we hit the Boulevard Périphérique. “It might take your mind off things.”
“What might?”
“A change of scenery. Paris.”
“Yeah. Sure. My brother’s dead. My mother’s insane. Hey, let’s have a crêpe.”
We don’t talk for the rest of the ride.
11
“Lewis! You cantankerous wretch! You dusty old fart! You drysouled, Bunsen-brained, formaldehyde-soaked bastard!”
It’s not me saying that. Though I’ve wanted to. On numerous occasions.
It’s my father’s friend G—a round man in yellow jeans, a red sweater, and black glasses. He’s a rock-star historian. Oxymoronic, but true. He wrote this mega-bestseller on the French Revolution. It scooped up all the major prizes. The BBC made a series out of it. Ang Lee’s doing the movie.
G and my dad met at Stanford when they were grad students. His real name is Guillaume Lenôtre, but Dad calls him G because the first time they met, he called him Gwillomay. Then Geeyoom. And then G limited him to his first initial.
G’s speaking to us in French. My father and I speak it here. I learned it as a child. Dad’s still learning.
“My word! And who is this—” G’s eyes travel over the leather jacket, and the metal, to my hair. His cheery voice falters. “—this stunning Visigoth? My little Andi? All grown up and dressed to fight the Romans.”
“And everyone else,” my father says.
G laughs. “Come in! Come in!” he says. “Lili’s waiting for you!”
He leads us through the door, locks it, then ushers us into