The Rain Watcher Page 6

  The meal is a success. The conversation is not strained, does not meander into hazardous zones, such as Colin’s drinking problem. The four of them talk, easily, lightly, laughing from time to time. The dishes are succulent, the wine excellent. After the candles on the cake have been blown out, with neighboring tables cheering, and the presents opened, Paul gives a short speech. He wants to thank them all for being here to celebrate his birthday and their wedding anniversary. He hasn’t been back to Paris for a long time and he’s very happy to be here, and just wishes the rain would stop so they could get a bit of sun for the rest of their stay. Again, his voice seems queer, breathless and high-pitched. He has to pause from time to time, picking up his glass of water with an unsteady hand. His words are slurred. They can’t make out what he is trying to say. Linden and Tilia exchange uneasy glances. Paul’s face seems farcically lopsided all of a sudden, like a disconcerting mask. It’s him, but it no longer looks like him, as if someone is jerking one side of his face up. He falls silent, and when Tilia asks him if he is all right, he sighs deeply.

  It happens in the following minute, when they are not looking directly at him, signaling to the waitress for more water. There is a gasp, almost inaudible, and Paul slides brusquely forward into his chair, head hanging down, his chin on his chest. Lauren, alarmed, shouts his name, but Paul slumps farther down, his forehead crashing onto his plate, upsetting the bottle of wine. Then his body rolls over and falls to the floor with a thud. There is a moment of screaming and confusion. A sea of faces looms toward them. Linden is down on his knees, his hands cradling his father’s bald skull. Paul’s eyes are half-shut; only the whites are showing. His skin is gray. Tilia and Lauren seem horror-struck, incapable of moving. Linden struggles to open his father’s collar, places shaky fingers on his jugular. He thinks he feels a beat, but he’s not sure. He leans closer, asks Paul if he can hear his voice. Paul mustn’t worry. They are going to look after him; he’s going to be all right. Linden has no idea if this is true, but in this moment of dreadful panic, he cannot think of anything else to say. He doesn’t even know if Paul can hear him, if Paul is still alive. He looks around him, powerless, sees all these unknown people staring. Then Tilia’s voice booms out with its unmistakable vigor, and he wants to kiss her for it. “Will someone call a fucking ambulance?”

  Her words shock people into action. The owner of the restaurant scurries off, says she will call one straight away, and a short man, napkin still in hand, presents himself to the stricken Malegarde family; he is a doctor. May he assess the situation? He squats down next to Linden and takes Paul’s wrist while peering into his eyes. Lauren asks tearfully if her husband is dying. After a few minutes, the doctor says that no, he is not dying, but he must go to the hospital right away. There is not one minute to lose.

  The ambulance seems to take forever. Tilia and Lauren sit together, weeping silently. Linden stays down on the floor with Paul. He waits, gritting his teeth. From close-up, his father looks dead. He cannot, will not believe it. His father cannot be dead. This cannot be happening. Yet the stark reality of the moment grips him. He can smell the synthetic odor of the carpet drifting up to him, feel its bristly texture under his knees. He can hear his mother blowing her nose. He can hear the low murmur of voices, the click of cutlery as people get on with their meals. When the medical team at last enters the hushed restaurant, things happen swiftly. He is the one to answer the questions, as his sister and mother appear unable to do so. Paul Malegarde, seventy years old. No medical treatment. Yes, he seemed tired for the past few days. Yes, his speech sounded suddenly slurred. Yes, one side of his face seemed to collapse. No, this has never happened before. No, he has had no major health problems.

  There is room for only one next of kin in the ambulance. Linden tells his mother and sister to go back to the hotel. He will call or text them as soon as he has news. He will handle this. They must trust him. Lauren nods, Kleenex held to her runny nose and tearful eyes. She then motions to her son, indicating the pocket of Paul’s jacket. He fumbles around, slides out his father’s wallet, and takes his identity card, his social security card.

  “Wait!” Lauren cries out. She rummages into her own bag, hands him a certificate, and he understands it’s their health-insurance policy. As unconscious Paul is strapped to a stretcher, oxygen mask clamped to his nose and mouth, intravenous drip inserted into one arm, Linden wonders how it is that he is not panicking; how it is that he can remain so calm, so in control, nodding to the medical team, deftly stepping into the ambulance. The white van, siren howling, hurries down wet streets while two doctors are still tending to his father. Linden realizes how fast and hard his heart is pumping, the only sign of his distress. He wants to ask the men if his father is going to make it, but they seem so busy, he doesn’t dare. He wants to know where they are taking them, and manages to question one of the doctors.

  “Georges Pompidou hospital” is the reply.

  Linden knows it is a recent medical complex situated in the fifteenth arrondissement and has a good reputation. Vehicles ahead of them glide to the side to let the ambulance pass. Paul is being taken into intensive care; Linden is not allowed to follow. Instead, he must go to the registry on the ground floor and deal with his father’s admittance. He watches his father being wheeled away, and two other doctors greet the ambulance team, peering down at the stretcher. Then doors close and he is left alone. He makes his way to the admissions desk. The hospital is vast and modern, startlingly white, filled with plastic green plants. A smell lingers, that particular odor of stale air, overcooked food, and disinfectant. There is a line of people queuing up. He takes his place. He sends a text message to his mother and sister to tell them what’s going on. It’s a long wait. He feels tired all of a sudden. He glances at his phone, sees the time is nearly midnight. He wishes Sacha could be here. What if he called him now? No, he has to wait until he knows what’s in store for Paul. He looks at the people around him. They all have the same weary, stupefied expression. He wonders what their stories are, why they are here.

  It is at last his turn. He sits on a chair in front of the counter. A jaded woman on the other side barely looks at him. He hands over his father’s identity, social security, and health-insurance cards. Her long pink nails click on the computer. Finally she lays her eyes on him. She is in her mid-forties, from North Africa. She is wearing a faded yellow blouse. Her frizzy black hair is tied back. She looks at him, and to his surprise, she smiles, and her smile is a kind one, lighting up her face.

  “Is he your dad?” she asks, handing him the cards back. He nods, his throat tightening. She asks him for his details, entering his name and number into the file. Then she tells him to wait on the third floor, in intensive care. As he gets up to leave, she says gently, “Good luck, monsieur.”

  * * *

  While he sits in the impersonal waiting area in intensive care, Linden reads the emails that have been piling up. His agent, Rachel, has asked him to call, which he hasn’t. At one point, he’ll have to let her know what is going on. There are a couple of important engagements coming up and she needs to go over certain aspects with him. Flying Linden from city to city is never an easy endeavor. He needs his team with him, his two assistants, Marlowe and Deb, and his indispensable digital technician, Stéphane. Not to mention his equipment, which seems to get bulkier by the year, his three Canons and his Hasselblad, lenses, tripod, laptop, necessary cables for cameras, backup material, flash units and lighting, light stands, umbrella heads, reflectors, extension cords, plug adapters, clamps of various sizes, Velcro straps, background stand, collapsible backdrop, memory cards, extra batteries for camera and flash, and battery charger. Gone were the days where he could travel lightly and fly with a single camera and argentic rolls of film. Rachel Yellan was not his first agent; there had been Béatrice Mazet before her, the first one to pick out Linden’s work in 2005, two years after he graduated from Gobelins and was working as an assistant for a French photographer, Marc Clerget.
Béatrice got him straightforward, uncomplicated jobs that he enjoyed but that did not thrill him. He disliked studio work, standard advertising shoots, and accepted them only because he had to earn a living. His first recognition came two years later, in 2007, when his latest photographs had been shown at a gallery in Saint Germain-des-Près. As usual, he had not gone for artificial lighting, which he disliked, but concentrated on reflections, superimposing faces and silhouettes using texture and natural light. The result was arresting, distinctive, and sensitive, a far cry from the Photoshopped, artificial images so often projected in the media. Rachel Yellan, a famous American agent, happened to see the portraits on the gallery’s website. She checked out his work online, as well as the famous Treeman Crying in Versailles, the photograph he took in 1999, contacted Linden, and when she was next in Paris, they met. He had at first been intimidated by her drive, but then decided to trust her. When the jobs started to come in, they were mostly based in America. It became evident to Linden that he should move to New York, which he did in 2009, at twenty-eight. The fact that he had an American passport made it less difficult for him, as well. It was almost like coming home, except that he wasn’t that familiar with the USA. Rachel found him a temporary place to live in SoHo, on Spring Street, in a renovated building above a grocery store, where he was to share an apartment with a painter and another photographer. He had been to Boston many times to visit his maternal grandparents, and to New York occasionally, with his mother, but it took him a while to settle down, to feel at ease in Manhattan. How unforeseen, that he should have felt so French upon arrival; he was even convinced an accent could be detected when he spoke English. Living in New York was another matter. Never in his life had he faced such noise. He found it deafening: the constant rumble of traffic, the thunder of construction work, the howling of sirens, the endless honking, and the loud parties. The store was open all night, and his room was situated just above it. Clients chatted on the sidewalk at three in the morning, as if it were broad daylight. His cotenants weren’t bothered: They were born and bred New Yorkers. He became accustomed to it after a while, just as he became used to the loquaciousness of his neighbors, unlike his Parisian ones, whom he had barely exchanged three words with, and he marveled at how perfect strangers were sociable in the street or in shops, sparking up conversations, interested and curious in the fact that he was from Paris. Six months later, he moved to the Upper West Side, on Eightieth Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus, to a small town house with a very steep staircase of four flights, which did not put him off. Eightieth Street was quieter than others, because it ended at the pretty park just behind the Museum of Natural History. He loved sitting on his roof terrace, where he could see the sun rise over Central Park and set over the Hudson and New Jersey. His downstairs neighbor, Emilie, was a Parisian. She was a gourmet chef and an Edward Hopper fan. He enjoyed speaking French with her, which he wasn’t doing much of these days. She took him shopping at Zabar’s, where he followed her, entranced by the dizzying display of food, and introduced him to the famous Cafe Lalo, between Broadway and Amsterdam, where he liked watching New Yorkers and tourists mingle. Little by little, Linden found himself fitting in, but never entirely. He had boyfriends, discovered new groups of people, and enjoyed himself. It seemed to him that even if restaurants were jam-packed, there was always another new, exciting place to explore. New York was friendly, welcoming, but he began to understand that to appreciate the city completely meant having been born here. His new neighborhood reminded him of the Paris he’d grown up in, the fifteenth arrondissement and its particular combination of ugly constructions and attractive ones, its mixed population, its families, its simplicity. Rachel kept him so busy, he hardly had time to feel homesick. In the beginning, the jobs weren’t thrilling: a load of portfolios for models, a steady flow of advertising work, which was well remunerated. He accepted each assignment with his usual enthusiasm. It paid off, to Rachel’s satisfaction. In a couple of years, Linden Malegarde became the young Franco-American photographer that every magazine or brand wanted to hire. His portraits were different, fresh, immediately identifiable. It was a question of shadow and light, grain and chromatology, what he brought out of his subjects, how he made them pose. He didn’t always go for a smile, which he found contrived or bland, preferring to seek out emotions, those that were hidden away. To him, taking a picture of a person, or a place, was like sketching unseen outlines, bringing forth imperceptible areas from the darkness, giving them another dimension, breathing new air into them. He wasn’t a talkative photographer, but he had learned how to put his subjects at ease. He was aware that most of them needed some kind of guidance. What he liked best was shooting a famous person who felt comfortable with the camera, who knew how to pose, how to catch the light. He slowly got such people to put their guard down, to give him something personal, an aspect of themselves they had never revealed, a clandestine vulnerability, a sense of humor, a dash of originality.

  Tonight, at the Pompidou hospital, Linden feels a peculiar and novel withdrawal from his job. He’s never experienced this before. Yet he takes his career to heart; he is enthusiastic, punctual, and polite, even with temperamental movie stars and divas, even with media tycoons who try to manipulate him, seduce him, or con him. Nothing else matters at the moment, nothing except the thought of his father. He is alone in the long waiting room, his eyes fixed on the double doors ahead. He’s given up answering his sister’s incessant messages. He made it clear to her he’ll call as soon as he knows anything. An additional worry is Lauren, who is running a high fever and has a headache. Her cold seems to have worsened. Tilia put their mother to bed; she is at last asleep, but it took a long time to soothe her, as they are both so worried about Paul. From time to time, Linden rises, strides up and down the cheerless corridor. Finally, he sits, dread gnawing at him. Why are they taking so long? What is wrong with his father? Why can’t they come and tell him? He’s going to go mad if this goes on. A silent TV flickers in the corner, showing the same images of the Seine flooding. He ignores the screen, wondering if he should go and find someone, just to obtain information.

  At two o’clock in the morning, as Linden is half-dozing on an uncomfortable chair, a doctor in a white blouse enters and asks if he is here for Paul Malegarde. He gets to his feet, his head spinning. The woman is small, blond, his age. She looks uncannily like Jodie Foster. Her name badge reads DOCTEUR HÉLÈNE YVON. She takes him into a small office beyond, asks him to sit down. He is so tense, he cannot speak. He can only stare at her, bracing himself for what she is about to say. She must have sensed his tautness, because she reaches out with a small, slender hand and touches his wrist.

  “Your father is still with us.”

  Even the shape of her mouth is exactly the shape of Jodie Foster’s, down to the implantation of her teeth. Linden is annoyed with himself for noticing this while she is giving him such important and positive news. She goes on, explaining that Paul had a stroke, a severe one. The result is an injury to the brain, she explains, and this can cause communication problems if there is damage to areas that control language. Some stroke survivors find they can no longer speak because the muscles of their lips, tongue, or mouth have been affected. But they don’t know that yet about Paul; it’s too early. They will have to undertake several exams and scans to assess that. That will take a while. He might have to be operated on, so they can remove a blood clot. The thing Linden needs to know is this: Paul will be here for a while. They don’t know how long. Linden listens, nodding. He wishes Tilia were with him; she would know exactly what to ask, what to say. He feels incapable. Words are stuck in his mouth.

  Dr. Yvon’s shrewd eyes take all this in. She gets up, pours out bottled water into a paper cup, hands it to him. He drinks thirstily. He then asks if he can see his father. She replies that he will be able to do so later on, during the day. He can come back to the hospital in the early afternoon. For the moment, the best thing he can do is go get some sleep. She’ll see h
im when he returns. Is he okay with this? Linden nods. They shake hands and he leaves. It’s too late to SMS his sister. He’ll see her back at the hotel, if she is waiting up for him. When he gets outside, the stark, freezing air is a welcome one from that of the stuffy hospital. The rain falls lightly, noiselessly, but he can feel it dampening the back of his neck. The streets are empty. It’s a residential area; many Parisians live here, but they don’t party here. No one comes here for nightlife. Linden walks past place Balard, up to rue Lecourbe, just as deserted, and cuts across to busier rue de Vaugirard using broad rue de la Convention. He hasn’t been back to this part of Paris for a while. He can’t help being fond of it. This was the Paris of his adolescence, the unpretentious fifteenth arrondissement, a district that could never be considered appealing, because of the disfiguring upsurge of the Front de Seine, an urban planning project of the seventies, twenty skyscrapers marring the city’s classical beauty. He used to say he lived in “Moche Grenelle,” ugly Grenelle, laughingly, although he now knows Beaugrenelle recently underwent a massive refurbishment and metamorphosed into a successful shopping mall. Linden knows this area by heart: the quiet domestic streets, and the modern buildings sitting cheek by jowl with older Haussmannian ones. In 1997, when he first arrived in Paris, he knew little about the subtleties of neighborhoods. He soon realized nocturnal entertainment took place in Montparnasse, the Latin Quarter, the Bastille, the Marais. But he didn’t mind heading back to the sleepy streets where Candice lived, leaving noisy nightlife behind. He always walked home in the small hours, enjoying a peaceful communion with the city. Tonight, as he heads toward rue Delambre, Linden sees himself at seventeen, coming back late from a party. His tall stature and broad shoulders deterred any assailants. Sometimes a tanked-up passerby would ask him for a cigarette. He never had any trouble. Candice did not demand he should be back at a given hour. She trusted him. His grades remained fair, not excellent, but above average.