PARIS

A broken heart does not Paris mend. She tried to imagine scenarios

to match the uninhabited mansion meant now only for show and focused

on the ungroomed back corner of a small garden, the part of the over all

that was ignored and invisible, much like herself.

Scratching out her pain on an odd-sized tablet with a pen purchased

in the 16th Arrondismeau near her school, she sat on a wooden chair

near the pond in Luxembourg Gardens. It was July and hot and her heart

heavy. The little French boy and girl with their pet duck swimming,

the relaxed couples lounging, enjoying the beauty around them.

She tossed off these images with a shake of her head and noted Central

Castings eagerness to accommodate all but her.

So not like Hemingway she thought and decided Hem only loved Paris in

retrospection, his dislike for the things he professed to later love would

dominate. Was she less than human in her disdain for this city? It was

not in the actual living but the Proustian idea of the remembrance of

things past that scared the hell out of her. What if the real joy of living

was felt only in one's memory? The pain of life certainly was.

With half her money gone and two-thirds of her stay remaining she made

her way to the McDonalds across from the Pantheon and bought a burger

and fries, a sure cure for the broke and broken.

She stuffed her parisian fast food into her purse and waited with the

others for the Pantheon to open. It struck her as odd something that old

would have hours.

And waiting to see dead people. Not a festive thought, but she was

here and so were they.

Inside the cold, dim rooms she wondered how many men it took to

slide the tomb covers off the thick stone slabs encasing the remains.

Sections of the Pantheon were crumbling, large pieces dropping from

the beautifully painted ceiling in areas where visitors were cordoned off.

A narrow casing of steps wound up to an open rooftop patio where

the view on this clear day, spectacular. Above her to the left, the

Pantheon dome. She climbed up the curved smooth surface, above the

ordinary tourists, and ate her burger and fries. Paris spread out below,

a cream colored, two-storied city with flashes of interest populating its

sprawl. The Sacre Coeur church, the ferris wheel at the Tulleries, the Eiffel

Tower and Notre Dam.

Crumbling her wrappers she lay back against the warm surface of the

dome. Arms spread as though on a cross, she lay open to the sun and

imagined, as she had one month ago on a beach in the Hamptons, the

healing properties of light filtering through the universe, that beating

down upon her would some how cleanse her soul and destroy all the

darkness and pain within.

MUSIC

She turned her cream colored Dodge down her north Dallas
suburban street right into a wall of music. Not odd, considering
32 kids lived in this neighborhood block.

Five houses down on the left she pulls into the only red brick
home with a circle drive in the front, the music so loud now even
the voices of her own thoughts beaten silent.

All doors and windows of the surrounding homes were closed to
keep the simmering Texas sun out and the air conditioning in.
But she had convinced herself it was to repeal the assault.

Entering the front door the music grew inconceivably louder.
Not the sound of Bread or Kiss or Boston or the Stones. A rhythmic
marching beat. Cosack-like. Germans, Russians, and the US military
marching. An entire orchestra sending troops to war.

And the marching. Pounding of boots, not on gravel but linoleum.
Now hardwood, now across entryway tiles her father's stern, energized
steps . Left, right, left.

A can of Pearl beer in his left hand, a lit cigarette in his right. Marching.
Marching. Her escape down the hallway coincides with the arrival of
his military might.

"Hi Dad," Over-powering and without as much as a glance or a nod, nay
without acknowledgment of any kind, this army of one stomps past
muttering orders to his troops, not understandable but spoken in that
"I'm talking to myself don't interrupt" ind of way while simultaneously
flattening his daughter against the hall wall in his wake.

He proceeds to the end of the hallway and with a drag from his cigarette
and a gulp of his Pearl beer, he reverses direction though not labeled
retreat in his mind.

Moving Home

"You can always move home," her mother's voice sincere, not angry, even hopeful

"But will we have to speak?"

"What?" her word more spit out than released.

"Will we always have to talk?"

Mom's happy, hopeful smile now screws in a tight twist across her face.

"No, not always, but mute co-existence will be uncomfortable."

"But each time we pass in the hallway I don't want to have to feel like
I always have to say hi."

Her mother's expression that of a woman whose daughter suddenly sprouted
two additional heads. "I don't understand what you mean."

"I mean, if I'm watching TV and go down the hallway during a commercial
and you or dad approach from the opposite direction, we're close enough to touch.
Do we pass by like the other isn't there, or do we smile, nod and say hello
because all this acknowledging could get old."

With a dismissive shake of her head Mom tidies up the kitchen. I" don't see it
being a problem. One hi a day is fine, two max.

She wanted to believe her mom but lingering doubts were bolstered by the
thought that living life as a permanent greeter at some social function was
cause for concern.

That she felt a stranger in her own home escaped them both.