Read Online It's Not Love, It's Just Paris by Patricia Engel - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Patricia Engel
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him, because he was still refusing to speak to me whenever I called home.
When he was born, I decided Beto was my baby. I watched him in his crib, poked his fat cheeks, tickled his toes, and picked his outfits. My mother wore him around her chest like a scarf, and I envied her motherhood, the intuitive way she tended to his hunger, his burping, his changing. I pushed him in his stroller, held his hand as he learned to walk around the house. During his years of resisting solid food, sometimes he would only accept my spoon, and when he started climbing out of his toddler bed at night he’d come to me, not my parents, and curl into my side until morning,sleeping with a scowl, his fists clenched against his tiny chest. When his darkness overtook him, I was the only one who could get near him, and he’d tremble in my arms with the fear he was born with and stare back at me with the eyes of a beaten animal.
Beto didn’t want me to come to Paris or to ever leave him. He was the reason I didn’t live in a dorm when I went to college and why I chose a school nearby. The doctors said we shouldn’t be manipulated by his threats, but I was a pushover. I spent years gathering the nerve to leave for Paris. Beto came to my room while I packed, moaning that I was the only one who understood him, the only one who looked at him without pity, who didn’t judge him and think his life a waste just because he didn’t know how to turn off the pain of living.
“If you really love me, you won’t leave me.”
I took him into my arms. I was the only one he let embrace him that way.
“You have to learn to live without me watching over you.”
“You say that like you’re not coming back.”
“I’ll always come back.”
But it wasn’t enough. I left him crying, and to punish me, he didn’t come with the rest of our family to see me off at the airport.
There was a stone bust of a man on a pedestal a few feet away. I went to take a closer look and the plaque below indicated it was Chateaubriand—a helpful coincidence because one of Beto’s rabbits was named Chateaubriand, and I decided it would be the subject of my postcard. Beto always gave his rabbits historical names. He was failing most of his classes but he was quite a reader, always stealing my books and scribbling
Beto Was Here
on the cover page when he was through. I wrote that Chateaubriand the bunny had a park in Paris named in his honor, described the iron fence, themanicured shrubs, the soft chatter of local children playing on the swings that sounded like the
Chapi Chapo
twins. I wrote that I missed him. I loved him. I promised I’d bring him presents when I came home for Christmas. Baby brother, cuídate.
And then I heard my name.
Cato’s face came into focus across the gravel path. Somehow I’d walked through the iron gate without noticing him sitting on the bench opposite me.
How funny
, I thought, and then remembered to speak outside my own mind.
“How funny. I saw you just yesterday.”
“No, the day before.” He stood up and walked toward me.
“No, yesterday. At Gare Saint-Lazare. On the platform.”
He looked confused.
“I saw you,” I repeated. “You waved at me.”
“I didn’t leave the Seventh yesterday.”
“Then it was somebody who looked a lot like you.”
“Maybe you dreamed it,” he smiled.
“No, it just means you’re common-looking.”
He walked closer. His shadow fell over me.
“What are you writing?”
“A postcard to my brother.” I held up the image side of a Notre Dame gargoyle.
“Can I sit by you?”
I nodded and he sat beside me, only my handbag between us. I was never any good at chitchat, a hindrance to my purported goal of being a diplomat; stranger conversation was torture, even with a half stranger like Cato. I tried to think of something to say. Something intelligent and amiable to fill the air now that he’d made an effort to be near me.
“You don’t say much, Lita. Are you shy?”
“Yes.” No
When he was born, I decided Beto was my baby. I watched him in his crib, poked his fat cheeks, tickled his toes, and picked his outfits. My mother wore him around her chest like a scarf, and I envied her motherhood, the intuitive way she tended to his hunger, his burping, his changing. I pushed him in his stroller, held his hand as he learned to walk around the house. During his years of resisting solid food, sometimes he would only accept my spoon, and when he started climbing out of his toddler bed at night he’d come to me, not my parents, and curl into my side until morning,sleeping with a scowl, his fists clenched against his tiny chest. When his darkness overtook him, I was the only one who could get near him, and he’d tremble in my arms with the fear he was born with and stare back at me with the eyes of a beaten animal.
Beto didn’t want me to come to Paris or to ever leave him. He was the reason I didn’t live in a dorm when I went to college and why I chose a school nearby. The doctors said we shouldn’t be manipulated by his threats, but I was a pushover. I spent years gathering the nerve to leave for Paris. Beto came to my room while I packed, moaning that I was the only one who understood him, the only one who looked at him without pity, who didn’t judge him and think his life a waste just because he didn’t know how to turn off the pain of living.
“If you really love me, you won’t leave me.”
I took him into my arms. I was the only one he let embrace him that way.
“You have to learn to live without me watching over you.”
“You say that like you’re not coming back.”
“I’ll always come back.”
But it wasn’t enough. I left him crying, and to punish me, he didn’t come with the rest of our family to see me off at the airport.
There was a stone bust of a man on a pedestal a few feet away. I went to take a closer look and the plaque below indicated it was Chateaubriand—a helpful coincidence because one of Beto’s rabbits was named Chateaubriand, and I decided it would be the subject of my postcard. Beto always gave his rabbits historical names. He was failing most of his classes but he was quite a reader, always stealing my books and scribbling
Beto Was Here
on the cover page when he was through. I wrote that Chateaubriand the bunny had a park in Paris named in his honor, described the iron fence, themanicured shrubs, the soft chatter of local children playing on the swings that sounded like the
Chapi Chapo
twins. I wrote that I missed him. I loved him. I promised I’d bring him presents when I came home for Christmas. Baby brother, cuídate.
And then I heard my name.
Cato’s face came into focus across the gravel path. Somehow I’d walked through the iron gate without noticing him sitting on the bench opposite me.
How funny
, I thought, and then remembered to speak outside my own mind.
“How funny. I saw you just yesterday.”
“No, the day before.” He stood up and walked toward me.
“No, yesterday. At Gare Saint-Lazare. On the platform.”
He looked confused.
“I saw you,” I repeated. “You waved at me.”
“I didn’t leave the Seventh yesterday.”
“Then it was somebody who looked a lot like you.”
“Maybe you dreamed it,” he smiled.
“No, it just means you’re common-looking.”
He walked closer. His shadow fell over me.
“What are you writing?”
“A postcard to my brother.” I held up the image side of a Notre Dame gargoyle.
“Can I sit by you?”
I nodded and he sat beside me, only my handbag between us. I was never any good at chitchat, a hindrance to my purported goal of being a diplomat; stranger conversation was torture, even with a half stranger like Cato. I tried to think of something to say. Something intelligent and amiable to fill the air now that he’d made an effort to be near me.
“You don’t say much, Lita. Are you shy?”
“Yes.” No
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