Page 51 of One of Them

Spring finally settled in Paris, and its sparkling blue glory enraged her.

How dare the leaves unfurl with such a tender green color, the flowers bloom with such profusion, the sun shine with such warmth?

But underneath the anger was pain. She should have been sharing these days with Drew; instead she was alone, plagued by a persistent gnawing sensation in her stomach, as if she’d swallowed ground glass.

The feeling dulled her appetite, so she barely ate anything, skipping meals in the dorm’s communal dining room and instead stepping into nearby cafés for coffee that kept her going all day.

At night she allowed herself a single glass of wine.

Remembering how Delia had shocked some of the girls at Vassar by doing the same thing, she felt she’d finally achieved some kind of honorary status as a French girl, if only in her own eyes.

Most of her time was spent either in the library or in her room, studying; no one else had moved in, and so she had no one to talk to, no one to distract her.

She read, she wrote, she memorized; her efforts earned her the highest grades in all her classes, and her professors praised her fine work.

But one of them, Madame Molyneux, added, “Vous devenez très maigre, Mademoiselle Bishop. Tout va bien?” You’ve grown very thin, Miss Bishop.

Is everything all right? Anne assured her that yes, everything was fine, but later, back in her dorm room, she took a good look at herself in the mirror.

She had grown quite thin; her blouse seemed to engulf her, and her skirt hung on her hip bones.

Her face was positively gaunt. She dug through a drawer to find a belt; that seemed to help, and later that day she ordered a crème br?lée along with her coffee, but the thick custard seemed to clot in her throat and she couldn’t bring herself to swallow it.

Making sure she was unobserved, she spat the vile mouthful into her napkin.

But though she couldn’t eat, she discovered she could smoke.

It started when someone left half a pack of Gitanes and a book of matches on a café table where she sat with one of the day’s many cups of coffee.

She’d never considered smoking before, though of course she’d seen other girls take up the habit, and so many of her favorite screen actresses—Bette Davis, Lauren Bacall, Joan Crawford—made smoking seem glamorous and alluring.

She fished out a cigarette, lit it, and tried to inhale.

Immediately she began to cough, but that didn’t stop her.

She waited for the coughing to subside and then tried again; this time, she coughed less.

And she liked the feeling of the burning smoke in her throat and her lungs—the scalding sensation made her feel she was being cleansed.

Purified. Over the next few hours, she finished all the cigarettes in the pack, and in the morning she bought a pack of her own.

She trudged through the next weeks. The semester would be ending soon, and she’d need to think about what, exactly, she planned to do.

She was ready to leave Paris, but there was nowhere else in Europe she wanted to be, so she thought she might as well make the arrangements to sail back to the States.

The upcoming summer loomed long and empty; maybe she would go to and spend time with her aunt in Skaneateles.

Then again, maybe not. Nothing seemed to call to her; everything felt flat and dull.

At least she could throw herself into studying—her final exams were coming up.

She took comfort in the small immediate pleasures of caffeine and tobacco—the first hot rush of smoke in her mouth, the way the bitter, dark brew—she had taken to drinking it black—made her heart bang in her chest and set up a steady, lilting rhythm in her head.

One day Anne saw Nancy in the hallway and tried to duck into her room. Nancy wasn’t having it. “Anne!” she called out, and when Anne didn’t answer, she called out again, even louder. Anne’s door had been locked, and by the time she opened it, Nancy was standing there in front of her.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “I knocked on your door a bunch of times. It was like you’d disappeared.”

“I’ve been here,” said Anne. “I’ve just been studying.”

“You’ve also been avoiding me.”

“I haven’t—” she started, but then thought, why lie about this? “You’re right. I have.”

“Because of Drew.”

“Yes. Because of Drew.”

“He won’t tell me what happened. Or at least he won’t give me the details, and neither will my mother. She says you ‘weren’t compatible.’ But that’s not what I saw—I thought you two were made for each other.”

“Evidently not.”

“Anne, aren’t you going to invite me in? Talk to me? I thought we were friends.”

Telling Nancy would mean telling her about sleeping with Drew, and Anne didn’t feel she could confide in Nancy, not the way she could have confided in Delia.

Delia. Now, why was she thinking of her again?

There had been no contact between them; Delia had not answered her letters.

Yet Delia was the one person she wished she could talk to.

“We were friends,” she finally said. “But things are different now.”

“They don’t have to be. You have a choice, you know.”

“I’m sorry, Nancy, I just can’t—” She was opening the door, stepping inside her room.

“Are you sure you’re all right? You look very thin.”

“I’m fine.” She’d stepped into her room and now wanted to close the door, even if it meant closing it in Nancy’s face.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to talk anymore.

” Anne closed the door while Nancy was still standing there.

She waited for a moment, and when she didn’t hear anything, she went to her desk and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

She’d taken to smoking Sobranies. Imported from London, they had a smoother, richer taste than the Gitanes, and they seemed classy to her.

She really needed one now, right now, so she quickly lit up and inhaled.

There it was, that feeling she craved—something tightened in her chest, but dilated in her mind, as if the bright, glowing tip—so vivid against the black paper—created some vital neural spark.

Not wanting to risk seeing Nancy again, she remained in her room for the rest of the day.

But in the morning she had a class, and so had to venture out again.

She opened the door a crack, just to make sure there was no one in the corridor, and when she saw there wasn’t, she scurried out, down the stairs, and into the street.

It was a perfectly glorious day, the kind of day that every dream or story about Paris conjured—azure sky, fat, fleecy clouds, a light breeze that set the new green leaves quivering.

And for what seemed like the first time in weeks, she was hungry.

Ravenous. She looked at her watch—8:30 a.m. Breakfast was still being served in the dining room: bread, jam, butter, slices of cheese and ham.

The thought was intoxicating. She could go back right now, go back and pile her plate with food.

But in the dining room, she might run into Nancy.

So she continued on her way and instead stopped at a bakery where she bought two croissants and two pains aux raisins .

She ate both of the croissants before she even got to class, shards of golden-brown pastry showering her jacket.

She brushed them away before she slipped into her seat, pulling out and uncapping her pen.

She could barely concentrate on the lecture, though—it was about the sixteenth-century poet Pierre de Ronsard—and she took no notes.

Instead, she kept the bag with the pains aux raisins under her desk, breaking off small pieces that she surreptitiously slipped into her mouth.

Finally, the class was over. To her amazement, she was hungry again—it was as if she hadn’t eaten anything at all an hour ago.

She had another class in fifteen minutes, but she had to eat, immediately, and so she left the building and headed straight into the first brasserie she came to, where she ordered onion soup with a layer of molten cheese coating its bubbling surface, a croque madame, with its golden moon of an egg quivering on top, and, as if that weren’t enough, pommes frites that came hot, crisp, and dotted with salt, overflowing the wire basket in which they were served.

“Vous avez grand faim, mademoiselle.” The waiter smiled as he placed the food in front of her.

You’re very hungry. Anne knew he was teasing, but she felt found out in some way, and she wouldn’t look at him.

She devoured the soup, the bread, the egg, the pommes frites .

Had she ever eaten anything so delicious in her entire life?

Her fingers were coated with oil, and though she knew it was rude, she couldn’t help putting them in her mouth to get every last bit.

All of a sudden, her stomach lurched. The rumbling in her stomach grew more intense, and she got up from the table.

Stumbling a bit, she hurried to the WC, which was not very clean, but at least it was empty.

Once she’d latched the door behind her, she threw up in great, extravagant bursts.

As she heaved, someone started knocking and then banging on the door.

She ignored it and, when the heaving was at last over, washed her face and rinsed her mouth with handfuls of water guzzled right from the faucet.

She looked at herself in the small mirror above the sink.

She was pale except for a blotchy patch of pink on either cheek.

Beads of sweat dotted her hairline. What was wrong with her?

Food poisoning? The flu? It was only then that she remembered it had been quite a while since her last period.

One month, or maybe two? Or even longer than that?

Her periods had always been irregular; she didn’t even worry about it anymore.

But maybe, just maybe , there was a connection between the missed periods and what had been happening to her these last days: first her lack of appetite, then her voracious appetite, and finally her body’s sudden and violent need to purge itself.

She unlocked the door of the WC and walked past the irate man who had been waiting.

Could she be pregnant? With Drew’s child?

Yes, they had used rubbers, but she knew rubbers weren’t foolproof.

Back out in the street, the day was even more beautiful than before, almost gaudy in its splendor.

If it was true that she was pregnant, what would she do ?

She looked up at the celestial blue dome of the sky and realized she hadn’t a clue.