Ульяна Солнечная – Its Never Too Late - As Long As Youre Alive (страница 18)

George put an arm around his wife’s shoulders.

They stood there and stared.

Kate stood beside them and stared too.

Inside her, something large and warm and almost unbearable began to rise.

She suddenly remembered that postcard, yellowed and faded:

Someday we’ll go.

We never went.

But I came.

“Kate,” Ellen called gently. “Let me take your picture.”

Kate nodded, handed over her phone, and stood with the tower behind her.

She smiled.

Click.

“One more,” Ellen said. “You look so happy.”

Kate looked at herself on the screen.

And it was true.

Her eyes were shining. Her smile was enormous. The wrinkles in her face seemed softer.

Happy.

At sixty-seven.

In Paris.

With new acquaintances.

Happy.

They went up the tower.

The line was long, but Kate hardly noticed the wait. She watched the people around her — Japanese tourists with cameras, a French family with small children, a young couple kissing as if no one else existed.

When the elevator began to rise, Kate’s ears popped. She opened her mouth to ease the pressure, and just then the elevator emerged from the structure, and the city opened before her.

Paris lay below — toy-like, colorful, alive.

The golden dome of Les Invalides, the green gardens, the curve of the Seine, the white rooftops, the brown geometry of squares and boulevards.

Kate pressed herself to the glass and could not look away.

“Well?” George asked.

Kate turned to him. Her eyes were wet.

“I didn’t know it could feel like this,” she said simply. “That you could look at something and feel it with your whole body. With your whole skin.”

Ellen nodded.

She understood without words.

They stood there at the top, the wind tugging at their hair, the sun warming their faces, and Kate thought:

This is it.

This is what made the whole life worth living.

For this moment alone.

She took out her phone and texted Barbara:

I’m on the Eiffel Tower. You can see all of Paris from up here. I’m crying. Everything is good. You were right.

A minute later Barbara replied:

I’m always right. Now go find a café and eat another croissant. For me.

After the tower, they parted ways.

Ellen and George went to the Musée d’Orsay, while Kate decided simply to wander.

She walked along the Seine, looking at the booksellers with their green boxes, the artists drawing portraits, the tourists buying postcards.

She wandered over to Notre-Dame. She couldn’t go inside — it was still under restoration after the fire — but she stood nearby, looking at walls that had survived centuries.

Then she drifted into some little park.

Old women in dresses much like hers sat on benches reading books.

Children chased pigeons.

Young mothers rocked strollers.

Kate sat down on an empty bench and pulled out her notebook.

Day Two.

I went up the Eiffel Tower. It feels like standing on a cloud.

I met Ellen and George from Vermont. Good people. Traveling together. They still hold hands like young lovers.

I miss Tom. Sometimes sharply, almost painfully. Especially when I see couples like that. But it’s a good kind of pain. It reminds me that I knew how to love.

Today I realized something. All my life, I thought Paris was the destination. The place I needed to get to in order to feel whole. But it turns out Paris is simply a city. A living, ordinary city with its own traffic and noise and smells.

But when you are here, you become someone else.

I am becoming someone else.

And I like her.

She closed the notebook and suddenly noticed that a man had sat down on the bench beside her.

An older man, with a gray beard, wearing a beret — an actual French beret! — and carrying a baguette under his arm. He unfolded a newspaper and began to read.

Kate looked at him and smiled.

A real Parisian.

Just like in the movies.

The man looked up, caught her eye, and smiled back.

“Bonjour, madame,” he said.

“Bonjour, monsieur,” Kate replied.