Free Women with Men by Richard Ford Page A

realized he was arriving at Joséphine's apartment with nothing in his hands—a clear mistake. Possibly some bright flowers would be a good idea, or a toy, a present of some minor kind which would encourage Léo to like him. Léo was four, and ill-tempered and spoiled. He was pale and had limp, wispy-thin dark hair and dark, penetrating eyes, and when he cried—which was often—he cried loudly and had the habit of opening his mouth and leaving it open for as much of the sound to come out as possible, a habit which accentuated the simian quality of his face, a quality he on occasion seemed to share with Joséphine. Austin had seen documentaries on TV that showedapes doing virtually the same thing while sitting in trees—always it seemed just as daylight was vanishing and another long, imponderable night was at hand. Possibly that was what Léo's life was like. “It is because of my divorce from his father,” Joséphine had said matter-of-factly the one time Austin had been in her apartment, the time they had listened to jazz and he had sat and admired the golden sunlight on the building cornices. “It is too hard on him. He is a child. But.” She'd shrugged her shoulders and begun to think about something else.
    Austin had seen no store selling flowers, so he crossed rue Regnard to a chic little shop that had wooden toys in its window: bright wood trucks of ingenious meticulous design, bright wood animals—ducks and rabbits and pigs in preposterous detail, even a French farmer wearing a red neckerchief and a black beret. An entire wooden farmhouse was painstakingly constructed with roof tiles, little dormer windows and Dutch doors, and cost a fortune—far more than he intended to pay. Kids were fine, but he'd never wanted any for himself, and neither had Barbara. It had been their first significant point of agreement when they were in college in the sixties—the first reason they'd found to think they might be made for each other. Years ago now, Austin thought—twenty-two. All of it past, out of reach.
    The little shop, however, seemed to have plenty of nice things inside that Austin
could
afford—a wooden clock whose hands you moved yourself, wooden replicas of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. There was a little wood pickaninny holding a tiny red-and-green wood watermelon and smiling with bright painted-white teeth. The little pickaninny reminded Austin of Léo—minus the smile—and he thought about buying it as a piece of Americana and taking it home to Barbara.
    Inside, the saleslady seemed to think he would naturally want that and started to take it out of the case. But there was also a small wicker basket full of painted eggs on the countertop, each egg going for twenty francs, and Austin picked up one of those, a bright-green enamel and gold paisley one made of perfectly turned balsa that felt hollow. They were left over from Easter, Austin thought, and had probably been more expensive. There was no reason Léo should like a green wooden egg, of course. Except
he
liked it, and Joséphine would like it too. And once the child pushed it aside in favor of whatever he liked better, Joséphine could claim it and set it on her night table or on her desk at work, and think about who'd bought it.
    Austin paid the clerk for the nubbly-sided little egg and started for the door—he was going to be late on account of being lost. But just as he reached the glass door Joséphine's husband came in, accompanied by a tall, beautiful, vivacious blond woman with a deep tan and thin, shining legs. The woman was wearing a short silver-colored dress that encased her hips in some kind of elastic fabric, and she looked, Austin thought, standing by in complete surprise, rich. Joséphine's husband—short and bulgy, with his thick, dark Armenian-looking mustache and soft, swart skin—was at least a head shorter than the woman, and was dressed in an expensively shapeless black suit. They were talking in a language which