Paris Was the Place by Susan Conley

Author:Susan Conley [Conley, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780385349659
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2013-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

I LEAVE LUKE’S early Tuesday morning and get Gita at the asylum center. Then we both take the train to the academy. When I come back in the afternoon, Luke’s in the den on the phone to China. He hangs up and says he feels fully recovered. I think it’s the Valium. I make asparagus soup.

“Leave.” He almost kicks me out after dinner. “I’m fine. Go back to your French lover. Go live your life!” I make him dial Gaird at the hotel again so we can both ask him to come home, but he’s not there. I take a cab home, but it’s painful to leave my brother alone in his apartment, and my resentment for Gaird grows. Why doesn’t he call Luke? Why isn’t he home?

When I get back to the apartment, there’s a note from Macon saying that he’s in Chantilly with Pablo. He returns after I’ve fallen asleep. On Thursday morning I get to have coffee and oatmeal with him before he leaves for the courtroom. Then I teach on Rue St. Sulpice and leave the academy for the asylum center at three.

Sophie lets me in. But she doesn’t smile. “What’s wrong? Tell me what’s wrong.”

She puts a long, pink-manicured finger to her lips to shush me. Then she takes my arm and walks me down to her office and closes the door. “Moona has been taken away.”

I don’t hear what she’s saying at first. “What do you mean, ‘taken away’?”

“She was deported yesterday. They changed the date of the hearing at the last minute, and her lawyer didn’t get the paperwork. The hearing was last Friday. She and her lawyer believed it was meant to be yesterday. If you miss your court hearing, you’re automatically denied. The officers came for her after breakfast.”

“You’re joking. You’re not serious.”

“This often happens. They had a seat on a charter plane leaving for Bombay. I tried to reach you, but you never answered the phone at your home. They are calling it a voluntary reunification with Moona’s aunt.”

“The wife of the uncle who raped her? How could they send her back?”

“The girls cannot be expelled on their own, because they are only children. But they can be reunited with family. You know this.”

“Oh, Sophie.” I sit down on the stool with my bag in my lap.

“Gita won’t get out of the bed. She saw them take Moona out to the van. Then she screamed and ran into her room, and she won’t move. She skipped kitchen duty. If she isn’t up by the time she’s meant to work there again, then I will call Roselle and try to get her a medical excuse.”

“Or the guard will report her?”

Sophie stands up. “He will report that she is uncooperative if he knows that Gita is in bed, but he won’t find out if I can help it. Today is the working of a mysterious God.” She looks up at the ceiling and raises her eyebrows like she’s frustrated with her God today and why can’t he just give her a little help?

I look down at my watch.

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