De Cive

Paris.

The best part of any flight, long or short, is being able to say that it was uneventful. Sarah slept most of the eleven hours. I was surprised by this but certain of it as I had watched her through the entire flight.

We made the long hike to passport control and found that things moved rather quickly. Sarah flirted with a little girl ahead of us in line, the zigzagging queue allowing them repeated meetings. I held our three passports. I opened Sarah’s and looked at her eight-year-old face, her eyes big and dark, her hair even wilder than it was now. At the checkpoint the officer smiled and studied me, then smiled at Sarah, glanced at her passport, and asked her name.

Sarah stared at him and said nothing. The pause was excruciatingly long and awkward. She was not having a seizure, that was clear to me. She had heard the question. She could not find her name.

Meg nudged her with “Sarah?”

“Sarah,” she said.

“Long flight,” I said. That apparently satisfied the man.

“Are you okay?” Meg asked Sarah.

“Fine.”

The officer smiled at Sarah. “Bienvenue en France.”

“Merci beaucoup,” Sarah said.

Out of customs and in the taxi, I felt myself fading. It was late morning, and I knew that the best thing to do would be to stay up until the evening, but I was fighting a losing battle. The freeway slowed and I closed my eyes. The rumble of the engine, the wind through the cracked open window beside me, the barely audible French voices on the radio, the fear of having watched my daughter forget her name put me to sleep.

I was awake long before we arrived at our hotel and none too happy about it. We inched through city traffic on what I was convinced was a meter-serving scenic route. That was fine as Sarah was so thoroughly enjoying the ride.

“The Louvre, Mom,” she said. “Can we go there today?”

“We’ll try,” Meg said.

“Nous sommes mardi,” the driver said. “The Louvre is closed on Tuesday.”

“Are you tired, Daddy?”

“I’m fine, sweetheart.”

We checked into our little hotel off the rue Saint-Placide. As I was told the rooms were quite small, I had reserved two. The rooms turned out to be next to each other with no adjoining door. With both doors closed, I felt so terribly far away from my family. I wanted to crawl onto the bed, not only because I wanted to sleep, but also because I wanted to pull the covers over my head to escape. I stepped into the corridor and gave them a knock.

Meg let me in. Sarah was lying on the twin bed nearer the window.

“Is she asleep?” I asked.

“She lay down and that was it.”