Who Will Run the Frog Hospital by Lorrie Moore Page B

the hospital. Performing the sweet rituals that would keep us together; he knew I could not otherwise take him back. Once the penance is performed, at least at first, one has no choice. “Think of all those good, praying people who keep God around for the rest of us,” said Daniel, on his knees by my bed. “God has no choice; he must honor the rites; if it were just the rest of us riffraff down here, he’d be long gone. But he comes through because of the good ones. He honors the covenant, the vows. Think of yourself as God. Think of me as the moral mix that is all of humanity.”
    “Oh, please.”
    “Well, then, think of me as—what? I don’t know.”
    “You know those cream puffs called Divorce?” I say now to Marguerite.
    “I’ve seen them.”
    “They’re so totally great. Can we get those around here?” Once, last year in Chicago, I was at a dinner party where a newlywed woman kept interrupting her husband to say in a theatrical whine, “Honey, can we get our
divorce
now?
Now
can we get our divorce?” I was the only one there who thought she was funny. I was the only one there who laughed every time. At the end of the night, she leaned forward by the door and kissed me on the lips.
    “Sure! I know of a pretty good
pâtisserie
not far from here.” Marguerites walk is strong and loping, impossible to match. We stop at her
pâtisserie
, wildly order two Divorces, then sit outside at the neighboring
tabac
drinking
panachés
(half
bière
, half
limonade
) to go with them. “Isn’t Paris amazing?” says Marguerite. “Where else would you have something like a
tabac
, half bar, half office supply store? The thing about France is that from romance to food to whatever, they really know what goes together. Look at all the red and purple—look at the gardens and lobbies and scarves. Not every culture knows that red and purple go so well together.” She pauses. “Of course, it’s also a totally sexist country.”
    “C’est dommage,”
I say, my mouth full of Divorce. I mention the men looking around, the libidinous, headlit bath the Frenchwomen are swimming in.
    “The worst thing, though,” says Marguerite, “is when a man walks by you in the street, sizes you up, and says,
‘Pas mal.’ Pas mal!
You feel outraged in a hundred different directions.” She pauses. “For one, you expect a little grade inflation on the streets.”
    I laugh in a giddy way. I’ve eaten too much sugar. Marguerite orders water—“Château Chirac”—(a Parisian joke everyone knows, apparently, because it is scarcely acknowledged as a joke). The waiter barely cracks a smile and then goes offto the kitchen. Château Chirac is no longer funny; it is water; it is what water is called; it is what water is. And it makes me wonder how many things have begun this way, as jokes. Love, adolescence, marriage, life, death; perhaps God is looking down saying, “Geeze, y’all, lighten up. This is
funny
. You’re missing the into
nation
!”
    “I can’t give my heart away to anyone but you,” Daniel said to me in the hospital. “Not that I haven’t tried, of course. It’s just that when I do, the other organs start a letter-writing campaign.”
    “Don’t be clever,” I said. “Don’t be like that now.”
    “What is your favorite painting in all of Paris?” I ask Marguerite. The liter of water has come and we gulp it down. She looks refreshed.
    “Let me think,” she says. She names Géricault, van Gogh, Picasso.
    “All the
O
s,” I say.
    “All the
O
s! Actually, at the d’Orsay, there’s a pastel of Madame Monet, with the ribbons of her hat all untied. That’s probably my favorite. She’s sitting on a bright blue sofa—the most beautiful blue you’ve ever seen—and she is looking straight out of the drawing, as if to say, ‘I married a painter, and I still got this sofa.’ I like that one. Very French.”
    “Do you think the Venus de Milo looks like Nicolas Cage?”
    “A little,” she says, smiling.