excerpt from A Waltz in Paris

“Her name was Julia Lockhart!” he shouted.
Cécile’s eyes widened, a look he hadn’t seen before. A look of confusion astonishment and happiness all put together. Every waitress in the place stared at the both of them.
“In 1989, Julia found out she was pregnant. I know it was that year because that was the same year the Berlin Wall fell. I was ready and willing to raise the child. I thought it was the best thing to ever happen to us. A true blessing. Finally, I would get the chance to raise my own child and I would raise that child in the name of my father. When she told me I had never been so happy in my entire life.”
Cécile began to cry, but he soldiered on through the painful memories.
“Julia didn’t feel the same way. She wasn’t ready for a child and I just didn’t understand why. We’d been together for years now. I was in the middle of my second feature film for Paramount so money wasn’t the issue. I began to think it was me, that she didn’t want to raise her first child with an actor who would never be there.”
“So what are you gonna do, Julia? Please don’t tell me you are even considering abortion.”
“What other choice do I have? And don’t feed me that orphanage crap. You know I can’t keep living knowing my child lives in an orphanage. I can’t do it.”
“So you’ll kill the baby instead! Julia, my love. This baby is exactly what we need. You’ll see.”
“We’re not ready for a child yet, David! I’m not ready and by God, it’s my choice. Not yours!”
“I’m the father! I have a say in the matter. I’ll die before I see my child perish.”
“The arguments went on and on,” continued David and by now, the whole café was listening. “In the end, it got to a point where I was choosing between my Julia and my unborn child. I chose, the child.” He began to cry, letting the tears loose. They streamed down his cheeks, but it never felt so good to cry like that. “That was a bad month. We couldn’t live with one another. We stopped sleeping in the same bed. We avoiding coming in contact with each other when we came home from our separate jobs and eventually our separate lives. No more dinners shared together. By the time her stomach began to show, Julia had left. I came home and she’d cleaned out her drawers. She left a note saying she was going through with the abortion and she just couldn’t see me anymore. After over ten years, she abandoned me and I had to live with the fact that my child was going to be killed, that what could have been another actor to train, what could have been an Academy Award winner, a bright and intelligent boy or a joyful free-spirited girl like you, Cecile, was to be killed in a few months. I have been living with that painful image ever since. The Avalon bloodline shattered. No more hope for future relationships, because the only one that ever mattered to me, the only woman I ever loved, walked out on me because she refused to raise a child with me.”
Cécile leaned against the bar now, her cheeks red with pain.
“About three years later, I got word that she died of breast Cancer. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of her, of what my child could have looked like. Whether it was a boy or a girl. Whether he would have followed in his father’s footsteps. Whether or not she had her mother’s lush black hair and radiant eyes.”
He had to stop himself here. The images were killing him. His stomach ached. His eyes hurt from the crying. He approached Cécile until their faces met. She wiped the tears from her eyes.
“My mother died of breast Cancer when I was two,” she said. “And you know what the funny part is, Monsieur Avalon.” She choked back tears, and then let them all out at once. “Her name too was Julia Lockhart.”
With that being said, she ran right passed him, opened the front door and took off into the rain. Standing in the center of the café, with all eyes on him, David noticed his hand was trembling. He grabbed it calmly and clenched it into a fist.
Cécile. What a pretty name. The kind of name Julia would name her daughter. Lying on the roof of her dorm building in 1979 looking up at the stars on their one year anniversary. It was New Years Eve and the fireworks were crackling, illuminating the sky with red and blue. She said she’d always wanted to live in France. He’d commented on the French and their silly names. She said she loved French names. They were so cute. The language is so sexy, she said. And so are the names. If she could live anywhere in the world, it would be Paris. Lying on the rooftops of New York. Lying on the highest point of Paris. Escapades through the city. Bike rides. Haunted voyages. Adventures. Life is a funny journey is it not, Monsieur Avalon? Smoke and drink and live life to the fullest with no regrets. Those were Julia’s ways.
“Cécile,” he said aloud, turned around and ran after her.
Outside, the rain was icy cold, like the water in that public pool Julia and him had snuck into. He walked without thinking and that walk turned into a run and everything he ever believed, every vision of remorse, every butterfly of anxiety in his stomach was blown out like a candle. The only truth was standing in front of him, shivering and crying in the rain.
Keep her warm, chief, his father’s comforting words. She needs you now.
He approached her slowly. She knew he was coming, glanced at him from within the hands covering her face and she stayed in place, letting the rain wash over her. Standing cold and rigid in the sidewalk, Cécile let her father approach. She moved the hands away from her face, unafraid of her tears that mixed with raindrops. He stopped and stared at her. This was the precious gift he’d been missing out on all these years. His little gem wandering about in the city of love without someone to look up to, searching for a job as a waitress in any shit heal joint just for the sake of paying her rent. A nineteen year old girl watching too many movies about love, because it is the one thing she never experienced. A nineteen year old girl who listened to true stories of love and all the fluff that came along with it.
“Daddy,” she said, letting the rain wash over her tears. She ran now, her cheeks curling into cheerful dimples once again. She jumped into his arms and together they embraced and within that embrace, lay an alternate life that could have been, an alternate life that was now possible, an absolute reality.
“Is it really you?” she cried. “All this time?”
He kissed her on the forehead. “All this time.”
“Is this real?”
David looked up at the grey sky, closed his eyes and felt the raindrops land on his skin. A daughter. Julia had given him a daughter. And she had kept her.
“This is real,” he said, holding his daughter close, finally understanding what it meant to love one’s own child.
For a long while, they stood in the rain, enjoying each other’s softness, the warmth that came with love even in the coldest rain showers.
“Do you want to come to America with me? See the Empire State Building?”
“I would love to, but only if you take me to Time Square on New Year’s Eve.”
He smiled. “Come on. Let’s get some ice cream.”
She laughed. “Is that where you take all your ladies?”
“No,” he said, putting a strand of wet hair behind her ear, like Julia always did. “Only the two that I love.”