“Seriously?” I say, my voice pitching high as I stop and turn to look at him. It’s exercise rush hour out here, and I get a fierce glare from two power walkers in coordinating jumpsuits, as they swerve past us.
“Seriously,” he responds, gesturing for me to keep walking. “In a charming little suburb on the outskirts of Paris.”
Sensing my anxiety, Hugh looks back toward the small lake at the center of Piedmont Park, where an empty bench beckons. “Perhaps not the best time of day for a casual stroll,” he says. “Let’s sit instead.”
We escape the flow of exercisers, and I feel my shoulders relax as we walk across a broad lawn toward the placid lake. We settle onto the bench and watch, in silence, as a pair of white swans glide away from us.
“I don’t want to pry,” I say, “so there’s no need to answer, but what exactly happened in Paris?”
“Well, as it happens, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I had traveled with some friends to visit a small community of anarchists who were attempting to live off the grid.” He’s looking across the lake, his gaze fixed on a mallard taking flight. “What I didn’t know,” Hugh continues, “was that they also were sabotaging the grid—cutting power lines and the like. It seemed like a harmless thing to do, chopping through a skinny wire with garden shears. And so I gave it a try, just as the federal police were arriving to arrest them. Well, more accurately, to arrestus.”
“And you went to prison?” I ask. I want to look at him, to see if something in his expression conveys the emotion he must have, talking about these events from his past. But I decide instead to watch the swans make their slow loops.
“I was seventeen years and eleven months old, thank God, or I might be in prison still,” Hugh says. “I still recall how terrified I was when I called home, to tell my father what I had done. But my mother picked up instead.”
“And she told your father for you?” I ask.
“No. She got on a train and traveled to Paris. My mother was a wise and intelligent woman, but she had a rather sheltered childhood and never dared travel alone. Not until then.”
His words, so matter-of-fact, make my heart ache. I know what it’s like to be that mother—one who does the unimaginable because there’s no other option. He looks toward me, clearly sensing that I’ll understand his words, and I turn to hold his gaze.
“She overcame her anxieties and even took public transportation for the first time, directly into Paris’s sketchiest neighborhood.” He smiles, and I can’t help smiling back, as I watch those soft wrinkles form at the edges of his dark eyes. “I’ll never forget watching her walk into that jail to arrange for my release,” he says. “It was so extreme, the juxtaposition of my glamorous mother in her gold jhumka earrings, against the rusty yellow cell bars, that seeing her brought me to tears.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I don’t know where she found the courage to come alone, to bail her son out of a grimy jail in a Paris suburb. I walked out with her on that day, and we never said a word to my father.”
“So you went back to London and left your anarchist phase behind?” I ask, probing.
“Something like that, I suppose. But after that experience, and living with this great act of love my mother undertook for me—” He leans back and looks up at the sky. “I determined not to squander what I had been given—a second chance.”
“And so began your glamorous life as an academic?”
He laughs, deep and loud. “And so began my transient life,” he corrects. “Let me assure you, there’s nothing glamorous about the life of a professor.”
“But you have to admit that you’re one of those cosmopolitan types who never settles down in one place for more than a couple of years,” I announce, shifting on the bench so that I’m also looking up.
“I don’t know whether I’d identify as ‘cosmopolitan.’?” He laughs. “But I do travel unceasingly, and I find it exhilarating. I’ve built a research program that requires me to be in constant motion, and it’s made for a lovely—if not glamorous—life. I haven’t a single regret.”
It makes me strangely wistful, knowing that this man’s life is so very different from my own. I let myself wonder, for a moment, what it would be like to have such freedom, to have no strings tethering me firmly in place.
I sit upright, face him, and ask, “What’s the awesomest place you’ve traveled?”
“Impossible to say,” he replies, turning back toward me sothat we’re face-to-face. I can tell he’s ready to be grilled. “But I’d put Pamukkale, Turkey, and Punta del Este, Uruguay, high on the list.”
“The ugliest?” I continue.
“No place is ugly, if one knows where to look.” He shrugs.
“Well, aren’t you the optimist,” I tease. “The coldest?”
“Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in January. Obscene.”
“Sexiest?” I ask.Holy crap. Where did that come from?
He pauses to study my face, and I feel a flush rise to my cheeks. “You’ll have to give me some time to come up with an answer to that one,” he says, his voice suddenly low and thick.
He looks away, back across the pond, and we sit in silence. A breeze blows up and I watch as ripples form on the surface of the pond. It’s remarkable, really, the stillness of this forested park, carved from the heart of Midtown. I feel grateful to be here, in a steady, calm place, beside Hugh. Though I wouldn’t mind being in Turkey or Uruguay—okay, maybe not Alberta. I wouldn’t mind having a life like Hugh’s, but I also know that his life is not mine. I know that I belong right here.
“Is it ever lonely?” I dare to ask. “All the travel, I mean.”
He ponders for a long minute, then turns to face me. “I hadn’t thought so, until now.”
