April in Paris

by John J. Healey

  I arrived in Hudiksvall in time to check into an unappealing Best Western hotel that had an over-chlorinated pool and an over-shellacked piney bar with bright lights and a sticky red carpet. I took Corru for a walk and we sat outside at a restaurant called Restaurang 49 where we shared a rather sad meal. I slept badly and went for an early morning swim before walking to the old age home that had been private when Edwin was there, and that was now part of the national healthcare service. I lied and said I was family and they showed me his record, a medical report, none of which I understood. But the nurse who gave it to me noticed an annotation at the bottom of the last page that mentioned a box of personal effects. She said that if I signed for it, they could give it to me and that they would be grateful, as they needed all the room they could get in their storage space. I signed the release, waited around, and then was handed what looked like a musty banker’s box, tied shut with cord.

  I thanked them, went back to the Best Western, and checked out. Then I drove south on a local road to the St. Maria’s Chapel cemetery where Edwin was buried next to the nurse. Their graves were in a clearing surrounded by thick woods. The tombstone had his original name, Adranaxa Anderson. I stared at it as Corru looked up at me wondering what we were doing. What a long way Edwin had come—from Ogden Avenue, and from West 148th Street, and from Caro’s garage apartment in Southampton. I took some pictures that I sent to Carmen, walked around a bit with Corru, then found my way to the E4 highway that took us back to Stockholm and the Grand Hotel. Rather than open the box right away, I took it with me to Paris.

  – 43 –

  I didn’t open it right away there either. I moped around for a few days bonding with Corru, who I took to the Luxembourg Gardens every afternoon, and once to the Bois de Boulogne. Summer was in full swing. I did my best to avoid running into Dirk or Consuelo and figured they were probably not in town anyway. Paris was full of Chinese tourists and pretty, half-naked youths sunning themselves on the Quays. I stared at them, entangled and devouring each other, as I crossed over the Seine feeling sorry for myself. Then, at dinner one night in the Marais, feeling bereft from hearing so little from Carmen, my phone buzzed. I retrieved it from my pocket and found the following message.

  I miss you.

  I felt like crying. I answered immediately.

  I miss you too.

  Where are you?

  Paris. How’s it going?

  Fine. Good. I miss you.

  Can we see each other?

  I could come tomorrow.

  Can you bring Emily?

  Really?

  I should meet her, no?

  All right.

  I miss you terribly.

  Sorry I’ve been so distant. I just needed this time alone.

  No one was sorrier than I. I wanted to cover her with kisses. I was also terrified of meeting the child but saw no advantage in putting things off.

  Send me your flight details and Thierry and Corru and I will be there to greet you both.

  All right.

  Back at the apartment I opened a bottle of champagne and brought Edwin’s box into the living room.

  The cord tied around it looked to be a century old. The lid of the box had Edwin’s proper name, birth, and death dates written on it in beautiful script. Inside there were just three items: a small, homemade doll, a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover dedicated to Edwin from Caro, and the following undated letter, mostly typed, that had never been sent:

  Dear Caroline,

  I hope you are well. So much time has passed. I can no longer remember how much you know and how much of this will be new to you. I believe I’ve told you the easy version of what follows, omitting certain unpleasant details. What I am about to put down here, what my mother told me on her deathbed, includes additional information that shocked me. I hesitate to write it and send it, for it is a sordid tale probably best kept buried with her. But since you have asked so insistently over the years, since we have loved each other so intensely, and since we shall never ever see each other again, here it is, in her own words, as best as I can recall.

  “Your father and I were brother and sister. We were very close for as long as I can remember. When we came to America with our parents, uncle, and aunt, we already knew we would stay in New York together once they moved to the West. We married to protect him, because your father was always attracted to other men. It was the way God made him. There was an incident in a bath house that was unpleasant, and it was only thanks to Mr. Cuddihy that your father was not arrested and sent to prison. That was when Mr. Cuddihy found me work with Judge Culhane and his family in the Bronx, where no one knew anything about us. Your father continued to work for Consolidated Gas, and I helped Mrs. Culhane with her children. She had memories of a Swedish grandmother and we got along. But the Judge took a fancy to me, and I was weak and loved him back. It drove poor Mrs. Culhane to drink. There were many ugly scenes. And then I got pregnant with your sister and stopped working for them. When Ingrid was born, I almost died of it. The doctors decided to remove my uterus. They did not consult me about it. They just went ahead and did it and told me I could no longer have any babies. I believed it was a just punishment for my sin. I remember telling the nurse that at least I had borne a girl, for that was what I’d always wished for. Your father, despite his proclivities, was a good father to Ingrid, and suddenly we looked like and were like a normal family. I stayed home and he went to work. He had his friends, and I continued to see the Judge now and then when the weakness overcame us. It was an arrangement that worked until your father decided he wanted a son. We fought over it. Even if I had wanted to I was no longer able to. When he threatened to steal one or to find another woman to try to have one with, I despaired.

  “It was then that a neighbor of the Catholic faith who lived in our building consoled me and spoke to me about the Foundlings of the Protectorate, babies born to wayward girls afflicted with sin as well. One day while your father was at work a priest came to visit. A police detective came with him. The priest asked me if I was a true Christian and I answered yes. Did I believe in Christ Our Lord the Savior and I answered, yes. Then he told me I might obtain a healthy baby boy—you my dear—not yet two years old.

  “I was overjoyed. The priest stepped out and waited on the stoop. The detective remained and told me there were conditions, that when the boy reached the age of nine, he would have to return to the Protectorate for a year of what was called Special Education. I was confused, but in my excitement, I agreed and told the detective I would consult with your father. I watched the detective and the priest cross the Avenue and enter Mr. Valiunas’s saloon. The detective was one of the men who later lied when testifying at Ingrid’s trial.

  “When your father came home, I told him what had happened and he too agreed and the following Saturday we took the trolleys north and walked the rest of the way to the Protectorate of the Archdiocese. The priest accompanied us to the foundling ward, and it was there I saw and held you for the first time. I never met the poor girl that carried and birthed you. You were a gift from heaven.

  “The years went by. I taught you to speak and read in English. Your father taught you Swedish. Ingrid taught you games. The Judge brought both of you many gifts. Two months after your ninth birthday the detective returned and told us it was time to honor our end of the bargain, that it was time to bring you back to the Protectorate for a year. Your father asked him what Special Education meant and the detective told him it concerned spiritual matters, but that he should mind his own business. When we protested the detective showed us the document that we had signed seven years earlier. I promised to bring you the following day.

  “Your father kissed you goodbye and went to work. Ingrid kissed you goodbye and gave you a small doll she made for you, one you often played with that was supposed to be you. I took you to the Protectorate. The manner in which the priest who received us looked at you gave me shivers. When he left the room to fetch another document to sign, I asked
a nun passing by what Special Education consisted of. The nun bowed her head, made the sign of the cross, and scurried off. This frightened me so much I took you away again before the priest returned. I asked Judge Culhane for help but when he looked into it, he told me they knew about your father. I didn’t know how. It was a time when people of his condition were sometimes tortured and executed in jail. I did not know what to do.

  “On the very next day the detective came to our house to get you. I refused and screamed at him. When I did, he looked at Ingrid in the same way the priest at the Protectorate had looked at you. He told me that if I did not hand you over to him, I would regret it for the rest of my life. Then your father returned, and harsh words were exchanged, and the detective left. This took place on the fourth of June 1916. Two days later Ingrid was found in the basement.

  “When the police arrived, they told us they knew who had done it. They told us it had been Mr. MacBride who lived with his sister in the building next door. We knew that MacBride, a simple man, was incapable of hurting anyone. We knew they were lying because MacBride was one of your father’s special friends. Then the detective appeared and told us that if we did not do and say what the police wanted, the same thing would happen to you, and that they would arrest your father as well for perversion and indecent behavior. Thus it was that we lost our beloved daughter and were forced to return you to the Protectorate. The Judge was inconsolable and unable to express his grief to anyone but me. After that we moved across the river to the other apartment you knew so well. This was the year of the trial and the appeal, the sentence, and the execution of poor MacBride.”

  Here Edwin changed to a fountain pen:

  So you see, Caroline, during my early childhood, I was surrounded by sin. I did not know my parents were siblings. I did not know Ingrid’s father was Judge Culhane. I knew about my father’s nature, but it didn’t seem to matter. When it came time for me to go back to the Protectorate my father was insane with rage. During my time with the priests there, the sins of my birth mother were revisited upon me. It was only much later that I learned that the girl who had carried me and breathed life into me had herself been subject to the same treatment. By the time I was returned to my parents I had ceased speaking. For many nights father and mother fought and incurred many protests from our neighbors. One night I told her what had befallen me and asked her to pray for my sins. I told her I was a sinner the priests were compelled to punish by sinning against me, so that I might one day be forgiven by Christ, Our Lord. When mother realized what this meant, confirming her worst fear, she told father. He would not hear of it. He cursed her and cursed me and cursed Almighty God.

  He left soon afterward. He quit his job and built a shack for himself in the woods at the northern tip of Manhattan near the train tracks. He lived on squirrels and fish and pigeons. He drank and I would visit him sometimes and we would fish together. Mother was ashamed and did not go and see him ever, and when pressed, she told whoever asked that he had returned here to Sweden where he had died from drink.

  I often try to imagine them the way they were when they left Sweden for the United States so long ago. He was a handsome young man, eager to make a life for himself in a Promised Land. Mother was fresh and beautiful, as beautiful as Ingrid would have been. They managed to find a way both of them could have a life in America. It was only his greed for a son that cast them from Eden. It was, mother said, as if the priest and the detective had been a two-headed snake, Satan himself, and that they had pointed out the apple to her from the Tree of Knowledge, the apple that was me, the apple she and father agreed to share and thus bring down upon them the Wrath of God. She said over and over how she and father had been like Adam and Eve, brother and sister, until the Devil appeared and drove them from Paradise.

  Here, he reverted again to a typewriter:

  “Dear Edwin,” she said to me, “you have committed no sin. You have been sinned against atrociously. I was the sinner and I further compounded my guilt in the years you lived alone with me. After your return, after father left us, my Irishman, the Judge, then a widower but unwilling to marry me, continued to visit, he of the same race as those who wronged you, who lied to us, who sinned against children in the worst possible way, who violated and murdered Ingrid. But I could not help myself. He may have been Satan in yet another form, but I did not care. Until we got older and he started seeing Mrs. Cuddihy after her husband died, he possessed me and filled me with pleasure of the most shameful kind. May God forgive me and may the flames of hell engulf me now as I deserve.”

  Then, in pen and ink again, he continued:

  The irony of course is that I’m sure my birth mother was an Irish waif and my sire an Irish priest. I don’t think mother ever considered this. And it was the Irish who brought me to you, dear Caroline. Mother and I were indeed possessed by the same race. Her affair and mine were the only true loves we ever knew. Had Mr. Cuddihy not suggested the position for mother with the Culhane family, Ingrid would not have been born, I would not have been chosen by them from the Protectorate, MacBride would not have been arrested, tried, and executed, and I would not have been saved later on from a life of crime and debauchery by the Judge and Jimmy who brought me to you. Is there not something poetic concealed inside such depths of misery?

  Having told you all this, having come this far, I feel I must finish by telling you everything. Call it a confession if you will.

  Here, to my enormous frustration, it came to an end. He either never wrote any more, or additional pages had gone missing.

  – 44 –

  I put the letter and the book back in the box. I looked at the doll— the one, presumably, that Ingrid had made for Edwin—and then I put it back in the box as well and put the box in the storage closet under the stairs. I returned to the living room, sat down, finished my glass of champagne, and poured myself another. My grandfather the Judge, my mother’s father, was Ingrid’s father. Ingrid was my aunt. I was Ingrid’s nephew. The Judge had bedded down the maid, knocked her up, and continued the affair for years. It was what drove his wife, my mother’s mother, to drink and death. For fear of scandal they had been unable to save Ingrid, or MacBride. All the Judge had been able to do was keep himself and his family out of the trial. But neither had my father, his brothers, or his parents been called to testify. Why? Edwin had been adopted. MacBride had been innocent. The police had been in on it. One of them had probably committed the rape and murder. The story was intensely more sinister than it first appeared, and I was genetically connected to it.

  I googled the Protectorate and was further stunned to discover that the massive complex of buildings, where hundreds of children had been kept and disciplined by Irish brothers and priests, had been torn down and wiped off the face of the earth in 1938 to make way for a planned community financed by the Metropolitan Life insurance company. The community was called Parkchester. I remembered the line in my Aunt Jane’s letter: By the way, you stayed with Aunt Moira in Parkchester during the last week of your mother’s illness and returned home after the funeral.

  Memories of Parkchester were chiseled into neurons folded above my optic nerves. The prison-like red brick buildings, the walkways between them, the artificial playgrounds, the lobbies and elevators, the parquet floors, the windows that opened using revolving levers. I remembered it as grim and depressing, bathed in Giorgio de Chirico light and surrounded by a neighborhood that felt like a wasteland. On the day my mother died, on the day she was buried, I was playing atop the ruins of what had been Adranaxa Anderson’s nightmare, the Protectorate.

  I wondered who the neighbor “of the Catholic faith” had been, the one who first told Elsa Anderson about the foundlings. I prayed it was not my paternal grandmother. But it might have been.

  None of this really helped elucidate the dream. But it was all there, I supposed, condensed and entwined. I just wasn’t smart enough to decipher it. And I wasn’t sure what deciphering it would give me. Nevertheless, the dream had led me t
o revelations of things about my family that I hadn’t known, or that I had deeply repressed. In the space of an hour I’d gone from being an interested but comfortably detached bystander, curious about some long-dead Swedish neighbors who lived in the building where my father grew up, to feeling implicated, attached to it by blood. Though irrational, I felt stained by it. Embarrassed. I was reluctant to tell any of this to Carmen, especially then, as she was preparing to introduce me to a little girl whose safety and well-being she contemplated sharing with me.

  Their flight on the following day was delayed until early evening, but Thierry got the three of us to the Rotisserie d’Argent by 8:15. Then he dropped their luggage off at the apartment and went on his way. It happened to be Bastille Day and there was a lot of traffic. Eight-year-old Emily, who had never been to Paris before, was slim and dark and spoke with a proper little English accent. We shook hands at Orly. Her auburn hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her eyes were a very dark brown. There was a small scar on her chin. An impression I kept to myself was that she looked alarmingly similar to the girl in my dream. Settling into a banquette at the Rotisserie I told her how the restaurant had been so much cozier only a few years before when it had a different name and more seats and a fat house cat that sat wherever it wished.

  She was talkative at first, as nervous as I was, and spoke a great deal about her father, as if to let me know she was clear on that, and then she asked me a lot of personal questions I did my best to answer. Halfway into the meal she began to wane and went into iPhone video game mode, which didn’t bother me at all. She rallied with chocolate cake and ice cream. Carmen sat back and let it all happen. She didn’t try to manage the encounter. When we left, Carmen held her hand and we crossed the Pont de Tournelle and went home.

  Emily was agreeably nonplussed by the apartment. She immediately fell in love with Corru, who I took out for a walk while the ladies settled in. I gave Emily the nicer of the two guest rooms, the one that faced the river and had an eighteenth-century fireplace and a bed with a canopy over it. She and Carmen did their bathroom things together and we watched some of the fireworks from the living room with the window-doors opened wide. I kissed her goodnight on her forehead. Carmen put her to bed and read to her from a book she’d brought along called Princess Cora and the Crocodile. It was past midnight when Carmen came to bed. We made love, and it was intense, for many reasons.