by Meg Wolfe
the rent break. “It was pretty bad. A lot of work, but I’m grateful to get a place I can afford.”
A customer came in, and Charlotte took the opportunity to get away. “Well, um, nice meeting you. Gotta go.” Wendy just gave a nod and went back to looking at the catalogue.
Charlotte looked by the window for Shamus/Seamus on the way out, but he wasn’t there.
He was, instead, sitting on the newel post in her apartment, waiting for her to come up the stairs. She was pleased. Clearly, she and this cat had an understanding: Wendy doesn’t like either one of us. We don’t like Wendy, either.
“Hello, Shamus.” She reached out to give him a pat, but he reached out with his own paw, and they played a silly pretend-swatting game for a few moments before she went over to the table and unloaded the bag of notebooks.
“So, are you a Shamus, or a Seamus?” She watched him leap from the newel to the table, and then try to see what was in the bag. He stuck a paw down in a gap along the side, and pulled out a pen, which he then batted around the table top.
“You’re a snoop. Shamus it is.”
Charlotte fixed a light lunch of cheese, crackers, and apple slices while waiting for a fresh half-pot of coffee to brew. She’d been drinking far too much coffee, and it was probably time to wean herself off the caffeine. There would be a small grocery run on Friday, on the way back from signing off with Stanton Estates, since the supermarket was out on the highway. She made a list of what to get from both the store and the house, and then wondered what, if anything, would be left after the sale? Martin had said that she could keep anything that hadn’t been sold, or let them donate it to charity.
The dark red leather of the old sofa gleamed in the soft sunlight, and brought out the faded reds of the kilim. Shamus was sitting on the back of the sofa, looking out the window, watching birds coming and going from the young tree planted in the sidewalk below. Charlotte wondered how big the tree would get, and if she would ever be eye-to-eye with a crow, or at least a cardinal or blue jay.
The big library table stretched across the west wall, from the window on the right to the stairwell on the left. It was a handsome table, if a little too big for the space, same as the sofa. But within minutes, she was grateful for every square inch of it, spreading out the notebooks in chronological order. There was still room for her laptop and her lunch. Her scanner/printer was propped on a file box under the table, ready to go. The table had four deep drawers, as well, of which only one had a few office-type supplies and batteries and charging cables. The rest of the drawers were still empty.
Now, where do I begin? Each notebook had dated entries, so she labeled them with the year each one began. The autobiographical passages, combined with ledger entries from the same time period, might give some idea of what was going on in Olivia’s life. She began with the earliest notebook she had, which started in 1969, even though it really wasn’t the beginning, typing the passages in English on the computer, and making notes of passages in French, including a loose translation if it didn’t take too long.
But as she progressed through the notebook, she found herself abandoning the typing and just reading, curled up on the sofa with Shamus dozing on the back of the sofa, next to her head.
In our house we spoke both English and French. My mother, Sophie Vinerman, was a Jew from Edinburgh, Scotland, where her father was a scholar. When she was seventeen, she traveled with her parents to find various relatives left in Europe after the Great War. In Paris, they lodged with Mme. Bernadin, a widow with a bookish daughter named Anastasia and a son named Marcellus. Marcellus was an apprentice chef. My mother and Sasha became fast friends, as mother was quite well-read, and she enthusiastically supported Sasha’s dream of owning a bookshop. When my mother and father first met, they were quite shy around one another. Sasha thought my mother would make the perfect wife for her brother, and was shameless in her matchmaking. My grandparents, though, were so absorbed in looking for their relations that they didn’t even notice the blossoming romance growing beneath their noses. When they returned to Edinburgh, Sophie and Marcellus wrote to one another faithfully for two years, while Marcellus advanced and began to earn something of a living. That was when he traveled to Edinburgh and spoke to my grandfather, asking for my mother’s hand in marriage. Grandfather reluctantly agreed, because Marcellus was not Jewish, but a Huguenot. He only agreed because my mother threatened to run away with Marcellus.
I came along a year after they married. We lived with my Grandmother Bernadin in Paris, and my mother helped her with the lodgers and the cooking and cleaning. Sasha lived there, too, and we read books and went to plays and lectures and art exhibitions. Sasha knew so many people, and she would often bring me along, being quite okay with people thinking that I was her child. Later I realized it was because she had no liking for the male sex, and most men would not want to be bothered with a woman who already had a child. No, Aunt Sasha preferred the company of women, as I came to realize when I was older. She introduced me to her friend Henriette one day at a café, and said that they were going to open a bookshop together. I was thrilled. Grand-mère Bernadin was less thrilled, but my mother, as always, was very supportive and persuaded my father and grandmother that this would be a very good thing for Aunt Sasha and she would be very successful and very happy.
I adored the bookshop, which they named Sibylline. It was probably not the best sort of environment for a young female child—this was the time of the Lost Generation, after all, and everyone came to Paris to drink and loosen their morals. I read things that I probably should not have read at such a tender age, and let myself be touched in ways that I should never have allowed, but that was how things were in Paris in those days.
My mother and my grandmother remained sheltered from much of this, because I knew, instinctively, not to tell. Nor did my father, who was also exposed to licentiousness, because he had worked his way up to sous-chef at a small but well-known restaurant.
When I was ten, two things happened which changed everything. My grandmother died and my father came to the notice of Mr. Lamont, a very wealthy American who lived in Monte Carlo. Mr. Lamont wanted my father to become his personal chef. This was attractive to my father in many ways. First, the pay was phenomenal—and steady. Second, Mr. Lamont entertained frequently, and his guests were wealthy and sophisticated; some were even royalty. Third, it was a live-in arrangement, and a wife and two little girls were more than welcome. Fourth, as I later discovered, my father had great concerns about my exposure to Aunt Sasha’s world, and saw this as a way to protect me.
I, however, did not like it one bit! Monte Carlo was not Paris. The people were so different. I loved my aunt’s scruffy friends who wrote great things and made great art, the whole world of books and paint and café crème. I did not like the marble floors and the salty sea air of the mansion at Monte Carlo. I did not like the feeling of being of the servant class after running loose as an equal, if a child, among the men and women of talent. But my father thrived in the appreciation and the security, and if my father thrived, so too did my mother.
My sister Helene, however, was as if born to the manor. She had no self-consciousness and her outgoing nature and blonde looks made her adorable to Mr. Lamont’s children, whereas I always felt they looked down on me.
But a chef was not like a maid, particularly not one of my father’s quality. He was regarded as a talented asset to be treated with respect, in much the same way as the Lamont children’s music teacher. Monsieur Czerny followed his nose to the kitchens, where he would discover all sorts of delicacies and pastries being made, and Monsieur never met one he didn’t immediately proclaim as perfection and devour it on the spot, along with several more if he could get his hands on them. Both my parents thought him great fun, and my mother, in particular, saw an opportunity to provide me with the piano lessons like she herself had had as a child. With Mr. Lamont’s permission, I took lessons with M. Czerny in the music room, but only when it wasn’t being used by th
e children or guests. I was a tolerable student, and felt somewhat accomplished—until my sister Helene turned three and began to show an interest in the piano herself.
How can I explain the deflating realization that my baby sister, ten years younger than myself, could easily play—and by memory—what I struggled to learn? This cheerful little blond prodigy won everyone’s heart and attention. We were taught to play Solfiegetto as a duet, my left hand on the melody, her little hands the bass line. By the time she was five, she played the treble, and I the bass, and she played it with more musicality than I ever managed, even while I lurched high above her and her feet couldn’t even reach the pedals. They dressed us in identical white lace frocks with pink ribbons, which suited her and made me cringe. But she became so good so quickly, that soon I got away with staying in my room to read while she performed.
My mother promised me that I could visit Aunt Sasha for my fifteenth birthday. Little Hell was to be left behind with our father and the Lamont’s old nanny. I had my mother all to myself for the journey to Paris and back, and we talked about books and I told her that I wanted to be a writer. It was 1936.