To know Paris, as Edmund White and countless others have observed, one must be a flâneur, one who takes leisurely strolls through the city, letting unexpected moods wash over you and remaining open to discovery—in my case, with an eye for crime. One must take the pulse of a quartier, assessing its rhythm; know it by heart, from the lime trees flanking its boulevards to its nineteenth-century passages couverts. Only when I can feel that pulse can I start the rest of my research for a novel.
Writers, like detectives, must be curious, and ask, “What if?”—which I had been doing since I first stepped on the cobbles. Detectives follow their noses, as the old adage goes; when a word rings false, when the indefinable something-isn’t-right moment happens—that is the moment to wonder, to ask questions. The exchange of a furtive glance, a figure ducking out of sight into the back of a café and failing to reemerge. In Paris, those who want to disappear can do so via the spare exit gate of a back courtyard, through the city’s series of covered passageways, even over the gray zinc rooftops or underground through a cellar or an old World War II bomb shelter.
All a writer needs is that “What if?” and a story tumbles out. I imagine the line at the tabac by Pigalle Métro station evaporating, the group of teens breaking off into threes to pickpocket unsuspecting tourists; an artist in a tiny fifth-floor den closing her shutters to block out street noise; a man with a gun entering a jewelry store in the “golden triangle” off the Champs-Élysées, ready to commit one in a series of daytime robberies. How I long to get it right, to write about the city with the confidence of a native, to reflect the Paris of the 1990s, with its hidden courtyards and criminal underbelly—updating the Paris that Inspector Maigret haunted.
Over the years, I’d gotten to meet police, and in order to know more, I’d gone out drinking with the flics, the local cops. Lucky enough to receive such an invitation one night, I joined several at the bar across the Seine from 36, where they’d taken over a back table.
An intoxicated young man looking for a fight entered the bar and approached us at our table—a table of off-duty police officers. Who knows why? Bad luck, I suppose. He began a drunken monologue. If you’ve had such an encounter, you know the kind. This young man was the sort you wanted to leave the premises before he got belligerent. A few of the officers spoke with him and escorted him out. He sat down on the sidewalk, and one of the admin police, who resembled an accountant, stayed behind to join him on the curb across from la maison, as the Préfecture is called. This policeman spoke with the young man for a long time amid the smokers and passersby, talking him down rather than talking down to him. I’d gone outside for a cigarette and noticed them carrying on a conversation. I didn’t get involved, as I didn’t have anything to add, nor did I wish to accidentally provoke someone so inebriated. When I came out again later, they were still talking. The flic was kindly asking questions. Maybe the kid had broken up with his girlfriend, lost his job, or just had a really bad day; I never found out.
It was something the flic didn’t have to do, with all his buddies inside drinking. Whether he enjoyed getting out of the bar, or the view of the Seine, or just talking with this kid, it struck me as something Jules Maigret would have done. Maigret, the knowing, sometimes fatherly figure who knew people would tell you their story if you just coaxed it out of them. Averting disaster, heading off a confrontation, recognizing the signs that a situation could spin out of control. Maybe that was part of what they taught at the police academy. By the time the young man (who was still, in my opinion, one slice short of a baguette, sobriety-wise) finally left, he had a smile on his face. I’ll never know what happened to him after that, but I had the feeling he would just go home and sleep it off. He wouldn’t feel denigrated or demoralized in the morning, only hungover.
Georges Simenon’s novels are full of investigators, flics on their daily beat, the victims’ neighbors, hotel concierges, capturing a time, a part of Paris, that exists now only in the imagination. A time when cell phones and numeric-entry keypads were unheard of—one could only ring the concierge’s bell to gain entry after midnight. Everyone knew everyone else’s business in a city with enclosed courtyards, high walls, and watchful eyes. I think they still do. Parisians smoked and drank morning, noon, and night. Men’s wool overcoats and hats steamed as they came in from a wet winter evening to a warm café with a charcoal stove burning. People knew their neighbors. Snitches snitched. Girlfriends chatted with each other, and mothers-in-law complained—human connections abounded, often forming a web of lies and deceit.
In that complicated world, Maigret keeps at it—plodding, questioning, then throwing out those questions, lighting his pipe when it goes out, and the suspect in the chair opposite him knows it’s only a matter of time. As does Maigret. He drinks at lunch, sometimes he gets angry, even orders sandwiches and beer in the afternoon. He takes the annual August vacances with Madame Maigret, unless a case comes up—but when doesn’t it?—and detains him in hot, deserted Paris. But a few of his investigations find him out in the countryside, in hermetically sealed villages where observant eyes don’t miss a thing. As in many cultures, an outsider arriving in a small French village is often met with distrust, even more so if they’re different.
That hasn’t changed.
I confess that when I first began writing my Aimée Leduc novels, I would think, Okay. There’s a murder, a staircase dripping with blood.… What would Inspector Maigret do? That wasn’t always much help, since Aimée is a PI, not a policewoman. But then I’d consider what she might do if Maigret appeared on the scene and questioned her after she found the body. That worked a little better. Of course, the police system in place now is different: Jules Maigret, as the head commissaire, would certainly not respond in person. Today, it would be the Brigade Criminelle and le procureur (the equivalent of our DA) who would hotfoot it to the scene and dictate the next steps in the investigation. My flic friends told me I had to change my way of thinking about the police process in a murder investigation. The way Maigret operated didn’t make for a plausible scenario now. So I relearned in order to keep the details in my books accurate and came to the conclusion that Maigret had it easier than a head commissaire would today.
Is Simenon’s work dated? Historical? Timeless? I’d argue the second two. I personally like my Paris streets dark and narrow, with glistening cobbles. The air thick with mist and suspicion. The Montmartre cemetery wall, the same as it was then, hulking with old, lichen-covered stone. I’ve imagined a corpse there more than once. My friend lives a block away, and returning late at night from the last Métro, walking uphill from Place de Clichy, the cinéma marquees dark, the café lights fading as I cross over to the cemetery, I hear the thrum of the old Citroën or Renault engine, the shift of gears, and smell the cherry tobacco. (I like to think Maigret smoked cherry tobacco, though I don’t know that it’s ever specified; perhaps there’s a Simenon scholar out there who can tell me.) Flashlights illuminate the corpse sprawled on the damp pavement; Maigret nods to his lieutenant with a “Take this down,” and we’re off on an investigation. An investigation that leads to the hidden life behind the walls, intrigue in the quartier, and worlds we’d never visit otherwise. Worlds that make me feel like I belong.
The iconic Préfecture at 36 Quai des Orfévres is now falling to pieces, the flics say—well-worn and tired around the edges, ancient and unequipped to handle the new technology the force needs. They’ve moved to a brand-new building that’s designed to gather all the gendarme divisions in one place. It’s in the 17th near the Parc Clichy-Batignolles and the old train switching yards, abandoned for many years. Had France gotten the 2012 Olympic bid that went to England, this is where the Olympic Village would have been. I’m kind of glad that never happened. As some flics point out, the move has been long slated, but with the current budget crisis, there’s an advantage to keeping the headquarters. The genius of being in the very center of Paris is that the city Tribunal is right next door. Prisoners awaiting trial literally go
from their holding cells to the court through an ancient underground tunnel. A friend, a flic whose first assignment out of the academy was escorting those in custody from their funky cells to the court, aptly described the surroundings as “medieval” and foreboding, as they were in Maigret’s time.
Boulevard Richard Lenoir is where the inspector lived with Madame Maigret. I confess to making a pilgrimage to their apartment building. While I know it’s a fictional building, I couldn’t resist scoping it out. I imagined myself saying, “It would be this street number and, yes, just as Simenon described.” Years later, riding a Vélib, a cycle from the citywide bike share, I returned home late to find that all the stations near my lodgings on the Canal Saint-Martin were full. Zut! It was late and drizzling, and I was hungry and looking to rest my aching feet. Finally, I found a single empty spot for my bicycle: on Boulevard Richard Lenoir, right below the Maigret apartment. How I wished Madame Maigret were still up waiting for Jules, warming a pot of cassoulet on the stove.
Even though I’ve made regular visits to France for over twenty years, I’m still l’américaine. I’ve been a guest at several of the locals’ weddings, heard about their husbands’ affairs.… I’d like to think they trust me now. After all, I’ve been into their homes, which is considered an honor and no mean feat. But in many ways, I’m still the outsider, the investigator. And yet they’ve given me a window into their lives, a way to see, so if that’s the way an outsider is, then I’m fine with it. I think if I ever do completely understand the French, the magic and mystery will be gone—but no fear of that. The first peaches of the season still drip and stain my chin, I’m full of wonder, and that duvet feels comfortable now.
LYDIA AND JACK
– Connie May Fowler –
WHEN I WAS FIVE, I TRIED TO KILL MYSELF.
The fluorescent tube buzzed overhead like a giant gnat that refused to die. Jaundiced light cast a yellow pall over tossed-but-not-forgotten foot pedals, bobbin cases, needle bars, snapped needles, bent needles, miniature screwdrivers, scissors, and fabric swatches upon which my mother had sewn a sampling of fancy stitches (I loved the zigzag stitch and often ran the tip of my index finger along its nadirs and zeniths, comforted by the highs and lows of its oppositional pattern) as I searched for a knife.
I suppose I could have zipped into the path of an oncoming bus (that would happen two years later), but at that moment, while my parents raged in the showroom of their sewing-machine store, the slitting of my wrists seemed reasonable, necessary, inevitable.
The knife was situated near the rear of the worktable, placed there, no doubt, so I could not reach it or the jar of peanut butter atop which it balanced. I rose to my tippy-toes and stretched as far as I could, grunting with the effort, my mother’s treasured pinking shears cold against my belly, but the knife and the nearly empty bag of Sunbeam bread with its illustration of the impossibly pretty Little Miss Sunbeam—blue bow nestled in blond curls—remained just beyond my grasp. The tome that was the phone book sat beneath a pile of oily rags. I stacked it on the floor along with several sewing-machine manuals, a Florida atlas, and a coffee-stained dime novel. That was all I needed.
I held aloft the knife, enormous in my tiny hand. In the shiny reflection in the steel, one eye stared back. I stepped off my paper stool, glanced at the burgundy curtain separating me from my warring parents, placed the blade against the pale skin of my left wrist with its road map of springtime-blue veins, and sawed.
FIFTY-PLUS YEARS LATER, AS AN ADULT LIVING A QUIET LIFE on a Caribbean island, a mystery dogs me: How was a child of five aware of the concepts of slit wrists, bleeding out, the warm silence of death?
I NEVER WANTED CHILDREN. THE NOTION OF A TEN-POUND bowling ball ripping open my vagina strikes me as one of Nature’s cruelest jokes. The responsibility that mushrooms the second the child exits said torn vagina is so monumental, it seems a thinking person would carefully consider and reconsider the pros and cons.
Perhaps it’s different for millennials, but baby-boomer females grew up on the pablum that cast motherhood as a requirement for every woman, no matter her circumstances or desires.
Oh, the moment that child is in your arms, you forget all about the pain of labor.
There is no love like a mother’s love.
A woman is incomplete without children.
It’s your Christian duty.
The only women who don’t want children are deviant women.
What else are you going to do with your life?
I am not a coward. I could have gotten over the ripping open of my private parts. But given my history of trauma, I sniffed a rat regarding the pro-motherhood platitudes. After all, my sister and I were so incessantly abused, we thought What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was a comedy. A mother who beats a child while telling her she detests her (the mildest of my mother’s invectives) isn’t exactly an endearing portrait of maternal love, nor does it inspire confidence in the institution.
And that responsibility issue? My father died when I was six, leaving my mother to stew alone in her madness. As her behavior grew more violent and erratic, and as her alcoholism morphed into barbed steel, my sister and I (my brother, far older, was long gone) became her unwilling parents determined to somehow ensure we all survived the fury.
MY DECISION NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN PUTS ME IN THE crosshairs of several world religions. Humanity has waged inquisitions, committed ancient and modern-day massacres, and suspended the civil liberties of those who worship gods not their own. Yet people line up in solidarity on the issue of procreation. In a way, I can’t blame them. Their texts were written and long worshipped during a time when populating the earth was a swell idea.
But given the cataclysmic realities of climate change, fewer babies might be a selfless, conscious act committed in pursuit of saving the planet. I think those of us who decline to procreate should be lauded as iconic, let’s-avoid-the-apocalypse role models. On Mother’s Day we should be sent flowers on behalf of the embattled Earth. But instead, with ancient beliefs de rigueur in these late days, we catch a lot of flak. Judgment, I’m afraid, is its own form of shrapnel.
My gender can be the most openly hostile. Women who insist they know what God thinks cluck, shake their heads, and make sad, pouty fish lips as they reach across desks in banks and college administrators’ offices or dinner tables jumbled with wineglasses, chortling, Don’t worry, dear. It’s not too late. You know, if all else fails, there is always adoption. I’ll pray for you. They cast sympathetic glances at my husband, even though he had a vasectomy years before we ever met.
For some people, no matter how woke a portion of the population becomes, it’s always the woman’s fault and never her—or her and her partner’s—choice. Real men don’t eat quiche, as the old platitude goes, and real women don’t decide to forgo having babies.
Among the benefits of being old enough to be a grandmother—again, a familial status I’ll never achieve—is the patina of age I bear like starshine. But the shine doesn’t smudge away the awkwardness. When I’m asked how many children and grandchildren I have, and I answer zero, people often pause, look past me, recalibrate, and then whip out their phones to show me photos of beaming offspring. Undeterred, I whip out mine and just as enthusiastically share images of my incredibly smart, gorgeous, and student-loan-free dogs. This is Pablo’s favorite chair. He likes to take a nap in it after he poops.
But at least those who think they know what I should have been doing all these years with my womb—that unseen moon, that mysterious planet with lunar cycles indefatigable and misunderstood—no longer insist that I must bear human fruit. Even they know that ship has sailed.
TURN OF THE SCREW: IT ISN’T COMPLETELY TRUE THAT I NEVER wanted children. When I was in my twenties, thirties, forties, I wanted them desperately once a month. But I am a writer. And writers, if we’re any good at our calling, divine patterns. I didn’t need to be Shakespeare to figure out that my child desires were tied to my womb’s lunar cycles, c
ycles that did nothing to erase the sting of childhood traumas. What might have seemed mysterious or a biological mandate to some became crystalline and manageable, lines drawn between the celestial dots of my womanhood.
WHEN I WAS AN UNDERGRAD—LOST, VULNERABLE, TUMBLING, with no safe place to land inside my mother’s wounded orbit—a professor informed the class that his wife desired to remain childless because, as an abuse survivor, she knew battered children always grew up to repeat their parents’ sins. Not only did the professor possess great authority by virtue of his position, but, as a girl who’d grown up fatherless, I was poised to believe everything he said.
And I continued to believe him, even after it became apparent to most anyone who could breathe that he was picking off wide-eyed coeds for his sexual pleasure as if we were little more than rotting fruit moldering at the base of his tree. I defend my gullibility by virtue of the fact that his views on battered children were supported by everything I had read on the topic in my Introduction to Social Work textbook. Even today, social sciences spout the same blather, hawking statistics to bolster a misguided and most damaging allegation that is yet another blow to the bodies and spirits of the battered.
In 2004, as I gave a speech to a group of domestic violence workers, a different truth pushed its way to the front of my brain, dispelling the lie and prompting me to go off script. The only people the if-you’re-a-battered-child-you’re-doomed statistic counts are those who end up in the system. But what about that grand majority populated by folks who never become perpetrators, who go on to live exemplary lives? We are legion. We are friends, colleagues, neighbors, sisters, brothers: battered children who grow up to be overachievers, shining examples of humanity, leaders within our communities, people who never have run-ins with the law, who would never even think about harming a child. And, unlike nonreproductive me, most survivors go on to have happy, healthy children whom they love with their entire beings. They do not beat them.
Private Investigations Page 5