The Paris Key

by Juliet Blackwell

  The Village Saint-Paul, as a nosy, close-knit neighborhood, felt secure, but just in case, Genevieve hid her passport and extra money in a little hidey-hole under the floorboards in the bedroom, which Catharine had shown her in confidence the last time she was there. She remembered Catharine saying, in a grave tone of voice: “I think they may have hidden Jews down here, during the war.” The opening was only about as big as a breadbox, but the teenaged Genevieve had supposed perhaps it opened further, somehow, her imagination stoked by stories of Anne Frank and her family secreted behind the paneling. Only now did Genevieve realize that Catharine had probably been joking.

  She packed forty dollars’ worth of euros, a small water bottle, sunglasses, and a dog-eared old paper map of Paris she found on Dave’s desk into a small leather satchel, then locked the doors and set out.

  Genevieve felt almost like a native as she navigated the streets and found the Saint-Paul Métro stop barely three blocks from the village. Catharine’s precise instructions were easy to follow. A gypsy family got on when she did, a little girl dancing, whirling, and clapping, while a man—her father?—played the drum, the loud bangs reverberating off the metal sides of the train. No one gave them money; Genevieve would have, but she didn’t have any change with her and couldn’t figure out what was appropriate, anyway. They exited at the next stop, without a word.

  On the number 2 line Genevieve studied the big subway map and kept track of the stops: place de Clichy came right before her station, and Pigalle right after. She exited at Blanche and took a moment to get her bearings when she emerged from the underground. She was looking for 49, rue Blanche, not far from the famous Moulin Rouge.

  On the map Catharine had written, You can’t miss it: It is a modern building, yellow with big crooked white strips in front of it, and stainless-steel details. It is an atrocity in the neighborhood, though some people love it.

  Her cousin was right: There was no way to miss the ultramodern façade. The steel-and-glass, yellow-and-white building stuck out like a colorful, modern, bumbling American among the elegant, staid Parisians.

  Genevieve entered through the sliding front doors and signed in at the reception desk. She had practiced a couple of lines in French—I am here to visit my aunt Pasquale Mackenzie. Could you please direct me to her room?—but it wasn’t necessary; apparently Catharine had called ahead and told them to expect Genevieve. A pretty, delicate-looking young woman emerged from a back office and greeted her in English.

  “Bonjour. I am called Solange. Your aunt is on the second floor, room 211. Here behind you is the lift. I will put in the code for you.”

  “Thank you,” said Genevieve, following her to the elevator.

  “You are American?”

  “Yes,” Genevieve replied, trying not to be disappointed that people seemed to guess her nationality so readily. So much for fitting in with the locals.

  “This code is for security, so the residents don’t wander,” Solange explained as she tapped numbers on a keypad. “We have many security features, because with the Alzheimer’s this is a concern.”

  Genevieve nodded.

  “Just like this, for example,” said Solange, turning toward a stooped, white-haired woman who was shuffling toward them, leaning on an aluminum walker. “Madame Lyon, pourquoi êtes-vous ici?”

  “Êtes-vous américaine?” The old woman asked Genevieve if she was American. She reached out and cupped one of Genevieve’s hands in both of hers. Her hands were warm and dry, velvety soft. “Merci, merci pour . . .”

  Genevieve lost track of what the woman was saying. She looked to Solange, who translated.

  “She say thank you for coming, in the war.”

  “The war?”

  “The Second World War. She remembers the Americans arriving, liberating her village when she was little girl.”

  “I . . .” Genevieve didn’t know what to say. She’d had nothing to do with World War II, of course. But did Madame Lyon even realize what year this was? Should Genevieve simply accept the thanks gracefully, acknowledge her gratitude?

  “She always does this whenever she hear anyone speaking English,” said Solange, sounding annoyed. She was holding the elevator door open with her shoulder; every few seconds it tried to close, banging her softly. “Don’t preoccupy yourself about it.”

  “Merci,” said Madame Lyon one more time. She was still holding Genevieve’s hand, her soft grip surprisingly strong.

  “Je vous en prie,” Genevieve said finally, practicing a line she had looked up last night: “You are welcome.” There was a much less formal way to say this: “De rien,” which meant, literally, “It is nothing.” But World War II wasn’t nothing. Genevieve remembered this from her last visit to Paris: The war was still alive, still acknowledged here in a way it wasn’t in the States. France had been invaded, bombed, occupied. It would take more than a generation or two of distance from the events to forget.

  Finally Solange led Madame Lyon away, and Genevieve rode the elevator to the second floor. She found her aunt’s room at the end of the long hall.

  Pasquale was sleeping. Her olive skin was dark against the white sheets; her eyes were closed but seemed to be moving, as though she was dreaming. Not wanting to disturb her, Genevieve took a seat in a molded plastic chair.

  Tante Pasquale had always been petite; at fourteen, Genevieve had already stood as tall as she. But now her aunt seemed truly tiny. Time (or was it the disease?) had only intensified her small build, shaving any extra plumpness from her until her bones poked cruelly at tissue-paper skin.

  Like Catharine, Pasquale had a wide mouth, strong cheekbones, heavy-lidded eyes. But on Pasquale it lent an elfin appeal: a dark pixie with a sweet, secret smile. When she cast that smile in Dave’s direction he would stop whatever he was doing—watching a game on TV, prepping vegetables, oiling his tools—and cross the room to embrace her. He would nuzzle her neck and whisper sweet nothings.

  It was a breathlessly romantic gesture that always embarrassed Catharine, who would roll her eyes and snort.

  But Genevieve had been enthralled with Dave and Pasquale’s flagrant adoration, as well as their romantic story: the young American soldier who had loved a woman so much that he had forsaken his native land and stayed to help rebuild Paris from the devastation of war. Who had rarely returned to the United States, not even to visit. Genevieve’s own parents had been devoted to each other, she supposed, but it always seemed more of a civilized partnership than a passionate love affair. Perhaps it was always like this for the offspring, Genevieve thought. Perhaps Catharine didn’t recognize the adoration shining in her parents’ eyes, or never interpreted it as romantic.

  “Qu’est-ce que vous faites là?”

  Genevieve jumped at the sound of a voice demanding to know what she was doing there. It was an attendant: dark hair pulled back in a tight bun, chubby, dressed in a baby-blue smock decorated with tumbling teddy bears.

  “Je suis ici visiter mon tante Pasquale. Je suis américain,” Genevieve said, wincing because she got the gender wrong, referring to her aunt with the masculine pronoun, and to herself using a masculine adjective as well. “I am here to visit my aunt Pasquale,” she had tried to say, adding, “I am American.”

  Mentioning she was American was probably wholly unnecessary, Genevieve thought, as the attendant gave her a frown.

  “She no know you,” the woman responded in English. She wasn’t French either, Genevieve realized. From somewhere else; an island nation, maybe. Tahiti? Just as in the United States, the people working in the nursing home appeared to be mostly female, and many were immigrants. Her name badge read: Pia.

  Pia held one finger up beside her ear and made circles in the air. “She crazy.”

  “I . . .” Genevieve trailed off, not knowing what to say. She wasn’t going to argue the niceties of Alzheimer’s with a health aide who probably knew her au
nt much better than she did, at this point. Still. “I just want to sit with her until she wakes up. Is that okay?’

  The attendant gestured with her chin toward the bed. Genevieve turned to see Pasquale’s dark eyes were open. Her gaze was vacant, fixating on a spot beyond either of them.

  “Comment ça va, ma petite?” Pia said, a big smile on her face. She continued in French, and Genevieve tried her best to keep up. Then she switched back to English. “You feeling better? Look who came from America to see you? From America, so far! Here is your nephew! And I bring you some lunch. Let’s sit up and look pretty!”

  Pia stacked two pillows behind Pasquale and helped her to sit higher in the bed.

  Once Pasquale was arranged, Pia placed the lunch tray on a hospital cart that she positioned in front of her.

  “She was dizzy earlier, so she stay in bed today,” Pia said to Genevieve. “You help her, eh?”

  “Of course.”

  “I be back. Bon appétit, ma petite Pasquale! Your nephew, she help you to eat, okay? C’est le repas, le déjeuner. Lunch! Mmmmm.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Pasquale

  Lunch. Pasquale didn’t care for peas, and the milk was warm.

  Did she even like milk?

  During the war . . . she would have loved anything—anything—to quell the constant, gnawing, nauseating yearning deep in her empty belly. Her parents sent her away to the countryside, to her grandparents on the farm. Thinking it would be safer than Paris. But times were hard in the Franche – Comté too; the Germans had come through, set up shop in the nicest farmhouse in the valley, ate up the stores.

  Paris . . . liberated. She returned too late to see the troops in their triumphant uniforms, marching down the Champs-Élysées.

  She works in her parents’ café near Montmartre. The American soldier comes in every day for coffee. Loud, smiling, everything a joke. Handsome, terrible accent. Younger than Pasquale by two years, she later discovers, but her father calls him “an old soul.”

  Thick wrists. Twinkling eyes. Dashing goatee. The scent of tobacco and something citrus. That Hershey’s chocolate bar. She had nearly fainted from pleasure when it melted on her eager tongue. Not like the chocolate she had known from before the war; strangely sour, as though the milk had turned. But delicious.

  “I think she’s finished.” A voice. A pretty woman, auburn hair, stands in the room. Her eyes as brown as that Hershey’s bar, but sad. As though she carries a great burden.

  Angela?

  “Where’d you get that hair?” Pasquale asked.

  The woman smiled. “From my mama, I guess. How are you, Tante Pasquale?”

  Tante. Not Angela, then. But the hair . . . like Angela’s.

  Another moment passed, and Pasquale realized the woman was still watching her.

  What had the question been? What was she supposed to answer? Had there been a question at all?

  She hated this moment, when she realized the here and now had been taken from her, relentless, unyielding, slipping away like the proverbial wave upon the sand. She tried to reconstruct what had just happened—the words, the meanings—but it was as futile as trying to pin down that wave.

  It was like when Catharine used to pester her, asking about her dreams. Pasquale would try to remember, but it seemed the more she concentrated, the faster the images skated away, fluttering just out of her mental grasp, before she could describe them. Sometimes she made things up to placate her frustrated daughter, to give her something to interpret. Oh, the stories Catharine would tell!

  Her nephew, Pia had said. But Pia must have meant niece. The woman was still looking at her, expectantly.

  What was she supposed to say?

  She gave a polite smile, nodded. Pretended.

  “Ça va, Tante Pasquale?” the young woman asked. “Done with lunch? Finis? I am Genevieve, Tante, do you remember me?”

  Genevieve. Screaming in the night, awakened from a nightmare, sobbing as though her heart was breaking, calling for her mama. Was there anything more terrible, more wrenching than the sound of a child calling out from the anguished depths of night? Calling for a parent who would never come?

  “Are you . . . you are Genevieve?” Pasquale asked.

  “All the way from America,” said another woman, taking the tray of food.

  Pia, Pasquale remembered. The woman taking the tray was named Pia, and she worked here, in this place Pasquale lived now. Pasquale didn’t live in the Village Saint-Paul anymore. Never again. No more friends dropping by and chatting through the window. No more relatives stopping by for couscous. No more Dave.

  No more Dave.

  Pain washed over her. Dave was gone. He had promised never to leave her, and yet he had. How could he have left her?

  Then shame. For forgetting.

  “Genevieve, mon amour,” she said, a huge smile breaking out on her thin face. “I don’t believe it! What are you doing here?”

  “She here for a little visit with her favorite auntie,” said Pia.

  When Genevieve came to them . . . The feel of her, sweaty and anguished, calling out in the night for her mother. Never had Pasquale known a child could cry like that, her small frame racked with sobs.

  How many nights had they been awakened by her cries? Dave rushing to her, cradling her in his big arms, bringing her into the kitchen so Catharine could sleep. Pasquale warming milk at the stove while Dave sits with Genevieve at the table, pushing the hair out of her hot face, her cheeks streaked with tears.

  “Why?” Genevieve’s question, simple and heartbreaking and impossible to answer.

  “We cannot understand why.” Dave’s voice is soft. “Only God knows the reasons for things. It will all be explained one day.”

  Pasquale remains mute, her eyes fixed on the milk warming in the pan, making sure it doesn’t scald. She wishes she could agree with Dave, that she could believe God has a plan, that someone is in charge, that such heartbreak would be explained. But Pasquale lost her religion somewhere around 1944. She knows that for some, the horrors of war increased their allegiance to God; but in her mind, no higher being would have orchestrated such atrocities or could have sat by and allowed them to happen.

  “But écoute-moi, listen to me, Genevieve,” Dave says to the girl in his arms, now hiccupping in the teary aftermath. “You will be happy again one day. You will live, and love. Sometimes love is all there is, but that is enough. Do you understand me?”

  Is it enough? Pasquale watches his gentle, graying head bent low toward his niece.

  Dave had always had more faith than she. The only time she’d seen it challenged was with everything that had happened with Angela. Pasquale had understood what Angela had done, and why, but Dave never could.

  The woman spoke.

  “You are beautiful as ever, Tante Pasquale.”

  Pasquale waved a thin hand in the air, and when she spied it, for a moment she couldn’t believe it was hers. It was so skinny, the bones practically poking through, like in the war.

  But this hand was old. Ancient, ropy blue veins standing out from grayish skin, gnarled knuckles. Her grandmother’s hands, sloughing lavender off the stalks they had dried in the sun. A circle of old women and children, working together to fill a huge basket, big enough for Pasquale to curl up in.

  The rhythmic scratching noise of thin, calloused hands scraping away at the fragrant blooms. The mound of lavender blossoms. The murmur of old voices. Behind them, someone is grinding spices for the night’s couscous. No meat, but there are carrots and onions, wild roots and haricots verts, and of course the couscous one of the boys brought home—they didn’t ask from where. Wild greens and twisted orange mushrooms, the chanterelles her uncle gathers from the forest.

  The woods are their salvation. They eat pigeons, the occasional cat. Rabbits. Dandelions. Roots. Anything.

 
; The soldiers took the chocolate and coffee and butter first thing, but left them with some lard. The old women roast barley and mix it with chicory to replace the coffee, but chocolate remains a sweet, mouthwatering, long-ago memory.

  When she complains, her grandmother gets her a scoop of cool well water from the bucket. Drink deeply. Think of good things, pleasant things. Not food, but the warmth of the sun on her skin. The strange, musky smell of the goat’s pelt when she rubs her nose in it. The lowing of the cows, the ones the Germans haven’t slaughtered, the ones that still provide precious milk and cream. Her grandfather made some sort of deal with the head officer and they were able to keep two of their cows, but the soldiers confiscated the butter and cheese and most of the milk.

  Warm milk. Pasquale reached for the carton that was on the tray, but the tray was gone.

  The young woman leaned over the table to hug Pasquale. She smelled like shampoo and fresh-cut grass and a little like the oil Dave had always used on his door locks. Reddish-brown hair fell in her face.

  “Angela?”

  “No, Tante Pasquale, it’s Genevieve, remember?”

  “Genevieve . . . Angela isn’t with us anymore.”

  “No.”

  “It makes me so sad. . . .” Pasquale’s eyes filled with tears. “Dave’s gone, too.”

  “Yes, I’m so sorry.”

  “So many, gone. My brothers. But . . . there are babies, n’est-ce pas? There are always babies. Did you tell Jim?”

  “Jim? You mean my father? Tell him what?”

  “Écoute-moi, listen to me, Angela. You have to tell him. You have to. I know you don’t like my advice, but you should listen to me on this.”

  “Tell him what, Pasquale?”

  Pasquale glanced around the room: a vase of flowers, half a dozen glittery cards sitting on the windowsill. Acoustic tiles overhead, medical equipment discreetly pushed behind a screen. A bright yellow strip of metal visible through the window. Not at home. She was sick. She can’t remember things. Something on the stove is forgotten, catches fire. It is the last straw. Catharine insists she move.