The Paris Key

by Juliet Blackwell

  “Let’s walk. It’ll be good for us; we can work off our lunch. A preemptive strike.”

  It was slow going. There were hundreds of steps, and Catharine paused frequently to cough and catch her breath, and once to light up a cigarette. Genevieve bit her tongue to keep from remarking upon the connection between cigarettes and lung capacity; she had to fight against the self-righteousness of the native Californian nonsmoker.

  Along the way the steps were lined with souvenir shops and, surprisingly, fabric stores. When Genevieve asked about them, Catharine explained, “This has always been this way. The zone had the textile factories, and so there have always been fabric stores here.”

  They were increasingly jostled by tourists the higher up the hill they went. Street performers dotted the sidewalks, with circles of spectators around them. The neighborhood was even more crowded than the Marais or near Notre-Dame, but then the streets were smaller here, akin to those in the Village Saint-Paul.

  “The artists must have the license to put their stands here,” Catharine said. “And there are many rules: They cannot force anyone to pay for a portrait—if they make your portrait but you don’t like it, you don’t have to buy it. Also, the artists must always keep an original piece of art on their easel.” She lowers her voice. “I think sometimes they get line drawings from China, and then just fill in the colors. But then, I am a cynic.”

  “Seriously? Paint by number?”

  She laughed and shrugged. “They are hooligans, n’est-ce pas? They are artists. They cannot be expected to follow the rules. In the summer many of them go on vacation, and the restos put out more tables and chairs. It is a pity because that is when most of the tourists are here, too. Ironic.”

  “Resto?”

  “Short for ‘restaurant.’ Speaking of which, we will eat here, down this alley, as the food is much better off the tourist track.”

  A mere two blocks over, the crooked cobblestoned street was empty. Here there were homes and small businesses and several more fabric stores.

  Catharine stopped and stubbed out her cigarette before gesturing toward a place that looked like a deli, with a counter in front for ordering sandwiches à emporter, to go. But then she led the way through a brick arch that opened onto a charming back room. Windowless, it had low brick groin vaults and yellow stone walls. The limited menu was written in chalk on huge magnum wine bottles set on each table.

  Three couples were seated at a table in one corner, raising their wineglasses in a toast. It put Genevieve in mind, again, of the photo she had seen at Philippe’s house. Angela looked young (so very young) and vibrant in that picture. Happy. With a man other than Jim by her side. Not for the first time, Genevieve reminded herself that a man sitting next to her mother in the picture didn’t, in itself, mean a thing. Especially in Paris, where the men were flirts and it was de rigueur to mingle and seduce. It was second nature to Parisians. Perhaps not to Catharine, she thought, looking across the table at her cousin, but to most Parisians.

  “Do you know anything in particular your mother would tell my mother to be truthful about?” Genevieve asked after they placed their lunch orders.

  “How do you mean?”

  “When I saw your mother the other day, she thought I was my mother, Angela. And she was urging me to tell my father something.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. My mother persists in a dream state now. Ironic, really, since she never wanted to tell me her dreams, and now that is virtually all she does.”

  “Yes, I understand. But . . . I don’t know. I wish I knew my mother better. Can you tell me anything about her, about when she came to visit?”

  “I was just a girl. I don’t remember that much about her. I know there was a falling-out, but that was all.”

  “A falling-out? With your parents?”

  “With my father.”

  “What kind of falling-out?”

  She shrugged. “It was . . . I don’t know. It had to do with her injury.”

  “Her arm.”

  Catharine nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “I was not permitted to know what happened. A lot of whispers. There are secrets, and then there are not.” She left off with yet another shrug, digging into her salade composée.

  “So you don’t have any idea what the falling-out was over, or what happened to her arm?”

  Catharine shrugged, ate, and remained silent.

  Leave it to Catharine to start talking in circles just when things start getting interesting. Genevieve felt a surge of unreasonable irritation, and on its heels envy, that Catharine had known her mother back then, had shared a room with Angela and yet refused to tell Genevieve in detail about every nuance, every shared story or confidence or bobby pin. What Genevieve wouldn’t give to go back in time, to have been a fly on that wall.

  She turned back to her own delectable meal of entrecôte aux cèpes—steak with mushrooms—and tamped down the ridiculous impulse to throttle her cousin.

  They traded a few remarks about Catharine’s extended family in Paris and her godmother’s place in Provence, and then Genevieve told Catharine about Nick and his wife. Finally, Catharine brought up her eternal question:

  “So, are you going to tell me your dreams?”

  Genevieve considered making something up, perhaps the fanciful scene still in her head from earlier atop Notre-Dame. But instead, she told her cousin the truth.

  “The only one I remember that’s interesting is me trying to open a locked door and being unsuccessful. But then . . . when I finally get close to opening it, I feel afraid, like maybe I shouldn’t open it.”

  “You are afraid to see what is behind the door?” Catharine’s intense gaze drilled into Genevieve, making her feel uncomfortable, embarrassed.

  “I should have gone with the gargoyle thing.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing. Sorry.”

  “So you are afraid of your own curiosity.”

  “Well, you know what they say . . . curiosity killed the cat.”

  “But ‘satisfaction brought it back.’”

  “Is that really the next line?”

  Catharine merely raised one eyebrow at her, as though to say You see? I do have some knowledge. The waiter came to whisk away their plates. They both ordered espresso.

  “What I find interesting is that you should have such a . . . prosaic dream.”

  “Probably I’m worried about failing in my new endeavor here in Paris. Not very exciting.”

  “But this was also my father’s profession, do not forget. And he came into your life at a very important time. So perhaps you think he is hiding something from you?”

  “In the dream he’s urging me on, encouraging me to open the door.”

  “Ah! This is interesting. But you do know that in your dreams, you play every role, do you not?” Catharine was getting fidgety, playing with the leftover silverware. She looked around the restaurant, as though searching for something. “I can’t believe there is no more smoking in Parisian cafés. We are in Paris, are we not? This is hardly civilized.”

  “Do you want to step outside?”

  “No, no, I will survive. So, when I was thinking about you, I always think of Jean-Paul Sartre.”

  “We look alike?”

  “No, of course not . . . oh, you are making a joke. But you do know what Sartre’s most famous play was about, don’t you?”

  Genevieve thought for a moment . . . she wasn’t that familiar with French literature, much less philosophy. She had a vague notion that Sartre wrote about choice and existence, all of which led to a lot of ennui and world-weariness. After Philippe had mentioned him the other day, Genevieve had intended to look him up. But without an Internet connection at home, such activities were difficult. She should find the library and dedicate a day to studying. But then a
gain . . . if she couldn’t understand philosophy in English, trying to plow through it in French seemed like a rather wasted effort.

  “Huis Clos,” Catharine said helpfully. “In English it’s usually called No Exit.”

  “Oh, right.” Genevieve realized she was playing with a little bit of spilled salt on the tabletop, moving the grains around. She feared Catharine’s hawk eyes might decide the shapes meant something, and abandoned them. “That’s the one where Sartre says that hell is other people? That sounds about right.”

  “You are joking again. What I meant to point out is that No Exit is about people locked in a room. They can’t open the door, can’t get out.”

  “You’re saying they are in need of a locksmith?”

  “In a spiritual sense, yes. They need to learn the truth in order to set themselves free.”

  Genevieve gave Catharine a look out of the corner of her eye. “I’m not sure that’s what the play’s about. I thought they were in hell, always wanting something they can never have, and that there’s no way out no matter what.”

  “‘L’enfer, c’est les autres.’”

  “That’s what I said: ‘Hell is other people.’”

  “Yes, but it does not mean exactly that. It means that we can only know ourselves through others’ perceptions of us.”

  “Really? Huh.” Genevieve had no idea how this related to her dream but was afraid to ask. Was Catharine saying that she was afraid of what other people thought of her?

  “When you were a teenager, you idolized my father. And then you found out that he and your mother had not spoken in some years. That he was angry with her. And you felt very upset about that.”

  “I did?”

  “You don’t remember? That is why you were angry when you left us.”

  “I don’t . . .” Genevieve tried to think back. That time was so odd in her mind: She remembered certain scenes with startling clarity, while others were murky or gone altogether, as though she had been on drugs. Not long after returning to Petaluma from Paris, when her grades took a nosedive and she was caught red-handed breaking into a neighbor’s house, Genevieve was ordered to go see a therapist. The woman—who wore a lot of loose natural fibers and smelled of patchouli oil—told Genevieve that “memory confusion” was normal for “young people” who had gone through “traumatic events.” Apparently it was common to forget things entirely, especially if those things challenged important parts of the psyche that needed to be protected.

  “I thought I was angry because I didn’t want to leave Paris,” Genevieve said.

  “That, too, maybe.”

  “And you really don’t know what happened between them?”

  “I don’t,” she said with a firm shake of her head. “But he never forgave himself. When he found out that Angela was sick, and then died before he could even arrange to go visit her . . . well, for the first time his dreams were full of hastiness, and grapes that were sour.”

  At Genevieve’s questioning look, Catharine explained, “These are symbols of rejection, loss, and regret. Mostly regret.”

  Genevieve sipped her wine, wondering what could have happened between the siblings.

  “So, you see,” Catharine continued, “there are things worse than locked doors. It is the secrets they keep that threaten to destroy us.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  After lunch Catharine and Genevieve went by the Alzheimer’s center to visit Pasquale. She was vague but pleasant, not at all like the other day, when she seemed to be in a different world entirely. Together they strolled through a courtyard garden attached to the building. Genevieve had been hoping Pasquale would say something further about Angela and Jim, but while Pasquale didn’t recognize Genevieve, she chatted about things in the here and now: the color of the leaves, a spider on the wall.

  “This is one thing that is so difficult with the Alzheimer’s,” said Catharine as they left the building. “There are good days and bad. You never know who you will meet. Come, I will walk you back to the Métro. Unless you want to come play with the sand table?”

  “Actually, I was thinking I’d walk back.”

  “Walk back?” Catharine’s jaw dropped. “That’s . . . I don’t know, four or five kilometers, at least. Maybe more.”

  “I like to walk, and it doesn’t look like rain. Is there a route you would recommend?”

  Catharine’s look of horror finally ceded to resignation. She gave a slight shrug before lighting a cigarette. “I suppose . . . in a car the most direct route would be the rue des Martyrs, this way. I will walk you there. You will not get lost?”

  “If I do I’ll just ask someone to point me toward the Seine. I can find my way from there.”

  As they walked, Catharine promised to try to find someone who could help with the paperwork for the locksmith shop—of course, Genevieve had forgotten to bring the bright pink papers to share with her.

  “You bring them next time. It is probably too bad you alerted the authorities that you were coming—probably you could have worked for many years with no one noticing.”

  “Maybe, but it’s too late now. And besides, it would be pretty embarrassing to be deported from France.”

  She shrugged. “The secret to dealing with the bureaucrats is to keep insisting—they try to defeat you with requests for more papers, more documentations, but if you persist, eventually they will cooperate.”

  “So I hear.”

  “Well, we are arrived. So, you head down that way until you hit rue de Faubourg Montmartre, continue to rue de Montmartre, and turn right at rue du Louvre. Then straight on toward the Seine, as you say.”

  “Thank you for lunch, Catharine. It was wonderful. And thank you for everything you’ve done—letting me use the apartment, the food, everything.”

  “It is no problem,” she said, waving away the gratitude. “I have no use for the place. It is good it is occupied by someone happy to be there.”

  “I . . . I adored your parents, you know. They saved my life, I think.”

  Catharine shrugged noncommittally, looked away.

  “All I mean is . . . you were lucky to have them as parents.”

  “Do you know something? No one believes me when I say this, but it is the truth: It is a terrible thing to be the only child of a couple in love.”

  • • •

  Genevieve stuck to the path Catharine had suggested, proceeding down rue des Martyrs toward rue Montmartre, because she wasn’t up for getting lost in Paris. Not yet, anyway.

  Normally she loved walking without a plan, crossing streets when she had the light or turning the corner when something caught her fancy. Oakland was crisscrossed with little pedestrian alleys and staircases leading through backyards and behind residential lots, quaint relics of the WPA era, when the government used to employ people to construct neighborhood improvement projects. Sometimes Genevieve walked so far she would look up, almost as if coming out of a trance, to find herself in a “bad” part of town.

  But she had never experienced anything worse than strange looks from men lingering on corners, or dogs rushing their chain-link enclosures, barking and snarling. In fact, in recent months she had been walking so much that she quickly wore out the soles of her shoes, buying new ones every couple of months. It had become her one big wardrobe expense.

  Walking was one way to keep her mind off the desire to let herself into whichever place she wanted: an empty house for sale, a crypt, a warehouse. Genevieve wasn’t motivated by greed, not for objects, anyway. She was fascinated by the intimate details of other people’s lives. What made them tick, how they organized themselves . . . especially what made them happy. She hadn’t given in to the compulsion since she was a kid, but it bothered her that she still felt the pull.

  It was a pull that increased the unhappier she became.

  She’d tried talking to a counselor a
bout it once, but the young therapist hadn’t been trained in how to maintain a poker face, and his quick look of surprise and worry was enough to keep Genevieve from returning for a second session.

  So she walked. Jason would have preferred her to work out in the gym at the club, using a treadmill “like a normal person.” But Genevieve liked the view: Life unfolded before her slowly, like a surreal foreign movie taking its time to set the scene before getting to the meat of the story. All leading up to some really depressing point, of course, as foreign movies usually did. That life was pain, or the banality of evil. Something like that.

  And as she walked down the rue des Martyrs, Genevieve definitely felt as though she were strolling through a movie set. Even given the relatively humble neighborhood—the tourists rarely ventured far from the butte of Montmartre—everything was impossibly charming.

  Could the deep yellow façade of the coiffeur shop (with Dames and Messieurs written on either side of the door in Art Nouveau script) be any cuter? Or how about the pharmacy, with its arched Gothic windows painted a chalky blue, a pretty white-coated woman standing in the doorway, chatting with a handsome deliveryman?

  How long would it take for the wonder to wear off? For buying aspirin in such a place to begin to feel normal, even ho-hum? Did a person ever stop seeing (feeling) the beauty, the history of Paris? Did stone walls begin to feel cold and depressing, to the point where she would ever yearn for the plastic, standardized façades of an Applebee’s or an Olive Garden?

  There must be some similar franchises in France, she felt sure. Out in the suburbs, in newer areas, there must be big-box stores and chain restaurants. Probably they were as uninspired and soulless as in the U.S., no better or worse.

  But one thing was sure: Spending the day “walking in Paris” sounded a lot more glamorous than spending the day doing the same thing in Oakland.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Angela, 1983