Her hands tremble as she fumbles with the lid. In the end, she gives up and hands it back to me. “Open it, please.”
I do as I’m told, not realizing I’m holding my breath until it escapes all at once. Inside is a pillow-shaped locket engraved with a pair of lilies. I find Maman’s eyes. She blinks slowly, offering the slightest of nods.
It takes a moment to locate the catch, but finally I’m staring at the face of a stranger. He’s handsome in a sharp, brooding way, with high cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and a head of thick, dark curls. His mouth is full, almost feminine, tilted up at the corners, as if trying to suppress a smile.
“His name was Erich Freede,” Maman says softly. “He was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris the summer before you were born.”
She falls silent then, though I can feel her gaze on me as I continue to stare at the photograph. Eventually, her words sink in. The summer before you were born. I look up, a question caught like a bone in my throat.
“He was your father.”
Father. The word sounds foreign on her lips, but her gaze never wavers.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because we’ve never spoken of him. We must do that now.”
I’ve always been curious about the man who’d managed to find a chink in my mother’s armor, but suddenly I don’t want to talk about him or why she’s suddenly decided to have this conversation.
“He was on his way to a rehearsal when we met. I was delivering a dress on Rue de Madrid, near the school. It had rained all morning and the streets were full of puddles. I was waiting to cross at the corner when a car sped past, soaking me with muddy water. I was horrified when I looked down at the dress box. It was soaking wet and filthy, and all I could think was, Maman will murder me if this dress is ruined. And then he was there, holding out a handkerchief.”
“Erich,” I say, pronouncing the name slowly, getting used to the feel of it.
“Yes. Erich.” A rare smile softens the lines illness has etched into her face. “He was wearing a white summer suit that looked like it had been made for him and black-and-white brogues so shiny, I could have used them to powder my nose. One of the smart set, with his straw boater and immaculately knotted tie. And there I was, dripping like a wet cat.”
“And he fell in love with you then and there,” I supply, reading the rest in her eyes.
Her expression goes soft and dreamy. “We both did. He was so handsome that when he asked me my name, I couldn’t remember. It was as if my mind had suddenly been wiped clean, as if nothing had happened to me before that moment. He helped me clean up the box, then bent down to wipe the mud off my shoes. I was so flustered I knocked his hat off into the street, and before we knew it, neither of us could stop laughing. He gave me his coat to cover my wet clothes and walked me the rest of the way.”
I find myself smiling. It’s a side of Maman I have never imagined—a young woman on the brink of a grand passion. “What happened after you delivered the dress?”
“We spent every spare moment together, usually in some park or other. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. He would bring a blanket and food, and I’d make some excuse about where I was going. We’d eat, and then he would play his violin for me. He played so beautifully, as if he were telling a story every time he picked up his bow. I went to a few of his concerts at the school. All those musicians playing together on one stage, and all I could hear was him. Or at least it seemed that way to me.”
“How long did it last?”
“Seven months and thirteen days.”
The swiftness and precision of her answer surprises me. “What happened?”
“He finished his schooling. It was time to go home.”
“Home?”
She closes her eyes, wincing. “Berlin.”
Her anguish is palpable and so uncharacteristic. Perhaps because I thought her incapable of such feelings. “I’m sorry he left you, Maman.”
Her eyes open slowly, dark and bottomless. “It was me,” she whispers. “I ended it.”
“You? Why?”
“He wanted me to go back to Germany with him, to marry him. But your grandmother forbid it. Even when I told her there was going to be a baby.”
“Because of the shop?”
“Because of the war,” she replies quietly. “Erich was a German. A boche, as they were known then—and still are, I suppose. My mother never forgave them for the Somme. So many of our boys were killed there, slaughtered in the trenches by the thousands. She couldn’t forgive it. Many couldn’t. She said marrying a German would bring far more shame than a bastard child.”
“So that was it? You just let him leave?”
She nods, pulling in a phlegmy breath. “His parents were dead, and his sisters had gone to live with an aunt while he attended school. It was time to go back to his responsibilities. I could have made him stay,” she whispers thickly. “If I had told him about you, he would have stayed.”
I stare at her, stunned. “You never told him you were pregnant?”
She turns her face away. “It would only have made things harder for us both. We had . . . responsibilities.”
I blink at her, trying to understand. It isn’t that I’ve missed having a father—you can’t miss what you’ve never had—but her argument makes no sense. “What could be more responsible than marrying the father of your child?”
“It wasn’t as easy as that. There was the shop to think about. I couldn’t leave Maman with only Lilou to help. Not when I knew she wouldn’t stay. Even when we were girls, my sister had one foot out the door. And then there were the stories—all the broken Roussel hearts, the ones who defied the rules of our calling and suffered for it. Maman said mine would be next and that when it happened, I couldn’t come back.” A pair of tears squeezes from between her clenched lids, leaving thin silver tracks in their wake. “I would be on my own—like my mother was after Lilou was born.”
“So you kept your secret and broke Erich’s heart instead.”
“I was afraid.”
The admission brings a lump to my throat. “And you never saw him again?”
She shakes her head, slowly, painfully. “I had a letter once, begging me to reconsider. I was afraid I would weaken, so I threw it in the fire. Lilou was livid with me. She never understood duty. And I . . .” Her eyes drift from mine. “I never understood anything else.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say softly, because I am. But I’m angry too. That I’d never had the chance to know this man who told stories with his violin or the woman my mother had been then, the one who’d fallen in love with a stranger on a street corner. I would have liked that woman. But the years have transformed her into someone else—into an unhappy echo of the very mother who had forced her to deny her heart. It seems a terrible irony as I sit listening to her story, and I wonder if she realizes it, too, and if that’s why she’s decided to tell me her story.
“It must have broken your heart to let him go,” I say gently. And then a thought suddenly occurs. “Is that why you’re telling me now, because you want me to help you find him?”
Her tears come suddenly and noisily, like a dam breaking, and I can’t think of anything to say. I have no experience in offering her comfort and I’m apparently doing it badly. “I’m so sorry, Maman. Whatever I said, I’m sorry.”
“He was Jewish,” she sobs raggedly. “Erich Freede was Jewish.”
I stare at her, struggling to connect the words with the anguish in her eyes. It takes a moment, but finally I understand. A Jew. In Germany.
“The Nazis,” I say quietly. “Mon dieu.”
She closes her eyes, dragging in another sob. “The stories . . . The camps . . . I can’t bear to think of it.”
I glance at the locket in my hand, recalling the day one of Maman’s clients shared her account of Kristallnacht, how she had closed the shop and gone to her room and not come out until morning. And how, when she heard about the Vél’ d’Hiv roundup on the ra
dio, she had wept uncontrollably and refused to eat for days. She hadn’t been crying for humanity; she’d been crying for Erich Freede, because she’d never stopped loving him.
It was why she’d been hanging on every word of the daily BBC broadcasts, scouring every line of the contraband newspapers that sometimes found their way into our letter box. And perhaps why she’s taken to feverishly fingering her rosary of late—a hedge against evil.
“Have you . . . had news of him?”
“No.” She covers her mouth, eyes clenched as a fresh pair of tears spills down her cheeks. “For years, I’ve imagined him playing all the great halls in Europe, holding audiences in the palm of his hand. It was a way of holding on to him, imagining him happy after everything that happened, and now . . . I don’t know where he is. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.”
My heart aches as I watch her speak, but I’m afraid too. Her breathing is thick and raspy, her lips blanched of color as she labors to breathe. “Please, Maman. You mustn’t upset yourself.”
“If only I hadn’t listened to my mother . . . If I’d told him about you and asked him to stay, he might be safe now.”
“You don’t know that, Maman. Jews are being rounded up here too. We’re doing it. The French.”
She struggles up from her pillow, clutching at my hand. “But it might have been different. Don’t you see? If he had remained in Paris, I would have been able to warn him. Instead, I broke his heart . . . and now I’ve killed him.”
I press her back against her pillows, hushing her like a child in the throes of a nightmare. I tell her to close her eyes and I stroke her hair, trying to recall a time when the roles were reversed and she was the one to comfort me. I can’t. She’s never been that kind of mother. Still, I can’t deny her that small bit of tenderness. Not when her heart is breaking.
I sit on the edge of her bed, waiting for her to quiet, and think of the maléfice—the curse. Maman’s mother had warned her that loving Erich Freede would lead to heartbreak. But how was that different from her current anguish, wondering if the man she loved was hiding somewhere, like a cornered animal, or imprisoned at the mercy of monsters at one of the camps? If that’s what comes of protecting your heart, I want no part of it.
Maman withdraws her hand from mine, brushing impatiently at her tears. “I wanted you to have the locket because I want you to have a part of your father. And because I need you to do something.”
I nod mutely.
“You will leave Paris one day. Take the locket when you go. Take him away from this place with all its terrible memories. Promise me you will.”
“Leave Paris?” I stare at her, stunned. “But where would I go? Paris is my home.”
“Not anymore. And you will leave. You must.”
“But the shop. The work. You always said—”
“I said a lot of things. I taught you to live for the work, because that’s what I was taught, but I was wrong. I was wrong about so much.”
“Maman—”
“Let me speak!”
I open my mouth, then close it again. It will do me no good to argue.
“I’ve always kept you at arm’s length. No, don’t shake your head. We both know it’s true. But you don’t know why.” She drags in a breath, rattling and wet. “You were so like him, Soline. So much it hurt to look at you. You have my eyes, my hair, my mouth, but you have always had his heart. He was a dreamer—un rêveur. He had such plans for us.” She pauses to drag in a shuddering breath. “I took that from him—and I was reminded of it every time I looked at you.”
Something in my chest lets go as I process her words. For years, I’ve wondered what I had done to deserve her wintery brand of motherhood, hoping to find something, anything that might thaw her toward me. Now I understand that there was nothing. There’s a strange relief in knowing.
I lay my hand over hers. “I think you should rest. Your medicine—”
Her eyes flash feverishly. “Be quiet and listen. A chance is coming for you, Soline. One that will take you away from here. You must take it.”
“It’s too late to go to Lilou. London is in the crosshairs too.”
“Not Lilou. Farther away. And for good.”
“But the shop . . .”
She shakes her head, silencing me. “That’s over now. The Nazis have seen to that. They’ll scorch the earth before they’re finished. But you will start again. In a new place.”
An uneasy churning has begun beneath my ribs. “How do you know this?”
Her eyes flash again. “How do you think? I took the hairbrush from your bureau while you were gone to the butcher.”
“You performed a reading . . . on me?”
“Not fully. You came back too soon. But I saw enough.”
The admission astonishes me. She’s always been so adamant about the dangers of using la magie to meddle in our own affairs. “But you always said—”
“Yes, yes.” She sighs, flapping a bony hand. “I know what I said, but I bent the rules. There are times when we must know which way the wind will blow, and it will blow you far away, ma fille. Far from Paris and all this madness. But you will not escape unscathed. There will be hardship and heartbreak along the way. You must hold tight to your faith, Soline, whatever comes.”
I look at her, bewildered. The Roussels have no faith, as such. We have our needles and our thread. That is our faith—The Work. “Please don’t speak in riddles, Maman.”
“My faith was tested once, when I was a little older than you. I failed.” She stops, craning her neck to pull in a breath. “I had no faith in what could be—a life of my own and love. Because I was not a dreamer. And so I followed the path marked out for me. But you, So-So . . . you have such dreams. And you’re gifted. More gifted than I ever was.”
For a moment, I can’t even blink. I’ve waited so long for even the tiniest crumb of recognition, proof that she saw me at all. Now, suddenly . . . praise. I want to weep, but I know Maman will not like it. “I had a good teacher,” I say instead.
She waves the words away, impatient to finish what she has to say. “This chance I spoke of . . . it will test your heart. It might even break it. But the most precious gifts always come at the highest price. I learned this too late . . . which is why I’m telling you now. You must—”
She breaks off, clutching a handkerchief to her mouth to muffle a sudden bout of coughing. By the time the spasms finally stop she’s ashen and shaking, her lips faintly blue. I reach for her hand, the birdlike bones fragile beneath my fingers, and it suddenly strikes me how seldom I’ve seen them quiet over the years. Always with a needle, a tape, a pair of shears. Stitching, pinning, hemming. But soon her illness will still them for good.
My eyes well before I can look away. She catches me by the sleeve, and for an instant, I glimpse a softness in her face. “No tears, mon tendre. Not for me. You will need them later. So many changes are coming, and you must be ready.”
I do as I’m told and blot my eyes on my sleeve, but her grave predictions have me rattled. “You’re frightening me with all this dire talk, Maman. Can’t you just tell me what you know?” But the moment the words leave my mouth, I regret them. “Never mind,” I say quickly. “You’re tired. You mustn’t talk any more tonight.”
She turns her head away, and for a moment, I think she’s crying, but when she looks at me again, her eyes are dry. When she finally speaks, her voice is slushy and thick. “Here is what I know, ma fille. There is a grief worse than death. It is the grief of a life half-lived. Not because you don’t know what could have been—but because you do. You realize too late that it was there for the taking—right there in your hands—and you let it slip away. Because you let something—or someone—keep you apart. But when your time comes, you can do it differently, ma fille. And it will come. But you must keep him alive, So-So.” She pauses, pressing a fist to her breast. “Here, in your heart. And never give up on what can be true for you. As long as you keep his beautiful face in your
heart, he will never truly be lost. There will always be a way back.”
She’s rambling now, hovering on the edge of sleep, confusing her past with my future. Her sleeping draught is taking effect. “Rest now, Maman. Close your eyes and rest.”
Her eyes remain locked on my face, suddenly wide and fever bright. “There are times for holding on in this life, So-So, and times for letting go. You must learn to know the difference—and trust your heart enough to let it break. It’s a hard thing, this holding on. But that’s where the faith comes in. Do you understand?”
I nod, because finally I think I do. I glance at the locket, still open in my lap. Erich Freede’s dark eyes stare back at me. Keep his face . . . his beautiful face . . . always in your heart. Yes. For Maman’s sake, I will.
“Sleep now,” I say softly.
She lets go of my hand and closes her eyes, settling into her pillows with a long, spongy sigh. I linger briefly, digesting all that has passed between us, wishing it could have come sooner, stunned that it’s come at all. The silence stretches. I stand, then turn to go.
“Leave him with me,” she calls softly, her voice thin and childlike. “Just for a little while.”
I close the locket and press it into her palm, curling her fingers around it, then bend down to place a kiss on her forehead. It’s an act I’ve never performed before—and will never perform again.
The next morning, I enter her room to find that she has slipped away. She lies quiet against her pillows, her face pale in death. But beautiful, too, as if slipping her skin has at long last freed her to be happy. Her hand lies open against the sheets, the locket and her rosary lying loose in her palm. I put the rosary in her bureau, then fasten the locket around my neck. The weight of it between my breasts feels foreign. My father. A stranger. But I’ve made a promise, and I will keep it.
I feel no surprise at finding her gone, only a dull wave of sadness as I pull the bedroom door closed behind me. I knew in my bones that our talk last night was meant to be a kind of goodbye.
The Keeper of Happy Endings Page 10