I'll See You in Paris

by Michelle Gable

  Pregnant and fattening by the day, Laurel worked to finish her degree and also to formalize her break from Charlie. He refused to grant the divorce and took to harassing her, materializing on campus and appearing outside buildings late at night. Laurel lopped off her hair and dyed it brown, hoping the disguise might suffice, praying he’d eventually give up.

  Former golden boy Charlie Haley soon became quite the adversary of campus security, who escorted him off the grounds on an almost daily basis. Charlie was by then a full-blown drunk, which meant he was mostly relegated to a wheelchair. The students who didn’t know Laurel would forever remember him as the homeless wino that terrorized the Wellesley girls.

  Laurel never told Charlie that she was pregnant, even before she left, but suspected he knew. As her due date approached, he circled closer, tighter, like a shark around its prey. Laurel dressed in baggy, flowing clothes but at some point the wind would’ve blown and revealed the budding Annie hidden inside.

  On August 31, 1979, on the fifth floor of Massachusetts General Hospital, Laurel Innamorati Haley gave birth to a bald-headed, blue-eyed, seven-pound baby girl named Annabelle. She was so delicious this girl, slept six hours a night straight out of the gates. She hardly ever cried.

  The only witnesses to the birth were one doctor, two nurses, and an Eastern European woman named Blanka who sometimes cleaned Laurel’s apartment when she was too spent or sick to do it herself. On the birth certificate, Laurel wrote “unknown” in the place a father’s name would go.

  Shortly after Annie’s arrival, Blanka, the maid who knew nothing about Charlie, told Laurel stories of a handicapped grifter who hung around the building’s lobby. One morning she watched him argue with the security guard, a well-heeled older couple standing behind him.

  “That’s odd,” Laurel said, trying to hide her panic.

  Charlie knew where she was and had the support and backing of his parents. The mere thought petrified Laurel. Bad dye jobs and ill-fitting clothes would serve no bulwark against the levels of wealth and fury Charlie’s family had.

  Could his family assert any sort of claim on Laurel? Her apartment? The chubby, happy, rosy-cheeked babe of perfection? Laurel was technically still Charlie’s wife and Annie his child. Because of this, Laurel existed in a constant state of medium-grade fear, which was the very worst fear of all. You never knew when it might explode into full-blown terror.

  One unusually warm winter morning, after a call to the admissions department at Georgetown Law, Laurel walked to the bank, baby Annie nestled in a wrap against her chest. She may not have been at Berkeley anymore, but she knew where to find all the good hippies, and therefore the best baby carriers.

  Once at the bank, Laurel withdrew the sum of five hundred dollars and then chatted with the teller while another employee summoned the manager. He needed to speak with her, they said. Laurel braced herself as Annie wiggled against her chest.

  “Is something wrong, Mr. Green?” she asked, heart thumping.

  “I have a telegram for you, ma’am. Just came in this morning.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Laurel said and took the paper.

  She breathed in and started to read.

  WESTERN UNION

  TELEGRAM

  1/7/1980

  MRS LAUREL HALEY

  C/O BANC OF BOSTON

  10 BOYLSTON ST

  BOSTON MA 02115

  TO MRS HALEY

  PLEASE COME RETRIEVE YOUR PAINTINGS FROM MY HOME AT QUAI DE BETHUNE PARIS. I AM WITH CHILD AND NEED SPACE. MUCH APPRECIATED YOURS TRULY MRS JAMES SETON.

  Mrs. Seton. Mrs. James Seton. Is this who Laurel had heard on the line? The wife of Jamie, not of Win?

  Maybe, she thought. Just maybe …

  Giddy with a prospect she didn’t understand, Laurel took out two thousand more dollars and rushed home to pack. They were on winter break and classes would not resume for another few weeks.

  The next morning she taxied to Logan Airport and bought a one-way ticket to Paris. As dusk draped across Boston, that so-called City of Notions, Laurel boarded a plane with only a backpack, a baby, and a head full of hope.

  Eighty-five

  ÎLE SAINT-LOUIS

  PARIS

  NOVEMBER 2001

  “So you did go backpacking in college,” Annie said when her mother stopped to catch her breath. “In a sense.”

  She noticed then how narrow the space between Laurel and Gus as they sat on the couch. What had they talked about in the ninety minutes Jamie and Annie were sipping wine downstairs? What had they decided?

  “Except you told me that you went to Banbury,” Annie said. “Not Paris.”

  “Oh, we went to Banbury. As soon as I realized that’s where Win was.”

  Laurel stood and began pacing, hands planted firmly in the back pockets of her jeans. From across the room, Gus watched, eyes shining. At once Annie thought of a quote from Edith Wharton: “Each time you happen to me all over again.”

  Was that what Laurel was doing? Happening all over again? It’d been so long. Her mother was—Annie had to say it—middle-aged, clinging to the last vestiges of her forties. Then again, there was a lot of time left in the game.

  Maybe … Annie thought just as her mother had so long ago. Just maybe …

  “So then what?” Annie asked. “You took me to Banbury. You were single. Gus was if not single, at least unmarried. But nothing happened, given you ended up back where you started. In Boston. Finishing up at Wellesley.”

  “He refused to see me,” Laurel said. “Had some intermediary tell me to ‘bugger off.’”

  “That was my sister-in-law,” Gus said. “Though I put her up to it.”

  “Why would you put her up to it?” Annie asked.

  “Fear. Nothing more. The reports of Pru’s return were widespread. Everyone in the village remembered the young girl who lived at the Grange so they were all atwitter when she came back to inspect her land, toting a scrummy baby and sporting a diamond ring on her finger.”

  A diamond, as it turned out, that wasn’t nearly as large as the first. It was a diamond Laurel purchased for herself, so no one would hassle her. Unwed mothers were still a stigma, pretty girls forever hit on, particularly when traveling alone.

  “After I heard this,” Gus said. “And saw for myself, from afar, I found I was spent. I couldn’t go through it again.”

  “You refused to see her,” Annie said to Gus. Then to her mother: “And you went back to Boston. For a second time.”

  Laurel nodded, her lips pressed tightly together. She tried to blink away the tears forming on her lashes.

  “So when did Charlie die?” Annie asked. “How?”

  “Can’t we just…” her mom said. “Can’t we just say he died? That there was an accident and leave it at that?”

  “Tell her,” Gus said, his voice like gravel. “Now. She deserves to know the truth.”

  “I know. God, I know.” Laurel pushed her hands against her eyes and let out a small, strangled breath. “It’s so damned hard.”

  She looked at the ceiling, for a minute, and then to Annie.

  “If I’d stayed in Banbury,” Laurel said. “If I’d stayed in Paris. If I hadn’t stayed with Charlie. If I never went back to Boston. If I’d never met Edith Gray at all. What would’ve prevented that?” She pointed toward the door. “What would’ve ensured this?”

  She pointed to Annie, and then to Gus.

  “That’s a lot of ifs,” Annie said. “And they explain nothing. What happened?”

  Laurel paused and opened her mouth. With this gesture she also opened every last part of her that had previously been closed. To Annie, to others, and even to herself.

  Finally, Laurel began to speak. This time she wouldn’t hold anything back.

  Eighty-six

  BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

  JANUARY 1980

  Laurel and baby Annie returned to Boston. Win refused to see her so Laurel gave up on him for good.

  They took a cab fr
om Logan, but two blocks from Laurel’s building the roads were closed, as if a movie were being filmed, or a politician were caravanning through town. The street and sidewalks were littered with people, hundreds of people. Police. Reporters. News vans. Spectators socked together in packs.

  Laurel didn’t think much of it, at first. She lived in Boston, along with the well-known and well-to-do but not always well behaved. Scandals happened with some frequency, as did less posh crimes—shootings, larcenies. It was a city. Mostly Laurel was irritated that she’d have to walk the extra distance in the sleet with a newborn baby cocooned beneath her coat.

  “Not sure I can get much closer, ma’am,” the driver said. “Is that your building? Number fifty-five?”

  “Yes,” Laurel replied, peering through the glass and thinking the melee seemed greater than was typical for a dishonored politician or bad-acting ballplayer. “Do you know what’s going on?”

  “It’s the Kellogg boy.”

  “The Kellogg boy?”

  Laurel’s heart thundered. His last name was Haley but Charlie was foremost a Kellogg boy.

  There were lots of them though, she told herself. It was a big family, expanding by the day. Hell, Charlie had four siblings, two of them male, as well as buckets of cousins. There were plenty of Kellogg boys to go around.

  “Yeah,” the driver said. “You know. The one who … you been under a rock or something?”

  “Out of the country,” she whispered, her mouth dry.

  Annie’s eyes flickered open. She started to squirm.

  “Right.” He tapped his forehead. “The airport. International arrivals. Well, anyway, you know the Kellogg family?”

  She nodded, her mind whirling.

  “It was the tall kid. Good-looking, but lost a leg in Nam? You know who I’m talking about?”

  This time Laurel couldn’t even muster a nod. It was all she could do to keep breathing.

  “Apparently his wife left him,” the driver said. “She lived in your building. Had a baby, same as you. Well, he got some maid to let him into the apartment.”

  “He was in the apartment?”

  “Yup. Shot the maid—”

  “Blanka!” she cried.

  The driver looked at her, confused. Blanka’s name was probably nowhere in the story. She was merely the help.

  “The boy shot the maid,” the man went on, “then hung himself in the bathroom.”

  “Oh my God…”

  Annie was full-on writhing now, struggling to break free of her mother’s hold. Laurel squeezed her tighter into her chest.

  “Oh my God,” Laurel said again. “Is the maid okay? Is he?”

  “Hell no. Gruesome scene between the shooting and the hanging.” The driver shook his head. “Someone found him two days later. Crazy thing is, they don’t know where the wife and baby are. I hope like hell that they’re alive. Count yourself lucky, ma’am, that you’ve been out of town. Some people. You just never know, do ya? You never flippin’ know.”

  Eighty-seven

  ÎLE SAINT-LOUIS

  PARIS

  NOVEMBER 2001

  Despite expectations to the contrary, Gladys Deacon Spencer-Churchill, Her Grace the Duchess of Marlborough, never made it to the century mark. She passed at ninety-seven in St. Andrew’s Hospital, one stepgrandson, one Pole, and one writer by her side.

  Her lovers were many, her exploits vast, the storied lives that ran against hers already fill a thousand other books. And while it might seem sad, that all her passion resulted in but one very dry and bleak union, on her deathbed Gladys Deacon viewed it otherwise.

  All she ever wanted was to be remembered. And she understood that memories happened in the mind but also in the heart. In the end, the love Lady Marlborough sought she gave instead. And that was enough for her.

  —J. Casper Augustine Seton, final paragraph from

  The Missing Duchess: A Biography

  “He killed himself,” Annie said. “While you were gone.”

  “Yes.”

  Laurel did not try to stop the tears now running down her face

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Annie asked. “It’s a horrible story, but why?”

  “It was the violence. The manner in which he died, taking poor Blanka with him. I didn’t want that to be your legacy. I was terrified of letting that shadow fall across our little family.”

  “Wow,” was all Annie could say.

  She wanted to tell her mom it would’ve been fine to confess the truth, that it wouldn’t have affected what was indeed a pretty life. But Annie understood about the shadow. Already she felt it cool against her skin.

  “I never stepped into that apartment again,” Laurel said. “And so, as I had so many times before, I set off to a new home, with only the clothes in my pack.” She smiled. “Of course, this time I had you. That’s how I knew I’d be okay.”

  “That and Gladys Deacon.”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “Thank God for Mrs. Spencer. It was a lot easier to move on by then because of her gifts. And I don’t only mean the monetary ones. I ended up giving more than half of the inheritance to Blanka’s family, not that it could bring her back. But I had to do something.”

  “So you finished school,” Annie said, still dazed and picturing a one-legged man swinging from a shower rod, a poor maid with the unluckiest job in the world. “Despite everything that happened.”

  “I did, somehow. Afterward I went to Georgetown Law and later took a job in D.C. We lived in a bitty, wonderful apartment in Arlington for a few years before I bought Goose Creek Hill. And that’s been our life ever since. You and me, kid. I’d like to think we’ve done okay.”

  “More than okay,” Annie said and gave her mom a hug. After pulling back she asked, “But what about Charlie’s family? Did you ever keep in touch with them?”

  “God no. They blamed me absolutely. Not that I didn’t blame myself, too. But they preferred to imagine I’d died along with their son and I was happy to let them.”

  “How come you never went back?” Annie asked and looked toward Gus. “To England or to Paris? You must’ve thought about him given you owned the Grange together.”

  “It didn’t take the Grange to make me think of him.”

  “And I didn’t own it for long,” Gus said, his voice froggy. “I ended up transferring my share to my niece, Jamie’s daughter. She’s about your age, finishing up at university. When she’s not wrangling over property rights with phantoms from the past, that is.”

  “That’s who you’ve been battling with?” Annie asked. “Gus’s niece?”

  “When Gus himself wasn’t trying to get historical permits to slow the process down,” Jamie added with a smirk.

  “And thank you for that extra aggravation,” Laurel said. “I knew the other party to the transaction was Clementine Seton, but I didn’t know if it was his daughter or wife or what. Gus did get involved, eventually. He heard I was being difficult.”

  “It was like a siren’s song,” Gus joked.

  No one said anything for several minutes. Annie closed her eyes, trying to put it all together.

  Laurel had finally explained where she came from. She gave Annie what she’d wanted for so many years. And while Annie was grateful for the truth, what Laurel said those weeks ago was true. The past didn’t make her. Charlie Haley was not who Annie was.

  “Now you know everything,” Laurel said, her shoulders relaxing for the first time that day, or even that decade. “Every last piece.”

  “Actually,” Annie said. “That’s not true. I know the past, all the background stuff, but as far as I can tell we’re in the middle of the story. You have to tell me, Mom. Pru. What happens next?”

  Eighty-eight

  Subject:

  Chapter One

  From:

  anniehaley79@aol.com

  Date:

  December 6, 2001 09:15

  To:

  eric.sawyer@usmc.mil

  While you were arrivin
g in Afghanistan, I was going home. Alone.

  I couldn’t get a direct flight, which meant I flew into Reagan instead of Dulles. We passed over the Pentagon and its gaping hole. A small reminder of the larger damage, a reminder of why you’re not here.

  You take care of business over there and then hurry back home. We have so much to talk about. “You will tell me everything. In the aftermath we will come home bringing to your comfortable armchairs that slight weariness exquisite at twilight and it will be a year before dinner is served.” Those are the word of Gladys Deacon, Duchess of Marlborough, as said to Bernard Berenson, the man she loved.

  I’ve been to England and to Paris. I’ve seen Boston, if only in my mind. I met a writer and a duchess. I saw my mother in love and found out about my dad. Yep. That old topic. It’s nothing I can go into over e-mail. But wait until you hear the rest.

  I’ve seen these places and feel like I’ve traveled a million miles. Now, after looking back, I’m trying my hand at moving forward. Yesterday I mailed an application to Harvard University. It’s not what you think.

  I applied for a six-month research fellowship, with the Berenson library, the very same Berenson I “met” on my trip. I didn’t have the easiest time describing my qualifications and, oddly, “fake researcher” doesn’t look all that impressive on paper. But years ago my mom applied for a job with nothing to back her up. Turned out for the best, in the (very long) end.

  And what of the formidable Laurel Haley? Well, she stayed with Gus. That’s right, the man from the pub you were so worried about. See how I could never fit these things in an e-mail? For now, let’s leave it at this. My mom and Gus went to Paris once. And in Paris they remain.

  You’re doing your job—safely, I hope—but I wish you were here. At age twenty-two I’m an unexpected empty nester and this old farm is too quiet by myself. Don’t worry. I do have some company, in the form of some very sick little girls who want to find some freedom on a horse.