After 2012 rolled into 2013, I sent another message, hoping that now that the holidays were over she might have time to look for the letters. She responded weeks later, promising she was going to try to find them, but noting again how busy she was.
People in France were eager to know when I expected to hear from her. They were bewildered by her inaction. Louise seemed more impatient than anyone.
Months later, I reached out to her again to let her know Agnès was interested in writing her a letter, a personalized plea. She did not respond, so I asked Kim and our mutual Type Tuesday friend for help and advice. After they mentioned the letters to her, she erupted in anger.
“I am crazy busy,” she wrote. “I’m not dodging finding them. For the Heuzé family this is not life and death but a really cool thing for them—kinda like having the luxury of time to play around on Ancestry.com.” She seemed incapable of believing the family was heartbroken. “… anticipatory? Yes! Eager? Yes! But ‘heartbroken’?!” she wrote.
Three days later, a breezy Facebook post said, “Great day in MN to put on your bikini, spray down with some coconut scented Tropicana oil and listen to this!” with a link to a Stan Getz album.
Agnès’s letter was returned to France with dates scribbled across the envelope by the post office—dates the woman refused to accept the letter. Meanwhile, Facebook posts showed her at a music festival, a hiking outing, a running club event, and at the White Bear Lake Yacht Club. Anger burned through me, especially when she posted about her interest in genealogy. “I could spend hours on Ancestry.com,” she wrote.
A year later—after Valentine informed me Denise’s health had declined precipitously, after Louise spent days in intensive care, after Kathy was diagnosed with cancer and in her indomitably cheerful way announced a surgeon had sliced her head open and scooped out part of her brain—I reminded the woman in Roseville time was not unlimited. A tick box indicated she read the message.
After even more time went by, she posted smiling photos from a multi-week vacation to France and Spain.
Perhaps she found the letters right away and decided she did not want to part with them. Perhaps she looked for the letters but could not find them. Perhaps she never looked. Perhaps she never had them. Perhaps she once dreamed of searching for Marcel’s family and felt she should have been the one to find them. Perhaps she got angry when I reminded her of her promises. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. I do not know why she lied. But I regretted ever mentioning her name and her promises to the family. I introduced false hope, and I knew too well how cruel hope could be.
As I struggled to salvage something from the situation, I clung to this fact: if she told the truth when she claimed she sold some of Marcel’s letters at the antique mall in Minneapolis, more letters are out there. Somewhere. So I continue to look. Every time I visit an antique store, I ask the clerk if they have handwritten World War II letters. Often they offer an empty shrug. Sometimes they escort me to display cases stacked with military memorabilia: canteens, patches, moth-eaten jackets. Occasionally, they point me to shoeboxes filled with musty cards or letters.
I realize chances are slim I will find them.
But it is impossible to abandon the hope that more of Marcel’s letters will someday be found.
In the months after our return, countless emails, messages, and letters went back and forth between me and various family members in France. I provided updates on the font. Sometimes they shared newly dislodged memories about Marcel or Renée. Sometimes one of us wrote just to say hello.
Natacha shared photos of her boys when they lost their front teeth, then when they climbed the Eiffel Tower. Later, she sent a photo of her swollen belly, and a list of names she and her fiancé were considering for their baby boy.
Agnès always ended her emails with “Mille baisers.” A thousand kisses. The words always made me smile.
In one email, Agnès casually noted she had a nice phone conversation with Eliane. She mentioned it as if it had been as routine as a trip to the grocery store. She did not offer more information, and I did not ask, but I knew it had been their first conversation in more than seven years, and my heart swelled with joy. I could not recall ever being so happy to read that something had been nice.
Soon after, I received a brief email from Eliane. She wanted to be clear that she and Denise believed the letters had been received in Berchères-la-Maingot, and that in “no case were they blocked in Germany.” The evidence, she outlined, was the undated, water-stained card that mentioned Claude, Jacques, and a strike. She guessed the card had been written in 1957 or so; she recalled transportation strikes then. Timing made further sense since Suzanne and Claude married in 1955, Denise and Jacques in 1956. And it was the only letter where Marcel called her Eliane rather than by her childhood nickname.
Eliane’s conclusion did not surprise me; it was the only scenario that made sense. And I respected her desire to be forthcoming about what she knew about the letters’ long journey.
Eliane recalled her mother kept a small stack of letters inside a dresser drawer in Berchères-la-Maingot. But Eliane never read them. “They weren’t ours to read,” she noted, apparently unaware sections had been written to her and her sisters. “The mystery is how they found their way to the flea market,” she added.
“That is the mystery, indeed,” I whispered.
One possible scenario was that the letters had been scavenged from the ruins of the cottage after it came down in 1999. Or perhaps the letters had been inside something that had been carted from the rubble, only to be discovered later once the source was no longer known. Timing made it plausible; within three years of the storm, five of Marcel’s letters were in my possession.
Another scenario was that the letters had been taken from the cottage years earlier, a possibility Agnès suggested after she remembered hearing the cottage had once been occupied by squatters.
Or maybe the letters were indeed the same ones Denise once had in her possession—the letters Tiffanie looked for but had not found.
But the scenario that seemed most likely was that at some point the letters made their way from Berchères-la-Maingot to Marcel and Renée’s home in Montreuil. Perhaps household belongings were purged when Renée moved to a nursing home. Perhaps the letters were still out of sight and weightless in the back of some dresser drawer. Perhaps they had been moved to a hatbox or an old tea tin. Or perhaps Marcel’s letters had been pressed flat inside the cover of some book, similar to the home they had for years inside the sketchbook in my closet. Geographic proximity made it plausible; the Clignancourt flea market was less than ten miles from Montreuil. Timing made sense, too. From what I had been able to sort out, Renée had moved to the nursing home less than a year before Kim bought the letters.
But after seeing how the family treasured old photos and other artifacts—the rock, the threading dies, the letter in German no one could read—there was one thing I believed with my whole heart: I did not—I do not—believe Marcel’s letters had been willfully discarded.
I eventually arrived at a point—and it was a surprising place to end up—where I did not need to know how the letters came to be at the flea market. The fact that his words found their way back to his family was the only thing that mattered. After hearing people say time and time again they believed Marcel’s letters found me, I began to wonder if it might—if it could—be true. Could the letters have found me because they needed help finding their way back home?
I sent formal letters to two venerable institutions in Paris inquiring whether they would like Marcel’s letters for their archives. Aaron and I wanted the originals to be in France so anyone in the family could hold them. We also wanted the letters to be protected for reasons even bigger than Marcel: his testimony deserved to be preserved on behalf of all French citizens impacted by forced labor.
I did not hear back from either institution. So for now, Marcel’s letters remain in my safe-deposit box. Whenever I go to the bank to drop off my bac
kup hard drive, I slide his letters from their protective sleeve and glance at the familiar loops and lines.
I thank Marcel for the people—for the wonder—he has brought to my life.
And I offer silent assurance to the Marcel Heuzé who died in Ravensbrück; I tell him he has not been forgotten.
One warm evening, eight months after our return, I walked to White Bear Lake, hoping to recall which driveway had had the name “Marcel” written in chalk. I fretted I would be unable to identify the property since the only image I could conjure was of the driveway—and most driveways looked the same. But once I neared the house, I knew it was the one. The homeowner happened to be outside, so I introduced myself and asked if, one year earlier, “Marcel” had been written across her driveway. Her eyes narrowed. My stomach lurched. For a few long seconds I feared I had truly imagined the entire thing.
“Marcel is my son. Do you know him?” I smiled and told her I did not, but over the next half hour, I told her the story of Marcel Heuzé. She listened in wonder, and her eyes filled with tears when I told her he returned home.
Her daughter had written Marcel’s name in chalk on the day of his high school graduation party, she explained. She thought other words had been written across the driveway, too. “Class of 2012,” or perhaps “Congratulations!”
I believed her, though to this day my mind’s eye is blind to anything other than the single word: Marcel.
The following Monday, Hoover’s back legs began twisting in an odd way. He avoided the stairs, and Aaron and I guessed he had pinched a nerve. Our veterinarian prescribed an anti-inflammatory medication, but his condition continued to deteriorate. Within days, twisting progressed to buckling. Before long, Hoover was unable to stand. Then he was unable to sit. For the first time in his life, he avoided eye contact. Instead, his brown eyes stared far into the distance. It was as if he knew the sobering prognosis the veterinarian would soon confirm: there was no hope for our precious thirteen-year-old boy.
In Hoover’s last hours, Aaron and I lay on the floor next to him, alternately stroking his silken ears and wiping away our own tears. Shortly before the veterinarian arrived, Aaron filled a bowl with vanilla ice cream, then gently held Hoover’s head so he could lap up his favorite treat.
The veterinarian shaved his leg, then told us to say our final goodbye. I kissed Hoover’s blocky forehead and thanked him for being part of our family. After the veterinarian carried his blanket-covered body to her car, I wanted to crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head, and pretend it wasn’t true. But I could not do that. I showered, put on dress clothes, and drove to Laura and Adam’s wedding.
Aaron did not go. He could not go. He sobbed uncontrollably for hours.
I held my sadness in strict check. I refused to spoil the soaring joy of Laura and Adam’s day by telling them what had happened or providing a reason for Aaron’s absence. But on the drive home, tears dribbled down my cheeks and my head began to pound. It seemed impossible to process a day filled with loss and love in equal, immeasurable quantities.
In the days and weeks that followed, Aaron and I were like buckets of grief that leaked from a hundred pin-size holes. Our house felt unbearably empty. Every morning, every noon, every evening my heart ached that Hoover was not waiting for our walk.
I begged Aaron to get another dog. He said he was not ready.
It would be another year before we adopted a nine-pound ball of black fuzz with massive retriever paws, and eyes that would turn the color of caramel. It was no coincidence he reminded us of Hoover—our new puppy was Hoover’s grandnephew.
Hoover was not replaced—he could never be replaced—but our hearts were refilled. And we were as giddy as any two parents bringing home their second baby.
A year after we returned from Paris, an employee of Seine-et-Marne, a regional department east of Paris, emailed a black-and-white scan of Marcel’s birth record. Seine-et-Marne had, in some earlier decade, taken custody of Boissy-le-Châtel’s civil archives.
I called Louise, who provided an on-the-fly translation of the record’s eighteen lines of swirling script. “In the year nineteen twelve, January 27, before Géas Bienaimé, mayor and civil registrar of the commune Boissy-le-Châtel, is … Heuzé Marcellus Lucien, age twenty-six … to present his new child, male sex, born the previous evening at eleven p.m., through legitimate marriage …
“Oh, the French.” Louise burst into a fit of giggles. “‘Legitimate marriage’: that’s ridiculous, don’t you think?
“… through legitimate marriage with Rousseau Suzanne Marcelline, age nineteen years … declares us to give the first names of Marcel Georges Eugine …” The enormous M in Marcel’s name had loops on each side that swirled like an old-fashioned eye clasp. Official signatures decorated the bottom of the page. Each name included some bold embellishment: a moat-like circle, a curlicue over parallel lines, a smokestack-like plume of loops. I admired the record’s regal formality; it was as if the impeccable writing and ceremonial language ennobled the twelve-hour-old Marcel to rise to every grand possibility life presented.
The left margin held two annotations: a record of Marcel and Renée’s marriage in 1932, and a record of Marcel’s death. Handwritten scribbles of “Montreuil” and “January 4, 1992” followed the rubber-stamp imprint of “décéde(é) à, le.” It stung to see Marcel’s death had been given no more deference than registering a car or obtaining a dog license. In fact, it seemed downright backward that the beginning of life was recorded with calligraphic fanfare, and the end of a long, love-filled life was no more than a rubber-stamped administrative annotation.
Louise and I chatted for another hour. She had grown even dearer to me, and we met often. Sometimes we talked about long-ago history, other times she was eager to chat about thoroughly modern topics: eyebrow tattoos, purple or blue streaks in hair, the allure of bad boys. Near the end of our call, she made the sound of a kiss and said, “Love you.”
I told Louise I loved her, too.
Freely expressing emotion still felt unnatural, but I was making an effort to be more open—more abundant—with affection. Marcel’s letters made me want to try.
After our call ended, I stared at Marcel’s birth record. For months, I would have given anything for the answer scribbled in this margin. But I suddenly realized the search itself had made my world rich with unexpected blessings. If I hadn’t had to puzzle the pieces together, I wouldn’t have met Dixie or Louise. I wouldn’t have read the twelve additional letters from Kim. I wouldn’t have learned about STO or gotten in touch with Wolfgang. I wouldn’t have seen Marcel’s photo or learned about Renée’s bravery. Aaron and I wouldn’t have gone to Paris. I wouldn’t have met Natacha under the Eiffel Tower. I wouldn’t have had the honor of embracing Denise, meeting four generations of Marcel’s family, or walking on the land in Berchères-la-Maingot.
I doubled down on my commitment to finish the font. Weeks, then months, disappeared refining lines and curves. I listened to Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier while I designed alternate glyphs and swashes. I tested each glyph, then tweaked it again. I tackled kerning head-on, refusing to let it win our multi-year standoff.
I wanted to add some kind of ornament that would be a testament to Marcel and Renée. After doodling pages of calligraphic loops, one particular swirl caught my eye because the pen strokes overlapped to create a heart shape. I tweaked and refined the swirl until it looked just so.
“How are you and Marcel coming along?” people would ask. The question always made me smile because it felt as though they were inquiring about a person—alive and vibrant—not a font defined by thousands of coordinates and lines of computer code.
“Almost done,” I promised every time.
A year after returning from Paris, I entered a distribution agreement with P22, a type foundry known for representing high-quality fonts based on art, design, and history. Their curated collection included other fonts based on handwriting, including that of Paul Cézanne, Frank Ll
oyd Wright, and Timothy Matlack, the man whose lettering adorned the Declaration of Independence. It was a tremendous honor that P22 Type Foundry wanted Marcel to be part of their collection.
On the morning of January 30, 2014, the font’s launch was still two weeks away, though only a handful of people knew that. P22’s owner scheduled the launch to coincide with Valentine’s Day; there seemed no better time to release a font based on words of love.
An email arrived, and as I read it, I drew in a stuttered breath. I blinked and read the short message two more times, as if I needed be sure my brain was not playing some cruel trick. After the third time, I burst into tears. I was alone in my office, but I snapped my hands over my eyes, embarrassed by the flood of emotion the email unleashed.
When I eventually moved my hands, I glanced at a glossy black-and-white photo taped to the top edge of my computer monitor. The small image had been there nearly a year. It had been a sentinel of sorts while I finished the font—a reminder to never give up, to surround myself with love, to believe anything was possible. The photo of Marcel piled on a wooden lounge chair with Suzanne, Denise, and his infant son Marcel took my breath away when I first saw it at Agnès’s apartment, and it took my breath away a second time, months later, when a copy arrived in my mailbox. Moments after opening the envelope from Agnès, I taped the photo to my monitor. It had been there ever since.
I wanted to race to our bedroom, shake Aaron awake, and tell him about the email. But he had recently gotten home from a long shift at the hospital and I knew he wanted nothing more than sleep.
I walked to the kitchen and started a fresh pot of coffee. It was the only thing I could think to do. Perhaps I hoped the coffee’s bright aroma might allow me to reclaim composure. But as I waited for the coffee to brew, sobs began to flow out of me. Not in ones or twos, in tens and twenties. I folded my arms in front of me and bent forward as waves of tears rolled out.
Fifteen months had passed since the day I stood on the land in Berchères-la-Maingot. During that time, I had experienced frustration, grief, happiness. But none of that had dislodged this degree of emotion. It was as if everything I held in check since the day I learned Marcel lived flowed out in one unstoppable, uncontrollable rush.
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