Fall of Poppies

by Heather Webb

  LEADING MY YMCA contingent across Paris forced me to look at my adopted city through new eyes. Sights I’d taken for granted, and then ignored as the days grew grimmer and darker, and the nights darker still, dazzled anew. Miss Rochon and her group were thrilled to see everything: Napoleon’s tomb, the Grands Boulevards and the Champs-­Élysées, the surprisingly noisy markets at Les Halles, even the graves and headstones of the infamous dead buried in the Père Lachaise. And their enthusiasm was shared by other sightseeing members of the American Expeditionary Forces and their connected organizations we often came across—­Americans, it seemed, had an insatiable appetite for cultural consumption.

  We found ourselves among the throngs of Parisians and sightseers walking up the steps to the basilica of the Sacré-­Cœur, a grand, white stone edifice at the crest of the butte Montmartre. As the others passed through its ornate doors, a wave of lightheadedness swept through me, so intense I pushed through the line of ­people behind me until I found an empty, quiet space. I sank onto my sturdy bag, my head in my hands as I struggled to contain the emotions threatening to erupt and spill over. It was because the opulent Catholic basilica outraged my Presbyterian sensibilities. I was quite famished, having eaten nothing since leaving Françoise’s. I grasped for any excuse but the truth—­that I was bitterly angry at God for taking so much from me.

  A shadow fell over me as a pair of booted toes came into my line of vision. My shoulders tensed; I was too much on edge to accept Sidney Mercer’s harassment. I lifted my head with a defiant and shockingly rude, “What?”

  An inscrutable expression crossed his face as he stared down at me. “When was the last time you’ve eaten?”

  The unexpectedness of his query wrenched an honest reply from me before I could help myself.

  “I don’t know,” I said wearily, brushing a stray hank of hair behind my ear. “Last night, perhaps.”

  “Get up,” he said, grasping my arm. “We’re going to have some supper.”

  I was on my feet and my suitcase in his hand before I could protest.

  “The others—­” I twisted to look back at the basilica.

  “They’ll be fine. I’m sure Annette will find a cause to rally up while we eat.”

  His stride was long and quick, eating up the distance between the Sacré-­Cœur, its innumerable number of steps, and the bottom of the butte, and forcing me into a skip-­run to keep up.

  “I thought you knew nothing of Paris,” I said breathlessly, not even allowed to catch my breath as he whipped us down the rue de St.-­Pierre.

  “I know it well enough—­or rather, my stomach does.” The corner of his mouth curled, a dimple creasing his cheek, as he cast a droll, sidelong glance my way. “I was in Paris years before the war, and I—­”

  He seemed to check himself with an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

  “And you what?” I pressed. He hadn’t allowed me to retain my secrets, so what was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander.

  He stilled abruptly on the pavement (the French, ever so blasé, merely swerved around us) and my bag banged against his leg.

  “And I had dreams of being a musician,” he finally answered. “There’s a café up ahead, if I’m recalling it correctly.”

  He had. The café was covered with the tricolor swags of bunting and the remnants of Armistice celebrations, as was usual these days. A waiter swept at the clutter around the chairs and tables in front of his door, successfully ignoring the patrons lounging in the chairs, as they did his efforts. We took an empty table and as I was seated, my stomach put up an embarrassingly loud protest against its emptiness. Lieutenant Mercer looked astonished, and then he laughed.

  Thankfully, a waiter brought us large cups of hot, inky black French coffee and plates of steaming rolls topped with pats of yellow butter. I eyed Lieutenant Mercer as I buttered my third roll. There was something about him—­something I couldn’t quite place my finger on—­that stoked my curiosity to an usually high degree.

  “What happened to those dreams?”

  He stared into his coffee cup, the dark, fathomless liquid rather like his eyes when he finally turned them to me.

  “I . . . my daddy is a preacher in Mississippi. The fire-­and-­brimstone sort, you know? And he expected me to follow in his footsteps.”

  “And you didn’t.”

  “I tried,” he said pensively. “How hard I tried. He even sent me away to seminary—­a preacher’s school—­to be formally trained when he hadn’t anything more than a fifth-­grade education. It was there that I discovered ragtime.”

  A warmth had crept into his voice with the last sentence. He didn’t need to explain—­ragtime had gripped me from the moment I heard the tunes wafting into my mum’s dressing room backstage in a provincial music hall.

  “They kicked me out when they discovered I was playing in local brothels, and I assumed my daddy wouldn’t want me back.” His mouth twisted wryly. “Music swept me up from Jackson to Memphis, and then to St. Louis and Chicago, before I thought to try Europe, where a few associates had struck it rich. I was green as unripened tomatoes, for all my arrogance, and my failed auditions showed me the error of my ways.”

  My head spun with the names of cities I’d only known from a map, or from Charles’s and Louis’s reminiscences of their growing up in America. I closed my eyes, soaking in the colorful descriptions of his life, feeling the hot sun on his back and the packed dirt roads beneath his feet, hearing the cacophony of sounds as he attempted to play over the thumping bedsprings and wails in his Mississippi brothels; the energy of music and performing. I opened my eyes; I hadn’t realized how much I missed all of it now that there was only me.

  “My husband was from Mississippi,” I found myself saying. “Pelahatchie.”

  Those black eyes were fixed on my face, and his unasked questions filled the air.

  “He’s dead,” I said quietly. “He was killed in the retreat from the Marne.”

  “I wondered.” His voice was stiff, not with disdain, but with emotion. “So you’re alone in France. Like me.”

  “Not at all like you,” I exclaimed. “You have a family in the United States. Something to go home to.”

  My face flushed with anger and chagrin. How had he induced me to voice my unspoken fears?

  “Morven,” he said urgently. “What of your husband’s family?”

  “No!” I wrenched back in my chair, almost dropping my butter knife. “No.”

  That letter, with its short message in black-­and-­white, said everything necessary. I understood it quite clearly—­I was not welcome.

  There was a peculiar tightness in his expression, and his hand brushed against one of his tunic pockets before he raised it to summon the waiter. His French was rough and rudimentary, but fluent enough to order a meal. Minutes later, there was a bottle of vin rouge and two glasses on the white tablecloth. Sidney’s movements were relaxed as he poured the wine into both glasses, and I breathed deeply of its rich, yet ordinary bouquet. Memories exploded with my first sip—­of nights spent counting our meager francs on the table with Addie and Louis, of times where Charles would surprise me with a bottle of champagne, of the bitter cold where we had only one another’s bodies, soft and entwined, to keep us warm . . . to keep me safe. My hand trembled as I set the glass down with a plonk.

  Sidney’s eyes were waiting for mine when I glanced at him. He finished his wine and set his empty glass beside mine, his fingers nudging against my own.

  “This husband you mentioned . . . he was an actor as well?”

  My gaze fell to that tiny brush of connection where our hands met, brown against the whiteness of the linen, and I wanted to tell him.

  “Of a sort. Along with Louis and Addie Dismond. We were a dancing quartet, sometimes with a skit or two to pad our act in the music halls.” I smiled. “We never blacked up, th
ough at first I didn’t see the harm. If you could only see the way Charles exploded when I brought black and red greasepaint from the theatrical shop. I’d never seen him so angry in my life, not even when we were triple-­booked in our disastrous, short-­lived attempt to use a manager.”

  “He—­that’s understandable, if you’d grown up in the States.” Sidney moved his hand away to pour another glass of wine. “It’s quite different.”

  “They never discussed it—­Charles and Louis,” I said pensively. “News of those terrible lynchings reached some of the British papers, of course, and I remember when Mr. Washington of Tuskegee attended the Duchess of Sutherland’s ball, but they didn’t like to talk about things of that nature with me and Addie.”

  Our conversation paused when the waiter returned and set two bowls of a clear, fragrant soup and thin slices of brown bread at our places. I spooned a little of the thin garnishes—­scallions and carrots—­into my mouth; delicate flavors burst on my tongue in spite of the soup’s wartime austerity. The bread was equally surprising in flavor, with the slightest hint of sweetness.

  “And Addie?”

  My spoon stuck against my palate and I slowly swallowed my soup. How to describe Addie, whom I considered closer than the sister I’d always longed to have? Her honking laugh and rib-­creaking embraces? Of the way she’d climbed into my hospital bed, ignoring the nurses’ squawks of outrage, when Charles was too distraught to bear my miscarriage? That she peeked between her fingers, half-­frightened and half-­allured by the flickering melodramas, when at the cinema?

  And who’d chosen to leave me. At least Charles and Louis hadn’t chosen to die. I gripped my spoon bitterly, suddenly awash with the blinding anger that had stricken me at the basilica.

  “She drowned herself in the Seine after Louis was killed at Artois.”

  Sidney flinched.

  I didn’t want or need his pity. I had survived on my own feet—­literally—­since I was fourteen, orphaned and penniless after my mother’s death from fever. The losses of Charles, Louis, and Addie had bent but not broken me, and neither would Lieutenant Sidney Mercer.

  HIS CHOICES LAY heavily on his mind when they rejoined Annette and the others. Sidney stared at Morven’s profile, her skin now smoothed of that pinched look after a few cups of coffee and a nourishing supper. The sunlight caught the gold flecks in her green eyes, wide and sparkling as she studied the map of Paris that Lionel had unfolded from his guidebook. There was that woman again, gay and beguiling, mighty like a rose.

  “Careful now, they might fall out.”

  He smiled tightly at Reverend Henry Bullock, a chaplain in his regiment. The reverend grinned broadly.

  “I wasn’t—­”

  “A body can’t help but stare at a pretty girl,” Bullock interrupted, raising his graying eyebrows sardonically. “Now if I was you, I would snap her up quick before any of these other fellows about to descend upon Paris lay eyes on her.”

  “I’m not—­”

  “Oh yes you are,” the reverend interrupted again. “You boys fight and fight it, but the Lord knows. He always places the right girl in your path.”

  Sidney wanted to laugh. He supposed his daddy would consider himself well served on his chosen path to hellfire by marrying an unscrupulous adventuress.

  Something tightened in his chest and he looked away from Morven, unwilling to just give up his assertion that she had been up to no good. He didn’t want to touch the burgeoning truth that Chas, the eldest cousin he’d idolized even after he’d left the family in Mississippi to follow his dreams, had recklessly and selfishly hurt two women. The cold snake of jealousy twined itself around all of that somewhere in his gut; jealousy that Chas had Morven at her most vibrant and alive. But then he’d died and left her to whatever had put such suffering in her eyes.

  Something thumped against his leg, drawing his attention away from Morven. It was only her battered kitbag, which he’d been carrying. It bulged strangely at the sides, but he supposed she had packed each and every one of her possessions. A sharp pain stabbed his heart at the thought that all she owned could be tucked inside of this one suitcase, rather like a soldier always ready to march. Always prepared to escape should the enemy attack.

  He supposed he could be classified as that enemy.

  “Sidney?”

  Annette was calling his name.

  “We should all fit in an automobile, right?”

  “Miss Rochon wants to go on a tour of the battlefields,” Morven said, her tone as neutral as her gaze. “There are motors for hire, though I’m not certain of what’s available these days.”

  He shifted her bag to his other hand, his shoulders tightening with tension. Only those who hadn’t seen the trenches firsthand, beneath the terror of artillery and hand-­to-­hand combat, could view the Front as a mere tourist’s site.

  “If there’s no room, I’ll stay behind,” he replied evenly.

  But there was, unfortunately. The garage they found after riding the Metro back to the Grands Boulevards supplied them with a massive, three seat gray Panhard touring car. Lionel took the wheel and Annette sat at his side, while the remainder of the group stacked inside the other two seats. His mouth twitched with faint humor when he saw Reverend Bullock, Mrs. Craigwell, and Netta squeeze into the middle seat, leaving the rear for him and Morven. He settled into the squeaky leather seat, her bag placed at his feet between them, careful to keep his distance.

  The winding, narrow streets of Paris as Lionel drove across one of the bridges to the Left Bank, and through southern Paris, defied his attempts. With every turn, he slid neatly against her, until the last time, when she raised her eyebrows and placed a hand on his arm, holding him still beside her.

  I COULDN’T BELIEVE my boldness in the motorcar, but holding on to Sidney Mercer served me well when we reached the outskirts of the Western Front. His hand caught and held mine when our feet sank into the loamy, churned soil of the French line. My fingers gripped his so tightly my arm shook as I stared at the desolate landscape that had swallowed most of civilization whole. Other sightseers dotted the now abandoned trench lines, and grubby children even darted in and out of them, already playing at French versus Huns on a battlefield that had only ceased its violence not quite two weeks ago.

  Was it forgetfulness, or resilience? Or the naïveté of children?

  My courage failed me when I saw dirt-­begrimed, uniformed men shoveling dirt. Or, what I took to be dirt at first; further inspection revealed the mounds to be the unburied dead. I turned my face into Sidney’s sleeve. His other hand skimmed up my spine and over my shoulder to rest against my nape.

  “Have you ever seen where your husband was buried?”

  “It isn’t necessary to do so.”

  He was quiet, for which I was grateful, and I gathered myself before lifting my head. His hand dropped away from my skin after a moment, and for a brief second, I regretted leaving his solid, comforting warmth. We stood at the edge of the Front while the others gawked and climbed over the wretched earth; we hadn’t any need to see proof of what had happened. It was there in our minds, imprinted on our skin.

  NIGHTTIME HAD FALLEN when we returned to Paris. The Armistice celebrations had started up again, and Sidney was staring up at the darkened sky through the window as colorful fireworks pierced the glossy-­smooth clear night and burst entrancingly above our heads. I stared a moment, too, wondering when this orgy of celebration would reach its bitter end. For where there was great joy, there was also deep pain, and even with peace there remained a festering wound that the war’s end wouldn’t heal.

  “Sometimes, I can’t quite believe it—­those could just as easily be the explosion of artillery over No Man’s Land.” His voice was low enough to force me to draw closer.

  “Was it so bad? At the Front?”

  “It was unspeakable.”

  M
y hand found his again, and our fingers twined together. It was mad. Perhaps he caught my mood, this erratic mixture of highs and lows, of fear and courage, all wrought by the war. His grip tightened as the motorcar made its way through the busy Parisian streets, where motorcars and taxicabs attempted to inch their way through the scores of ­people stepping from the pavement at any point along the way. We were a wounded ­people—­walking wounded—­with some of us more scarred inside than our exteriors revealed. Who and what was going to glue us together again?

  Love.

  That word, devastation in one syllable, snuck into my heart as I stared at Lieutenant Sidney Mercer. I hardly knew him and had only met him not one hour ago. This was mad—­I was mad. How did I dare to snatch at happiness when so much had been snatched away from me? When the world had yet to shake itself free of the blood and agony of the past four years?

  But dare I did, gripping the tiny shards of courage and fear that had kept me alive when everyone else had fallen.

  THE OTHERS CLAIMED fatigue, yawning and stretching exaggeratedly. I hid my skeptical smile as they exited the motorcar and walked up the path to the colored YMCA hostel in Marais. Now I was alone with Sidney, who drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. His gaze was intent, his brow wrinkled in a frown, and he eventually spoke.

  “Why did you remain here when you had nothing left? Surely your husband’s family—­”

  “His family!” I wanted to spit. “I wrote to them immediately after he was killed and received a stiff but polite letter stating there was no knowledge of my existence.”

  He frowned harshly. “There must be some mistake.”

  “There was no mistake, Lieutenant Mercer.” My fingers trembled when I linked them in my lap. “Charles wasn’t the kind to look back, and I assume that meant whatever he did prior to our marriage ceased to exist for him and for his family. And he chose that I didn’t exist to them either.”

  “But, Morven—­”