“That’s worse.”
M. Lebeau nodded empathetically. “Perhaps you can use the session to try to make peace with those events.”
“I doubt that,” Nathalie said, but then she reconsidered. She’d come this far, and there was no harm in seeing if that was possible. “Let’s try that, then.”
“Good,” said M. Lebeau. “Do note that during hypnosis you may share things you wouldn’t in a fully conscious state.”
“I understand. May we begin?”
“In a moment.” M. Lebeau stood up, disappeared into the room where his wife had gone, and returned with a long pipe and a large, covered bowl. “Opium. I like to clear my head before each session.”
Was that what his wife was doing back there?
“Doesn’t that cloud your thinking instead?”
“Only if I have too much, which I never do while I’m working. With just the right amount my mind opens up like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. That’s how I prepare to set your mind free, make it even more open than my own. Would you like some opium as well?”
Nathalie shook her head vigorously.
“Very well.” M. Lebeau tapped the sides of the bowl, studying her. “Are you ready, Mademoiselle Baudin?”
“No. I—I don’t think I can do this.”
“Why?”
“Because—” Her tongue tripped over the excuses and unfurled the truth. “Because I’m afraid.”
“Close your eyes,” said M. Lebeau in a placid tone, exhaling smoke. “And we’ll work on helping you find peace. Shall we?”
There was a kindness about him, a tenderness in his voice, that was grandfatherly and reassuring. He reminded her of a sweet librarian, long since dead, who’d recommended books to her and Papa years ago.
“Yes,” she said, reclining on the sofa, eyes closed. “I’m ready.”
In a moment she heard nothing at all, as if the books lining the walls had shushed the sounds of Paris so Nathalie could, at last, retreat into herself.
* * *
“You are floating on a cloud. Carefree, comfortable, and safe,” began M. Lebeau. His voice, melodic and serene, dissolved the silence. “The sound of my voice will guide you, show you where your mind can go. Relax on that cloud. Feel yourself, lighter than air. Your feet. Your legs. Your back, shoulders, neck. Your head. All are cradled by this peaceful, protective cloud. You are content.”
Nathalie’s breathing steadied into a calm, deep rhythm. The cloud was softer than any pillow she’d ever touched, the sky surrounding her was more beautiful than any blue she’d seen in nature or in art.
“I’m going to tap your shoulder. When I do, our journey will begin on a field of grass.”
A hand touched her shoulder, then it was gone.
She stood on vivid grass, cascading green as far as the eye could see.
“Behind you there is a house. Go inside. You will see someone, someone close to you. Someone who helps you. That person will embrace you.”
She turned around to see a small white house with black shutters and a red door. As soon as she walked inside Simone kissed her on both cheeks.
The voice, this voice that she somehow wanted to obey without understanding why, was peaceful. “Who is there?”
“Simone.” Nathalie heard her own voice. Somehow she heard it, even if she didn’t feel as if she were speaking.
“Simone is there to help you put things into a box. There’s a large box in the center of the room, and there are rocks beside it. You are going to open it, and then you’re going to fill it up with rocks. The rocks are your memories, the ones you wish to forget. If a rock is too heavy, Simone will help you.”
Nathalie walked to the center of the room and knelt down. She picked up a small rock and put it into the box. A memory of standing in line at the morgue.
Then another, then another. Entering the morgue, walking up to the viewing pane. A rock into the box, a child crying behind her at the morgue.
A rock with more weight. A girl on the cement slab, viciously ripped by a knife. What was her name?
Another rock, heavier than the last. A child’s screech of terror.
Another rock, this one jagged. Touching the viewing pane.
Another rock, this one too heavy. Simone extended a hand to help. Odette on the slab shrieking, bloody, getting bludgeoned by a knife.
She dropped the rock and screamed. Simone leaned in and turned into Aunt Brigitte with the word INSIGHT branded on her forehead. Nathalie stood up and the floor turned into sand and she stood knee-deep in the sea. A wave crashed at her feet and pulled her into the water, away from the beach and into the dark and frothy depths. She screamed until she went under and suddenly she was aware of M. and Mme. Lebeau holding her hands in the room full of books and telling her, in soothing tones, that she was safe.
Rawness spread in her throat. She stood up, just as she had during the hypnotic—dream? Vision? What was it? Something different than sleeping, different from the morgue visions. Yet another place her mind could go.
Her mind stumbled through the murky labyrinth of reality. “How long have I been under?”
“Not quite ten minutes,” M. Lebeau said.
No, it had to be hours and hours. Her body said so. She approached the window. The shadows hadn’t changed much. He was right.
“I don’t believe you were truly under,” he continued. “Very close, but you didn’t let go entirely. Somewhere in between, it seems. You may remember much of what happened, rather like a dream.”
Her legs were loose with fatigue. She felt as though she’d been running from something other than herself for the past few hours.
“Mademoiselle, please sit,” said M. Lebeau, guiding her to the sofa. “I’m so sorry this happened.”
Mme. Lebeau, who smelled of clove and something medicinal, placed a wrinkled hand on her cheek. The touch reminded her of Aunt Brigitte’s.
“I’ll get you something to drink,” she said, vanishing into the mysterious back room.
Nathalie tried to swallow away the harsh sensation in her throat. “I feel like I was in a nightmare, but worse. Does this happen often? Someone being ‘in between,’ as you said, and then coming out of it terrified?”
M. Lebeau shook his head. “I’m afraid it doesn’t. Only once before under … special circumstances. Are you…?”
The question perished on his lips.
“Am I what?”
He picked up the opium vase and pipe, set them on a desk in the corner, and stared at her. Then he broke into a smile much like the one he’d greeted her with when she’d entered. “Are you feeling well enough to walk? That is, will you need help getting home?”
His tone had a drop of artifice in it.
That’s not what you were going to ask.
“Am I what?” Nathalie repeated as though he hadn’t answered. Because in truth he hadn’t.
Mme. Lebeau returned carrying a silver tray with a teapot and cup. She set it down on the end table next to the sofa. “This will make you feel better.”
“Monsieur, what were you going to ask me?” Nathalie tried again.
“Nothing,” he replied cheerfully, crossing his arms. “I’m sorry, that’s not true. I was wondering how old you are. A rude question, I know.”
“Sixteen.”
“Oh!” His eyes brightened. Was he surprised? She looked her age and was never taken for more than seventeen or eighteen. “To be young again. Eh, Geneviève?”
Mme. Lebeau smiled. “Indeed.”
But something about the way he spoke, something about the way his face lit up, told Nathalie that wasn’t the question he’d intended to ask, either.
He wasn’t going to budge. Whatever he’d nearly asked faded into never.
Why?
Mme. Lebeau poured the tea and handed her the cup, decorated with blue and white stripes and some kind of exotic script.
Nathalie lifted it to her lips, inhaled its pungent earthy, floral smell, and immediately p
ut it down. “What is this? It’s not tea.”
The elderly Lebeau couple glanced at each other before Mme. Lebeau responded. “It’s similar to tea, and it will bring you back to yourself.”
“Is it opium?”
“No,” the old woman said, “but it does have poppy seeds and other herbals.”
Nathalie prickled with unease. For a second she was tempted, very tempted, to drink the tea as quickly as she could swallow. But she didn’t. She couldn’t.
“I’d better be going,” she said, standing up on legs that suddenly felt much better. “Thank you for trying to help me. How many francs?”
M. Lebeau waved his hand. “I would not take your money, Mademoiselle. My apologies that your experience was so unsettling. I can only conclude that—that whatever you came here to forget cannot be forgotten.”
Nathalie straightened up, noticing for the first time how small and shriveled these two strange people were. Despite it all she found them likable in their eccentricity. There was a freedom about them, she decided. Something like what Simone wanted, only with the experience and confidence that age brings.
She took her satchel and said a hasty good-bye, with M. Lebeau’s final words chasing her all the way home.
“Remember who you are,” he’d said, “and then you’ll know why you can’t forget.”
20
The hypnosis session, or whatever it was given that she hadn’t actually gone under, affected Nathalie in an unexpected way: It sharpened her focus.
For the rest of the day, her thoughts kept returning to one thing. Not the visions, the Dark Artist, the letters, or the bottle of blood. Not even Simone or her unusual-but-engaging sweetheart.
Aunt Brigitte.
Nathalie had been determined, after that memory-turned-dream in the park, to look for Tante’s papers. The blood jar discovery had pulled her onto a different path; besides, she hadn’t had an opportunity to search the apartment the past few days. But Tante’s appearance in her hypnotic reverie brought her attention firmly back to those papers.
Why were they so important?
They were the ramblings of a woman hanging on to the rim of sanity by her fingertips.
And yet.
Papa had made an effort to save them. Protect them, even. And of all the facets of Aunt Brigitte to filter into hypnosis, only the most prominent word on those papers came through.
INSIGHT.
Nathalie thought about that last day at Mme. Plouffe’s. Several moments came back to her now, shards of glass reassembling into a window. Transparent. Distorted, but not entirely occluded.
Of course Aunt Brigitte hadn’t tried to choke her; that was a dreamer’s editorial. She and Maman had left Aunt Brigitte’s room without incident. Afterward Maman had brought her to Mme. Plouffe, who’d given her warm milk and a raspberry thumbprint cookie. The next thing Nathalie recalled was the carriage ride home. Papa had held the stack of papers close to his chest in a way that had reminded her of the way she held her stuffed bunny, Silvain. Once home, Papa had carried those papers straight into the bedroom and never spoke of them again.
Had he kept them?
If he had, the papers would be in their bedroom. She had to search.
Yes, she could have waited until the next time Maman was out on an errand or visiting friends. She hadn’t had that opportunity in several days, however, and she needed to know.
Inquisitiveness trumped patience, as it so often did.
After dinner, Nathalie sat in Papa’s chair and read from her Poe anthology. Maman settled on the sofa to work on a blanket for the Cartiers, the family across the street expecting a little one this fall. Around half past nine, Maman said she was going to “rest her eyes,” placed her knitting needles down, and fell asleep shortly thereafter.
Before long Maman’s breaths were deep and rhythmic; she was just beginning to snore lightly.
Good. She wouldn’t rouse for a while.
Nathalie rested the Poe book on an end table and stood up as quietly as possible. She took light steps toward Maman’s room. Shadows enveloped her as she slipped through the doorway, a curious Stanley in tow.
She felt in the darkness for Maman’s bedside lamp. Clink! Her hand struck the base. She pulled back her hand, listening intently until she heard the sound of Maman’s sleep from the parlor.
Nathalie put the lamp on low, the flame equivalent of a whisper, and carried it—where? She paused, glancing around her parents’ bedroom as if seeing it for the first time. She hadn’t looked around at the nooks and crannies in their room for years, not since she got caught searching for Christmas presents when she was six. (That year she received a visit both from Père Noël, who gives gifts to well-behaved children, and from Père Fouettard, who delivers spankings to naughty children. She never searched for gifts again.)
She started with the closet, full of bags and boxes against the back wall. Looking through them took longer than it should have, between the dim lighting and her efforts to be soundless. She found nothing except a pair of her baby shoes. After some hushed coaxing, Stanley hopped out of the closet. Nathalie shut the door and listened for a moment, long enough to detect that Maman was still sleeping, and proceeded to the drawers.
There were six of them. Nothing was tucked away in the first two. The third drawer squeaked like a mouse. Nathalie’s fingers danced along the interior and stopped on something long and flat with hinges on one side. A box.
The ideal size for documents.
She placed the lamp on the dresser and moved it to the edge, catching just enough light to see what was inside. Papers and more papers: her birth announcement, documents about her parents’ marriage and Papa’s work in the navy, and some papers related to money and the apartment. Her heart sank as the stack grew thinner.
The next three drawers held nothing resembling documents. A keepsake box containing coins from Papa’s adventures overseas lay nestled in the last one. Nathalie had always been captivated by those coins because they told a story of their own about Papa’s travels to places like America (she wanted to visit Boston one day) and Cochinchina and Algérie française.
An unexpected ruffle of emotion, mild yet inescapable, passed through her. I miss Papa.
His rumbling voice, his hearty laugh, even the way he looked when he was deep in thought. He’d seen much—it was etched on his face like a melancholy concerto—and spoke of it from time to time, yet Nathalie knew much more was left unsaid.
She took the lid off the keepsake box and grabbed a coin. Any coin. It didn’t matter. Just something to make her feel connected to Papa there, in that moment. She put it in her pocket, patting the coin twice as if to safeguard it. Time to resume her search.
Stooping down, she scrutinized the space under the bed. There were two boxes there, but she knew one was for storing winter clothes and the other was for Christmas decorations. Lifting the lids confirmed it. Stanley climbed into one of the boxes and she gently nudged him out. She stood up to listen for Maman’s deep breaths before moving on.
Two more places to inspect.
Nathalie stared at the outline of the wardrobe, dreading its creaky doors and drawers, and crossed over to it. She leaned in close to muffle that first thud when the doors were unlatched, cringing when it was louder than she anticipated. She listened again for Maman’s breaths. Still heavy.
With the lamp at eye level, she peered into the recess of the top shelf. Bed linens on one side and the blanket her grandmother had knit on the other, with nothing in the space between.
Nathalie reached for the first drawer and pulled it back; the wood groaned like a weary old man who wanted to be left alone. She hesitated.
Everything was quiet. As quiet as a side street in residential Paris could be. Maman wasn’t breathing audibly anymore, but she wasn’t stirring, either.
Nathalie thumbed through some sweaters and, seeing nothing, pushed them back.
This search was far less thrilling and worthwhile than she had expected. M
aybe that was the problem—expectations. Simply wanting the answer to an old and probably irrelevant question to assuage her desire to know about Tante didn’t mean the world was going to comply.
She moved to the last place worth exploring: the desk. An inkwell, a small stack of books, and a paperweight lay atop it. Stanley jumped on the desk, weaving around the books to sniff the inkwell.
The first drawer turned up nothing but a ruler, some nails, and a hammer. The second drawer was noisy and took an eternity to open. It was strewn with scraps of paper and a folded-up page of Le Petit Journal. Just as Nathalie picked it up, Stanley leapt off the desk, knocking two books onto the floor.
The sofa jostled on the wooden floor, ever so softly.
She put the books back onto the stack, shooing Stanley out of the room to no avail.
Maman’s cough burst in from the living room.
Nathalie extinguished the lamp. Maman’s back would be to the bedroom, but if she stood up, she’d see the glow.
The floor creaked, distinctly, as it only did when bearing human weight slat after slat.
Oh no, no no no …
The noisy drawer was still open. Nathalie shoved the newspaper inside the front of her dress and pressed up against the drawer.
“What are you doing?”
She turned. Her mother held a lamp that threw just enough light to reveal a scowl.
“Nothing,” Nathalie said, willing her voice not to crack. “Stanley came in here and I followed him.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t the other way around?”
“I’m going to bed and I wanted to take him with me, that’s all.”
Maman placed the lamp on her nightstand and folded her arms. “Was he in that drawer you just closed?”
Nathalie watched Stanley saunter out of the room. “He knocked some books off the desk. The drawer was open a little and I pushed it in.”
The lie swelled like a lump of dough, pushing at the walls of her stomach.
“We’ll talk in the morning. Bonne nuit, Nathalie,” Maman said, her usual warm tone traded for ice.
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