by Liza Wieland
The herons stand in a line with their backs to the mainland, the cormorants and guillemots below them, as if waiting for admission to the old sardine factory, to gobble up all the scraps. The moons of magnolia flowers glow, surreal, too many for one sky. Elizabeth can recognize myrtle and quince, the spiny pink skirts of mimosa flowers, a giant stand of bamboo. It’s hard to know exactly where in the world one has suddenly landed. Such a tiny island, but crowded with its own lighthouse, fort, chapel, beach, cliffs as blank and imperious as Dover’s. A pirate’s den, the guidebook says, also once a refuge for an earthy poet who had an affair with Sarah Bernhardt.
To the north, there is open ocean. Sigrid tacks and turns the Isolde back toward Douarnenez harbor. The wind fails to nothing, and the boat drifts whimsically. Ann disappears into the hold, and then they hear the pop of a cork. Ann hands up a bottle of wine and a sleeve of paper cups. Louise pours, and they raise the cups in the direction of the lighthouse. Ann joins them to sit beside Marie, touching her arm and the inside of her wrist casually, without self-consciousness. Louise looks away, but for a long moment, Elizabeth stares. The wine is white and crisp and very cold. Sancerre, the label reads. Five minutes more in the Isolde’s icebox and it would have frozen. Again, Elizabeth imagines Robert’s body, borne along, now borne back to Douarnenez. Unburied. She wants to leave him here.
We will meet in Paris, Sigrid says to Elizabeth as they motor into the boat slip. I’ll make sure of it. In the meantime, take care of this.
She hands Elizabeth the blue origami sailboat.
Clara, comtesse de Chambrun, director of the American Library in Paris, has agreed to rent her apartment beside the Luxembourg Gardens to Elizabeth, Louise, and Hallie. The countess and Mrs. Crane are connected by an intricate web of commerce and politics. They are each, Louise says, admirers of the other’s husband’s name, and so they play a certain game. When Louise offered a sum of money for the rent, Clara wrote back that it was too much, and Louise returned a letter naming another price, and Clara rejected that, too. In the end, they paid no rent and had the services of a cook and housekeeper.
When Elizabeth and Louise meet Clara at 58 rue de Vaugirard to claim the key, she wants to know which one of them is the writer.
Your mother told me, Clara says to Louise. She thought that would make me believe you were all calm, neat girls.
We are, Louise says. Elizabeth is the calmest and neatest of us all.
Clara looks dubious, but then she fixes her gaze on Elizabeth. Her expression softens and her eyes widen, as if she’s had an idea.
Very good, Miss Bishop, she says. And you’re still young, too. Those qualities could be useful later in life.
Clara smiles, with some hesitation, as if she’s afraid the necessary parts of her face might not work correctly. She is tall, with a long nose and jaw, like a horse. She should smile more, Elizabeth thinks, to lessen the effect.
Clara does not invite them to sit. There is a suitcase packed by the door.
Thank you for all this, Louise says. We would be glad to pay you something.
My husband believes in generosity, Clara says, that it is a more reliable kind of intimacy. But now, in this era, in Europe, I am not so sure. Perhaps you can take me dinner, or to tea. Like friends.
Of course, Elizabeth says, without knowing why she’s spoken up so quickly.
Though you know I am older than your mothers, Clara says. My daughter, Suzanne, would be your age.
Elizabeth hears the would be. I’m sorry, she says.
Oh, Clara says. Her heart. It was . . . But where is your friend?
Hallie decided to stay in a pension in the sixteenth, with her mother, Louise says.
Clara sighs, clearly relieved. The third bedroom, she says, Suzanne’s bedroom, is very small. You would be crowded, I think. No one sleeps in there anymore.
* * *
Later, after Clara has called the driver to fetch her suitcase and left with him, Elizabeth finds the photographs, arranged on the dresser in the small bedroom:
Suzanne at nine months, in that bedroom, sitting in the caramel-colored leather chair, holding a world atlas as if she’s reading from it, as if she were announcing the names of countries, lamplight beaming down over her face and hands. Her fingers tracing the edges of the continents.
Suzanne held by Clara in front of the Christmas tree: a slyly humorous shot, in which a teddy bear ornament hangs directly above Suzanne’s head as if it’s her idea, as if she is thinking the little bear into existence.
Suzanne at five (someone has written the ages), leaning against a tree in the Luxembourg Gardens, a pose meant to be casual but looks as if it must be excruciating, as if the cleft of the tree had suddenly of its own accord yanked Suzanne’s arm up at a forty-five-degree angle, and Suzanne is trying to pretend that such a horrifying thing has not happened.
The next year, Suzanne wearing a sweater the exact color of Japanese iris, arms crossed, a blond braid falling over her left shoulder. Some question in her eyes, some worry or fear, above that gap-toothed smile.
At fifteen, embracing Clara on the Pont des Arts.
“Seventeen, after the diagnosis.” Suzanne’s fierce smile, the smile of heedless youth, the smile that says, Fine for you to admit there might be an end to your days on this earth, but I’m going to live forever.
The largest photo, nine-year-old Suzanne wrapped in a white blanket, looking at a picture book with a man, perhaps her father. The book is The Nutcracker, so it must be Christmas 1911. No sign of damage to Suzanne’s perfect little heart. No inkling. No war yet. That’s three years hence.
Just like now.
The champagne like stars on their tongues, as the monk once said, and the wild strawberries in summer warmed by the sun and shockingly sweet. Louise’s hand on Elizabeth’s hesitant, her skin like a child’s: soft and untroubled. The light over the Seine this same softness, but really the opposite—old light, well broken in. Like leather, chafed from years of use, a saddle, a jacket, and Elizabeth believes if she could touch this light, that’s how it would feel. Children’s voices in the alley sounding at first like church bells, but then as they walked closer, like cats. The jangle and shriek of perfume on Saint-Germain. The racket at night outside the apartment. Chocolate so bitter it’s almost like tasting chalk. Chalk-lit, like the white cliffs. The large beer called a formidable. Actual church bells. The feel of Clara’s oldest books and the smell of them giving Elizabeth an ache below her eyes, in her nose and ears. The clocks in the apartment going off nearly constantly. The crazy quilt of languages around Notre-Dame. The quiet in certain parks. How the early evening light on the île Saint-Louis feels exclusive, carefully set down at dusk, so perfectly does it fill the streets. Even the ice cream tastes better there. Steak in the tourist cafés, though, tough as an old boot.
Elizabeth would like to become more French, but she knows she never will. For one thing, the French are small and thin, and while she is certainly small, thin seems to be forever out of reach. Louise, though, is often mistaken for a wealthy Parisian, and Elizabeth wonders what must be said about them as a pair. Louise has brought her friend from the country! Louise’s friend the Swede! What does it mean, Canadian? Aren’t Canadians simply French who are confused, who missed the boat? Or took the boat, rather! Louise receives an invitation from an ambassador’s wife to visit their house in Neuilly, another to attend a salon in the Latin Quarter. Bring your somber little friend, the wife says. She and Louise laugh about that, but still it makes Elizabeth sad.
Clara tells them the maid, Christine, and Simone, the cook, are worried because Elizabeth and Louise appear to have no suitors. Louise proposes they send themselves flowers, great, towering bouquets, a new one every day, until the maid grows tired of sloshing water and dropping petals.
In odd moments, Elizabeth misses New York City. Paris, though a delight to the senses, sometimes seems a little dull. She reads days-old American newspapers and keeps a running tally of all they’ve missed
in New York, talks and concerts and theater openings. But also world news: it’s strange, Elizabeth feels, to be in the middle of so much and learn nothing until they read it.
Louise, she cries, throwing down the newspaper, listen to this: American citizens traveling on ships of warring nations do so at their own risk.
No more Nazi boats, Elizabeth, Louise says.
I only booked one way. And what will Margaret do?
I’m sure her mother will only put her on an American ship. If she lets her travel at all.
We’ll have fun when she gets here.
Aren’t we having fun now? Louise says.
Of course we are.
But the Louvre with Margaret. She’s been imagining the two of them roaming the place on rainy afternoons, and Margaret’s running commentary. She knows everything Margaret will want to see. The Wedding Feast at Cana. Woman with a Mirror. The Géricault portrait called The Woman with Gambling Mania—Elizabeth has already found it on the second floor of the Sully Wing. The woman in the painting is wearing a white kerchief and holding a crutch. Her face, the expression. She looks like a simpleton, but she’s an individual, Margaret says. You think you might understand her and feel for her. He paints her with such sympathy.
And then Margaret says this, which causes Elizabeth to love her all the more: I think a madwoman and an artist are alike in a way. They’re intense and single-minded. They cannot be distracted from their passions. They’re not like normal people. Isn’t that right, Elizabeth?
The apartment de la comtesse appears to have been furnished by a madwoman, with too many writing desks, love seats, family portraits, clocks, and Moroccan knickknacks, mostly an enormous collection of small incense burners strung on ropes and chains. These, Christine explains in French and in hysterical pantomime, are apparently used to fumigate Clara’s many visitors by shaking the vessel around their heads and shoulders. Every drawer in every writing desk is locked, Elizabeth discovers when she searches for pens. Christine claims the keys were lost il y a mille ans, a thousand years ago.
The multitude of clocks don’t keep the same time. Elizabeth and Louise argue about this.
We could adjust them, Louise says.
All of them? Elizabeth says. That would take hours. And maybe the countess likes it this way, all the staggered ringing. Maybe she needs it to stay awake.
It keeps me awake, Louise says.
It doesn’t seem to.
All right, so I do sleep pretty well, but not so well that I don’t see you reading Robert’s letters. Put them away, why don’t you? Or, better yet, throw them away.
Yes, Elizabeth says. That’s just what I’ll do.
I shouldn’t have said that.
You’re right.
Elizabeth asks herself why on earth she rereads these letters, and she never has a very good answer. The memory of Robert Seaver burns in her mind. His hands, calloused on the inside from gripping crutches his whole life, but soft to touch, to hold. His hands felt like the writing paper he used, and so it comforts her some to touch the letters.
Elizabeth knows Louise also wants her to stop writing to Robert’s mother, but she can’t. She feels she has to explain herself. Maybe it is out of guilt, but more likely that Elizabeth isn’t convinced of anything—she wonders if she could have loved Robert and been his wife, that she might have liked the way she could have been with him, that she still longs for something he could have given her that Louise can’t. Which is a life like other people’s. She can see all those lives, the way she can see the outline of a tree in the fog: really, it’s just that you know the tree is there. You can’t actually see it. It’s faith, a kind of frantic belief that the world doesn’t change very much or very quickly. But, Elizabeth wonders, what if she really wants change, really wants a steady life that resembles other steady lives? But why on earth would she go home, stay in one place? She and Louise could travel for years on the Crane family money.
And Louise is generous. Elizabeth knows Louise would take her to the ends of the earth. She says so, and then, she says, when we come to the end, we’ll start over. But won’t we have seen it all by then? Elizabeth wonders. Will we want to see it again? Does she love Louise? Can she love anyone? What is love anyway? When has she felt it, ever? Drinking. That’s when. No, not just drinking. That summer two years ago, when she was falling in love with Robert. And then with Louise (and with Margaret, if she’s honest). It felt like that, falling, as if she were plummeting, tumbling, sinking backward onto a soft bed, helpless. That’s why they call it falling in love, the drop of it, an excess of gravity. Warmth, wonder, a calm surprise. Oh Look. Here you go. You’re facing forward, but the world rises behind you, disappears past your shoulders, over your head. What other sensation is like that? Elizabeth wonders. A vacuum? A vortex? Neither sounds pleasant.
There is a photograph on the bedside table, the childhood portrait of Suzanne and her brother, René, in which they appear to be blond angels, dressed in white linen, and backlit. After Elizabeth buys the pair of doves at the market on rue de Lutèce, and after she paints the small wooden cage, she keeps the doves next to the photograph, thinking children and singing birds should, whenever possible, be in close proximity. But they shuffle and coo at all hours, so she moves both the birds and the photograph to Clara’s bedroom, which they reserve for guests. In Clara’s handkerchief drawer, she finds the other picture, the one in which Suzanne has been crying. She looks as if she is about to be struck.
Clara phones to ask Louise and Elizabeth if she might come back to the apartment someday soon. To collect a few things, she says. This visit is arranged for lunch, but Clara arrives hours late, in the middle of the afternoon when Elizabeth is alone. Clara stands for a few minutes in the front hallway, staring into space, as if she’s forgotten why she wanted to come. Then she crosses the hall and disappears into her bedroom. Silence, a breath of it, until a clock chimes the quarter hour. Elizabeth calls out, asking whether she would like some refreshment, and Clara says yes, if it’s not any trouble.
Use the Limoges, Clara says. In the china cabinet.
Elizabeth finds the Limoges cups, white with skeins of pink roses. Her hands shake a little as she carries them from the kitchen, pours the tea. They settle on the sofa.
I hope I’m not interrupting your writing, Clara says.
Heavens, no, Elizabeth tells her. I’m afraid I’m having a sort of dry spell.
That must be terrible. I myself have never had a dry spell that way. I’m writing a memoir now, you know.
I didn’t know. How lucky to be so prolific.
It’s not luck. You sit down and you do it.
I’ve heard that.
If you were writing, Miss Bishop, what would it be about?
About? Elizabeth replies.
I think that’s the polite question, Clara says.
Poems about clocks, Elizabeth says and laughs.
At first, Clara is angry. You mock me, she says.
Mocked by clocks. How extraordinary. Isn’t that what we all are?
She wishes she had something stronger to pour into this pretty little teacup. Clara stands abruptly.
I dislike tea, she says. Really. We ought to have an honest-to-goodness drink.
Clara looks as if she might be about to cry. She leaves the room and returns with a glass decanter half full of glittering amber.
Scotch, Clara says.
I like scotch, Elizabeth says. I like it very much. Too much, probably.
Clara pours out two generous tumblers, and they drink. Do you want something to eat? she asks.
No, thank you, Elizabeth says. I want the full effect. I want to get very drunk.
Good, Clara says. So do I.
They drink for a moment in silence. Light streams through the tall windows, falling hard on Clara’s face.
The thing is, Clara says, I find myself wishing for you to be my daughter. I know that’s odd. That was the reason I rented you the apartment. Not because of Louise and her
family, but because of your ages. Suzanne would be a bit older, but not much. And I would have loved for her to turn out like you. An independent person who knows what she thinks.
But I don’t know, Elizabeth says. I don’t have any idea. I just go along. Drinking and getting up in the morning. Because the clocks wake me. Otherwise I might not get up. So I suppose I should thank you for the clocks after all. She studies Clara’s large hands. Nobody really ever wanted me for her daughter.
Well, I do, Clara says. I want it immensely.
Why? Elizabeth asks.
I can introduce you to some of my friends, Clara continues. I do know some very influential people. Readers who might appreciate your work. You do seem a bit lost in the shadows.
In that moment, Elizabeth remembers her father lying in the snow. He is blue, like snow shadows, like the evening into which he has fallen. His jacket and trousers are blue, too. His hands beside him seem to have more to do with his clothing than with his body. Elizabeth stares from the porch of their house. She is three. She stares and stares. She cannot help herself. The world is nowhere, lost to her. Inside the house, her mother rests in the darkened bedroom, taking apart the blanket, stitch by stitch, each bit of thread a loss, a disappointment. Soon her mother will be sent to the institution.
She knows her father is dead, though she doesn’t know the words for it. She knows he now has nothing in common with the world. Before, he was like the fox, like the birds, like the sky, above her, the blue of his eyes a kind of smaller version of sky, the flecks of brown in the irises like the birds that drift there. But now he is more like a machine in the barn, still until someone makes it go, or the broom in the kitchen closet, a tall wooden thing whose purpose might be decided by her mother but mostly left in darkness.