When I got to the house, my mother was at the gym, so I jumped in the car and took off in case there was some kind of problem that might bring her home early—an instructor who called in sick, lower back pain, a fall from the stationary bike in spinning class. The last thing I needed was another discussion with her.
I don’t want to give the wrong impression of my mom. She’s actually quite funny, as sarcastic people often are, and I know, despite her caustic nature, when it comes to the big things she’s always got my back. Another thing about her is that she’s often right, which I recognized she probably was in this case.
Grand-mère was eighty-nine and for the past six years had been living in an assisted-living community; the use of the word facility or home was frowned upon. The doctors said it wasn’t Alzheimer’s, some other kind of dementia, but what difference did a label make anyway? She was in and out of it, recently more out than in, so that was one problem.
The other was that no one had ever heard her talk about anything that happened before she came to America as a new bride in 1945. I did know my grandparents met in a displaced-persons camp outside of Paris, that he was a doctor and she a wandering girl from somewhere in the French countryside, both the sole survivors of their families. Other than that, silence had reigned on the subject for seventy years. The Benoit family has always believed that what remains unacknowledged doesn’t actually exist. Even when I was a kid and we went on vacations to France, there were no investigations—actually not even any discussion—into what might have happened to our ancestors.
But some of us wanted to hear the story, our story really, mostly the cousins. Sticking with tradition, my mother and aunt maintained their parents’ silence, and their husbands, third- and fourth-generation Americans, knew when not to intrude. But the four of us had speculated in whispers forever: Liz getting teary, Adam full of righteous anger, Zach thoughtful, struggling to understand the inexplicable.
My curiosity had been the most voracious. I read all the books. First the novels: Uris, Wouk, Styron. Then the nonfiction: Anne Frank, Elie Wiesel, Yehuda Bauer’s History of the Holocaust, William Shirer’s Rise and Fall. I tried to wrap my mind around what had happened, what it meant, but I became a jumbled-up fusion of my cousins’ reactions: it made me cry, it put me into a rage, it frustrated the hell out of me.
Grand-mère was sitting in a chair in the communal living room, sun brushing her right shoulder, the rest of her in dusk. When I was a child, my favorite thing was to bake with her. She taught me how to make pain d’amande and challah; dripping the melted butter over the braided loaf is one of my sweetest memories. I still bake the cookies, often when I’m feeling a little lonely; the intoxicating aroma of almonds and butter never fails to lift my spirits.
It hurt to see Grand so small, so pulled inward, so vacant. I wondered if the large woman who made potato latkes so rich and crisp they melted and crunched in your mouth at the same time, who beat the pants off her friends at the poker table, who loved her family with a fierceness that was scary at times, was somewhere inside this tiny husk of a woman. If she still existed at all.
I sat in the chair next to her and took her hand in mine. It was cold, the skin so transparent it almost wasn’t there. “Grand-mère,” I said. “It’s Danielle. Dani. How are you?”
She looked at me with her still startling gray eyes. Blinked. Then a blazing smile. “Linda!” she cried. “Linda!”
“Not Linda,” I corrected. “Dani. Linda’s daughter. Your granddaughter.”
“You look beautiful.” She pressed my hand between both of hers and leaned toward my neck, drawing in a deep breath. “Why do you look young when I look old? You even smell young.”
“It’s Dani,” I repeated. “Not Linda.”
“That beautiful girl of yours. Syyn myydl. The one with all those blonde curls? With the silly boy’s name who does not eat enough? Such a firecracker. A real firecracker that one. Paints such pretty pictures.”
Pretty pictures. This, of all things, she remembered. It hurt. “She’s fine, but how are you? I came here to see how you are.”
“I am dying,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Losing my marbles as—”
“Don’t say that, Grand—”
“There is nothing wrong with dying when your time comes,” Grand-mère declared, and I saw the woman she was push through the wrinkled skin and hunched body. “What is wrong is dying when it is not.”
I hesitated. “You’ve seen a lot of that, haven’t you?”
She stared over my shoulder, and I worried I’d lost her.
“Do you remember when you met Grand-père?” I asked, hoping to lead her gently into her memories.
She looked at me blankly.
“Henri,” I said. “What was he like when you first met him?”
Her face softened. “Grand-père Cäin. He gives me milk right from the cow.”
“Not your grandfather, your husband. Henri.”
“The milk is very warm. At first I do not like it but then I do.”
“You met Henri right after the war,” I reminded her. “What was he like?”
“He is crazy. Everyone is. The war is over, but nothing is better. All he wants is to go all over France to find his sister. He is a good man, handsome, and I help him.”
“In France? He was looking for Alizée in France?” This didn’t make any sense. Alizée went missing in 1940 in New York; she’d never have gone back to Europe at that time. I didn’t know what was worse, Grand-mère’s confusion, my disappointment, or the fact that I was going to have to admit to my mother that she was right.
“My Henri looks in America before he looks in France. Before I meet him. Then we come to America together.”
I sat back in my chair. My grandfather immigrated to the United States in 1945. “I don’t think so, Grand.”
She nodded her head as if I’d agreed with her. “We come to America to look again.”
“When you came to America to look again, did he talk to Lee Krasner or Jackson Pollock?” I asked cautiously. “Mark Rothko? Is that when he got Alizée’s paintings from Eleanor Roosevelt?”
“He gets the painting from the other one.”
I sat up, senses heightened. “What other one?”
“She gives him the one he carries with him all the time.”
“Is it big?” I asked. “Red, white, and blue? Or does it look like lily pads?”
“Bloom. That is where we go first. We are worried she is . . .” Grand-mère made a circular motion with her forefinger. “She is not all there in the head.”
“The painting looks like blooms? Like flowers?” Lily Pads could be interpreted that way. “Did you go with him to visit Eleanor Roosevelt?”
“We visit her and the husband way out in the country. In New York. But my Henri has the painting from her already from before. He brings it to France with him and then brings it back to America. He hates it.”
I ignored her non sequitur. “You went to Hyde Park?”
“They make us apple pie.” Grand shook her head. “She says her husband bakes it, but I do not believe her.”
“Her husband?” I asked a little too loudly, and Grand-mère pulled back into herself. Franklin Roosevelt was dead by 1945, she couldn’t be referring to him. But Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock lived on Long Island, not exactly “way out in the country,” but maybe it was then. I knew it couldn’t be, but I tried anyway. “Did you visit Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock in Long Island? When you were looking for Alizée?”
“She is very nice, but I do not like him. Your father says he is an imbecile.”
“Lee is very nice?”
“My Henri is so smart he talks to presidents,” Grand said proudly. “The wife gives him pictures.”
“The wife gives him pictures? What wife? Whose wife? Jackson Pollock’s? Franklin Roosevelt’s?”
“I like the pictures very much but they make him sad. He says we must make them go away. It is time to look forward and n
ot back.” Grand’s face crumbled and a tear stumbled its way down a branching crevasse in her cheek. “I would like very much to see those pretty pictures again.”
I took her hands, thrilled there was something I could do for her. “I have them, Grand. I can bring them to you. Or at least Lily Pads, the one you like so much, the blooms, because I have to take it on the train and Turned is too big. But I can do that. Would you like that? Next Saturday maybe? I’ll bring one of the pretty pictures for you to look at.” I think maybe I’ll bring one of mine, too.
Grand-mère’s eyes flashed, and she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “We cannot tell your father about this. He tells me to throw them away, but I do not. I hide them instead. How can I destroy such beautiful things? I save them for pretty little Dani. My Henri is so smart he talks to presidents, but he cannot bear to look at his poor sister’s pictures.”
11
ALIZÉE, 1939
“This is what we know.” Alizée ticked off the items on her fingers. “Breckinridge Long controls all the visas. He has absolute power over who gets into the country and who doesn’t. Perhaps who will ultimately die and who won’t. He’s an extreme nativist, staunch isolationist, doing everything he can to obstruct laws Congress has passed, to do the opposite of his job description. And he’s completely committed to keeping as many immigrants out of the United States as possible.”
It was the first meeting of the Discredit Long Committee. Gideon had recruited four other ANL members, and after a few discussions, he’d appointed Alizée to head up the group. She’d been surprised, flattered, and a bit nervous. But action was what she needed now, the best antidote.
The more she delved into Breckinridge Long, the more disgusted she was. The facts she’d uncovered were bleak: he’d managed to reverse a Roosevelt initiative to ease restrictions on immigration; since taking the job as assistant secretary, he’d slashed the quotas in half and was hoping to cut even more; he was out-and-out lying about how many visas he was authorizing, especially for Jews. If he wasn’t removed from the State Department, it was sure to get worse. He had to be stopped before there were no more visas to be had.
“This could be the most important thing you ever do,” she told her committee. “We get this man out of his job, and we can save thousands of lives.” It was true, and what she needed to say, but inside she was crying: Save mine, save mine, please save mine.
They listened solemnly, and she forced herself to focus on them, on their sorrows. Nathan Heme was a veteran of the Great War who despised Germany. Aarone De Abravanel was an Italian trying to get visas for his family. Bertha Dryzen’s German grandmother, aunt, and cousins had been killed by the Nazis in 1937. And William Stewart was a boy about Alizée’s age who believed we were all God’s children and therefore had to stand up against any evil perpetrated on innocents. Bertha and Aarone were Jewish, Nathan claimed his war experiences had turned him into a devout atheist, and William lived by Jesus’s golden rule.
Alizée explained the general plan: they were to research everything Long had ever said or done that might be used against him. “We’re looking for bribes, kickbacks, lies, underhanded or criminal activity. Anything we can find. Public and private.”
“How are we supposed to do that?” Nathan asked. He was originally from England, born to Gypsies, a people Hitler was harassing almost as much as the Jews.
“I’ll get to that,” she said. “Just hear me out.”
“I say we shoot the guy,” Nathan grumbled. “Forget all this gobbledygook.”
Alizée ignored Nathan; although his point about how difficult this was going to be was more than valid. “ANL has connections at the State Department and at the White House. Once we collect enough information, Gideon hopes his contacts will be able to convince FDR to fire Long. Replace him with someone who’ll follow the law and actually try to fill all the visa allocations. Hopefully, someone more sympathetic to the refugees.”
“There couldn’t be anyone less,” Bertha said, and both William and Aarone nodded. Nathan scowled but sat up a bit straighter.
“A handmaid to the devil,” William said. He was so good-looking, with high cheekbones and what Babette would have called “bedroom eyes,” that Alizée had a hard time matching his piety with his movie-star face.
“You didn’t mention that Long and FDR are good friends,” Nathan pointed out. “Have been for years. So there’s a good possibility whatever we find will end up being ignored.”
Alizée recognized this negative attitude from her socialist groups; there was always one. Unfortunately, in this case, the defeatist voice was well informed. She gave Nathan her best smile. “That’s a good point, and we’ll need to take it into consideration when we’re farther down the line, but the president’s a good man, a great man. When we come up with enough ammunition, he’ll listen.”
“I’ve got ammunition,” Nathan said. “And I can shoot. My way we don’t need to worry about whether your great man will turn against his buddy. This way we can take it—”
“I am thinking the president is wanting to go to war,” Aarone interrupted. “So there are other things that he and Mr. Long do not . . . How do you say? See with their eyes?” Aarone had come to New York when he was twenty-two and had been working for the past ten years in a shirt factory to bring the rest of his family over one by one. He’d managed to finance three brothers, but two sisters and his parents still remained in Italy.
“See eye to eye,” Bertha said.
“Again, a good point, but let’s concentrate on our first steps,” Alizée said before Nathan could counter. “Our first hurdle is getting the goods on Long.” She cleared her throat and picked up her notes. “The man’s been in the public eye for years, which is helpful to us. A third assistant secretary of state under Wilson. Ran for Senate from Missouri twice—and lost. Ambassador to Italy and now assistant secretary of state. And there’s been controversy all along the way. Some noise about campaign irregularities. He was considered overly pro-Mussolini when he was in Italy and—”
“Something that didn’t seem to bother his buddy Franklin,” Nathan interrupted. “Long stayed in that position for years.”
“You’re not being particularly helpful,” Bertha said to Nathan in a soft voice coated with steel. She’d told Alizée that after her mother found out about the deaths of her own mother, sister, and nephews, she’d gone mad and never recovered, that the suddenly old woman begged her daily to save her dead family.
Nathan snapped his head backward in surprise, Aarone winked at Bertha, and Alizée resumed as if there had been no interruption. “His lengthy career will make it easier for us to find articles, interviews, speeches, correspondence,” she said. “It means he’s had contact with lots of people—and that he’s made lots of enemies. So let’s go rattle some cages.”
She divvied up the tasks. Nathan would take the early years: World War I, the Wilson administration, Long’s senate defeats. William and Aarone were responsible for his tenure in Italy, and she and Bertha would handle the years between 1937 and the present. Each would scour the libraries for material, talk to reporters, the police, hunt down friends and enemies. They were to meet again in two weeks.
The next day, a month after her telegram to Arles, a response finally arrived.
1939 APRIL 30 AM 10 55 ARLES FRANCE
ALIZÉE BENOIT 303 WEST 10th STREET NEW YORK NEW YORK UNITED STATES
BANK WILL NOT RELEASE FUNDS STOP NO EXPLANATION STOP CONTINUE TO DO WHAT YOU CAN STOP LETTER TO FOLLOW STOP
TANTE C=
Days passed and no letter followed. Alizée tried to convince herself that banks in France had the same problems banks in America did, that her aunt and uncle’s inability to get at their cash was due to a bureaucratic oversight, that the money would arrive soon. She needed to stay calm, allow time for things to work themselves out. But fear gnawed at her.
Except for at ANL meetings, she hardly ever heard talk of potential disaster in Europe; almos
t everyone she encountered was convinced any negative news was nothing more than an attempt to pull the United States into a fight with Germany, which America had no business getting involved in. The waste of the Great War all over again: hundreds of thousands of dead boys followed by the hopelessness of the Depression. It wasn’t that she couldn’t understand this position that bothered her; it was that she could.
So she threw herself into her work. Aaron Seliger came for a studio visit. He carefully inspected the six reversals she’d finished and claimed to be impressed. He explained that unfortunately he had shows scheduled through the end of December but that he would definitely come back in November to “reassess” when she had more paintings completed. Mark said this was extremely encouraging, and Alizée thought it was, too, so she went, rolled canvases in hand, to the few other galleries that sold abstract art: Montross, Rehn, Valentine Dudensing, A. E. Gallatin’s.
The owners gushed over how talented she was, how original the work, but no one had either the space or the inclination to show any of them. Lee was certain the lack of interest was because she was a girl and had nothing to do with the quality of her work; Alizée could accept that was probably part of it. “Positive rejections,” Mark called them, which, again, they were. But that didn’t stop it from stinging.
She was thinking about this as she swirled red through the mostly blue tones of a failed painting when the door of her flat flew open and Lee bolted in, waving her hands and talking so fast that Alizée couldn’t understand what she was saying. Lee danced around in a circle, singing a song about jeepers and creepers and peepers, which made absolutely no sense.
Alizée was mystified but pleased. Lee and Igor had been fighting a lot lately, and it was good to see her smiling again. “What? What are you trying to tell me?”
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