by Phoebe Stone
We sit down at the table. She takes a big, deep breath. “Yes, oh yes, they wanted those dolls. ‘Very well, then,’ they shouted, ‘If you do not tell us where the dolls are, you will have to come with us.’ And they took my little grandmother away. She was not going to betray France. She was not going to relent. Not this time. And she did not. I never saw my grandmother again.” Collette sobs. And I cry too for Delphine Rouette and for Collette, who must have been so frightened lying under the bed.
“I should have said something!” Collette shouts. “I should have called out. I knew where the dolls were! ‘Take the dolls but leave my grandmother here!’ I should have said. But I did not. I obeyed my grandmother. I did not speak! I should have! I should have!”
“Collette,” I say, getting up to hug her, “it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. You were a child.”
Collette cries and cries. “I will never forgive myself,” she says. “They were only dolls. They were not worth my grandmother’s life!”
“Oh no. You must forgive yourself. You are not to blame for a war. You are not to blame for the Nazis. You were obeying your grandmother,” I say.
Collette and I sit together in silence then. A long deep quietness like a large body of water settles in around us.
“Where were the dolls hidden, Collette?” I finally say.
“Don’t you know? Didn’t you guess?” she whispers. “In your armoire! The seventeen dolls were hidden in your armoire. There is a false wall at the back of it that opens up and there are large shelves hidden in there. The dolls were tucked behind that wall, locked away in the secret part of the armoire in your room.”
“Oh, Collette,” I say and we cry again. We cry for Delphine Rouette. We cry for Collette and for all the children caught in the war. We cry for the dolls and for Madame Jumeau and Sylvie the spy and we cry for France and for what happened.
“There will always be tears in France because of that war,” says Collette. “Those tears will never go away. We live with those tears. We work around those tears. But they are always there.”
“Collette,” I say, “what happened to the dolls?”
Collette looks at me. Her face is raggedy and red and she seems drained, as if all the light has fallen away from her now. She takes my hand. She gets up and we walk to the back of her apartment. There she opens a door into a small room.
Then I see them. Seventeen beautiful dolls, shining in their fancy bébé dresses with their beautiful handmade child bonnets with ribbons of smooth silk tied under their chins. There they stand on the shelf, seventeen perfect childlike dolls, untouched, unspoiled, representing France when she was thriving, when she was at her best.
For the next few days a deeper quietness looms over the rue Michel-Ange, Michael-Angelo Street. The air is hushed and hot, the weeping wisteria shadowy and still. There seem to be no cars or scooters rushing by, as if even Michael the angel is standing too in silence with Collette. And then one evening the quietness seems to break.
I am sitting on the balcony in the late afternoon. How beautiful this city is and how complex, with its light and its dark side, its sparkle and its spell. I love to see the sun setting on the skyline here. I know it has cast its orange glow on thousands and thousands of evenings in Paris, even as Collette and Delphine tucked all those dolls in the back of the armoire.
I think about my armoire and how much it must have stored and kept in its life with its secret drawer and its hidden shelves. I remember when I first found the little doll dress with Jean-Claude. I remember the excitement and the worry as we opened the drawer.
And then I remember something else. Something I pushed aside and in my guilt almost forgot. There was some wrapping paper and a card with the dress. It had been a gift. I had shoved the ribbons and the rest to the back of the drawer. Maybe the card is something Collette would want to see.
The idea seems to stun me and then it sends me climbing back into the salon and rushing toward my room. In the hall I pass Dad, who is calling out, “Pet! Come and see the sunset. It’s beautiful!”
“Saw it, Dad,” I say, darting around him. I dash into my room and pull the chair away from the armoire. There is the little drawer with its bumblebee on the handle. I open it and gently lift out the wrapping paper and card.
I can hear Mom with Ava in the next room, saying, “Oh, honey, if I were your age I would wear ribbons in my hair. You should try it. That might look stunning.”
“Collette?” I call out down the stairwell. “Collette? Where are you?” I scramble over the steps, slipping on them in my stocking feet. I tear across the foyer and stop at Collette’s door. It’s shut. It’s locked. I pound on it. “Collette!” I call again. “I have something to show you!”
I run out the front door of our building and slip under another arch of wisteria and then I am in the courtyard in the back. The sunset is casting orange filtered light on the clothesline that stretches across the expanse. The large, sailing sheets are cast in a pale, orange glow. “Collette,” I call again.
I see her standing among the sheets, the sky above her the color of a field of pumpkins ablaze with light. “There’s something I forgot to show you! Collette!”
Collette looks out from the shadows and sheets and says, “Qu’est-ce que tu dis? What are you saying?”
“I have some wrapping paper and a card to show you. I forgot about it. It was all wrapped up, the doll dress. I opened it. It was a gift,” I call.
“What did you say?” Collette calls back again. She drops her basket of clothes and clothespins and rushes toward me. For a moment it seems in my mind as if Michael the angel is lifting her up, carrying her across the courtyard toward me. She runs so fast she appears to be made of nothing but wind and clouds. “Mon Dieu!” she cries.
When she reaches me, I hand her the wrapping paper and ribbons and the card. She looks down at the card. Her hands are shaking. I wait. Moments pass. She throws her head back and looks up. She presses her fingers over her eyes. Her mouth trembles. I wait. She takes her hand away and looks farther and farther off, farther and farther up and away. I wait. Finally she drops her head down and reads aloud very quietly in French.
Then she translates it for me in an even softer voice. I almost cannot hear her.
Chère Collette,
You have just helped me hide the dolls. I want you to have this little dress and I want you to know that I am grateful for your help, my sweet child.
Love, from Grandma, 1943
“Mon Dieu! My skies! My trees! My water! My air! My life!” Collette cries out. “She was brave, my grandmother. She died with honor. She was courageous. She knew what would happen. She wanted to resist. And she thanked me. She thanked me.”
When I finally go upstairs it is nighttime. I walk in the darkened salon. And I sit alone in a Louis the Sixteenth chair. Paris is stretched out all across the front of the room through the long windows here, in the same way Collette’s story seems to spread out before me. Every pore of my skin weeps for her and for Delphine.
At the same time Paris is showing me its other side, its dazzling nighttime colors. The lights and reflections sparkle like candles strung across the horizon. Moving spotlights span the darkness as Paris celebrates the night once again.
This apartment appears to be empty. When I pass Ava’s room I see she has gone out. I try her door and find it locked again. Why does she lock it when she leaves? What is she hiding from me?
I walk through the rest of the apartment. No one has turned on any lights. Mom is sitting in the dining room with her back to me. Only Dad’s study is lit up as he reads and writes astonishing things about some guy who died over a hundred years ago.
How sad I feel for everyone, sad for Collette and sad for Delphine beyond measure. I also feel terrible for Ava and Logan. And for what I did. Oh, I have to make that right.
I walk into the kitchen and see dirty dishes piled on the counter. All I can think to do in my sadness for Collette and for everyone is to
clean the kitchen, the way Delphine made extra bloomers and dresses for free for Madame Jumeau to try to make up for what happened.
After I finish the dishes, I fill a bucket of soapy water and I get down on my hands and knees with a scrub brush and I scrub the white tile floor as if scrubbing away all the mistakes I’ve made. I guess I am trying to scrub away Collette’s sorrow too. Hers is an old sorrow. I must scrub hard and long to wash that away. Finally the floor is clean and shines in that wet, fresh, renewed way.
Now I hear Ava returning. I hear her bustling through the apartment to her room. I hear her door closing. Now is a good time. I rush forward and knock on her door. “Ava?” I call. “Um, I have something I need to tell you.”
“Pet, I don’t want to hear what you have to say, okay? Leave me alone. I don’t care what it is,” says Ava.
I start to open her door. “Don’t come in here!” she shouts. “Go away.”
I just stand there with my head hanging down.
And then I too go to bed. I lie there staring at the ceiling. I never thought it would be so hard to take back something I did in one foolish moment.
I worry too about the fashion show. Every time I think about it, I feel like I am on a tightrope walking high over a flooding river. We shouldn’t have sent in the application. I am sure I will get rejected yet again. It’s just another mistake.
Still, through all this, the feeling I have for Windel does not vanish, no matter how much I try to make it disappear. It hangs on like a line of music, a little phrase of melody that won’t go away.
I remember coming across Windel in a Boston park in early spring. He was on the swings with his little seven-year-old brother, probably taking care of him for the afternoon. Both of them were swinging higher and higher. I watched them for a while from my hidden spot and then I realized they were both wearing headsets, listening to music as they were swinging. Windel took his off for a minute and I could hear it. He had been on the swing listening to Chopin’s nocturnes. And his little brother was too.
After that, I went to the swing sets myself, even when it was cold out, and I would swing higher and higher, listening to Chopin. It got to be as if I became the music as I lifted up and down with the wind and the notes.
Collette and I sit in the courtyard this afternoon. The plane trees blow and rustle their branches of hot green leaves, making a cleansing, healing sound. The sunlight and shadows flicker on the warm cobblestones. We drink some citron pressé, which is much like lemonade.
Soon Marguerite appears, carrying Albert in his cage. Marguerite loves Albert. “That bird has charmed everyone in Paris!” says Collette. “And you know Marguerite started with only a pair of finches in her cage at her apartment and now she has twenty-five finches. They make nests and raise families there! They produce the tiniest eggs!”
Marguerite smiles.
They begin to talk in sign language about Jean-Claude. Yes, he is always trying to kiss Marguerite. Collette translates the signs for me. “Yes, yes,” says Collette. “He does that. He is very enthusiastic. Kissing and killing, you know, he is only doing what men have done since the beginning!” Everybody laughs. Laughter echoes against the four walls of the courtyard. “But he is a good boy, is he not?”
Soon we see Monsieur Le Bon Bon walking across the courtyard. He is coming back from his job. He walks toward us in a white jacket covered in white powder. Even his face and his small round glasses and his little mustache are all powdery white. He looks like a ghost from a Tintin book.
“Oh, Le Bon Bon, he works at the boulangerie. At the bakery. He is the flour sifter!” says Collette. “And he’s back at work! Enfin! Finally.”
“Oh,” I say. “I didn’t know.”
Marguerite gives him a hug and a kiss on both cheeks, the French way to say hello. Soon she too is covered in white flour.
“This looks like love,” Collette whispers to me.
When they are gone, the wind begins rinsing in the trees again. We sit quietly for a while listening to it. I look over at Collette to check her face. I find it has a fresh, clean look, like a floor recently scrubbed. “I rested well last night, my little angel, for the first time in a long time,” she says.
“I am glad,” I say.
“Sometimes it is good to speak, to say things, you know?” she says. “Hidden and unhappy things do not like the sunlight. It dries them out and they crumble away.”
“I know,” I say and I look down.
“Ah, what have you done about the letter and Logan?” says Collette.
“Nothing,” I say. “And that’s the bad part. I feel awful about what I did to my sister.”
“Oh, my little one, of course you feel bad. Perhaps you can do something about it,” says Collette.
“I have to tell her what I did but I haven’t been able to find a way,” I say. “She hasn’t made it easy.”
“Oh, c’est dommage! It is a pity,” says Collette. “Perhaps you will have Ava as your model. You must make it up to her for what happened with Logan and the letter.”
“What!” I say.
“Yes, remember the application said so. It said you must supply your own model,” says Collette.
“I won’t get in anyway. I’m sure of it. And Ava hates me,” I say. “She locks her room when she goes out because of me.”
“There are lots of things you have not talked about with Ava. And to lose a sister is a terrible thing.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Hmm,” says Collette. And then she begins to hum a little song. I have never heard her hum or sing anything before.
“Well, shall we have some more citron pressé? Then I will go and lie down for a little nap,” says Collette. “After all, I am eighty years old now.”
“Collette! I thought you were only seventy-nine,” I say.
“Oh, but I was yesterday. But today, not so anymore. I am now eighty.”
“It’s your birthday?” I say. “But you didn’t get any presents.”
Collette suddenly becomes very quiet and then she says in a kind of hush, “Yes, I did. I most certainly did, ribbons and all, my little angel. And I must thank you. It feels almost as if a spell has been broken, if you believe in such things.” Then she hums the little tune again.
“Collette,” I say, not understanding at all what she means about a spell being broken, “why did you say something about me needing a model?”
“Did I forget to tell you? Oh, mon Dieu!” says Collette, throwing her arms out as if to hug the sky in a French hello kind of way. “We received an email on my computer. This morning. We have heard from the panel at the fashion show! At last! You are one of ten finalists! Five of you will be selected to be in the show. And I am not surprised at all. What you did was absolutely wonderful. Fantastique! Naturally you are a finalist!”
“What!” I say. “It can’t be. There must be a mistake. Are you sure?” The leaves seem to make a roaring sound in the wind now, like the ocean. Suddenly I drop to my feet and lie on the courtyard stones, flat on my back. Me? Are you sure? I stare up at the sky, the clouds racing across the blue. Me? I am a finalist in the fashion show? “Are you absolutely sure?”
“Of course I am sure,” Collette says. And then she begins to hum her little tune again. And I realize she’s humming “Happy Birthday.”
Tears pour out of my eyes like rain blowing green across the courtyard. Streaming over my face. They liked my dresses and my ideas? “Collette, are you sure?”
She nods and keeps on singing. “Joyeux Anniversaire. Joyeux Anniversaire.”
And then I join in with Collette. We sing “Happy Birthday” together, first in French and then in English, singing louder and louder and louder.
After a while, I ride the tiny cage elevator upstairs. I truly feel like I am flying. Me, a finalist in a fashion show? You mean, I have a chance? I could get in? Moi? Is that possible? Yes, it’s true because Collette showed me the email.
Nobody knows I applied, not even Mom and Dad. A
nd I have a chance! Then a shadow drops over me. Ava. What about Logan’s letter? For some moments I had forgotten. I don’t deserve anything if I can’t make that right. Oh, I feel terrible, awful, dreadful, and at the same time excited, amazed, and full of wonder. I am flying! The elevator stops and I step out singing and worrying at the same time. And I walk straight into Ava, who is all dressed up in one of her simple tailored sleeveless shifts, ready to go out.
“What are you so happy about?” says Ava. She’s carrying a notebook. On the cover she has glued a picture of our dog, Lucy. Her hands grasp the notebook tightly.
“Oh, it’s nothing, Ava,” I say. “And where are you going?”
“Oh, nowhere,” says Ava.
And then I remember Logan’s letter again and I say, “Ava, I have something I need to talk to you about. Are you coming back soon?”
“Are you making a trip to the bakery now?” she says.
“I could be, I guess,” I say. “I mean I wasn’t, but yes, of course.”
“A dozen cookies might be nice,” she says. “And, um, a cheese sandwich with mustard. And maybe a bottle of sunscreen. Just leave it on the kitchen table for me.”
“But I need to talk to you,” I call out.
A pained look seems to cross Ava’s face as she slips past me into the elevator and pulls the cage door shut. Then she waves through the mesh, reminding me for a moment of a terrible, beautiful caged bird.
In the apartment I pass Ava’s door. It’s locked again, as usual. But now I see Mom walk toward the door, unlock it with a little key, and go in. She leaves the door standing open as she makes Ava’s bed with a lovely new yellow bedspread.
I stop in the doorway and Mom says, “Ava had a dream last night that her room was yellow and I wanted to surprise her with yellow curtains and a yellow bedspread. Want to help me, Pet?”
“Sure,” I say. I take a corner of the light bedspread and we lift it high. It billows like a yellow flower opening above us and floats gently to the bed. The birds sing in the courtyard from an open window. Mom stands back, looks at the bedspread, and smiles.