She and Tristan had a real meal in the garden, made at home, then returned the rollaway cots to the hotel. She’d actually cooked in her new French house. Her new French house — what a phrase! As if it belonged to her, as if she would build a life here. It gave her a moment of wonder, and lightheadedness. But she woke up before midnight, the thought that Weston and Marie-Emilie had slept in that room heavy on her mind. They had conceived Harry there. There was something wrong with that. But what? What could be wrong with a married couple bringing a baby into the world?
The pissoir sat dark, still wound up with orange tape, off limits. It had to be a woman, or a child. The skeleton was small. Who had been so hated, so unloved, that they were encased inside a wall and forgotten? It was sad, as sad as the fresher death of Justine LaBelle. She thought of the Bordeaux phone numbers in her notebook. Tomorrow she would get a cell phone. She would get back into the mix, call her sisters. Damn the expense.
Looking at the million stars, picking out constellations, the what-what suddenly slammed into her head, loud and insistent as ever. She clamped her hands over her ears. What the hell did it want? What question was it asking? What? What?! She didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to know what the question was. But it wouldn’t leave her alone.
Stop! But it shouted again, the siren cry of the unknown: What? What?!
Then she remembered Dr. Murray, the gray-haired, ruddy-complected psychologist. He had peered at her with watery blue eyes full of compassion. It had been hard to look at him, she thought she might start crying. Weeks ago at Tristan’s evaluation, what had he said? They had a short, clinical discussion about grieving, about the way different people handle the mourning period. He said you couldn’t make rules, set schedules for recovery, for normalcy. That you had to listen to whatever was going on inside you. You had to respect your subconscious, or it would be your demon. Better to listen to your demon, to try to understand it, than ignore it and pay a worse price, he said.
Okay, listen. She took her hands off her ears and closed her eyes, tipping her face to the starlight. I’m listening. What is the question?
Something to do with life, and the end of it. The finality. Harry’s death wasn’t the initial trigger, no, it had been coming on for awhile. His presence, his living self, had started it. Or something else, something only she could see or touch or feel. Something deep inside her that required answers, that refused to go stumbling through life, blinders set, doing what she “ought to.” The subconscious asked on, even when answers were scarce: What do you want from life? What is it about? What are you doing with your time above ground? What will it take to feel alive?
A fine list of ‘what-whats.’ Her lists, her sanity-keepers. The calendar with its regiment, its comforting lineup of hours. Was that the real core of the problem, insane list-making, schedule mania, calendar memorization? Or were those coping mechanisms, ways to stave off the scary chaos of the answerless questions: What is life anyway? What is death but an end to the pain of living? What happens after death? Why am I here on earth? Why was I born?
Was there an answer to any of them? No one knows why they’re born. You are simply brought forth in love. You arrive, and then everything else is guesswork. You choose a path, or it chooses you. You protest your lot, or accept it willingly. It doesn’t matter. It’s yours, you own it. And now you have to live with it.
The calendar fixation seemed, now that she’d been away from the office so long, simply a neurotic way to cope with the passage of time. That was what bothered her: Time. Tick-tock. The way it slipped away, unnoticed, so that days went by in a flash. Weeks slid by, then months, seasons. Winter blew cold and snowy then before you realized it the grass was green and you’d somehow missed the delicate onset of spring, the opening of buds. Children grew overnight from tiny kissy-face cherubs to strapping, shaving, back-talking sluggers. It wasn’t fair, it didn’t have to happen.
She felt the rock in her chest again, not so big but still there, pressing against her heart. Life didn't have to happen? Ah, but it did. Time marched on, unbidden by protest and the thin desires of the flesh. It would not stop. It would not slow for adoring mothers or trial attorneys or absent fathers. It would not stretch its languorous minutes for you or anyone. Time was an equal opportunity torturer.
How did everyone else cope? You couldn’t control time. You could schedule yourself to death, packing in every second with so-called meaningful work. You could try harder, be smarter, love more. But that was only a torture you did to yourself. It wasn’t time’s fault you accepted its reins so readily. The only thing was to accept. Accept change. Accept time. Accept death.
The moon poked up over the wall, shining a flash of light on the espaliered pear tree, its fruit now swelling and heavy. The bones that hid in the latrine for so long: who was it? Who had lived, and died here? Who cared for them, who loved and missed them?
Did it matter? Death comes to all of us — but most of all, to me. It will claim my flesh, make it weak. She thought of Harry again, as his heart seized, as the light went out of his eyes. What did he think of? Did he know he was dying? Was he afraid? She wanted suddenly to have been there with him, to have held him and comforted him and whispered to him as he went, to tell him she had loved him once even if she’d been so very neglectful for, oh, years. She wanted, she realized now, too late, his forgiveness. How would she ever forgive herself without his blessing?
Harry had moved on. He’d adapted to her coldness. He had found warmth in the arms of another woman and the soft hands of their child. She tried to imagine him forgiving her. She tried to hear his voice, those words. She tried to make them manifest on the night air: I forgive you, Merle. I was happy with my new woman, my adorable girl. Don't feel bad you didn't have it in you to love me.
But it wasn’t right; it wasn’t him. Harry didn't care about any of them, before or after his death. Not really. He didn't care enough to forgive her.
It's a mystery, how you'll die. But it wasn’t a mystery itself. No, it was very ordinary. The Big D. The Dirt Nap. It would come. And sooner than you expect.
Tristan was snoring. The evening had cooled and the turmoil in her head had stilled. Cigarettes and what-what done for the night.
As she stepped into the parlor she heard a noise under the floor. She’d put out a dozen mouse traps, baited them with camembert (for world’s most pampered mice) but hadn’t checked them recently. Grabbing the flashlight she pushed aside the cabinet, pulled up the door in the floor and shone the beam down the wooden stairs. At the bottom step a mouse was caught in a trap, the wire across his back but still alive. She picked up a length of plastic pipe and a plastic bag and started down the steps.
Night or day the cellar was pitch black, no worse than her basement at home except the dirt floor smelled of mold. The mouse was pushing himself in circles on the step, one foreleg functional. No sense prolonging the misery. She whacked him hard over the head. With a flick of the wrist she scooped him, trap and all, into the plastic bag.
Where did she put the other traps? She shone the light into the far corner, behind the tall stack of kegs. Another success, a fat dead mouse. She kicked the old rug rolled in a long sausage. Prime rodent hideout. She’d put a trap at each end of the hole. Another kick then two mice dashed out by her foot, vaulting the trap, causing her to jump backwards and lose her balance. She fell into the kegs, smashing three of them in a loud snapping and crumpling of wood.
Swearing, she got to her feet and brushed herself off. She’d dropped the bag and the flashlight. It shone over her shoulder against the back wall where the kegs were stacked. As she picked up the light she moved closer to the wall. Something was different about this wall.
A light went on upstairs. Tristan bent over the trap door. “Mom?”
“Sorry. Checking mousetraps. I couldn’t sleep.” She ran her hand over the wall. It was wood, and not a wall at all. “Put some shoes on and bring that manila envelope down here. In the cabinet. Left drawer.”
>
Tristan came down the steps in white socks, tennis shoes, and plaid boxer shorts, his blanket around his shoulders. He held out the envelope. “What’d you find?”
She brushed the spider webs off the wooden planks of the door. A wrought iron lock was set into the surface. There was no handle, just a key hole. “A door.” She rummaged in the bottom of the envelope.
“Wait, Mom. Maybe it’s another skeleton,” Tristan said.
“You think so?” She held up the big key.
He shrugged, frowning at the sealed door. “Could be anything.”
She’d seen one skeleton this week; two wouldn’t make a huge difference. Besides, there was no skeleton in here, she knew it. What were the odds of finding even one pile of human bones in your homestead?
“Hold the flashlight.”
He trained the beam on the keyhole. Jiggling the key, she felt for how it turned, if it turned. Left, right, she pushed it in and out, back and forth. Debris dribbled down the wood, ash or mildew. Then it turned.
Merle looked at Tristan, her face lit up in the beam. She pulled on the key. The door wouldn’t budge. “Hit the corners of the door with the flashlight,” she ordered, smacking it with the heel of her hand. He banged around with the light until she told him to stop. “Let’s try again.” She heard the ping of wood separating, then, with a jerk on the key, it opened an inch.
“Stick your fingers in and pull,” she said. They each put a foot on the back wall and pried the door six inches wider. “Give me the light.”
The door stopped eight inches from the floor, as if to keep floodwaters out. She wedged her knee in the opening and put her face up to it.
“More bones?”
“No.” She swung the light back and forth. “Bottles.”
Prying open the door farther they squeezed inside the old wine cave. The room was only five feet deep but as wide as the house. The racks were about half full, up to chest height, but lots and lots of bottles. She brushed off a bottle and sucked in a breath.
How long had this wine been here? Since Weston’s day anyway. Dust and mold lay thick on the bottles. She pulled out one, rubbing the label. ‘Château Pétrus.’ That was the label Albert said was very fine. The label was crude and brittle, almost shattering at her touch.
A beautiful, ancient space with a vaulted ceiling and carved racks, this was the traditional place to store one’s wine in France, underground, at a constant temperature, in darkness, much like Gerard’s fancy oak barrels. Merle counted the bottles quickly. Twelve cases, a hundred-forty-four bottles of wine.
“It must be old,” Tristan said, pulling a dusty bottle from the rack and blowing on the label. “1947. Yeah, that’s old. Do you think my grandpa hid this here?”
“He stored it here anyway.” Why had he never sold it, or taken it with him to the U.S.? Had he died before he had a chance to import it? “Hold up the light to this one.”
Inside the bottle the wine looked dark as ink. Some sediment had collected along one side. But the corks looked decent, intact. The lead covering had held. Sixty years though, a long time for neglected bottles. It was probably spoiled.
“Peuw. There’s big ol’ green mold on these,” Tristan said, pointing to one end where water had leaked in from above.
Merle stepped down the rack to examine the end ones. “Let’s take one up from here. And one from the other end, and that one.” She grabbed one, and let Tristan take two bottles. “Upstairs, don’t drag your blanket. Wait.” She found the bag of dead mice on the floor, relocked the cave, and followed him up the steps and shut the trap door.
They set the bottles on the oak table. Merle got a roll of paper towels and wiped the bottles clean, dabbing the paper labels gently. The vintages were the same three as the labels in the safe deposit box. Three wine labels to remind him what he had stored here.
Merle sat down. Château Pétrus ’46. Château L'Église-Clinet, 1949, a black and white label. Château Cheval-Blanc, 1947, the label faded. She pulled the labels out of the envelope. They matched the bottles exactly.
She opened the old menu and for a moment tried to see if there was some clue hidden among the kidney pies and mutton stews. Murky. Was this what “they” were after? Were these wines rare and exotic? She had no idea. “Tristan. You must not say anything to anybody about the wine downstairs. Even Albert. It’s our secret. Okay?”
He was huddled back in his bed. “Okay,” he said sleepily.
“Take your socks off, they’re filthy.”
“You coming to the tournament tomorrow?”
She pulled the blanket up under his chin. He hadn’t shaved in a week and whiskers were sprouting all over his chin, making him look not so much like her child anymore. She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. Hard to believe he’d be going home in a few days, without her. The thought of it made her sick.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, D’Artagnan.”
Chapter 24
The baby. The baby. The. Baby.
Marie-Emilie can’t get enough of him, the tiny, red creature. So helpless, so beautiful it makes her cry to look at him. She would stare at him all day long, as he slept, as his tiny hands plied the air. But she has to find food.
Stephan has left her a bag of stale bread in the alley behind the bakery. She has not seen Stephan for days, but he does this for the baby. She has searched the hedgerows for fallen fruit. She has begged at the old widow’s farm. The woman was unkind at first but when Marie-Emilie got on her knees and cried, she offered three eggs and a quart of goat’s milk.
The milk is necessary for the baby; Dominique will not nurse him. She refuses to hold him, turning her head away when Marie-Emilie exclaims about his little curl of hair, his tiny fingernails. She wants nothing to do with her baby. So Marie-Emilie is anxious for his survival. If only she could bare her own breast to feed him, to nurture him. Dominique makes her angry. Then Marie-Emilie holds the baby and the anger melts away.
Sometimes she thinks of Stephan but she is so tired the thoughts don’t stay long. He leaves bread sometimes but nothing more. She is devoted to the baby’s survival. That is all that matters.
Were there still such women as wet nurses? Marie-Emilie does not know. She has asked at the church and received only a shake of the old priest’s head. She fashions a nipple from goat hide, ties it to a bottle. Poor little thing. Poor baby. He suckles the makeshift nursing bottle. He looks in her eyes. There is love there. She sees it.
The priest does baptize the baby. Reluctantly, as long as Dominique doesn’t enter the church, he says. The baby is innocent, he must be saved. Both the baby and Marie-Emilie cry when the holy water is touched to his scalp.
The days are busy, finding food for the three of them, hoeing rows for a farmer who needs more help than he has, making Dominique eat broth, changing the baby, feeding the baby who demands so much and yet who is she to deny him? He did not ask for this. He is innocent, a baby.
Marie-Emilie names him Henri-Laurent, a noble name. She does not tell Dominique though, whispering the name to the baby alone. The girl worries her. She grows thin. She lost much blood with the childbirth and is weak. But the days grow warm and one afternoon Marie-Emilie returns from the farm and finds the girl in the garden, sitting in the sunshine with the baby on her lap. She has cradled him in her skirt and swings her legs back and forth as a song comes from her lips. But she doesn’t look at him while she hums. She looks away, at the birds flying in the sky, at the pear tree against the house, at the roses opening against the wall.
For a moment, Marie-Emilie is too stunned to move. She stands by the door of the house, watching Dominique and her baby, a horrible feeling inside her. Dominique will leave. She will take Henri-Laurent. She will take the baby away and they will both be gone forever. Her heart contracts at the thought of never holding the baby again.
Dominique’s hair is long and blond, and wet, she sees. She has washed at last. Such a pretty girl, small freckles across her nose, sweet lips, a hi
gh forehead that gives her a regal look. But young, somehow younger than her fourteen years. Weston had seen that right away, that innocence in her blue eyes, that willingness to follow, to be led astray. As if the world could be nothing but good. Only an innocent would see the world that way after this war. Only an innocent, or perhaps someone not right in the head.
Marie-Emilie takes a step out into the garden. Is Dominique not quite right? She has rejected her own child, refusing to nurture him. Is that a sign of derangement? Would she harm him? A flutter of panic rises in Marie-Emilie.
Dominique sees her, grabbing the arms of the metal chair. “Come then, where have you been?” She looks cross, waving her hand at the baby. “Get him, now. He drives me wild with his crying.”
And so the panic falls away. Dominique is still herself, childishly annoyed, selfish, never to be a true mother. Marie-Emilie rushes forward and scoops up the baby from her lap, cuddling him against her shoulder. It is only a small miracle, a mother quiets the son she doesn’t want. It won’t happen again.
Two days later she is gone. Marie-Emilie rises, carrying the baby down the stairs at daybreak, moving quietly outside to wash him. When she steps back inside a few minutes later she feels the emptiness. Dominique’s bag, a ratty thing made of scraps of rug, is gone.
Dominique herself, vanished.
Chapter 25
The tournament was held in the small school gymnasium, a multi-purpose space about half the size of a basketball court, with a small grandstand of bleachers at one end. There weren’t many spectators, just a few parents. The opposing team had come in on a bus from Bordeaux and looked big and rough compared to the local boys.
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