Sometimes, early in the morning before the alarm went off, I would lie next to him and watch him sleep, watch him dream. As he surfaced back to the reality of being in our bed, in our room, sometimes, in his last sleepy moments, he would be confused, not certain that he was awake again. Then he would smile, relieved, I think, to be back.
“Where you been?” I would ask, an invitation for him to tell me about his dreams.
Like any great storyteller, Mike had no qualms about embellishing. I would snuggle against him, wrapped in his arms, and listen as he unwound his strange overnight wanderings. He dealt with stuff during the course of an ordinary day that most of us could never conjure by great feats of imagination. So the exaggerations that are the stuff of dreams were wonderful fodder for a man with bizarre material and a penchant for embroidering tales. I was always sorry when a story ended. I am sorrier still that I will never hear one again.
That night, warm in a bed in my newly discovered grandmother’s house—a situation I never imagined until it happened—I dreamed that Mike and I were in bed together and he was telling me a convoluted story about a woman who fell or was pushed or who took off flying—dreams don’t need to follow a logical route. We could see her fall through the air from our bed, like watching surround-TV. As the woman dropped through the sky, a terrible storm came up: clashing thunder, bright flashes of lightning surrounded her, tossed her in spiral trajectories with Sergei in his car seat tumbling along with her.
I was afraid of the thunder, but Mike was there. Then he wasn’t, and it was me who was falling, not through the sky but down into water, deeper and deeper until everything was black and the weight of the water pressed against my chest. Seaweed covered my face and I couldn’t breathe. I clawed at it. Though I couldn’t see anything, I could still hear the thunder, great crashes like huge boulders colliding overhead and tumbling toward me. Desperate for air, desperate to get out of the path of the boulders, I fought my way to the surface just as lightning crackled through the blackness.
In this nightmare I ran, crazy with panic, frantic to escape the noise and the blasts of silver lightning. Sharp gravel cut my bare feet. Someone was screaming and would not stop.
“Merde!” I knew the voice and realized that this was no dream, but a nightmare nonetheless. Claude Desmoulins loomed out of the dark and reached for me. A flash of lightning lit the compound and made his sparse hair stand on end; I had seen exactly that happen before. “Marguerite. Arrête-toi! Chérie, stop, I beg you.”
The screaming stopped; it was me. I was standing in the middle of the compound in my pajamas, barefoot, in a freezing downpour.
Claude grabbed me, threw something around me—a blanket. He gripped my arm in a viselike hold and wouldn’t let go no matter how hard I pulled. It was all too familiar, his face, the way my arm hurt, his voice, the storm trying to crush and drown me.
“Let her go you son of a bitch! Let her go!” Max came out of nowhere, made a flying tackle into Claude that dropped both of them to the ground; Claude released me as he fell. They rolled around in the gravel and the muddy slush underneath, each man trying to land blows and dodge them at the same time.
“Stop it, both of you,” I ordered, tiptoeing over to them, icy water sluicing over my feet. I reached out of the blanket Claude threw around my shoulders and into their squirming dog pile to grab an arm or a leg, trying to separate them. They wrestled in the muck with the abandon and fire of pissed-off little boys, but with more huffing and puffing. A real brawl is an inelegant, messy affair, not at all like the stand-up punch-outs of the movies.
“Max, Claude, stop it. Right now!” I clapped my hands like a playground supervisor. “Someone will get hurt.”
Doors of all three houses flew open and people streamed into the compound draped in hastily grabbed coats: Freddy, Antoine, Kelly, Gérard, Gillian, a couple of the kids. There was a lot of racket all around, great smashing thunder only adding to the noise, flashes of lightning giving random snapshots of the scene, like an old black-out routine. A car drove through the gate and gave steady illumination to Max and Claude trying to pummel each other.
Gérard and Freddy got into the fray but only made the ruckus worse as they tried to separate Max and Claude. They both received a few punches for their efforts. Kelly offered her voice. I no longer had feeling in my feet.
Just as I was about to give up and leave the men to their slugfest, an explosive Crack! cleaved the night air. Suddenly, everyone froze in place, like a house party playing statues. Slowly, heads turned toward the source of the great bang.
Grand-mère, wrapped in a full-length mink coat, raised a pistol over her head and let off another round into the black sky. “That will be enough. Everyone go home.”
Still holding the pistol aimed upward, she handed me a pair of rubber garden clogs to slip onto my feet, then draped a raincoat over my shoulders.
The car came to a stop, the lights went out, and the compound was dark again—the show was over. The fighters uncoiled themselves from the mud and struggled to their feet assisted by Gérard and Freddy. Inspector Dauvin emerged from the car, looked from face to face with a puzzled expression.
“Qu’est-ce qui arrive?” What is going on? he asked. Everyone tried to answer the question at once, a great babble of voices.
Grand-mère took me by the elbow and marched me toward her open front door. She still held the big pistol, an old Luger, pointing forward, as if she knew what to do with it.
“Grand-mère, where did you get that?” I asked.
“I took it off a dead German,” she said with a proud little toss of her head. “Right after I slit his throat.”
21
“You have to believe me,” Claude implored. “I would never harm Marguerite.”
He had washed up and changed into dry clothes, like the rest of us; Casey and Bébé had never stirred from their beds. Claude had begged Grand-mère to let him come over and speak with me. Grand-mère thought it would be all right, but Max was a tougher sell. He relented on the condition that he could stay with me during the conversation.
Turns out, Max was on hand when I ran out the front door in a panic because Grand-mère had asked him to stay over, to sleep on the sofa and serve as the downstairs watchman as Bébé was upstairs. Max hadn’t brought a bag, so Grand-mère gave him flannel pajamas and a beautiful flowing blue velvet robe that had been my grandfather’s to change into because his own clothes were sodden with mud. I put on the sweats I ran in that morning—now yesterday morning—and that had magically reappeared in my room nicely laundered.
Max, Dauvin, Grand-mère and I sat huddled in front of the fireplace in Grand-mère’s salon, ready to listen to what Claude had to say.
Both Claude and Max had hatch marks from the gravel on their faces and hands, but neither of them had managed to connect a blow that did any visible damage to the other.
My feet had some gravel nicks, which Grand-mère dressed with antibiotic ointment and covered with thick white cotton socks. Somewhere during the course of the evening’s events, I had put a tooth into my bottom lip. It bled and swelled, made M and B words sound a bit distorted, and it was sore. My arm ached where Claude had gripped it. But I was otherwise okay, except that it upset me unduly to be in close proximity to Claude. His voice yelling at me through the racket of the storm had been familiar in a very scary way.
Claude seemed to be genuinely upset by Max’s assumption that he had ever tried to hurt me.
“I was wakened by the storm,” Claude said. “Outside the church today, I saw how Marguerite reacted when there was a little lightning. I remember how it was for her in a storm, so I got up and went downstairs to watch for her. I was concerned for her, you see?”
“You bastard,” Max said. “You know what else she heard at the church today? She heard what you said, that you should have done away with her when you had the chance, when she was a baby.”
Claude flinched, seemed chastened to the point that I expected him to drop
to his knees and offer to crawl all the way to Lourdes seeking forgiveness. “I was stupid to say such a thing.”
I asked, “Is that how you feel about me?”
“No.” He shook his head. “You must know that I was fond of you, Marguerite. I am fond of you. I was profoundly sorry when you were taken away. What I said this morning...” He hesitated, distressed by what he was going to say. Finally, he looked directly at me.
“What I said this morning, I said for Freddy’s benefit. He was always so jealous of you. And now his mother, who found him imperfect in every way compared to you, is dead, and it is you who carried her ashes home, as if even in death she preferred you. Do you understand?”
“I understand that instead of reassuring him of his mother’s love you encouraged his jealousy.” I nailed him with a glare that made him look away, flush an unhealthy degree of red. “I’ve spent some time with Freddy. He’s wonderful. He seems to accept me, now that we’ve finally met. You, however, seem far more upset that I’m here than he does. You have been a goddamn problem for your son all through this difficult day when he needed your support.”
“No, I...” He stopped, sort of collapsed in on himself, unable to finish the disclaimer. “Yes. And I am so sorry. But you must understand how it was for Freddy.”
“Isabelle didn’t know me,” I said. “Didn’t know what I could and couldn’t do. Surely he knew that.”
“Would it matter if he did? He was only a boy.”
“Poor little bugger,” Max said, glancing over at Claude, shaking his head. “Between you and his mother...”
I put my hand on Max’s knee, and he stopped. He was still steamed, but he contained it, with effort. I told him when we sat down that I wanted him with me, but that I was afraid that he would stir up something again before I got what I wanted from Claude. He promised he would control himself. Besides, I told him, I needed him to translate for Dauvin. The entire conversation was conveyed to the inspector in a mix of French and English, with hand gestures and facial expressions filling in some of the gaps.
I turned to Claude. “You said I was taken away. But Isabelle had already sent me away. I read that I was here, with Grand-mère, from September until at least mid-December, and Isabelle never visited.”
Claude furrowed his brows and wanted to know, “Read where?”
“In a letter my father wrote to Isabelle in the middle of that December, when I was two.”
“He wrote to her in December?” Torrid disbelief as he spat out the words. “The sonofabitch promised.... He wrote to her?”
“Claude!” Grand-mère snapped. “That will do. We have seen enough of your temper for one day. You owe our Maggie at least some explanation. You tell her what she wants to know. And I hope you can be civil about it. It’s very late and we all want to get to bed. We don’t have patience for your outbursts.”
He took a couple of breaths, and worked to compose himself before he nodded for me to continue.
I asked, “Why was I left here when Isabelle went back to Paris?”
Claude wrapped an afghan around his thin shoulders, stared off into the fire, sorting out what he wanted to say. And probably what he didn’t. After a moment he brought his focus back. In a quiet voice, he began to tell his story.
“For your second birthday, in September, there was to be a party, here, Marguerite. Isabelle brought you early in the week for a visit, but my school term in Chantilly had begun so I wasn’t able to join you until the weekend. When I arrived, you and your mother were riding a little pony together, a Norman cob, a sweet-tempered beast you called your little friend. It had been a birthday gift, an extravagant one, so I thought that Élodie had given it to you to ride when you came to visit.”
I checked Grand-mère. She was listening as intently as a schoolmarm watching for errors in a student’s recitation.
Claude continued. “I took a few pictures, a very charming scene. Later, when the horse was back at the stable, I reached up to help you down and I said, ‘Come to Papa.’ But you shook your head and told me I wasn’t your Papa. You said your Papa gave you the pony for your birthday.”
“Two-year-olds say all sorts of things,” Max interjected.
“Yes,” Claude acknowledged. “But in that case, what she said was true. Alfred Duchamps had been here for the birthday, and my wife hid it from me. I was rightfully angry, I believe. Before we married, Isabelle promised that it was over between them. She told me she would not keep Marguerite from her father, but that she would arrange not to be present when he visited. I trusted her. And I was a fool.”
I turned to Grand-mère. “Who gave me the pony?”
“Your father. Out of guilt, I think.”
“So.” I turned back to Claude. “You were angry with me and jealous about my father, so you—what?—disowned me and left me here?”
“Not at all.” A vigorous denial. Finally, he seemed to have some starch, the return of a modicum of the righteous ire he had expressed earlier. “Isabelle and I had a big fight, of course. In the end, we decided that we needed a little time alone to make some repairs to the marriage. Louise and Grand-mère offered to watch you for a week or two—no more.”
He begged me, “You must believe I was very fond of you. Your mother was so busy with her work that many evenings it was just you and me for dinner and bedtime. We made a nice little family.”
“But you didn’t come for me after a week or two,” I said. “It was more like three months.”
He smiled for the first time, a little rise at the corner of his mouth. “You see, the repairs to the marriage went quite well, and in no time my wife was pregnant with Freddy. From the very first, she was sick, not just in the morning, but all day. She felt very tired, her work was demanding. It was decided that, considering her condition, it was best for you to stay a little longer with your grandmother. So Isabelle could get some rest.”
“Three months and not a single visit?” Max wanted to know.
I patted my uncle’s knee again. He took a deep breath and leaned back, gazed off into the corner; there was a lot he wanted to say.
“But you did eventually come for me,” I said. “Why?”
“Why?” A lift of the bony shoulders, as if to say, who needed a reason? “School was out for the winter holiday. It was almost Christmas. Isabelle was anxious to see you, quite insistent one day that we go immediately. Of course, we wanted our little girl with us. We missed you.”
“You came for me just before Christmas?” When he nodded, I said, “My father wrote to Isabelle just before Christmas and told her that he felt she had abandoned custody, and he was coming over to discuss taking me back to America with him.”
“Where did you see these letters?” Claude demanded.
“Isabelle kept them.”
Claude turned red and started to blow off again, and again it was Grand-mère who cautioned him not to. All she said was, “Claude,” in a low but very firm voice.
“I didn’t know about the letters,” he said, voice reedy with anger.
“So, you took me back to Paris, and a few weeks later Isabelle called my dad and told him to come and get me.” I glanced at Max. “I understand that I was pretty battered when Dad and Max got here.”
“You bastard,” Max hissed.
“Yes, you were hurt.” Claude wrapped the afghan tighter, a protective cocoon. “But I never harmed you, Marguerite. I would not.”
Clara, in her robe and slippers, hair in a braid down her back, came in carrying a tea tray. She had a fat bed pillow tucked under one arm as she groused about all the mud we had traipsed into the house—mud was even tracked into her kitchen—and don’t expect her to clean it until tomorrow. Did people think she had nothing better to do than mop up after them? And who dragged his pillow downstairs and left it in the kitchen? What is she now, the chambermaid?
Grand-mère thanked her for the tea, apologized that all the noise in the house had wakened her, and sent her to bed. Mud on the floors could certai
nly wait.
When Clara was gone, I got Claude’s attention again.
“Go ahead,” I said, “you were telling us what happened.”
“Isabelle—well, a pregnant woman can be a bit emotional, yes?”
“You’re blaming Isabelle now?” Max said.
Grand-mère raised a finger to her lips to stop him from saying more.
Claude resumed: “The three of us were together again in Paris. But Isabelle was having a difficult time—pregnancy, pressures at work, the holidays, a toddler to look after—she was exhausted, I thought. But now that you tell me your father was pressuring her, I understand better.”
I wasn’t sure why Dauvin stayed to hear about ancient family history. He seemed bored by it all, couldn’t understand much of what was being said, and Max was a very inconsistent translator. Idly, he picked up the pillow Clara had left on the footstool next to his chair and turned it over. I thought he might be contemplating a little nap. He caught me watching him, gave me a nod. He asked if the bump on my lip hurt. I told him it did, a little. He asked how it happened. All I could do was shrug: happened somehow in the confusion. Looked worse than it was. Again he nodded.
I turned back to Claude. “You didn’t know Dad and Max were here right after Christmas to challenge Isabelle’s custody rights?”
Claude sat very still, processing the question. When he spoke, he addressed Max, without open rancor this time, only curiosity. “What did you do?”
“We hired a lawyer to begin the legal process to get custody,” Max told him. “Our grounds were abandonment. The lawyer asked Élodie and Louise to sign affidavits affirming how long Maggie had been with them without visits from her mother, or the payment of child support money that my brother sent to her.”
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