They sat in the cheerful living room of the apartment, and the two women couldn’t have looked more different. Marguerite was as fair as her daughter was dark, although both were tall, with good figures, and whereas Brigitte’s eyes were nearly as dark as her hair, her mother’s were an almost sky blue. They had similar smiles, but different features. Brigitte’s looks and bone structure were far more exotic.
The room was warm and pleasantly decorated, there were a few well-worn antiques, and Marguerite had lit a fire in the fireplace before Brigitte arrived. They sat in front of it in worn but elegant old velvet chairs, drinking tea from the Limoges cups her mother was so proud of, which had been her grandmother’s. Marguerite looked aristocratic and genteel, although nothing in the apartment was of great value, but she had good taste, and had lived there for years. Their home had the patina of time. On every wall, there were bookcases filled with books. It was a home where learning, literature, and education were revered, and anything about their family history fascinated Marguerite, and always had.
“So tell me what’s happening with your book?” Brigitte’s mother asked with interest, not wanting to bring up the painful subjects of Ted and her job.
“I don’t know. I think I’m too distracted. It’s stalling, I’m completely blocked. The research is good, but I can’t seem to get it off the ground. I guess I’m upset about Ted. Maybe it’ll go better after I take a break. That’s why I came down to see you.”
“I’m glad you did. Do you want me to have a look at it? I have to admit, anthropology isn’t my usual subject, and your material is a little lofty, but maybe I can help you give it some zip.” Brigitte smiled at the offer, typical of her mother. And Brigitte was grateful that her mother hadn’t made any harsh comments about Ted. She was just sad for Brigitte.
“I think it needs more than zip, Mom. I’ve already got six hundred and fifty pages on it, and if I follow my outline, through history and in all the countries I want to cover, it will run well over a thousand. I wanted it to be the definitive book on women’s right to vote. But all of a sudden, I wonder if anyone will care. Maybe women’s freedom is about a lot more than their right to participate in the democratic process,” Brigitte said sadly.
“Sounds like a real page turner to me,” her mother teased, but she was sure it would be a thorough, extensive, impeccably competent book. She knew Brigitte’s ability to write, even if the subject seemed dry to her. Brigitte smiled at the comment. It was after all an academic and not a commercial book. “I’ve been busy too. I’ve been back at my research at the local branch of the Mormon library for the last three weeks. It’s incredible the documentation they’ve collected. Do you realize they have more than two hundred camera operators in forty-five countries around the world, taking photographs of local records, for people to use in genealogical research? Their real purpose is to help people baptize their relatives into the Church, even posthumously, but anyone is free to use the records for ancestral purposes. They’re incredibly generous with the information they’ve gathered, and very helpful. Thanks to them I’ve traced the de Margeracs all the way back to New Orleans in 1850, and I know they came to the States from Brittany around that time. Some of them were there long before that, from another branch of the family, but of the same name. Our direct descendants came from Brittany in the late 1840s.” She said it like a news bulletin, and Brigitte smiled. It was her mother’s passion. “That would be my great-grandfather, and your great-great-grandfather, who came over then,” she went on. “What I want to know now is the history of the family before they got to America. I know that both a Philippe and Tristan de Margerac came to America, and there were several counts and a marquis in the group, but I don’t know much about them, or anything actually, before they left France.”
“Wouldn’t you need to research it there, Mom?” Brigitte asked her, attempting to be interested in it. For some reason, although anthropology fascinated her, her mother’s tireless genealogical search for family history had always bored her to tears. She had never developed her mother’s curiosity about their ancestors. It seemed like such ancient history to her, and so irrelevant today. And their ancestors all seemed so dull. None of them seemed exceptional to her.
“The Mormons probably have more of that history than any library in France. They’ve photographed local records there. The European countries are the easiest to research. One of these days I’m going to go to Salt Lake City and pursue it, but I’ve gotten a lot of good material from their library here.” Brigitte nodded politely as she always did, but her mother knew how little the subject interested her, and they moved on to other things—the theater, opera, ballet, which were passions of Marguerite’s too, and the current novel she was reading. Eventually, they talked about Ted, inevitably, and his dig in Egypt. The subject couldn’t be avoided any longer. Marguerite was still sorry about what had happened, and sad for her daughter. She knew it was a huge disappointment, and Marguerite was impressed by how philosophical Brigitte was about it. She wouldn’t have been, in her shoes, to be abandoned after six years. Brigitte was taking a lot of the responsibility on her shoulders, although Marguerite didn’t entirely agree with her. She thought he should have invited Brigitte to go to Egypt with him, and instead he was using it as an opportunity to end the relationship and move on.
They talked about the schools Brigitte had sent her résumé to. She was still determined to stay in the Boston area, but it was too soon for them to have responded to the résumés she sent out. Brigitte knew that the colleges were all busy processing applications, and after that they’d be dealing with acceptances, and their wait list. She doubted that she’d get any response to her letters until May or June. She wasn’t panicking, and she was willing to wait until then. She just needed to find something to do in the meantime, but her mother’s never-ending ancestral project wasn’t it. She wanted to be helpful to her mother, but cataloguing generation after generation of similarly respectable people seemed as dry and predictable to her as her own book. She wished at times that they would turn up a criminal or a creative scoundrel in their background, someone to bring more life to their family tree than what was there.
Both women turned off the lights and went to bed at midnight. The fire was out by then. And Brigitte slept, as she always did, in her childhood room. It was still decorated in flowered pink chintzes, which had been her choice as a young girl. She liked coming home to the familiar fabric and old room, and her long intelligent conversations with her mother. They got on well.
The next morning, they had breakfast together in the kitchen, and then Marguerite went out to do errands, buy groceries, and play bridge with friends. She had a pleasant life, and had been involved with someone for several years. He had died a few years earlier, right before she retired and there had been no one since. She had a wide circle of friends, and went to lunches, dinners, museums and cultural events, mostly with other women, and a few couples. She lived alone but was never bored. And her genealogical project kept her busy on weekends and on nights when she didn’t go out. She had learned to put inquiries out through the Internet, but most of the information she had, she’d gotten from the Mormons. She dreamed of putting it all in a book one day, for Brigitte, and in the meantime, she loved the search, and the hunt for history and relatives of centuries past, even if Brigitte found them tedious and unexciting.
She showed Brigitte her latest notes that afternoon when she came home. Brigitte had done some shopping, and then went up to Columbia, to visit a friend who was a professor there, who promised to keep an ear out for any openings in admissions. He suggested that she might consider teaching instead of admissions, but she didn’t think she had a knack for it, and wanted an administrative job, which gave her more time to write and take classes toward her doctorate. Brigitte looked in better spirits than she had the day she arrived. Her mother had been right, and it was good for her being in New York. Everything seemed electric and alive, although she liked the academic world around Bost
on. The atmosphere was more casual and younger. But being in New York gave her a nice change of scene. There was a lot more to do here, which was why Marguerite loved it.
When she looked at her mother’s recent research, Brigitte was impressed by the information Marguerite had gathered. She seemed to have the birth and death dates of all her direct ancestors, and many cousins. She knew the counties and parishes in New Orleans where they had lived and died, the names of their homes and plantations, the towns they had migrated to in New York and Connecticut after the Civil War. And she knew the name of the ship one of them had arrived on from Brittany, in 1846. The family seemed to have stayed in the South until just after the Civil War, and then migrated North in the 1860s and 1870s, where they had lived ever since. But what had happened in France before that remained a mystery to her. If anything, Brigitte thought that segment of their history might be more interesting than what her mother knew so far.
“It’s not that long ago, Mom. You ought to be able to get that from the Mormon library too, or a trip to France.”
“I really have to go to Salt Lake to do that. They have more of the European records there and a much larger facility. I just haven’t had time. And libraries that size terrify me. You’re much better at all that than I am.” Her eyes begged Brigitte to help her with the project, and her daughter smiled. Her mother’s enthusiasm touched her heart.
“You know, you have enough here for a book, if you ever want to write one,” Brigitte said encouragingly. She was always impressed by her mother’s diligence and perseverance.
“I don’t think anyone would care about it except our family, and that’s mainly me and you, and a few cousins scattered here and there, unless we still have relatives I don’t know about in France. But I doubt that we do. I’ve found no recent de Margeracs in France. And everyone here has pretty much died out. There’s no one left in the South, and hasn’t been in a hundred years. Your grandfather was born in New York at the turn of the century. There’s really just us now.” It was a labor of love that had fascinated her for years.
“You work so hard on it, Mom,” Brigitte said admiringly.
“I love knowing who we’re related to, where they lived, and what they did there. It’s your legacy too. Maybe one day it will seem more important to you than it does now. There are some very interesting people perched in our family tree,” Marguerite said with a smile, but Brigitte hadn’t found that to be so. They were aristocratic, but there was nothing unusual about them.
In the end, Brigitte spent the rest of the week in New York. She had no pressing reason to go back to Boston. She and her mother went to the theater together, the movies, several small, casual restaurants for dinner, and took long walks in Central Park. They enjoyed each other’s company and her mother tried to stay off painful subjects. There was nothing left to be said about Ted, except that in Marguerite’s opinion Brigitte had wasted six years. And she suspected now that Brigitte thought so too. Ted had proven himself to be totally selfish in the end. Brigitte hadn’t heard from him since his text the morning after they broke up.
On Saturday afternoon they spent a lazy day at home, reading the early edition of the Sunday Times. Her mother chortled when she found an article about genealogies in the magazine section. Predictably, it extolled the virtues of the Mormons and their libraries, and her mother looked at her wistfully again.
“I wish you’d go out to Salt Lake City for me, Brigitte,” she pleaded with her. “You do so much better research than I do. That’s not my forte, but it is yours, and I can’t go any further back now, until I trace the family back to France. I’m pretty much stuck around 1850. Any chance that you’d go there for me?” She didn’t want to add “now that you don’t have a job or a man,” but it was true. Brigitte had time on her hands, and she was feeling restless, while she waited to hear about a job.
She started to say no and then thought about it. There was no reason for her not to go, and from what she’d just read in the Times about the Mormon Family History Library, she had to admit that it sounded interesting, and it was something she could do for her mother, who was always volunteering to do things for her, and was so supportive of her and always had been. It was a small favor she could do for her and Brigitte had nothing else to do now.
“Maybe. I’ll see,” she said noncommittally, not wanting to promise to do it, but she also realized that it was a great way to avoid the book that she was suddenly so disenchanted with. And she thought about it again on Sunday when they were having breakfast in the kitchen and sharing the rest of the Sunday Times. Brigitte was supposed to go back to Boston that afternoon. The weather report said it was snowing there with no end in sight. Two hours later they closed the airport in Boston. The weather was fine in New York; the storm currently in Boston wasn’t due to hit New York until the next day.
“Maybe I could go out to Salt Lake for you for a couple of days,” Brigitte said thoughtfully. “I have a friend from school there, or at least I used to. She has about ten kids and is married to a Mormon. I could look them up and do research for you. It might be fun.” Brigitte smiled at her mother, and Marguerite’s face lit up at the prospect.
“I’d be so grateful if you did. I can’t do another thing until I trace them back through Brittany. The Mormons have incredible records on microfiche and disks, with assistants to help you find it.” She was selling hard, and Brigitte laughed.
“Okay, okay, Mom,” Brigitte answered, and a few minutes later she called the airline and booked a flight to Salt Lake for later that afternoon. It felt good to help her mother, and it was beginning to sound like a more intriguing project. Brigitte was suddenly fascinated to see the Mormon library in Salt Lake, and she wondered if she’d find something there she could use for her book too, although it was unlikely.
Her mother thanked her profusely when she left, and Brigitte promised to call and report her findings. She had booked a reservation at the Carlton Hotel and Suites, which she saw on the Internet was within walking distance of Temple Square where the Family History Library was located. Now that she had agreed to go, Brigitte could hardly wait to see it. She was vastly impressed by what she had seen on the Internet about it. They apparently had hundreds of volunteers to help, and all their records and resources were without charge, except for photocopying documents and photos. It was a remarkable service to the public that they had been providing for decades. The Mormons had a gigantic organization and the most thorough research operation in the world.
Brigitte was thinking about it when she boarded the flight to Salt Lake, and hoped she’d find something of interest to her mother. She didn’t really expect to find anything exceptional in her family history. Everything her mother had come up with so far was both circumspect and benign. They were respectable aristocrats who, for some reason, had chosen to come to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, long after the reign of Napoleon. Perhaps they had come to purchase land, or discover new territories—and they stayed. But Brigitte wondered now too what they had done in France before they’d come to America, what had happened to them during the Napoleonic reign, and the French Revolution fifteen years before that. She was on a mission of discovery now that suddenly seemed a lot more interesting than chronicling women’s rights to vote around the world. Maybe her mother was right after all, and the subject she was researching now was far more worthwhile than what she had been doing for the last seven years. Brigitte was about to find out in Salt Lake.
The flight to Salt Lake City took five and a half hours, and she went straight to the hotel from the airport. It was a European-style inn built in the 1920s, and was a short walk to Temple Square, which was her destination the next day. To orient herself and get some air, she went for a walk before dinner. She found Temple Square easily, a few blocks away, and immediately spotted the enormous Family History Library on the west side of the square, on the same side as the history museum of the Church, and Osmyn Deuel’s cabin, which had been preserved since 1847 and was
the oldest in the city. She walked past the Mormon Temple with its impressive six spires, and the domed Tabernacle next to it, which was open to the public for rehearsals and concerts of the famed Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Both structures were impressive to see, even from the outside. She saw the capitol, and walked past the Beehive House and the Lion House, both built in the mid-1850s, which had been the official residences of Brigham Young, who had been the president of the Church and the first governor of Utah.
Brigitte was startled to see how many people were walking around the square, despite the chilly weather, and all of them were looking at the buildings with both awe and interest, which suggested that they weren’t locals but tourists. There seemed to be a huge number of people in town, many of them congregated around the square. And people looked pleasant and happy, and were obviously excited to be there. The atmosphere was contagious, and Brigitte was in good spirits when she went back to her room at the hotel. She was beginning to enjoy her mother’s project more than she ever had before. With the time to explore it now, it was adding a new dimension to her life.
Legacy: A Novel Page 5