I didn’t correct her, didn’t tell her that it was ignorance on how to dress rather than a denial of my womanhood that dictated my wardrobe. And that the only thrill and passion of romance I had ever known was from her brother when he crossed the hotel hallway from his room to mine every night. Instead, I said, “You’re right, Simone. What can I do to look more grown?”
“That is no problem. You are fortunate that you are living in France, only a few short miles from the haute couture capital of the world. If you are willing, I will help you.”
You couldn’t even tell where Patsy had sewn the collar back on my yellow two-piece from Fort Smith, Arkansas, after Billy Roy’s funeral. It was the only dress I owned that Simone thought was half-way acceptable so I put it on and we went to Paris to scout out the famous stores on Avenue Montaigne.
“I don’t think I can afford one of them dresses from that Montana street,” I told her on the subway.
“No, no, Bonita Faye. No one buys them. One copies them. Like I do.”
So that was how her slim, attractive body was always clothed in dresses that were tucked just right at the waist or flared seductively at the hemline. Even her around-the-hotel workdresses were made of swirling floral patterns and she always changed into chic ensembles for supper with the guests.
To my surprise we didn’t go in any of the fancy stores on Avenue Montaigne. We sat on a stone bench on the median that divided the wide street. “Why don’t we go in?”
“Do not be silly, Bonita Faye. Designer dresses would do us no good unless we are going to have dinner with the President or enjoy a show at Maxim’s. Look. That is what we want to see.” Simone indicated a group of three women about to enter Christian Dior’s gray building. A uniformed doorman bowed and opened the door for them.
“French designers are trying so hard to make up for the ground they lost during the war, that they are not designing clothes for the real women of France. I do not know if Paris will ever be the haute couture king again, but, the women who shop here know how to dress. It is them we watch and it is their dresses we copy,” Simone explained.
We had fun, eyeing the customers and admiring or criticizing their outfits. When Simone decided she knew enough about my likes and dislikes, we went to a small fabric store near Galeries Lafayette and picked out material for two new dresses.
On the way home, I told her how much I had enjoyed the day and how much I appreciated her helping me. Her blue eyes that never seemed to darken, widened. “But, my friend, I am the one who has enjoyed the day. Since the war, I have lost touch with my old friends…women friends, and like Claude, I find you refreshing and honest. I never had a sister, cherie, and men have always liked me more than women, but I think we get along well enough, you and I. We are becoming friends, yes?”
It wasn’t the same as with Patsy, but I also enjoyed the easy-going companionship between Simone and me. We laughed as we measured and sewed my new clothes. Not gut-busting snorts, but enough so we wiped away a few tears. Especially when Simone told me stories about Claude as a youngster or like on the day she taught me to wear high-heeled shoes.
I had noticed from my time sitting at the Cafe Roy that all French women wore high heels—without stockings—and their calf muscles were strong from the constant walking they were required to do every day. My legs looked spindly and fragile in the new shoes. “I can’t walk in these, Simone. I’m going to fall over,” I protested.
“Practice, practice, practice, Bonita Faye. By the time this dress is finished, you’ll be able to manage a decent walk. Don’t women walk in Oklahoma?”
“Not on spikes.”
Together we explored the shops in Paris and Boulogne, looking for just the right trim or accessory for my new outfit. That’s how I got to see even another side of French life and how, slowly, Simone and I became friends.
Michel often accompanied us on our excursions and he and I became almost as big of pals as he and Claude. When we would reach the hotel after a day’s shopping, Simone would rush to get ready for the supper crowd and I’d often bathe Michel or play quietly with him until we ate. He’d sit in my lap and eat cookies and milk and I’d brush his hair back from his eyes and give him a kiss on his temple like I did Patsy’s kids back home. I could taste the salt from the perspiration that gathered on his forehead. The feeling I had from Michel came from deep inside and swelled my heart. I wondered if I could love him any more if he had been my own. I wondered what it would be like to be a mother.
Simone invited Robert Sinclair to supper when my new dress was ready. Like it was a party. I came down the stairs to the dining room slowly, but balancing well on my new shoes.
Both Claude and Robert gave me appreciative looks, then Claude’s brown eyes darkened.
“What’s the matter?” I whispered to him when I slipped into my seat beside him. “Don’t you like my dress? Is there something wrong with it?”
“Before only I knew the woman inside. Now everyone can see. I liked you the way you were.” He was jealous. Simone and I exchanged knowing looks. My dress was a success.
I was wearing it the night I waited for her to put Michel to bed, absently smoothing one of the pink flowered flounces, waiting for her to return and tell me what had happened that afternoon in Paris when the stranger in the cafe had upset her when her voice startled me.
“Bonita Faye, I don’t know what you imagined you saw today, but it wasn’t what it seemed.”
“You don’t know what I imagine and, believe me, I have a pretty active imagination, but I didn’t misunderstand what was going on. Who is that man, Simone? And why are you afraid of him?”
Simone began a denial which disintegrated into a sob as she sank into the chair next to mine. “I don’t want Claude to know. I have hidden it from him for so long. Promise me, you won’t tell Claude.”
“I’ll promise I won’t tell Claude as long as I can keep from it. But, not if I think he can help you. If it’s that serious, he may have to know, Simone. Claude’s a man and he may be able to take care of the matter for you.” You can see where I was in my thinking. Even with my background, I still thought it took a man to fix a problem.
“But, Bonita Faye, that’s exactly why Claude should not know. He will try to kill Max and Max is stronger, bigger.” Simone’s accent became more pronounced as her agitation grew. “I am afraid Max will kill Claude.”
“Hush, hush. Calm down. Now who is Max? And what does he want from you?”
She looked as though she thought she didn’t have any choice. She told me. “Max is Michel’s father.”
Not Denis Denfert.
“It was in the war. You notice, we don’t speak of that time much here. It is too painful. Our parents dying. The farm destroyed. Claude was so young then. It was easy to lie. Even so, he always thought Michel’s father was my great French lover who died fighting in the Resistance during the last days.”
“And that’s not true?”
“No, no. I thought you recognized…That you knew.”
“What, Simone?”
“That Max is German. That Michel’s father is a German.”
I do not approve of taking the Lord’s name in vain, but when Simone divulged Michel’s paternity, I said, “Jesus Christ!”
“Exactly, so you see…”
“But I thought women who…well…I had heard that…”
“That the heads of sexual collaborators were shaved and their breasts painted with swastikas? That was true.” Simone stopped and pulled a package of cigarettes from her skirt pocket. I didn’t know she smoked. She lit a cigarette and tossed the match onto a saucer with a practiced flip. Exhaling the first deep drag, she shrugged and tossed her blonde hair. Then with her elbows on the table, holding the hand that grasped the cigarette, she leaned toward me, the cigarette smoke drifting before her narrowed eyes.
“What I did, I had to do. You c
an believe it or not.” She sat back in the chair, her look daring me to disbelieve her claim. She greedily sucked on the cigarette again.
“Simone, I understand ‘doing what you have to do.’ You believe me.”
“Somehow I think I do. Anyway I need to tell someone. I need some help from somewhere.” She squashed her half-smoked cigarette out in the saucer, lit another and began her account.
“In the beginning, my part…what I was supposed to do…was only to establish a contact within the German headquarters for the Resistance. You understand? Names, lists, gossip…that sort of thing. It was late in the war. You do not know…cannot begin to imagine what it was like for us. No food except what my parents grew in their garden. No heat, no electricity. It was like living in the shell of a city. All the conveniences…no…the necessities of life…just out of reach.
“And the humiliation. The hunger was agonizing, but the degradation was somehow worse. So when Denis made contact with me…”
I interrupted. “Denis! My Denis? Denis Denfert?”
“He was the leader of a Resistance cell. He is a Communist, you know. Very powerful.”
No, I hadn’t known. I’d have to ask Robert Sinclair what a Communist was.
Simone went on. “Anyway, Denis arranged for me to have a German government job. The Gestapo had their own secretaries, underlings, but these assistants had their own network of people who really did their work.
“I was employed by Max…well, his last name doesn’t matter. He had to keep me well informed so I could perform accurate work for him to present as his own…and so you see how it worked. I passed on bits and pieces of information to Denis who used it…wherever it was appropriate, without deliberately betraying the original source. Max’s group worked with logistics so the information mainly contained things like where supplies were stored or being transferred or transported.”
“That was dangerous work, Simone.”
“Not so much on an impersonal level. The war was nearing the end. Everyone knew that so there was much confusion and stupid commands and counter commands. No one was really in charge…would accept responsibility. It was easy for Denis and his workers to sabotage or steal supplies from the Germans without anyone realizing who had the ultimate responsibility.
“The worst part for me was when Max wanted to make me his mistress. It wasn’t even out of affection or desire for me. It was to ensure my loyalty to him. To compromise me.”
“Good lord, what did you do?” I coulda hit myself in the head for that question. I knew what she had done.
“When I told Denis what Max was suggesting…no, demanding, he wanted me to get out of the city. Go to the farm…anywhere away from Max. You see, cherie, I was a virgin and, by then Denis and I were in love.”
Simone stopped here in her narrative and stood up and walked to the kitchen for an unopened bottle of wine and two glasses. She poured us a glass, taking a sip of hers, before she continued.
“The work I was doing was small but important in a starving city. All I know how to say here is that when I became Max’s mistress, I was not a virgin. Denis and I…well, never mind. When the liberation began, I did escape to the country. My parents were dead by then. They had been caught up in another arm of the Resistance. It’s ironic, they never knew what I was doing for our country and until their capture, I didn’t know about their involvement either.
“Denis tried to help with their release, but by the time he located them, they had already been shot. He was unable to protect them like he did me when the war was over. That’s why I have never had to bear the stigma of collaborator…why Michel and I have been free of the derision such women and their children have suffered.”
“Why didn’t you marry Denis?”
“When I knew I was pregnant with Michel, I lost my…oh, the word…the word…self-respect. Yes, that is it…self-respect. Max was not…is not a nice man, Bonita Faye. To regain my dignity, I needed to be independent. And who knows? Denis might not have ever been able to forget about Michel’s father and after Michel was born, he and Claude were my only reasons for being.
“I did what I had to do,” she repeated. “And it has worked, until now.” Simone jumped up and started pacing the room.
“Why did you think Max was dead?”
“Denis told me Max died. Killed by a Resistance sniper during the liberation. Instead he was only badly injured and smuggled to Switzerland. That is where he has been since the war. Now he has slipped the border again and is here. And he wants Michel.”
“No.”
“Yes, I do not know how he found out he has a son. I’ve told you his injuries were severe. Max cannot father any more children. He wants Michel. He wants his only child.”
“So…” Simone sat down and spread her red-tipped fingers in a helpless gesture on the table.
“You have to tell Denis,” I said.
“Yes, possibly. I’ve thought of that, but I don’t know if that is the best way. I hate to be dependent on any man to solve my problems. And, too, Max escaped from him once before.”
“Right now, that’s your best way…or…”
“Yes, what?”
“Let me think on it Simone. Let me think about it tonight. Don’t worry, I’m not going to say anything about Max to Claude.” Robert Sinclair was teaching me to think before I leaped. Out of respect for him and in trying to practice this new discipline, I held my tongue to keep back the first answer I’d thought of besides telling Denis. I’d almost said, let’s kill the bastard ourselves. It’s amazing how quick my thoughts went to the ultimate solution.
TWENTY
Ever since Patsy recited the Bible verse to me about the “second death,” I suspicioned I wasn’t finished in the killing business. What really bothered me was how eagerly I accepted the challenge of killing Max. Maybe ‘cause it had been so easy with Billy Roy. I liked planning things out ahead of time and Billy Roy’s death had just happened naturally. Well, not naturally natural, but quick and easy. Figuring out how to kill Max would take some planning.
Simone had a message from Max the next day. It must have cut him to the quick to have to shelve his plans to take Michel, but someone from a former Resistance group had recognized him on the street and he had to sneak back across the border to safety. He’d phoned Simone from Switzerland.
“But he said he would be back as soon as he could. For me to be ready at any time to deliver Michel to him. And, if I told anyone about him, he would see that both Claude and I would be killed.”
“Well, that really lets out telling Denis, but it buys us some thinking time,” I said. I wasn’t ready to tell Simone my half-baked idea.
In the meantime, during our respite from the Max dilemma, I had taken to helping out at the hotel. Simone would accept hardly any money from me for my board and keep. She claimed it didn’t seem right, but she did appreciate my now and then contributions that kept her from having to hire additional help. I knew I couldn’t work for pay, I didn’t have a French labor permit, In fact, I had already gotten an extension on my original visa, but like usual, I did what I could.
One of my Saturday chores was to polish the dark oak stairway with high-smelling furniture polish. First I’d sweep away the loose dirt, starting from the top floor and then I’d get my bottle of greasy stuff and hand wipe with a cloth all the way down to the basement. The stairs were narrow and the work was easy even if I did come up shiny and gritty. I wore blue jeans and my head was tied up in a bandanna-like kerchief.
“Pew, you smell awful, Bonita Faye.” Claude didn’t like me to work on his Saturday day off even if that was the day he, too, helped around the hotel, lifting and moving furniture that was too heavy for Simone or the day maids.
He liked it better when I ran errands with him like delivering orders to the small business he and Simone ran from a house nearby. Two workers unpacked white demitasse cup
s and saucers and stamped them in pure gold with the image of the Eiffel Tower. Then they repacked the boxes and sent the cups to Paris to be sold in street kiosks as souvenirs to tourists. I still have one of those cups in my china cabinet in Poteau.
“Why is it always the Eiffel Tower?” I complained. “You French stick that tower on anything that doesn’t move fast enough. Why don’t you all try some different historic symbol, like…maybe, the guillotine?”
Claude wasn’t any happier about my sending a weekly postcard to Harmon in Korea than he was about my being busy when he wanted to play. We were headed across the park in Boulogne to the Longchamp race track, when the problem finally came to a head.
I had begged him to let me stop long enough at the Tobac to pick up some more stamps—I never had enough stamps—when I noticed that he had gotten quiet…too quiet. He’d been moody lately, but I hadn’t thought that it had anything to do with me…or Harmon.
“I read your note to Harmon Adams,” he said.
“So? That’s okay. I was just telling him about Robert Sinclair teaching me French.” I thought he was worried about having read my mail.
“So? So who is Harmon Adams?”
We stopped in the middle of the path.
“I told you, Claude. Harmon is the deputy sheriff in LeFlore County who helped me out when…when I needed help. He’s my friend. Are you upset? You don’t get upset when I write to Patsy.”
“Harmon Adams is a man.”
“That’s right. A man who is the deputy sheriff of LeFlore County, Oklahoma. A man who helped me when my husband was killed. No, don’t look away. You know I was married and that my husband was shot to death. Harmon is the man who made it easier for me to get through all that.”
“And you care for him.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, I do. For lots of reasons. Maybe you do need to know some more about Harmon.”
I spoke slowly so that he would understand what I was saying. Sometimes I struggled to substitute a French word for one he didn’t know in English, but I told him Harmon’s story.
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