by Jina Bacarr
I grin, mission accomplished. I slip my arm through Karl’s.
‘Come, Karl, we’ll be late for the premiere.’
Cheers at our departure, then more jibes tossed at me. By heckling me, my old neighbors in the working class district perform their parts well.
For that, I’m grateful. Or lives will be lost. Including the man I love.
As the big, silver Mercedes races through the winding streets on the Right Bank, I break into a sweat. I lean forward and hold onto the door handle as the touring car enters the traffic circle, then makes a sharp right onto the Boulevard Voltaire. My stomach turns… but I can’t reveal to the handsome SS officer sitting next to me why I feel faint…
All that matters is, in his eyes I’m Sylvie Martone, film star – and Nazi collaborator.
I can never let him believe otherwise.
2
Juliana
A road not traveled… till now
Los Angeles
Present Day
Rain splatters against the bay window echo my heavy pencil strokes.
I grip the number 5B drawing pencil so tight, the point breaks off.
I heave out a deep sigh that’s got me so coiled up inside. I can’t shake this unbearable loneliness that’s swept over me, like I’m alone in the world without her. Maman. She was my whole world these past two years, my life taking a detour to care for her. The end came all too quickly, and I’d give anything to have more precious time with her, but I can’t. I have to pick up the pieces and pretend I’m fine when I’m not.
She never judged; she was always there for me.
Now she isn’t.
And it hurts. I was her round-the-clock caregiver but at the end when she looked into my eyes, she didn’t know I was her daughter. She told the nurse before she died, ‘She’s the pretty lady who takes care of me.’
I denied the subtle changes in her personality for months. Maman (I always call her that since she was born in France) started showing signs two years ago, but I never expected the downward slide to happen so fast. I watched my kind, intelligent mother lose control of who she was, the blankness in her eyes, the unsteadiness in her walk. That was coupled with times of complete lucidity, brilliance almost, a portal in her mind opening for the briefest time to give me hope… then see it dashed when the door slammed in my face. Finally, my mother fell into a calm sleep… taking in oxygen through a tube from an ugly green tank I grew to hate because it was taking her from me… breathing slower… then slower… as if she knew the end was near.
Maman, how I miss you…
I want to tell her my news about my new job and I’m angry she’s not here. No wonder my mind is wandering this morning like a spool of thread come undone. I feel like a lost chord without a song.
Sketching is my haven. A place I can call home, an anchor to find the road forward again.
Which is why I’ve spent the past hour fidgeting with this retro costume for an upcoming sixties TV drama, Wings over Manhattan, working on the design for the blue and white flight attendant uniform. I spend a long time thinking about a design before I pick up my pencil then sketch it quickly, the curves and lines appearing almost magically like an animated film clip.
My meet-up with the producer isn’t for another two weeks. Yet I’ve got it into my head that I have to finish the sketch right away. A penance, I suppose, when I should be trying to move on.
I jam the pencil into the automatic sharpener, the eerie whir jarring my nerves. I could venture out into the rain to the art store and buy another one, but the idea of sloshing through LA streets that see rain twice a year isn’t inviting.
Yet the longer I stare at the sketch, the more I need to share my feelings. I’m not into grief groups and I’m not close with the people from Maman’s life before she retired to move in with me. I walked through her funeral last week like a puppet on strings, picking up one foot then the next but feeling numb inside. I have no family and few friends I can count on in my crazy world designing costumes for TV.
Apart from Ridge McCall who never left my side.
I can’t help but smile, remembering how we met our first week of college when we bumped heads in the darkroom in photography class. I couldn’t believe this incredible guy with the gorgeous smile noticed me when the lights were on. He had a hot reputation since he’d already racked up movie credits as a stuntman and had every girl in class drooling over his muscular bod. Imagine my shock when he went out of his way to sit next to me in class, and then when he picked me for his partner for field trips, saying I had a good ‘eye’ for color and style and I should follow my dream to be a costume designer. (He caught me doodling costume sketches in class.)
And then when he asked, would I mind riding on the back of his motorcycle?
I liked him right away and we ended up getting amazing shots on film from the beach to the desert and cutting up doing it. We became great pals, pulling pranks on each other, like hiding canisters of film or shooting goofy poses to loosen up our creativity. I was so busy working and drawing and studying, I never thought about dating him. We had too much fun together to screw it up. He’d listen to me talk about my crushes, I’d comment on the long list of girls impressed by the stuntman in the stonewashed jeans and tight tee with James Dean eyes. Somewhere along the way, we eased into being a comfy twosome.
We don’t talk about our dating lives anymore.
I don’t have one, not since I started taking care of Maman. No regrets there.
Ridge… I don’t know. Maybe he’s got a girl. If so, he doesn’t talk about it. Either way, I’m lucky to have him for a best friend.
Maman always smiled when the handsome stuntman brought her fresh flowers and kept her mind busy extoling his exploits on film as a dashing swordsman or crashing a tank through a wall. I know she wondered about us, but I told her we decided long ago not to ruin a beautiful friendship by getting involved.
I pick up my cell to text him, pour out my heart to him like I’ve done for years when I need a strong shoulder to lean on, then put it down. He’s already done so much, walking me through the steps of taking care of her affairs and sitting with me for a long while when we came back to the bungalow after the funeral so I wouldn’t have to be alone.
I can’t bug him. He’s knee-deep working on a big archival assignment for a stock footage company with over a hundred years of film in its vaults, a gig he’s worked long and hard to get. I respect that.
That doesn’t help this bout of loneliness I can’t shake.
If only I had family here… someone who knew Maman. Someone who’d laugh with me about how she’d let her glasses slide down her nose when she was happily surprised, or how she insisted on having a box of chocolate nonpareils on her birthday every year since the sweets reminded her of idyllic days growing up in a French convent outside Paris.
I’ve never been to France, always had a job since high school, including working as a tour guide at a major movie studio. I was born in California, but grew up speaking both English and French. I’m thirty-six and I know zilch about my Gallic roots.
I never thought about it till now.
Which brings me to the matter of Maman’s possessions.
My study is like most parlor rooms in these 1930s-style Spanish bungalows on the West side. Built in a time when hanging multi-colored beads separated it from the main house, it’s become a convenient storage room since I work on my laptop on the veranda on sunny days, or sit on the love seat under the bay window, steadying the old artist’s wooden board I’ve had since college on bent knees.
My work habits make it easy for me to avoid this room. And what’s in it: anything and everything that belonged to Maman, sealed up like holiday presents with perfectly aligned tape and shipped over from my mother’s apartment in Santa Clara. Boxes that have sat here untouched, which saddens me.
When she first came to live with me, we talked about going through her things, but I could see she didn’t want to, as if by opening th
ese boxes she’d have to come face to face with the reality she was no longer that person. Worse yet, she may not have any memory of what she saw, and she’d feel empty inside. Even if memories are rose-colored, we cling to them because they give us pleasure as well as the courage to go forward in hard times.
If she couldn’t remember, she’d have neither.
So I abided by her wishes to wait for the day when she felt strong enough to accept whatever she found. Waited for a day that never came.
I didn’t have the heart to go through the boxes without her. I kept avoiding it, telling myself I was too busy with the day-in, day-out routine taking care of Maman with a strong mind but a lonely heart. As if by going through her things, I’d have to relive watching her fade away all over again. I know what her last wishes were regarding her personal things and I admit I’ve been remiss in carrying them out – something Ridge and I talked about yesterday over lattes at the gym not far from the studio.
‘I worry about you since your mom died, Juliana,’ Ridge said when I found him throwing quick jabs at a heavy punching bag. Tall, dark, gorgeous, engaging his entire body as he hit the bag like he was hellbent on turning it into a pile of sawdust. Yet he was a man who sang lonesome cowboy songs off key, could lift twice his bodyweight, but also had a tender place for me in his heart I sometimes took for granted.
I felt guilty bugging him, but I needed to talk.
‘I’m good, Ridge… sort of.’ I straddled the black leather bench and put down the steaming mocha lattes I’d picked up while checking out the amazing abs on this man who works out every day at 6 a.m. like clockwork. ‘I’m… well, confused.’
‘Join the club. You’re going through a big transition. Like me.’ He punched the bag and the sweat rolled down his face and made his bare chest shine bronze and gold under the hot lights. I’m not immune to his appeal. I just don’t go there in my mind. I don’t want to be another groupie.
Ridge is a legend in the world of stunt work and the recipient of numerous awards for his contributions to the industry and high-risk stunts. He doesn’t talk about himself, but it pains me to see how he’s struggling to accept the fact that at forty, time is catching up with him. I’ve watched him perform on the set and the man is a warrior-god in action. When it’s time to go to work, his head is in the game and he never gives up.
Last year he cut back on his stunt work to focus on his future (he’s been in the business since he was sixteen). He’s quick to admit you can only get set on fire or die by the sword so many times.
I couldn’t believe it when he told me he had a new gig as a film archivist. It’s been his dream for a long time to ensure the films highlighting the greatest stunts from the early silents to the present aren’t lost, but preserved for the next generation of stunt performers.
I’ve been so wrapped up in my problems with Maman, I didn’t realize I’d gone into a strange shell of my own.
Which was why I’d showed up this morning. I needed a pep talk.
‘For years, I ignored my fears,’ Ridge continued, ‘let the adrenaline override everything else. Pushed forward and got the job done.’ He punched the bag so hard the sweat on his face spurted into the air. ‘Then I got hurt and reality hit me like a steel drum. It took me a while to come to terms with my vulnerabilities.
‘I’m not afraid to jump out of a plane or leap onto a moving train. I am afraid of letting down my team… and that means you, Juliana. You’re always there for me when I do something stupid, or how you make me talk about something that happened on a shoot I don’t want to talk about.
‘I won’t let you down now. You talked about how you’ve been avoiding letting go of the past, moving on. Don’t run from your past, embrace it. The hardest part about doing a stunt is that moment before you make the jump. If you think too much about it, you’ll make a mistake. If you get nervous, that’s when you get hurt. Just do it… make your decision and go with it.’
My talk with Ridge about finding the courage to move on has fueled my energy in a new direction. I’ve put this off too long. So why not start on a rainy afternoon? I’m working on the designs for a show that takes place around the time Maman was a teenager. Maybe I’ll get some inspiration from her for the uniform for my friendly skies attendant. I smile. I like that idea. As if she’s helping me move on.
I push down the deep ache in my chest, heave out a big, cleansing breath. Then I put down my coffee cup and get to work.
It’s time, Maman.
My mother, Madelaine Chastain, was just a baby when Paris was liberated in 1944, but the demure Frenchwoman always put off talking about her family when I asked her, waving her hand about like she was signaling someone unseen to go away lest they spill the beans. A ghost, perhaps. To my knowledge, Maman’s family were all killed in the war. That didn’t excuse her lack of une famille in my eyes. When I asked the faculty staff who came down for the funeral if she ever mentioned any relatives in France, they shook their heads. I admit I was too distraught over her death and exhausted from the toll caregiving took on me to go searching any further. I wonder if I should have. She must have someone I can write to, talk with about my mother’s last few years, her downward spiral into a deep depression that made her believe she was a burden to me. She once said something I tucked away in my mind.
That I’d have enough to bear if I ever found out about ‘her’.
Who she was talking about, I never figured out.
Maman never spoke about my grandparents, insisting they died in the war. As a teenager, I spent hours conjuring up a fantastic tale of them being Resistance fighters, brave partisans fighting the Nazis but making sure their daughter was safe with the nuns since they’d most likely be killed before their country was free again. I’d come up with various ‘looks’, but my favorite was a sketch of my grandmother outfitted in partisan chic – pencil skirt, silky cream blouse, knee-high, brown suede boots, and a bomber jacket cinched in at her waist. A deep navy beret pulled down over one eye, her lips bright with a sizzling red lipstick.
So unlike my mother. I often tried to get Maman to add a necklace or earrings to her ensemble, but she always pooh-pooed the idea, saying she was a convent girl at heart. After all, glam is my business. Giving actresses the right cut on a dress, the fit of a pair of jeans, the angle of a hat. The retired art history professor never deviated from her black suit, crisp white blouse, low pumps, and square glasses.
These memories of Maman and fantasies of my grandmother are all I have to cling to. I realize now I avoided a lot of things in my life because I was too busy following my dream of making it in Hollywood. In college, I was picked as the model for the movie studio tour ads, though I never saw myself as an actress or beautiful. The only thing I can lay claim to as anything interesting about my face is the deep dimple on my left cheek.
Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved to draw… stick figures in my mother’s textbooks, making clothes for my Barbie, working on costumes for school plays. I do visual storytelling, designing costumes specific to that character and give it the cinematic flair to work on the silver screen.
Maman didn’t understand my love for design or the movies. She loved her history books and her students and rarely talked about anything else. I never pressed her about where we came from and she seemed happy I didn’t. My mother was such a private person, so careful with saying and doing the right thing, even her handwriting was precision perfect. I never wanted to look behind the curtain and see otherwise. No wonder I feel empty inside when it comes to knowing my roots. I suck in a sharp breath and take the plunge to find out.
Let the unpacking begin.
I take my time and rearrange the boxes I’ve kept stored here in my study. I do the smaller ones first, blowing off the dust coating the brown cardboard. Cutting the tape with scissors with a reverence that doesn’t surprise me. Taking my time with each packed box as if Maman is watching me, nodding her head in approval.
I go through her possessions with a careful eye,
my heart pounding, looking for clues about my roots in each box. Nothing yet… no wild revelations, but with every box I open, every memory I find helps me cope with her loss. Still, my curiosity tugs at me to find out more about her, to fill in the gap of where I came from. I’m delighted when I find a sealed box of letters written by my parents – I never knew it existed.
Maman told me years ago my father was American, but my parents never married. How they had this long-distance love affair that culminated when my mother came to America to have her baby. Me. After skimming several letters, I wipe away a tear, feeling the deep love between them, but there’s no hint of my mother’s family, like she was born without a past.
I find photos of me as a baby, then from my childhood since I grew up in a time before everything went digital. First communion, dressing up for Halloween, teenage angst years where I shied away from the camera. I love handling these glossy four-by-six prints, the color as vibrant as a scene out of Oz. Then I find old movie camera tapes I gave her of my trips to San Francisco and New York for location shoots, cities Maman loved to visit with me. Nothing here that says anything about her life before she settled in California except for a few letters in French. Letters from the convent where my mother lived until she met my father, signed by a nun named Sister Rose-Celine.
I put the letters aside, looking for something about my mother as a young girl. She was forty when I was born, she must have had a life before me, relatives somewhere… but nothing. Even her finances were straightforward: bills, savings, retirement checks every month. I admit I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered Maman left me a generous stipend which I’ll save for a rainy day. Or that vacation I never went on. While my mind is flirting with the idea of tropical breezes and white, sandy beaches, I’m attracted to a square box that’s different from the others. Elegant wrapping and neatly tied string with an elaborate knot. The box is inside a bigger box hidden under out-of-date clothes. A convent uniform. Grey, linen jumper, white blouse with a Peter Pan collar and short sleeves, light blue sweater. The scent of a lovely French perfume wafting from the closed-up box makes me sigh with delight. Rose… then plum, is it? And raspberry… and a spice I can’t identify. A provocative scent in stark contrast to the uniform.