Inside was a painting in a cheap frame. It was all black. A watercolor. It was a young girl’s painting of the Seine with a starless night sky up above. It was the painting Claire had always wanted. She read her niece’s note. She thought about girls with long black hair, about the bottle-green leaves of the sweet pea vines and the white-throated squash blooms. She thought about a robin in the grass, and the sprinklers being turned on, and about the hot pavement on the corner where she had waited all day. She thought about the tomatoes in the garden. Cherokee chocolates, Golden Jubilees, Green Zebras, Rainbows. She felt a surge of grief, not for everything she’d lost, but for everything that had never been. She hadn’t even known how much she’d missed Elv.
“They want to come to Paris,” she said.
THE WEDDING WAS held in the Bois de Boulogne, at the Chalet des Îles, set in the center of the lake. The family had rented out the restaurant and invited sixty people. The Cohens had such a big family and so many friends that several had to be cut from the invitation list to ensure they didn’t go over the lucky number of sixty. There were some hard feelings, but there had already been a huge engagement party several months before, at Philippe’s brother Émile’s house, with too many guests to keep track of. That evened things out a bit.
Sixty was a lucky number, Madame Cohen had decreed, and she had been right too many times for them to ignore her. It would bring them happiness, they would see. Indeed, the weather was perfect, just as she’d predicted. The hot summer’s day had faded into a warm blue evening. It would stay light until after ten. No one worried about the silly rumors about creatures that could be found in the Bois after dark, vicious dogs, wolves, lost souls. This was not the weather or the time for such things. Guests were ferried across the water in little boats, disembarking on a dock strung with white lights. A trio played in the garden and music drifted across the island. The bees were moving slowly through the thin blue light, drawn by the sweet glasses of champagne and kir, making themselves drunk with the scent and the taste.
The dress Natalia made was stunning—white tulle and silk. Every seam was perfect. There were sixty pink pearls sewn into the bodice. When she’d presented the dress to her granddaughter, Claire had cried and said it was far too beautiful for her. She was afraid she might ruin it.
“Wear it and be happy,” Natalia told her.
Now Claire was standing near a bank of wild ferns that grew beside the restaurant. Bullfrogs were calling in the reeds. The heat had settled on Claire’s skin and she looked flushed. She was drinking a glass of vodka and soda. She was a nervous wreck. She didn’t know if happiness would suit her. She wasn’t prepared for it. Philippe wasn’t supposed to see her in her wedding dress until the ceremony, but he went right over. He didn’t care about rules. He never had. That was why Madame Cohen had kept him out of the shop when he was a boy. He was nothing but trouble back then. But a boy who is trouble is something entirely different as a man. He was leaning in close, whispering. Claire laughed and let him have a sip of her drink.
Peter Smith had come from New York to give the bride away. They had teased him that hell must have frozen over because here he was back in Paris, staying with Philippe’s parents, who didn’t speak a word of English. Pete was surprised to find that this time around everything was better than he’d remembered, especially the food. He was becoming an expert on cheese and thought he might open a shop in North Point Harbor, right on Main Street. Elise and Mary Fox were there as well, splurging on the Ritz. Mary was delighted to find that so many of the guests were doctors, even if she couldn’t speak the language. She’d discovered that one of Madame Cohen’s grandson’s friends was working at NYU Medical Center. She and Claire had already discussed catching the bouquet; Claire was to throw toward the right, where Mary would be standing, arms outstretched.
But the wedding gown wasn’t the last dress Natalia had sewn. She had made a pink silk and tulle dress for her great-granddaughter. It arrived in North Point Harbor in a huge white box tied with string. The package was so special that Mimi had to run upstairs and get her mother to come out to the porch and sign for it before the postman would hand it over. They carried it up to Mimi’s room, then sat it on the bed and stared at it, wondering what on earth it might be, before Elv went to get the scissors to cut the string.
“It’s definitely something French,” Mimi said solemnly.
“Definitely,” Elv agreed.
There was a huge amount of tissue paper, and then the dress. Elv looked at it, then turned away, overcome. Mimi was too excited to notice; she grabbed the dress and raced down to her grandpa’s apartment to show it off. It was by far the most beautiful dress in the world. Elv stayed behind and took up the envelope inside the cardboard box that had been addressed to Miss M. Story. It was an invitation to Claire’s wedding. Elv opened it. She shouldn’t have, but she did. She couldn’t believe how much time had passed. It was low tide in the bay. The birds were swooping over lawns and through the tall marsh grass beyond the yard. Bring your mother, Claire had written.
NATALIA PAID FOR the tickets, as she’d always said she would. But of course Elv and Mimi were too excited to sleep on the plane. Elv whispered how every year the Story sisters would notice a new shade of light in Paris. The sisters were in love with French milk and French bread; they all practiced tying their scarves the way French women did, but could never get it right. Every spring the chestnut tree in the courtyard bloomed. The river was green in the daytime, and black as evening approached. One night Elv had rescued a cat that had fallen into the water. Their ama had named it Sadie, and it was still alive, only now the cat was very old and cranky.
Mimi did not find Sadie cranky in the least. It sat on her lap and purred and she sneaked it bits of her dinner. She loved being in Paris in her great-grandmother’s house. They stayed in the guest bedroom, the room that had been Claire’s before she’d moved in with Philippe. The parlor was still painted red, lacquered so that it gleamed when the lamps were turned on. The light was still a thousand different colors, changing with the weather and the hour of the day.
“It’s the color of lemons!” Mimi declared when she woke to her first morning in Paris. “Now it’s the color of peaches!” she said as she and her ama later fixed a pot of tea in the kitchen. Mimi had seen photographs of her gigi on the mantel, but Claire still hadn’t been by after two days.
“She doesn’t want to see me,” Elv said to her grandmother while Mimi was doing her best to watch French television.
“She wouldn’t have told Mimi to bring you if she didn’t want you here,” Natalia assured her.
But Elv got herself so worked up the night before the wedding that she came down with a fever. In the morning she dressed, then went to splash water on her face. She was burning up. She told Natalia she couldn’t possibly go, but then she saw Mimi in her frothy pink dress. She wished Lorry were there to see how beautiful his daughter was. Oh, baby, he would have said. How did you get to be so grown-up?
Mimi talked her mother into going with them to the park. “Maybe you’ll feel better once you get there,” she said reasonably. “You don’t have to go any farther if you don’t want to.” She was practical, the way Meg had been. Plus she had Lorry’s talent for talking you into nearly anything.
“Sure,” Elv said, catching up her daughter’s hand. “Will do.”
Pete was there with a taxi, which they took to the Bois; the driver went wickedly fast. Pete had second thoughts about Paris all over again.
When the taxi parked, they could see the lake and the island. Mimi was utterly enchanted. “It’s the fairyland you invented,” she said to her mother.
“Go on,” Elv said, sending her off with her ama. “I’ll watch from here. This is fine.”
Mimi was too smart. She came to her mother and gestured so that Elv would lean close and she could whisper. “Is it because they all hated Daddy?”
“Oh, no,” Elv said. “Everyone loved him. He told people stories and they just sat and listened and t
hey didn’t want to be anywhere but right there with him. Believe me, I know.”
“Your mom doesn’t like crowds,” Pete said. He had come up behind them. Elv threw him a grateful look. “Like at the school dinners. She has a good view from here.”
Elv waved to Mimi when she got on the little boat and Mimi waved back. She had a sense of loss just seeing her daughter float away. The boat was indeed like a faerie boat, leaving water lilies in its wake. Once it had drawn up to the dock, everyone got off and was greeted by the Cohen family. Music drifted across the water in bits and bursts. Every now and then Elv spied Mimi on the other side, exploring the island, and then she couldn’t see her anymore. Mimi caught sight of the bride standing by the reeds with a tall, handsome man. She ran right up to her gigi, and when Claire turned she knew Mimi immediately. She recognized the long black hair, the way she smiled. She was wearing the charm bracelet and she held up her arm for Claire to see. She shook it and there was the sound of bells. Mimi’s eighth birthday had just passed. She was exactly the same age Claire had been when she did the unpardonable, horrible thing for which she could never be forgiven.
She had gotten out of the car.
Claire glanced around and spied a woman on the other side of the lake. She asked Mimi if she would take care of her bouquet for her. It was made up of a hundred roses, all white. Each rose was small and perfect. Mimi nodded. She took her duties very seriously.
Claire could hear the birds in the linden trees; they always called when it was growing dark. The nature of love had totally escaped her until now. She had thought that if you lost it, you could never get it back, like a stone thrown down a well. But it was like the water at the bottom of the well, there when you can’t even see it, shifting in the dark. She remembered everything. The violets and the blood, the day when Elv hunkered down in the garden after refusing to cut her hair, the bird they had found with its tiny white bones, the charm Elv had strung together to protect them against evil. When they were in the garden looking up through the leaves, the whole world turned green. Elv thought she saw her sister walking toward the dock in her white dress. She had been waiting for her and she’d wait for her for as long as she was gone, and there she was, in the falling dark; she hadn’t gone anywhere at all.
Madame Cohen sat in an armchair that the waiters had carried out to place under one of the lindens. The air was still sultry. The last of the day’s light filtered through the shadows. It was lemon colored, exactly as Mimi had noted. Madame Cohen had been brought a kir pêche that reminded her of the peaches she and her sisters had once eaten on a picnic out in the countryside. Natalia pulled a chair next to her friend’s. She could see her great-granddaughter holding a bouquet of white roses, spinning in a circle on the dance floor that would later be crowded with couples. She and Madame Cohen had worked side by side in this world of grief. Today their grandchildren were happy. That was gratifying.
They could hear frogs splashing in the shallow water. There were white lights everywhere, as if the stars were falling down. It was twilight. The light would soon be turning to ink, another color for Mimi to write in her diary. Philippe shouted out and waved his arms, calling the two grandmothers over.
“They need us,” Natalia said.
“Let’s let them think so,” her friend suggested.
As they walked across the grass, Madame Cohen saw a small black shadow in the shape of a moth. It hovered above her glass of kir, drawn like the bees to the sugar and fruit, then it flitted away. She didn’t worry about it in the least. It was summer, and hot, and everything was just beginning.
Acknowledgments
MANY THANKS TO MY FIRST READERS—Maggie Stern Terris, Pamela Painter, Tom Martin, Gary Johnson, Elaine Markson, and John Glusman.
Thanks to Camille McDuffie. Much gratitude to Shaye Areheart.
And many thanks to Sandra Hoffman-Nickels and Max Hoffman for sharing Paris.
About the Author
ALICE HOFFMAN is the author of twenty-five works of fiction. Here on Earth was an Oprah Book Club selection. Practical Magic and Aquamarine were both bestsellers and Hollywood movies. Her novels have been ranked as notable books of the year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, and People, while her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, the Kenyon Review, Redbook, Architectural Digest, Harvard Review, and Ploughshares. She divides her time between Boston and New York City.
The Assassin’s Daughter
We came like doves across the desert. In a
time when there was nothing but death, we
were grateful for anything, and most grateful
of all when we awoke to another day.
We had been wandering for so long I forgot what it was like to live within walls or sleep through the night. In that time I lost all I might have possessed if Jerusalem had not fallen: a husband, a family, a future of my own. My girlhood disappeared in the desert. The person I’d once been vanished as I wrapped myself in white when the dust rose into clouds. We were nomads, leaving behind beds and belongings, rugs and brass pots. Now our house was the house of the desert, black at night, brutally white at noon.
They say the truest beauty is in the harshest land and that God can be found there by those with open eyes. But my eyes were closed against the shifting winds that can blind a person in an instant. Breathing itself was a miracle when the storms came whirling across the earth. The voice that arises out of the silence is something no one can imagine until it is heard. It roars when it speaks, it lies to you and convinces you, it steals from you and leaves you without a single word of comfort. Comfort cannot exist in such a place. What is brutal survives. What is cunning lives until morning.
My skin was sunburned, my hands raw. I gave in to the desert, bowing to its mighty voice. Everywhere I walked my fate walked with me, sewn to my feet with red thread. All that will ever be has already been written long before it happens. There is nothing we can do to stop it. I couldn’t run in the other direction. The roads from Jerusalem led to only three places: to Rome, or to the sea, or to the desert. My people had become wanderers, as they had been at the beginning of time, cast out yet again.
I followed my father out of the city because I had no choice.
None of us did, if the truth be told.
I DON’T KNOW how it began, but I know how it ended. It occurred in the month of Av, the sign for which is Arieh, the lion. It is a month that signifies destruction for our people, a season when the stones in the desert are so hot you cannot touch them without burning your fingers, when fruit withers on the trees before it ripens and the seeds inside shake like a rattle, when the sky is white and rain will not fall. The first Temple had been destroyed in that month. Tools signified weapons and could not be used in constructing the holiest of holy places; therefore the great warrior king David had been prohibited from building the Temple because he had known the evils of war. Instead, the honor fell to his son King Solomon, who called upon the shamir, a worm who could cut through stone, thereby creating glory to God without the use of metal tools.
The Temple was built as God had decreed it should be, free from bloodshed and war. Its nine gates were covered with silver and gold. There, in the most holy of places, was the Ark that stored our people’s covenant with God, a chest made of the finest acacia wood, decorated with two golden cherubs. But despite its magnificence, the first Temple was destroyed, our people exiled to Babylonia. They had returned after seventy years to rebuild in the same place, where Abraham had been willing to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice to the Almighty, where the world had first been created.
The second Temple had stood for hundreds of years as the dwelling place of God’s word, the center of creation in the center of Jerusalem, though the Ark itself had disappeared, perhaps in Babylonia. But now times of bloodshed were upon us once more. The Romans wanted all that we had. They came to us as they swarmed upon so many lands with their immense legions, wanti
ng not just to conquer but to humiliate, claiming not just our land and our gold but our humanity.
As for me, I expected disaster, nothing more. I had known its embrace before I had breath or sight. I was the second child, a year younger than my brother, Amram, but unlike him entirely, cursed by the burden of my first breath. My mother died before I was born. In that moment the map of my life arose upon my skin in a burst of red marks, speckles that, when followed, one to the other, have led me to my destiny.
I can remember the instant when I entered the world, the great calm that was suddenly broken, the heat of my own pulse beneath my skin. I was taken from my mother’s womb, cut out with a sharp knife. I am convinced I heard my father’s roar of grief, the only sound to break the terrible silence of one who is born from death. I myself did not cry or wail. People took note of that. The mid-wives whispered to one another, convinced I was either blessed or cursed. My silence was not my only unusual aspect, nor were the russet flecks that emerged upon my skin an hour after my birth. It was my hair, the deep bloodred color of it, a thick cap growing, as if I already knew this world and had been here before.
They said my eyes were open, the mark of one set apart. That was to be expected of a child born of a dead woman, for I was touched by Mal’ach ha-Mavet, the Angel of Death, before I was born in the month of Av, on the Tisha B’Av, the ninth day, under the sign of the lion. I always knew a lion would be waiting for me. I had dreamed of such creatures ever since I could remember. In my dreams I fed the lion from my hand. In return he took my whole hand into his mouth and ate me alive.
When I left childhood, I made certain to cover my head; even when I was in my father’s courtyard I kept to myself. On those rare occasions when I accompanied our cook to the market, I saw other young women enjoying themselves and I was jealous of even the plainest among them. Their lives were full, whereas I could think only of all I did not have. They chirped merrily about their futures as brides as they lingered at the well or gathered in the Street of the Bakers surrounded by their mothers and aunts. I wanted to snap at them but said nothing. How could I speak of my envy when there were things I wanted even more than a husband or a child or a home of my own?
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