by Mary Fleming
“So you’re coming tomorrow,” Mother repeated, just as I was about to leave. She looked worn out by my visit.
“For whatever it’s worth,” I said, leaning down to kiss her good-bye. “Yes. I’m back.”
Edmond came out of his study as I walked toward the door.
“How do you think she seems?” he said. “She’s better at home, no?”
“She tires easily,” I hedged. He nodded, a flicker of hope abruptly extinguished. “I’ll be back tomorrow for lunch,” I said as I headed down the stairs, the dog nipping at my legs. Edmond stayed in the doorway until I was out of sight, and that image of him stuck with me for a long time. An old man, still trim and smoothly dressed, but his elegant trousers pulled up on his shortened waist, his face haggard and lost, standing alone on the threshold.
Though our exchange had hardly caused walls to crumble, the first bricks had been loosened. That was something. And then I was surprised at how reassuring it felt to be back at the rue de Verneuil. Absence had given me a new appreciation of its hush, its familiar objects and smells. Much as I had tried to forget and deny them, there had been plenty of happy memories. There was sitting in the kitchen with Lisette or in the reading corner that Mother had set up for me in my bedroom, with its large, cushioned armchair and a standing lamp. I’d spent hours curled up comfortably, until I got too big to curl. Or there were the times I surreptitiously slipped into Edmond’s study, which was lined with oak shelves and the old leather-bound history books he collected. How despite their belonging to my hated stepfather, I would pluck one from the shelf and smell the old paper and leather, turn the brittle pages, consult the print date, and try to imagine the first owner. Then, too, I remembered the frightened feeling I used to get, especially in the early days, if Mother were out for too long. I would fill up with terror, almost to the point of being sick, that she wouldn’t come back and I’d be left an orphan.
The next day, the day of the lunch, I let Piotr close up the shop so that I would be on time. At just after noon, I washed my hands until I thought the skin would come off, put on the cleanest, newest clothes I had, and set off with the dog through the mass of last-minute shoppers to the rue de Verneuil. It was a late spring day, hot and sunny. The light was blinding and the air heavy, and I let Cassie pull me along as she nosed the grubby pavement. She lurched right and then left, but I was patient with her today because I viewed her as my protective shield against the encounter. Everyone together was not the same thing as one or two at a time. And there would be the new wife Anne-Sophie, plus I would have to face my niece and nephews. Did they know what had happened? Stephanie, modern, free-spirited mother that she was, may just have told them.
By the time I stood at the front door, I was prickling with the heat. The dog, tongue hanging in a pant, stood like an unwatered flower, her tail barely swaying as she heard the confident click of Edward’s heels approaching.
“What a handsome couple,” he said, stepping aside to let me in.
“She keeps me on a short leash, at least.”
Edward shook his head. “How stupid we sound.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Ridiculous.”
As we walked into the front hall, Edward almost whispered: “Mother’s in bed. Saving her strength for mealtime. It’s a bad day. I almost wish we hadn’t tried to pull this off.”
I headed down the hall. Mother did look worse than yesterday, and the artificial color she’d added to her cheeks only highlighted what was missing underneath. She was propped up on her bed, dressed, but looking uncomfortable and out of place in her clothes. “Don’t worry about me. Go join the others,” she said. “You have to meet Anne-Sophie. And the children will love the dog.” I stopped in the kitchen to give Cassie water and say hello to Lisette. Her eyes filled with tears as soon as she saw me. Out came the hankie from her apron pocket.
“Oh, Trésor. It’s terrible. She won’t eat, and she can’t stand the smell of meat cooking, so look,” and she pointed to the counter where a cold roast beef sat ready. “I had to buy it at the butcher like this, cooked by somebody else.” She shook her head and dabbed her eyes with her hankie. “And Monsieur looks worse every day too. What will he do when she’s gone?” She stopped to blow her nose. “Et le chien,” she went on, looking disapprovingly at Cassie, who had slopped water from one of her mixing bowls all over the clean kitchen floor. “Why can’t you bring home a human?”
And what about you, Lisette, I’d wanted to ask. You, whose whole life, except for a sister in Brittany, revolves around this house.
“Here’s my elusive brother. I told you he was real,” said Edward as I walked into the salon.
A youngish woman with glasses smiled at me. I almost couldn’t speak—the idea that Edward could marry someone with even a minor handicap, and one displayed so boldly—it seemed impossible. And she was not stunningly beautiful, just okay-looking. “Nice to finally meet you,” she said, standing up. It was hard to judge her figure in her pregnant state, but she clearly had nothing like the perfect body of her predecessor either. She was short, maybe that was it; she didn’t rival Edward in height or age. “And who’s this?” Anne-Sophie asked, bending down to the dog. “The children will love her.”
“Cassie’s her name. Don’t be too nice to her or she’ll bother you all through lunch.”
“I don’t mind,” she said, stroking her head. “I love dogs. Someday maybe we’ll have one,” she added, looking at Edward.
“Not until the children are responsible enough to walk it,” he said. “So never.”
At which point children could be heard walking briskly, not running, down the corridor. Two boys stopped abruptly at the door. Matthieu and Henri had stretched like toffee since I’d last seen them. As with Edward and me, they had a brotherly resemblance, but not much more. Now Matthieu looked less like Edward—still the curly hair, the slightly rounded face—but around the eyes, he was Stephanie. Henri still looked like his own person. He had the curly hair, which seemed to pass to every male member of the family, but his face was longer and thinner, the features finer. Right behind them was a squat, roly-poly boy, dragging a white cloth diaper by the corner. He half hid himself behind Matthieu and stuck his thumb in his mouth. And then Caroline sauntered in. She crossed one long leg over the other as she leaned against the door jamb with a studied attempt at apathy. She looked more like Stephanie than ever. Just toned down. The hair wasn’t quite as red, the eyes more hazel than green, the features less chiseled. But the body—long and lithe—was a nymphet’s version of her mother. On some level, it must have been hard for Edward to look at her.
The boys came forward, little soldiers under orders to behave, be polite. After each one kissed me hello, he peeled away toward the dog, even pudgy little Paul. Caroline continued to stand in the doorway with such conviction, I thought: she must know. But after a glance at Edward, she too came to greet me. I said stupidly, in English: “Three brothers must be tough.”
She answered me with a shrug in French: “You get used to it.”
Edmond announced that it was time for lunch as if he were calling us to battle. Then he and Edward went to fetch Mother, while the rest of us shifted rooms. Anne-Sophie had to scold the boys away from Cassie, and as soon as they’d gone, Caroline sidled over to the dog.
“Stroke her ears,” I said, making her look up and blush. Cassie now licked her ear. Her laugh sounded brittle, out of practice.
Edward and Edmond came into the dining room, one on either side of Mother, who despite the warm day, was dressed in a wool cardigan. Curved forward, as if she had a bad stomach ache, she barely lifted her feet as she shuffled to the oak chair brought in from the living room, one with arms and extra cushions piled on it. Even the boys stopped bickering as their grandmother was lowered into her seat. The rest of us sat down. After a moment the silence became awkward. No one seemed to know what to talk about. Usually it was Mother who guided us along the road to social intercourse. Without her we were lost. T
hen Caroline, who was not yet seated, walked over to Mother and kissed her gently on the forehead, saying simply, in English: “Hello, Granny.” The graceful gesture somehow put everyone in the room at ease.
Platters of food were passed around the table. The children—even little Paul, next to his mother—sat quietly, and I was reminded of that lunch years ago when the children had joined the adults for the first time. How Henri had complained about his soup and had fidgeted with the books on his chair, until called to order by Mother. Today, they behaved like all French children, who from a very early age are expected to rise to the occasion of adult gatherings.
“What are you reading, Mother?” Edward asked, assuming the role of social motor. Since he was not a big reader himself, the question sounded forced.
“For the first time in my life,” her eyes fluttered, “I’m having trouble with fiction.” She looked at me. “I can’t suspend my belief and get into the story. Maybe it demands too much concentration. Magazines are my limit. Anyway, Anne-Sophie—how’s your book coming along?”
“I’m hoping to get the research done before the baby arrives,” she said, putting her fork down and pushing her glasses up her nose, her other hand on her lump of a stomach. “But I’m not sure I’ll make it.” She had a high, light voice.
“What is the subject of your book?” I asked.
“I’m writing my dissertation on the Bièvre,” she said.
“As in the rue de Bièvre?” I asked. It is a short street in the Latin Quarter across from Notre Dame, known to all of France because President Mitterrand had lived there.
“The street was named after an arm of the Seine that ran from the south and joined the main river near where the Gare d’Austerlitz stands today. An abbey diverted waters to what’s now the street for its gardens in the twelfth century. I’m trying to reconstruct the history of the communities that developed along the whole river. Of course, not the original inhabitants, which were beavers. That’s how it got its name. I’m starting from Gallo-Roman times.”
“What happened to it?” I was astonished I’d never even heard of it.
“It was eventually covered up. Besides being full of junk—the rue Mouffetard, for example, gets its name from the word mofettes, which was what the residents called the stink that the river gave off—it flooded all the time. The last of it was covered over after the big flood of 1910.”
“You see, there are lots of things you don’t know about Paris,” Edward said, crossing his arms across his chest with a satisfied smile that his wife knew more about the city than his weird wanderer brother.
“Where do you do your research?” I asked, refusing even to acknowledge Edward’s mild taunt.
“Mostly in the national archives, in libraries.”
“Have you been to that socialist monstrosity?” Edmond asked with disgust.
“Yes,” Anne-Sophie said, putting a napkin to her heartshaped mouth. “And I’m afraid to say the new national library is a nightmare, inside and out.”
“The city of Paris,” Edmond continued, “hasn’t built anything worth its own cheap concrete since 1930.” This was generous of him; usually his cutoff date was the war. The first one. But how pleased he must be, I thought, to have a historian for a stepdaughter-in-law. Edward had really hit the jackpot this time. Anne-Sophie had something for everyone.
But as social motor, my brother was sputtering. The conversation lagged over the salad and cheese without Mother’s impetus. She made a few efforts at asking more questions, at maintaining her old job, but she couldn’t seem to focus for long on the responses. It seemed, in fact, she wasn’t quite there, as if part of her had already left this earth. So instead of covering politics and culture, our usual menu, we rambled from the weather, and how the relentless rain had given way to relentless sun, to comments on the food, something we never talked about, since it was always assumed that whatever Mother had planned and Lisette had prepared was good.
While the weather was being discussed over the peach tart, I watched my mother and niece. They obviously had a great deal of natural affection for one another, une sympathie that had been fed by much time spent together. Even before Stephanie left, Mother had mothered those children several times a week. And after the split, she was all they’d had in terms of maternal affection until Anne-Sophie, whom Caroline resented anyway. Which perhaps partly explained Caroline’s particular affection for her grandmother. While I ate the very sweet, juicy peaches, I tried to look at Mother from Caroline’s point of view, as source of succor. I tried to imagine what it might be like not to have that wall of unsaid things between us.
The children were excused, and it was obvious Mother needed to be too. I took one chicken arm and Edward the other, and we guided her back to her room. As we lowered her onto the bed, Edward said: “You shouldn’t have stayed the whole meal, Maman. It’s tired you out too much.”
“I wouldn’t have missed that lunch for the world,” she said, looking from son to son, then closing her eyes.
“I’ll come back on Tuesday,” I said. “During my lunch break.”
Each of us leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, then slid silently out of the room.
SIX
ON THE FOLLOWING Tuesday morning, just after I arrived at the rue de Seine, I got two calls. One was from Edmond telling me that Mother was still worn out by lunch and didn’t want to see anyone that day. The second call was from Wanda, Piotr’s wife, telling me that on Sunday afternoon, while they were taking a stroll along the Seine, he had been knocked over by a roller blader and was in the hospital with a concussion. Wanda told me breathlessly: “The doctor said that if he had been a smaller or an older man, he would probably be dead.” She was silent for a moment, undoubtedly crossing herself and looking to heaven. “But he will be fine, after a week’s rest.”
Such an accident wasn’t surprising. The city had been overrun with wheels in general since that same 1995 strike that had propelled Mélo-Vélo into solvency. Everyone had some form of nonmotorized locomotion, and roller blades were popular and dangerous, especially on weekends, when people tore through the city, oblivious to pedestrians. It was in fact more surprising that such an accident didn’t occur on every street corner, especially now, late spring, as people emerged from their winter holes.
The May sky got hotter and hotter. Flags went limp, shutters got shuttered. I had to pull my fans out of the cupboards at the shop and in my room. It was so warm that everyone wanted to be outside, and they often dug old, rusty bicycles that needed repairing out with them. Or they bought new ones. Things were busy, and with Piotr out, I was stuck at the shop most of the time.
Which meant my visits to the rue de Verneuil were quick and limited. I had no time alone with Mother. When I went during lunch, Lisette would be preparing a tray for Edmond to eat at Mother’s bedside. When I stopped by after closing, either Anne-Sophie or Edward would be there. But while not managing to talk to Mother, I did get to know my new sister-in-law. She was cheery, energetic, and, being from a large family herself, undaunted by all the children under her care. Like Mother, she was organized too, so she had her help lined up, allowing her a few hours a day to work on her book. Though the next time I saw her, she looked considerably less bookish: the glasses had disappeared, and the contact lenses were in. Her unmasked blue eyes, along with the heart-shaped lips, gave her a perpetual look of pleasant surprise. Though she was not stunningly beautiful like Stephanie, the whole package was highly attractive. Edward hadn’t gone that soft.
He and I, with Mother as our main topic of conversation and often no audience to receive our wit, dropped the sarcasm entirely. Because Edmond was too distraught to confront the practicalities of Mother’s illness, we unburdened him as much as possible. We dealt with her medication and the nurses. We wondered about the state of her legal affairs. Edward suggested that we ask about her will and whether all was in order. At first, it struck me as typically callous, but then I realized he was just being typically
practical.
By Saturday evening I was exhausted and not in the mood to go out. Plus I was riveted by the book that Mother had given me. The inner rhythms of Sebald’s prose mesmerized me, as did the photos and drawings he interspersed into his text. In fact, if the backdrop to the alienation felt by the narrator and the Jewish exiles he describes hadn’t been the Second World War, The Emigrants might have been written for me. The sense of displacement, loss, and isolation resonated that strongly. But also shamed me. By comparison, my story seemed small and contained, completely personal, while theirs belonged to a tragedy of epic proportions, the tragedy of the twentieth century.
But Béa had followed up on her offer and invited me to dinner, so there I was again, walking through the gloomy foyer of the main building and into the magical space beyond. The wisteria was in full bloom now, the musky flowers hanging in heavy bunches from the twisted vine. The whole garden smelled of them. Two upstairs windows were flung open in sunny abandon.
As I knocked on the door, I heard a plaintive jazz saxophone.
“Hello,” she said, swinging the door wide open with a flourish. “Come in.” The studio caught just an edge of the late sun. Some of the lower glass panes were open, and warm air wafted in. Here it wasn’t hot or stuffy, as it had been in my close quarters. She was wearing a loose silk top and a pajamas-like bottom, pale green on darker green, and bare feet. She was clearly in a happier mood than the last time I’d come.
“What’s that song?” I asked, recognizing the tune though unable to place it.
“It’s John Coltrane playing ‘My Favorite Things.’ You must know the song from The Sound of Music. Every American I’ve ever met grew up on that film.”