Pausing on the threshold, she felt the days folding in on themselves, their length shortening little by little with winter’s approach. A photograph of grinning RAF members, caps jauntily tipped at an angle, thumbs up, posing on a runway, with the headline “London Elated by Triumph; Axis Tasting Punishment!” caught her attention. Another headline proclaimed that the Japanese population had been evacuated from the entire Western Seaboard, followed by multiple exclamation points.
“Good morning,” she said, leaning against the stove.
Max glanced up from the paper, his eyes uneasy. Already, he had smoked a pack of cigarettes. She could tell from all the butts littering the ashtray.
He kept raking his hand through his hair.
“Things don’t look good,” he blurted out.
Her pulse quickened. “What happened?”
He flicked his index finger against an article buried in the back pages. “France issued a new decree that all Jews must wear the yellow star. It has been in effect since May 29th.”
The china-blue walls and the ticking clock felt oppressively tranquil. Her stomach clenched, and she pressed her lower back into the knobs of the stove. “Even children?”
Max took off his spectacles. “I don’t know.” He started to pull another cigarette from the carton but thought the better of it. “Agnes would never follow such a decree. She would keep Lucie looking the same as always, blending in with the other children, as we discussed.”
“Yes, of course,” Vera said softly, barely able to get out the words.
He flung the newspaper onto the table and stood up, staring out at the garden. On the grass, fallen avocados had been ripped open by crows. Puckered figs, the color of bruises, nestled within the flat green tree leaves.
Vera came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his middle. He also wore a robe, flannel, and she rested her head against his back, breathing in the lingering scent of sleep. She knew that he worried not only about Lucie, but also about his brother and his parents, and whether they had already been rounded up in Paris, as many other friends and relatives had been.
She whispered into his back, “You must be thinking of Paul.”
He turned around, his eyes watering. “He hasn’t written since August.”
Then he pulled her into his chest, and she listened to his drumming heart.
Chapter 14
LUCIE
November 1942, Oradour-sur-Glane, France
Lucie and the other children balanced on wooden crates, peering through the farmhouse windows, the morning crisp and blue. Their breath left white marks on the glass as they watched the German officer survey the inside of the house. Lucie thought the German looked elegant in his olive-green uniform with the little silver cross dangling from the collar. Solange whispered that he was as handsome as a prince, with those golden eyebrows. The other children hissed, “Don’t forget he’s a kraut!”
They listened to the soldier explain to Agnes’s sisters and their husbands, in a loud performative voice, that within the next forty-eight hours various members of his unit would be billeted in the farmhouse. He paused and glanced around at the drafty rooms, with the high vaulted ceilings, as if calculating how many of his men could reasonably fit under the roof. Then he added that their family would live in the two rooms at the back of the house, off the kitchen, where the housemaid currently resided. “You’ll have to let the maid go,” he added. “There’s barely enough space as it is.”
Agnes and her sisters nodded, their hands shoved into their apron pockets, their eyes trained on the floor. The men also averted their gazes, and Lucie wondered why they were all so quiet and still. Even Giles, the border collie, sniffed and roved around the room, when normally he would be lying on the rug by the fireplace, his nose buried in his front paws.
Then the officer awkwardly reached into his coat pocket and thrust some wilted wildflowers in the direction of the women.
For a tense moment, it seemed as if no one would accept the flowers, until Agnes’s sister Marion stumbled forward and took the bouquet, before making a big show of rushing off to find a vase.
* * *
• • •
That night after dinner, the sisters lingered in the kitchen, as they often did, while Lucie played marbles with the other children on the rug next to the unlit hearth. The husbands sat nearby, watching the children play. Sometimes Lucie stared at the men, trying to discern what they were thinking beneath the sweaty sheen of their faces, their pronounced knuckles gripping the armrests. When they caught her eye, they would make some quip to lighten the mood, something that Lucie never entirely understood but pretended to because she wanted them to feel happy and to laugh. Then she returned to the reassuring clink of the marbles, only to feel their worried eyes on her.
In the evenings, Agnes lay beside her on the narrow bed and read a few old letters from her parents. This was only allowed at bedtime. During the day, she must remember that the wife of Agnes’s cousin in Reims had died, and finding himself a widower, unable to care for his five children, he had sent Lucie to Agnes when the war broke out. She almost started to believe that she had a father in Reims who was a pharmacist, and that her mother had died of throat cancer. It seemed more real than the vague way Agnes talked about her real parents, who had left two years ago. Whenever she pressed for more information—how far away were they, and when were they coming back—Agnes always said that they were not too far away, and they would come for her as soon as the war ended.
“Shall I read the one about the ice cream shop?” she asked in her customary way, rubbing her eyes, which were slightly red and puffy.
Lucie nodded, pulling the quilt up to her chin, aware of the faint buzz of mosquitoes circling in the unseasonably warm night.
“‘My dearest L.: The ice cream here is delicious. There’s even an ice cream stand in the shape of a bulldog. You walk into the shop through his open mouth! The children read comics and run barefoot all day. Chewing gum is also very popular. Many children, and some adults, eat with their mouths wide open! It’s quite funny, as you know how much Papa hates bad manners. Sometimes when we’re out at a restaurant, he can’t stop himself from staring at someone across the way with her mouth hanging open full of food. I tell him to just ignore it, but he really can’t stop himself!’”
Agnes and Lucie laughed, and then she nestled closer to Agnes. “There are restaurants where they are? And children?”
“Oh, yes.” Agnes sighed. “It seems so.”
“Do you think they went back to the house on the sea? Near the beach?”
“I don’t know,” Agnes said, furrowing her brow. “It doesn’t say.”
Lucie inhaled her lavender-scented blouse, which made her head heavy. Agnes read on about a caramel-colored cat that visited in the evenings for milk. Then some cursory questions for Agnes about Lucie’s health, and if she was able to get any schooling at all, inquiries that Agnes glided over, her soft voice a stream over rocks.
As she descended into sleep, Agnes’s intonations melded into her mother’s voice. During the day, Lucie couldn’t recall her mother’s voice, and even had trouble remembering her face unless she took out the photograph: her mother standing in front of a spouting fountain on a gravel path, her hand resting on a giant pram, where Lucie slept, apparently swaddled in muslin, according to Agnes, who also said that Lucie only slept when wheeled around the Tuileries Garden and howled the moment the carriage stopped. Her mother wore a cloche hat, so it was difficult to see her hair, but it was bobbed. Her face was blurry beneath the rim of the hat, but Lucie could make out her defined cheekbones and lively eyes looking at the camera with incredulity, as if having a baby was the rarest of gifts.
The following morning, Lucie woke up alone, but she could tell that Agnes had slept with her all night from the bed’s disarray. Agnes only did this when Lucie had a fever. She touched her forehead. It felt
cool.
* * *
• • •
Downstairs, at the long oak table, it seemed as if all the sisters and their children had evaporated. Only Agnes sat there, waiting for Lucie with some bread and jam and tea spread out on the table.
She motioned for her to sit and eat.
Lucie sat down, suddenly uneasy. She stared imploringly at Agnes, who wouldn’t meet her gaze. Instead she fiddled with her watch, saying that it was broken again. “Silly old thing,” she repeated.
Lucie tried to eat, but the bread and jam moved around tastelessly in her mouth, as if she were chewing up paper. Then she noticed her suitcase standing in the doorway and her heart accelerated. She leaned forward, and asked in a low whisper, “Are we going to meet Mama and Papa in the place with the bulldog ice cream shop?”
Agnes smiled tightly. But then she stopped trying to smile, the depressions under her eyes more pronounced, as if she’d barely slept. “I’m afraid not.”
She put down her watch on the table, as if to restrain herself from playing with it. “We’ve decided it would be best if you lived with the Sisters of St. Denis until the war ends.”
“When will the war end?”
She stroked the top of Lucie’s hand. “Hopefully not too long from now.”
“Are the Germans going to take me away? With the rest of them?”
Agnes clenched Lucie’s hand. “Who told you that?”
Lucie instantly knew she had made a fatal error, repeating Thomas’s comment. He had fisted her dark curls and pulled hard while telling her that the Germans were coming for her. The other children stared at her with renewed interest. He was the eldest boy and seemed to know things.
When he let go, she punched him in the neck and he yelped like a kicked dog.
* * *
• • •
Lucie focused on the porcelain plate before her, on the little blue flowers circling the rim, on the jam smeared over the hard bread.
“Who said this to you?” Agnes repeated, calmly now.
“Anyone,” Lucie said, her face reddening.
“No one,” Agnes corrected her.
“No one,” Lucie repeated, upset that she had used the wrong word, which happened when she got nervous.
Agnes sighed and held her hand. It felt uncharacteristically sweaty, not the cool, dry one Lucie had expected.
* * *
• • •
In the car, she hugged her doll to her chest, the only thing Agnes had allowed her to take. None of the letters or even the photograph of her mother was allowed. Agnes explained that she would keep it all for her at the farm, so that the letters and photograph would not get lost or damaged, but Lucie felt unconvinced.
Through the car window, the leaden sky promised a storm. The dog Giles barked furiously from behind the fence where the cows and pigs were corralled. He kept clawing at it, trying to leap over, and a few times he nearly made it. Someone yelled at him in the distance from the stables. Lucie wanted so much to run out of the car and fling her arms around his neck, feeling his warm bristling fur, but she knew this was impossible.
Agnes pulled on her leather gloves with finality and started the car. Watching the farmhouse recede into the grayish sky, flanked by fields of lavender, Lucie felt a strangeness settle over her. No one had said goodbye, as if the stones of the house had buried the rest of the family, even though it was a normal Saturday.
She looked anxiously at Agnes. “Will you visit me?”
Agnes checked the rearview mirror. “Of course.”
“When will you visit?”
“Oh, as soon as I can.” A heavy pause hung between them.
Agnes kept looking into the rearview mirror.
The road curved around a field of sunflowers stretching toward the sky. The bright petals and wooly brown middle made Lucie want to roll down the window, but she restrained herself. Inside the car, the air felt dense and secretive, and Agnes seemed to want it this way.
* * *
• • •
About an hour later, Lucie jerked awake, looking out the window at the rolling hills in the distance and the dense green bushes along the road, the quaint houses spaced far apart from one another. Agnes pulled onto a smaller road, shaded by overgrown trees, with branches that stretched overhead, as if they were trying to touch, a shadowy tunnel of leaves.
Up ahead, the church’s steeple punctured the sky.
“Are we here?”
Agnes nodded.
* * *
• • •
Clutching Agnes’s hand, Lucie stared at the spherical hedges lining the path leading to a sky blue door embedded in the convent’s archway. Agnes tugged her along, her jaw tensing. But before she even rang the bell, the heavy door swung open and two nuns flew out. Long black gowns covered their shoes, lending them the appearance of levitation. Lucie stared up at their white habits, as if dove wings sluiced through the air on either side of their heads.
They were Sister Helene and Sister Ismerie, but Lucie quickly forgot who was who and only noted that one nun was slimmer and younger. They smelled of wet wool and Marie-Rose talc.
The Sisters seemed quite pleased that Lucie had arrived at this point in the school year, as this would give her time to adjust to her new surroundings before the Christmas holiday. They made quite a fuss over this, as if such timeliness was something to celebrate, whereas a dull panic had begun to spread through Lucie. When would she see Agnes again? How long would she stay here? And who were these other pupils, as the nuns kept calling them, and what were they like?
Agnes knelt down, gazing at her.
One of the nuns rested a hand on Lucie’s head.
She wanted to shake it off.
“Don’t be afraid,” Agnes whispered. “It’s better here.” Steadying herself, she let her hand graze the purplish gravel lining the circular driveway. Lucie wanted to ask if she had done something wrong at the farm, if Agnes’s sisters hated her for some unnamable reason, which she knew they did.
Agnes smoothed down her hair, and smiled because of course it had already tangled despite how carefully she had brushed it out the night before. Then she kissed Lucie on the forehead, a dry quick kiss, as if she were only strolling out for a quarter of an hour, implying none of the urgency and importance that the nuns placed on her departure.
* * *
• • •
Sister Helene carried her suitcase and Sister Ismerie spoke in hushed tones to Sister Helene as Lucie tried to keep up with their swift pace, straining to hear their conversation.
“She’s baptized at least,” Sister Helene said, glancing hopefully at Lucie. “Perhaps she even knows her catechism. The governess explained that the parents have been missing for two years, and the situation in Oradour has recently become quite . . .” Sister Helene hesitated. “Untenable.”
“Yes, well, with the broken armistice, we must take every precaution.” Sister Ismerie gave Lucie a long look. “Show her the dormitory,” she added before striding off.
* * *
• • •
Lucie followed Sister Helene down a long white corridor. Arched windows looked out onto a rosemary garden encircled by stones. A statue of St. Augustine feeding a tiny bird perched inside his open palm stood near a gurgling fountain. Plaster fell off in chunks from the moisture in the air, the floorboards soft and creaking beneath her feet. At the end of the hall, they reached a large room where Sister Helene said she would sleep with the other girls. Tall narrow windows admitted a syrupy light shimmering with dust motes.
The empty room appeared even gloomier, and Lucie’s chest tightened, rejecting everything she saw. There were no freshly cut flowers or dogs roaming about, no one practicing the scales on the piano, no voices arguing or laughing, no calves being born or litter of kittens to fawn over, and if she reached even further back, to when she lived
with her parents, other details came to mind that certainly could not be found here: marble sinks with golden faucets, mosaics tiling the entryway, her canopied four-poster bed, the big black car her father drove on Sundays with the top down. She glanced at the rows and rows of perfectly made beds and shivered.
Sister Helene smiled down at her. “Here we are then.”
Lucie focused on her youthful face, sprinkled with freckles, and her brown eyes, flecked with green, which seemed to laugh behind a veneer of seriousness. Swallowing hard, Lucie nodded.
Next, Sister Helene took her to Mother Superior’s office, which was richly furnished with a velvet chaise longue and even a radio. Sister Ismerie, who Lucie now realized was the Mother Superior, sat behind a large wooden desk and stared at her gravely. Lucie suddenly felt as if she had already done something wrong, and that sharp nervousness returned, the same feeling that made it difficult to find the right words for things. Then Sister Ismerie started talking, and at first, because of the nervousness that rushed into her ears like an ocean, Lucie only heard bits and pieces: she wouldn’t be able to wear her old clothes anymore; she would be given a school uniform. “Every day you must wear it.” Sister Ismerie’s voice pierced through the oceanic rushing, and Lucie regained focus. “And there will be no dolls or toys allowed during the school year, and no thumb sucking either.”
Sister Ismerie sighed heavily and shot a despairing look at Sister Helene.
Standing in the middle of the office, Lucie memorized their faces, and noted that Sister Ismerie was older and fatter with deep creases around her mouth and across her forehead, and Sister Helene was slight and fragile-looking. She seemed almost too young to be a nun.
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