The Paris Key (11 page)

“Qu'est-ce que vous faites là?”

Genevieve jumped at the sound of a voice demanding to know what she was doing there. It was an attendant: dark hair pulled back in a tight bun, chubby, dressed in a baby-blue smock decorated with tumbling teddy bears.

“Je suis ici visiter mon tante Pasquale. Je suis américain,”
Genevieve said, wincing because she got the gender wrong, referring to her aunt with the masculine pronoun, and to herself using a masculine adjective as well. “I am here to visit my aunt Pasquale,” she had tried to say, adding, “I am American.”

Mentioning she was American was probably wholly unnecessary, Genevieve thought, as the attendant gave her a frown.

“She no know you,” the woman responded in English. She wasn't French either, Genevieve realized. From somewhere else; an island nation, maybe. Tahiti? Just as in the United States, the people working in the nursing home appeared to be mostly female, and many were immigrants. Her name badge read:
Pia
.

Pia held one finger up beside her ear and made circles in the air. “She crazy.”

“I . . .” Genevieve trailed off, not knowing what to say. She wasn't going to argue the niceties of Alzheimer's with a health aide who probably knew her aunt much better than she did, at this point. Still. “I just want to sit with her until she wakes up. Is that okay?'

The attendant gestured with her chin toward the bed. Genevieve turned to see Pasquale's dark eyes were open. Her gaze was vacant, fixating on a spot beyond either of them.

“Comment ça va, ma petite?”
Pia said, a big smile on her face. She continued in French, and Genevieve tried her best to keep up. Then she switched back to English. “You feeling better? Look who came from America to see you? From America, so far! Here is your nephew! And I bring you some lunch. Let's sit up and look pretty!”

Pia stacked two pillows behind Pasquale and helped her to sit higher in the bed.

Once Pasquale was arranged, Pia placed the lunch tray on a hospital cart that she positioned in front of her.

“She was dizzy earlier, so she stay in bed today,” Pia said to Genevieve. “You help her, eh?”

“Of course.”

“I be back.
Bon appétit, ma petite Pasquale!
Your nephew, she help you to eat, okay?
C'est le repas, le déjeuner
. Lunch! Mmmmm.”

Pasquale

L
unch.
Pasquale didn't care for peas, and the milk was warm.

Did she even
like
milk?

During the war . . . she would have loved anything—anything—to quell the constant, gnawing, nauseating yearning deep in her empty belly. Her parents sent her away to the countryside, to her grandparents on the farm. Thinking it would be safer than Paris. But times were hard in the Franche – Comté too; the Germans had come through, set up shop in the nicest farmhouse in the valley, ate up the stores.

Paris . . . liberated. She returned too late to see the troops in their triumphant uniforms, marching down the Champs-Élysées.

She works in her parents' café near Montmartre. The American soldier comes in every day for coffee. Loud, smiling, everything a joke. Handsome, terrible accent. Younger than Pasquale by two years, she later discovers, but her father calls him “an old soul.”

Thick wrists. Twinkling eyes. Dashing goatee. The scent of tobacco and something citrus. That Hershey's chocolate bar. She had nearly fainted from pleasure when it melted on her eager tongue. Not like the chocolate she had known from before the war; strangely sour, as though the milk had turned. But delicious.

“I think she's finished.” A voice. A pretty woman, auburn hair, stands in the room. Her eyes as brown as that Hershey's bar, but sad. As though she carries a great burden.

Angela?

“Where'd you get that hair?” Pasquale asked.

The woman smiled. “From my mama, I guess. How are you, Tante Pasquale?”

Tante.
Not Angela, then. But the hair . . . like Angela's.

Another moment passed, and Pasquale realized the woman was still watching her.

What had the question been?
What was she supposed to answer? Had there been a question at all?

She hated this moment, when she realized the here and now had been taken from her, relentless, unyielding, slipping away like the proverbial wave upon the sand. She tried to reconstruct what had just happened—the words, the meanings—but it was as futile as trying to pin down that wave.

It was like when Catharine used to pester her, asking about her dreams. Pasquale would try to remember, but it seemed the more she concentrated, the faster the images skated away, fluttering just out of her mental grasp, before she could describe them. Sometimes she made things up to placate her frustrated daughter, to give her something to interpret. Oh, the stories Catharine would tell!

Her
nephew
, Pia had said. But Pia must have meant
niece
. The woman was still looking at her, expectantly.

What was she supposed to say?

She gave a polite smile, nodded. Pretended.

“Ça va, Tante Pasquale?”
the young woman asked. “Done with lunch?
Finis?
I am Genevieve, Tante, do you remember me?”

Genevieve.
Screaming in the night, awakened from a nightmare, sobbing as though her heart was breaking, calling for her mama. Was there anything more terrible, more wrenching than the sound of a child calling out from the anguished depths of night? Calling for a parent who would never come?

“Are you . . . you are Genevieve?” Pasquale asked.

“All the way from America,” said another woman, taking the tray of food.

Pia,
Pasquale remembered. The woman taking the tray was named Pia, and she worked here, in this place Pasquale lived now. Pasquale didn't live in the Village Saint-Paul anymore. Never again. No more friends dropping by and chatting through the window. No more relatives stopping by for couscous. No more Dave.

No more Dave.

Pain washed over her. Dave was gone. He had promised never to leave her, and yet he had. How could he have left her?

Then shame. For forgetting.

“Genevieve,
mon amour
,” she said, a huge smile breaking out on her thin face. “I don't believe it! What are you doing here?”

“She here for a little visit with her favorite auntie,” said Pia.

When Genevieve came to them . . .
The feel of her, sweaty and anguished, calling out in the night for her mother. Never had Pasquale known a child could cry like that, her small frame racked with sobs.

How many nights had they been awakened by her cries? Dave rushing to her, cradling her in his big arms, bringing her into the kitchen so Catharine could sleep.
Pasquale warming milk at the stove while Dave sits with Genevieve at the table, pushing the hair out of her hot face, her cheeks streaked with tears.

“Why?”
Genevieve's question, simple and heartbreaking and impossible to answer.

“We cannot understand why.” Dave's voice is soft. “Only God knows the reasons for things. It will all be explained one day.”

Pasquale remains mute, her eyes fixed on the milk warming in the pan, making sure it doesn't scald. She wishes she could agree with Dave, that she could believe God has a plan, that someone is in charge, that such heartbreak would be explained. But Pasquale lost her religion somewhere around 1944. She knows that for some, the horrors of war increased their allegiance to God; but in her mind, no higher being would have orchestrated such atrocities or could have sat by and allowed them to happen.

“But
écoute-moi
, listen to me, Genevieve,” Dave says to the girl in his arms, now hiccupping in the teary aftermath. “You will be happy again one day. You will live, and love. Sometimes love is all there is, but that is enough. Do you understand me?”

Is it enough?
Pasquale watches his gentle, graying head bent low toward his niece.

Dave had always had more faith than she. The only time she'd seen it challenged was with everything that had happened with Angela. Pasquale had understood what Angela had done, and why, but Dave never could.

The woman spoke.

“You are beautiful as ever, Tante Pasquale.”

Pasquale waved a thin hand in the air, and when she spied it, for a moment she couldn't believe it was hers. It was so skinny, the bones practically poking through, like in the war.

But this hand was old. Ancient, ropy blue veins standing out from grayish skin, gnarled knuckles. Her grandmother's hands, sloughing lavender off the stalks they had dried in the sun. A circle of old women and children, working together to fill a huge basket, big enough for Pasquale to curl up in.

The rhythmic scratching noise of thin, calloused hands scraping away at the fragrant blooms. The mound of lavender blossoms. The murmur of old voices. Behind them, someone is grinding spices for the night's couscous. No meat, but there are carrots and onions, wild roots and
haricots verts
, and of course the couscous one of the boys brought home—they didn't ask from where. Wild greens and twisted orange mushrooms, the chanterelles her uncle gathers from the forest.

The woods are their salvation. They eat pigeons, the occasional cat. Rabbits. Dandelions. Roots. Anything.

The soldiers took the chocolate and coffee and butter first thing, but left them with some lard. The old women roast barley and mix it with chicory to replace the coffee, but chocolate remains a sweet, mouthwatering, long-ago memory.

When she complains, her grandmother gets her a scoop of cool well water from the bucket.
Drink deeply. Think of good things, pleasant things. Not food, but the warmth of the sun on her skin. The strange, musky smell of the goat's pelt when she rubs her nose in it. The lowing of the cows, the ones the Germans haven't slaughtered, the ones that still provide precious milk and cream
. Her grandfather made some sort of deal with the head officer and they were able to keep two of their cows, but the soldiers confiscated the butter and cheese and most of the milk.

Warm milk. Pasquale reached for the carton that was on the tray, but the tray was gone.

The young woman leaned over the table to hug Pasquale. She smelled like shampoo and fresh-cut grass and a little like the oil Dave had always used on his door locks. Reddish-brown hair fell in her face.

“Angela?”

“No, Tante Pasquale, it's Genevieve, remember?”

“Genevieve . . . Angela isn't with us anymore.”

“No.”

“It makes me so sad. . . .” Pasquale's eyes filled with tears. “Dave's gone, too.”

“Yes, I'm so sorry.”

“So many, gone. My brothers. But . . . there are babies,
n'est-ce pas
? There are always babies. Did you tell Jim?”

“Jim? You mean my father? Tell him what?”

“
Écoute-moi
, listen to me, Angela. You have to tell him. You have to. I know you don't like my advice, but you should listen to me on this.”

“Tell him what, Pasquale?”

Pasquale glanced around the room: a vase of flowers, half a dozen glittery cards sitting on the windowsill. Acoustic tiles overhead, medical equipment discreetly pushed behind a screen. A bright yellow strip of metal visible through the window. Not at home. She was sick. She can't remember things.
Something on the stove is forgotten, catches fire. It is the last straw. Catharine insists she move.

The woman in front of her, with Angela's hair. Her niece.
Genevieve.

“It is so good to see you, Genevieve. All grown up! You are beautiful.”

“
You
are the beautiful one, as always, Tante Pasquale,” Genevieve said. “Catharine sends her love. She'll be back on Thursday.”

“I wish I could cook for you.”

Genevieve smiled. “Me too! I have dreamed of your couscous over the years. And do you remember when you used to make me
chocolat chaud
—hot chocolate?”

“Catharine won't let me cook anymore. Where is the milk?”

O
utside the Alzheimer's facility, the streets were lined with traditional cream-colored stone and brick buildings. Fanciful black wrought-iron balconies, elaborate corbels under the eaves, carved shields over each doorway added grace to the blocky forms.

Genevieve walked down rue Blanche, past a long row of Vespas and motorcycles, noting a pizzeria and a couscous diner, a couple of dress shops, a cute bright red bar called Blabla (what a great name for a bar).

Though Genevieve had steeled herself against profound changes in her aunt, it was still a shock to see what the years, and Alzheimer's, had wrought. Why had she let Jason talk her into a honeymoon in Hawaii? She was one of those weird people who didn't particularly like sun
or
sand, much less resorts full of tourists. She should have insisted on coming to Paris, except that Jason said he had a friend with a condo where they could stay for free, and her aunt and uncle didn't have much room for them, and a hotel would have been expensive. And Parisians were snooty, weren't they? And Jason had a client in Hawaii; he could do a little schmoozing and then write off the whole trip; it would be a win-win.

But the truth was that Genevieve hadn't pushed the idea of Paris. Her time with Uncle Dave and Aunt Pasquale had saved her after the death of her mother. But . . . it was also an unwelcome reminder of such raw vulnerability, such a painful time, that to relive it was too grueling even to contemplate. Marrying Jason was the start to a new life, one without regrets, without dwelling on the losses of the past. Or so she had imagined at the time.

What had Pasquale been telling Angela to do, in her reverie? What did she think Angela should tell Jim?

Probably it was some inconsequential confidence that the sisters-in-law had traded. Spending too much on a dress, drinking a little too much, losing a precious piece of jewelry. And what would it matter at this point, anyway? All the players were long gone, existing only in the memories of those who had known them. Still alive in Pasquale's mind more than in most, in that odd, Zen-like state of here and now (and very long ago) that afflicted so many with dementia.

Genevieve wondered how Catharine dealt with her mother looking through her, not recognizing her, answering questions that had not been asked. Since it had been so long, it was possible that even a healthy Pasquale would not have recognized her niece Genevieve after all these years . . . but what must it be like to have your mother's familiar eyes rest upon you with that unsettling emptiness, that lack of recognition? At the worst, even when Angela went into hospice, she had always recognized her children.

But . . . could Pasquale's admonition have been about something more? Could Angela have been troubled when she came to Paris? To Genevieve she had always referred to it as a carefree trip before having a second child; a visit to see her brother, Dave, in the City of Lights.

The brother she adored. Though . . . she had never returned to Paris, and Dave had never come to visit them in California. Genevieve hadn't wondered much about it as a kid; it was simply the way it was. It was an expensive trip, and neither family had much discretionary income. But still . . .

Genevieve remembered one night, sitting on the floor with her uncle, hunched over a rusted lock they were putting back together. When she leaned forward, the strange old piece of metal she wore as a talisman fell out of the neckline of her shirt.

Dave's hands went still as he stared at it. Normally Genevieve didn't see much family resemblance between Uncle Dave and her much younger mother, but in that moment their eyes had the same cast: about a thousand years old.

“Um . . . I found this in my mom's drawer, after she died.” Genevieve reached up to stroke the necklace. “It was in a package from Paris. Was it from you?”

He nodded.

“Do you think she would mind that I took it?” she asked, made nervous by his continued silence. “Or . . . do you want it back?”

“No, of course not,” he said with a sad smile. “It's just as it should be. It looks good on you. It's a key. Originally from Syria.”

“It's a key?” she held it up to look at it. It didn't look like a key.

He nodded. “Very ancient. Very special. Keep it safe.”

She nodded. “You know, my mother always told me stories about you. She loved you so much. And Paris, too.”

After a long pause he said, simply, “Did she, now?”

Genevieve tried to conjure memories of Angela—of the
woman
she had been, not just as a mother—but the truth was that her recollections were a vague jumble. Soft, capable hands. The sadness in her dark eyes. The quiet, stubborn insistence with which she stared down the neighbors at the city council meeting. Her sweet voice singing:
“I love you, a bushel and a peck . . .”

Memory was a tricky thing. Not long after their mother had died, Genevieve had an argument with her brother over a huge pile of snapshots they were sorting through. Genevieve had a distinct memory of the family road trip to Yosemite, but Nick told her she hadn't been born yet; it was right after Angela came home from Paris. “The only way you were there was in utero,” he'd said. Genevieve must have manufactured the memory from the familiar photos, kept on the mantel.

Toward the end, when Angela was in hospice, she had long talks with Nick and Jim. But not with Genevieve; Angela would just hug her daughter as hard as she could, and cry. Genevieve wished she could forget the odd stench of the room, the stinging tang of rubbing alcohol and the unpleasant stewed-food aroma that wafted down the hall from the cafeteria. At home, her mother had always smelled of baking spices: vanilla and cinnamon, yeast, sometimes citrus. That scent was gone, masked by the cloying, disturbing sourness of imminent death and, worse, the doomed efforts to keep it at bay. She had felt suffocated by those smells and by the tightness of her mother's grip.

As always, Genevieve's mind overflowed with questions she wished she could ask Angela, not as child to mother, but as woman to woman.

Genevieve looked up to see that she was in front of the Moulin Rouge. Outside, a swollen line of people waited for the doors to open. They had the harried, annoyed, yet determinedly cheerful demeanor of tourists. It felt surreal, slightly dreamlike, to walk out of a state-of-the-art medical facility and stroll past such a famous club, a place that looked like a movie set. But that's the way it was in Paris: everywhere she looked were sights so iconic as to seem like tourist clichés. The Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame, the Arc de Triumph, the Louvre. Adorable florist shops and cheese shops and chocolate shops. Historic fountains and the bridges over the Seine and plazas chock-full of outdoor café tables under colorful umbrellas.

She considered trying to walk all the way home instead of taking the Métro, but the day had turned gray and rain looked imminent. Also, though the lunch at the Alzheimer's center hadn't looked very appetizing, it reminded Genevieve that she hadn't eaten much for breakfast.

There were plenty of restaurant dining options, but she wasn't up to lingering over a meal, alone, in a Parisian restaurant. Not yet.

So she zoomed back on the Métro, easily reversing her steps. It began to sprinkle as she made her way from the Métro stop to the Village Saint-Paul and was truly raining by the time she arrived back at the shop. She fitted the key in the front door and pushed it open to the sound of the ticking clocks. The dusty confines of the shop and apartment were warm and dry and felt like home.

She brought the cheese dome out of the fridge and laid it on the table beside a rather pathetic heel of stale baguette. Then she took out a small cutting board and sliced the remaining pear, which was already going soft.

Genevieve polished off the last of the cheese and ham just as she finished her novel. She would have to go grocery shopping tomorrow. Not to mention
book
shopping. Like most readers, she felt nervous without a stack of novels at her disposal. In fact, she sometimes wondered: What did people
do
if they couldn't read? On the other hand, maybe without those hours lost to novels she would have become a championship knitter, or a rock climber.

Luckily, Paris was, hearteningly, still a city of books. Across the street and a few doors down was a bookstore called the Red Wheelbarrow—surely, given their name, they would carry books in English?—and of course there was the famous Shakespeare and Company, not far from Notre-Dame.

Then it dawned on her that Uncle Dave used to keep a small bookshelf full of novels in English. He lent them out only to his closest friends and even had a personalized stamp, a hefty metal object with his name in a bold, blocky script that reminded Genevieve of something from the Cold War era, like pictures from a history book about the Soviet Union:

DAVE MACKENZIE

Under Lock and Key, Serrurier,

Rue Saint-Paul, Village Saint-Paul

Dave had handed her the stamp and a big ink pad.
“Could you go through the books and make sure they're all stamped? That way they're sure to make their way back to me.”

Genevieve had been avoiding the master bedroom since she'd arrived, hesitant to face those ghosts. But now she opened the heavy wooden door at the end of the hall to reveal a simple chamber, virtually unchanged. The small double bed was neatly made, covered (as always) in a wedding-ring quilt made by Pasquale's mother and aunts and given to the young couple as a present upon their marriage. Tante Pasquale's dressing table was topped (as ever) with a lace-edged linen runner and several dainty bottles of expensive perfume, a rare luxury. There were a series of baby and school pictures of Catharine on one wall, a few other family members. And two framed photos of Genevieve: one, standing with Dave and Pasquale and Catharine in front of Notre-Dame; the other a high school graduation photo she didn't remember sending. Perhaps her father had done so.

Uncle Dave's highboy still held a little pewter dish full of coins—they used to be francs; now they were euros. Every night he emptied the coins from his jingling pockets; in the morning he would hand a few to Genevieve and send her to buy baguettes.

“The government pays a subsidy to bakers, to keep baguettes affordable. There were too many hungry people during the war; now at least one can always buy baguettes!”

Along one sidewall was a low bookcase jammed with English-language novels and collected essays: Ernest Hemingway. Mark Twain. Henry Miller. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Henry James. Gertrude Stein. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Americans, all, who had found their way to Paris and left behind a bit of their hearts.

Genevieve pulled out
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
, by Gertrude Stein
.

It dawned on her that she shared her hometown of Oakland, California, with the American expat, who had set up a celebrated salon in Paris not far from the Luxembourg Gardens, where she entertained the likes of Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway. Stein had, in fact, given Oakland one of its few claims to fame, famously remarking: “There is no
there
, there.”

Genevieve took the book into her bedroom and set it on the nightstand, but she didn't feel like reading at the moment; in fact, she was alert to the point of fidgety. It must be jet lag: tired at the wrong time, wide-awake at odd moments.

Should she go out for another walk? It was raining in earnest now, a steady beat of droplets drumming loudly against the casement windows. There was probably an umbrella here somewhere, shoved behind holiday ornaments in one of the few overstuffed closets. Catharine had encouraged her not to be shy, to help herself to whatever she wanted. Still . . . while Paris in the rain sounded romantic, it also sounded cold and dreary.

She had noticed rags and a mop and bucket in the closet where she found the pilot light for the water heater. But if she was going to clean, first she needed music.

Genevieve flipped through the albums by the old phonograph, hoping to find Edith Piaf or Jacques Brel or something else typically French. The sort of music that would be on the soundtrack of a Hollywood movie set in Paris. But to a record they were American, probably music for a homesick Dave: Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett. Finally she chose an album and put it on the turntable, clumsily setting the needle in the groove as Dave had taught her so long ago.

The apartment filled with Patsy Cline's voice singing “Crazy for feeling so lonely . . .” as Genevieve dusted and swept and washed the floors, every stroke of her arms making the apartment feel more like hers, like home. For real.

It would be an exaggeration for Genevieve to suggest she
liked
housework. But she was enough of a farm girl, she supposed, to feel uncomfortable having people doing the work for her. Jason had tried to hire a housecleaner many times. Most of her friends would have loved the idea of their husbands suggesting such a thing. But Genevieve felt it beyond awkward: What was she supposed to do while they cleaned, when she felt compelled to pick up a mop and work beside them? Should she kick back and read a book, lifting her feet while they swept under her? Or should she hand over the keys and take a walk, allowing virtual strangers access to her things?