The Paris Key (35 page)

G
enevieve walked.

Raindrops fell, hours passed. Still, she didn't stop.

Finally she looked up to find herself at the foot of Montmartre. The rain was coming down now in earnest, in the way of Parisian rain: soaking, easily as plentiful as the feeble spray from the shower in Pasquale and Dave's place. Her hair fell across her face in wet locks. She was grateful for the storm; the streets were empty of tourists and even the heartiest of street performers, and her tears were camouflaged by the raindrops.

“I love you, a bushel and a peck . . .”

She couldn't get that damned song out of her head. Over and over, her mother's voice, haunting her. Genevieve let out an angry sob.

Was everything a lie? Just as Jason's affair had made Genevieve doubt all that had gone before in their relationship, finding this out about Angela made Genevieve second-guess everything she had known and thought about her mother. The absolute devotion Angela had apparently felt for her husband and children. The hundreds of cupcakes baked and lasagnas made; the warm, soft hugs; the scent she carried, of cinnamon and citrus and vanilla. The sensation of utter safety and unconditional love Genevieve had felt when the carpool let her out by the side of the road and she would head down the long dirt driveway and spot her mother weeding the carrot patch.

Angela would smile, let the hoe fall, and open her arms wide, so Genevieve could run and fling herself into her soft embrace.

All of it. Now she thought about the times when that faraway look came into her mother's eyes. Those mornings she couldn't get out of bed, when Jim would rouse Genevieve and tell her Angela had one of her sick headaches, that she would need to get her own breakfast. Even the protests at the prison: Were they due to deeply held moral beliefs, or simply the result of Angela thinking of her criminally inclined Parisian lover?

Genevieve's father. Her
father
.

No. Her dad was Jim Martin: steady, quiet Jim. She had railed against his stoicism, his lack of emotion, but now . . . Nick was right. She knew her brother was right: a real
father
is the man who raises a child, stands by her, cares for her, bakes nearly inedible, lopsided birthday cakes with bright blue frosting after her mother dies.

This was even truer if Jim knew about the circumstances of Genevieve's conception. He had to know. Surely. Genevieve had tried to piece the dates together, but she didn't have all the details. She supposed Angela could have been pregnant before she left for Paris, or that she could have told her husband that, anyway. A few weeks here or there; did men even notice such things when holding their newborn babies?

But surely Angela had told him the truth, had confessed to her affair. Surely she had enough regard for her husband, the father of her son, to tell him the truth. To allow him to decide for himself.

“A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck . . .”

She started running up the steps of Montmartre. Shallow puddles splashed underfoot. The funicular was out of service since only an idiot would be out sightseeing in weather like this. So the only sound was the steady hiss of the rain, the squelch of her soles on the stone steps.

One flight of stairs; two. Genevieve gulped in air, couldn't get enough. Her thighs burned; the air started to sting in her lungs. Her temples began to throb. She welcomed the pain. When she couldn't run anymore she kept climbing, stubbornly; she wouldn't stop. Ignoring the nausea engulfing her, gasping for breath, then crying.

Her mother's singing voice kept repeating in her head.
“A bushel and a peck though you make my heart a wreck . . .”

Genevieve let out the sobs in earnest as she mounted the steps. No one could hear. She was as alone at that moment as she had ever been in her life: the streets and sidewalks empty of tourists and locals, artists and street performers. No cars, no funicular. The Sacré-Coeur up in front of her, crowning the hill, gleaming like a white beacon in the storm.

One more flight. The final one, to the doors of the basilica.

She made a deal with herself: She would allow herself to wail and moan all the way there, screaming out her rage and pain and abandonment. And that would be the end of it. The
end
.

Her mother had lied to her. Her father and brother, too, probably. And, she supposed, Dave and Pasquale. Lie upon lie. Just like Notre-Dame, built stone by stone over a temple to Jupiter. Or Philippe's house, constructed and reconstructed according to the whims of fashion, each era meant to hide the last. Her whole life was built on prevarication and mendacity. No wonder she could never open up to truly share her heart with her husband; no wonder he had turned to another. She had no one, and nothing.

Even her damned, hard-to-spell, impossible-to-pronounce name was rooted in this; she knew that now. Her mother's “vacation” in Paris.

Finally the basilica doors loomed up in front of her. Bronze with a verdigris patina; lion's heads holding huge brass rings.

Nauseated, she couldn't breathe deeply enough, gulping in the wet air.

She turned to look out at the city laid out before her.

“I love you, a bushel and a peck . . .”

Genevieve sank onto the top step, every ounce of energy gone. She was probably still crying, but she couldn't even manage the sobs anymore. Just sniffling, face wet. Gulping for air.

After a moment, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Est-ce que je peux vous aider?”

Genevieve looked up to see a gray-haired, black-robed priest. He was asking if he could help her. Heedless of the rain that streamed down his face, he kept speaking in French that she couldn't completely understand, and didn't try to. His presence was enough.

“Ça va, mademoiselle?”
Are you okay? he asked.

She nodded.

“Do you need a doctor, or spiritual help?”

She shook her head.

He sat down next to her, as if he were her only friend, looking out over the city. Even the gray veil of rain couldn't erase the panoramic view of the Eiffel Tower, the opera house, and Notre-Dame.

They sat side by side for several minutes in silence.

Finally, in French Genevieve didn't even realize she knew, she asked the priest: “Do you believe in ghosts, Father?”

He took a moment, as though considering her query. Then he tapped his heart and said:
“Oui, dans le coeur.”

Yes, in the heart.

Genevieve had been carrying her mother's ghost with her. She had wanted to know the woman Angela was, and now she knew the truth: Her mother had been a woman capable of deep passion. She had loved, and loved deeply. She had also been unhappy and deeply flawed; disloyal, and torn between two worlds. And yet all of it—the distant looks and the vanilla-scented hugs, the crippling depression and the silly songs—contributed to the person she had been. She had made her own choices. That was how her story ended, as Catharine would say: as a wife and mother who had an affair in Paris, who had paid a heavy price, and who had returned to the little farm in Petaluma to do her best.

It had never been Genevieve's job to make her mother happy. Only Angela could do that.

And with that, Genevieve let go of her mother's ghost.

She fancied she could see it, like a figure from a Chagall painting, floating down the steps of Montmartre, taking a turn around the opera house, drifting toward the Seine, and finally disappearing amid the medieval spires of Notre-Dame, where, Genevieve supposed, it would commune with the gargoyles for some time to come.

G
enevieve's new clothes fit into one of her uncle's heavy old suitcases. She chose a favorite lock and decided to keep the set of Victorian keys. She had packed up Dave's notes and the special locks and keys for his book and was leaving the packages with Sylviane, who had promised to send them to her.

With Catharine's permission, of course. “I am sorry you are not staying, my little cousin. But I think perhaps the dreams will lead you back one day. I hope so,” she had said.

“You want me to just leave things locked up?”

“Yes, please take anything you want, and I will have one of the neighbors assess the rest to see if they can sell any of it. It will work itself out.”

“Okay, good. I'm . . . I'm sorry about all this.”

“Me, too. Very sorry. You know, the bureaucracy in France is difficult, but I'm sure we could figure out a way around it. Surely you could get certified—”

“It doesn't matter anymore,” Genevieve had interrupted. “I'm going anyway.”

“You are homesick I think?”

No.
Homesick was about the last thing she was. Genevieve needed to go back at some point to deal with Jason and the divorce, true, but she didn't have to move back for that. She was leaving because . . . because Paris was not her home. Not really. It was too painful now. She had no home. No real family, no real friends, nothing. But at least in the U.S. she spoke the language and she didn't worry about being arrested for working or deported for overstaying her visa. At the very least, there was that.

Besides . . . who becomes a locksmith in this day and age? It was an old-fashioned, antiquated occupation. And to try to become one in
France
? What had she been thinking?

She would sleep on Mary's couch for a little while, pick up a few copyediting projects, and try to figure out her next steps.

“This is stupid,” said Sylviane, hugging a package of papers to her chest like a child with a beloved toy. “If you go back to no home, not even near movie stars, why you don't stay here in nice apartment in Paris?”

Genevieve let out a long sigh.

She had hoped to slip away undetected, but Sylviane had stopped by and, when Genevieve didn't answer the buzzer, had come around into the courtyard and spied her through the window, suitcase splayed open on the bed. After that, there was no stopping her.

“I think you are stupid,” Sylviane repeated.

“Gee, thanks.” Genevieve handed Sylviane the notices she had received, warning her against operating the business as a “foreign national.” “What about those?”

Sylviane shrugged, hitched her hip up onto the open windowsill. Last night's storm had washed the city fresh, and the day dawned with a brilliant sun that warmed the wet streets and brought floods of customers out to the village's biannual antiques fair. The courtyard was packed with antiques of all kinds—rocking chairs and dolls and credenzas and kitchenware—along with display tables strewn with tchotchkes; dozens of people milled about, looking for bargains and soaking up the atmosphere.

“I tell you the secret of French bureaucracy, but you don't follow my advisements.”

“I just . . .” Genevieve trailed off, wondering how she might try to explain everything to Sylviane, whether it was even worth the effort. She had given her the broad strokes of the story, but Sylviane didn't seem to grasp why she was so upset.

“I don't understand why it is such a great offense, what you tell me about your mother and this man. I mean, things were different then. It was the
eighties
. Do you remember seeing pictures of the
fashions
? Big hair, big makeup, everything very different back then.”

“This isn't big hair, Sylviane. It's adultery, and me having a different father than I ever knew about.”

“I was thinking, though, this means you are a true Parisienne,” she said, waving her finger in the air as though she had just alighted upon the winning point. “Conceived here in Paris! Think about that! Perhaps you tell the bureaucrats that!”

“Really? You think informing the authorities that I'm the daughter of the man suspected of bombing the Spanish embassy is going to help my case?”

Sylviane shrugged again, sighed dramatically, and looked outside at the milling crowd.

Genevieve continued packing, trying to fit everything into her various bags. How had she managed to attain so much stuff when she'd been in Paris only a little more than a month?

Sylviane shouted something in French out the window. Genevieve looked up to see Marie-Claude, with Daniel on her heels. Behind them came their son, Luc, and Jacques. Soon there was a whole crowd around the window. Speaking in a mix of French and English, they conveyed their dismay that she was leaving, full of advice on how to deal with the authorities. An elderly neighbor named Madame Velain asked who would fix her door.

This is a nightmare,
Genevieve thought as she tried to close her crammed suitcase. Her head still throbbed with the aftermath of the migraine she'd suffered all night long, and the last thing she wanted was to have to say good-bye to everyone, face-to-face. How could she possibly explain everything she was feeling? She checked her watch: The taxi was supposed to be here in fifteen minutes.

The shop buzzer sounded and Genevieve fought the Pavlovian response that made her want to answer it.

She steeled herself.
No more
. Paris would no longer be a dream; it was not her escape valve. She had to go back and face Real Life, as Jason would put it. Surely she could figure out some sort of win-win situation. Eventually.

What if that buzzer was the taxi? The driver was supposed to call the phone number when he pulled up, but what if he rang the buzzer instead?

She peeked into the shop. Her heart sank. Again.

It was Killian, holding a gift-wrapped package in one hand.

“Open the door, Genevieve, please,” he said when she hesitated.

Why not?
The whole neighborhood would be here soon, apparently. She let him in.

“Listen, I have to apologize—”

“No, you don't.”

“I do. I sincerely apologize. I really put my foot in it down there, in the catacombs. So I brought you a peace offering.” He held out the package, rather awkwardly wrapped in pink paper with an orange bow.

Genevieve focused on the present so she didn't have to meet his eyes. “I don't really like presents,” she said, her voice sounding hollow to her ears.

“Think of it as belated payment, then. For opening my door that first day.”

Reluctantly, she took it from him, set it on the work counter, and opened it. It was a sepia-toned picture of Genevieve standing on the Love Locks Bridge. The solid bank of padlocks formed a low wall behind her; the edges of the photo were warped and out of focus, giving the photo an ethereal, other-timely cast. Wind blew her hair, and she was laughing as she reached up to push a lock out of her face.

Genevieve looked pretty, and happy. She looked like her mother.

Angela and Dave, atop Notre-Dame, the wind ruffling Angela's hair.

“It's . . . beautiful. Thank you.”

“You're welcome. And I hope you accept my apology,” he said, his tone husky. His eyes shifted over her shoulder. “What's going on?”

Through the open door they could see friends and neighbors crowding into the apartment. Sylviane would be calling in her five brothers soon, Genevieve imagined.

“It's nothing,” Genevieve said to Killian. “It's the antiques fair today, and . . .”

Killian was already walking past her into the apartment. “What's with the suitcases?”

Genevieve opened her mouth to speak, but Sylviane beat her to it.

“She is going to sleep on friend's couch because is too much trouble to write forms for police.”

“I'm sorry?” Killian said.

“The authorities have caught up with me, I'm afraid,” Genevieve explained. “They won't give me a license to practice in France—”

“She did not try hard enough. You can't surrender to these people, I am telling her. But does she listen?”

There was a general hubbub among the neighbors. Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion on how to deal with the local bureaucrats.

“It really doesn't matter,” Genevieve tried to explain over the general air of mayhem. “I'm leaving anyway. I—”

“You're
leaving
?” Killian demanded. “You mean,
leaving
leaving? Where are you going? Why?”

Genevieve tried using her old trick to keep herself from crying. She bit her tongue, imagined peppermint candy. But try as she might, she felt the hot prickle of tears stinging the back of her eyes.

Surely you're all cried out, aren't you?
After yesterday's melodramatic, self-pity-and-tear-fueled sprint up Montmartre, Genevieve would have thought she'd be dried out. The migraine had blossomed before she even got home, and this morning she had awakened from fitful, locked-door dreams puffy-eyed and spent, feeling empty and hollow. And her thighs were killing her.

The buzzer rang again. That
damned
buzzer.

“I'll get it,” said Killian. “You, stay here—don't go away.”

Genevieve turned back to the crowd, wondering how to explain—in her mixed French and English and body language—how much they all meant to her, that their caring was not lost on her, that if only she could, she would have loved to have made this work, to have been their neighborhood locksmith and become an essential part of their community, like her uncle before her. But that it had never been realistic. Paris had been a dream . . . and the fantasy had died down in the dank, dark, secret catacombs. In the dizzying depths of the city.

But suddenly there was a rustling by the courtyard doorway, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea, allowing a dandily dressed man through.

“Who are you?” demanded Sylviane, jutting out her chin and physically positioning herself between Genevieve and the new arrival. Despite the situation, Genevieve had to smile at this: Apparently she now had a self-appointed, delicate-looking, bread-scented guardian.

“I am Monsieur Lambert,” said the newcomer. “I am here to make the inspection of the shop of the
serrures
.”

“Monsieur Lambert,” Genevieve said, realization dawning on her. “I am so sorry, I completely forgot that I made the appointment for today. I'm really sorry I wasted your time.
Je suis désolée, pardonnez-moi.
I'm leaving anyway, so it won't be necessary.”

“
This
is the man?” Sylviane asked before Lambert was able to say a word. “
Quel connard!
This is the little
bureaucrate
trying to chase Genevieve from Paris,
ça me fait chier
.”

The neighbors set upon him like buzzards on roadkill. Several women began poking fingers into Lambert's thin chest and making hand gestures that reminded Genevieve of the ones she had witnessed between drivers on her very first trip to Paris. She had a hard time keeping up with the French, but she understood snippets: her neighbors talking about the cultural tradition of the Village Saint-Paul, suggesting he grant an exception on the basis of heritage; several reminded him of the contributions of Americans to defeating the enemies in both world wars. Sylviane threw in the optimism and romance of American movies, sprinkling her language with a hefty dose of swearwords.

“Genevieve!” came a new voice from the direction of the shop. A cane tapped loudly on the tiled floor.

Genevieve turned to see the final nail in the coffin of her nightmare: Philippe.

“What is going on?” he asked. “You are having a party without me?”

“No, she say she is leaving,” said Sylviane.
“C'est des conneries!”

“But this is not possible.
Pourquoi
, Genevieve? Why do you leave us?”

“Look, everyone, thank you so much, really,” said Genevieve. This situation was rapidly spiraling out of control; she had to rein it in. “Monsieur Lambert, I'm so sorry about all this, and you don't have to worry because I'm leaving anyway. I'm going back to California; the taxi will be here any minute to take me to the airport.”

This last caused another roar of voices, everyone talking at once.

“Genevieve,
ma petite, pourquoi
?” Philippe asked her why in a heartbreakingly gentle voice.

She couldn't fight the tears anymore. She shook her head as they started to fall. “I'm sorry, Philippe. I—”

“You have friends here. Family, too.” He nodded at the door, where Catharine now stood. Everyone started to greet her like the long-lost neighbor she was.

“He is right, Genevieve,” said Catharine. “I came by to wish you farewell, but I see I am not the only one! Your neighbors who seem to love you. They never act like this when I try to leave!”