The Seven Turns of the Snail's Shell: A Novel (7 page)

CHAPTER 9

Los Angeles, California

O
nly her grandfather was alive by the time Anna’s flight landed at LAX fourteen hours later.

She choked back the tears when she entered his hospital room. He had just come out of surgery. His face was as pale as the white bed he lay in. His mouth gaped. There were scrapes from shards of glass on his cheeks and forehead. A plastic tube ran into his nose from an IV stand nearby. The distinctive smell of rubbing alcohol filled her nostrils.

“He is very weak. He sustained critical internal injuries,” the surgeon had told her. “He may not make it through the night.” They would control the pain, he said.

“Oh, Grandpa,” she bawled and laid her face on the pillow close to his.

The old man looked lovingly toward her. His unruly white eyebrows twitched as he blinked back the tears in his eyes. “Your grandma. She, oh God, Anna, she didn’t make it,” he said. His voice was raspy, his breathing labored. It appeared that he was drawing all his strength to speak. “She and I, oh dear God. We were hit. It came so fast. I couldn’t get out of the way. Oh, dear God. Why her?” He sobbed aloud.

Tears welled in her eyes. “Shush, Grandpa, don’t wear yourself out. You need to rest.” She spoke as calmly and reassuringly as she could, concealing the anguish she felt.

“Anna, there is something very important I need to tell you.” She tried to shush him again. “No, no, you must understand something that I have not told you previously.” He spoke haltingly. His chest heaved with every breath. “Who your father was, how your parents met…You know I adore you, and you have been the pride of my life. Now that your grandmother is gone…” He choked up again and hesitated. “I need to answer those questions you asked me so many times. Remember? You finally quit asking because I wouldn’t give you any information.”

Anna nodded and stared at him. Her heart was pounding. She remembered how many times as a child she had asked him to explain who her father was, and he would always tell her that he didn’t know anything. Even after her mother died, and she was old enough to understand, he maintained his ignorance on the subject. He was correct about one thing. She had finally stopped asking. What use was pestering? She loved him as a father anyway.

“I thought you didn’t know anything about my father?” She kissed his forehead and forced a smile. One of her tears spilled onto his cheek.

“It was a long time ago, but I want you to know now. So you can… Anna, I was shot down over France during World War II, as you know.” Anna’s grandfather had never shared much of his war experience with anyone, even his wife. “I was rescued by a group of Résistance fighters from Corsica… They saved my life. One of them, a man named Diamanté, became my friend.”

Gasping for air, Stu Ellis managed to tell his beloved grand-daughter the whole story. Anna was later to remember how time seemed to stand still as he related the details. Diamanté and he had exchanged letters for years after the war ended. They were about the same age. Both of them had returned to their homelands and married. Diamanté had a son, Diamanté
fils
. When Junior was of age, he joined the French military, as was required. One day, Anna’s grandfather received a letter from Diamanté that Diamanté
fils
was coming to California to attend an exchange training school with the American Navy in San Diego. Would he entertain him occasionally on weekends, Diamanté asked, so that he wouldn’t get homesick for family? Stu Ellis wrote back that, of course, his son was welcome in their home and they looked forward to the young man’s coming. As it turned out, their beautiful daughter, Anna’s mother, was seventeen at the time of Diamanté
fils
’ visit to California. He was there just long enough to sweep her off her feet; when he left, she was pregnant with Anna. Her grandfather told Anna that he didn’t believe that her father ever knew because the next letter he had received from Diamanté was several months later. It bore the terrible news that his son had been killed in the war in Algeria and that Diamanté was heartbroken. Stu didn’t hear from him again, and he never told him about Anna.

“You must have been born right about the time of your father’s death.” The old man closed his eyes, exhausted.

Anna sat in stunned silence. Why hadn’t she been told this before?

“Grandpa?” When he didn’t open his eyes, she panicked. “Grandpa, I can’t lose you. Not now.”

His eyes opened. “I’m awake, Anna.”

“Didn’t this Diamanté ever try to contact you?”

“No.” His voice faded to a whisper. “I heard from another of the old Résistance leaders that he had moved to the south of France. I had no more news after that.”

“What was Diamanté’s last name?”

He thought for a moment, holding her hand tightly. “It’s funny, Anna. I always just called him Diamanté, but I recall that his last name was Wolf or Tiger, or something like that, in French. The
maquis
…that was the name they all called themselves… I think that the word had something to do with Corsica… They all called him “the wolf “for short. He had such eyes, like those of a wolf.” He patted her hand. “His son was very handsome. I see his features in you. It gives you a very European beauty.”

Anna sobbed. She was angry with the old man for not telling her all these years, for being in a car accident now, for giving her so much love over the years that it hurt to bear the thought of losing him now. She laid her head on his heaving chest and stayed with him, holding his hand. She told him how much she loved him, that he was safe, that the doctors would take care of him—everything she could think of to comfort him. Sometime during the night, he slipped into a coma, and two days later he quietly passed away.

CHAPTER 10

A
nna and Monique strolled through Laguna Beach’s Heisler park overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Anna’s thoughts went back to her childhood and the good times she had spent in her grandparents’ care.

“Tell us a story, Anna.” She was eight years old. Her grandfather was smiling at her. He and her grandmother were sitting next to each other in their seaside chairs under a big, purple and orange umbrella. It was August. As a child, she had first exhibited the gift of storytelling when she was in preschool. She would make up stories about her stuffed animals. Grandfather never tired of hearing her stories.

“You have such a gift, Anna. No one else in the family has this gift, sweetie. You will use this to your great advantage someday.”

Of course she had, and he had always been so proud of her successes as a novelist. Her story at eight was about how a blue and beige horse named Handee became a sculpture in the park near her grandparents’ home.

“Okay, Grandpa.” She had hesitated a minute to think up her story. Then the little girl had begun her fable in earnest.

“This is the story of Handee. Handee was a blue horse with tan spots on his back. He also had a tan spot over one eye, which made him look like he had a patch on it. He had big, really big feet, so his horseshoes were huge. He had white patches on his legs all around his knees, which made him look like he had white socks on. Handee enjoyed singing tunes every day as he trotted along the beach. He was a singing horse! He sang horse songs! One day, as he was trotting happily along singing a favorite horse song, he saw a perfectly circular hula hoop standing up between two trees in the park on the hill right in front of him.
That hula hoop is bigger than I am
, he thought, as he cocked his head this way and that to get a better view of it. Just then, he decided to have some fun. He pawed the sand with his big, horseshoed feet and began galloping upward toward the hoop. As he picked up speed, he made a huge leap with his back feet in the air, and he jumped right through that hoop. The weather was so beautiful, like today, and he had such perfect form that he turned around and jumped through the hoop again and again. It was like he was dancing. He was having such a good time that he didn’t see a fairy appear. It was a park fairy. The fairy watched him jumping and singing for a while, and she was so delighted at what she saw that she decided that she should cast a magic charm on him. Right then and there, just as he was midway through the big hoop, his hind feet in the air, his tail pointed skyward, his eyes closed in perfect happiness, and his mouth open in song, she froze him for all to enjoy forever after. That is how Handee became one of the beautiful sculptures in the park near our house. The lesson to the story is to jump and sing with all your heart in whatever you do, and you will be rewarded because people will like you forever. The end.”

“BRAVO! BRAVO!” Her grandfather and grandmother had clapped, and her grandfather had slapped his knee in appreciation. Anna bowed in front of them and kissed them each softly on the cheek.

“Can I have an ice cream cone, Mama?” A small voice behind her brought Anna back to reality. Her grandparents were gone. Only their seaside chairs stared at the Pacific now, locked arm in arm like the companions they had been and would be forever in heaven. Anna turned to look back.

“Not now, baby,” was the woman’s response as she walked along, holding the hand of a little boy. “It’s too close to dinner time.”

“Can I have a puppy like that one?” was the little boy’s next request. Anna’s golden retriever, Paris, was sauntering along beside her. The dog gave a lick at the chubby finger as they passed in front of them. The mother smiled at Anna and hurried her little boy along.

“Seems like everything is pink in California,” Monique pondered aloud.

The late September sun was setting over the Pacific, shedding a pinkish light over everything in Laguna Beach—the white sand, the tile roofs, sprawling white driveways, and wide sidewalks. Everywhere, pink roses and pink bougainvillea looked as if they had chosen their colors from the sky. A gentle breeze off the ocean whipped the two women’s hair.

“Monique, I really appreciate your staying for a while. It has helped with all the sorting out I have to do.”

“I’m glad to be here. Unfortunately, I can stay only a few more days. What exactly will you do now?”

“I don’t know. I have some unanswered questions in my life.” She hadn’t told Monique about Diamanté yet.

“Oh, we aren’t over that yet, then?” Monique rolled her warm brown eyes, thinking it was C-C to whom Anna was referring.

Anna looked at her directly. Monique’s impeccably made-up, fine-boned face and shell-like ears were glowing in the pinkish light. “It’s like when I was a little child and I dreamt that I found another room in our house by just opening a door. I have a door in front of me that, when I open it, will lead me into an unfamiliar room in my life.”

“And what if that room, as you call it, brings still more pain?”

“Then so be it, Monique.”

“What about Mark,
chérie
? You should give him a chance. Besides, I like him. I think he’s very handsome and so personable.”

“Mark? He’s comfortable, but I’m not in love with him, remember?” She took off her dark glasses and looked at her friend. “Come on, Monique, you and I both know that until I see C-C again, I won’t be able to set up house with someone else. If I find out that he is married, or has a life of his own, I won’t interfere. I just need to know for sure.”

Monique shrugged her shoulders. “My advice to you, my friend, is this: get C-C out of your system, once and for all. Forget him. Seize a life, as you Americans like to say.” She seemed to take a subtle pride in her new command of American slang.

“You mean get a life, Monique,” Anna gently corrected her friend, smiling.

They walked past several pieces of public art on display. The light had turned more bronze now, and the sun was right at the point where the smooth line of the water delineated the western horizon. In a moment it would drop below the surface and seem to disappear forever. Anna contemplated a garden snail chomping its way through a hibiscus plant. She was reminded of the Parisian waiter, his drawing of the arrondissements of Paris and the seven turns of the snail’s shell.

“You are probably right, Monique. I’ll work on it.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Monique flew back to Paris at the end of the week.

CHAPTER 11

W
ith her grandparents gone, Anna felt alone, truly alone, for the first time in her life. The day following Monique’s departure, she and Paris took a long, rambling walk along the beach.

She sat down on a wooden bench, took off her straw hat, and watched the clouds billowing over the ocean. A seagull swooped down and landed next to her bench. The graceful bird balanced on one webbed foot as it looked at her first with one sharp eye and then the other. The two of them stared at each other until the bird flew off. She watched it as it took wing directly into the wind, soaring far out over the ocean, gliding in a wide circle with its wings spread, then flapping wildly in ascent, to be carried along on a second cross-wind. Chee! Chee! Chee! She heard its cries rise and fall across the water as she finally lost sight of it in the haze over the long stretch of coastline. She tried to imagine the absolute feeling of freedom it would be to be able to take to the air like that.

Rejected by her mother as a baby, Anna had grown up to be tough and self-reliant. Her grandparents had raised her. When she was five, her mother had died of a drug overdose, and she never was told anything about who her father was, despite the many times that she had asked her grandparents. Now, because of a terrible accident, she had some information that haunted her. She knew her father was dead, but was there a family somewhere? She had a name, Diamanté, and a nationality, Corsican. A grandfather. Where are you?