April in Paris

by John J. Healey

  I didn’t say anything about what I’d found in Edwin’s box until the following afternoon when, after an excursion to the Eiffel Tower, we returned to the apartment and Emily fell asleep. Rather than give Carmen a recap, I brought the box back out and handed her the pages. She read it through without any comment until she finished. Then she refolded the pages and handed them back to me.

  “Wow,” she said.

  “Is that incredible, or what?” I said, nervous.

  “She was your aunt.”

  “She was my aunt. The Judge, to me, was always an old man. I’d no idea about this side of him. They murdered his daughter.”

  “Raped and murdered his daughter,” she said.

  “And he and Ingrid’s mother kept seeing each other,” I said.

  “Maybe they loved each other.”

  “The Andersons were siblings. The father was gay. MacBride was one of his boyfriends. It’s all very twisted. I’m embarrassed by it.”

  “Why?” she said.

  “I feel like a fraud. An imposter. I feel unworthy of you.”

  She smiled, leaned over, and kissed me.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “It’s got nothing to do with you. It’s fascinating and amazing, but it’s no reflection on you at all. You know that.”

  “Even so,” I said. “It gives me the creeps.”

  “This is sort of sweet, and terrifying,” she said, taking the doll from the box.

  We looked at it together, an old rag doll with little buttons for eyes. The eyebrows, nose and mouth, drawn on a face of canvas stuffed with cotton, had almost faded entirely.

  – 45 –

  We went to Spain and spent a week in Madrid visiting with Carmen’s mother. She was meeting both Emily and me for the first time. She was thin and elegant like her daughter. She had been liberal and progressive all her life, growing up in Barcelona within a conservative family. Her wardrobe was old school, sensible dresses and shoes and skirts that ended below the knee. The apartment, Carmen assured me, was classic haute bourgeois Madrid, sofas and armchairs upholstered in dark shades of green and burgundy, old family paintings, two walls of books, potted ferns, a tea service from France, and a collection of crystal water pitchers.

  It was hard to discern which of us made her more nervous, the new American boyfriend whose Spanish was atrocious, or the young motherless girl who spoke no Spanish at all, and whose grandfather had made Carmen so unhappy. But we all got through it. On our last night I took everyone to dinner, returning to Horcher’s. Emily behaved like a proper young lady and afterward allowed me to hold her hand walking back to the hotel.

  Madrid was hot and dry. In the mornings we went for walks with Corru in Retiro Park before it got too bad. During the week the park was tranquil and spacious. The lawns were watered and green. Up until the middle of the nineteenth century it had belonged to the royal family. The Count Duke of Olivares had commissioned its construction in 1630 for Philip IV, employing Italian landscape artists. A great pond was built, the Estanque del Retiro, where Emily and I rented a little boat and rowed our way around. But by lunchtime it was a hundred degrees, and during the weekend the park was overrun with mostly immigrant families enjoying a well-earned day of rest. Carmen’s mother—with whom we had lunch most days— was against air conditioning, so it was always an enormous relief to return to the Ritz for a major siesta in the afternoon. Sometimes Carmen would venture out at that hour, immune to the desert-like climate she’d grown up in, and walk around looking at the boutiques along the Calle Claudio Cuello. Emily and I would stay in the hotel room. She would draw or play video games and I would rest and read.

  One day I took her across the street to the Prado and asked her to give me her impressions of Las Meninas and Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights and Patinir’s Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx. The only things that grabbed her attention in the Velasquez painting were the dog and the female with dwarfism. The Bosch painting fascinated her, but Patinir’s was the one she most responded to. She said the landscape reminded her of England and that the man in the boat going down the river could be me on my way to see her and Carmen to have a picnic in a nearby glade. I found it curious and original and sweet that she made no mention of the rendering of hell depicted on the right side of the canvas. My students always gave it too much prominence.

  We said goodbye to Carmen’s mother and took a high-speed train to Barcelona and stayed there for a couple of nights. Catalonia certainly felt different. Reflecting its geographical position, it gave off a vibe that seemed a bit French, southern French. Though Barcelona appeared to be just as big as Madrid, its beaches and the steep hills behind it lent it a more romantic air. Many of the older buildings had facades of stone of a particular hue, a dark, ocher shade more elegant to my eye than the brighter brick and granite seen in Madrid. The culture and the people were different as well. The energized, in-your-face style, so prevalent in Madrid, was gone, and in its place there was an attitude more restrained. I suspected that both cities were more provincial than they believed themselves to be, but to some degree their respective appeal derived directly from that. I noticed in the restaurants we went to, a wonderful place called Igueldo, and another called il Giardinetto, that the service was calmer, and that what might appear to a Madrileño as standoffishness was simply good manners.

  I rented a car and we continued north to the countryside of the Empordá where Consuelo and Lucia were summering. Consuelo’s family had a big house there, what the Catalans call a masia. It was just outside a tiny medieval town called Madremanya. Dirk was in Ireland making his movie, an ironic, fractured-fairy-tale take on Jane Austen. Carmen and Emily and I stayed at a little hotel that was ideal: low-key and faux rustique, with good food and a lap pool, one side of which was lined with pomegranate shrubs. The girls got along, mostly, and every other day in the afternoons we drove to a cove, what the Catalans call a cala, for a swim in the Mediterranean.

  One morning we went to the small city of Palafrugell, where Carmen and Consuelo wanted to stock up at a proper market. While they shopped, I sat with Corru and the girls under an umbrella at a busy outdoor café in the main plaza.

  “Are you and Carmen going to get married?” Lucia asked.

  Both girls were having fresh orange juice and chocolate croissants, a combination I found revolting, and they were teasing Corru by offering and then not giving him bits of the pastry.

  “It’s a bit early for that,” I said. “We haven’t discussed it. What do you think we should do?”

  “I think the proper thing is to marry her,” Lucia said.

  “What do you think, Emily?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  I could see the idea made her uncomfortable.

  “Well,” I said, “we’re not in any rush, at all. It hasn’t even come up.”

  That seemed to put her at ease.

  “I heard Mommy and Carmen talking about Emily’s father getting married to another man,” Lucia said.

  “You did not,” said Emily.

  This sudden betrayal caught Emily off guard.

  “I did too,” Lucia said.

  Emily started to get upset.

  “Don’t believe everything you hear,” I said to Lucia.

  “But men can’t marry other men,” Lucia said.

  “Says who?” I asked. “Of course they can.”

  Lucia had always seemed so sweet and sophisticated for her age, and now she was behaving like a little brat.

  “I’ve heard both my parents say it,” she said.

  “That’s because they’re old-fashioned,” I said. “Men marry men and women marry women all the time these days. It’s not a big deal.”

  “At my school it’s a sin,” Lucia said.

  “Well, then you go to a really dumb-ass school,” I said.

  Emily pretended to be shocked. Lucia began to cry.

  “Why are you crying?” I asked her, irritated.

  “I’m going to
tell my mother,” she said in an unpleasant whine.

  “Please do,” I said. “And both of you, stop teasing Corru.”

  This got them both crying. I think it was all the sugar. An older couple at a neighboring table, French-looking, began to stare. To my great relief Carmen and Consuelo appeared at that moment, laden with bags of produce.

  “What is going on here?” Carmen asked.

  “Shaun says I go to a dumb-ass school,” Lucia said, now really crying, milking it for all she could.

  Both of the women looked at me.

  “Now why would he say that?” Consuelo asked.

  “And he said you and daddy are old-fashioned.”

  “I can explain,” I said. “It seems your daughter has issues with same-sex marriage.”

  “She’s eleven years old,” Consuelo said.

  “Well, that’s kind of my point,” I said. “She’s way too young to be so uptight and judgmental.”

  The ride back to Madremanya was on the quiet side. The only benefit I derived from the unpleasant encounter and its immediate aftermath was that when we reached our hotel Emily asked me to go swimming with her. That was a first. By the time we drove over to Consuelo’s for dinner, all was forgiven and forgotten. The girls renewed their friendship and Consuelo gave me a big kiss. Six other guests were there as well, including two men up from Barcelona who lived together and had a house nearby. They were charming and fun, and everyone had a good time.

  Carmen and I made love in the shower that night after Emily fell asleep. In the middle of the night she came to our bed upset from a dream. Corru jumped up as well, making for a snug fit. When I woke the next morning only Corru remained. Carmen had taken Emily back to her own bed in the adjoining room, fallen asleep, and stayed there.

  On our last night in Madremanya we took Corru for a walk after dinner through the narrow, agreeably ill-lit streets of the village. Emily and I played at imagining who lived in each of the houses while Carmen trailed behind, speaking with her mother on the phone. After Emily went to sleep, we discussed the rest of the summer and agreed to return to Massachusetts sooner rather than later. The academic year in the States started early and there was still a lot to try to organize. My real estate lady was putting together a list of possible places for us to look at and we’d need to arrange interviews for Emily at schools in Cambridge. A few days later we flew to London so that she could see her father for a couple of days, and then we flew to Boston.

  – 46 –

  That fall semester was my last one at the Clark and at Williams. I closed on a house in Boston that needed some work, and a lot of commuting went on that autumn and winter between Lenox and Back Bay. But by St. Patrick’s Day of the New Year we were living on Beacon Street between Fairfield and Gloucester streets, across the river from MIT. The only relic of note from my past was the Zurbarán painting rescued from 820 Fifth. The phantasmagorical image that had provoked such foul language from the whiskied tongue of Bunky Bass graced our entrance hall and was much admired. The portrait Carmen’s father had done of her hung in our bedroom.

  She was back at work, teaching and doing research. I had yet to find a suitable teaching position and was in no hurry to do so. I occupied myself giving three lectures at the Museum of Fine Arts, funding an experiment to provide courses in art history at the city’s public high schools, and finalizing initial budget approvals for the Ingrid Anderson Foundation on Ogden Avenue. Channeling the Gino Colossi of my youth, I also took pleasure in dropping Emily off and picking her up each day at a school where she seemed to be flourishing. We celebrated Christmas in Spain, where Emily got to travel with her father and Paco to Granada and Córdoba, and we planned to divide the summer between Europe and Caro’s house in Southampton. We were settling into a life that was new for all of us.

  When I realized that spring break would take in the eighteenth of April, I—without much pushing—convinced the girls to come with me to Paris. My reasons were both sentimental and dark. It would mark a year since Carmen and I met, and a year since the dream.

  Thierry met us early one morning at Charles De Gaulle and took us to the Quai de Bethune. The three of us had breakfast together and slept for a while and went for an afternoon walk with Corru to the Luxembourg Gardens. The chestnuts were in blossom. Holiday tables were under the trees. We had tea at the newly renovated Ritz, which I of course didn’t like. The scruffy, stained-carpet version of yesteryear was much classier and soigné. I thought the facelift had turned the place into a vulgar watering hole for oligarchs and emirs.

  On the evening of the eighteenth, Emily and Corru went to Dirk and Consuelo’s for a sleepover with Lucia. We walked them over and had a drink. At twilight, an hour later, Carmen and I were back on the street alone. We looked at each other and smiled. We crossed the bridge and went to dinner at Itinéraires. We started with champagne and went on to a Chassagne-Montrachet with a risotto that had little bits of asparagus and truffles in it. We had a good time. Then we walked back home and made love in the living room, half on the couch, half on the floor, took a long bath together, and went to bed. She fell asleep.

  Near midnight I got up and put a robe on and retrieved Edwin’s box from the storage closet. I took it into the living room, opened it, and took out the doll. I reached in for the letter and read it again. Then I had a look at the copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a first edition published in 1959 by Grove Press that Caro had inscribed to Edwin. To my astonishment, as I thumbed through it and smelled the paper, the missing pages of the letter appeared. I was amazed I hadn’t seen them nine months earlier. Three sheets of the same airmail-thin onionskin paper, folded razor flat and in precarious condition. But as with the first sheets, the text was clear and legible. I took a deep breath and began to read Edwin’s confession.

  On the third anniversary of Ingrid’s murder, Father convened us and swore us to secrecy. Each of us lied to our parents that night about our whereabouts. There was me, there was Jimmy, because he’d been sweet on Ingrid, he was thirteen years old by then, and Gino Colossi. Gino wasn’t actually chosen, but he found out somehow because he always stayed close to Jimmy even back then, and it was impossible to get rid of him. We were told to bring some kind of sharp weapon and wait at the bottom of Woodycrest Avenue. I remember walking down past the orphanage in the dark and being scared. Jim chose a knife from a drawer in his mother’s kitchen. I took a screwdriver from a toolbox Father had left at home. Gino came with scissors from the family barbershop.

  Father picked us up in a car. It was new and obviously stolen. We drove across the bridge to Washington Heights, then north toward Inwood. He was always direct with me about himself, about sex. He was Swedish that way I guess. During the drive he told us what he had found out. The other two boys had never heard anything like it.

  “There weren’t no bathhouses in Highbridge,” he said. “We had no place to go that was safe. So we used the coal bin room in the basement of 1075 and 1077, me and MacBride, me and Albert Boulder, me and Paddy Culhane.” Jimmy piped up and said, “Are you saying Paddy is queer?” “I’m saying he is a fine and gentle young man,” Father said. “Ain’t nothing queer about him. He just fancies his own kind is all.” That seemed to shut Jimmy up, and besides, everybody had thought that about Paddy from the time he started getting whiskers. Father went on. “Sometimes the four of us would meet there together. We used the quilt Albert kept in there to lie on. I was living with your mother then. Albert was married but hardly ever spoke to his wife. MacBride lived with his sister and brother-in-law, Conlan the plumber, who we all thought was one of us too, but too frightened to admit it. Paddy lived at home with his sisters and the Judge.

  “The problem was Albert. Albert Boulder was Catholic. Paddy was Catholic too of course, but he knew how to keep things in balance. Albert was a holy roller and each time after we had sex down there, he’d go to confession and cry and beg for forgiveness. The priest he confessed to told the priest that worked in the Protectorate, told him ev
erything, about me, about MacBride, and about Paddy. The Protectorate priest told Captain Morrison. They had the goods on us,” my father said. “They knew it all he said and threatened me when they came to take you back to that filthy place. You ain’t that way, Edwin. I can tell. They were animals, these people. After they defiled and killed Ingrid and stuck MacBride with the rap, they threatened us too and threatened the Judge, to tell everyone what his son was like. MacBride was the sacrifice.”

  Jimmy and Gino just sat there and didn’t say anything. “How do you know?” I asked him. “You’ll see,” he said.

  He left the car near Shorakkopoch Rock, the place where the Indians had sold Manhattan Island to the Dutch. We walked down through the woods, and then through an opening in a chain link fence that led to his shack. We were nervous but excited because it was an adventure. But we weren’t prepared for what we found.

  Two men were inside, their hands and feet bound with rope. Their faces were covered with blood and bruises. They were difficult to look at. They seemed to be dead. One was Captain Morrison, the detective who’d come to our house. The other was the priest from the Protectorate I’d come to know too well. “It was hard to lure them where I wanted them, one at a time,” Father said, “but I did it. And now I’m done with them,” he said, “or almost. Now it’s your turn. For this,” he said, kicking one of Captain Morrison’s legs, “is the man who raped and murdered our Ingrid. And this sack of shit,” he said, kicking the priest, “is the man who sinned against Edwin.” When we were alone Father always called me Adranaxa. He called me Edwin that night so that Jimmy and Gino would know who he meant.