“I’ll explain later. But, yes, Boris Barkov, expert on antique Russian texts, board member of InterCentro, apparently is Val’s father. It’s pronounced the same, isn’t it, even though he spells his name differently. A difference in conversion from the Cyrillic to the Latinate alphabet, I suppose.”
Jean-Paul nodded acknowledgment and turned back to Berg. “I would like to know what Monsieur Barkov’s interest is in the library. But more importantly, what is his interest in Maggie and me? Someone has gone to great lengths to keep the two of us away from this apartment. At first, there were little forays made to get access, but they failed, and then escalated the closer we came to the time when Maggie was to arrive.”
“Maggie.” Dusaud set down his brandy snifter when he turned to me. “Who knew about your plans to stay in Paris?”
I had to think for a moment. “My friends, our families, my co-workers.”
“And everyone who sees the entertainment news,” Philippe said. That got everyone’s attention. The poor kid blushed yet again, but he continued. “There were stories that said you worked on a film in Normandy all summer, Aunt Maggie, and that you were talking about moving to Paris to work with French television once you finished the project about bombs.”
“Jean-Paul,” I said, covering his hand. “Right now I need something juicer than just merde. And remind me to call Uncle Max.”
“When was this?” Berg asked.
Philippe shrugged. “After the holidays. It was when Aunt Maggie was filming battlefields in Flanders. When Grand-mère saw the report, she was so happy to think you are staying in France forever.”
“Did your friend Val see the report?” Jean-Paul asked.
“Oh, yes. I got into a panic about cleaning the apartment before Aunt Maggie came. But we had exams, and I couldn’t get away.”
“Until now,” I said.
He sighed. “I’m not supposed to be here. Papa will kill me if he finds out. But I had to come and explain.”
“How did you know I had arrived?” I asked.
“Madame Gigi. She scolded me so hard.”
“When did you talk to her?”
“Yesterday. She said I could stay over at her apartment tonight if I came today to apologize. She isn’t answering her phone, but her hearing isn’t very good.”
“If you stay anywhere tonight,” I said, “you’ll stay right here with us. Philippe, Madame Gonsalves had a little accident this afternoon. She’s in hospital.”
“Oh, no.” He started to rise from his chair, but Jean-Paul put a hand on his arm and he settled back down.
“She’ll be fine,” Jean-Paul said, giving him a pat. “Just a little bump on the head. You’ll come with us to check on her in the morning, then you’ll come to lunch with us at Karine and Émile’s. Their girls will be very happy to see you. After lunch, we’ll put you on the train back to school. D’accord?”
“Yes.” Philippe glanced at me to make sure it was all right. When I nodded, he repeated, “Yes. Thank you. Yes.”
Berg folded his napkin beside his plate, signaling that the meal was over for him. “Philippe, unless you’re too tired after your kitchen labors, I would like you to take us down to the library so that we can have a look at the books that your friend found so interesting.”
My nephew turned to me, expecting permission, I suppose. I said, “Go ahead. You made dinner, I’ll clear away. I expect that Jean-Paul wants to go down with you.”
For the second time that day, lights went on over the back stairs, and Philippe led a party of inquiry down into the basement. I did dishes.
8
Except for a break at Christmas, when I went back to Los Angeles to be with my mom, my daughter, Uncle Max, and Jean-Paul for the holidays, since October I had been living out of a suitcase, wearing the same week’s-worth of clothes over and over and over. Everything in that case was basic, washable, functional. Boring. I had grown to hate the sight of it all. So, the big issue for me upon rising on Sunday morning was which shirt and which sweater would I pull on yet again. First thing, we were going to check on Madame Gonsalves in the hospital. After that, off to Karine and Émile’s for a family lunch. Jean-Paul’s mother would be there. From our first meeting, Victoria Bernard had been very gracious to me, very welcoming, because, she told me, her son had been so very sad after his wife died that she was afraid he would never be happy again. But I made him laugh. As kind as she was, she was also rather formal. A bit too perfect. And always beautifully dressed.
Feeling less than chipper that morning, I lifted my sad little wardrobe out of the suitcase on the floor intending to put it into the tall armoire that served as the room’s closet, to get it out from underfoot. Though Freddy’s two boys had left quite a few things in the room they shared during the year and a half the three of them had stayed at Isabelle’s apartment after her death—dragging their feet, or maybe angry, over having to move out—Freddy had completely cleared away all evidence of himself. So, I expected the armoire to be empty. I was surprised, then, to find it full of clothes. A woman’s clothes. Isabelle’s, of course.
Before we went to bed, I had put the black slacks I wore all day Friday into the washer, and popped them into the dryer before breakfast that morning. When I got out of the shower, I put them on, still warm, yet again. Isabelle and I, I had been told often enough, were built very much alike. It took one more look at the well-worn stack of shirts in my hand to get over any qualms about rifling through that late stranger’s things for something different to wear. I chose a silk blouse that was about the same shade as very old pearls, and a soft blue cashmere V-neck sweater. For good measure, I looped my long string of pearls around my neck a couple of times and declared myself ready for whatever the day ahead held.
As I walked into the salon looking for Jean-Paul, Philippe came in through the front door, leaving a wet trail.
“You were out?” I asked.
“For a minute.” He hung up his coat and slipped off his soggy shoes. “I wanted to get something to take to Madame Gigi. Flowers or sweets or something. But it’s Sunday morning and the shops are all closed.”
“Why don’t we take her the chocolates you brought yesterday?”
“But I gave them to you.”
“You did, and I treasure the gesture. But, as you said, it’s Sunday morning, nothing’s open, Madame Gonsalves is in hospital, and you’re right, we can’t go to her empty-handed. So, could we declare the chocolates a gift from us all?”
He thought for a moment before saying, “Madame Gigi does like sweets.”
“Good. Then agreed?”
“Agreed.”
Something occurred to me as he headed off toward his room. “Philippe?”
“Yes?” He turned.
“How do you come and go?”
He shrugged, not sure what I was asking.
“Do you have keys?”
He pulled a set out of his pocket, two latch keys and an electronic gate clicker. “I still have Papa’s keys from when we stayed at New Year’s. Is that wrong?”
“No,” I said. “Of course, you would have keys. I hadn’t thought until just now to ask who all has sets. Do you have any idea?”
“You know that sometimes Mamie Izzy had—” He just couldn’t find the right words to explain about Isabelle’s issues. “Sometimes things would get so bad with her that Madame Gigi would call Papa or Grand-mère or Uncle Gérard to come. They had door keys in case she wasn’t letting anyone in. And Madame Gigi has keys, of course.”
“Makes sense. Thanks.” I started toward the kitchen, still looking for Jean-Paul. We were going to have to change the locks. As soon as possible.
“Do you want me to leave them here?” He dangled the keys between two fingers.
“Oh.” Yes, I did want him to leave the keys. I also didn’t want to make him think I didn’t trust him, or that he wasn’t welcome. He was welcome, when we were there to greet him. “All things considered, it’s probably a better idea to leave th
em here than to have to bother with them at school.”
“Sure.” He set them, very quietly, on the table behind the sofa and continued on toward his room.
I found Jean-Paul coming up the back stairs from the basement. I said, “Looking for reading material?”
“No.” He held up a squat, brown bottle. “Liquid refreshment. I decided that brandy would be better to take to Karine’s than wine. Émile will have been very careful about choosing the wine for lunch, and I wouldn’t want him to think I question his taste.”
“Dandy,” I said. I told him about discovering that there were multiple sets of keys. “We need to change the locks.”
“If you say so.”
“I have a meeting in the morning with French TV. Will you be able to take care of it?”
“Bien sûr. When does Guido come?”
“Tonight. His plane arrives at six. I asked him to take a cab.”
“I’ll get on the locks first thing.”
Philippe re-emerged from his room wearing a turtleneck and a sweater he found among the clothes he, or maybe his brother, Robert, had left behind. Jean-Paul stowed the brandy in a muslin shopping bag. We all pulled on coats and scarves, and tucked gloves into pockets. It was wet out. Val Barkoff’s coat hung over a bucket of umbrellas. As I moved it aside to get one, I thought about the boy who had left it behind. The coat was too big for Jean-Paul, who was just about six feet tall and well built. The Barkoff boy, then, was a large kid. Tall like his mother, Natasha, round like his father, Boris? Not that it mattered.
Last thing, I went to the panel beside the front door, and switched to the street-view camera to make sure that the police car was still parked there. It was. When we drove out, the little white-and-blue Citroën fell in behind us. Along the way, we passed several bakeries that were open. All of them had displays of beautiful sweets in the window. I glanced back at Philippe and the little bag of chocolates on the seat beside him, and wondered, again, why he had gone out earlier that morning if it wasn’t to buy something to take to his Madame Gigi. His eyes were locked on the phone in his hands. His face told me nothing.
Madame Gonsalves was enjoying her hospital stay. She exclaimed over the chocolates, the perfect gift, she said, all the better because it was Philippe who chose them. Her head was fine, but there was water on her knee from the fall. She was to stay over another night so that it could be watched. If necessary, an orthopedist would come in that afternoon and tap it. He was, she said, very handsome. And she was very comfortable. And we were not to worry.
Philippe kissed Madame Gonsalves’s cheeks and clung to her hand until it was time for us to leave, but he said very little. To anyone. The generally exuberant youth remained quiet during the short drive into the western suburbs, checking from time to time to make sure that the police car was always behind us. Clearly, something weighed heavily on him that cold gray morning. The police escort? The prospect of lunch with Jean-Paul’s family? Had I offended him when I asked about the keys? Or was it that his once golden life had devolved into a giant, endless cockup?
Karine and Émile lived in a large, traditional, and unpretentious house on a large lot in a newish development of similar houses. When Jean-Paul turned into the driveway, our escort found a space out front, and parked. Jean-Paul drove around to the back where there was a wide, graveled parking area in front of the garages. Others had arrived, and parked, before us.
I recognized the green Jaguar at the same time as Philippe. He muttered, “Merde. Papa is here.”
“If I had to guess, Philippe,” Jean-Paul said as he pulled in next to a Volvo sedan, “your father drove your grandmother in from Normandy. You know what that means, don’t you, Maggie?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“The family has gathered to talk about a wedding.”
“We should have eloped,” I said.
“It’s not too late,” Philippe chimed in. “We could just back right out and go off and get you two married.”
“Sorry, but it is too late,” Jean-Paul said, releasing his seat belt. “We’ve been spotted.”
Émile appeared at the back door. We followed him into a stone-floored mudroom where we exchanged les bises and shed our wraps and commiserated about the miserable weather. Émile exclaimed about what a lovely surprise it was that we had brought Philippe. Before we could go through into the rest of the house, Émile pulled Jean-Paul aside.
“To soften the blow before she saw you, I told your mother you had been in a little accident. I’m glad I did, because she had a total meltdown. Her poor little boy, and, well, you know the rest.”
“Her little boy is fifty years old,” Jean-Paul said with a chuckle. “Somehow, I have managed to make my way for a full half century, but— Ah well. Shall I pull a bag over my head to spare her the sight?”
“No. But I am going to take the brace off your shoulder so she won’t see you with an empty sleeve. That would be too much for her. The bone is healing nicely, but let’s not test it, promise? No push-ups, no gymnastics. Philippe, go on in. Your dad, your brother, and your grandmother will be so happy to see you.”
“Thank you, no. I want to wait and go in behind Jean-Paul. If everyone is freaking out about his scars, maybe they’ll forget to be angry I’m here.”
“Who would be angry?” Émile asked, but in the question, he found the answer. “awol from school?”
The sheepish look on the boy’s face told him all he needed to know.
We helped Jean-Paul out of his shirt and sweater and unbuckled the brace. Émile examined the collarbone and the progress of the flesh wound before he let Jean-Paul put his clothes back on. As Émile folded the brace and set it on the washer, Jean-Paul raised his arm and moved it in a slow, experimental circle. “What a relief.”
Émile watched him closely. “I’ll pop out some of those sutures before you go home. But take it easy, huh?”
“Two arms again,” Jean-Paul said to me with a gleam in his eye. “Think of the possibilities.”
“Congratulations,” I said, taking his arm on the delicate side, hoping to protect it from the oncoming crush of family affection.
We made an entrance. Between Jean-Paul’s mother’s anguish over her boy’s injuries and Philippe’s father’s over his son’s surprise appearance, there was a fair amount of exclaiming and explaining going on.
“What happened, my angel?” Jean-Paul’s mother, Victoria, wanted to know as she clung to his side, fingers gingerly tracing the scars on his face.
“Slipped on the ice, Maman.”
“I don’t believe you. Tell me the truth.”
“The truth: A drone appeared out of nowhere and dropped a bomb on me.”
“It did not. Don’t tease.”
“I was in a car wreck.”
“Now, did that need to be so difficult?” she said, crisply. “I wish you had simply told me the truth when you called last week to say that you had lost your wallet and needed a favor. Maggie, dear, you need to watch this one closely. He’s a terrible tease.”
“So I’ve discovered,” I said.
Poor Philippe was head to head with his father, explaining mightily with hand gestures and a variety of explanations of his own. When Freddy looked over his son’s head and caught my eye, I ventured into the fray. Without mentioning all that had gone before, I told him that there had been attempts made to get into the library, and that Philippe had been very helpful by giving us information. Freddy seemed skeptical. His eyes elided toward Jean-Paul for confirmation as I spoke, and I knew I needed a better story because Jean-Paul, of course, would know at least as much about the library as Philippe. I was saved from miring myself further in their family issues by the appearance of my grandmother. After the drive in from Normandy that morning, she had gone upstairs for a little lie-down. As soon as she heard our voices, and there were a lot of voices, she brushed her hair and joined us.
My grand-mère, Élodie Martin, age ninety-three, wore the mantle of elegant grande dame d
eceptively well. I say deceptively, because she actually was an earthy, gutsy survivor. The efficiency with which she dispatched a unit of Nazi soldiers during the Occupation of France had become the stuff of local legend. From the first time I met her, I knew that, given the right provocation, Grand-mère could do something similar all over again.
“My dear, dear Maggie,” she said after a prolonged exchange of kisses. “I was so hoping you would be able to come for a visit when you were filming in Flanders; it’s not so terribly far from us. We missed you at Christmas. It would have been our first together since you were a tiny little one. But this year, you will be there, I insist. Now, when are you coming for a nice long stay with your Grand-mère?”
“That will depend on what comes out of a meeting I’m having tomorrow. If that conversation goes nowhere, I’ll come and see you before I head back to Los Angeles to look for my next job. But if it goes as I hope it will, then after I get the current film finished in L.A., I’ll be around here for a while.”
“I’ll have my fingers crossed for you tomorrow, my darling.” Then she smiled and said, “And fingers crossed for myself.”
Fortunately, nowhere in that conversation did she remind me how ancient she was and how tenuous life is. She merely patted my face and went over to check on Philippe, who, though Karine and Émile’s fifteen- and sixteen-year-old daughters, Vic and Suze—Victoria, for her grandmother, and Suzanne—and his younger brother, Robert, were doing their best to cheer him up, still looked uncomfortable and sad. The two boys had been through a great family trauma the year before, and I thought they both had a lot of grief, still, to overcome. When they were with strangers, maybe they could shunt their feelings aside. But with family, the situation around their mother was always the greatest presence in the room. Doubly so when I, who had been the target of their mother’s crime, was there with them.
At last, lunch was served. Conversation was noisy and wide-ranging, from politics to the tiresome weather, the cost of an American education, the state of French national health, and the best way to prune roses. At the end, Karine brought out an apple cake with the cheese, and right away the women, except me, zeroed in on the real topic du jour: wedding plans for me and Jean-Paul. I might as well have been in the kitchen doing dishes for most of it. After I said that I agreed with Jean-Paul that a civil ceremony was sufficient, and that a religious ceremony afterward was unnecessary, I wasn’t consulted further. They could survive without a church blessing, but they were not to be deprived of a big party. My daughter’s participation was assumed, but no one mentioned a role for my mom, the woman who raised me after Isabelle gave me up. When Jean-Paul caught my eye, and nodded toward the kitchen door, I followed his lead, folded my napkin under the edge of my plate and quietly slipped into the next room with him. No one seemed to notice.
Number 7, Rue Jacob Page 22
