The Paris Library

by Janet Skeslien Charles

  I dreaded seeing Robby and Tiffany on a date—his arm around her at the choir concert or sharing a doughnut after church, but that day never came. Around Halloween, I realized Odile had been right about misreading signals. I tried to catch his eye, but he no longer looked in my direction.

  But someone else was dating. The ladies of Froid pushed every single single woman in Dad’s path. In the church hall, they set him up with a giggly blond teller who’d recently started at the bank.

  “He’s nothing but skin and bones,” said old Mrs. Murdoch.

  “Lost his appetite,” Mrs. Ivers said. “But his savings account is plump.”

  During the fall band concert, they stuck him next to a florist with greasy hair. “He’s a good provider,” Mrs. Ivers whispered during Danse Macabre. At the fireman’s spaghetti fund-raiser, they paired him with my English teacher. Listening to her yammer on about Macbeth, Dad didn’t seem happy, but he didn’t rush through dinner, either. Mary Louise and I were the first to leave.

  “Revolting,” I told her, kicking at the dead leaves on the sidewalk.

  “Gag me,” she agreed.

  “Your dad goes on more dates than you,” Tiffany Ivers said as she slithered by.

  In Mary Louise’s room, we sang “You May Be Right” at the top of our lungs, using Angel’s Aqua Net as a microphone. Something in the angry twitch of Billy Joel’s voice spoke to me. At midnight, Sue Bob pounded on the door and told us to shut up.

  In the morning, Mary Louise and I trotted down the alley—the quickest way to my place. Two houses from home, we froze like antelope when we saw Dad at the back door with the blond bank teller, who blushed as she stroked the arm of his shirt. He wound his fingers through hers.

  “Gross!” Mary Louise hissed. “They’re having hand sex.”

  “She spent the night.”

  “Do you think he’ll marry her?”

  It had only been eight months since Mom died.

  * * *

  GRIEF IS A sea made of your own tears. Salty swells cover the dark depths you must swim at your own pace. It takes time to build stamina. Some days, my arms sliced through the water, and I felt things would be okay, the shore wasn’t so far off. Then one memory, one moment would nearly drown me, and I’d be back to the beginning, fighting to stay above the waves, exhausted, sinking in my own sorrow.

  * * *

  A WEEK LATER, after church, Dad, Mary Louise, and I were picking out pastries in the hall when the blonde approached and regarded him expectantly. He kept glancing from me to her. “Girls,” he finally said, “I’d like you to meet Eleanor. She’s… This is Lily and Mary Louise, her partner in crime.”

  “Nice to meet you. Heard so much about you.” She squeaked like a demented parakeet.

  “Lily?” I heard Dad say. “Are you okay?” I shook my head. He could move on. I would stay with Mom. I remembered her hand, dusted with flour, passing me the beaters covered with chunks of cookie dough; her laugh as I twirled my tongue around the metal, trying to get what I could. I remembered the clown costume she made me for Halloween, her foot on the pedal of the sewing machine, head bent in concentration. I remembered things I could not possibly remember. Mom watching over me as I slept. Mom with a tender expression, patting her enormous belly, me nestled inside. I remembered that I wouldn’t wear the sweater she’d crocheted because it wasn’t store-bought like Tiffany Ivers’s. I remembered the way Mom smiled to hide the hurt. If I could find it, I’d wear the sweater every day.

  * * *

  FOR MY FOURTEENTH birthday, Dad took me to Jeans ’n Things, which was owned by Mrs. Taylor, who sat three pews in front of us and had a brown bouffant. Angel and her friends had designed their own T-shirts with their names printed on the back, and that’s what Dad decided to get me. I was impressed he came up with the idea himself.

  The T-shirts came in five colors; orange was the only one in my size. Next, the decal. Pictures of bunnies, birds, or rock bands. Before, Dad would have checked his watch twenty times, worried about time away from work, but now he examined each one with me.

  “Your mom would have chosen the eagle,” he said, so softly I barely heard.

  That’s what I picked. Mrs. Taylor brought out the velveteen letters—big, medium, and small, and red, black, and blue. He and I felt them all.

  “Your mom took care of the presents. I didn’t realize everything she did.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said, hugging him tight, the way I wished I’d hugged Mom that last day.

  I wore the T-shirt home.

  Odile brought over a cake—chocolat!—and Mary Louise and a few other girls from school watched me blow out the candles. The smoke was still rising when Eleanor Carlson barged in without knocking.

  Scowling, Mary Louise said, “What’s she doing here?”

  “What a nice surprise.” Dad kissed Eleanor Carlson’s cheek.

  “Happy birthday!” she chirped.

  “Lovely to see you.” Odile nudged me.

  “Lovely,” I muttered.

  Mary Louise crossed her arms and wouldn’t say a word.

  Dad and Eleanor Carlson were careful not to touch, careful to stand well apart. But he smiled at her more than he smiled at me, and it was my party. Wanting the day to be done, I horked down the cake and tore open my gifts.

  Afterward, as Mary Louise and I stuffed the paper plates into the trash, Dad brewed a fresh pot of coffee. His girlfriend opened the exact cabinet for the cups. Out of all of them, she chose my mother’s favorite with the dainty blue flowers. Of course she did. Dad didn’t seem surprised.

  Mary Louise took everything in, my pain written on her freckled face. She knew that I’d never used the cup. In a low, fierce tone, she spoke my anger, my hurt, my heart. “That bitch thinks she can just come in here and take anything she likes?”

  Eleanor set the cup and saucer on the counter, then reached for the coffeepot. Mary Louise swiped the porcelain onto the floor, the sound of it shattering at once sad and satisfying. White and blue snowflakes scattered across the linoleum. No one moved. We watched the last piece skitter to a stop under the fridge.

  “You did that on purpose,” Dad shouted at Mary Louise. “Why would you do such a rotten thing?”

  On and on he continued, but she was used to getting bawled out. Eyes half closed to protect from his spittle, she took it stoically.

  Dad’s girlfriend watched, maybe wondering why he was getting all worked up.

  “For heaven’s sake, it’s only a cup!” Eleanor said. Taking the broom and dustpan from behind the door, she swept up my mother’s remains.

  CHAPTER 13

  Odile

  PARIS, AUGUST 1939

  RÉMY PREPARED TO join the army the same way he got ready for school, by slapping some cold water on his face and throwing a few books into a messenger bag. I perched glumly on his bed. Resentment swam between us: I felt that he was abandoning me, and bolting headlong into danger; he was disappointed by my lack of enthusiasm for his plan. I didn’t think he should go; he couldn’t wait to leave.

  “Take a sweater,” I said. “You don’t want to catch a cold.”

  “They’ll supply me with everything I need.”

  Earlier, I’d gone to the bank and withdrawn my seeds of security. “Here,” I said, pressing the francs into his hands.

  “I don’t need your money.”

  “But you’ll have it.”

  “I’ll be late.” He set the bills on the bed.

  I followed him to the entryway, where our parents waited. Maman fussed, straightening Rémy’s collar and asking, “Do you have a clean handkerchief?”

  Papa gave Rémy a brass compass. “From my own army days,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  “Thanks, Papa.” He flung the compass into the air and caught it before slipping it into his pocket. “I’ll show those Krauts.”

  “Promise you’ll write,” I said.

  He kissed my cheeks. “Promise.”

  Bag slung over his back, he bou
nced down the stairs as though he were nipping out to buy a baguette.

  * * *

  AS A PRECAUTION against air raids, the City of Light stayed pitch black at night—no streetlights, no neon lights of the cabarets, no lamps lit in the reading room. Parisians had been advised to carry gas masks. Many people, like my cousins, crammed belongings into their cars and left. Miss Reeder helped distraught compatriots book passages back to America. Teachers curtailed their summer vacations to help evacuate pupils to the country. The calm of the children’s room was chilling.

  Home was quiet, too. This was the first time Rémy and I had been separated for more than four days. Like the sunrise, like the bread on our table, he’d always been there, slurping his café au lait, gurgling after he brushed his teeth, humming while he and I read together. Rémy provided the musical score of my days. Now, life was silent.

  He’d been serene in his choice to join the army, and that should have been some comfort. Instead, I drew my solace from Maman and Papa. Before, Rémy and I had been on one side, our parents on another like we were at the dinner table. Now, we three became united in our worry, in our anxious glances at the empty chair. Rémy hadn’t written.

  “When’s Paul returning from Brittany?” Maman asked. She did her best to smooth over awkward silences.

  I tucked my hand into my pocket and touched his latest letter. He wrote every day, telling me how much he missed me, how many hectares left to harvest.

  I sighed. “Not soon enough.”

  * * *

  IN THE CLOAKROOM, brown leather gas masks—with “The American Library in Paris” printed on the top—slumped against the wall. As I flung mine onto the floor, Bitsi breezed in and chirped a friendly bonjour. I didn’t reply.

  “What are you reading these days?” she asked. “I just finished Emma.”

  “With Rémy away, I’m too distracted to read!”

  “It’s not a competition to see who misses him more,” she said on her way out the door.

  I didn’t know what to say, or rather I had too much to say. How dare you encourage Rémy to enlist? What if he’s in danger?

  Margaret entered and hung her straw hat on a peg. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Bitsi is what’s wrong.”

  Margaret said she’d fix a tea tray and meet me at my desk. “Now, what’s all this about?” she asked as she poured the Darjeeling.

  “Rémy’s always been fragile—the first to catch a cold, the last one picked in gym class. Yet Bitsi encouraged him to put himself in harm’s way. And he didn’t even tell me that he was enlisting.”

  “Is there a reason he didn’t confide in you?”

  Margaret’s eyes were so earnest that I found myself telling her a truth that I just now understood. “He did try to tell me.” My teacup trembled in my hand. “I wish I’d listened. He’s always been there for me, yet the one time he needed me…”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  “I could have talked him out of enlisting.”

  “Perhaps this is something he felt he had to do.”

  “Perhaps.…”

  Margaret gestured to the scene before us. Peter-the-shelver was orienting Helen, the newest member of staff, a reference librarian from Rhode Island with a frizzy bob and dreamy eyes. Gliding along the stacks, the two of them reminisced about New England, 917.4, the most magical place on earth; I’d read enough love stories to know the beginning of one when I saw it.

  Boris approached with a long roll of paper and said we needed to cover the windowpanes to protect against the shattering of glass in case of a bombing.

  “How’s your brother?” he asked as he laid the roll over the table.

  I cut a large swathe. “He still hasn’t written.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “When I joined the army,” Boris said, spreading glue onto the paper with an old paint brush, “we cadets trained so hard that at night we fell into our bunks dead tired. There was no time for correspondence. The sergeant wanted it that way, wanted us to leave our former lives behind.”

  “You’re probably right.…”

  “But it’s hard to be the one left behind.”

  Boris understood. We said little, but much, as we enveloped the Library in darkness. With so many windows, it took two days.

  Then on September 1, the army called up men aged eighteen through thirty-five. Boris, the neighbor boys I’d grown up with, the pasty doctoral students who practically lived in the reference room, the baker who burned the baguettes—all mobilized. Papa asked to keep his police officers in Paris; Paul received a dispensation to keep working on his aunt’s farm—for now.

  Everywhere, I saw evidence that war was imminent: in the army, which had swelled its ranks; in the Herald with its ominous headlines; and on the Library bulletin board, alongside the bestseller list, a newly posted paper embossed with the US embassy seal declared, “In view of the situation prevailing in Europe, it is advisable that American citizens return to the United States.”

  Would Miss Reeder follow the embassy’s directive? What if the British ambassador issued a similar statement and I lost Margaret?

  I ran past the card catalog, where Aunt Caro had introduced me to Dewey and a whole constellation; past the stacks where Paul and I had first kissed; past the back room where Margaret and I had become friends, to Miss Reeder’s office.

  The Directress swiveled slightly in her chair, pen in hand, her attention on the documents spread over her desk. The aroma of her coffee filled the air. There were no boxes, no sign of packing. She was here. As long as she was here, everything would be all right. My panic receded, and I took a slow, deep breath.

  “You’re not going home?” I asked.

  “Home?”

  “You’re not leaving?”

  Her brows came together, and she regarded me quizzically, as if the thought had never occurred to her. Miss Reeder replied, “I am home.”

  1 September 1939

  Dearest Paul,

  I miss you so, I want to feel your arms around my waist, your whisper of reassurance at my temple. My chest has ached since Rémy enlisted. I hate how I left things with him. When you return, things will be better.

  Since most local men have been mobilized, your aunt surely needs you now more than ever, but I need you, too, and count the days until you come back.

  All my love,

  your prickly librarian

  * * *

  I COULDN’T ESCAPE THE fact that Rémy had a new confidante, but I could escape her by remaining in the periodical room as much as possible. Today as always, I was buoyed by seeing my habitués. Swathed in a purple shawl, Professor Cohen sighed over a beautiful passage of Voyage in the Dark. Beside her, Madame Simon’s dentures clicked as she swooned over the fashion in Harper’s Bazaar. Across from them, M. de Nerciat and Mr. Pryce-Jones bantered.

  “The best whisky’s made in Scotland,” the Englishman said. “I’m half Scotch myself.”

  “Yes, I know,” the Frenchman murmured. “And the other half is soda.”

  “Glendronach is the best!”

  Never willing to admit that Great Britain produced anything of value, the Frenchman argued, “George Dickel out of Tennessee is the finest.”

  “A taste test is the way to find out who’s right,” I told them.

  “Odile, you’re ingenious!”

  Bitsi sidled up to me. “My brother was called up,” she said. “He left yesterday.”

  “Mine left weeks ago,” I said. “But then you knew all about it, didn’t you?”

  “Rémy would have been called up anyway.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I snarled.

  Subscribers gaped in surprise. “We’re all worried,” Professor Cohen soothed.

  Turning away from Bitsi, I opened the Herald and read the editorial: “For all the present anxiety, a great war may never come. Certainly no one, with the possibility of Herr Hitler, c
an say that it will.” I didn’t realize I’d said the words aloud until I saw Mme. Simon grimace.

  “What war?” she tittered. “Europe is tired, no one wants to fight.”

  “You’re delusional,” Professor Cohen said. “Children fight over toys, men over territory.”

  “Let’s not think about that right now,” said M. de Nerciat, eyeing me worriedly. He nabbed the Herald and opened to the society pages, where two full columns announced the news of Paris’s American Colony. “ ‘Mr. Eli Grombecker, of New York, flew to Europe on the Clipper. Mr. and Mrs. E. Bromund, of Chicago, among those who visited Berlin recently, are at Le Bristol. Mrs. Minnie K. Oppenheimer and Miss Ruth Oppenheimer, of Miami, are at the Continental.’ ”

  “War won’t stop socialites from shopping,” Mr. Pryce-Jones said.

  “And the news from the British Colony,” M. de Nerciat continued, “ ‘the Maharaja of Tripuria and the Yuvaranee of Baria are at the George V. The Countess of Abingdon joined the Earl at Le Prince de Galles.’ ”

  My habitués and I laughed. The socialites took themselves so seriously, but allowed us to briefly forget the tense political situation.

  After work, I went home, hoping for a letter from Rémy, but the tray on the entryway table remained empty. I heard voices in the sitting room and peeked in—Paul! Seeing me, he jumped up. Aware of my parents, I allowed my hand to briefly settle on his upper arm as he gave me a peck on the cheek.

  On the divan, twenty centimeters apart, I whispered, “I missed you.”

  “I missed you more. You had your habitués for company. Aside from my aunt, I had cows, chickens, and goats.”

  “One could argue that Mr. Pryce-Jones is a stubborn old goat.”

  “Yes, but he’s never bitten you!”

  My father regarded us with smug benevolence. “I knew Paul was the one for you.”