The Paris Library

by Janet Skeslien Charles

  She’d never gone back to France, never mentioned her parents or aunts and uncles or cousins. Odile had forsaken her whole family—it wouldn’t be hard to leave me behind.

  On Saturday afternoon, Iron-Collar’s car pulled up to the curb. I opened my window and ducked down so no one would see me spying. He and Odile spoke amiably on her porch about the food-pantry fund-raiser. The minute he mentioned me, she backed into her house.

  * * *

  LIFE WENT ON without Odile. I began my junior year without our French lessons. I hadn’t suffered such a loss since my mother had died. But Mom hadn’t had a choice. Odile chose to stay away. Trudging home from school, I passed her house. The curtains were closed. I knew if I tried the door, it would be locked.

  * * *

  AT LUNCHTIME, Mary Louise and Keith made out under the bleachers, which left me alone in the cafeteria. Tiffany Ivers slithered over. “Bet your stepmother can’t wait until you graduate and you’re out of her hair.”

  Tiffany picked on John Brady because his father was the custodian; she got everyone to call Mary Matthews “Pepperoni Pizza” because of her acne. I was the only kid at school with a stepmom. Divorce was a big-city problem, and the death of a mother so young was thankfully rare. I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what I had.

  “Know how to say ‘stepmom’ in French?” I asked.

  She stared at me, dull eyes half-hidden by her foofy bangs. Why had I spent years comparing my luck to hers, my looks to hers? I remembered the sweater Mom had crocheted, how I’d cared more about Tiffany Ivers’s opinion than I had about my mother’s feelings.

  “Belle mère,” I said. “It means beautiful mother.”

  “Is that supposed to be French? Sounds like you have some kind of speech impediment.”

  A few years ago, this would have made me bawl. Now I knew that people who said cruel things should be cut from your life. I walked out. Away from her bitchy comments, from her narrow mind, I felt stronger.

  Even in her silence, Odile taught me.

  * * *

  AT 7:33 A.M. on Saturday, I awoke to the screech of Scooby-Doo. “People are trying to sleep,” I yelled down the hall.

  “Okee-dokey,” Joe yelled back, and lowered the volume half a notch.

  Joe and Benjy, Benjy and Joe. I loved them, but they drove me crazy. Every time I sat down, Benjy grabbed at my waist and hoisted himself onto my lap. If our house had a chorus, it was “Joe, sweetie, will you get your finger out of your nose? Joe, take that finger out of your nose this minute. Get that finger out! Right now!” God, I missed Odile. There wasn’t a moment that I wasn’t aware of what I’d lost, what I’d thrown away by being reckless and selfish.

  Eleanor peeked in my room. “Why don’t you and I take a drive?” she said. “We’ll put that learner’s permit to use.”

  “What about the boys?” We never went anywhere without them. We never went anywhere, period.

  “It won’t kill your father to watch them. Just us girls today. We’ll go to Good Hope.”

  I loved the feel of the steering wheel gripped in my hands, the purr of the car as I hit the gas, the long stretches of pasture, the cows that watched us fly by. I loved that as we approached the city there was more than one radio station. I loved getting away from school, from the boys, from how I’d hurt Odile.

  Good Hope had thirty thousand inhabitants. Right before we hit the city limits, I eased onto the shoulder so Eleanor could drive. We passed a Dairy Queen and a Best Western, chains that existed in the rest of the world. Froid had stop signs that no one stopped at; Good Hope had actual red lights. The sidewalks were twice as wide as ours, and drivers had to pay to park. We stopped right in front of the grandest department store in Montana, The Bon. That’s French for “good.” Five stories of blond bricks glimmered in the sun. Even the doors were grand, brass and glass without a single smudge. Inside, we were met by the scent of Wind Song. Islands of cosmetics beckoned. Eleanor guided me to the Clinique counter, where the saleswoman wore a long white jacket, like a doctor, like someone we could trust. She drew several shades of lipstick on her wrist. They resembled swatches of silk. The three of us considered them carefully, as if we were selecting drapes for the governor’s mansion.

  We settled on Perfect Peach, and Eleanor got out her checkbook.

  “Aren’t you going to get anything?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You deserve something nice.”

  “We’ll see.” She was embarrassed, but I couldn’t understand why. She was a married lady. It was her money, too. Wasn’t it?

  I dug my heels in. “We drove all this way.”

  Eleanor let herself be convinced. She got a silver tube of Pale Poppies. And she looked radiant.

  In the Mezzanine Bistro, which looked onto the ground floor, we chose a table next to the Plexiglas edge so we could people-watch as if we were in a Parisian café. After we ordered, I saw an elegant saleslady hitch up her stockings when she thought no one was looking.

  When the waiter set down Eleanor’s club sandwich and my French dip, she asked, “Are you having a good day?”

  “Mais oui,” I said, dipping my sandwich in the jus.

  After lunch, Ellie and I washed our hands in the ladies’ room. In front of the mirror, we puckered up and reapplied our lipsticks. It was the closest I’d ever felt to her. If we were French, this would be the moment I moved from the formal vous to the informal tu.

  We got in the station wagon, and she drove us out of the city. The rock music on the radio disintegrated, and Ellie rolled the dial to our local country station. The Froid water tower, “water castle” en français, came onto le horizon.

  Easing onto our street, we saw the fire truck. Hard to tell from five blocks away, but it appeared to be parked in front of our house. “The boys!” I gasped. Ellie sped up. The one day we were gone… Had Joe somehow found the matches in the drawer? Please let them be okay, I prayed.

  The truck was at Odile’s. Wisps of smoke wafted from her window. A fireman tugged a deflated hose away from her house. Ellie hit the brakes, and we jumped out. Neighbors gathered on the sidewalk, where we found Odile slumped on the curb. Mrs. Ivers wrapped a quilt around Odile, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “What happened?” Ellie asked the fire chief.

  “Kitchen fire,” he replied. “Something left in the oven.”

  “Professor Cohen’s cookies,” Odile said. “I think of her more and more. It was my fault.”

  “These things happen,” Ellie soothed. We squatted down on either side of Odile.

  “My fault,” she insisted.

  “You didn’t mean to,” I said.

  Odile looked at me. I was so happy, I didn’t even care that she stared, eyes wide like I was a stranger.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  I swallowed. “No, I’m the one…” There were so many things I wanted to say. I love you. Your forgiveness means everything to me. I’m still sorry.

  “Why don’t you come to our place?” Ellie said.

  I walked her to our house, to my room, where she lay down.

  “Do you want me to go?” I asked.

  “Sit down.” She patted the bed. “I want you to know. There are things that happened during the war that no one talks about, not even today. Things so shameful we buried them in a secret cemetery, then forever abandoned the graves.”

  Her hand hugging mine, she introduced her cast of characters. Dear Maman and down-to-earth Eugénie. Blustery Papa. Rémy, the mischievous twin I would see every time I looked at Odile. His girl, Bitsi, the brave librarian. Paul, so handsome, I fell in love with him, too. Margaret, every bit as fun as Mary Louise. Miss Reeder, the Countess, and Boris, the heart and soul and life of the Library. People I would never know, would never forget. They’d lived in Odile’s memory, and now they lived in mine.

  By the time she finished, I felt the story was a book I’d read, a part of me forever. When the Nazis entered the Library, I s
huddered in the stacks. Delivering books to Professor Cohen, I tripped on the cobblestones, frightened that the Nazis would learn of my mission. As food grew scarce, my stomach rumbled and my temper flared. I read those terrible letters and didn’t know what to do.

  “You were brave,” I told Odile. “Keeping the Library open and making sure all people could check out books.”

  She sighed. “I merely did the minimum.”

  “Le minimum? What you did was amazing. You gave subscribers hope. You showed that during the worst of times, people were still good. You saved books and people. You risked your life to defy the fricking Nazis. That’s huge.”

  “If I could go back, I would do more.”

  “You saved people by hiding those letters.”

  “If I’d destroyed all the crow letters the first time I saw them, more lives could have been saved. It took me too long to understand what needed to be done. I was too worried about being caught.”

  I wanted to keep arguing, but her eyes fluttered shut.

  * * *

  OVER DINNER, WHILE Odile dozed, Ellie and Dad decided she would stay with us while her kitchen was remodeled, then went on to talk about this and that. I couldn’t stop thinking about the crow letters. Though I liked to think I wouldn’t have arrested innocent people, I’d proven that I was capable of believing blindly and lashing out. Watching Dad eat his beans, I noticed that his hair was turning gray. I wondered what worries kept him up at night, what he’d be willing to do in order to protect his family. I went through Odile’s story again, feeling that something didn’t add up.

  Each summer, Grandma Jo and I had spent afternoons sipping lemonade on her screened porch. Her passion was jigsaw puzzles. Sprinkling the pieces on her table, we reconstructed blue skies over Bavarian castles. Since we were marooned in the middle of wheat fields, those fragmented photos were my first look at the outside world. Grandma’s puzzle habit—two a week—got expensive, so Mom bought them secondhand. The pro: cheap. The con: hours spent on a puzzle only to find pieces were missing, lost long before the church rummage sale.

  It had been a while since I’d felt the frustration of an incomplete puzzle, but I recognized the feeling now. An element of Odile’s story was missing. A part of the frame or one of the corners. If Odile loved Paul, why had she married someone else?

  CHAPTER 40

  Odile

  PARIS, AUGUST 1944

  THE ALLIES ARE getting closer. The news rolled down the rue de Rennes, it lingered in side streets. It whispered along the paths of Père Lachaise and made it to the Moulin Rouge. They’re getting closer. The news clambered up the steps of the metro and bounced over the white pebbles of the courtyard to the circulation desk. We’d heard that the Allies had landed on the beaches of Normandy over two months ago, so where were they? The press—full of propaganda—was no help. We depended on word of mouth.

  “The Allies must be getting closer,” Boris told me as we checked out books.

  “I’ve seen Germans packing their vehicles in front of Occupied hotels.”

  “Vacancy signs will soon be up!” Boris replied.

  Mr. Pryce-Jones, shaky from his time in the internment camp, leaned on a cane as he crossed the threshold. He’d been released three weeks ago; M. de Nerciat followed close behind, hands held out, worried his friend would fall.

  “I shouldn’t be back in Paris,” Mr. Pryce-Jones muttered. “Not when others remain imprisoned. And did you have to use my age as a pretext to get me out?”

  “No, my dear fellow, I could have told them you were feebleminded.”

  I hid my smile behind The Turn of the Screw, 813. Some things hadn’t changed.

  “Where are the Allies?” M. de Nerciat asked.

  “They must be on their way,” Boris said.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Margaret, who was returning after a week of nursing her daughter through a bout of the mumps. When Margaret arrived after lunch, I barely recognized her. The brim of a new white hat hid her eyes, and the matching silk dress was as snowy as a christening gown. It’s chic to be shabby, I reminded myself as I ran a hand over my worn belt.

  “That thing’s more notches than leather,” she said as she joined me at my desk. “Let me offer you an outfit.”

  “No,” I said, more sharply than I intended. Everyone knew what clothes like Margaret’s meant. Paul called the women who slept with Soldaten “stuffed mattresses.” But perhaps I was being unfair. She’d always had beautiful clothing—I’d worn many of her things myself. The new ensemble wasn’t necessarily from her lover.

  “What did I miss?” she asked.

  “They say the Allies will get here any day!”

  I expected her to be thrilled like the rest of us, but she merely said, “Oh.”

  Bitsi came to say hello, my grandmother’s pearly opal on her finger. When my parents had discussed giving the heirloom to Bitsi, I insisted. I wanted her to have it, to know we considered her family. I’d even showed her Rémy’s and my secret place. Among the crumpled handkerchiefs and dust bunnies, we lay together, me clutching his toy soldier, she his favorite book, Of Mice and Men. I’d grown up believing that love lasted until a mistress tore a couple apart, but Bitsi had proven that not even death could destroy true love. In that dark womb, we sobbed, our tears welding us together as sisters more than any wedding ever could.

  I’d received a letter from one of Rémy’s friends and handed it to Bitsi to read.

  Dear Odile,

  We called your brother “Judge” because he’s the one we went to to settle our disputes. I even fashioned him a gavel with a rock, twig, and a length of twine. Stuck here, far from home, we’re frustrated and angry. Bored and hungry. Don’t take much to set someone off. “Judge,” I’d say, “is your court in session? Louis won’t stop taking the Lord’s name in vain. It tears Jean-Charles up, and he done tore into Louis.” Our arguments may seem petty, but the Judge took each one seriously and managed to soothe men who’d reached the end of a frazzled rope. We miss him.

  Faithfully yours,

  Marcel Danez

  Seeing Bitsi’s expression brighten as she read, I insisted that she keep the letter. Marcel’s tribute meant the world to me, but she meant more. She held the scrap of paper to her heart and made her way to the children’s room.

  Watching her go, Margaret hissed, “That hair of hers resembles a crown of thorns! Little Bitsi will tire of the role of weepy widow, and take a beau.”

  Her insinuation—that Bitsi’s grief for Rémy was an act—hit me like a fist. I couldn’t bear that idea that Bitsi would forget my brother. My chest hurt so much I could barely breathe. I rushed from the room. If I’d slowed down, if I’d stopped to think, I would have remembered a time when Bitsi’s virtue had made me feel tarnished, too; Margaret’s scorn was less about Bitsi and more about her own shame.

  When Boris saw me leave, he said, “Are you sure about leaving Margaret on her own in the reference room?”

  “Believe me, she thinks she has all the answers!”

  “She’s been a good friend to you and the Library.”

  “Why are you taking her side?”

  He winced. “Just go.”

  I needed to talk to someone who understood. At the precinct, Paul offered me his chair.

  “You wouldn’t believe what Margaret said.”

  “It’s the war. We all say—and do—things we regret.” He rarely referred to the past. My refusal to deliver books that one time. His arrest of Professor Cohen. The way we’d romped in the sheets of the departed. It was the only way we could continue as a couple.

  “I know.”

  “Life will go back to normal.”

  “We’ve said that for years. What if this is normal?”

  “Nothing lasts forever,” he said, gently massaging my back.

  “Last week, when I told Margaret that Maman went to the butcher’s at dawn, and there were already ten housewives in line, she said, ‘Why doesn’t she buy from the black market?’ Wit
h what money, I’d like to know. Anyway, all her food comes from Fe—”

  I stopped myself. No, no, no, you always do this. Not this time. Keep your mouth shut!

  “What were you going to say?” he asked.

  I exhaled. “Nothing.”

  “Margaret’s a nice type,” Paul said, “for an English girl, I mean.”

  “Nice? She insinuated that Bitsi was pretending to mourn.”

  “People speak without thinking. I’m sure she didn’t mean any harm.”

  He wouldn’t rush to defend her if he knew about her Nazi. Margaret had it easy. All she had to do was snap her bony fingers, and she had parties, couture, jewelry, and trips to the seaside.

  “She insinuated that Bitsi will take a lover.”

  “Of course, Bitsi will always love your brother, but maybe someday—”

  “Maybe someday?” I said sharply. “She’ll never forget Rémy. Never! Not everyone’s a slut like Margaret.”

  Paul’s hands stilled on my shoulders. “You don’t mean that.”

  How could he believe the worst of Bitsi, but the best of Margaret?

  “You don’t mean that,” he said again.

  I turned to face him and took cruel pleasure in saying, “She has a German lover.”

  My claim floated in the air between us, the space of a breath.

  Paul’s lips curled in distaste. “Slut!”

  With his echo of my word, I realized I’d let my temper get the best of me. I had to be more careful and less judgmental.

  “I shouldn’t have said what I did. You were right, you always are. She’s nice, so good to my family. Thanks to her, Rémy always had food. At the Library, I don’t know what we’d do without her. She’s there now, doing my job.”

  “Harlots like her will get what’s coming to them.”

  “Please don’t talk like that. Her husband’s a cad. She deserves better. You’re right, people speak without thinking, like I did just now. Please promise you won’t tell.”