Lost in Paris

by Elizabeth Thompson

  Finally, she closed my book and slid it across the desk. Her gaze raked over me, a slow meander from the top of my head to my feet.

  I was determined to let her speak first. Then, fearing I would appear dumb if I remained mute, I blurted my excitement at having a chance to prove myself.

  Then, merely trying to lighten the mood, I added that I would always arrive to work on time.

  The look on her face made me wish I had remained silent. But she had already moved on, demanding to know where I’d gotten the suit I was wearing.

  I was thrilled she’d noticed.

  I told her I’d made it specially for the interview. I was so inspired by Mademoiselle Chanel’s creations that I had re-created the design to demonstrate my skills.

  Madame rose from her desk. She picked up my arm and examined the hem of the sleeve. She yanked open the jacket and examined the lining, scrutinized the collar.

  She muttered about my quality work. For a moment I thought I was hired. Then she accused me of stealing the design from Mademoiselle Chanel.

  I was so confused I laughed. The charge was so absurd I expected Madame to laugh, too, but she didn’t.

  My heart pounded as I struggled to understand how something I had sewn to showcase my talent, something Madame had conceded was quality work, made me a thief.

  I removed the jacket and told her she could have it. I had never stolen anything from anyone. I simply wanted to prove my capability.

  Madame shooed it away, saying I’d demonstrated what I was capable of and it was nothing Mademoiselle Chanel wanted for her atelier.

  Then she told me about another designer who’d stolen Chanel’s designs and how Mademoiselle had pushed her into a flaming candelabra and set her clothes on fire.

  A menacing grin lurked at the corners of Madame’s lips as she told me to imagine what Mademoiselle would do to a brazen nobody who had waltzed into her atelier attempting to pass off a filched Chanel suit as her own.

  I started to defend myself, but Madame told me to get out and never return.

  I gathered my sketchbook and ran from the office. The sewing machines hummed, but the workers were as demure as the dressmakers’ dummies scattered about the studio. The smell of desperation hung so thick in the air it seemed capable of oozing down the walls.

  As I walked toward the door, Madame said I should notice not one person in the room was wearing a Chanel design.

  The sewing machines stopped then, and I felt the weight of every gaze on me. I turned to Madame and said I couldn’t tell what they were wearing because their clothing was hidden by ugly grey smocks and frankly grey wasn’t my color.

  I left the way I’d entered, with my head held high, consoling myself that I was meant to work somewhere I would be valued, where my talent wouldn’t be set ablaze.

  Four

  December 31, 2018—8:45 p.m.

  London, England

  I undo the clasp of the envelope Marla handed me and peer inside. It contains several papers.

  “Go on.” Marla points at the bundle with her nose.

  I pull out something that looks like a certificate—a deed, maybe? But the writing is in French. A yellowed business card, also in French, is paper-clipped to the upper left corner.

  The envelope clunks when I drop it onto the island. There’s something else inside, something metal and weighty. I upend it, and a large old-fashioned brass key clatters onto the island’s marble top.

  I look at Marla for an explanation. “Okay, I give up. What is this?”

  “I found it when I was cleaning out Gram’s attic. This was in Granny Ivy’s cedar chest. There’s other stuff that belonged to her, but this is the most important.”

  Granny Ivy was Gram’s mother. My great-grandmother, Marla’s grandmother, who lived to be eighty-nine years old. I was only six when she died, but as she used to sew my school clothes, she would reminisce about life in England, where she was born and raised. I don’t remember much of what she said, but I like to believe her early influence had something to do with the Anglophile I am today.

  Ivy lived with Gram after Ivy’s husband, Tom, passed away, so it makes sense that some of her stuff was relegated to the attic after she passed. That would make it part of Gram’s modest estate, which mostly consisted of her three-bedroom, one-bath College Park bungalow and its contents. It’s the house where I spent most of my time when I was growing up. The only place where I knew safety and stability.

  For sentimental reasons, I’d love to keep the house, but Marla made it clear that I’d have to buy her out. She needs money, not memories. Her relationship with her personal finances is about as good as her situation with me. She’s always been reckless and impulsive, living for today without a single thought for the future. Maybe that’s because she allows her boyfriends to piss away what little cash she manages to save up.

  “I still don’t understand what this is,” I say.

  “Remember Patrick Sterling? Gram’s attorney?” Marla asks.

  “Of course I do.” He’s the lawyer who handled Gram’s will. Marla and I met with him when I was in Orlando.

  “I took it to him, and he said it’s the deed to an apartment in Paris in Granny Ivy’s name. But he says it’s ours now.”

  I practically snort my tea.

  “What?” I set down my cup and take a closer look at the certificate. Among French words that I don’t understand, I see the name Ivy Braithwaite.

  “Mr. Sterling verified this?”

  Marla nods and shows me a piece of paper I didn’t realize she was holding.

  “He looked into it last week and said the French lawyer whose name is on that business card died twenty years ago. But Patrick got in touch with another lawyer from the same firm who will help us. His name is Emile Levesque.”

  “So this is real?” I ask.

  “It appears that way.”

  “But wait—” I look at the deed again. “When did Granny Ivy come to the States?”

  “I don’t know. Mom was born in Florida in December 1940.”

  “Does that mean this place has been sitting vacant since before the war broke out? Or has someone been living there?”

  I squint at Marla. She shrugs. “I don’t know, Hannah. I’d like to go to Paris and check it out and I’d like for you to come with me. That’s the big reason I’m here.”

  I hear her, but I don’t answer her, because I still can’t quite wrap my mind around it.

  “I don’t remember Granny Ivy or Gram mentioning an apartment in Paris. Wouldn’t one of them have told us about it? This just doesn’t make sense.”

  “Patrick and the French lawyer say the title is still in her name, and as Gram was her next of kin, it went to her. As per Gram’s will, everything passes to us. Of course, he did mention that we have to pay a pretty hefty inheritance tax.”

  Oh. Okay. Now I see where this is going. With Marla, it always comes down to money.

  “So, you’re wanting us to sell the place?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I mean, we haven’t even seen it yet. And it’s… Paris. You know?”

  “Marla, I don’t have money to cover the taxes, if that’s why you’re here.”

  Though, since we’ve jointly inherited the place, technically I’m only responsible for half.

  She holds up her hand like a traffic cop. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. Eventually we’ll have to pay, but Patrick said we have time. Didn’t you say you’re on vacation soon?”

  I mentioned that when we spoke last week. Why is it that she remembers only the things I want her to forget?

  I don’t answer her. I sit stock-still, staring at the papers in front of me.

  “Come to Paris with me, Hannah. It’ll be an adventure.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on. Live a little. Think of it as a treasure hunt with a guaranteed prize. We have the deed right here. At the very least it’s a free place to stay. How can you say no?”

  “What
if someone is living in the apartment? We have no idea what we’re walking into.”

  “That’s why I want you to come with me. I’m afraid to go by myself.”

  I roll my eyes.

  So much for adventure. She wants a bodyguard.

  “Maybe we could ask the French lawyer to check it out for us,” I suggest.

  “At a rate of three hundred euros an hour?”

  “Well, it’s either that or you can walk into the situation blindly.”

  “Or you can come to Paris with me.” Pleadingly, she clasps her hands together over her breastbone.

  I close my eyes as I feel my quiet, cozy vacation slipping out of my grasp. I open them again, only to see Marla’s puppy dog gaze looking back at me.

  And her shiner, which makes my heart hurt.

  “We’re in this together, Hannah. We jointly inherited the place. I know this is sudden, but you kind of need to come with me.”

  Excuse me?

  “Unless you want to sign away your rights to the place and be done with it?” She smiles.

  “Nice try, Marla. Look, I love the idea of spontaneously jetting off to France, but I can’t. It’s not practical. Not right now.”

  She scoffs. “We don’t have to fly. Paris is practically in your backyard. Let’s take the Chunnel. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

  She’s right. Paris is practically in my backyard. It takes less than two and a half hours to travel via train. I visited the city when I did my study abroad semester years ago, but I haven’t been back since, and I’ve never taken the Chunnel.

  I glance down at the certificate or deed or whatever it is that Marla has presented along with her word that this apartment in Paris now belongs to us. I realize that’s all I have to go on at this point.

  It’s New Year’s Eve. The law offices—of both Patrick Sterling and our French connection—will likely be closed tomorrow and possibly a few days thereafter.

  “I want to wait until I can talk to Mr. Levesque before we go off half-cocked.”

  I pick up the brass key. It’s ornate and looks more like a decoration than our all-access pass into the world of French real estate. Who knows—if someone has been squatting all these years, they’ve probably changed the locks.

  “Wait a minute.” A possible snag stops me midthought. “What about property taxes or fees or whatever the French equivalent is? I wonder if Ivy paid them? If not, maybe the government foreclosed.”

  “I’m glad you reminded me. Patrick asked the French lawyer about that. Hold on—let me get my purse. I had him write it down so that I’d get it exactly right.”

  She pushes back from the island and clicks off into the living room on her high heels, returning a moment later with her bag, a quilted designer tote that looks about as authentic as her red Chanel sunglasses. I wonder if she bought them from the same corner vendor. She sits down, pulls out another envelope, and extracts a folded paper. I see it’s a piece of letterhead stationery with something typed on it.

  Marla pulls out a pair of readers and carefully pushes them onto the bridge of her nose, wincing when they settle into place. The glasses draw attention to the bruise. I don’t want to look but I can’t help it.

  Despite everything, the eggplant-and-merlot-colored contusion makes me feel bad for her. How someone could leave a mark on another person is beyond me. She may have been an absentee mother, but she never laid a hand on me… despite the way her boyfriends manhandled her.

  “Okay, it says here that someone set up an annuity to cover the cost of taxes, and the French attorney confirmed that it’s all up-to-date. All we owe is inheritance taxes. He says it’s unclear whether inheritance taxes are based on current market value or the last sale price. The French law office can assist us with that, but we still need to get the property appraised. Oh, and I forgot there was this, too.”

  She reaches inside the neckline of her blouse and pulls out a gold chain. When she holds out the charm, I see it’s a delicate gold ring with a small red stone.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “It’s a ruby ring.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “It was with the papers and key. The chain is mine, but the ring is too small to put on my finger. I put it here so I wouldn’t lose it. I’d like to keep it if you don’t mind. I mean, you did say I could keep any of the crap that was left in Mom’s attic since I was the one left to clean it out.”

  She says it in such an offhanded manner it makes me choke out a little bubble of humorless laughter.

  She looks offended. “What’s so funny?”

  I shake my head. I can see from here the ring isn’t crap. But we did agree she could keep what she found. I hope she doesn’t try to pull that with the apartment. “We can’t afford to pay inheritance taxes.”

  “Yes we can,” she says with a smile. “When we sell Gram’s house in Florida, we’ll use the money from the sale to cover it.”

  Perhaps it will be enough, but I suspect it won’t be quite so easy. “Did you ever hear Granny Ivy mention an apartment in Paris?” I repeat.

  Marla shakes her head. “Then again, I wasn’t around a lot when Granny Ivy moved in with Gram after Grandpa Tom died. I was hoping maybe you’d heard her mention something about it.”

  I shake my head. “No, I was pretty young when she died. All I know about her past is that she was living in the UK in Bristol when the war broke out. She met Great-Grandpa Tom, who was in the US Air Force. They got married and he sent her back to the States to keep her out of harm’s way.”

  Marla is fishing in the envelope. I have a feeling she’s not listening.

  “Here,” Marla says. “This. It was in the trunk, too.”

  She hands me a yellowed newspaper clipping. The text is in French, but I recognize the name Andres Armand, the famous French writer who was part of the Gertrude Stein interwar expat scene.

  “So, I googled him,” Marla says. “The guy in the article. What’s his name?” Marla nods to the brittle newspaper clipping in my hand.

  “Andres Armand,” I say.

  She nods. “Apparently, he was sort of a hotshot French writer of the time. Have you heard of him?”

  “Of course I have.” I start to say, Haven’t you? But obviously she hasn’t. There’s no reason to embarrass her. Then again, not much fazes Marla, so I’d probably come off looking like an asshat.

  I have a limited grasp of the French language, but it seems like the article might be about Andres Armand’s death.

  I get my phone and pull up a French-to-English translation page and begin typing in the first few lines.

  “I was right,” I say aloud.

  “About what?”

  “This article is a death announcement. Armand was killed toward the beginning of World War II. This is a story about them finding his body. Apparently he died working for the resistance.”

  I study the picture at the top of the article. I’d seen his photo many times, but I’d never really looked at him. Armand was a handsome man.

  “This was with the deed?” I ask.

  Marla nods. “I brought everything that was with it.”

  On a whim, I close out of the translator program and search Andres Armand and Gertrude Stein. Dozens of pages appear. The teaser for the top article reads, “The Winds of Change—Novel by Stein Protégé Andres Armand Paints Vivid Portrait of Prewar Paris Life.”

  I know about Andres Armand, but I have to admit I’m not an expert on his work. He’s not as well-known as Hemingway or Fitzgerald or one of the American expats that are required reading for every American high schooler.

  “I wonder why Granny Ivy saved the clipping with the apartment documents. Was there anything else besides what you’ve shown me?”

  Marla shakes her head.

  “Maybe she put it with the deed because she wanted to keep all the French stuff together?”

  “Maybe,” I say. “But why? What did it mean to her?”

  It’s just an article c
lipped from a French newspaper. In fact, it may not have meant anything to my great-grandmother.

  Ivy had been a reader. Maybe she read Armand. Maybe she was going through an Armand phase at the time of his death, much the same way that I collected Jane Austen memorabilia when I first moved to England. It didn’t mean anything except that I enjoyed Austen’s work.

  “Do you have anything to eat?” Marla asks. “I’m starving.”

  She gets up and starts opening cabinet doors, setting her sights on an unopened package of Biscoff cookies.

  “Put those back,” I say. “They’re not mine.”

  She makes a face and begins to tear open the wrapper. “I’ll replace them.”

  She won’t. The casual promise—tossed out so nonchalantly it’s in the wind the moment it leaves her lips—is one of Marla’s greatest hits.

  She knows she can get away with it. That’s why she does it.

  I add Biscoff cookies to my mental grocery list as she stands with one hip cocked against the counter, chomping biscuits with abandon.

  I hear the front door open and shut. Cressida and T are back, and they’re uncharacteristically silent.

  “It’s safe to come in,” I call, relieved that they’re home.

  I begin stuffing the Paris paraphernalia back into the envelope because I’m not quite sure how to explain it to them. It still feels a bit fantastical, as if any moment Marla is going to laugh and say, “Just kidding. I really had you going, didn’t I?”

  “How is everyone?” Cressida asks as if she’s walking into a hostage situation.

  Tallulah looks just as tentative.

  “We’re fine,” I say. “Come in. Want some tea?”

  “She’s a tough nut.” Marla nods in my direction and rolls her eyes. “I still haven’t convinced her to come with me. I mean, who needs to be convinced to go to Paris?”

  Marla told my friends about the apartment before she talked to me? Why should I be surprised?

  I console myself with the reality that if it does pan out, we’ll probably end up selling the place and be done with it.

  “It’s like this,” Marla says. “In Orlando, if you travel three hours north, you’re in Jacksonville. Three hours south and you’re in Clewiston. But from London, you invest the same travel time and you’re right smack in the middle of oh là là.”