Lost in Paris

by Elizabeth Thompson

  “How so?”

  I tell him about hiring Marla.

  “My mother and I have a complicated history, but she’s proving she really wants to make things right. Am I stupid for trusting her?”

  “I’m sensing trust doesn’t come easily to you.”

  “Trust and I have a fraught relationship. But I won’t bore you with that.”

  “You wouldn’t be boring me,” he says. “I’d really like to hear about it. I want to know more about what makes you… you.”

  I don’t quite know where to start or whether I should laugh it off and steer the conversation in another direction.

  “Do you really want to know what makes me the damaged person I am?”

  I cringe. The words sounded much better in my head and that’s exactly why I’d rather not get into it—

  “I really do want to know.” He smiles and reaches for my hand. “Don’t think of it as damage. Think of it as texture.”

  I take a deep breath and jump off the high dive before I can chicken out.

  “Basically, my grandmother raised me. I’m just discovering that my great-grandmother—her mom—had this secret life no one knew about. It’s weird. You live with someone and you think you know them. Then you find out there was a secret side to them you never knew at all. That they were keeping something this big. I don’t even know what I think about it yet. Add to that the fact that I’ve never known my father. And I spent a lot of years with someone once, but he… he—”

  The word gets stuck behind the lump in my throat.

  “Let’s just say things didn’t work out…”

  “Hannah, I’m sorry.”

  “No, don’t be. It was for the best. We dated for three years and one night our conversation meandered down the dreaded where-is-this-relationship-going path and he told me he didn’t see a future for us. He said I’d helped him realize that he never wanted to get married. So we broke up. It was amiable and very adult. There wasn’t a big fight. I didn’t cause a scene or create a lot of drama. It was like one day we were a couple and I thought we were heading for forever, and the next I discovered that he wanted something completely different than I did. I was sad, of course, because I loved him. He said he still loved me, but there was no sense in dragging out the inevitable.”

  “Do you still talk to him?”

  “Oh no. Here’s the kicker. He ended up marrying someone else less than a year later. And he had the audacity to invite me to the wedding.”

  I hope my laugh doesn’t sound bitter.

  It’s hard to read Aiden’s expression. I hope I haven’t overshared, but I feel like I have. I hate feeling this exposed. I glance at my watch. “Oh, look at the time. It’s been a lovely evening, but I need to go. Aiden, thank you.”

  I stand to leave. I realize we are the only two left in the restaurant besides servers and other staff.

  “Let me take you home.”

  “No. Thank you, but I’ll be fine. Get me a quote for the food for the tour dinner and I’ll see if it works with our budget.”

  He hesitates. “I won’t let you down, Hannah.”

  I’m not sure if he’s talking personally or professionally, but I want it to be both, and my neediness makes me want to run as fast as I can.

  When I get home around midnight, Marla is nowhere to be found. I wonder where she’s gone, but I’m too tired to text.

  Either Cressida or Tallu comes in around 2:00. The other comes in about forty-five minutes later.

  Even after they’ve settled in, there’s still no sign of Marla. I lie awake, thinking about the heartbreak she has suffered in her own right. What a toll it must’ve taken to feel responsible for her father’s death and know that’s the reason her own mother emotionally canceled her.

  That kind of grief has to change you. It must break you apart and put you back together again differently, practically rewriting your DNA.

  Or maybe Gram passed the gene that keeps people from sustaining healthy relationships to Marla and Marla passed it to me. As I drift off to sleep, I wonder if that’s why Aiden scares me.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING MARLA and I board the train to Bristol. When we’re settled and the train pulls out of the station, I ask her where she was last night.

  She promptly brushes me off.

  I press the issue, giving her a taste of her own nosy, nudgy medicine. “Please tell me you didn’t hook up with Jesse.”

  She pulls a face. “Oh, Hannah, of course not. I told you, it’s not like that with him.”

  I don’t believe her, but, you know what—?

  “Okay, Marla, fine. I don’t want to know.”

  “I am not attracted to him, and even if I were, Tallulah and Cressida have a prior claim. He’s off-limits. I firmly live by the rule, sisters before misters.”

  I almost snort the mocha I purchased before we boarded the train. “Tallu and Cressida are not your sisters.”

  I want to add, they could be your daughters, and for that matter, if you’re so honorable, why was it not daughters before rotters back in the day? Because you threw me over for some gems, Mom.

  But she waves me off, leans her head against the train window, and sleeps the rest of the way to Bristol.

  After we arrive, we find no trace of Tom and Ivy’s marriage record in the city hall. Though we do find death certificates for Angus and Constance Braithwaite, Ivy’s parents. They passed away within three months of each other. Angus passed first, on July 27, 1928. Constance followed in October.

  “Are you sure Ivy and Tom were married in Bristol?” Brie, the desk clerk, asks.

  “I thought so,” I say. “That’s what my great-grandmother always said. This was Ivy’s hometown.”

  “Have you tried searching the GRO records online?” Brie suggests.

  She must read our confusion. “GRO is the General Register Office. It’s a database where all civil registration of births, adoptions, marriages, deaths, and such are recorded.”

  Brie scribbles something on a small scrap of white paper and passes it to me across the desk. It’s a website.

  “It’s quite easy to use and very complete. It contains all the records dating back to 1837. If your granny’s information exists, it should be there.”

  Marla and I thank Brie and make our way out of the municipal building.

  “Well, that’s great,” I say as I tuck the slip of paper into my purse. “We could’ve simply done an internet search rather than make the trip.”

  “Maybe. If you knew where to look,” said Marla. “Sometimes the internet can feel like the ultimate wild goose chase. While we’re here, we might as well have a look around.”

  But first we go to a pub and look up the web address that Brie provided. With the names and the year—1940—we discover that Ivy Braithwaite and Thomas Norton were married May 22, 1940. It was a Wednesday.

  They were married in London, not in Bristol, but that’s not the first thing on our minds.

  “Gram was born on December 4, 1940,” I say.

  Marla counts on her fingers. “That means she was probably conceived in March 1940.”

  Marla and I look at each other. “In the first entry in her 1940 diary—the one I found on the floor by the bed—Ivy talked about spending a quiet New Year’s Eve with Andres, and she didn’t leave Paris for the UK until mid-April.”

  “Yep,” Marla says. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that Tom Norton was not Gram’s father. I’m thinking that Ivy was pregnant with Andres’s baby before she married Tom.”

  * * *

  WE’RE MOSTLY SILENT OVER the fish and chips we order for lunch. I could really use a pint or two right about now, but I don’t want to drink in front of Marla. Instead we order bottles of J2O. Orange and passion fruit for her. Apple and mango for me.

  Sometime later, as we finish our meal, Marla says, “I noticed that the address on the death record for Granny Ivy’s parents was Whitchurch Road.” She dra
ins her glass. “Why don’t we go see where they lived? It might not give us any clues about her marriage, but it would be good to put things in context.”

  It’s a great idea—I’d hate to write this trip off as a total waste.

  We hire a cab and soon enough, we’re standing in front of the two-story white-stone home where Ivy was raised. It appears to have been split into two apartments. The houses in the surrounding neighborhood seem to be more modern, but if I squint my eyes, I can imagine how it must’ve looked when my great-grandmother lived there.

  I went to university in Bristol and I can’t believe I never thought to visit Ivy’s childhood home. It never crossed my mind.

  “I wonder what happened to the place after Angus and Constance passed,” Marla muses.

  I watch my mother standing there gazing at the home with reverence. I remember the way the paintings of Ivy distressed her. It’s humbling, really. In her own quirky way, she is more affected by the past than I am. Or maybe it’s that she is the one who slows down long enough to connect to the heartbeat of our ancestors.

  I think about how my mother was shut out as a teen. Gram never forgave her the one mistake—or circumstances prevented them from forgiving each other and moving on. Now, it seems pretty clear that Ivy was living with her own secret pain, too.

  Marla reaches out and gives my hand a quick squeeze. “This is our past, Hannah. And I think there’s more for us to discover back in France.”

  I want so badly to trust my mother and start anew—to give her the second chance she never got from her own mother. I’m not quite there yet, but I can feel the ice around my heart thawing.

  January 1930

  Paris, France

  Dear Diary,

  My parents’ death nearly broke me.

  Andres insists I should cling to the good memories. I wish it were that easy. The trouble is there aren’t that many good memories. My parents and I weren’t terribly close. I always thought someday we would find our way to each other, after they realized my need to get away from Bristol wasn’t to escape them. It was about finding myself.

  Now we will never have that chance.

  Some days, that’s all I can think about. It’s worse when I’m alone with my thoughts. Today it felt as if the walls were closing in. I had to get out of the apartment.

  I didn’t know where I was going, but I found myself at Harry’s Bar. I was nursing a café au lait while I sketched, when I realized Zelda Fitzgerald was calling my name. She invited herself to join me, saying I looked as sad as she felt. I wasn’t in the mood for company, but she ordered a bottle of champagne and two glasses, and the next thing I knew, she had pulled my sketchbook right out of my hands and began perusing my designs. I would’ve been offended, but by the time the waiter returned, Zelda had commissioned me to sew her a new wardrobe.

  She confided that she was in such a funk, the only way she could lift her spirits was by indulging in her second-favorite pastime—beautiful clothes. I asked her why not her favorite?

  She bemoaned that was no longer an option. The dance company for the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Italy, had invited her to dance with them, but Scott had forbidden her to accept the offer. He couldn’t bear to be away from her, yet he refused to follow her to Italy.

  Zelda said ballet and pretty things were what kept her sane. Since her dream of being a ballerina had been ripped from her life, she needed something else to make her world beautiful. She decided the only thing that would heal her wounded soul was if I designed a collection just for her. She promised to pay me more than anyone had offered in the past.

  In the meantime, she said, we would have to search for happiness at the bottom of the champagne bottle.

  By the time we’d finished, we were sozzled. One moment we’d been toasting her new wardrobe, and the next minute, Zelda was a mess, crying into her hands, claiming that Scott had not only robbed her of the ballet, but he had also stolen her writing. She swore Scott had read her diaries and used her words in his books, passing her writing off as his own.

  She said he was determined to drive her crazy.

  I can’t get the image of Zelda’s mascara-stained face out of my mind.

  The worst part is that I don’t know if I believe her. Perhaps I don’t want to because there are many parallels between Zelda and Scott and Andres and me. Andres the writer, me the diarist with stifled creative aspirations.

  The difference is Andres is exceedingly supportive of my endeavors, and as for my intermittent diary scribblings… you know they are not witty enough for anyone to covet.

  It’s difficult to believe Scott would do that to his wife, but it was just as difficult to see Zelda falling apart in front of me. She implored me not to tie myself to Andres in marriage so that nothing would prevent me from leaving him when I was ready.

  I have no plans to leave Andres, despite Zelda’s warning. I didn’t tell her that, but I did ask if she was thinking of leaving Scott. She said no, that neither of them could survive this world without the other. It will be ’til death do them part.

  Then she stood up from the table and pirouetted into a curtsy like a ballerina at curtain call. For a moment she acted as if she were basking in the praise of an adoring audience.

  The waiter broke the spell when he asked her if everything was okay. She blinked at him and said it most certainly was not. We were out of champagne. She ordered another bottle and told him to send the bill to Scott. Then she sat down at the table and said to me, “If I can’t have ballet, I will always have champagne. Ivy, darling, let us drink a toast to the few little things we have left.”

  Twenty-Three

  January 23, 2019—4:00 p.m.

  Paris, France

  How many tour bookings do we have now?” I ask Marla when she walks into the office.

  I’ve rented a small storefront on the boulevard Saint-Michel in the Latin Quarter. We could’ve found cheaper accommodations, but this one is right in the heart of a touristy area and it was available immediately. I figure the walk-in traffic will be worth the higher rent.

  “I’m not sure,” she murmurs absently as she sits down at her desk and begins typing something on her phone. “I’ll check after I finish this.”

  The inaugural tour leaves exactly ten days from today, and last I heard, Marla had booked two months’ worth of two-day tours. With all of the permitting in place, I’ve lined up two days’ worth of content, including stops at Gertrude Stein’s and Natalie Barney’s homes, browsing at Shakespeare and Company, a trek through the Tuileries, coffee at Café de Flore, and lunch at Les Deux Magots. One night we will enjoy Aiden’s moveable feast, and the other night we will have an early dinner at Auberge de Venise Montparnasse, which used to be Dingo American Bar, where Ivy and her friends spent so much of their time.

  There is a host of other places that Ivy mentions in her diaries that I’d love to work in (she seems to have been a regular at Harry’s Bar), but we are almost overscheduled.

  I will adopt the persona of Ivy Braithwaite as I present the tour. I’ve almost memorized my spiels. For someone who never wanted to be an actor, I’m having way too much fun pretending to be someone else.

  “What are you doing?” I ask Marla. I’ve tried not to ride her too hard about her job. She did well booking the first eight weeks. But now I need her to pick up the pace and book out several more months. Her paycheck depends on her performance, so you’d think I wouldn’t have to ask her for reports, but she has yet to fill me in on whether the seeds she’s planted with various travel agencies and tour-booking sites have paid off.

  “Can you at least give me a hint as to how you’re doing with bookings for the rest of the year?” I ask.

  “What?” she looks up from her phone as if just realizing I’m in the room.

  “Our tour bookings?” I say as I push a yellow pin into the Paris city map that’s hanging on the bulletin board on the wall. The yellow pins represent possible alternate stops on the tour. “The clients you’r
e supposed to be getting.”

  “Oh… yeah… I need to call Glen at Tripadvisor and see if he’s gotten our second ad up yet.”

  I glance at her over my shoulder. Her fingers are flying across her phone screen again. I turn back to my map.

  “If you don’t know if the ad is running yet, that means you have no idea if it has generated bookings. Marla, I need hard numbers soon. We have a lot riding on the first six months of tours. It will make or break us. What are you working on over there?”

  “Well, I know this probably isn’t an opportune time to bring this up, but I need to go out of town for a couple of days.”

  I turn around and face her. “Where do you need to go?”

  “It’s complicated, Hannah.”

  As if that’s supposed to placate me with less than two weeks before the tour starts.

  “Well, if it’s complicated, maybe it should wait until after we get the tour up and running. I really need all hands on deck for the next month and I need you to focus.”

  She chews her bottom lip.

  “My trip can’t wait.”

  “Just tell me what it is.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  I shake my head because I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.

  “Do you remember what we talked about when I hired you? I told you I was afraid something like this would happen. I don’t enjoy being a hardnose, Marla, but I need you to focus all your efforts on helping me get this tour off the ground. If you can’t tell me why you want time off right now, then what am I supposed to do? What would you do if you were in my place?”

  “Hannah…” She studies something on her phone for a moment, then types a quick message. Finally, she looks up.

  “Okay. I’ll tell you. I was wanting to keep it a secret until I looked into it more, to make sure it wasn’t a wild goose chase. But I suppose you need to know. I looked into the Andres Armand Foundation that Dr. Campbell mentioned. I was able to locate that Étienne Armand he spoke of. Not only does he run the foundation, it turns out he’s Andres Armand’s great-nephew. I’ve set a meeting with him to discuss the authenticity of the manuscript. If it pans out that Andres wrote it, it could be a really cool element to add to the tour.”