Anio Szado

by Studio Saint-Ex

  Finally, it was Friday morning. The last day to endure chitchat over coffee and eggs Benedict, the last afternoon of sightseeing (yet another folksy gallery, another battle monument, another reverent reference to where Quebecois blood had been shed), the last evening in which they would sit four at the dinner table, the hosts fussing over Tonio’s every serving and every word, as though without their ministrations and their guestroom the man would have been dead.

  Consuelo roused him early. “I told the De Konincks we’d go with them to fetch the son from boarding school.” It was a bit far, Charles had said, but a lovely drive; the scenery would do Monsieur de Saint-Exupéry good. She got Tonio up and dressed. Then she faked a sudden headache to claim a few hours of freedom—to read and sketch in the luxurious bed.

  Lunch arrived—via the cook, on a silver tray—but Consuelo’s husband and the De Konincks did not. The afternoon passed in foul tedium. By the time she descended from the bedroom to take her pre-dinner cocktail—alone—Consuelo was nauseous with boredom, furious at being abandoned. The injustices that had been served upon her this holiday! They ground like sand in the teeth.

  Dinner for one was served and rejected before the party finally returned. Their spirits were as elevated as the color in their cheeks. Their words were contrite but their tone was too carefree. Père and mère De Koninck spoke quietly. Tonio said not a word, nor did he raise his eyes. Asleep in his arms was a golden-haired child.

  While the mother put the son to bed, Tonio and De Koninck settled down to smoke and tell Consuelo about the day. The school’s headmaster had entreated Tonio to rally the boys with an impromptu talk, which evolved to a magic show, for which they rewarded him with a song. Tonio had responded with his favorite childhood tune, and needed no persuasion to teach the students to sing along.

  By the time Thomas mastered the chorus, he understood that his new friendship with this big, funny man would elevate his status among his eight-year-old peers. That was the only explanation Consuelo could think of for Charles’s claim: “It’s the first time he’s ever begged us to stay on and take in the pleasures of his school.”

  Thomas led a tour, holding tight to Tonio’s hand. Even the teachers marched behind them, and soon teachers’ wives emerged from the residences and were following along. They had a picnic and a boat ride; there were seagulls and sunshine and swans. Thomas taught Tonio clapping games. Tonio led a roving lesson on constellations, using resident pet turtles for stars.

  When they said their goodbyes Saturday morning, there was great reluctance in Tonio’s voice.

  In the airplane, he opened his notebook. Consuelo asked no questions; there was no need; she could simply watch to see what he wrote. But all that he scratched out were doodles. A boy chasing butterflies. A boy playing with string. A boy with a stick or a scepter … with a sword … with a snake … with wings.

  A boy-man pining for the boy he had been.

  22

  Leo leaned against the kitchen counter, spooning cornflakes into his mouth. “Did you see this? It came yesterday.” He plucked an envelope from the counter and tossed it my way. “It’s from Mother. She complains that you haven’t visited our dear uncle.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “How’s he supposed to report to her on the status of your safety and virtue when you’re avoiding him? She can’t trust me to tell her. She needs a respectable snitch.”

  I skimmed the letter. “For Pete’s sake, Leo. She’s not looking for information from Yannick. She’s worried that he’s working too much. She wants us to keep an eye on him.”

  Leo brought the bowl to his mouth and slurped the remaining milk. His bowl clattered into the sink, where last night’s dinner dishes still waited. “Yannick can handle himself. He always knows best.”

  When Leo had started skipping high school and drinking, it had been Yannick who had convinced their father to kick him out of the house. When my brother moved out, Yannick reported to my parents that Leo was earning a reputation as a heavy gambler, and Papa immediately stopped sending him money. It had been left to Yannick to convince Mother to stop her secret cash-laden letters, too.

  Even Papa hadn’t known of Mother’s covert actions, I was sure. His younger brother Yannick had a way of finding out everything. Everyone loved Yannick—in a way different from how they loved Papa. Papa had been respected and admired; Yannick had always been everyone’s best friend. People confided in him and looked to him for advice. Maybe Yannick always thought he knew best, but others thought so, too.

  Leo turned on the tap.

  “I’ll wash up,” I said. “You go.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.”

  He disappeared down the hall, then returned a few minutes later to blow a kiss and grab his lunch box. He waved as he pulled the door shut behind him.

  I took my time in the kitchen, savoring the warmth of the dishwater on my hands. June had begun with a fury. So hot, just outside the door, yet Leo’s place in the early morning was still clammy and cold. When July came, and intolerable August, the basement would be either a cooling refuge or dreadfully humid and close.

  But now there was Yannick to think about. I couldn’t entertain him at Leo’s. I tried to remember what I had done with him in years past. There had been musicals and cinema nights, occasionally a museum day. And, of course, the frequent, hilarious spying on competitors under the guise of enjoying dinners in fine restaurants all over town.

  Yannick working too much? It had always been him hounding Papa to take a break. It was Yannick who had pressured his brother to visit Grand-mère in Montreal, to take the family south, to take up an instrument as Yannick had mastered the oboe, to learn to relax. He helped Mother plan vacations that never came to pass. But he did manage to get Papa to the New York World’s Fair in the summer of ’40; sometimes my uncle’s efforts led to the worst that could come to be.

  Yannick was running the restaurant in the French Pavilion of the fair, and he vowed to get his brother out to see the spectacle. I’d been eager to see it myself, but Papa had promised we’d go as a family, so I waited until he could take the time. His weekdays were overrun by meetings with clients, city officials, and staff. Weekends were for developing and drafting ideas, a responsibility he said he couldn’t delegate or deny. Around the edges, in the evenings and late into the nights, he fit the already-fraying Alliance Française community—dining with its members, drinking with the stalwarts of its splintered factions, pleading his case for a united, nonpolitical collective. I had been waiting fourteen months.

  Leo was coming for a visit, a rare event, so Papa vowed to come straight home from work. Mother and I had made a casserole that could keep. We listened to the news, a comfortable threesome around the kitchen table, until the phone rang and Mother took the receiver from the wall.

  She was hanging up when Papa came through the door. “Clear your schedule for the Fourth of July,” she said. “Yannick’s taking you to the fair.”

  Papa was trying unsuccessfully to get his shoes off without bending to untie them, one foot pushing sluggishly against the other.

  Leo walked over to Papa and slapped his arm affectionately. “About time you got here. They’re drowning me in tea.” He took the hat off Papa’s head. He considered his face. “God, you’re old,” he said.

  They both smiled. Leo knelt down, loosened Papa’s laces, and eased the shoes off his feet.

  “Thank you, son.”

  “Anytime.”

  I placed a trivet onto the dining room table and Mother set down the casserole dish. A rich, cheesy cauliflower scent wafted from under the steamy glass.

  Papa hung his overcoat on a hook, the lining swishing against the plaster wall. He eased into his dining room chair. “What did Yannick say?”

  “You know how he is. ‘Tell your knucklehead husband that if the owner of the most popular restaurant in the fair can go AWOL for the entire Fourth of July, an architect can leave his drafting table to see the greatest show
in the world.’ Really, all Yannick cares about is the foods of the world. He wants to eat his way through the pavilions. Better put aside a whole day for it, Émile. Don’t make that face.”

  July the 4th, 1940, was Superman Day at the World’s Fair. Mother hated crowds and Leo was not pleased with Yannick’s interference in those days, so in the end it was just Yannick, Papa, and me.

  Papa read from the official pamphlet as we waited in line for the Futurama exhibit: “ ‘Here are the materials, ideas, and forces at work in our world. These are the tools with which the World of Tomorrow must be made.’ ”

  Yannick said, “They forgot about cheese. Materials and ideas are good, but who wants to live in a world without cheese?”

  All Yannick noted at the Italian pavilion was “They’ve got cheese as big as tires.” He cursed the inability to order perogi at the Polish pavilion, which had closed due to the war, and praised the sausages in Switzerland. In the Belgium pavilion, he had a fat waffle piled with strawberries and whipped cream—and pronounced the dessert good enough to serve at Le Pavillon, the restaurant he planned to open after the end of the fair.

  As we waited for the fireworks at night, just before the pavilions closed, Yannick ran back into Belgium and returned balancing more plates of waffles, one for each of us. While the last streaks of sunlight faded, we pulled plump, red strawberries out from under mounds of cloud-puff cream. We let the sweet juice spread across our tongues and trickle down our throats. I was completely exhausted. We had seen electrical displays; enticing and outlandish predictions for the future; an entire world of fashion extravagance and modern chic. We had waited in line for hours and walked for miles. But I laughed as we wiped white trails off our faces and as Yannick unwittingly pushed cream into his hair. The towering concoctions became soft lumps, and the soft lumps dwindled into bite-sized islands. I devoured my last piece slowly, savoring the cooling air and the first flashes of fireworks, the mosaic of carnival sounds, the sweetness that lingered in my mouth.

  “Papa,” I said, “we’ll have to plan a visit to Le Pavillon next year to see how Yannick’s waffles compare to these.”

  Against the wail of a rocket that screamed up and exploded in a shower of sparks, I could only read my father’s lips. I thought he said, “All right.” But his face, lit by crackling light, looked grey and pained—not right at all.

  There were things I have imagined so many times that they have melded irrevocably with what I know to be true. Papa didn’t go into work the next day. This is true. I imagine him waving Mother off with a drowsy hand when she tried to wake him, and Mother wondering if he and Yannick had drunk themselves blind after she went to bed. Yannick’s idea of what was best wasn’t always what was conventionally right.

  She had let Papa sleep. He is worn out, she would have thought. I would have thought it, too.

  Papa got out of bed at noon, moving listlessly.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Mother had asked.

  He clung near her in the kitchen.

  “Émile, I can hardly move. Go read. I’ll join you when I’m through.” She had taken the newspaper from the kitchen table to hand to him. “Oh my Lord. There was a bombing yesterday at the fair.”

  He took the paper and closed it on itself, not wanting her to worry—he’d take care of all the worrying on his own—and headed toward the front room, his slippers shuffling on the hardwood floor. She was drying the dishes when his voice rose in the hall.

  They said it was a stroke. A stroke, like the swell of a paddle in water, like a twig of charcoal moving on a page, like Papa’s hand smoothing my hair, soothing me to sleep when I was young and he had time.

  Mother would have held on to the thought, the word, through the hours at the hospital, the discussions with the doctors, the taxi ride home alone. She held it through the worried silence in which Yannick opened our apartment door. Behind Yannick, my anxious face, Leo’s bewildered eyes.

  Mother had stood in the doorway, looking frightened and frail. Leo’s rough and trembling hand took hold of mine.

  Yannick asked, “What was it?”

  Mother whispered the word. “Stroke.”

  The funeral had not been in New York, but in Montreal. The Lachapelles had a family plot in Sacré-Coeur Cemetery, and Papa was laid alongside Grand-mère and Grand-père. There was a place on the monument where his dates were inscribed. I had put my shaking fingers into the granite wounds.

  Yannick had taken control, telephoning the funeral home and the church, arranging the train tickets, sending telegrams.

  “How long are we staying in Montreal after … everything?” Leo had asked as we sat at our dining table in the hours before we would all board the train.

  Yannick came out of the kitchen. His forehead shone. “As long as it takes.”

  Leo asked, “As long as it takes to what?”

  Mother said, “To get Grand-mère’s house cleaned up and make a start on moving in.” She glanced at me. “Then we’ll come back here to finish packing up and get Mignonne settled in with you before I go back to Montreal for good.”

  We had been fighting about the plans: Mother wanted me to move with her to Canada, to quit New York Fashion School, to go to Collège Lasalle in Montreal if I insisted on going to school at all. I had refused to consider it; I would graduate in New York. I clutched my fork in my lap, the tines digging into my knee.

  “Try to eat,” said Yannick, but neither Leo nor I touched our food.

  “Mignonne,” said Mother quietly. “It won’t be easy for you to stay here. There, we have a whole house just sitting empty, waiting for us. You won’t have to work. I won’t have to work. We can take in a boarder.”

  “Won’t you want to have boarders either way,” asked Leo, “whether she goes with you or not? If she stays in New York, you can rent out more of Grand-mère’s house. And it isn’t going to cost her much to stay here if she’s going to live with me.”

  Mother pushed aside her plate. “We would have all moved to Montreal anyway, as soon as Papa could finish with his projects at work. It’s something he wanted for us. For you, too, Leo. It’s a quieter life there.”

  But I knew that my father never would have finished; he never would have abandoned the Alliance. He would not have made the move.

  “What Papa wanted was for Mig to be happy,” said Leo.

  Yannick had been standing at the head of the table, his fingertips on the back of Papa’s chair. Now he walked over to stand behind Mother and rest his hands on her shoulders. “Think of Émile,” he said gently. “Let him watch his children succeed.”

  So I had completed my diploma in New York, with a promise to join Mother in Montreal at the end of it—for a visit, not to stay. But I had stayed a whole year. What was in New York for me to rush back for? From the day I had met Antoine he had been vowing to return to Europe, and Madame Fiche had very efficiently stolen my confidence in my dream.

  Cunning woman. Thank God that Yannick convinced me to come back and try again.

  I put away the last clean plate and dried my hands as I walked to the phone. I asked the operator to let the number ring a long time. The restaurant hadn’t yet opened for the day, but Yannick would be there.

  “Le Pavillon.”

  “Yannick, it’s Mignonne.”

  “The famous fashion designer? I have tried phoning you, but no one is ever home. When can I see you? Come to the restaurant.”

  “Let’s get you away from work. We should do something special. Is there anything in particular you’d like to do? Something for old times’ sake.”

  “Bite your tongue—you’re too young to say ‘for old times’ sake.’ But you’re right. I’ll tell you what. Let’s fly the family banner at the Alliance Française. I haven’t been in a dog’s age.”

  “Really? Shame on you.”

  “Exactly.” He laughed heartily.

  We made plans to meet at the Alliance. I would ask him there for news of my former pupil—in the most offhanded,
casual way.

  23

  Early evening. The ladies of the Alliance would be having aperitifs or finishing their late-afternoon gin. I had arranged to meet Leo and Yannick at the dining room tonight. I would arrive early, troll for clients. Maybe Antoine would be there.

  I bathed in the shared bathroom down the hall. The hot water felt good on my body. In my closet I found a tailored jacket and a maturely dignified dress. I chose simple pumps, pairing them with a clutch purse. Wouldn’t Madame be pleased if she could see me looking so proper for once? She would probably think I was being true to my bloodline. I fixed my hair and made up my face, tamping down the thought that Uncle Sam might want the metal of my lipstick tube for bullets or bombs. If he really needed it, he would have gotten to it first.

  At the Alliance, it took less time for me to down a martini at the bar than it had taken the bartender, Eddy, to make it. The dining room was almost empty, I didn’t know any of the members present, and all the ladies were intent on their own conversations. I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt them with a sales pitch. But Eddy and I had grown up together. We had even had our time under the stairs.

  He said, “You should see it from Monday through Wednesday. You could run the Polish cavalry through here and be lucky to bayonet a hat.” He wiped a glass and flashed an arresting smile. “Did you bring back a Canadian boyfriend, Mig?”

  I shrugged and rubbed my nose with the back of my hand. “Why is the place so empty? Is the membership down that much?”

  “Not on paper. People just don’t come in. It’s no more one-big-happy-family around here. There’s been no holding back the knives since your dad passed away.” He tucked the end of the bar towel behind his belt. “Not that you’ve been around to see it.”