Sometimes when I learn of the cruelty that is happening, I think it must be happening in another world. But it is right here, in Paris. And they say it will only get worse. Today I sat by two Jewish women on the train who seemed to be very shaken up. I overheard one of them whisper to the other, “They will come for the French citizens next.”
I would give anything for this madness to end.
I stare at the screen feeling nauseous. Paul and I read about the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup the last time we were here together. The Jews were held in the stadium for five days without food or running water. They were living in filth. There were women who gave birth on the floor. Eventually they were shoved into cattle cars and sent to concentration camps.
“Alice? Are you okay?”
Behind his glasses, Paul’s olive-green eyes study my face. He looks concerned.
“I’m so confused,” I tell him.
“What is the matter?”
The matter is that Adalyn eventually became a Nazi sympathizer, which presumably led Gram to cut her out of her life. But in July 1942, when she wrote this diary entry, Adalyn had a Jewish friend who was a victim of the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup—someone she cared about a lot, apparently. What in the world happened to her?
“Paul, there’s something I need to tell you.”
I can’t keep it a secret anymore. I need somebody to talk to. In a hushed voice, so no customers can overhear us, I tell him about the photo I found in my great-grandmother’s vanity. As I go through the details, Paul’s expression moves like a time-lapse video from concerned to horrified to downright confused, just like me.
He reads the latest diary entry two times through.
“So you are telling me this person . . .”
“. . . became a Nazi sympathizer. Yes.”
“I cannot believe it. I don’t understand.”
Still staring at the screen, he furrows his brow and sticks out the very tip of his tongue, a habit I’ve noticed. He does it when he’s very focused on something, like his drawings. Seeing him in that pose—so goofy and so serious at the same time—helps me to relax.
“I was nervous to tell you about Adalyn because I only just met you, and I didn’t want the fact that I’m related to this person to scare you off.”
“Scare me off? You could never.”
Blushing, I watch as Paul fishes inside his backpack for his sketchbook. When he finds it, he opens it across his lap and starts scribbling something on a fresh page.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m making a list of everything we know about Adalyn so far.”
“You’re amazing, Paul. Okay, let’s see. She was beautiful . . . rich . . . went to a lot of parties . . . and she hated the Germans when they first invaded. She also hated Pétain for striking a deal with Hitler. And she loved Charles de Gaulle’s speech about the flame of French resistance.”
Paul jots everything down as I talk.
“. . . She had at least one friend who was Jewish, and it sounds like he was deported to a concentration camp. . . .”
“. . . And then somehow, she changed sides,” Paul says, completing my train of thought. “Is there anything else?”
“No, that about sums it up.”
We both stare at the list, as perplexed as ever.
“This is really bizarre,” Paul concludes.
“Tell me about it.”
At five o’clock Paul locks up the bookstore. We wander around the corner for an afternoon snack at Vivienne’s bakery, where she plates two slices of apricot tart fresh from the oven—“on the house,” she insists. I try to get Vivi to accept my money, but she pushes my hand away, and Paul just shrugs helplessly.
As we scrape the last crumbs from our plates, Paul says, “Now I keep wondering about Adalyn, too.”
“Right? It’s like a whole other mystery in and of itself,” I reply. “I want to know all about Gram and Adalyn.”
“What are you going to do?” he asks.
“I feel like I should go back to the apartment and look for more clues. If I already found the diary and the photos, maybe there’s something else I haven’t seen yet. Something my grandmother wanted me to find. Who knows?” I fidget with my glasses for a second. “You could come with me, if you wanted. It would be cool for you to see it.”
“I would like that very much,” Paul says.
There go the butterflies. Paul has invited me into his world, and now I get to bring him into mine. He smiles, and the distinctive curve in his upper lip is enough to make me melt on the spot.
And then a red warning light flashes in my head. Oh no, I just remembered Camila’s text messages. Our third hangout is about to be over, and absolutely no steamy advances have been made. Well, that’s just great. While I’m over here fawning over Paul, he’s probably looking at me as nothing more than a friend.
“Are you sure you want to come?” I ask him. “I know it’s a far trip from your apartment.”
“I don’t mind,” he says with a smile. “I am just happy to go someplace with you.”
Maybe there’s still hope for me.
Paul and I make plans to meet tomorrow, and then I head back to the Airbnb to see what Mom and Dad are up to. I’ve been gone for over six hours, and they’re still in the exact same places as when I left them. The only difference is that Dad’s hair is standing on end, presumably from all the times he’s raked his fingers through it in frustration at all the paperwork. Mom is a little more lively than before; at least, she seems to register my presence when I plop down next to her on the couch. It’s a far cry from the person who sings along to her Best of Broadway CD in the car, but I’ll take it.
“Did you and Dad have a nice afternoon?” I ask her.
“Your father is in over his head,” she says. “He hasn’t been able to get up from the table.”
“It seems really complicated.”
“Your grandmother certainly didn’t make it easy for us.”
Your grandmother. Mom must be feeling angry today. I get up from the couch and pop my head into the kitchen.
“Dad, is there any way I can help?”
“That’s nice of you to offer, honey, but I think I should be okay,” he replies. “Why don’t you go keep Mom company? I think she could use it right now.”
I go back to the living room. Mom is picking at a thread dangling from the frayed sleeve of her cardigan.
“Do you want me to grab scissors for that?”
“When I die,” she says quietly, catching me off guard, “you can be sure I won’t do something like this to you.”
“Mom, what are you talking about?”
“I mean I’ll make it easy for you and Dad to take care of things—I won’t leave you with a mess of a will to sort out!”
Where the heck did that come from? She’s talking like she only has days left to live. I’m kind of alarmed that Mom would bring up her own will—but then again, I have to remember, everyone handles grief differently. When someone close to you dies, it’s totally possible that you’d start to think more about your own mortality, right? Maybe all she needs is a distraction; I mean, she’s been cooped up here all day with nothing to do but think about Gram.
“Let’s go do something,” I suggest. “We can walk to the market and pick something out for dinner.” Mom would love that. I know it. She’s always showing me what to look for in the produce section of the grocery store: bananas with a hint of green, avocados with just the right amount of squish.
“If you want,” she says simply.
I go to my parents’ bedroom to find her a pair of shoes. Then, with some effort, I manage to pull her up from the couch. By the time we get outside, the first wisps of pink have appeared in the evening sky. It’s a clear night; I should finally do what that taxi driver said and take Mom up the hill to Sacré-Coeur. You never know—a beautiful summer sunset over Paris may be just the thing to brighten her mood.
The next morning, I turn the corner onto the rue de Marquis
to find Paul standing with his hands in his pockets outside number thirty-six. His freckled face brightens when he sees me coming down the block.
And then I realize I have a minor emergency. How are we supposed to greet each other? The other times we met up, there was an automatic barrier between us: Paul’s desk at the bookstore, the cup of coffee he handed me yesterday. This is the first time we’ve met without any obstructions, and it occurs to me that I have no idea what to do. We’re obviously not going to shake hands—too formal. But do we hug? We’ve never hugged before. I know I’d like to hug him, but does he want to hug me? Do friends hug each other in France? Oh, this is bad! And I’m getting close now. I wish he would give me some kind of cue.
“Hey, Paul!”
I’m not exactly sure how much distance to keep between us, so I pick a random spot to stop walking. Oh no, I think I messed up—now there’s a weirdly large gap between us. Paul inches forward. Are we hugging? Is this happening? His arms seem to be moving, but I can’t tell for sure what they’re doing, so in a panic, I do the only sensible thing I can think of in the moment: I wave at him from two feet away, like an idiot.
He drops one of his arms and waves back.
“Hey,” he says.
Real smooth, Alice.
I try to move past the awkward moment, and lead him into the building and up the five winding flights of stairs. I open the door of apartment five, and a look of amazement appears on Paul’s face. His lips open and close a few times without any words coming out. Finally, he manages to say, “Alice, c’est incroyable!”
I take him through the living room to the dining room, then through to the kitchen. Paul keeps mumbling words of disbelief as he turns his head in every possible direction.
“I could look at everything for hours,” he says.
“I’m glad you like it. When I came to see it with my parents, my mom wanted to get out of here pretty quickly.”
He sets down the brittle old stack of recipes he was examining.
“How is she doing, by the way?”
It’s sweet that he thought to ask. The other day we were talking about my parents, and I mentioned that Mom’s been having a tough time since Gram died. He said he was really sorry to hear it—and not in that rehearsed voice some people use when they’re responding to bad news that doesn’t affect them. It sounded like he really meant it.
“Still not great,” I tell him. “Yesterday she basically sat inside all day and stared at the wall. I took her to the market and to watch the sunset when I got home, because she’d normally like that kind of thing, but she was just, like, detached.”
Paul frowns.
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“I know. I wish there was something else I could do.”
“Have you and your dad tried talking to her about it?”
“A little here and there,” I mumble, crossing my arms. “Talking about feelings isn’t exactly my family’s strong suit.”
“It might help,” he suggests.
He sounds so hopeful. Paul clearly hasn’t met the Prewitt family.
“Maybe,” I say politely. “Anyway, do you want to see the rest of the apartment?”
I take him to the master bedroom and lead him over to my great-grandmother’s vanity. After warning him to brace himself, I open the top drawer and show him the photo of Adalyn surrounded by Nazis. He reacts the same way as I did, even though he knows exactly what’s coming. The picture is so disturbing, it’s like you don’t even want to touch it; he holds it between the very tips of his thumb and pointer finger, like he’s trying to minimize skin contact.
“Do you think she was dating one of these men?” Paul asks.
“It’s possible,” I say with a grimace.
“They could have even gotten married.”
“I hope not.”
As Paul inspects the photo, I notice something in the drawer I didn’t see before: a hardcover day planner from the year 1943. Curious, I flip through the pages. Just as she saved the magazine clippings, my great-grandmother documented every social engagement in her calendar. At least once a week, there’s some kind of dîner or fête in the books. Every few weeks, the words “Hotel Belmont” appear in the square for Saturday.
“Paul, have you ever heard of this place?”
“Yes. I think it is near here, actually.”
I show him how often it appears in the day planner. “I’m going to look it up.”
I whip out my phone and search “Hotel Belmont WWII Paris.” The first result is a booking site for the Hotel Belmont in the Eighth Arrondissement, nearby. The second result is a review in the Guardian of a book about resistance and collaboration in Nazi-occupied France. Bingo. I click the link and scan the article for any mention of the Belmont, and when I find it, I read it out loud to Paul: “LeGrand—that’s the author—goes inside every walk of life, from the hungry families queuing for rations to the socialites who flocked to the Hotel Belmont to dance the night away with German officers.”
“Oh my god,” says Paul.
“My great-grandmother was in on it, too,” I say bitterly. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
I put the datebook in my backpack for closer inspection later, and then I take him across the hall to Adalyn’s bedroom to show him the place where I first found the diary. I remember how excited I was, back when I didn’t know the awful truth about her. I also remember having trouble with the drawer closest to the floor.
“Hey, Paul, I couldn’t open this one before.” I tap it with the toe of my sneaker. “Any chance you could try?”
“Sure,” he says, crouching down. He seizes the knob and pulls it hard, his biceps flexing under his T-shirt. “Wow, it’s really stuck.” He shakes out his arm and pulls it again. There’s an encouraging squeak, and then with one final tug, the drawer shoots open. We both peer inside.
“Look,” Paul says, “there’s a note.”
He carefully retrieves the piece of paper and holds it up to the sunlight.
“Is that stationery from the Hotel Belmont?”
“It is,” Paul says, moving closer so we can both see it.
Underneath the hotel’s crest, there’s a short message written in French. It’s signed by a person named “Hauptmann Ulrich Becker III.”
“That is a very German-sounding name,” Paul whispers. “I think ‘Hauptmann’ is a military rank.”
“What does the message say?”
Paul adjusts his glasses and looks at the card closely.
“His French was not very good,” he says. “Okay, let’s see: My most dear Adalyn, I give thanks for the many evenings I have spent by your side. . . .”
I groan.
“. . . Your beautiful eyes and your wonderful stories make better the pain of being so far from home. If I cannot be in Berlin, I am glad to be here in Paris with you. I give you this gift in the hope it will keep you warm during the winter. Yours truly, Hauptmann Ulrich Becker III.”
Paul sets down the card and looks at me with a grimace. I feel the same way. We just read a Nazi love letter addressed to someone in my own family.
“She must have met him at the Hotel Belmont with her mother,” Paul says.
“Well, if it’s like you said, and she ended up marrying one of them, I bet it was this guy,” I say gloomily.
“We can try to find him, too,” Paul says.
“That’s a good idea,” I reply—and then I shake my head in disbelief. “I can’t believe I’m about to go tracking down a Nazi. I feel like I need to cleanse my soul somehow.”
“What is the exact opposite of Nazis, do you think? Oh! We should go to the Museum of National Resistance,” Paul says. “It’s in Champigny-sur-Marne. I have always wanted to go.”
I look at him standing there in his jeans and plain white T-shirt—a cute Parisian boy who could be anywhere right now, but he’s here with me, helping me solve the most bizarre mystery on the planet. The strange thing about being around my parents, especially in
these past two weeks, is that I still end up feeling alone, even when we’re together. Being with Paul is the opposite; it’s like having a teammate who’s always on my side.
“I’m really happy I met you,” I blurt out—and I’m embarrassed right away. Today has not been my smoothest performance; first the awkward wave on the sidewalk, now this.
But Paul smiles.
“I’m really happy I met you, too.”
I slide Ulrich’s card into the front of Adalyn’s diary for safekeeping, and we go back down to the street. Paul has to get to La Petite Librairie, and I have to get home to make sure Mom has remembered to eat food today, which isn’t a guarantee.
I walk with him back to the metro station. But instead of saying goodbye, Paul says, “Hey, Alice . . . do you know about le quatorze juillet? I think they call it Bastille Day in America?”
Where is he going with this?
“I think I’ve heard of Bastille Day—it’s like the French Fourth of July, right?”
“Yes—well, sort of,” he says. “It’s our national holiday, on the fourteenth of July. It is maybe not as big as the American holiday, but there are still parades . . . fireworks . . . no competitions to see who can eat the most hot dogs, though.”
“You’re missing out on a great tradition,” I point out.
Paul laughs. Then he looks at his shoes and clears his throat.
“So my sister, Vivi, loves to celebrate le quatorze juillet,” he says. “Every year, she and her friends rent an apartment in Versailles—very near to the palace—and Vivi spends the day cooking for everybody. . . .”
My heart is beating faster all of a sudden.
“. . . Anyway,” Paul continues, his voice a little bit shaky, “Vivi says she would love to have you join us this year. And I would, too, of course. It’s only a forty-minute train ride from here, and her friends are all really nice, and of course I will bring you home whenever you want, and—”
“Paul, I would love to go!” I clasp my hands together.
He looks surprised—then relieved. “You would?”
The Paper Girl of Paris Page 11
