The Paris Key

by Juliet Blackwell

  “Yes,” she answered. “But I found an umbrella in the closet.”

  There was a long pause.

  Yes, but I found an umbrella in the closet. Genevieve cringed at the inanity of her own words. On the other side of the telephone line, probably stretched out in their bedroom, was the man she had held (how many nights?) in that big brass bed with the goose-down comforter. The man with whom she had exchanged vows at an informal ceremony at the farm: the barn strewn with garlands of flowers and a huge banquet table set up on the lawn; Nick had dressed up the goats with flower-and-laurel leis that they immediately ate off of one another, to everyone’s amusement. On the other end of the telephone line was the man who had mourned with her when her father died . . . but, she reminded herself, feeling the ice hardening her heart, he was already with Quiana by then.

  One of the cruelest cuts of infidelity was the shadow of doubt it cast backward, onto everything that came before. Was it all a lie? The time she and Jason had stubbornly packed a picnic and gone to the beach despite the chilly forecast, then huddled over a fire because neither would admit how cold they were, then wound up laughing and making love on the deserted stretch of sand? When they were painting the bedroom a butter yellow and Jason dabbed Genevieve’s nose with paint and said he hoped it brought a sunny glow into each and every one of her days? When she leaned on his shoulder and cried for her father, told Jason about the silent, stoic man Jim was, how his lack of demonstrativeness sometimes drove her crazy and yet that he was a good father, one who never left her in doubt of his love . . . when she was telling Jason all of that, spilling her heart, opening her soul . . . was he thinking of another woman’s lips? Of her smell, the sounds she made when he was inside her, the feeling of her moving beneath him?

  “So, the flight was all right?” Jason continued.

  “Yes, it was fine, thanks. Everything’s fine. What’s up?”

  “I was just checking in. You said you would e-mail me when you got settled.”

  “I don’t have Internet set up yet. And no cell phone, either, so I’m a little cut off.”

  Another pause. Genevieve knew he was thinking, “She wants to be cut off.” And he was right, she realized with something akin to surprise. She certainly hadn’t been rushing to get connected. Obviously this couldn’t go on forever; she had bills to pay online and people to contact. This was the modern world; as tempting as it was, she couldn’t hide in her medieval-era Parisian village forever.

  She cleared her throat. “As a matter of fact, one of the neighbors has offered to help me get Internet set up, so I should be online soon.”

  “Oh good. That’s great. I’ve tried calling this number before, but it just rang and rang; there was no voice mail.”

  “Things are a little different here—it’s kind of like the 1950s. Only better dressed and beset by ennui.”

  He chuckled. Genevieve always could make him laugh.

  “In the meantime,” she continued, “this is the best way to reach me. And you have the street address, right?”

  “Are you suggesting I write you a letter on paper?”

  “I know, shocking, right? But you know me, I’m an old-fashioned sort.”

  “All right, I . . . I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  Genevieve took a moment, trying to force down the lump in her throat. She didn’t want him to hear it in her voice. Remember the humiliation, she thought, blowing a breath out of taut lips, trying to maintain her resolve. She wasn’t herself with Jason; didn’t know who she was, really, but she knew they hadn’t been good together, even before Quiana sauntered onto the scene. Skinny, blond Quiana.

  “I’m fine, Jason, thanks. How are you doing?”

  “I’m . . . well, it’s been rough. I don’t want you to think this is easy for me. I know I screwed up, big-time.” She could just see him, ducking his head in an adorably vulnerable, aw shucks, ma’am, didn’t mean to trample your rosebush kind of way. She heard the tinkle of ice in a glass: probably a scotch kind of night, single malt of course, aged eighteen years, “old enough to vote.”

  “Okay, well, I really have to go. Thanks for calling. Sleep well,” Genevieve said in a rush, needing to get off the phone.

  “G’night, Genie.”

  • • •

  Genevieve needed a watch.

  The last one she remembered owning had Tinker Bell on it, from a family trip to Disneyland when she was eight. Despite the fact that Genevieve enjoyed the idea of old-fashioned watches, the reality was that she had become accustomed to checking her cell phone for the time. But though she had brought the phone with her in case of emergency, the international rates were exorbitant, so she had simply left it turned off.

  Part of her—out of touch, on vacation, no schedule—appreciated the novel sensation of rarely knowing exactly what the hour was, and it was good for her to practice her French by asking strangers for the time. But still.

  Catharine kept telling her to take whatever she wanted, to use whatever she needed. So Genevieve went into Dave and Pasquale’s bedroom and pulled open the top drawer of her uncle’s highboy. In the jumble of loose change, miscellaneous receipts, yellowing letters, old combs, military medals, jewelry-sized boxes: There it was, the watch she remembered him wearing: big face and hands, aged brown leather strap.

  An old man’s watch. Far too large for her arm. Nonetheless she strapped it on. Even after she’d pulled the strap as tight as she could, it still spun around on her wrist. She loved it. It reminded her of Uncle Dave.

  Genevieve was about to shut the drawer when she noticed the handwriting and return address on one of the letters: Angela Mackenzie Martin, 2510 Apple Tree Lane, Petaluma, CA. USA.

  It was written on the crinkly, tissue-thin blue paper that people used to use for airmail. Genevieve took it out, turned it over in her hands. The postal stamp was smudged, making the date illegible.

  Now she really felt like she was snooping. Reading someone’s mail was a step too far, wasn’t it? On the other hand, both parties were deceased. It wasn’t as if either of them would care.

  Slowly, carefully—as though it might bite—she opened it.

  Inside the envelope was a single piece of stationery. It made a crackling sound as she unfolded it. Three olive leaves fell onto the top of the bureau; probably from the small orchard of trees they had out behind the turkey shed. Angela always liked to send dried flowers or leaves in her letters.

  Blue ink, her mother’s handwriting. Only two words:

  I’m sorry.

  • • •

  As Genevieve was making herself a cup of bad coffee (she would have to try the place Killian had showed her yesterday), she flung open the window. The air was cold but fresh. The rain-washed stones of the courtyard glimmered in the morning sun; geraniums bloomed pink and red, trailing from tiny balconies and window boxes. There were a few small tables and chairs where neighbors liked to take their morning coffee, and an old white bike—complete with flower-filled basket—leaned against a stone wall. Big painted Italian pots held fragrant herbs and small topiary manicured in the shapes of spirals and balls.

  What had gone on between Angela and Dave? Was this why they hadn’t visited, all those years? What could have been so serious to have caused such a break?

  Her heart hurt for them both.

  What could—

  A tapping at the window. She looked up to see her neighbors Daniel and Marie-Claude.

  After a round of bonjours, they invited her to join them for espresso.

  “Oh, thank you, but I have to run—I am going to visit Notre-Dame this morning, and then I’m going to have lunch with my cousine Catharine.”

  “Please give them our love,” said Daniel. “To Catharine and Pasquale.”

  “I will.”

  “Catharine never comes back here,” said Marie-Claude with a sad shake of h
er head.

  “Never?” Genevieve asked.

  “Too many memories, I think.”

  They all fell silent for a moment.

  “Maybe, when a little time has passed, it will get easier.” Even as she said the words, Genevieve felt as though they were trite, a platitude. Still, trite was often true. “Time heals all wounds,” her mother used to say. Healed, perhaps, Genevieve remembered thinking, looking at her mother’s arm, yet not without leaving scars.

  “Perhaps I could join you tomorrow morning,” Genevieve suggested. “Or I’d love to at least come by and look through your store. I remember my uncle used to get old locks from some of his neighbors. . . .”

  “Oui, bien sûr,” said Daniel. “I put them aside, always for him. Always he is working on his book. You are looking to complete his book, I think?”

  “I . . . I didn’t . . .”

  Marie-Claude clucked and said to Daniel in a chastising tone: “It is not because she asks about locks that she is going to finish his book.”

  “Ah. Sorry,” said Daniel. “Quel dommage—it is only that it is a shame he did not finish.”

  “Maybe . . . perhaps I will.”

  Chapter Thirty

  1997

  Of all the tourist meccas in Paris, the only one Genevieve specifically asked to go see was the top of Notre-Dame. Home to the famous gargoyles.

  Her aunt and uncle were not up for climbing the steps, and Catharine (already put out that her parents insisted she accompany them on their “family outing”) just laughed and said she would visit the gargoyles in her dreams.

  They waited with Genevieve in the long line, though: Catharine perched on a balustrade on one side of the cathedral, reading her book the whole time, sighing when she had to get up and move as the tourists shuffled forward, one group of twenty at a time.

  Uncle Dave made the most of the long wait by browsing the tourist traps that lined the street. He kept insisting Pasquale and Genevieve check out the treasures he found, bringing one after another over to the line for them to look at, sometimes with a shopkeeper yelling at him to either buy it or bring it back: tiny hand-crank music boxes that played tinny renditions of “Frère Jacques”; aprons covered with the famous chat noir—black cat—of Paris; silly snow globes featuring the Eiffel Tower.

  When finally they reached the head of the line, Uncle Dave looked apprehensive about letting Genevieve go by herself. At the last minute he offered to go with her, but Pasquale pooh-poohed the idea, saying he would collapse before he was halfway up.

  “I’ll be okay,” Genevieve had said. “I’m not a baby.”

  “I know you aren’t,” he said with a wink. “But I am. I’ll wave at you!”

  “You won’t be able to see me, all the way up there.”

  “I’ll wave anyway, just in case. Look for me!”

  The circular stone stairs wound up, up, up the tower, narrow and steep. Genevieve climbed, keeping a steady tempo, following on the heels of the man in cargo shorts in front of her. There were so many people right behind that she prayed she wouldn’t stumble, for if she did, she would knock over everyone below her like dominoes, all of them falling and thumping their way down the steep stone steps and spilling back out the side doors of the church.

  She could see the headlines: GENEVIEVE MARTIN CAUSES TOURIST CATASTROPHE!

  There were grooves worn in the center of the stones, the rock worn away fraction of an inch by infinitesimal fraction of an inch over the centuries. She imagined brown-robed monks and black-robed priests, and perhaps a hunchback or two in rags, climbing the never-ending stairs to the tower to ring the bell.

  When she finally emerged at a platform, Genevieve was disappointed to find they were not at the level of the gargoyles yet, but instead at a visitors’ center. Yet another place to buy souvenirs, as well as the ticket for the rooftop visit. Some of the sightseers, incredibly, decided not to ascend any farther, already defeated by the rigors of the steps.

  But Genevieve figured she had come this far, why stop now?

  Up farther, so many steps, round and round and round. Until emerging, finally, at a platform partway up the church façade. The gargoyles’ lair.

  The view of Paris below was stunning, of course: the Eiffel Tower; the star of streets radiating from the Arc de Triomphe; the Seine flowing around narrow islands as it snaked its way through the city; the faraway dove-white dome of the Sacré-Coeur perched atop the butte of Montmartre.

  But it was the gargoyles that held everyone’s attention and elicited oohs and aahs. And Victor Hugo’s ghosts were alive and well up here in the tower: the hunchback condemned to forever toll his bell, the beautiful gypsy to whom he lost his heart.

  Genevieve knew the real story. She and her mother had seen Disney’s cleaned-up version (they called it Quasimodo-lite) last year, even though Genevieve was too old for cartoon movies, because Angela really wanted to go and talked her daughter into it. They had shared a bucket of buttery popcorn and hooted at Frollo, then applauded when he met his well-deserved end.

  But in Hugo’s original tale, Esmeralda sure didn’t live happily ever after. In fact, when the beautiful, free-spirited Esmeralda was forced to choose between the noose and the man (the real monster, Frollo), she had chosen death. And then the ever-loyal hunchback had lain down beside her body and died of starvation. Later, when someone tried to separate their skeletons, his bones turned to dust.

  Love was destined to destroy you, was Victor Hugo’s basic message, as far as Genevieve could tell. A couple of years ago Genevieve had wanted to believe in love. But now . . . now that her mother’s abandonment had nearly killed her, she understood. Hugo got it right. Love was out to get you. To destroy you.

  “Are you going to let that little lock defeat you? Love defeats every lock, Genevieve; trust your old uncle.”

  She knew Dave believed it when he said things like that, and she wanted him to be right. But she wasn’t sure.

  Genevieve looked down to the courtyard in front of the cathedral. It was a dizzying height, and the plaza was full of groups of tourists, but finally she spotted Dave and Pasquale. Dave was looking up, waving both hands. She couldn’t see the expression on his face, but she imagined he was smiling, calling out to her.

  He probably couldn’t see her but simply hoped she could see him. The off chance that she could, she imagined, was enough for him to make a fool of himself. Gladly. He was like that.

  The gargoyles were worth the climb: Some seemed so real they could easily have been demons turned to stone. One appeared to be biting the head off of some much smaller creature—a tiny man?—clutched in his claws. Another was contemplative, his monkeylike face resting in the palms of his oversized hands, as he observed his domain. Others stuck out their tongues, bared their teeth, made faces. Their expressions were so elastic and whimsical it was hard to believe they were carved of stone.

  Yet another, apparently made from stone of a different quarry, had not withstood the weather: the face was half gone, the carving sloughing off over centuries’ worth of pelting rain and hail. These melted sculptures seemed more sinister, somehow, than the well-preserved ones, as if they were spirits emerging from their stone cocoons.

  Genevieve suddenly remembered the scars on her mother’s arm, the injury she had never explained to Genevieve. The slick, melted-looking surface. After her mother’s death, Genevieve asked her father about it.

  He’d said, “Paris,” and that was all.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Genevieve started up the steps of Notre-Dame, hitching her backpack higher on her shoulder and remembering the last time she’d been here, as a teenager, how she had prayed she wouldn’t trip.

  The backpack was heavy with the presents for Catharine: Star Trek paraphernalia and a little taste of the South. After long consideration, Genevieve had decided to bring what she had to her cousin and perhaps b
uy her something else while she was in Paris.

  She wished she didn’t feel so awkward around her cousin. Catharine wasn’t a bad person; she was just off-putting. Or so Genevieve had always felt. And Catharine’s insistence on Genevieve’s divulging her dreams wore on her. It seemed to her that certain things should remain private. How was it that Catharine was so annoying when her parents were so lovely, so warm and welcoming?

  But then, Genevieve wasn’t much like either of her parents, was she? She had aspects of each, she imagined, but she certainly wasn’t her father. As for her mother . . . that was harder to know.

  Had her mother climbed these steps? She must have. There was that photo of her and Dave here with the iconic gargoyle, the monkey-faced one with wings looking out to the city below. The tour was so orchestrated that every visitor stepped the same way, so their feet would be falling on the same spots.

  Did each person leave a minuscule trace? Was there some sort of historical butterfly effect? Did the footfall of one’s mother (or one’s fourteen-year-old self) leave something behind: the tiniest imprint, the tiniest groove in the stone?

  Her mother had come to Paris and had her picture taken in a cabaret, sitting beside a handsome man. Why had Genevieve never known this? Why were there pictures in the farmhouse of Dave in Paris, photos of Angela and Jim on their honeymoon, but only the single one of Angela’s later trip?

  Or perhaps there were dozens more tucked away in photo albums or shoe boxes. Nicholas had dealt with their parents’ things after their dad passed away. He had asked Genevieve if she wanted anything and she begged him not to throw anything away until she had a chance to go through it; but of course she had never made the time, or the mental space, to do so. Had he kept the items in boxes that he tripped over, swearing at her each time? Or tucked in the closet of the spare room, or out in the barn where the insects and vermin would eventually eat through the cardboard and ruin everything so he could feel justified in throwing out the leftover effluvia of not one but two lives?