Sarah's Key

by Tatiana de Rosnay

  I put the notebook down, devastated at what we now knew.

  "She killed herself," William said flatly. "There was no accident. She drove that car straight into the tree."

  I said nothing. I could not speak. I did not know what to say.

  I wanted to reach out and take his hand, but something held me back. I took a deep breath. But still the words did not come.

  The brass key lay between us on the table, a silent witness of the past, of Michel's death. I sensed him closing up, like he had done once before in Lucca, when he had held up his palms as if to push me away. He did not move, but I clearly felt him drawing away. Once again, I resisted the powerful, compulsive urge to touch him, to hold him. Why did I feel there was so much I could share with this man? Somehow he was no stranger to me, and more bizarre still, I felt even less a stranger to him. What had brought us together? My quest, my thirst for truth, my compassion for his mother? He knew nothing of me, knew nothing of my failing marriage, my near miscarriage in Lucca, my job, my life. What did I know of him, of his wife, his children, his career? His present was a mystery. But his past, his mother's past, had been etched out to me like fiery torches along a dark path. And I longed to show this man that I cared, that what happened to his mother had altered my life.

  Thank you," he said, at last. "Thank you for telling me all this." His voice seemed odd, contrived. I realized I had wanted him to break down, to cry, to show me some form of emotion. Why? No doubt because I myself needed release, needed tears to wash away pain, sorrow, emptiness, needed to share my feelings with him, in a particular, intimate communion.

  He was leaving, getting up from the table, gathering up the key and the notebook. I could not bear the idea of him going so soon. If he walked out now, I was convinced I would never hear from him again. He would not want to see me, or talk to me. I would lose the last link to Sarah. I would lose him. And for some godforsaken, obscure reason, William Rainsferd was the only person I wanted to be with at that very moment.

  He must have read something in my face because he hesitated, hovered over the table.

  "I will go to these places," he said. "Beaune-la-Rolande, and rue Nelaton."

  "I could come with you, if you want me to."

  His eyes rested upon me. Again, I perceived the contrast of what I knew I inspired in him, a complex bundle of resentment and thankfulness.

  "No, I prefer to go alone. But I'd appreciate it if you gave me the Dufaure brothers' addresses. I'd like to see them, too."

  "Sure," I replied, looking at my agenda and scribbling the addresses down on a piece of paper for him.

  Suddenly he sat down again, heavily.

  "You know, I could do with a drink," he said.

  "Fine. Of course," I said, signaling to the waiter. We ordered some wine for William and a fruit juice for me.

  As we drank in silence, I noticed inwardly how comfortable I felt with him. Two fellow Americans enjoying a quiet drink. Somehow we did not need to talk. And it did not feel awkward. But I knew that as soon as he had finished the last dregs of his wine, he'd be gone.

  The moment came.

  "Thank you, Julia, thank you for everything."

  He did not say, Let's keep in touch, send each other e-mails, talk on the phone from time to time. No, he said nothing. But I knew what his silence spelled out, loud and clear. Don't call me. Don't contact me, please. I need to figure my entire life out. I need time and silence, and peace. I need to find out who I now am.

  I watched him walk away under the rain, his tall figure fading into the busy street.

  I folded my palms over the roundness of my stomach, letting loneliness ebb into me.

  W

  HEN I CAME HOME that evening, I found the entire Tezac family waiting for me. They were sitting with Bertrand and Zoe in our living room. I immediately picked up the stiffness of the atmosphere.

  It appeared they had divided into two groups: Edouard, Zoe, and Cecile, who were on "my side," approving of what I had done, and Colette and Laure, who disapproved.

  Bertrand said nothing, remaining strangely silent. His face was mournful, his mouth drooping at the sides. He did not look at me.

  How could I have done such a thing, Colette exploded. Tracing that family, contacting that man, who in the end knew nothing of his mother's past.

  "That poor man," echoed my sister-in-law Laure, quivering. "Imagine, now he finds out who he really is, his mother was a Jew, his entire family wiped out in Poland, his uncle starved to death. Julia should have left him alone."

  Edouard stood up abruptly, threw his hands into the air.

  "My God!" he roared. "What has come over this family!" Zoe took shelter under my arm. "Julia did something brave, something generous," he went on, quaking with anger. "She wanted to make sure that the little girl's family knew. Knew we cared. Knew that my father cared enough to ensure Sarah Starzynski was looked after by a foster family, that she was loved."

  "Oh Father, please," interrupted Laure. "What Julia did was pathetic. Bringing back the past is never a good idea, especially whatever happened during the war. No one wants to be reminded of that, nobody wants to think about that."

  She did not look at me, but I perceived the full weight of her animosity. I read her mind easily. Just the sort of the thing an American would do. No respect for the past. No idea of what a family secret is. No manners. No sensitivity. Uncouth, uneducated American: l'Americaine avec ses gros sabots.

  "I disagree!" said Cecile, her voice shrill. "I'm glad you told me what happened, Pere. It's a horrid story, that poor little boy dying in the apartment, the little girl coming back. I think Julia was right to contact that family. After all, we did nothing we should be ashamed of."

  "Perhaps!" said Colette, her lips pinched. "But if Julia had not been so nosy, Edouard would never have mentioned it. Right?"

  Edouard faced his wife. His face was cold, so was his voice.

  "Colette, my father made me promise I'd never reveal what happened. I respected his wish, with difficulty, for the past sixty years. But now I am glad you know. Now I can share this with you, even if it apparently disturbs some of you."

  "Thank God Mame knows nothing," sighed Colette, patting her ash blond hair into place.

  "Oh, Mame knows," piped up Zoe's voice.

  Her cheeks turned beet red but she faced us bravely.

  "She told me what happened. I didn't know about the little boy, I guess Mom didn't want me to hear that part. But Mame told me all about it."

  Zoe went on.

  "She's known about it since it happened, the concierge told her Sarah came back. And she said Grand-pere had all these nightmares about a dead child in his room. She said it was horrible, knowing, and never being able to talk about it with her husband, her son, and later, with the family. She said it had changed my great-grandfather, that it had done something to him, something he could not talk about, even to her."

  I looked at my father-in-law. He stared at my daughter, incredulous.

  "Zoe, she knew? She's known about it all these years?"

  Zoe nodded.

  "Mame said it was a dreadful secret to carry, that she never stopped thinking about the little girl, she said she was glad I now knew. She said we should have talked about it much earlier, we should have done what Mom did, we should not have waited. We should have found the little girl's family. We were wrong to have kept it hidden. That's what she told me. Just before her stroke."

  There was a long, painful silence.

  Zoe drew herself up. She gazed at Colette, Edouard, at her aunts, at her father. At me.

  "There's something else I want to tell you," she added, smoothly switching from French to English and accentuating her American accent. "I don't care what some of you think. I don't care if you think Mom was wrong, if you think Mom did something stupid. I'm really proud of what she did. How she found William, how she told him. You have no idea what it took, what it meant to her. What it means to me. And probably what it means to him
. And you know what? When I grow up, I want to be like her. I want to be a mom my kids are proud of. Bonne nuit."

  She made a funny little bow, walked out of the room, and quietly closed the door.

  We remained in silence for a long time. I watched Colette's face grow stony, almost rigid. Laure checked her makeup in a pocket mirror. Cecile seemed petrified.

  Bertrand had not said one word. He was facing the window, hands joined behind his back. He had not looked at me once. Or at any of us.

  Edouard got up, patted my head in a tender, paternal gesture. His pale blue eyes twinkled down at me. He murmured something in French, in the crook of my ear.

  "You did the right thing. You did well."

  But later on that evening, as I lay in my solitary bed, unable to read, to think, to do anything but lie back and examine the ceiling, I wondered.

  I thought of William, wherever he was, trying to fit the new pieces of his life together.

  I thought of the Tezac family, for once having to come out of their shell, for once having to communicate, the sad, dark secret out in the open. I thought of Bertrand turning his back to me.

  "Tu as fait ce qu'il fallait. Tu as bien fait," Edouard had said.

  Was Edouard right? I did not know. I wondered, still.

  Zoe opened the door, crept into my bed like a long silent puppy, nestling up to me. She took my hand, slowly kissed it, rested her head on my shoulder.

  I listened to the muffled roar of the traffic on the boulevard du Montparnasse. It was getting late. Bertrand was with Amelie, no doubt. He felt so far from me, like a stranger. Like somebody I hardly knew.

  Two families that I had brought together, just for today. Two families that would never be the same again.

  Had I done the right thing?

  I did not know what to think. I did not know what to believe.

  Zoe fell asleep next to me, her slow breath tickling my cheek. I thought of the child to come, and I felt a sort of peace come over me. A peaceful feeling that soothed me for a while.

  But the ache, the sadness remained.

  New York City, 2005

  Z

  OE!" I YELLED. "For God's sake hold your sister's hand. She is going to fall off that thing and break her neck!"

  My long-legged daughter scowled at me.

  "You are one hell of a paranoid mother."

  She grabbed the baby's plump arm and shoved her back onto her tricycle. Her little legs pumped furiously along the track, Zoe hurdling behind her. The toddler gurgled with delight, craning her neck back to make sure I was watching, with the overt vanity of a two-year-old.

  Central Park and the first tantalizing promise of spring. I stretched my legs out, tilted my face back to the sun.

  The man at my side caressed my cheek.

  Neil. My boyfriend. A trifle older than me. A lawyer. Divorced. Lived in the Flatiron district with his teenage sons. Introduced to me by my sister. I liked him. I wasn't in love with him, but I enjoyed his company. He was an intelligent, cultivated man. He had no intention of marrying me, thank God, and he put up with my daughters from time to time.

  There had been a couple of boyfriends since we had come to live here. Nothing serious. Nothing important. Zoe called them my suitors, Charla, my beaux, in Scarlett-like fashion. Before Neil, the latest suitor was called Peter, he had an art gallery, a bald spot on the back of his head that pained him, and a drafty loft in Tribeca. They were decent, slightly boring, all-American middle-aged men. Polite, earnest, and meticulous. They had good jobs, they were well-educated, cultivated, and generally divorced. They came to pick me up, they dropped me off, they offered their arm and their umbrella. They took me out to lunch, to the Met, MoMA, the City Opera, the NYCB, to shows on Broadway, out to dinner, and sometimes to bed. I endured it. Sex was something I now did because I felt I had to. It was mechanical and dull. There, too, something had vanished. The passion. The excitement. The heat. All gone.

  I felt like someone--me?--had fast-forwarded the film of my life, and there I appeared like a wooden Charlie Chaplin character, doing everything in a hasty and awkward way, as if I had no other choice, a stiff grin pasted on my face, acting like I was happy with my new life.

  Sometimes Charla would steal a look at me and say, "Hey, you OK?"

  She would nudge me and I'd mumble, "Oh, sure, fine." She did not seem convinced, but for the moment she let me be.

  My mother, too, would let her eyes roam over my face and purse her lips with worry. "Everything all right, sugar?"

  I'd shrug away her anxiety with a careless smile.

  A

  GLORIOUS, CRISP NEW YORK morning. The kind you never get in Paris. Sharp fresh air. Stark blue sky. The city's skyline hemming us in above the trees. The Dakota's pale mass, facing us. The smell of hotdogs and pretzels wafting through the breeze.

  I reached out my hand and stroked Neil's knee, eyes still closed against the sun's increasing heat. New York and its fierce, contrasted weather. Sizzling summers. Freezing white winters. And the light that fell over the city, a hard, bright silvery light that I had grown to love. Paris and its damp gray drizzle seemed to come from another world.

  I opened my eyes and watched my daughters cavort. Overnight, or so it seemed, Zoe had sprouted into a spectacular teenager, towering over me with lissome strong limbs. She looked like Charla and Bertrand, she'd inherited their class, their allure, their charm, that feisty, powerful combination of Jarmond and Tezac that enchanted me.

  The little one was something else. Softer, rounder, more fragile. She needed cuddling, kissing, more fuss and attention than Zoe had demanded at her age. Was it because her father was not around? Because Zoe, the baby, and I had left France for New York, not long after the birth? I did not know. I did not question myself too much.

  It had been strange, coming back to live in America, after many years in Paris. It still felt strange, sometimes. It did not yet feel like home. I wondered how long that would take. But it had happened. There had been difficulty. It had not been an easy decision to make.

  The baby's birth had been premature, a cause for panic and pain. She was born just after Christmas, two months before her due date. I underwent a gruesomely long C-section in the emergency room at Saint-Vincent de Paul Hospital. Bertrand had been there, oddly tense, moved, despite himself. A tiny, perfect little girl. Had he been disappointed? I wondered. I wasn't. This child meant so much to me. I had fought for her. I had not given in. She was my victory.

  Shortly after the birth, and just before the move to the rue de Saintonge, Bertrand summoned up the courage to tell me he loved Amelie, that he wanted to live with her from now on, that he wanted to move into the Trocadero apartment with her, that he could no longer lie to me, to Zoe, that there would have to be a divorce, but it could be quick, and easy. It was then, watching him go through with his longwinded, complicated confession, watching him pace the room up and down, his hands behind his back, his eyes downcast, that the first idea of moving to America dawned upon me. I listened to Bertrand till the end. He looked drained, wrecked, but he had done it. He had been honest with me, at last. And honest with himself. And I had looked back at my handsome, sensual husband and thanked him. He had seemed surprised. He admitted he had expected a stronger, more bitter reaction. Shouts, insults, a fuss. The baby in my arms had moaned, waving her tiny fists.

  "No fuss," I said. "No shouts, no insults. All right?"

  "All right," he said. And he kissed me, and the baby.

  He already felt like he was out of my life. Like he had already left.

  That night, every time I rose to feed the hungry child, I thought of the States. Boston? No, I hated the idea of going back to the past, to my childhood city.

  And then I knew.

  New York. Zoe, the baby, and I could go to New York. Charla was there, my parents not far. New York. Why not? I didn't know the city all that well, I had never lived there for a long spell, apart from my annual visits to my sister's.

  New York
. Perhaps the only city that could rival Paris because of its complete and utter difference. The more I thought about it, the more the idea secretly appealed to me. I didn't talk it over with my friends. I knew Herve, Christophe, Guillaume, Susannah, Holly, Jan, and Isabelle would be upset at the idea of my departure. But I knew they would understand and accept it, too.

  And then Mame had died. She had lingered on since her stroke in November, she had never been able to speak again, although she had regained consciousness. She had been moved to the intensive care unit, at the Cochin hospital. I was expecting her death, gearing myself up to face it, but it still came as a shock.

  It was after the funeral, which took place in Burgundy, in the sad little graveyard, that Zoe had said to me, "Mom, do we have to go live in the rue de Saintonge?"

  "I think your father expects us to."

  "But do you want to go live there?" she asked.

  "No," I said truthfully. "Ever since I've known what happened there, I don't want to."

  "I don't want to either."

  Then she said, "But where could we move to then, Mom?"

  And I replied, lightly, jokingly, expecting her to snort with disapproval, "Well, how about New York City?"

  I

  T HAD BEEN AS easy as that, with Zoe. Bertrand had not been happy about our decision. About his daughter moving so far away. But Zoe was firm about leaving. She said she'd come back every couple of months, and Bertrand could come over, too, to see her, and the baby. I explained to Bertrand that there was nothing set, nothing definitive about the move. It wasn't forever. It was just for a couple of years. To let Zoe grasp the American side of her. To help me move on. To start something new. He had now established himself with Amelie. They formed a couple, an official one. Amelie's children were nearly adults. They lived away from home and also spent time with their father. Was Bertrand tempted by the prospect of a new life without the everyday responsibility of children--his, or hers--to raise on a daily basis? Perhaps. He finally said yes. And then I got things going.