Word arrives from Eleanor about a check, and then a check arrives, too: $3,000 from the Porlock Prize, which Robert has somehow won, which means that with stretching and scrimping and some savings (and some of Eleanor’s savings), you will be able to stay in Paris for a whole semester, before you all head home to reality, Milwaukee, for good, come Christmas.
But come Thanksgiving, a second forwarded letter arrives with a check “for the balance”: $51,000, signed “Sam Coleridge.” You think about framing it, but instead, you cash it, and it clears.
The story begins, then, on the day you’d planned to announce your pre-Christmas departure, when you instead ask Madame about investing some money in the store. With an eye toward one day assuming—control? This does not translate well.
Like buying it? you try.
Because you want to try this: trade Milwaukee for Paris, a bereft life for a busy one, $51,000 or some portion thereof for a down payment, for the stock, the store, the building.
Madame shakes her head, coughs. Not the building.
But the store, she says, and stops, and, for only the second time that fall, smiles.
The story begins when you pay to paint the store red.
* * *
—
Paris subsumed us. Navigating the schools, the city, the store, sorting out what our lives now were took all our time, and what often felt like all our breath. I never slept so well as I slept those first autumn months in Paris, and I never had less reason to: my mattress was filled with what felt (and smelled) like sand; sirens pulsed past all night; rats fought noisy nocturnal battles behind our building.
I slept because I was exhausted. Running a bookstore, even a failing one, requires enormous effort. Especially when it comes with twins.
The twins: age seven, Madame’s grandchildren, Annabelle and Peter. Their care and feeding, after and sometimes before school, were our charge. Their mother, Sylvie, was estranged from Madame, divorced from the twins’ father. She lived in Abu Dhabi, remarried to a sheikh.
Their father, George, unmarried, lived in Paris. Daphne and Ellie (and Annabelle and Peter, and mutedly, Madame) adored George. Crisp, British, impeccable manners and dress, Starbucks cup forever in hand. Daphne initially thought he was a barista; in truth, he was trying to make partner with a large consulting firm. Daphne also worried that he might try to become my partner, not in the store but in life, until Ellie bluntly disabused her: he’s gay. (He was; he’d told me. And when I’d helplessly raised an eyebrow—so why did you marry Madame’s daughter?—he shrugged and said, “people change.”) He compensated us exorbitantly for the twins’ care; I caught a glance or two between him and Madame that suggested they knew the store alone couldn’t sustain us all and that it was his duty to fill the gap.
And he also considered it his duty to sort out our visas, extending our stay from ninety days to at least a year. This should have required our departure and reentry, followed by much waiting in line at the Préfecture de Police, examination of our finances, our health, and our language skills. But George, armed with corporate knowledge and money, found us a back door, with the help of a “friend”—and a law that expedited long-stay visas for foreigners who’d bought businesses. The law had expired, but supposedly they were piloting a new version that required a local partner. George got us enrolled. So long as Madame had a say, we could stay.
For good measure, George had invoked an entirely separate visa program covering au pair work. His “friend” later told him this proved unnecessary in our case, but I would argue the opposite. The twins proved essential to our lives in Paris. We didn’t have them every day—sometimes George kept them; sometimes they flew to see their mother, who inevitably returned them ahead of schedule—but we had them frequently, sometimes even overnight. I liked having them with us, and not simply because they distracted us. They were quiet, good-natured. They followed directions preternaturally well, a trait I credited to the amount of time they’d spent acquiescing to the crisp, firm kindness of international flight crews. And like the seasoned travelers they were, they didn’t engage in indiscreet conversation. They never asked where Daphne and Ellie’s father was, perhaps because George himself was often airborne and their mother’s new life so distant it was almost fictional. They must have complained to George about missing their mother. But they never said a word to me. And so I accepted that they accepted their lot. That we all did.
I see now that that was a blind spot, a foolish one. Maybe the twins weren’t a distraction but a deception; the more I witnessed their own tranquility, the more I found it easy to think that Daphne and Ellie weren’t immediately interested in finding their missing parent, either. Entirely untrue. But what was true was that as school put more demands on the girls, as they gradually did make French friends and their social lives (mostly Ellie’s) grew more complex, the girls had less idle time to devote to wondering where their father might be, and when, as that poignant theory held, Robert might join us.
And as the weeks wore into months, as the twins became their siblings in all but the most strictly legal of ways, as the girls became true Parisians in all but the most strictly legal of ways, the poignant theory wore away. It wasn’t that the girls forgot Robert—not a day went by that his name, or work, didn’t somehow scent the air—but that the muscle the body devotes to longing (I understand it’s in, or behind, the heart) stiffened from less strenuous use.
Daphne, for example, had dutifully continued writing in the diary Eleanor had given her so long ago, though the writing became more exterior, professional—notes on Paris and children’s books for Dad’s article, which she’d present to him as soon as he arrived. As such, she didn’t seem to care if we peeked into the diary or not; it sat on the store counter near the caisse and I would glance at it week to week, a paper blog, to see what about Paris was catching her eye: the severely trimmed trees, the thick jade green of the Seine, a weeks-long debate about precisely which bridge Bemelmans had painted Madeline as falling from, and a running tally of how many Madeline-aged schoolgirls she’d seen in hats, ribbons, or school uniforms of any kind (zero).
But Daphne’s entries eventually grew more spare, going from daily to weekly to whenever. The last entry, just a single question, was weeks old now: are there NO cats in Paris? There had to be, but it was true I’d not seen a cat in Paris since the last time I’d seen The Red Balloon.
I detected a change in Ellie as well. It wasn’t that she was moving on, but she was definitely always in motion now, and never more so than the Saturday she led us to no. 4, rue de la Colombe, a tiny corner of the Île de la Cité, that sliver of Paris that occupies an island in the Seine. A little wine bar, empty.
“So?” Daphne said.
“Ludwig Bemelmans, the Madeline guy, used to own this,” Ellie said.
“A bar?” Daphne said.
While Daphne wandered closer to inspect a plaque on the wall, Ellie explained she’d read all about it in one of Bemelmans’s “books for grown-ups”—and I briefly wondered if the girls really had cooled to their father’s memory. I wondered if I wanted this cooling to occur. It meant less angst on their part, but, uncomfortably, more on mine. I’m not sure if I realized until then that I’d outsourced hope to them, partly because I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for. Finding Robert’s book, that scribbled I’m sorry, had been such a shock that the animal part of me had tried to sell the book right away—it was too much to imagine the person I’d imagined was dead was alive. But then, when the book did disappear, it was worse. I’d tried telling myself that, absent the book, everything was the same as before. But it wasn’t. I was thinking about Robert, what might really have happened to him, more than ever.
And Ellie, apparently, was thinking about Bemelmans.
“Did the book say he sold it because of a bad love affair?” Daphne said, squinting at the plaque.
“What?” Ellie said.
&nb
sp; We all studied the plaque now. A timeline of significant dates in the building’s history ran all the way back to 1297, but the one that had caught Daphne’s eye was for 1953, when one Ludwig Bemelmans, “peintre et écrivain américain,” had taken over the bar only to turn around and sell it to a young couple soon after “à cause d’un chagrin d’amour.” This translated to “heartbreak,” they agreed, but a debate ensued as to just what, or who, had broken Bemelmans’s heart.
They were talking, my two daughters, in English and French, they were falling for a story, stories, just as their dad had, and so when Daphne said, Dad would love this, I nodded, because she was right. Because she wasn’t using the past tense.
“I love it,” Ellie said with a snort.
According to the plaque and website and the Bemelmans essay Ellie had read, the great man himself had decorated the walls inside with murals. Reason enough to investigate further, Daphne and I thought, though Ellie wasn’t sure.
And inside, the owner wasn’t sure either, only that no trace of the supposed murals remained. Ellie spun on her heel and said we should leave immediately. The owner protested. We should take a seat; his pâté was particularly good. Then he turned to Ellie and with a look that revealed this was not their first meeting—surprise one—asked where her petit ami was.
Surprise two: Ellie had a boyfriend.
* * *
—
Surprise three: she would bring him by the shop some night to introduce us.
Until then, everything was deferred with shrugs. They’d met at school. His name was Asif. His dad was the Canadian naval attaché. They were “just friends” and had been to Bemelmans’s old bar “just once,” had not had any wine or the pâté, just Cokes.
I couldn’t tell if I’d just heard five lies or fifty, and wished Robert had been there to hear her, too: not because he’d ferret out the truth (he was terrible at that) but because here was another milestone, the first boyfriend, that would pass without him. Daphne looked on in awe, either at the effortlessness of Ellie’s audacity or at the impossibility that even half what her older sister had said was true.
* * *
—
But it was. A few days after we visited Bemelmans’s bar, Asif arrived at the store at closing time to meet us, receive my belated approval, and take Ellie out on a date.
While Ellie prepared upstairs, I went to the back room, letting Daphne play shopkeeper—a role she loved, and perhaps took more seriously than I did—and listened for the bell above the door. The first time it rang, it was Molly, the young mom from New Zealand, dawdling on the way home to take over from the nanny. As soon as Molly heard what was afoot, she begged to stay and meet The Boyfriend. I sent her away and returned to the office. Sitting down helped. Checking my e-mail did not.
I looked for a book to distract myself instead, which reminded me once again that I was missing a book, Robert’s. I missed Robert at that moment, but I was surprised to find that I especially missed his proxy: of all the books to steal in the store, why had someone taken his old Central Time volume?
Had he taken it back?
Did that mean he was taking his I’m sorry back?
Did that mean he was alive, in Paris?
The rising anxiety felt somewhat akin to what I felt on sleepless nights, and so I retrieved my most reliable cure, an 1888 Paris guidebook we inexplicably had six copies of, Walks in Paris, by Mr. Augustus John Cuthbert Hare. I had liked Mr. Hare from the moment I read the subhead he’d slapped atop the book’s initial pages, which dealt with cabs and hotels and where to eat: dull-useful information. His walks were endless (the book runs 532 pages), borrowed abundantly and shamelessly from other authors, lamented all the gorgeous buildings French “folly” had failed to save, and featured at least one murder, suicide, or otherwise fraught historical death per page. From him, I’d learned that the quite undistinguished-looking rue des Lions around the corner was indeed where once the “large and small lions of the king were confined.” I particularly liked that “and small.”
I thought: Robert would have loved this.
The bell rang. I shoved aside the thought—still automatic after thirteen months—that it might be Robert, and went out to meet Asif.
* * *
—
He all but snapped to attention and greeted me formally: “Hello, Madame Eady.” English, I would learn, was his way of showing off; he’d spent most of his childhood in Quebec speaking French. (English was probably safer for him in Paris anyway, as the French can find Quebecois accents more humorously awful than Americans’.)
“Hey,” Ellie said, suddenly appearing at the top of the spiral staircase. She smiled at Asif, looked carefully at me, and announced, “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay!” Daphne said.
“And while I’m gone,” Ellie said, “nobody talk.” She disappeared.
“Ignore her, Asif,” I said, and he pretended to relax, at least until I told Daphne to check on the twins. Daphne’s departure would leave the two of us alone.
Asif was smoothly handsome, with lashes longer than Ellie’s, and he was taller than all of us. Eight or nine feet, I’d guess. I liked that. And that our idle conversation revealed that an abiding passion of Asif’s (driven by military or diplomatic life, I assumed) was safety. Ellie was my treasure, or a large part of the dwindling hoard I had left. I didn’t want her stolen away by anyone or anything in Paris; Asif seemed up to the task of protecting her.
Still, when Asif swung his security discussion around to the store, I grew uneasy. Was it secure? Night and day? I thought about telling him about the king’s lions. But I thought: even after I explained, Asif wouldn’t get that. And I thought: I wish for Ellie someone who would get that, someone like her dad.
My wandering mind had missed Asif wandering into a new topic, books. When I began listening again, I heard him asking me a question. I asked him to repeat it and then winced when he winced; he must have thought I was critiquing his English. No, it turned out, just his canon. Trying to impress me, he asked if I’d read Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, Kant; trying to be helpful, I asked if he’d ever read anything written by a woman.
That made him nervous enough to start talking about security again: Asif thought a camera or two would help us catch shoplifters. The embassy had quite a system, he said, and then caught himself. “But I really shouldn’t answer questions about it,” he said, and then paused, I realized, so I could ask one.
“No,” I said. “I guess not.”
“My dad’s really good with the stuff, though,” he said.
“I thought he was good at ships,” I said.
Asif looked at me blankly.
“Because he’s in the navy,” I said, and he brightened.
“We even have them—cameras—in, around, our apartment,” Asif said, and then caught himself again. “I probably shouldn’t talk about that, either.”
“No,” I said, “because it’s creepy.” I smiled so he would know to as well.
“What’s creepy?” Daphne said, returning with the twins.
“Nothing,” Asif said, quickly but suavely. It charmed me—I liked that he was at least aspiring to be an adult—but seemed to irritate Daphne, as would most things Asif in the months to come. It took some time for me to determine that the reason was jealousy, mixed with the fact that Asif was male. Save George, Daphne had not had much kindness in her heart for men since arriving in Paris.
The twins, on the other hand, were smitten. They’d climbed onto the tall stools behind the counter and watched the whole scene, rapt. Their lives were full of exotic people coming and going, and they loved it. In some children, the result would have been shyness; it made the twins, on the other hand, want to pull their chairs closer to the show. What’s more, Ellie—self-possessed, American, proud—could do no wrong in the twins’ eyes, and she had chosen Asif. The ma
tter was settled.
Peter, decidedly the more docile twin, looked, as he often did, contentedly bemused, like the beloved uncle he will one day be.
Annabelle, on the other hand, looked ready to sub in with Asif should Ellie show even a moment’s disinterest. Her face fell as Ellie returned.
“Where are you going?” I asked Ellie, a reasonable question that was met with pursed lips.
“Maybe we’ll head down to the Seine,” Ellie said. “Look for escapees.” The Seine is lined with pop-up bookstalls; Ellie was forever certain that books stolen from our shop were for sale there. Daphne thought so, too.
Asif nodded grimly. This was exactly the sort of security lapse he was talking about.
Daphne rolled her eyes, and then Annabelle did, too, a new skill, one of several that George told me Annabelle was mastering under our care.
Asif’s eyes, meanwhile, popped wide when I told Ellie to be sure not to cross the Seine and visit Bemelmans’s old wine bar. Again.
Ellie was undaunted. “Fine,” she said, “we’ll go up to the Pompidou and hang out with all the drunk American students.” I actually liked the pedestrian streets around the glass-fronted, inner-workings-on-view Centre Pompidou at night: there were usually people, buskers, music. After dark, our corner of the Marais was so quiet it could be spooky, lions or no.
“They’re not all drunk,” I said.
Ellie, afraid (like me) of what I would say next, tugged at Asif. With an exchange of au revoirs, he bundled her out the door and ducked his head at me, a deferential salute. Annabelle ran to the glass and thumped on it as they passed. I saw Ellie wait—I saw Ellie impress herself with her own magnanimity—while Asif paused, grinned, and pressed his hand against Annabelle’s, the glass between them. Then Asif turned, Ellie turned, and they left, marching up the street, away from the Seine, their hands swinging achingly close to each other, knuckles brushing, heads tilted just so.
Paris by the Book Page 10
