“What’s wrong with my condition?” Henri smiled mockingly, looking over the day’s mail on the tray. She reached out for the letter with her name and address handwritten, the envelope bearing an American stamp. “But, Nadine, you are always so kind. All I need is soup and a piece of bread.”
“And a glass of wine. I have a Château Raspail that has just come in. They are practically giving it away, at sixteen francs.”
But Henri was no longer listening. She had slipped into the living room and turned on the lamp on her father’s desk.
When, a half hour later, Nadine called her to the dining room, Henri’s face was white.
“You are unwell, my little girl?”
“No. I’m fine. But I’m not hungry.” She reached for a piece of bread to appease Nadine. “I will take this upstairs. I have some reading to do.”
It was just after midnight that Nadine heard the cry. She opened her door and rushed up the stairs to Henri’s bedroom. Another cry came as she opened the door. “Nadine, Nadine! The baby is coming!”
Nadine flew out the door. “I have Dr. Hervier’s home telephone number.” She was back in the bedroom in moments. “I rang and rang and rang. No answer. I think, chère Henri, I will get an ambulance to take you to Saint-Jean.”
Nadine was gone again to the telephone. Henri closed her eyes and let out another cry of pain.
Twenty minutes later the ambulance was there. A half hour after Henri arrived at the hospital, the baby was born, a month before he was due. Nadine was not back in the apartment until four in the morning. She had telephoned Raymond Leborcier from the hospital but had to settle for leaving a message with the desk clerk. “Tell Professor Leborcier,” she said excitedly, “that he gave birth to—I mean, his daughter gave birth to a little boy. The baby is a month premature but doing well. The professor can call me when he gets this message. Mademoiselle—Madame Durban is at the Saint-Jean hospital, 524.43.64. But it would be better not to disturb her. Monsieur le professeur can call me instead. The number is—” She was excited, but stopped herself before giving to the desk clerk, to hand on to Professor Leborcier, the telephone number of Professor Leborcier.
Returned to the apartment, she paused to draw breath. She thought to look into Henri’s bedroom before going to bed herself—there might be bedclothes that needed to be taken away. She looked at the night table, switching on the light. There was only a ripped-open envelope and a letter. She looked at it curiously. It didn’t bear the handwriting she had gotten used to, or the return address of “Private Durban.” On the envelope, in the sender’s corner, was written, simply, “Monsanto.” The stationery was that of “Dakota Student, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, N.D.” Nadine’s knowledge of English was insecure, but curiosity drove her to make an attempt to decipher the opening lines. They read: “I cannot bear to give you this terrible news. When you wrote…”
“Terrible news”? Nadine did not have the heart to grapple with the lines that ensued. A wise Frenchwoman with experience in life and in tragedy, she knew what it must mean, this “terrible news.” It could only mean that Stephen Durban, the husband of Henrietta and the father of her child, had been killed. It was the shock of getting that news that had brought on the premature birth of the baby.
Beyond telling the professor what had happened, Nadine reflected, she must not let on that she knew what the letter said. Not let on to Henrietta, or anybody else. Possibly—she gave ground here to her conscience—she would tell her mother when she visited her on Sunday. Chère Maman was very old, and would not breathe a word of it, not even to her priest, the holy Père Toussaint.
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER 10
Boulder, Colorado, February 1987
“Did I tell you I’m on the committee for Thursday evening’s speech?” Amy asked.
“Which speech?” Henri replied. “There are usually six speeches you can choose from. My goodness, everybody comes to Boulder.”
The boy’s young voice interrupted. “Not everybody, Maman. Presque tout le monde.”
In the small, comfortable apartment, Henrietta looked over at her sixteen-year-old son. Her vision blurred. She was seeing Reuben Castle. That’s how old Reuben was—sixteen—when she first laid eyes on him at the Memorial Union in Grand Forks, in 1966. They were both freshmen at the University of North Dakota. But no—Reuben had been older than Justin now was, surely? She closed her eyes to do the arithmetic.
—Reuben was born in August 1948.
—Therefore, in September 1966 he was eighteen years old. Not sixteen, Justin’s age.
“Justin, I have told you not to speak in French except when we are alone.”
Amy interceded. “Oh, come on, Henrietta. It’s good for me when he speaks in French. And what he said wasn’t very difficult to understand.”
“That’s right, Mrs. Parrish.” Justin got up from his chair and pulled from the bookcase his watercolor set. He wiped off the brush before continuing. “But it was difficult to understand why Maman said that everybody comes to Boulder. Do you know, Mrs. Parrish, about the three men in the train who passed the cow? The brown cow?”
Amy reconciled herself to hearing again what the students had been told in Mr. Edwards’s trigonometry class at school. She smiled at Henri over her coffee cup—she understood. She too had a teenage boy.
“No, tell me about the cow, Justin.”
“Well, when they passed the cow, the economist said, ‘It appears that the cows in Ireland are brown.’ The mathematician said, ‘No, John, all you are able to say is that some of the cows in Ireland are brown.’”
Justin paused, permitting his mother’s guest, the lively middle-aged woman, head of the special-collections division of the Chinook Library, to absorb the lesson thus far. Then he dipped his hand into his pocket and brought out a pair of glasses.
Donning them, he arched his eyebrows and spoke in deep, authoritative tones: “‘No, Rudolph’—this is the logician speaking, Mrs. Parrish—‘you are entitled to say only this, We know that in Ireland there is at least one cow, of which at least one side is brown.’”
Justin broke into a smile of boyish pleasure. “You like that, Mrs. Parrish?”
She replied, teasingly, “Je l’aime beaucoup, Justin.”
He went back to his watercolors. “I’ve got to go to the paint store soon, Maman.”
“Well, you know where it is, Justin. On your bicycle it will take you…not more than twelve minutes.”
“Oh. I thought you might want to drive me.”
“No. What you thought was: There is a driver. There is a car. So I can be driven to the store. Me, I thought: There is a bicycle and a store, and only one brown cow who has a driver’s license.”
“Mrs. Parrish,” Justin turned to her, a little indignantly, “your Allan has a driver’s license, and he’s only three months older than I am.”
“Justin, I am not here as a family broker on the question of a driver’s license.”
Henrietta broke in, addressing a few words in French to her son. To Amy she said that she wanted to wait for the doctor’s analysis of Justin’s eye problems—“He only started wearing glasses a month ago.”
“And I don’t really need them, Maman. Only when I’m looking in dictionaries, that kind of thing. Not when I’d be driving a car.”
Amy Parrish accepted another cup of coffee and returned to the subject of the evening speech. “It’s sponsored by the Boulder Democratic Caucus. Come to think of it, Henrietta, I don’t even know whether you’re a Democrat! I simply assumed you were. Everybody who’s educated is.”
From Justin: “President Reagan is not a Democrat, and he’s educated.”
Amy thought to be cautious. “Well, there are two views on that subject, Justin. But Henrietta, dear, I’m trying to find out whether you’d like to come with me to the talk. Obviously you don’t have to contribute anything.”
“Who’s the speaker?”
“Senator Reuben Castle. North Dakota. H
e’s supposed to be very good.”
“Supposed to be.…How many people is that, Mrs. Parrish, when you’re supposed to be good? Like one thousand think you’re good? Like one million?”
Henrietta Durban rose from her chair. Amy noticed that her face was pale. “You all right, Henri?”
“I’ll be right back.”
She was gone five minutes. When she came back her color had returned, and she took up the conversation where they had left off.
“Where are you sitting, Amy?”
“Thursday night? I’m on the committee, so I can sit wherever I want. Would you like to sit onstage? There’ll be a lot of people onstage, including our mayor and our governor—at least, the governor promised to come.”
“I have a lot to do. If I go, I’ll probably get there late. I’d better sit in the back.”
“Can I go too?” Justin asked.
“Yes,” his mother said. “You can come with me.”
When, soon after her father’s death, Henrietta Leborcier Durban accepted the offer from the University of Colorado library, she and her son, just turned fifteen, settled into an apartment near the campus. No one, not even Amy Parrish, her superior at the library, questioned her closely on her marriage or on the circumstances of the death in Vietnam of her husband, Lieutenant Durban. Henrietta didn’t bring up the subject; nor did Justin, who had been told as a little boy that his father had died in military service, and that this was why he was fatherless.
CHAPTER 11
Boulder, February 1987
Looking around, Henri estimated that several hundred people were at the Democratic rally in Macky Auditorium. The meeting had begun, or so it had been advertised, at seven-fifteen. Henri arrived with Justin at about seven-thirty. She led him to a seat just in front of the last row, where a half dozen girls were waiting to hoist placards designed to stimulate Democratic passions. As Henri and Justin took their seats, the welcoming speaker was pronouncing a litany of the evil deeds of the Reagan administration. When he was done, the canned music blared in. The apogee—as always—was “Happy Days Are Here Again.” That melody evoked the sacred historical memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1932 he had mesmerized the convention in Chicago and, four months later, the voting public nationwide in his decisive victory over President Herbert Hoover—the “Prince of Depression.” Tonight’s speaker in Boulder had referred to Mr. Hoover using the same words, perhaps the millionth time he had been thus recalled to the memory of Democratic audiences. The speaker waved his hands voluptuously as the music played, jubilant music, happiness-is-ahead-for-us music.
It was several minutes before the Democratic congressman was introduced, an elderly man who looked lean and hungry and who was very very indignant about everything President Reagan had done, touching on Iran, Nicaragua, and Ollie North.
“But you’re not here tonight,” Congressman Atkins said, addressing the house full of Democrats, half of them students, “to rue yesterday’s political news. You’re here to celebrate tomorrow’s political news.” Henri found herself gripping the wrist of Justin, who was carried away by the proceedings, clapping boisterously whenever the audience gave him a lead with its applause. “You’re here to listen to a young shining star in the Democratic pantheon.” Atkins paused theatrically.
“Now let me tell you about Reuben Hardwick Castle. Going back not that long—just fifteen, twenty years—he was the most prominent member of his class at the University of North Dakota. Editor in chief of the student newspaper, chairman of the Student Council. He was brave in denouncing the war, but he refused to shield himself from it. He even put off law school, waiting till after his military service to begin law studies at the University of Illinois, all of this so that he could do what he thought was his duty.” The applause had been dutiful, but now was proud.
“He was, fortunately, spared the bloody end so many members of his generation suffered in that terrible war under the leadership of President Nixon. He returned home safely, entering law school the following September. But he didn’t complete his studies—in good conscience he couldn’t complete his studies while he saw the terrible shape his country was in. He was drawn to public life, to do what any good citizen would do—put his God-given talents to work in order to serve his country.” There was a ripple of applause.
“Hold your applause, please, ladies and gentlemen, gathered in this hall of this distinguished university—it gets better. When he was out here in Colorado on a speaking tour for the Democratic Party, he met and soon afterward married a young lady who had been Miss Colorado—and then had gone on to become Miss America!” There was substantial applause.
“Elle est ici?” Justin whispered to his mother.
“On ne sait pas, Justin.”
“Je voudrais la voir.”
“On verra.” They would soon know whether Mrs. Castle was there.
“Priscilla Castle is the mother of a fine young man, and if he’s lucky, one day in just a few years he’ll be a student at the University of Colorado—” There was enthusiastic applause. “And if he does enter this university, I know he’ll end up a proud member of the Democratic Caucus.” The applause now was sustained.
“Reuben Castle was elected first as North Dakota’s sole member of the House of Representatives, where I am honored to serve as one of Colorado’s proud delegation.” The applause had now thinned out. “Only six years ago, he was elected to the Senate, replacing a long-serving Republican. He easily won reelection last fall.
“So! I’m delighted tonight to introduce this great young Democrat. And just to show the special esteem he has for the University of Colorado”—the speaker was slowing down the words he spoke and augmenting the volume with which he spoke them—“he has brought with him Miss America—she is still that, always Miss America, as far as the citizens of Colorado are concerned!”
The congressman turned on his heel and gestured to the people seated on the stage behind him.
Justin felt the sudden pressure of his mother’s hand. “Qu’estce que c’est, Maman?”
“Nothing. Quiet.” Her eyes were fixed on the stage. Had she spoken too sharply to her son? She would make up for it.
“Quiet, darling,” she said, her tone softened.
CHAPTER 12
Boulder, February 1987
Amy dropped her handwritten letter off at Henri’s apartment early the next morning. The envelope was marked: En route to Aspen, skiing. The lettering on the envelope was large and distinctive.
The missive read, “Glad you came last night! I spotted you, and hoped to catch you afterward, but you had already left. I think Senator Castle is quite smashing, and who knows, we may all be hearing from him from a higher platform in a year or so. And Priscilla’s—well, I’ve known her since she was sixteen. I almost wrote sexteen. Enough said.
“I mean, enough said on that. Henri, I’ve known you nearly two years now, so I’m going to give you some advice. Big-sister advice, since I’m a dozen years older than you. It boils down to: Get around a bit. This campus is, well, maybe not teeming with attractive disengaged males, but there are some nice people here. They may not be in the same league as your Mr. Durban (sorry, I’ve never known his first name), but…. Well. How many years since he died? I guess as many years as Justin is old, if I work it out right. Justin is divine, but you can’t very well cohabit with him and anybody else at the same time.
“I warned you early on about my reputation. J. is a junior now, one year behind my Allan. You can’t send him away yet, not for a while, but at college time, he should certainly go away. Leaving you with a little privacy. Don’t be sore at me for poking into other people’s business. How can anybody help other people without getting into their business? You can always tell me to shove off, but I don’t think you will. And I don’t think you should.”
Henrietta walked into the kitchen, Amy’s letter folded in her pocket. Justin was eating his cereal absentmindedly, his eyes on the television screen. Henri looked up. Th
e caption on the Sony read, “Senator Reuben Castle speaking at Democratic rally.” The camera zoomed back and showed Priscilla Castle, gazing devotedly at her husband. Seated next to her was their son, who looked to be about eleven. He was wholly detached from the scene. His jacket and shirt seemed to grow larger as the seconds ticked on, but it was an illusion, as the boy wearing them mentally distanced himself, shrinking from the proceedings. But when the crowd broke out in applause and the boy’s eyes moved toward his father, Mrs. Castle could be seen discreetly nudging him.
The television commentator took over. “Senator Castle, with his family looking on, complained about the policies of President Ronald Reagan at a meeting sponsored by the Democratic Caucus of the University of Colorado. He was well received, and there is talk that Democrats might find his name on the national ticket, if not next year, then perhaps in 1992.”
The television image gave way to a commercial.
“Maman? Il est bien fort, ce monsieur, non?”
“Yes. He’s very attractive, and very impressive. Justin, have you thought of going away over spring break?”
“You mean to Paris?”
“No. I was thinking of a skiing vacation. Your friend Charley is always talking about skiing vacations. And Mrs. Parrish says that Alta, in Utah, where Allan goes, is very nice, and not expensive.”
Justin pushed his cereal bowl away. “Are you going to take a vacation?”
“I hadn’t planned to.”
“Do colleges have vacations? I mean, for college employees? I mean, do you get paid if you take a vacation?”
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