A Paris Apartment

by Michelle Gable

  I raised my child. I am not prepared to be a mother again. I do not have the means or a way to get them. As much as this world is crumbling my looks are, too. I will have to lower my standards or begin selling off the beautiful pieces given to me by Clemenceau, by Le Comte, by Giovanni Boldini.

  Boldini. I can hardly write his name. This, the man I loved for most of my life, the man who reentered the fairy world created by Béatrice and me. He saved my life once only to ruin it later. I thought when Giovanni came back it was for the both of us. Alas, Giovanni didn’t miss me but Béa, and he missed her in the most inappropriate manner. Boldini got her pregnant. He killed her.

  He said it was a misunderstanding. Marguérite says I’ve concocted something out of thin air. But what is there to possibly misunderstand? To make up? Nothing he can say will make it right. He tried to make amends by giving me the portrait he painted of me all those years (decades!) ago. It was his final parting gift, which I promptly attempted to sell to the French government. They would give me nothing for it. That’s how unimportant the man has become.

  In sum, the wretch left me with three things: a useless painting, a dead daughter, and a baby I do not want and cannot take care of. Thus I must do what I couldn’t before. Tomorrow it is off to the idiot’s home. It may be a harsh sentence for this young child, but I cannot keep her. My feelings are something lower and darker than indifference. It is not her fault but, like Boldini, she killed my Béa.

  The director of the asylum, if he’s still there, was a kind man. They teach their students trades, ways to become productive members of society. It is more than I could give her. After all, if I’d left Béa there she would still be alive.

  As I pack Lisette’s few things for the journey, the tears come hard. No, I tell them, stay away. This is not the moment for regrets. Marguérite is on her way. She will join me on the journey. With her help I will be brave enough to leave the child. This time I will not look back.

  Chapitre LXXIII

  They traveled the long road to Sarlat-la-Canéda, the windows of Luc’s BMW M6 down, the wind pitching April’s hair into hedgelike proportions. She thought more than once the distance was long enough that, had they been in the United States, she would’ve insisted on flying. Yet somehow April was glad of the length of the trip.

  Lisette’s desertion of the flat finally made sense. If April’s own grandmother had ditched her at the local Home for Idiots, she would’ve eschewed the woman’s knickknacks and paintings too. Still, as brutal as the action was, April felt sorry for Marthe. She was so full of love for her daughter that it must’ve taken the severest kind of depression to force her to abandon Lisette. The one man Marthe trusted betrayed her in a most egregious fashion, her favorite person dead at his hand.

  “Even in an automobile you work furiously,” Luc noted as they eased off the highway and onto a twisted road surrounded by purples, surrounded by yellows, surrounded by greens, all of it beneath a turquoise sky. Even compared to California the effect was almost too much for April’s eyes.

  “I’m trying to write interview questions,” April said. “But failing miserably.”

  “Why don’t you—how do you call it? Float by the seat of your pants?”

  “Fly. It’s ‘fly.’ And considering I hounded the ailing woman into seeing us I need to be prepared. I don’t really know where to start. At first I only cared about the furniture, the paintings, all the amazing pieces in the apartment. I wanted to find out why Madame Quatremer would leave it all behind. Now it doesn’t seem to matter.”

  She patted the stack of journals on her lap.

  “This is what I care about,” she said. “The rest of Marthe’s story. The journals told me so much, but they’re incredibly sparse at the end, such massive gaps of time. I need the filler, the in-between. I’m hoping Madame Vannier has it.”

  “Well,” Luc said and smiled. “As always, I hope you get what you want.”

  As they twisted deeper into the countryside, April closed her eyes and leaned back into the seat. Like a crooked country road, her mind started to turn and wander. She found herself thinking about her mom. April pictured her face: those green eyes, the wide, flat nose, and the sprinkle of freckles across her cheeks. By the time she died those freckles were long gone, institutional fluorescents a sad downgrade from California sunshine.

  April very nearly nodded off to sleep.

  “You’re smiling,” Luc said suddenly. He reached over and patted April’s arm, interrupting her waking dream. “What is so amusing to you?”

  “Not amusing.” April rolled her head to the side. She gave a tired little smile. “I was thinking—dreaming? About my mom.”

  “What about your mom?”

  “I was thinking about animals.”

  “Animals? Why? Did you have a lot of pets growing up?”

  “No, the Potter household was no-feather, no-fur. No-fin, even! Brian once brought a goldfish home from the county fair, and Mom made him take it back. To the fair! You know you’re in a sorry state if carnies think you’re weird.” April laughed. “Yet my mom loved animals. If there was a crippled dog or cat in the neighborhood she’d fix it right up. I’ve seen her tape a cat’s tail and create a makeshift brace on a dog’s leg using hacked-up rulers and duct tape. Once she tried to administer CPR to a bird that flew into the living-room window.”

  “Did it work?”

  “I think she blew up its lungs. I remember sobbing at the screen door.”

  “Poor little Avril,” Luc said.

  “Poor April is right! She was blunt too, to an almost indecorous extent. A woman in the neighborhood had a miscarriage, and my mother proceeded to tell us, at Sunday dinner, that the neighbor gave birth not to a baby but to a giant hairball with teeth. I thought my father was going to pass out.”

  “Sounds like an entertaining woman. Maybe I would’ve enjoyed her almost as much as I enjoy you.” He winked.

  “I’ve been writing it all down, these stories, our memories. I’d forgotten how great she was. She was stuck in my head as this stern, teetotaling, rule-following kind of housewife, but now I wonder. Had she been born a little later perhaps she would’ve ended up one of those free-spirited hippie types. Or maybe if she hadn’t married a naval officer.”

  “And what if you’d not married a financier?” Luc said.

  “I was long since me when he came along. Moving on! Doesn’t this car have a radio? An iPod?”

  April reached down and turned whichever knob her hand first found.

  “That is the air-conditioning,” Luc noted as a blast of air shot her in the face.

  “Make yourself useful and put on some music.” April leaned back into the headrest and closed her eyes. “I need to think.”

  Within seconds April fell into that slip of space between dream and reality, where the outside mixes with the inside. April smelled Luc’s cigarette at the same time she saw her mother, at the same time Marthe slid absinthe down the bar toward a man who looked like Troy.

  When April next opened her eyes, thinking she took a ten-minute nap, the clock told her it was closer to an hour. Luc was jiggling her leg.

  “We’re in Sarlat,” he said. “In case you want to freshen up before we arrive.”

  “Why?” April scooted into an upright position. Her mouth felt tacky. “Do I need to freshen up?”

  April flipped down the visor and searched her purse for something that qualified as “makeup.” Unless Marthe time-traveled and swapped handbags, there was zero chance of finding anything capable of freshening up in that particular pit of loose paper and excess pens.

  “Ah! Eight-year-old lip gloss from some unnamed source!” April announced, producing a mangled pink and sparkly tube. “Fingers crossed whoever dropped it in here didn’t have herpes.”

  “Did you just say the word ‘herpes’?!”

  Before April devised an appropriate retort she was struck by the view outside.

  “Wow! This is Sarlat?” she said. “Is this p
lace for real?”

  It was amazing, this village. A time capsule, perfectly medieval with its yellow sandstone buildings, steeply pitched roofs, and cobblestone streets. It was almost offensive in its quaintness, like it belonged in an amusement park.

  “Did they rebuild it or something?” April asked, still stunned. “Or has it been this way all along?”

  “All along, I suppose.”

  Luc swung around a corner and proceeded down an alley that looked better suited for a secondhand moto. April gripped the sides of the car as Luc deftly navigated trash cans and people and goats.

  Soon they shot through one last alley-street and out onto a dirt road. The path was long and straight, surrounded by green fields. At the end of the road stood a square stone house. April let out a small gasp. It had to be Agnès Vannier’s. There was no other place for the road to go.

  Chapitre LXXIV

  Even though it was warm outside, Agnès Vannier sat before a crackling fireplace with a velvet blanket draped over her lap. A large upholstered box was at her feet.

  There was no questioning the woman’s age and recent ill health. Her shoulders were slight, bones poking through her sweater like fingers, wispy arms folded like grasshopper legs. She had a fluff of white-blond hair through which April could see her pink-marbled scalp. Her eyes were ice blue, the color of a glacier, almost transparent.

  “Welcome to my home,” she said in French after a maid or household assistant of some sort let them through.

  “Thank you for having us,” April replied, unsure whether to approach the woman in the rosewood chair or remain several yards back. “It is a pleasure to be here.”

  Madame Vannier looked her squarely in the face.

  “I will not speak any English,” she said.

  “Ce n’est pas un problème.” April inched herself closer to Luc, suddenly seized by the urge to grab on to some part of him: his sleeve, his belt, the outer edge of his right pocket. She felt loose, unsecured.

  “May we sit down?” Luc asked in French and pointed to a narrow white-upholstered loveseat made in the days when people were not quite so large.

  “Please do.” Agnès tilted her head as a small smile formed at the corners of her mouth.

  “Again, we appreciate you taking the time to speak with us,” April said, reminding herself to talk slowly, to count the breaths between her words. When it came to speaking French in nervous fashion, April had to be sure she kept inhaling. “My name is April Vogt, and of course you know Monsieur Thébault.”

  “Yes, Luc.” She touched the small sapphire pendant that sat in the pool of gaunt space beneath her neck. “The handsome solicitor. So, Madame Vogt, why you have come all this way?”

  “To begin.” April cleared her throat. She extracted the diary pages from her bag. “I wanted to return these in person. Thank you for loaning them to our auction house. They were of great assistance in determining provenance.”

  April handed the papers to Madame Vannier, who then threw them onto the coffee table and chuckled. The sound came not from her throat but somewhere deeper, moister, perhaps a pair of lungs besieged by pleurisy.

  “Luc told me you would say this,” Madame Vannier said. “About the provenance.”

  “Yes, well.” April brushed a piece of hair from her face. “It is true. So thank you, again.”

  “You have said ‘thank you’ quite a lot.” She lightly touched her temples. “Please stop.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I only wanted to express—”

  “What did you think of the journals?”

  “I, uh, well … I loved them,” April said. “I absolutely loved them. I wished there were more entries. Marthe de Florian was a fascinating person.”

  “‘Fascinating.’ That is one word to use.” Madame Vannier chuckled again. The sound made April tremble. She moved closer to the fire. “I do not have much time, today or on this earth. So let’s get to it, shall we? What is it you would like to know? So you can determine your … provenance.”

  April dived back into her purse to locate a pen. She tested three on her yellow legal pad before finally finding one that worked.

  “My questions are many,” April said and looked to Luc for help. He shrugged. This was her show, he seemed to say. He only bought her the ticket. “But the first is how you fit into the story.”

  “Madame Vogt, did you come to ask about me? Or would you like to know about Marthe and Lisette?”

  “I came to learn about all of it, really.”

  “We’ll get to me. I do not feel like answering this. Not yet.”

  “Um, all right,” April said, momentarily reverting to English while her brain spun. What was it April really wanted to ask? Did she even know?

  “Madame Vogt?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Trying to formulate my thoughts. You see, I understand quite a bit thanks to the journals.” She nodded toward the table. “I suppose I’m trying to fill in the missing pieces.”

  Luc coughed. April snapped her head in his direction. Was he issuing a warning? Or suffering the ill effects of his tobacco habit?

  “I’m curious,” Madame Vannier said. “What is it you think you understand?”

  “Not everything, of course, but I do have better comprehension of the personal relationships, of Marthe’s love of Giovanni Boldini and why she was so angry with Jeanne Hugo. I also now see why Lisette—sorry, Madame Quatremer—left the apartment behind.”

  “And why was that?” Madame Vannier asked.

  “Well, despite everything, despite how very much Marthe loved Béatrice, I am sure Madame Quatremer felt a certain sense of disconnection since she was put up for adoption at such a young age.”

  Put up for adoption. It sounded so much better than abandoned at a home for idiots and imbeciles. But at least, in the end, Marthe considered Lisette part of her family. She felt some duty toward her. Otherwise Marthe never would’ve left Lisette Quatremer the apartment and its treasures.

  “‘Put up for adoption’?” Madame Vannier said. “This is not true.”

  “But the journals—” April pointed to the table. She glanced toward Luc. He shrugged again. She looked back at Madame Vannier, who continued to bore into her with that eerie fluorescent stare. “Marthe said she was taking her granddaughter to a home. She couldn’t care for her on her own.”

  “Well, that second part is certainly true,” Madame Vannier said with a little snicker. “But no, she never took her to the home in the end. She planned to but her good friend convinced her otherwise.”

  “‘Good friend’? Do you mean Marguérite?”

  Madame Vannier nodded, and a wide grin erupted across April’s face.

  “Well, of course Marguérite would step in,” April said, goofy with the thought of it. Leave it to Marguérite to help Marthe do the right thing.

  “So you’ve come to appreciate dear Marguérite.”

  “Yes! Absolutely. She was a great friend, wasn’t she?”

  “Indeed. Frankly I don’t know why she put up with the illustrious Madame de Florian,” Madame Vannier said, rolling her tongue theatrically. “Luckily for Béa, luckily for Lisette, Marguérite made it her personal mission to look after her.”

  “Look after whom? Lisette? Or Béa?”

  “Both in their way. But I was referring to Marthe.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Marthe’? No one looked after her. Of course, yes, she had ‘clients’ and they provided material things, but Marthe was remarkably self-sufficient, don’t you think? She came to Paris without a dime, without knowing a soul, and made a life for herself. Just look at all the items in her apartment! It was a rich woman’s flat. She did quite well, don’t you think?”

  April glanced toward Luc for what felt like the tenth time. How many times would she say the words “don’t you think” until someone finally agreed with her?

  “If one can judge a life by personal possessions then I suppose you are right,” Madame Vannier said at last. “I care to judge it in an
other manner. Marthe was a terrible mother, utterly selfish.”

  “Excuse me?” A flash of heat rose to April’s cheeks. “Don’t you think that’s a little harsh?”

  “Or not harsh enough. By today’s standards she would be considered abusive, neglectful at the very least. Especially by your American standards.”

  “You’re wrong!” April cried and leaped from the couch.

  Luc tried to grab her arm but missed completely. She snatched the journals from the table.

  “I read these,” she said, shaking the papers. “Not all the days, not even all the years were here, but I know this woman. It may sound crazy but I feel as though I know her.”

  “Do you?” Madame Vannier’s voice was rough, like sandpaper. April felt like a scolded child. “Tell me, why do you think only some journal entries were found in the apartment? What happened to the rest?”

  April shrugged. “I suppose the same thing that’s happened to most documents from a hundred years ago. They were lost or destroyed or thrown away.”

  A devilish smile slithered across Madame Vannier’s face.

  “Destroyed, yes. They were destroyed. By Lisette. After Marthe died.”

  “What do you mean?” April asked, almost coughing out the words. “I thought she’d not been to the apartment in seventy years?”

  “She hadn’t. Marthe de Florian died in 1935. Lisette left Paris in 1940. In between were enough years to go through the woman’s things, to rid of herself of that which she did not want to see. You think these letters and words were important to you? Well, they were everything to Lisette. Like you, she was trying to piece together a story, to understand things she could not.”

  “Wasn’t she there? She had all these people around—her grandmother, Marguérite. Didn’t she already know the story?”