by M. D. Elster
I was worried that the friction between them would drive them apart, that my mother’s barely concealed disapproval of my stepfather would dampen the spark between them. In the mornings after I’d heard the angry hum of one of their arguments muffled through the bedroom walls the night before, I would search their faces at the breakfast table for a sign of their future dissolution. Such a parting would devastate my world and break my heart. But I was often relieved to see the look in my stepfather’s eyes as he watched my mother moving about the kitchen, pouring orange juice into a glass or setting down a plate of eggs or what-have-you. There was something unique about my stepfather’s gaze when he saw something he wanted. Those stunningly icy-blue eyes were always full of a greedy hunger when he looked at my mother. It was a wolfish gaze to be sure, yet one that managed to calm me in this case. As long as that look gleamed in his eyes, I thought to myself, we will all remain united as a family.
I was half-right. I was right in that it was not a deadening of passion that would eventually divide my mother and stepfather, but I was wrong in thinking we would all remain united. War, after all, has a way of driving a wedge through any bond.
In April, the unthinkable happened.
That evening, the discord began with another argument between my mother and stepfather. The servants were away for the night, I remember; the war had broken Patsy down and she had gone to the countryside to take temporary refuge with a cousin, and Ralph had been given the night off. I had grown accustomed to the arguments between my mother and stepfather by that point, but something in the volume and tone told me this one was different. Ordinarily, they argued in hushed voices; I heard them through the wall as though they were a pair of insects, buzzing around each other with agitation. But this time there were actual shouts, screams — and then — the distinct sound of something (a lamp?) being thrown. I was suddenly very afraid. My heart instantly leapt into my throat, along with the sensation of burning bile. I crept from my bed, down the hallway, walking towards the terrible sound, and peeked through a crack in their door.
No one was hurt, but the lamp was indeed lying broken on the polished wooden floor, broken into a thousand pieces. My stepfather’s normally pale face was red, and my mother’s cheeks were streaked with tears. Whatever the issue was that had come between them, they clearly felt passionately about it. They did not observe me, and continued to shout.
Before I could make out what was being said, they were interrupted by a sound that was even louder and more thunderous than any they were capable of making: It was an air raid. First the wail of the sirens sounded, a high, humming horn winding up in pitch, then down, then up again. A bomb struck, an explosion sounded, and the earth beneath the house shook, making the walls tremble. I thought back to that night in Paris, when the Germans had marched into the city and my mother and I had sat frozen with fear in our little pigonnier of a room, listening to the terrible clacking of the storm troopers’ boots. Now here the Germans were — yet again — this time in London, raining down doom from above.
My memory has since made a terrible jumble of the events that followed. I recall seeing bright flashes of blinding light through the curtained window. It was like lightning, only greenish, and later orange. The walls continued to tremble, and it occurred to me the bombs were getting closer. I knew we were meant to evacuate to the bomb shelter, but for some reason, my mother and stepfather had resumed their argument, and weren’t marshaling their efforts to that end. A bomb whistled down from the sky and fell very near to our house; its tremendous vibration alone sent a chunk of plaster from the ceiling tumbling down. I began to worry that the situation was spinning out of control, that we needed to hurry to the bomb shelter immediately, or we would not make it. Anxiety choked me, but I resolved to push open the door and reveal myself to my mother and stepfather. Perhaps the sight of me would be enough to remind them we needed to evacuate.
But I was already too late. Just as I pushed the door wide and scrambled towards them in my flannel nightgown, the sky cracked open and swallowed my mother up.
At least, this was how it seemed at the time.
I was told later that the bombing had caved in part of the side of the house where we were living in Belgravia, and that my mother had been struck and killed by falling debris. You were very lucky to survive, Anaïs, all the adults around me said after that night. Your stepfather lifted you into his arms and ran with you to the bomb shelter, and kept you safe for the remainder of the raid. One of the worst bombings ever, that night… It is a true wonder you weren’t all killed. They said I was lucky, but I didn’t feel lucky, not straight away. The air raid had, after all, claimed the life of my one living blood relative.
My mother had always been so capable. She had dug my father’s grave with her own, callused hands. She had managed to get the two of us to Paris, and once there, she had scrubbed as a maid and literally sung for our supper. I knew she would always do what was necessary, and that she did it out of love. I knew she would wrestle a tiger for me, if need be. I was lost without her.
During the days that followed in the wake of the air raid, I said and ate very little, grieving the loss of my mother. There was a secondary worry on my mind, too — what would become of me now? Would my stepfather still watch over me, as my guardian? Would he want the burden of raising his dead wife’s child, a knobby-kneed girl who had been home-schooled in the woods?
My stepfather had proved a savior once, arranging for our family to leave Paris behind for London during treacherous times. And now he proved himself a savior twice over, for he came home one day, two weeks after the terrible April bombing with a pair of tickets tucked into a tidy folio.
“We have our passage, Anaïs,” he said, looking into my eyes and squeezing my shoulders. “We’re going to America!”
His voice was stern and grave, and yet at the same time, trembling with excitement. I realized, as sad as he was for my mother, he was happy to have finally arranged for the tickets. He was grieving for my mother, but he needed to look forward, I realized. It was the only way, with tragedy all around us here in our native continent.
“Why are you crying?” he asked, wiping at my cheeks with his gray-gloved hands and studying my expression. I immediately worried my face would dirty those lovely leather gloves. I looked up into his gentle countenance, his pale blue eyes and black moustache, his hair with its gentle wave and tiniest hints of silver.
“Because I was afraid you would not want me!” I blurted out. “I am crying because I am happy.”
“Of course I want you, Anaïs,” he said, still squeezing my shoulders. “I have to keep you close — now, more than ever. Don’t you know that?”
His lips twisted in a smile that was equal parts amused, sentimental, and pleased. How silly I must’ve been to him! I blushed, and found myself smiling sheepishly back at him.
We sailed on the very next Sunday, and after a long week at sea, I became one of the people I’d seen long ago on that news reel, hugging the railing of the ship’s bow, watching the horizon to see what it might bring, and waving excitedly to the Statue of Liberty as she loomed onto view.
CHAPTER 23.
Mr. Kendrick only wants to know about our escape from Europe, and about my stepfather’s heroic involvement in the Resistance. But more memories are coming back to me now — even more than what I have been able to remember during my sessions with Dr. Waters. As we talk, my brain whirs away, picking up right where the reporter’s interest drops off. A flood of memories rushes in.
We had made it to America.
There was but one heavy stone in my heart: My mother was buried in London, laid to rest only days before we sailed. I’d wanted to somehow bring her with us, so we might put her in the ground in the land that was to be our new home. I couldn’t bear the thought of an ocean between my mother and I, or of a grave so far away I might never visit. But young as I was, I knew that putting her to rest in America was very likely impossible. My ste
pfather had suffered enough trouble simply trying to arrange for our passage; it would be too much to ask him to arrange for transport of a corpse.
I suppose it was selfish of me to have wanted to bring my mother in the first place. During times of war, my stepfather reminded me, passenger ships are for the living; transporting the dead is a luxury. I never mustered the courage to petition him directly about my mother, but it was as if he could read my mind.
As it stood, I was desperately grateful my stepfather still wanted me for his own child, and that his paternal instincts had not died with my mother. I lived in constant fear he might change his mind, that he might decide he did not want me after all. My insecurity wasn’t his fault, for he gave me no reason to feel this way. In fact, at regular intervals during the days that followed in the wake of my mother’s passing, he often pulled me close simply to embrace me and reassure me. I remember breathing in his cologne with its hints of rich tobacco and saddle leather and feeling a flood of warmth and safety.
“My, but your daughter is quite fair for one so young,” a fellow passenger remarked as we walked the deck and took the air in an attempt to remedy my seasickness during our weeklong trek across the Atlantic. My stepfather beamed with pride, and patted me on the head.
“Yes,” he said, “I am blessed indeed to be the father of such beauty.”
“Ah,” the passenger replied, giving a patronizing smile, “You’ll feel that way until she comes of age and the boys start coming around to court her! Let us hope she is the kind to keep her wits about her.”
“I shall see that she does!” He shook his cane as though fighting off invisible suitors.
They chuckled together, while I blushed madly and pushed a few strands of hair out of my face that had grown sticky in the salty sea air. I had no interest in the opposite sex, and could not imagine how I possibly ever would.
I was surprised, however, to overhear his response to this stranger. Before my mother died, if someone should have paid my stepfather a compliment about my appearance, he used to always wave the flattery off with a humble hand and say, I can hardly take credit; she is her mother’s child, and takes after my wife. But on the deck of that ship, steaming across the Atlantic that day, he made no mention of my mother at all. Perhaps this was on account of his sensitivity and consideration for my own feelings. I was still very much grieving the loss; it would not do to explain to a stranger how she had died. But at the same time as it made me sad to note the omission of my mother in his repertoire of retorts, I was nonetheless somewhat tickled to hear him claim me — quite proudly — for his own. I thrilled to think people might actually mistake us for father and daughter by blood. Surely the thought of disowning me would never enter his mind, I reasoned, if enough people believed we were already bound by blood.
The ship that brought us to America sailed into New York, but we quickly found our way south, settling in New Orleans. After London and New York, I found myself soothed by the balmy sounds of French — even if it was mainly heard in concentrated pockets of the city, and was a strange, transplanted French indeed. It was something vaguely familiar; and I was hungry for the sound of French in any manner I could get it.
My stepfather bought a mansion in the Garden District, and soon after purchased a jazz-and-cabaret club in the French Quarter. He named the club after Monsieur Brisbois’ cabaret in Paris: les Quatre Rois. As for the house, it was pinkish-hued, with porches and wrought iron verandas painted green to look like dark green frosting. It was verdant everywhere you went in New Orleans, fans lazily churned the air, fountains burbled, and gardens were overgrown with lush, leafy greenness. Music wafted from nearly every doorway: Trumpets squawking, horns blasting long luxurious notes, pianos tinkling and drums rat-tat-tatting.
It also seemed to me that my stepfather had managed to get us out of Europe with a significant sum of money to his name after all. I knew better than to question him; he had always had his ways of working magic — especially when magic was needed — and it was not my job to pester him about the details. I knew there was some business about money in Switzerland he couldn’t get at while we were trying to make our escape from German-occupied France, but that he had been able to reach his chief banker there upon our arrival in the United States, and that the wires between them were successful. I don’t know how much money it was, but whatever the sum, it meant that when we entered the country we qualified as a different kind of immigrant — the kind to improve rather than drain a wartime economy — and this in turn meant our visas had been expedited in some manner.
In any case, once we settled in we were quite comfortable. I was under the impression that my stepfather could have been a man of leisure in New Orleans, had he wanted to be one. I don’t know why he bought the nightclub, save for the fact he needed something to occupy his time, and he already knew something about running one. It was rather a smart move in the end, for not only did it furnish us with an additional income, but it also inserted my stepfather into the heart of the city’s social scene. In due time, he became friends with various members of city council, the mayor, and even one of the state’s two senators. His marquee boasted some of the most talented jazz musicians and singers in the entire South.
At first, he allowed me to spend the majority of my time by his side, even coming along with him to the nightclub and lurking around backstage just as I had done previously at the club where my mother had performed in Paris. But eventually, his sterner logic as a parent prevailed. He decided: My English wanted vast improvement if we were going to make our permanent lives here in America. And secondly, he decided, I should be enrolled in one of the prestigious all-girl Catholic academies in the city. To that end, I was obliged to spend most of my time at the mansion, alone with an English tutor, readying myself for my debut in just such an academy.
When I was finally enrolled in school, the tutoring did not prove to be the passport into American society that my stepfather had likely hoped it would be. I spoke, read, and wrote English just fine. But my accent was dreadfully thick — even by francophone New Orleans standards — and the slightest use of American slang left me completely in the dark about what it was people were saying. I was the awkward newcomer, too eager and uncouth, the foreign interloper among a ring of wealthy girls more vicious and better organized than the mafia. The other students made me the butt of their jokes. They giggled behind my back about my accent, poked fun of my lack of knowledge about popular culture; they invited me to parties, then gave me the improper time and address.
It wasn’t easy, and I didn’t like certain parts of my new life, but at least no bombs dropped on New Orleans. No one I knew died. There are ways to put things in perspective.
I liked the things I learned in school, and my teachers befriended me — but this latter development only made my relations worse with my peers. There was one teacher in particular, Miss Scarborough, who would sometimes take lunch with me. She wanted to know all about London and Paris; she asked me to describe the goriest details about the Blitz, and took down notes in a little notebook as I talked. It was all for a novel she was writing, she said. I liked her. She was pretty but considered strange among the rest of the faculty; she had turned down a proposal from a wealthy sugarcane heir to go it alone and “make her own way” as a teacher, journalist, and writer. The other teachers called her a spinster behind her back.
Lunches with Miss Scarborough cost me dearly. Afterwards, my schoolmates would harass me in the halls, jeering Teacher’s Pet! They taped signs to my back and put dead rats in my locker. As I got older, I took refuge more and more in my stepfather’s nightclub. I often went there during times my stepfather was unaware, waiting until he left the house and then following him an hour or so later by streetcar. I had a key to the backstage door, and sometimes I even lurked around the empty nightclub during daylight hours, “playing hooky from school” — an American turn of phrase I soon learned when I was found out and my renegade actions were reported to my st
epfather.
I can’t have you spending your days — much less your evenings! — in a nightclub, Anaïs, he often chastised me. It’s improper.
I would protest: I was merely painting scenery for next week’s performance! My protests did no good. My adolescence complicated things. With every candle that caused my birthday cake to glow more brightly than the previous year, my stepfather approved of my presence at the nightclub less and less — while I, meanwhile, needed the familiarity of its environs more and more.
And then, as if on cue, a young aspiring singer walked into my stepfather’s nightclub, and in one simple audition piece, changed everything for me.
Colette came in on a Sunday afternoon — during a rare window of time my presence was still permitted in the nightclub. The club was closed on Sunday afternoons. As was our custom, my stepfather and I attended an early mass, picked up some gumbo in takeaway paper cups, and then spent the rest of the afternoon tinkering around in the nightclub office, where he went over the accounting books and I completed my English essays and algebra homework. I still remember, at the time, how I jumped when I heard a sharp rapping sound at the heavy entrance door of the club.
I looked up from where I had been actively solving for x and y.
“Likely some vagrant,” my stepfather said, waving a hand and returning his attention to the accounting books. I remember he wore one of those billiard-green eyeshades whenever he sat down to do the books. Even my stepfather, with his piercing blue eyes, jet-black hair and stylish manners, could not elevate that eyeshade to the level of high fashion. It was an accessory I considered ridiculous and unnecessary, and said so, but he ignored me and wore it anyway.
