Chasing Sylvia Beach

by Cynthia Morris

  She shook out her hand. When she had tried to write as a girl, she’d been self-conscious of the words on the page. Everything she penned could be seen by someone else—namely, her mother. It wasn’t that she went through Lily’s things, but Lily didn’t feel she had enough privacy to reveal her thoughts. Now, for once the words came with no concern about who would read them. They had no purpose other than for her, right now, suddenly less lonely because of the pages she was filling.

  People’s skin is different, a pallor that could be city life or malnutrition; with the coming war, food for the masses is dwindling in quality and availability. Every day, every moment is like moving through a spell that’s been cast. Sometimes it’s not so bad to be clueless about the current events everyone is talking about. It’s the dislocation, the dischronation that’s disconcerting.

  Will you ever see a computer or cell phone again? Will you ever relish the joyful lightness of plastic—plastic pens, compacts, timers, keyboards, bottles, cups? Will you ever feel the freedom of getting a to-go cup of hot coffee wrapped in its little cardboard sheath, and relish the ease of tossing it away? With a desperation heretofore unknown to you, you find yourself craving and loving those very things that you cared so little about.

  Everything is heavy; and you, too, lost in a time you used to fantasize about, you, too, are heavy. The objects in this time are made of real substances—metal, glass, wood. The books are bigger, heavier, with sturdy bold type and soldierly spines.

  Lily came up for air. The sounds of the café came back into focus: the clink of glasses, the steady rise and fall of friendly arguments among the men at the bar, the hiss of the seltzer bottle. The people at the tables around her had been replaced by different ones; she had no idea how long she’d sat there. A couple was now in the man’s place, leaning together and talking urgently over their beers. She dove back in, letting the activity around her fade away.

  It’s a new level of self-censorship, monitoring everything you say for its appropriateness. You discover, for instance, that you pepper your speech with the word “like” as a way to like what, you are not sure. With the hyperawareness of your words, you put your verbal tic on a short leash and discover that pausing before talking makes you feel smarter.

  It’s not the inconvenience of all this so much as the floating, the surreal sense that you are not yourself nor anyone else, that you do not and will not ever belong here nor anywhere. It’s seeing yourself go through the motions of life as if they mattered. Here you are buying writing supplies. It’s seeing yourself lose your life, seeing it and feeling it—like that time your new ruby ring slipped off and sank into the lake just off the edge of the dock, and no matter how much you dove and dove and dove after it, gasping for air, grasping for what you lost so easily—that makes this so weird. Knowing that you were spoiled by your near-perfect life, the ease of it, and that you have become what you would not wish on anyone—a single woman without a family in the path of Hitler’s onslaught.

  And why here? Why now? If I can travel through time, I’d rather . . . I’d rather be here earlier, or . . . I’d rather go back and see my mom one more time. I didn’t know when I left for France that I’d never see her again.

  Lily’s throat clenched and she blinked several times. The waiter moved among the tables, wiping them down, straightening them. A few people lingered over empty glasses. The clatter of dishes being washed came from behind the bar. She pressed her fingers over the words in her notebook, testing to see if the ink was dry. The waiter paused by her table.

  “Autre chose, mademoiselle?” he inquired. Lily asked if they served food. He nodded, telling her they had a few sandwiches left. Lily craved a real meal, something warm and savory, but she ordered a cheese sandwich. It had been hours since her lunch with Paul and she didn’t know when she’d eat next. When the sandwich arrived, a tough, chewy baguette with a slice of mild cheese and a slathering of butter, she ate it slowly, considering what she’d written. Back home, she never made time to sit down and write. Now, she had something to write about and she enjoyed the freedom of describing her experience without needing to lie or evade. When she finished the sandwich, she sat back, full and momentarily content. It felt good to write. She stretched, catching a sniff of her blouse. She hadn’t changed her clothes. Whoa, she thought. It’s time to freshen up. She asked for directions to Printemps, one of the large department stores near the Opéra, and made her way there.

  The giant stained-glass dome at the top of the department store glittered in the weak Paris sunlight. The store commanded an entire city block. The few times Lily had tried to find clothes in Paris had been a failure. She knew the sizing system was different, but the clothes seemed to be made for tiny women. Yet women in the 1930s were more buxom, shaped more like her, wide hips and generous bosom.

  She entered the giant revolving door and found herself in the accessories department. Gloves fanned brightly on tables and costume jewelry winked from wooden display boxes. The hat department took up a whole side of the floor. There were so many to choose from: felt hats lined with ribbons, sharply sculpted hats, straw hats pinned with bunches of fake flowers.

  An atmosphere of refined elegance drifted through the store like a fine perfume. Lily passed the cosmetics department, dotted with vanity tables. She only needed a dress and a few pairs of underwear and she’d be fine until she got home. If she got home.

  The clothes weren’t arranged as they were in modern department stores. A few mannequins stood around with lots of room in between. It was like a bad party, no one talking, no one connecting. Lily hovered near a mannequin wearing a full-length peach gown.

  “Je vous aide?” A thin woman with penciled eyebrows and bright red lips hovered nearby, as if she didn’t want to get too close. Lily responded in French. It came out like someone walking up a set of old steps, hesitant and creaky.

  “Yes, I’m looking for a comfortable dress.”

  “For what occasion?”

  Lily smirked inside. As if she would have the opportunity for an “occasion.” “For everyday wear,” she said.

  With thinly veiled scorn, the woman pointed a long fingernail toward the corner of the store where steps led to the basement. Lily headed that way, insecurity shadowing her. Surrounded by the elegance, class, and grace of the French, she felt like a farm girl with dung on her shoes. She gathered her imagination around her. Clad in her sparkling shoes, tiara, and flowing peach evening gown, she floated past the woman in the dress department, outshining her in every way.

  By the time she got to the basement, her pretend confidence was working. She found clothes that suited the average woman, not someone who dressed frequently for the opera and government cocktail parties. Other women perused the items on the racks, holding up dresses to show their friends.

  She paused to inspect a row of long flowing pants with wide bottoms. She held them up against her body. They were too long and a drab shade of gray.

  “Je vous aide?”

  Another saleswoman. Maybe she did need help. She had no idea what size she wore, how much clothes cost, or what the dressing room policy was.

  “Oui. Je cherche une robe.”

  “Your size?”

  “I don’t know. I’m American, and we do size differently.”

  The saleswoman pulled out a cloth tape measure and held it against Lily’s hips. It was strange to be touched, even lightly, even in such a professional manner. She stood very still, letting the birdlike pressure on her hip bones sink in. The woman took the tape away.

  “I’d say you’re a size three. Let’s look.”

  She guided Lily toward a rack. The woman presented dress after dress, then led her to the dressing room. Finally, Lily left wearing a new navy blue dress with a scalloped collar, her old clothes in a shopping bag.

  Lily couldn’t help but stop in the lingerie department, which mimic
ked a pastry shop in its color and extravagance. Corsets, garters, and other appliquéd contraptions were layered on tables like almond wafer cookies. Fluffy piles of silk were as tempting as meringue. She hesitated at a table of peach silk panties fanned out, their lace edges rippling like waves. Her fingers stroked a pair, relishing the velvet ribbon. She glanced up and saw a woman she recognized slipping behind the curtain to the changing room. Lily frowned. Was it the woman from the plane? Lily couldn’t be sure. It was more of a sense of recognition than actual identification. A saleswoman approached her, and Lily stepped away. She tried on a camisole and a slip. In the end, she bought a few pairs of panties, including a pair of the fancy peach ones.

  On her way out, she passed the makeup counter. Even in the thirties, the beauty zone was intimidating. Lily knew nothing about potions and compacts and powders. She’d spent her teenage years under the florescent light of the library, not caring how she looked. She preferred to spend extra time in the morning reading or lying in bed rather than applying makeup. Now, as a grown woman, she was adrift among feminine accoutrements. Still, a lipstick might help her blend in. What was the French word for lipstick?

  A salesgirl with a tight roll of curls flanking her cheeks noticed Lily. She strolled over. Her makeup was applied as if she were going onstage, heavy and dramatic. Her bright red lips mouthed something that Lily didn’t understand. Lily stammered and blushed.

  “J’ai besoin de . . .” Lily gestured around her lips as if applying lipstick.

  “Rouge a levres,” the woman filled in. “Suivez-moi.”

  She led Lily around the maze of counters and displays. At the lipstick tray, she eyed Lily, squinting and surveying her clothes. She inspected Lily’s light coloring, her small mouth, the slight dimple in her left cheek. She seemed to be studying a painting or something she wanted to know the secret of. Lily’s shoulders relaxed. The woman glanced back and forth between Lily and the palette.

  “Voilà!” she exclaimed. She plucked one of the tubes out of the holder. The lipstick was a pinkish brown color, mashed in at the top. The woman dabbed her pinkie into it and approached Lily’s face. Lily reared back slightly. People didn’t use their fingers at cosmetics counters back home. She was disgusted at the thought of where the woman’s fingers had been, what other women’s lips she had touched that day. As the woman’s finger came closer to her face, Lily surrendered and let her apply the makeup with small, sure dabs. The woman’s perfume and minty breath floated over Lily and she relaxed. At home she looked forward to her quarterly haircuts just to feel the stylist’s fingers working the shampoo through her hair, hosing the warm water over her head. She might need to get a haircut here, merely for the feel of someone’s hands on her head.

  When Lily was a girl, her mother liked to fix her hair. Lily would fall into a sort of trance, her thoughts melting away with the strokes of the brush on her head. She’d hated the way her hair tangled and her mother worked the knots out, but she’d give anything for a second of her mother’s attention now.

  Claire Heller, dressed in her gardening clothes, stood at Lily’s shoulder. “Do you really need lipstick? Shouldn’t you be saving your money for food? You never wore lipstick at home.”

  Lily shook the thought off, talking back in her mind. I’m not at home, am I? I’m in France, and I’m older now, and I want a lipstick.

  The woman finished with the lipstick and stepped back. She squinted at Lily, nodding with satisfaction. Lily felt like a living canvas, there merely for the woman to ponder. The woman handed Lily a heavy art deco hand mirror lined in silver. Lily regarded her face, pursing her lips, kissing the air. Her mother’s face looked back at her. With the lipstick, she was transformed, more mature. Lily’s mother had given Lily her delicate features, though she’d kept her blond hair to herself. A wave of goose bumps passed down her spine.

  “Ça vous va?”

  She continued to stare into the mirror, pressing her new lips together before nodding. If her mother didn’t care for lipstick, she knew both her mother and father would be proud of her resourcefulness.

  For a year after her mother’s death, Lily had lived in Chicago with her father. In an attempt to get away from the grief that haunted them both, Lily moved to Denver after several months, leaving her father to carve out a life with his new girlfriend, Monique. Her mother’s garden fell into ruin, and when Lily came for her first visit she cried at the desiccated rose bushes and wilting lilac trees. The backyard was the same sad scenario, and when she saw the brown beds where flowers had once bloomed, she yelled, “Why don’t you just sell the house?”

  “I have,” he said, glancing at Monique, who had accompanied him to the airport to pick Lily up. “That’s why I wanted you to come. You’ll have to clear out your room. You can have whatever you want from the house.”

  Lily slumped onto a chair at the kitchen table. She wanted the whole house, the way it was when she had left for France. With her mother in it, not some woman who wore artfully applied makeup and pastel sweater sets. She scanned the kitchen, seeing the scene as a soon-to-be extinct ecosystem. The appliances lined the back counter: coffee grinder, blender, food processor, toaster oven. She wondered how much her father used them. Monique wasn’t the homey type. The house already felt different now that she knew it would be hosting another family’s petty squabbles and dinner smells.

  Lily expected her mother to emerge from the pantry with a stack of cans for dinner. She loved making casseroles, challenging herself to see how many cans she could use—green beans, diced tomatoes, chicken broth, and tuna—for a strange, quasi-Italian casserole. During the months after her mother died, Lily had spent most of her time engrossed in cookbooks and recipes, cooking her way out of her grief.

  Standing at the wine rack, choosing a bottle, her father spoke. “It’s hard for me, too.” “Would you like some wine?” He stabbed the corkscrew into the cork.

  Lily took down two wine glasses and set them on the tiled counter between them.

  “Lily, in case you didn’t notice, you’re not the one surrounded by the memories. You don’t have to walk by her closet every day and know she’ll never wear those stupid gardening clogs again.” He poured the wine. “You haven’t seen the garden slowly rot and thought . . .” He stopped, unable to finish the thought.

  She handed his glass to him and they toasted. The cabernet was an attack, the first taste sharp and tough. She sat down at the kitchen table. Her dad joined her, bringing the bottle. His chair moved across the tile with the familiar squealing sound. They took tentative steps toward discussing their new lives without the house. He told her about a penthouse suite he had seen and liked. With his busy work schedule at the stock exchange, a condo would be easier to maintain. Lily wanted to ask if Monique was moving in with him, though she didn’t want to think about her father as an eligible bachelor with new prospects. He could get a new wife but Lily couldn’t get a new mother.

  “I’ve got to start packing up your mother’s belongings. I was hoping you could help. You might want to take some of her things.”

  Lily didn’t want to go through her mother’s things. It was an invasion of such a private person. Yet she didn’t want Monique in there with her red fingernails.

  “Of course,” she said.

  They ordered a feast from Thai Palace—spring rolls, jungle curry, pad Thai, extra spicy with prawns, and tofu plus mango rice for dessert. After dinner, Lily went upstairs to bed. At the top of the stairs she went into her parents’ room. On the nightstand by her mother’s side were a pair of reading glasses and a trashy paperback that surely wasn’t her father’s. So Monique was staying here. She stepped past the bed and into her mother’s walk-in closet. Nothing had changed here, the rarely worn heels propped on the back shoe racks, the dresses sheathed in plastic from the dry cleaner’s. The scent of her mother lingered. A garden scent—essence of rose paired with the crumbly s
mell of dirt, with a tickle of sharp fertilizer. The clothes she wore all the time—the chinos and jeans, the oversized plaid shirts—were at the front, ready to be released from the hangers, ready to head down to the backyard. Lily brushed a hand along the sleeves and suppressed an impulse to press her face against them.

  She turned to a chest of drawers that had been there forever. She’d always wanted to know what her mother kept there. The top drawer held an assortment of accessories: a pair of gold square cuff links lying against each other, a collection of white jewelry boxes, a few small handkerchiefs embroidered at the edges. The kind of things she’d never seen on her mother or her father.

  She pulled the drawer open further, rooting around the back. Behind the stack of hankies was tucked a blue velvet jewelry box. Inside, a ring nestled in the cleft—an opal sitting in a crowned gold setting. It fit her left ring finger perfectly. She spread her fingers and held her hand away from her, winging it back and forth. The colors in the ring pulsated with each movement—first pink, then green, then a shimmering blue. Lily had never seen this on her mother—ever.

  Backing out of the closet slowly, she headed to her own room. The bed and dresser seemed smaller. The months she stayed here after her mother died had left no trace. But it was still her room. She searched for things she might want to bring back to Denver: the framed Renoir poster, the thick pink rug.The ugly dresser and too-small desk did not interest her. At the window, she looked out into the backyard.

  Her mother used to joke that she wanted to be buried under the lilac bushes that formed a hedge around their backyard. She’d pull her Adirondack chair over to them in May and sit there, soaking up their scent and delicate petals. Lily watched from her bedroom window. Her mother’s face would soften, finally, into something like love. Her eyes would close, as if she were listening to an exquisite piece of music from far away and deep inside her. Lily wanted to pull up next to her mother, to sit at her knees and rest her head on her leg. She contented herself with watching from the window.