by Phoebe Stone
“Oh non non non oui oui,” says Dad, laughing, pulling up a leg of his jeans and showing his chubby calf. “No bites. All clear.”
“Dad!” says Ava. “Please.”
“Angus,” says Mom, “you are embarrassing Ava. She’s fourteen, honey. Be a little more sensitive.” Mom is wearing a shawl to cover her right shoulder and the tattoo she doesn’t like, which she got before she knew Dad. She takes the shawl and wraps Ava into it. Now Mom and Ava are rolled up together in a pale, delicate cobweb.
Dad looks baffled but cheerful. Then he smiles and hugs them and says, “You mean no one wants to see my chunky ankles?”
Behind the concierge in her apartment, her TV is playing loud and fast. It looks like maybe American Idol dubbed in French. The unpleasant faces of the judges seem that much meaner with French coming out of their mouths.
My dress is cold and wet and I look down at it, still feeling that pushing in my throat. So I leap up the stairs ahead of everyone and stand in the shadowy darkness outside the double doors to our apartment. I am kind of shivering.
“The little elf, she is already upstairs! With the sad face tonight, n’est-ce pas?” I hear the concierge say.
“My girls,” says Dad, sighing. “And my wife is a painter. Did you know? Une artiste!”
“Oh, I am not, Angus,” says Mom. “He’s being so kind. I haven’t painted in years.”
“Buddy, no. While we’re here, you’re going to sit on the balcony and sketch, just like Matisse,” says Dad.
“Angus, I wouldn’t know where to start. But you didn’t notice I made Ava a French braid around her head. Doesn’t it look like a crown?” says Mom, her voice sounding proud and misty at the same time.
I stand here, waiting. It’s spring in Paris but my feet are cold. Some of the pink milk splashed into my shoes. Finally, when everybody comes upstairs, I slip off into my room, which is small and narrow. I am actually beginning to wonder if perhaps it was once the maid’s room.
I take the watered silk dress off and lay it on my bed, looking at the stains. Maybe I should just throw it away. I decide instead to take it to the bathroom, which is down a long hall far away from la toilette.
I turn on the cold water in the tub. This is a bit risky. The tub doesn’t drain well after a bath. The water sits there for hours, reminding you in a sorrowful French way that all things take time. Dad says the French are very patient.
I float my dress into the water. And it slowly circles and turns with its ugly stains, as if stuck at the bottom of a well.
The feeling in my throat is causing me to bumble more than usual, I think, because when I go back to my room I kind of stumble and fall against the big dark armoire, which takes up much of my room. I hear a clunk and a piece of wood drops off the side.
It figures. It’s always like that. When one thing goes wrong, everything starts collapsing. Page twenty-five: The life of a younger sister is just a tower of dominoes ready to fall over. I pick up the piece of wood and then I call out, “Dad? Mom?”
I lean into the hallway. Mom is coming out of the kitchen. She has just opened the back hall door and found a small group of bottled wines, delivered like milk waiting at the door. We have traded places with the Barbour family. They have wine delivered to their back door. Dad squeals with delight.
I look down at the piece of wood in my hand. What will the Barbour family think? I mean, because I broke a big piece off the side of their antique armoire. I hardly bumped it. I didn’t mean to.
I am so sorry, Monsieur Barbour, I am thinking as I crawl into my crisp, heavy cotton sheets. I have hung up my wet silk dress in the window on the curtain rod with a towel under it. The lights from nighttime Paris pour through its watery silk body. I can clearly see the big pools of stains all over the skirt. My ruined dress.
Now my head hits the pillow and I fall away past the Eiffel Tower and float under the wings of Michael the angel and then I am almost drifting into sleep. But I still feel that pressing in my throat, that pushing feeling. I don’t know what to call it. Whatever it is, it hurts, that’s all I can say.
In the morning through my open window, I hear the nightingale that seems to live in the courtyard outside our windows. It sings a certain string of notes every morning, “da de da da da de.” I sit up in bed at the open window, listening. Then I lean my head out and whistle a string of notes in response, a little different tune, hoping the nightingale will answer me as they do sometimes in fairy tales. And wow, it mimics the string of notes, the same as mine, whistling them in the same way. I whistle the string of notes again, and again the bird answers!
I rush out of my bedroom and I practically bump into Dad in the hallway.
“The nightingale answered me!” Dad calls out. “I sang to it from my balcony and I heard it answer. It sang the same notes.”
I stop there, looking at my cheerful dad in his fluffy, white, terry-cloth bathrobe. We both just stand there for a moment. Then I say, “That must have been me, Dad. I answered you and then you answered me.”
“Oh,” says Dad, looking pleasantly confused, and then he reaches out and hugs me. “My little nightingale,” he says. “This city has something otherworldly about it. Doesn’t it? Just the courtyard full of trees is enough for me. Can you believe it?”
Now Ava walks into the hallway wearing her white satin slippers that Grandma Beanly gave her for Valentine’s Day. She stares at Dad and me, a thousand dark birds flying out of her eyes.
I retreat into my room and look at the damage done to the armoire last night. I sit here listening to the real nightingale singing outside, such a beautiful song, as if telling me something in a language I can’t quite understand.
I pick up the piece of wood and look down in horror at the newly exposed area on the side. My eyes focus on the spot and I move closer.
What? I see a small built-in drawer. A drawer? It must have been hidden behind the wood panel that I knocked off by mistake. “Mom?” I call out. “Dad?” But the Barbours’ apartment is large and they don’t answer me. All I can hear is the nightingale singing its repeated call.
I touch the handle of the little drawer and I look closer at it. The knob is carved in the shape of a bumblebee with tiny wings. I finally pull gently on the knob. It doesn’t give way. And then I realize the little drawer is locked.
“Oh, where is Ava?” says Mom when I emerge from my room, curious and somewhat shaken about the little locked drawer. Why is it locked? Why was it hidden behind the panel?
I look up at Mom, and my dress hanging in the moonlight at my window floats across my mind. Mom, it didn’t seem like an accident to me.
“Ava? Where are you? Oh, Pet, look who I ran into downstairs on the street! Logan Stewart from Boston. We’ll have to have your parents over for dinner, Logan,” says Mom. “This is such a surprise!”
Mom moves aside and I am suddenly standing face-to-face with an astonishing red-haired boy. Age fourteen? Right here in our hallway, standing right next to the temperamental landline phone that rings when you bump into it by mistake and looks like it’s been here since the beginning of time.
“Um, hi,” I say, jolting backward a bit and pulling up my slouching kneesocks.
“How great that your family is in Paris, Logan,” says Mom. “We just don’t know anybody here yet. It’s kind of lonely. I miss America, you know.”
“Yeah, there’s a bunch of Americans from Boston around. My mom knows them all. The Watsons, for one. But they’re only here for a couple of months,” says Logan. “But I mean there are others too.”
“The Watsons?” I say, kind of falling against a wall tapestry of Marie Antoinette with soldiers surrounding her. “Um, you mean, like, um, Windel Watson? Those Watsons? Your mom knows them?”
“Yeah, the kid plays the piano, right?” says Logan.
“Uh, yes,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut. It figures. The life of a younger sister is just a tower of dominoes ready to …
“I guess it was a big thing f
or them to find a hotel that had a piano so he could practice,” says Logan. “Not every hotel has a piano, you know.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Yeah, and there are other Americans too. I mean, but the thing is, you really want to hang out with French people, not Americans. I mean, that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?” says Logan.
The problem with younger sisters is their knees shake, easily and often. Especially when names like Windel Watson are mentioned.
“He’s in town already?” I say.
“Oh, I can’t wait for you to meet Ava,” says Mom. “She’s just beautiful. She looks like me, the way I looked, you know, when I was young.” Mom laughs and kind of glances in the mirror above the phone. A disappointed shadow drifts across her face. “Ava?” she calls out again.
I look down at the rug. Logan almost pats my arm. “Hey, Pet’s pretty too,” he says. Then he smiles at me with his numerous freckles and his rolled-up sleeves and his necktie-flying-in-the-wind kind of stance.
“Me?” I say, trying not to scratch my elbow or fall over and start crying because the boy I loved, Windel Watson, my beautiful piano-playing boy, is in Paris and he hates me. Because I pulled a major younger-sister blunder. No, many, many blunders. My knees are still shaking because of Windel.
“Ava?” Mom calls again. “Oh, this is such a big apartment! You can feel lost and lonely here and very American among all this French stuff.”
“I like the Louis the Sixteenth chairs and the long French windows and all the balconies. This place is a classic,” says Logan.
“Dad has to have everything old-fashioned. We aren’t even allowed to use computers or cell phones here,” I say, finally giving in and scratching my elbow.
Logan follows Mom into the salon, the French word for living room, and sits down in one of the little gold-painted chairs. He’s been holding a long wrapped package and he sets it gently on the floor.
“Ava! There you are!” says Mom, her face lighting up like fourteen birthday candles, one for each of Ava’s years. “Oh, honey. Look who’s here! Logan Stewart!”
Ava emerges from behind the grand piano in the far corner and walks across the needlepoint rug like a graceful cat, with her long hair all golden and glowing around her.
Suddenly everything in the room shifts. The light changes. Logan lifts his head and his face brightens, as if someone has just thrown a handful of sequins into the air.
I stand here feeling small and alone with all these Windel memories knocking around inside me like a hundred pianos pounding. So soon? In Paris already?
Ava stops in the middle of the room on the large flowered rug, stepping on the stitched petals of a white lily. She just stands there. Where was she? Was she listening to everything we were saying?
“Oh, Logan, I remember you from Boston,” says Ava. “I always wanted to ask you, were you named after the airport there?”
“No,” says Logan, smiling. “I guess it’s a popular name and there are thousands of kids named Logan out there. But you know what? Logan spelled backward is nagol.”
“What does nagol mean?” says Ava, lifting her leafy-green eyes.
“Well, that’s a secret that all the Logans of the world keep. We’re the only ones who know what nagol means,” Logan says. Every time he glances at Ava, he kind of seems to float up into the air, like a sailboat lifting away in the wind.
Ava smiles at him and says, “Ava spelled backward is Ava.”
“Wow, like the word wow,” says Logan, looking at Ava and floating, floating.
“Yeah. Like wow,” says Ava.
“Pet spelled backward is tep,” I say, suddenly sticking my head up like a prairie dog out of a hole. And then I wish I hadn’t said anything because tep doesn’t mean anything and it sounds stupid.
“Oh, and Pet had a crush on this boy with the weirdest name in the world: Windel,” Ava says and she rolls her eyes.
I kind of collapse inside, thinking maybe I’ll just tell Logan that Ava still carries around her stuffed blue dog when she’s home and she still sleeps with it.
“Windel is not such a weird name,” says Logan.
Then Mom says, “Pet, do you have something to do somewhere else maybe?”
“Yeah, like on another continent, perhaps?” says Ava, laughing.
Logan looks at me sadly as if he knows what I am feeling. “Ouch!” he says. “Hey, you know what? I brought something. Flowers. I mean, yeah, they were for my mom but … here. These are for you, little sweetie.”
Ava turns to the window with a dark look on her Sleeping Beauty face.
“Flowers for me?” I say. “Seriously? Oh, thank you!!!” And I tear open the package and purple irises spring forth in a kind of celebration. In a blur Ginger comes into my mind. She whispers, I see three bouquets.
“Great bouquet!” says Ava. “But you don’t want to give the flowers to her. She won’t know what to do with them. She eats flowers.”
“Ava! I do not!” I say, holding the bouquet in front of my face because I feel I might be blushing and I would like to hide that.
Then Mom says, “Oh, Logan, would you like some tea? Pet can bring in the tray for you and Ava. Two young people having tea in the salon in Paris! Oh my!”
“Mom!” says Ava with a little laugh.
“No, no, that would be great,” says Logan, laughing too. Sequins and sunlight and sailboats floating, floating away.
“Can I have some tea too? I am dying of thirst,” I say, doing the younger-sister hop. Up one, back two. Hop. Hop. Hop.
I look up at Mom and Ava. Mom has her arm linked with Ava’s arm. They are frowning at me and I have this sinking feeling that France is a very small country and it seems to be getting smaller and smaller every minute.
I sort of back out of the salon. I go into my room and take down my dress from the window. It is dry now but the stains are still there. I slide into the corner next to my armoire with the crumpled dress in my lap. I sit there and stare at the little locked drawer. Then I stick the end of a barrette into the lock and rattle it. But nothing happens.
“Albert!!! Non! Non!” I hear the voice of the concierge echoing in the hallway the next morning. Then I hear a tremendous racket outside our apartment door. Much shouting and whistling.
I open our doors and look out into the stairwell. I see a flash of purple and orange feathers. Monsieur Le Bon Bon’s parrot has escaped!
“Albert! Albert! Viens par ici!” calls the concierge. She rushes up the stairs with Monsieur Le Bon Bon looking woeful and worried just behind her. Albert flies around in the stairwell and then soars through our open double doors and begins diving and dipping around our apartment. He flutters across the salon with his purple-and-green-and-orange wings fanning. I swerve as Albert flashes by me.
“Albert is very beautiful,” I say, looking up at the ceiling, where he has paused momentarily on the chandelier in our salon.
“Albert!” the concierge calls out. “No, no, do not say that he is beautiful. He knows this. Le Bon Bon spoils him and perhaps I do too. You come here, Albert.”
For some reason Monsieur Le Bon Bon reminds me of a Tintin character with his small tailored suit jacket and his wide eyes behind his glasses. He watches from a corner as the concierge flies around the salon now with an umbrella in her hand. She opens it and closes it so that the parrot finally leaves the chandelier and heads down the hall to my room.
“This umbrella usually works! He knows he is misbehaving but when he sees the umbrella he thinks perhaps we will take him out for a walk. He loves the rain. Ah,” calls the concierge, running down the hall to my room. “Voilà! We have him now, oui. Fermez la porte! Close it, the door!”
And so I do. Then the concierge and Albert and I are all contained in my little room. Albert, with his dazzling purple, orange, and green feathers, is clinging to my bedpost. “Viens ici, mon chéri, hmm, oui,” the concierge coos, moving closer to him. And soon enough she reaches out and clasps him gently. Now he is
perching on her fingers. She cups her other hand around his back. “Voilà,” she says, encircling Albert in her arms.
Then the concierge suddenly looks up at the armoire. Her face jolts. She takes a few steps back. She looks away and then her eyes return to its large dark doors.
“Oh, it can be fixed with glue,” I say. “I mean, Dad isn’t handy at all but …” And then I realize she can’t see the little drawer from her angle.
“I didn’t know the armoire was still here. I thought it was sold years ago,” says the concierge, walking toward it and then backing up. “I never come up here and …” Her face turns to shadows and sadness.
“Wait … um. What do you mean?” I say in what sounds suddenly like an overeager American voice.
The concierge just backs away out of the room. Her face is strained as she looks toward the armoire. Suddenly she hurries away with Albert in her flowery possession.
Monsieur Le Bon Bon follows with a large golden cage swinging in his arms. Down the stairs and around they go, chattering on, Albert now singing and chirping among their fast French phrases.
I close the double doors. I go back to my room, and stare straight at the big, dark armoire, looking at it from every angle, wondering, wondering.
I hear the nightingale trilling again as it gets toward evening on the rue Michel-Ange. The notes go up and down and in and out among the sound of wind and leaves. I go into the salon where Logan’s irises stand in a vase on the piano. I pick the vase up and carry it into my room.
“What was all the racket earlier?” Ava says, stopping in my doorway. “And what did I miss? What happened with the armoire?”
“Oh, nothing, Ava,” I say, scurrying over and standing in front of the little locked drawer so she can’t see it. After the parrot was taken downstairs, I tried again to wiggle the drawer open for the longest time but it held fast. “Uh, the concierge was just admiring the armoire, that’s all. Because it’s so old.”
