by Phoebe Stone
“Delphine did not wait for her mama. She ran all the way from the Luxembourg Gardens, rushing across Paris, passing the brand-new Eiffel Tower and then on into Passy. She ran until her lungs hurt and her eyes hurt. ‘No no no,’ she kept crying. ‘Say it’s not so.’ But it was so. It was so! Sylvie, her dearest, beloved stepsister, was the spy.
“Delphine felt like thin cotton torn in two pieces, she felt ripped like a length of linen, shredded like a yard of silk. But by the time she got home, exhausted, hungry, and wet from the rain, she knew. She knew she could never tell on her sister. Sylvie was poor. Her papa was out of work. Delphine could never say what she saw. She told no one, not even her mama.”
Collette’s voice is quavering now. Her words are hushed and breathy. Her head is bent and her hands are twisted around each other, knotted together. “What would you have done, Petunia? If your sister was the spy? Someone who was so close to you they could almost feel your thoughts? Someone you loved so very much. Where would your loyalties have been?”
Mom and Ava have gone out to get shampoos and manicures and then they are going to have dinner at a restaurant called Bonjour Paris! Dad said before they left, “It sounds like a tourist trap, Buddy. If you want the real French experience, go to the Café de Flore. That’s where all the cool French people eat.”
But Mom and Ava are sure that’s where they want to go, even though Bonjour Paris! didn’t even get mentioned in Rick Steves’ guide. They left a couple of hours ago. Now Dad is in his study working on an article about Flaubert (who else?).
I feel sad and sorry for Delphine Rouette. She was caught in a trap, not wanting to betray her sister and not wanting to hurt the Jumeau company. What was she to do? Some things don’t seem to have answers. I am caught in a trap too. But it is a trap my own stupidity caused. I never thought someone would steal my backpack.
I lean in through Dad’s doorway. He’s at his desk with piles of books all around him. He looks up and says, “Flaubert hated modern life in the 1860s. You know that, Pet? He refused to ride the train to Paris. He took instead a boat down the Seine from his house. He liked the old-fashioned life. And he was right!” Dad pounds his fist down on his desk. “Progress will destroy us.”
“Dad, Mom says to be careful with the Barbours’ furniture,” I say.
“Thank heavens the French like their trains,” says Dad. “In the States the trains have all but disappeared.” He sticks his head back behind his book and I go off to my room, feeling alone with my secret and wondering how Delphine Rouette felt with hers.
It’s dusk and Paris is a dark gray pearl with orange lanterns of light in all its many windows. I can see that the young woman across the street is in her salon, as usual. For the first time I see this evening she has a visitor, a man wearing a white doctor’s jacket with a stethoscope around his neck.
Now he holds a little finch in his hands, putting the stethoscope against its chest. When he tucks the bird back in the cage, he stands up and looks at the girl. Then he starts gesturing with his right hand rapidly, as if talking with his hands. She in turn responds with her hand moving quickly, fingers to the side and then straight up, then hand closed. Then open.
Soon the girl walks the man to the door and they disappear. After a few minutes I see him on the sidewalk below passing under a streetlamp, carrying a doctor’s bag. I decide he must be a veterinarian. Either he is a friend or veterinarians make house calls in Paris.
I turn now to my yellow cotton dress. Collette showed me how to make French seams so that the inside of the dress does not look all ragged and as if it might unravel. She also gave me a cardboard of old narrow lace to use for the inserts in the front of the bodice. Tomorrow I will try to reach Logan, though I am not sure how to tell him. I don’t even know how to find his phone number in Paris. I will also go back to the Laundromat to see if my backpack has turned up. I feel a great sadness creeping over me. Not just my sadness, but Delphine Rouette’s sadness. Hers seemed to be unfixable.
I look over and see the young woman across the street is back in her salon now. She leans near her birdcage with a worried look on her face. I feel worried too. We seem to mirror each other, she and I, like sisters. I get my markers out and write in bold letters, Salut! Je m’appelle Petunia. Je suis américaine, which means “Hello. My name is Petunia. I am American.”
She soon sees my note and writes back, Salut. Je m’appelle Marguerite. Je suis sourde. Her name is Marguerite. We wave and smile and then Marguerite goes back to her birds, filling the water dispenser on the cage.
I do not know what Je suis sourde means and so I go down the smaller hall that leads to the little toilette behind its door, and then to Mom and Dad’s bedroom and finally to Dad’s study. I lean in the doorway where Dad sits among his towers of books. “Dad,” I say, “what does Je suis sourde mean?”
Dad looks at me, pleasant and puzzled in a Dad kind of way. He puts his book down and says, “Honey, it means ‘I am deaf.’ ”
“Oh, thanks,” I say and then I go back down the hall and find my way to the kitchen. I sit down. In the center of the table, there is a bowl of blood oranges. Even the fruit is slightly different here. Nothing is entirely familiar. Nothing. I put my head down on the table and for the first time since I have been in Paris, I cry.
Today I hear Mom on her phone talking to Mrs. Stewart. By stitching the threads of their conversation together, I figure out that Logan is away traveling in the north of France with his dad. Heartbroken and rejected, he must have taken off into the wilds, to be alone, to think, to brood. Naturally this upsets me further.
I feel so bad that I even go into Ava’s room and fumble around trying to explain, mumbling phrases like “stolen letter” and “missing backpack” but my words get all snarled up and make no sense. Ava looks amused and superior and so I slink away sorrowfully. When I was in her room I did notice that she covered something up quickly with her bedspread and pushed something behind her so I couldn’t see whatever it was. But that’s Ava for you.
I go back to my room for my sparkly silver sweater that I got while in New York City just before we left our home, America. That sweater is one of the only things I own that Ava wants. She once asked me to trade for the sweater. She offered me a pair of socks with a button on them that plays “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” But I declined.
Now I put the sparkly silver sweater on her bed and say, “It’s yours, Ava. I have decided it’s not my color.” Ava looks pleased, as if it’s her natural right, and puts it on immediately over her nightgown. Then she flops down on the chaise lounge in the corner and begins reading, wearing my favorite silver sweater. And still I feel dreadful. Awful. Terrible.
A little later, I decide to make lunch for Ava, bread, cheese, and fresh sliced tomato. On the tray I include my new jar of Nutella, which is a nutty chocolate spread French kids eat on everything. It is now Ava’s favorite food in France (mine too). I bought the jar with the last drop of Grandma Beanly’s “bon voyage” money. I was saving the delightful treat for my own late-night emergencies.
I take the tray into Ava’s room and set it on her desk. She looks up briefly from her book and nods, as if to say, “Very good, Wilson, that will be all.” When I come back to get the tray I see she has eaten the whole jar of my Nutella and nothing else. And still I don’t complain.
Later Ava calls out, “Pet, my sunglasses are missing. Find them for me, will ya?” And I go galloping, in my shame and guilt, around the apartment, climbing under tables and squeezing into tight spaces where sunglasses might wander. Finally I find them in the bottom of the standing water in the bathtub. (The tub water takes about two hours to drain. I timed it once.) Well, at least the sunglasses were not in la toilette.
Alas, I realized as I reached into the tepid bathwater, I can never actually tell Ava what happened with the letter. If she knew, she might truly kill me. Mom would too. They would have to bury me beneath the Statue of Liberty that stands along the river not far from here. It
is the smaller, unimportant, younger sister of the real Statue of Liberty in New York City. A perfect resting spot for me. And then, of course, I would never make it back to my beloved U.S. of A.
Today Ava brought home a cute stray puppy that was running lost through the Parc du Ranelagh and she spent hours calling the phone number on the collar. Just now she has located the grateful owner, who is on his way over here.
Yes, Ava can be sweet at times. I remember how she trained all the dogs in Grandma Beanly’s neighborhood in Indiana one summer. She taught them to sit up and beg and do all kinds of tricks. Then I helped her put on a dog circus for everyone. It was so much fun. Oh, I wish I had never stolen Ava’s letter.
Still, through all this, I have managed to complete the yellow dress and one more, the final one. Now I have four finished.
Collette has helped me fill out the application for the fashion show on her computer using her email address. I borrowed Monsieur Le Bon Bon’s digital camera and I took the photos. I wrote an essay to go with them and then we pushed the send button and the application went off into the unknown to be weighed and criticized by unseen judges. Ever since we sent off the application by email, my whole being has been rattled. Why did I even want to try?
And I feel so rotten about ruining Ava’s love life that I am thinking maybe I should go downstairs and wither away under the wisteria.
When I get downstairs, the first thing I say is, “Collette, have we heard from the fashion show people yet?”
“So soon, ma petite? No. No. This takes time,” Collette says. She is carrying a big angry bumblebee out of her kitchen. She has him caught in a jar and he is fighting the glass wall.
I am standing here wondering, how much time will it take before we hear about the show? Will I be jittery like this for a whole month?
“Non, non, monsieur!” says Collette to the bumblebee. “Stop buzzing. You cannot break the glass. It is not possible. You must allow me to help you, monsieur.” She carries the jar to the courtyard and I follow. Then she opens the lid and lets the fussing, buzzing bee out. He soars angrily off toward the sky. “Voilà!” she says. “Go home now, monsieur, back to your hive. The flowers in the courtyard at the school for the deaf attract all the bees in Paris. That is where this bee was going, I am sure. The bees from that school are always coming in my kitchen!” She pats the table. “Voilà! Sit down, my little angel.”
I droop into the chair and tuck my head down. “Ah, I see,” says Collette, “things have gotten more tangled upstairs. You have not given Logan the message that the neglectful concierge has thrown away his letter! But in spite of this, I hope you will still accompany us. We are all ready to go to the Hôtel Magique this very afternoon. Monsieur Le Bon Bon is having his bath right now. Jean-Claude will arrive in one hour. As I showed you yesterday, I have the skirt from the 1950s with the Eiffel Tower on it for you to wear. It is so pretty, is it not?”
“Yes, it is. And I will be happy to wear it. I worked on these shoes to match it. I added the velvet and the stuff on the toes,” I say, showing her the shoes.
“Oh, I like the red velvet and the little mouse on each toe sitting up to beg. Elles sont adorables!” says Collette.
“Well, they aren’t mice actually. They’re supposed to be French poodles. When Ava saw these shoes she said they gave her the creeps. She hates mice,” I say.
“Ah, oui, everything gives Ava the creeps,” says Collette. “What’s wrong with mice? They are très mignonnes, very cute!”
“If it’s anything to do with me, it creeps Ava,” I say. “And things are a mess anyway because of me. And I wish I hadn’t applied for that fashion show. If I don’t get in, I am going to feel even worse.”
“Well, we cannot expect to succeed at everything. Sometimes we fall down. Then we get up again. Oui? Oh yes, of course you’re worried. How you remind me always of my little Delphine Rouette. Indeed things were a mess for her as well.”
“Yes,” I say. “They were.”
“Well, you know her dearest sister, because of poverty and need, had betrayed the Jumeau company. And Delphine and her mama loved and needed the Jumeau company. But my little Delphine could do nothing with what she knew about Sylvie. She was caught. Trapped between two loyalties. And does anything come before family and a beloved sister?”
“Um,” I say, kind of chewing on my lower lip.
“All Delphine could do to make matters better was to help Madame Jumeau as much as she could. And so she did. She sewed piles and piles of slips and bloomers for dolls and then did not record her hours and asked for no money for the work. Every time she could manage she would secretly sew a lovely doll dress and add it in with her mother’s package at no charge. Whenever she could, she would go to the workshop and sweep and clean and arrange fabrics and unscramble spools of ribbon. If they needed a child to sew buttons on doll dresses or hem skirts, she would offer and then forget to write her hours down. Anything she could think of she did to help Madame Jumeau and her doll company. And Madame was very grateful to Delphine and her mama. They were her dearest and best employees.
“One day outside the house, yes on this rue Michel-Ange, two horses pulling a Jumeau doll company wagon stopped in front of the door here. And Madame Jumeau got out, carrying a box. She came into the foyer and she set the box on a small table. Then she threw her arms around Delphine’s mama. ‘Oh, I am so grateful for your wonderful service to the company, for the doll dress you made that won the prize. I am also grateful for your daughter’s help with the slips and pantaloons. I have come to give you a gift.
“ ‘First I must explain that my husband and I have decided something. The Jumeau doll company will be closing its doors soon. The German doll companies have driven the price of dolls down so low that we cannot make any money. Our dolls and doll clothes take time and artistry to create. The German dolls are made quickly. They are lighter and coarser. But they are also much cheaper. We are losing money now. We must close the company.’ Madame began to cry and Delphine’s mama began to cry and Delphine too cried. In fact, Delphine’s tears fell the hardest and the longest, for she had extra sorrow because of Sylvie.
“ ‘But I will never forget your service and help,’ said Madame Jumeau. ‘I will never forget the exquisite orange-and-maroon doll dress you made that won the medal at the World’s Fair in America a few years ago.’ She hugged Delphine’s mama again. ‘I have a very special present for you and your wonderful daughter. There are sixteen more boxes in the carriage and I will need help carrying them all in. Do you know what is inside them? Can you guess?’ said Madame Jumeau.”
Collette stops talking now. She turns her head and looks out at the courtyard. “And you, Petunia, do you know what Madame Jumeau gave Delphine’s mama and Delphine?”
“No,” I say.
“Can you remember how many Jumeau dolls went to the World’s Fair in Chicago?”
“Seventeen dolls,” I say. “Size zero doll, size one doll, all the way up to size sixteen.”
“That’s right,” says Collette. “Madame Jumeau gave them all seventeen dolls dressed in the finest doll clothes, the very dolls that had gone to the fair and won the medal for the Jumeau doll company. These child dolls Madame Jumeau brought into the apartment and gave to Delphine and her mama.
“And it might have been a wonderful gift. It should have been. Imagine how dazzling it was for Delphine, who only owned her little doll Rags before this. Now she had seventeen of the world’s most expensive and beautiful dolls. Oh, how things might have been different for me if Madame had not bestowed such a gift on my small grandmother! But she did. Oh yes, she did and what was to follow would change the course of my life as well.”
A small, dark cowboy rushes into Collette’s kitchen and jumps into her arms. He kisses her on both cheeks. He is wearing a black Lone Ranger mask and a black cowboy shirt and black boots and a white cowboy hat. “Collette, I am all ready and set to go to dance le swing,” Jean-Claude calls out. “I am ready to dance a
t the Hôtel Magique! My uncle too is all clean but his hair is wet.”
“Le Bon Bon’s hair will dry as he walks along the street. He cannot use that as an excuse. C’est une excuse! Is he hiding?” says Collette. “Do you see what Petunia is wearing? And look, she has made little shoes to match!”
“I like the mice,” says Jean-Claude. “May I shoot them?”
“No shooting this afternoon, please,” I say. “And those are poodles, not mice.”
“It’s a fake gun, just my hand, you see?” Jean-Claude pulls the mask from his eyes. “And also, it’s me, Mademoiselle Petunia! I am here for a kiss!”
“Some other time, Jean-Claude. But I must say, your English is very good. I do not think you need me to teach you much,” I say.
“Allons-y, mes amis,” says Collette. “Let’s go.”
Collette and I troop out into the hall. Behind us, the Lone Ranger darts from corner to corner. We open Monsieur Le Bon Bon’s door and Collette calls out, “Mon petit chou! Where are you?”
She stops for a moment in his salon, looking at the empty wall above Monsieur Le Bon Bon’s sofa. “You see this large space? It’s like a hole in his apartment. There used to be a painting here of Le Bon Bon’s wife. It was a portrait of her. Le Bon Bon adored that painting. He showed it to me many times. But when she left, she took the painting with her! Incroyable! Unbelievable! She takes it with her, leaving a big hole in Le Bon Bon’s heart and also a hole right here.” She slaps the wall.
“It’s too bad,” I say.
“Perhaps he needs another painting,” Collette says, whispering to herself. Then she calls out, “Le Bon Bon? Where are you? You are not trying to get out of this. We are going now.”
Finally Monsieur emerges from a small room with a towel over his shoulders. He is also wearing his new silk shirt and a bow tie sewn by Collette. Every one of us is now in costume, even Collette. She is wearing a little black straw hat with a veil and white gloves that she used in the 1950s.
