After a pause, he said, “She was very intelligent. She could be very kind, generous, but she often seemed distracted, her mind on some situation or problem or another. She was very successful in her work, and she was very passionate about the estate. She invested a lot of her time and her money to modernize the farm operations. Papa always said she was astute about the politics of agriculture, and I should listen to her.”
For as long as he could remember, David said, Isabelle had spent nearly every weekend at the estate, usually bringing her mother with her during the winter. Grand-mère stayed on the estate almost full time from Easter until the fall harvest.
My brother Freddy, however, was more interested in his life in town. On weekends when he was young he would usually stay at his father’s apartment in Chantilly, a Paris suburb.
About Freddy, David had little else to say, except that he worked in some area of finance, and seemed to be very successful. At least, he had a house in an expensive Paris neighborhood and always drove a nice car. His boys went to an excellent private school.
I refrained from asking him why Freddy was living in his mother’s apartment if he had a house of his own in Paris, but there had to be a story there.
Isabelle’s apartment was on the Left Bank of the Seine, near the Sorbonne, a very old district built long before cars, or electricity, or plumbing. Her home was inside a traditional high-walled compound that David explained would contain the homes of several families. The houses were built around a central courtyard, a commons area that now would include parking for residents’ cars instead of stables for horses or workshops. From the street, all that was visible was the front wall and a gate wide enough to drive a car through. Inside, a very private world.
“Beautiful neighborhood,” I said, as we slowly drove past.
“Very expensive neighborhood.”
“Thank you for showing me,” I said.
“I thought you would be curious,” he said. He stole a few narrowed-eye glances at me. “Madame Martin discussed with you Madame Isabelle’s estate?”
“No,” I said. “And I certainly did not ask.”
“No.” He nodded. “Of course.” He thought that over, seemed to find some significance in it. “It is time. I will take you to Monsieur Hubert now.”
M. Hubert’s office was above an umbrella shop in the neighborhood of the ancient and collapsing Church of Saint-Sulpice, on a side street off the very posh Boulevard Saint-Germain. The street was narrow and there was no parking, so David dropped me in front of the building and told me he would pick me up from the same spot after my meeting. I would have preferred to have him come with me, a little support, even though I had met him only a couple of hours earlier. I felt very much alone as I mounted the narrow stone stairway to the second floor, off into a vast unknown.
“Here you are.” M. Hubert rose from his desk to offer his hand. His assistant, the efficient-looking young woman who ushered me in, relieved me of my coat, showed me to a red silk-upholstered chair facing his antique partner’s desk, and retreated with orders to fetch coffee.
Hubert was a compact, narrow man, dressed all in gray, with white eyebrows sprouting behind dark horn-rimmed glasses. Wearing a cardigan under his suit coat, he looked like a kindly school teacher. Indeed, his English, like David’s, was schoolroom-flawless and formal.
While I settled in my chair, Hubert studied me over the tips of his steepled fingers. “I knew this day would come, eventually. And, I confess, I have harbored some curiosity about how it would be when we finally met.”
“You have me at a disadvantage,” I said. “My grandmother told me you are the administrator of some account, but I know nothing about it.”
“Well then, let me try to explain.” He opened a large document box on his desk and pulled out a stack of files. “Are you at all familiar with a series of patents your father owned with your mother?”
My first thought was, of course, my parents held their assets jointly. California is a community property state. But we weren’t in California, and Mom and Dad probably weren’t exactly the parents he referred to.
Some of the files on his desk were yellow with age. As he thumbed through their tabs, looking for something, I asked, “Are my father’s patents jointly owned by Isabelle Martin?”
“Yes, of course.” A matter-of-fact statement, knowledge assumed. He found the file he was looking for, pushed his reading glasses up over his forehead, folded his hands atop the file and looked at me. “The patents resulted from work they conducted together. I believe their research was the basis for your mother’s doctoral dissertation—but you must know that.”
I didn’t, of course. But it made sense that if Dad and Isabelle patented something together, that thing would have come from their work together all those years ago, when Isabelle was a graduate student.
Hubert took a breath. “The patents are registered internationally, but they are owned in France en tontine, under an arrangement made by your parents many years ago. All monies earned, the royalties, are deposited into the account of the tontine and distributed as they designated.” He looked up at me. “Are you familiar with a tontine?”
“Vaguely,” I said. “Something about rights of survivorship.”
“Exactly. A tontine is like an exclusive club, owned equally by its members. Whenever a member dies, the club remains intact, and the remaining members continue to own the assets equally. Of course, when there is a death, each member’s share grows larger. And, at the end, the last surviving member owns all of the assets.”
“What is your role?”
“Very little. I receive, manage and disburse the money earned according to the instructions of the members.” He slowly pushed the file across the desk toward me with two hands. I opened it and found royalty statements that went back over forty years. The money was divided equally between Dad and Isabelle and paid quarterly. The amounts ebbed and flowed over time, never a fortune, but there was always something. However much the patents earned, they certainly would be a nice boost to my professor father’s state salary and, later, his pension.
I remember, when I still lived at home, Mom and Dad waiting for royalty checks to arrive, never knowing what the amount would be until they opened the envelope. They would speculate and plan: a big check could be a special family vacation, orthodontia for a kid; a small check could be a season subscription to the symphony or a new sofa. The checks paid for three kids to go to college and probably for my private high school tuition, and about once a decade bought a new car. Like the residuals I receive for reruns of my programs, the checks were a bonus, never primary income. But they came in handy, for instance when they covered unexpected expenses. Like home repairs.
I noticed two things in the recent record. First, the amounts paid began to surge about five years ago, until currently, they were indeed substantial. And, a little over a year ago, beginning the month after Dad died, the entire royalty was remitted to Isabelle. Thinking about Mom’s leaky roof and why the repair costs were a problem for her, I asked M. Hubert why the change.
“It was the arrangement made those many years ago.”
“And now that Isabelle has passed away, what happens?”
“From the beginning, the tontine had three members: your parents and you, their natural daughter. As last one standing, you are now the sole member, and all of the assets belong to you.”
The assistant came in with a coffee tray, which she set on a side table, providing a welcome diversion—coffee, yes please, milk, yes, sugar, no, biscuit, no thank you—a moment for me to mull things through.
Before I took my first sip—the coffee was very strong, even with half milk—I knew that as soon as I could set things up, all earnings from the patents would go to Mom, as they should. Losing Dad was hard enough for her, but to have some portion of her financial security flow to Isabelle was just cruel. What had Dad been thinking when he agreed to those terms?
I asked question two. “The original patents go
back over forty years, but recently they are earning more. Do you know why?”
He laughed softly, a self-deprecating chuckle as he hefted the files. “Don’t expect me to understand the details of the devices your parents developed, except that they have something to do with conservation of energy; a valve system. The original devices pertained to nuclear power reactors, but over the years your father revised them, reconfigured them, and broadened their applications to the methods for recovery of petroleum from oil shale, and, more recently, solar-generated power. Indications are that as use of solar power increases, the income from the devices will increase as well.”
“You said that over the years these widgets were revised and reconfigured by my father. But the original financial relationship with Isabelle continued?”
Hubert nodded. “Yes. Because the original device came from joint work and was legally the property of the tontine, any extrapolation of that work belonged to the tontine as well.”
“Interesting,” I said, checking my watch. Grand-mère expected me in less than half an hour. “What happens now?”
He pulled out a single piece of letterhead paper and squared it on the desk in front of him. With a small flourish, he took a pen from a holder and extended it toward me as he slid that single page in front of me. “For the time being, a signature, that is all.”
Apparently, getting this signature was the reason he was in such a hurry to see me. The document, whatever it was, was written in French. I think I got the gist of it, or part of it. With my signature I would agree that M. Hubert would continue to manage the tontine. About the other parts, written in French legalese? Mysteries to me.
I slid the sheet into the royalty disbursal file. “Of course, I will need to have my attorney take a look before I sign anything.”
He seemed taken aback, flummoxed. “If I can explain anything to you, madame...”
I smiled sweetly. “Regretfully, my familiarity of both French language and law are not adequate for me to understand the document or its implications. Even if it were in English, I would ask an attorney to go over it with me before I signed anything. You understand, I’m sure.”
He stammered a bit before he managed, “Well, yes, of course I understand. You must be careful.”
“Thank you,” I said, and at the risk of being taken for a simpleton as Mom warned, I smiled. I gestured toward the document box beside him. “May I have a copy of the entire file, please?”
He furrowed his brow. “You must have copies of everything already, do you not?”
“Maybe, in my father’s papers in California. But I’m here, and I don’t have access. I want to go over the files with both a translator and my attorney.”
That request made him no happier than my hesitation to sign his document had. Indeed, he seemed offended, as if he thought I didn’t trust him.
He said, “I can assure that all of the accounts are in order, madame. Your mother sent someone she trusted very much to audit the records quarterly. Her initials are at the bottom of every page, as you can see.”
He showed me, HGD, initialed in a tight little script.
“I’m sure that everything is in order, monsieur,” I said, smiling again. “My father was a very careful man, and obviously he placed his trust in you for many years. However, this is all new to me. Before I make any decisions, I need to study the records.”
He thought about it for a moment before he nodded. “A delay of a week will make little difference.”
“Is there an issue with time?”
“Some, yes. There are some patent renewals that need signatures very soon. Before you return to America, I hope.”
“I’ll do what I can,” I said.
He summoned his assistant and asked her to make copies. She told me that the accounting summary in my hands was a duplicate, and I was welcome to take it with me. All of the files, including the original patent diagrams, had been digitized. I could wait for paper copies to be made—there was a hefty stack of them, so it would take a couple of hours—or she could download the files to a memory stick that I could plug into any computer’s USB port. Would that be all right?
Absolutely, it was. The download took less than a minute. I dropped the memory stick, smaller than a pack of gum, into my purse, thanked them both, and promised to call by the first of the week to set up an appointment. On my way back down the stairs, I sent a text message to my Uncle Max: GET FRENCH ATTY ASAP.
David was waiting for me at the curb, as promised.
“All is well?” he asked as he held the car door for me.
“I’m not sure,” I said, tucking the royalties file with the unsigned document into my carry-on bag.
From the Left Bank, we crossed the Seine onto the Île de la Cité, passed behind the vast gray eminence of Cathédrale de Notre-Dame under the watchful eyes of its gargoyles, then crossed the Seine again and drove into the Marais District, named, David told me, for the marsh it used to be.
Grand-mère lived in a tall gray stone house on a wide street off the rue Vieille-du-Temple, mid-block among a row of other tall gray houses that looked to be maybe mid-nineteenth-century architecture. The house was imposing, as were its neighbors. I counted three stories plus an attic, and wondered if there was also a basement. And maybe a dungeon?
David maneuvered the big car down a narrow alley behind the house, and then through a wide door that opened automatically as we approached. We were in a roomy garage with massive wooden roof beams darkened by age. He told me this had once been the carriage house and stable. The house had passed to Élodie through her grandfather, a cheese broker.
“I hope you don’t mind coming in through the back.” He held my door for me. “Madame thought that because we will be leaving again quite soon, we should leave your bags in the car, unless there is something you need before we set out again.”
The black satchel with Isabelle’s ashes was on the floor next to my feet. Leaving it, as well as Isabelle’s personal effects, locked inside the garage seemed like a very good idea.
We were halfway across a small back garden, winter barren except for bright chrysanthemum borders, when the back door was opened by a woman I guessed to be in her late forties or early fifties, dressed in a trim, dark brown skirt and matching cardigan buttoned up to the throat, lots of crisp white collar and cuffs showing, and wearing sensible low-heeled shoes. Her posture, the hands folded in front of her, said servant. She greeted me formally, “Bonjour, madame,” with a little bow of the head, no handshake. She backed toward the wall to make room for me to pass inside, into a real butler’s pantry where a man—a butler?—who would be the pepper shaker to her salt shaker if they came as a set was assembling lunch plates.
Behind me, as I walked down a long corridor, the woman spoke to David in rapid French, every second or third word of which I caught. My school French was rusty, but it was slowly emerging out of my mental closet as I heard people speak. I was able to understand that Grand-mère waited for me in the little salon, and that David would find his lunch in the kitchen with someone named Oscar, probably the man in the pantry. Did David think I needed to freshen up, or was I ready to beard the old lion in her den? Lion wasn’t exactly the word she used, however.
Without waiting for translation, I said, in my best French, “I’m ready.”
7
My sister, Emily, bore a strong resemblance to Mom. I looked a lot like Emily, but, as I’ve said, I was also the spitting image of my father. My brother, Mark was, an equal amalgam of both parents, or he just looked like himself. The one feature that all three of us siblings unarguably had in common was my father’s prominent nose. We used to joke that his assertive nose genes had overwhelmed Mom’s more delicate ones. The point is, when all of us stood together we looked like a family. I never thought that we did not, or that I looked less like a member of the family than the others did. But every tattered notion I still had about who I was and where I belonged, where I came from, vanished when a side door opened a
nd Élodie Martin stepped into the hall.
Grand-mère stopped in the silvery shaft of light the open door cast on the dark, polished stone floor, and looked at me for a long moment before she approached. Watching her walk toward me through the pale light was like watching my own specter visiting from forty-some years into the future.
Unlike most people, because I see myself on the screen nearly every day, I know what I look like from all angles. Her gait, the set of her shoulders, the contours of her oval face, the color of her pale eyes, the shape of her hands and the way she held them, her skinny ankles, all were mine as well. As she reached her hands toward me I wondered for just an instant, if as I reached my own hands toward her, I would encounter the cold face of a mirror instead of warm flesh.
I remembered Isabelle begging me to look at her so that I would know her, and later the funny expression on Mom’s face when she looked at Isabelle’s passport photo and saw a face she had not seen for over forty years. Mom and Isabelle saw the resemblance that I had not. Or, had refused to see.
“Here you are.” Grand-mère took both of my hands in hers and kissed me on both cheeks, la bise, the standard French greeting. Her eyes were misted with tears. “I would know you anywhere, my dear. Except...” She peered more closely at my face. “Except your nose. Where did you get that nose?”
I touched the sculpted bridge of my nose. “Dr. James Wells.”
She furrowed her brow. “Pardon me?”
“Plastic surgeon,” I said, letting her guide me into the room she had come from, a formal sitting room, and toward a small round table set for lunch that was placed in an oriel overlooking a small garden. “I had my nose altered for television.”
She laughed lightly. “Did this Dr. Wells sell a particular nose for television?”
“He sold a nose that my bosses persuaded me was more acceptable to a midwestern-American audience than the ‘ethnic’ one I was born with.” I sat in the chair she indicated. As an icebreaker, I thought, she stayed on the subject of my edited nose until the housekeeper I had seen earlier, whose name, I learned, was Clara, brought the soup course.
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