Lena stayed a little to one side, aloof, shy maybe, hands primly folded in front of her, mouth drawn tight. Was it grief? Freddy said that Lena had been distraught over Isabelle’s death. Or did I see disapproval of me and Casey in her posture, distaste for the mere fact of our existence on that exquisite face? Displeasure, perhaps, at being somewhere she simply did not want to be?
Lena was beautiful. But even if she were plain, she would seem beautiful merely by the grace with which she carried herself. I don’t know how French women manage to look so perfectly pulled together, and chic, with what appear to be the simplest of elements. Lena’s were: classically tailored woolen slacks and jacket, fine-knit sweater, cordovan leather boots and matching handbag, a silk scarf tied just so at her neck. Doubtless, the ensemble cost the equivalent of the GNP of a small country. Whatever the cost, everything she wore, including her chin-length brown hair, was understated, perfectly cut, perfectly fitted, perfectly natural. Perfectly perfect.
Poor Gillian, for all of her overwrought efforts, came nowhere close to Lena’s apparently effortless elegance, no matter how much she invested or the hours she spent in the attempt.
Lena was reserved in her manner, a bit queenly. She studied me as if I were an oddity that might bite. As she exchanged greetings with the others, I saw a shadow under her politesse, something more than reserve. If she were, as Freddy said, distraught about Isabelle, might Lena consider the friendly banter of the group, banter she pointedly stayed aloof from, to be inappropriate to the occasion?
Mourning, of course, travels a different path with every person. But what I read in her demeanor was wife-in-exit mode. One of the first signs I picked up that my marriage to Scottie was in trouble was his sudden aloofness around my parents, with whom he had always been very close. If Lena, like Scottie, had made the decision to go, shows of affection for people she was leaving behind might not be worth the bother.
At one point, Freddy put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. She did not shrink away from him, but she certainly did nothing to encourage his affectionate gesture, or let him linger in the embrace. Almost immediately, in a tone that could freeze the tits off the devil himself, Lena said, “Boys, we need to get ready for lunch.”
She took her bag off Freddy’s shoulder—I recognized the maker, had a pretty good idea what she had invested in it—rounded up her sons and walked away toward Isabelle’s house. Their departure left a moment of silence in its wake.
Freddy, chagrined, spoke first. “Bébé, do you need help with your things? Antoine has a full house, so you’re staying with us.”
Grand-mère frowned. “Is Claude staying over tonight, Freddy?”
“Yes.” He looked uncomfortable affirming this tidbit. “He’s driving Lena and the boys back to Paris tomorrow night.”
“Then where will you put our Bébé?” Before Freddy could answer, she hooked her hands around Bébé’s and Casey’s elbows and turned with them toward the door, her entire focus turned on them. “You two come with me. I’ll show you to your rooms.”
David followed them inside carrying his panier of bread, with Julie, Grand-mère Marie and Kelly behind him. Freddy touched my arm, a request to stay behind.
“Everything all right?” I asked him.
He shrugged, he wasn’t sure. “I want you to know that Lena, my dear wife, is a wonderful woman. But the last year has been very difficult for her. She was accustomed to a certain life. But then financial nosedive. Catastrophe. The adjustment has not been easy for her.”
I said, “These are challenging times for a lot of people.”
He nodded, an understatement. “You were told that my family is living in Maman’s Paris apartment?”
“Yes.”
“And you know she was sick?”
“Yes.”
“When we moved in with her, everyone believed I was the devoted son, making sacrifices to care for his mother.”
“I’m glad she had you.”
He looked down, shook his head slowly. “We were a great inconvenience, I’m afraid. Maman cherished her solitude, an impossibility with two teenagers underfoot. But...”
When he didn’t finish the thought, I said, “I’m sure it meant a lot to her to have her grandsons with her. Your boys are wonderful.”
“Thanks to Lena.” He shifted his gaze to the black-ribbon-wrapped wreath that had been placed on the front door that morning. Stress lines bracketed his mouth, making him look older.
“Will you move back to your own home now?” I asked.
He shook his head. “The truth is, we lived with Maman out of necessity. Maman’s apartment, or here, those are the choices at the moment. And my wife...” His shrug was poignant. He had already told me that life in rural Normandy was an adjustment Lena was not interested in making. “She has a good position at her firm. In Paris.”
“You’ll figure things out, Freddy.”
“Hah!” A quick reaction that reeked of doubt. He moved a small step toward me and met my eyes. “Now is not the time, sister, but don’t forget that later you and I must talk. There are very large decisions to be made. And the outcome is very important.”
“And I’m the unknown quantity, yes?”
“Yes.” He shifted his focus toward Isabelle’s house, and the door closing behind his family. “I hope we can agree on the best course.”
I had no idea what the best course would be, only that there were several family factions. Out of respect for Isabelle, and guilt about the way I had treated her, until I understood what the issues were, I needed to stay unaligned.
All I could think to say was to repeat a lame cliché, “Things will work out.”
“Of course. We’ll find a better time to talk. Right now, please excuse me. I should see to Lena and the boys.” He kissed my cheeks, turned and walked briskly back to Isabelle’s house. I was tempted for a moment to call after him, to reassure him, to tell him that I would not be a problem for him, but I honestly could not make such a promise, yet.
Inside, as I hung up my coat, I spotted Casey, in stocking feet, creeping down the stairs.
“Sweetheart?” I said.
“Good, there you are.” She came to meet me. “I was hoping to find some of that bread David brought in.”
“We’re going to eat in about half an hour,” I said. “And you need to change.”
“Bébé offered to stop and get something to eat on the way, but I was in such a hurry to get here that I told him I wasn’t hungry. But, Mom, I’m starving. Do you have a cookie or something squirreled away?”
I looked around the salon. The table was set for lunch, but other than butter and some condiments there was no food set out yet. I told her we could probably talk whoever was in the kitchen out of something. But as I passed the sideboard, thinking cookie, I had a flash, and not knowing why, bent and opened a lower drawer, slowly, knowing it would squeak and give me away. It did. And, as also expected, inside the drawer there was a small cookie tin with a familiar picture of Mont St-Michel on the top. I took out the tin and opened it, knowing that inside there would be, or should be, little shortbread cookies, each with a dab of raspberry preserves filling a thumbprint in the center. The cookies were there.
As I offered the open tin to Casey, I glanced toward the kitchen door and saw that Grand-mère and Grand-mère Marie, probably alerted by the squeaky drawer, were watching us. They both had tears in their eyes.
Grand-mère Marie spoke first. “I told you,Élodie, she remembers.”
I said, “Growing girl needed a snack.”
“Delicious,” Casey said around her first bite.
“They are your mother’s favorite,” Grand-mère Marie told her. “I baked them yesterday and put them in her secret place for her to find.”
My grandmother raised the skirt of her apron to her face and wept into it. I went to her, put my arm around her and led her to a chair. She gripped my hand as she looked up at me.
“You do remember,” she sobbed. “My poor l
ittle Marguerite, what else do you remember?”
13
“Here you are.”
Uncle Gérard’s voice echoed along the gray stone corridors of the Convent of the Sacred Flower. While some members of the family were receiving communion from the local parish priest before the funeral service, Gérard had guided Gillian, Jemima and me into the bowels of the convent in search of a rest room. He remembered one near the refectory, the community’s dining room, from earlier visits.
I was glad for the guide. The convent’s interior passages were a windowless labyrinth full of sudden turnings and dead ends, and I doubt I could have made my way back to the chapel alone unless I’d left a trail of bread crumbs.
The company was surprisingly agreeable, as well. Gillian was flinty to be sure, but I began to see the real toughness underneath her fustian that, in a man, would probably be admired as dogged determination. She had clearly come up from some place she had no intention of returning to, or of ever seeing her daughter descend into.
And Jemima? I could hardly blame her for being unhappy about the forced show-up chez la famille Martin. Everyone was polite to her, overly polite. She understood the resentment that the mere fact of her existence generated among Gérard’s other children, but understanding didn’t make it any easier to live with.
While we were washing our hands and waiting for her mother to get all of her complex parts reassembled, Jemima quietly asked me whether, if the tables were turned and we were not gathered for my mother’s funeral but her father’s, people would behave as warmly toward her as they were toward me. There was such profound sadness in her question that I wanted to take her in my arms. My situation was strange. Hers was bloody awful.
The answer I wanted to give her, but didn’t, was that her acceptance into the bosom of this family might depend upon how much of their future comfort rested with her. Instead, I said, “Give them time. When they get to know you better, things will be different.”
She turned toward the door, the way back to the others, and shuddered. “And if not?”
“Then to hell with them.”
Gérard must have checked his watch four times after Jemima and I rejoined him before Gillian finally emerged from the rest room. He never prodded or groused, though. And when she came out, he told her how lovely she was. It sounded sincere.
“My dearest and my dearest,” he said to his wife and daughter. “If you think you can find your way back, I have been asked to take Maggie to meet the abbess. Will you excuse us?”
He got them started back in the right direction, gave instructions for the rest of the trip, kissed them both. We waited to see that they made the first turn, and then he put his arm through mine and led me away.
The ancient stone building was cold. Not merely drafty like Grand-mère’s old house. There was a pervasive, solid, permanent cold in the walls and floors that came up through the soles of my shoes and seeped through the fabric of my heavy coat, made our breath visible in the air.
“Quite a maze,” I said, looking into a dark side corridor as we passed. “I understand why Grand-mère hid out here during the war. Who could find her?”
He dropped his head near mine to share a confidence. “Rumor has it there is a network of underground tunnels that extend all the way to the beach, in case you need to escape, or to sneak in someone under cover.”
“Is it true?” I asked, intrigued.
“I only know the stories.” He whispered, “Remember, this is a convent. I have never been invited to explore its mysteries.”
“I was told that I was born in the infirmary here. Do the nuns take in unwed mothers?” I asked. “Maybe sneak them in and out through the tunnels?”
“The nuns offer sanctuary and hospitality to anyone who asks, but unwed mothers specifically, no. As for sneaking, well...” He studied me, seemed to be considering something before he said, “Your mother did not need to hide herself. No, that is not the reason she came here.”
“No?” I asked, hoping he would keep talking. When he didn’t, I said, “A modern woman, a scientist like Isabelle, would surely prefer a hospital to a convent when it came time to give birth to her first child.”
“Perhaps.” Gérard checked his watch, a device to avoid answering. “The abbess knows more about it than I do.”
We came to an intersection of corridors as a phalanx of black-habited nuns marched past, walking in pairs, an indistinguishable mass except for the faces, framed by stiffly starched white wimples, looking out from under their veils. No one acknowledged that Gérard and I were there. No one spoke at all. The only sounds were the reverberations of hard-soled shoes on the stone floor, the rhythmic click-clack of rosary beads swinging from their waists, and the fluttering of heavy black fabric swaying in cadence with the movement of unseen legs.
The wave of nuns was familiar to me. As a teenager I had been sent to a convent school for reasons that were never clear to me. The teachers, all in black habits, would sweep through the halls in a similar formation on their way to and from chapel every morning, hands buried inside their sleeves, rosary beads swinging. But the teaching nuns kept their eyes up and watchful, and they were never silent during their progress, nor would they have hesitated to speak to us: your skirt is too short, miss; see me after class, young lady; get rid of the chewing gum; do I smell tobacco? Seeing the nuns approach, I felt a familiar shimmer of general guilt for yet-to-be-enumerated infractions.
“Did you notice,” Gérard said when they had passed by, “that all of the younger nuns come from the old colonial regions? They are African and Asian and Pacific Islander. What you will rarely see any longer is a European girl in a habit. It is possible that the future of the Mother Church lies beyond Europe. Interesting, is it not?”
“It is,” I said, pondering the role of a time-worn institution such as this one in a modern, post-industrial state. Did it still have a function?
I kicked myself for not having a camera in hand to capture that black-shrouded procession, even from the back, and made a mental note to call Guido to begin talking about arrangements to bring our little film crew over. Damn, I hated Guido when he was right. How could I not make a film here?
Gérard cleared his throat. “I thought what Lena had to say at lunch was quite interesting, didn’t you?”
“Interesting, yes,” I said. “But I’m not sure it was the most appropriate topic to bring up at the time.”
He thought that over. “No, probably not.”
Lena, an insurance company actuary—an odds-maker of sorts—announced that if Isabelle were going to die in Los Angeles, considering all the factors—age, income, interests, neighborhood—the most likely cause of death other than natural causes would be a car accident. She admitted that the probability was very low, though Isabelle raised the odds when she went walking alone after dark.
No one mentioned the little factor that screwed up the odds: someone hired an assassin. I could not look at Grand-mère during Lena’s discourse, and was relieved when Freddy pointedly changed the subject.
“Just along this way,” Gérard said, guiding me through an archway and into a narrower side passageway.
“Gérard...” I said. There were a few things I wanted to know about my Sunday night dinner companion, and this might be my best opportunity. “Grand-mère told me you’re a friend of Jean-Paul Bernard.”
“Yes, we ride for the same polo club. Wonderful seat on a horse,” he said. “Why? Do you know him?”
“I met him. He helped Grand-mère make arrangements for me to bring Isabelle home.”
“You cannot call her Mother, yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Is his family from this area?”
“Here? No, no. Versailles I think, or near there.”
“Wife, six children?”
He made the most wonderfully dramatic sad face, tsk’d a couple of times while he wagged his head from side to side. “So tragic. His wife: one morning at breakfast, she looked at him with a funny express
ion on her face, she said, ‘Oh dear,’ and just like that, she was gone.”
“Dead?” I was appalled.
“Brain aneurysm.”
“Recently?”
“Maybe two years ago. Her passing was the reason he accepted the appointment to Los Angeles. A fresh start, you know? He has his son with him; nice boy, about the same age as Jemima.”
We made another turn. About halfway down the passage an open door spilled light as well as the sound of voices into the corridor. Casey and Kelly, and someone I did not recognize, were having an animated conversation. I looked up at Gérard, but he answered my question before I asked it.
“Looks as if our daughters have already come to visit Ma Mère, the abbess.” With a formal bow and sweep of the hand, he ushered me to the door. “Shall we join them?”
Ma Mère was a tiny woman about the same age as Grand-mère. She sat with her hands folded atop a large desk in a perfectly ordinary-looking office furnished with metal filing cabinets, copier and fax machine, with a computer and printer on a side table. A collection of small space heaters took the edge off the building’s chill, but only just barely.
The abbess turned from Casey and Kelly when we entered, and smiled up at us. Her dark eyes had an unmistakable twinkle.
“Mom, thank God.” Casey rose from her chair in front of the desk to hug me. “We’ve been waiting. It took you so long I was afraid you got lost.”
“I was in good hands,” I said, not mentioning how long Gillian kept us waiting while she patched and repainted.
“Ma Mère was worried.” And so, I understood from the tone of her voice, was Casey.
The abbess, smiling sweetly, made eye contact with Gérard and gave him a little nod, an indication that she was waiting for him to do something. He understood.
“Ma Mère,” he said, “may I present my niece, Maggie MacGowen?”
“Maggie MacGowen?” One of her index fingers broke free of the clasped hands on the desk and waggled at me, those brown eyes full of mischief. “I was present the day Father Victor christened a little child named Marguerite Eugénie Louise-Marie Duchamps, right here in our chapel. So who can this Maggie MacGowen be?”
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