The French War Bride

by Robin Wells

  I had believed that the secrets of my early days with Jack would die with me. The notion of dredging them all up, of shining a light on what I had worked so hard to bury, makes my heart both race and stop, although I know this is biologically impossible. “I do not mean to be rude, but this is a private matter. What was between Jack and me is really not your concern.”

  “Not my concern? Not my concern?” She is suddenly a lion—her forehead creased, her mouth large, her voice larger, roaring in a way that is likely to summon an aide. She pounds her cane on the floor to emphasize each word. “You stole my life!”

  My upper lip breaks a sweat, while my mouth feels packed with gauze. “You said you had a wonderful life. That you married a wonderful man.”

  “I did. He was wealthy, handsome, successful, adoring. But . . .”

  In that heartbeat of a pause, I know what she is going to say. The words come out barely more than a whisper; the lion is now a wounded lamb. “. . . He wasn’t Jack.”

  No, of course not. No one else in the world was Jack. “I—” I start to say I am sorry, but what good would that do? An apology would bring back nothing, would give her nothing. And I wouldn’t mean it, anyway; I would not have given up a single moment with that magnificent man.

  “Please,” she begs.

  I look at her and try to see her objectively. It is what Jack used to do with his patients—to remove assumptions and judgments, to try to see them clearly. She is an old woman, searching for the truth about her life. Ah, merde.

  “The truth is not likely to bring you the peace you want,” I warn again.

  In fact, peace is the last thing it’s likely to bring. How can she forgive me once she hears the full extent of my deceptions?

  How can I forgive myself? I had hoped to die without digging through the graveyard of my past, picking through and laying out all the skeletons of shame and pain—the shame and pain that I’d suffered myself, but far worse, the shame and pain I’d unintentionally inflicted on others.

  And yet, what excuse do I have to withhold what she wants to know, aside from pure selfishness? Elise is gone, so I no longer need worry about protecting her. I have lived through the true horror of old age, which is outliving a child.

  “I don’t even know where you and Jack met,” Kat says.

  This, at least, I can give her. “It was at a church.” It was l’Église Saint-Médard, on the rue Mouffetard in the fifth arrondissement. I can picture it so clearly I might have visited it just yesterday. Jack and I didn’t meet there, exactly; one might call it more of an encounter.

  “I was kneeling at the end of the altar, sitting back on my heels, my head against the railing, when Jack entered the confessional. He didn’t see me—and I didn’t look up to see him.”

  “Wait!” Kat holds up her hand like a traffic cop. “Jack went into a confessional? But he was Baptist!”

  I nod. “He was there on behalf of someone else.”

  Kat sits silently for a moment, apparently digesting this. “And you? You were there because you were religious?”

  “No. I was there because I was desperate.” Desperate and despairing, with nowhere else to turn.

  As I think of it, memories waft in like wisps of fog and cling to each other. “I was . . . how do you say? . . . at the end of my rope. Heartbroken and . . . and . . . just broken. I needed a miracle.”

  “Why? What had happened?”

  “So much. So very, very much.” The fog was thickening, coalescing into something with weight and shape.

  “I mean with Jack. You said he went into the confessional.”

  She didn’t want information about me—only about Jack. Of course. “Yes. He went in, and I overheard him talking to the priest—he spoke French quite fluently, you know—and what he was saying . . . well, I couldn’t help but listen.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He explained that he had been with an evacuation hospital unit in Normandy that was following the First Army on its march through France.”

  “Yes, yes. He wrote me of that.”

  “He said he and a young medic were helping a wounded infantryman out of a Jeep when a lone German soldier, dazed and disoriented and probably wounded himself, wandered into the hospital zone. He had a machine gun, and he aimed it at them. The medic had a gun; he knew Jack was not armed. He pushed Jack out of the way and shot the soldier.”

  I remember how Jack’s voice faltered as he told this to the priest. Even now, the memory makes my own throat thicken.

  “The medic saved Jack’s life, but in the process, the machine gun fired into his chest. As he lay dying, he asked Jack for a priest; he wanted to confess. There was not time to find one. Jack said he would hear his confession, and later relay it to a priest. That was why Jack was at the church that day—to confess by proxy for the medic.”

  “Catholics can do that?” Kat asks.

  What ridiculous details snag this woman’s attention! But then, she wouldn’t know; like Jack, she, too, was raised Baptist. “No, and the priest told Jack as much. ‘Well, I gave my word,’ Jack said, ‘so I’m going to tell you his confession anyway.’”

  “So he did?”

  “Yes. Jack said that the medic had been separated from his unit soon after the American landing—what is now called D-day. A young Frenchwoman hid him from the Germans for a few weeks and helped him connect with the American hospital unit. He feared he’d gotten her pregnant. He loved her, and he’d intended to return and marry her.

  “The priest replied that he would pray for the young man’s soul, and asked his name.

  “‘Doug Claiborne from Whitefish, Montana,’ Jack replied.

  “The priest asked if Jack knew the name of the girl or where she was from.

  “‘No,’ Jack said. ‘The medic was fighting for his last breath as he told me this. He said he had a note with her address in his coat pocket, but when I looked for it, there was just a hole where the pocket should have been.’

  “‘Then there is nothing you can do,’ the priest said.”

  I close my eyes, seeing the dimly lit church again in my mind’s eye. I can practically smell the wood polish on the altar rail, practically see the flicker of the votive candles.

  “It was wrong, but as Jack and the priest talked, their voices grew softer, and I crept closer to better hear. As I neared the confessional, I saw what looked like a doctor’s bag outside the curtain. A metal tag was attached to the top. I flipped it over and read his name: Dr. Jack O’Connor.

  “‘And you, my son?’ the priest had asked. ‘Do you have something to confess?’

  “‘Only that I do not deserve to be alive,’ Jack said. ‘Another man died when it was meant to be me.’

  “‘Apparently God thinks otherwise. Are you going home soon?’

  “‘Not yet. I’m stationed at the 365th army station hospital here in Paris—it used to be the American Hospital. I’m here for at least a couple more months, maybe longer.’

  “‘Ahh,’ the priest said. ‘Well, I will pray for you.’”

  I open my eyes to see Kat frowning at me. Until this moment, I had not realized I had closed them. “Right then and there, I formulated a plan.”

  Kat’s eyebrows rise. “A plan?”

  “Yes. But in order to understand, you must know what life was like for me during the war.”

  Kat waves her hand in that dismissive gesture again. “I don’t care about your sufferings. Have you cared about mine all these years?”

  “Not as I should have.” She does not really want to forgive, I realize. She does not want to let me off the hoof, I think the saying goes. I tamp down my irritation, then force myself to look at her again, as Jack would have done—objectively, without bias or emotion.

  Sacré coeur. She is an old woman who is dying. I realize I must grant her wish. But first, I will l
ay down some rules.

  “Some actions only make sense if you know the reasons why. If I am to tell you this story—the whole ugly truth of it all—I insist on telling it at my own pace, in my own way. I will tell it without interruptions or questions, or I won’t tell it at all.”

  She nods, her mouth pinched and tight.

  “This might take a while,” I warn.

  She lifts her shoulders in that stiff little shrug again. “I have nothing to do but hear this and die.”

  And I have nothing to do but to tell it. I sigh, then draw a deep breath and begin.

  2

  AMÉLIE

  September 1, 1939

  For me, the war began with the battle of the zipper.

  I was at the dressmaker’s shop with my mother on that Friday afternoon, each of us selecting fabric and trim for new winter dresses. Mme Depard’s shop always smelled like lavender and face powder, combined with the sharp scent of fabric dye. The scent always filled me with a floaty kind of hopefulness. The dressmakers would conjure up the perfect dress, one that would transform me from a gangly young girl into a beautiful, confident, full-breasted woman. The scent of the shop was a heady promise.

  The scent was also an allergen that made my eyes water.

  It was after school—fall classes had begun just that week—and I was wearing my uniform: a starched white shirt with a round collar, a shapeless navy pinafore, and oxford shoes. I was sixteen years old and I was, of course, excited at the prospect of a new ensemble. The fabric Maman and I had selected was a green wool jersey, and I’d finally convinced Maman to let me have a fitted waist with a belt—a grown-up silhouette. She had just started allowing me to wear heels and stockings for special occasions.

  Maman wanted to pick out buttons for the back, but I desperately wanted my dress to have a zipper. All of the chic girls attending university in the Quartier Latin wore dresses with zippers, and I, still being in lycée, looked up to them. Maman thought zippers looked cheap—which, in truth, they were. They were less expensive to install, and therefore the sign of factory-made clothes.

  Papa was a professor, and Maman considered store-bought clothes to be below our station. We did not wear couture, of course, but according to Maman, it would be an insult to Papa’s status if we did not wear custom-made.

  “Only people who can afford no better wear zippers,” she said.

  “Movie stars can certainly afford better!” I argued. My best friend Yvette and I adored the movies—especially the American ones. My father said the French ones were better—much more meaningful and artistic. He said that France was the birthplace of le cinéma, and that France would still be the moviemaking capital of the world if the Great War had not crippled the industry, as it had crippled all of France.

  My father—indeed, all of the adults I knew—talked endlessly about how France had been “before.” I knew nothing of “before,” since I was born after. All of my life, though, talk of war had been a daily staple. Like bread, it was served up at every meal and gathering. If adults weren’t talking about an impending one, they were rehashing the events of the Great One.

  Even the French movies were about war. The government insisted that theaters show one French film for every seven American movies in an attempt to get French filmmaking back on its feet. Yvette and I keenly preferred the lighthearted Hollywood movies to the dark, grim, war-themed films in our own language. The newsreels showing German soldiers marching in lockstep provided more than enough military drama for our tastes.

  “Katharine Hepburn wears zippers,” I told my mother.

  “If Katharine Hepburn wore a toilet for a hat, would you want to do that as well?” my mother asked.

  We were arguing about this in the back corner when Mme Avant burst into the shop, her umbrella dripping, her face bright pink. Her chest, as large and round as a pigeon’s, heaved up and down. Everyone turned toward her.

  “The Germans are attacking Poland!” she announced.

  It was as if every woman in the store had turned to stone. Maman’s face went white. “Oh, no,” she murmured, a hand to her chest. She leaned heavily against the display case. “My boys.”

  My two older brothers were seventeen and eighteen, and they had been champing at the bit to join the French Army for what seemed like forever. Maman had insisted that they wait to be conscripted; Pierre, the oldest, argued that the men who volunteered got the choicest assignments. Papa said it was inevitable that they would serve, but so far, Maman had prevailed.

  I largely tuned out talk of war and politics, but even I had been unable to tune out the latest events. Just last week, Germany had signed a nonaggression pact with Russia, and in response, France and Great Britain had signed a pact to defend Poland.

  At school just that morning, my friend Lisette, whose father worked at the Louvre, said that the museum was packing up paintings and sculptures to be shipped and hidden in the countryside. Her father had personally helped crate up the Venus de Milo.

  There was a heaviness in the air, a sense of something about to happen, like a snow cloud about to drop a blizzard.

  “Does this mean we’re at war?” I asked.

  “If we’re not, we’re about to be,” Mme Avant said.

  “We must go home.” Maman straightened and collected her purse. “Come.”

  “What about our dresses?” I asked.

  “We’ll tend to that later.” She turned to the vendeuse, who was holding the bolt of fabric near the trim and buttons. “I’m sure you understand.”

  “Bien sûr,” she murmured, her head bent low. “I will set the fabric aside for you.”

  Maman mumbled her thanks, and clutched my elbow all the way home. We lived in a narrow three-story townhouse, a rarity in the Quartier Latin, where almost everyone lived in flats. It had been in my father’s family for generations, and, the year before, Papa had sunk a major chunk of his savings into reinforcing the foundation and modernizing the bathroom and kitchen.

  Yvette must have been watching for me from her flat across the street, because she knocked on the door practically as soon as we walked in. “Did you hear?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  We were excited. We knew it was terrible, but we were, in many ways, still children, and we felt as if we were on the brink of a grand adventure. Despite what everyone said, war seemed terribly thrilling and glamorous. All those men in all those handsome uniforms, so brave, so dashing, so ready for love!

  —

  Maman turned on the radio. There was no music that night; only newscasters talking, talking, talking.

  “We must figure out some hairstyles that will make us look older,” Yvette said to me.

  We disappeared into my room and stood before the mirror of my bureau, pinning our hair into rolls and updos. Yvette and I were practically sisters; our parents were best friends and we had known each other all our lives. We felt like family, but we couldn’t have looked more different. Yvette had blond hair and blue eyes. Her cheeks and lips were always pink, as if she’d just come out of the cold. Her personality was bright and colorful, too.

  I, on the other hand, was short and slight, with dark brown hair and light brown eyes.

  People would say, “Oh, that Yvette—she’s going to be a heartbreaker!” About me, they would seldom say much of anything. I tended to blend into the background, which was fine with me. I preferred being a supportive player to Yvette’s plans and schemes rather than hatching my own. I was an introvert; I loved reading and calligraphy. I could have passed my whole life curled up in a corner with a stack of books or with a pen and paper, copying stylistic fonts from magazines and movie posters, while Yvette was always on the lookout for the next adventure.

  Yvette left our house when Maman called me to help prepare supper—roast chicken with new potatoes and carrots. Papa came home at his regular time, his fac
e grim. He was alone. My brothers usually accompanied him home from university.

  “Where are Pierre and Thomas?” Maman asked.

  My father hung up his hat without a word.

  “Non,” Maman breathed, her voice like a prayer. She scurried toward Papa and grabbed the lapels of his coat. “You must stop them!”

  “They are men, Marie.”

  “Not Thomas,” Maman insisted. “He is still a boy.”

  “Seventeen is the age of conscription. And anyway, he will be eighteen in two months. He will be drafted if he does not join with Pierre.”

  Maman dropped her hands from his jacket. “Still, that could buy some time.”

  My father loosened his tie and sighed. “Marie, it is important that this be his choice.”

  “He is too young to make such a choice!”

  “It is likely to be the last free choice he can make for a very long time.” He took off his coat. “It is a noble thing they are doing. And with any luck, they can serve together, keep an eye on each other. You must not give them trouble.”

  My mother turned her back to my father, refusing to engage in any further conversation. She banged pot lids and pans on the stove, moving with sharp, jerky movements.

  My brothers did not make it home for dinner that night. My father and I ate without them. My mother did not eat. She sat with us, but she only pushed her food around the plate.

  As we were clearing the table, my brothers came in.

  “Well?” my father asked.

  Pierre’s back was straight. His chin jutted out at a combative angle, as if he were braced for battle. Beside him, Thomas, too, stood erect, as if he were already a soldier, awaiting orders. They looked at each other, then spoke in what must have been practiced unison. “We have joined.”

  My mother cried. I think my father did, as well, but he rose and hugged Pierre, then Thomas, so quickly it was hard to tell.

  They settled at the table, and Papa poured them stout glasses of wine.

  “Are you getting uniforms?” I asked.