The French War Bride

by Robin Wells

  “She’s not nearly as large as I expected,” the midwife said, expertly wiping off the dark-haired baby with the warm water and clean washcloths that Nora had thought to provide.

  “Did you say she?” Yvette asked.

  “Yes. It’s a girl.”

  “A girl!” she murmured. “Oh, a little girl!” She looked at me, her eyes shining. “I have a daughter!”

  “She’s beautiful,” I said.

  “Yes,” Nora said. “Just like her mother.”

  “I will name her after mine.” Yvette reached for the baby as the midwife finished wrapping her tightly in a blanket. She gazed into the red, still-squalling face. “Hello, Elise.”

  Tears poured down my cheeks. Yvette’s mother should be here. How could a moment be so heartrendingly beautiful, and at the same time, so full of grief? Who knew such emotions could exist in equal portions at the same time?

  “It is a wonderful omen,” said Nora, “to be born just as the war ended.”

  “Yes. She is born in a free France,” I said.

  “But she will be raised as an American.” Yvette looked at me. “Just as soon as we can, we will go.”

  —

  Yvette did not rebound from childbirth the way we expected. She wanted to nurse the baby, despite all of Dierk’s formula. The child constantly fussed and cried and spit up, but when we took her to a doctor, he said nursing was best, that formula would only make the baby worse. Yvette was exhausted, and continued to bleed well after the time she should have stopped. Both mother and child failed to thrive.

  I tried to let Yvette rest by caring for the baby as much as possible, but there was only so much I could do. I would spend many an hour at night holding Elise and rocking her, trying to calm her crying.

  As the weeks went by, Yvette took in some sewing, and the milliner who had employed her gave her some custom work to do at home. Yvette was determined to earn money for passage to America. Money was not the only obstacle we had to overcome; when I checked into the requirements, I learned that there were a very limited number of visas to America and thousands of Europeans wanting to immigrate there. We were hopeful that having Yvette’s aunt sponsor us would help our cause.

  We still heard no word from her aunt. Yvette wrote yet again.

  At three months, the baby still cried and threw up all the time. Yvette was more fatigued than ever and seemed to have aged several years in a few months. We pooled our money and again took the child to a doctor. He said Elise was colicky and reassured us that she would outgrow it. He told Yvette to keep nursing her, to let her eat as much as she wanted. The baby was attached to poor Yvette’s bosom almost continually.

  Yvette lost weight, and the baby did not seem to be gaining.

  And then, in October, when the child was five months old, Yvette took ill. It started with a headache, and then she developed a cough and a high fever. She could not eat, and she developed a horrible phlegmy hack that made nursing impossible.

  Alarmed, Nora bought a baby bottle and we started Elise on the formula. I called the doctor, and he gave Yvette penicillin. Penicillin was very expensive in those days for non-military personnel—it took almost all our savings—but I insisted.

  It didn’t work. Three days later, her fever raged on. She was in and out of her head with delirium, and then, terrifyingly, she lay still and unresponsive, her breathing a shallow rattle. Nora fetched the doctor once again.

  “It is the flu, which is viral,” The doctor said. “There is nothing more medicine can do.”

  “What about a hospital?”

  “I am sorry, but they are overcrowded and have no space to quarantine. They will not admit contagious patients.”

  “Will the baby get sick?” Nora asked worriedly.

  “If she were going to, she probably would be ill already. It is likely her mother’s milk gave her immunity.” He packed up his bag. “If madame regains consciousness, give her liquids and aspirin.” At the door he paused. “And call her priest.”

  My heart . . . it dropped into a bottomless pit. “It is as bad as that?”

  The way he avoided looking me in the eye told me that it was. “She was weak from childbirth, and she is now very ill,” he said in a low voice.

  “But she might get better,” I insisted. I could not accept what he was telling me.

  “I have seen miracles before. And perhaps the priest can help pray for one.”

  A miracle? That is what it would take? I gazed at him, beside myself with grief. Yvette was the last of my family.

  “I am sorry, mademoiselle.” He closed the door behind him.

  “I will go fetch Father Gaudet,” Nora whispered.

  I prepared a bottle for Elise and carried the child to Yvette’s bedside. As I sat down, Yvette opened her eyes. “Ammie.”

  She was awake! Hope flooded my chest. “I am here.”

  “You will . . .” It took much effort for her to talk. Each breath was an ordeal. “. . . look after Elise for me.”

  “Of course. I will care for her until you are better.”

  “You will care for her . . . if I don’t get better?”

  “But you will! You must not talk like that.”

  “You will take Elise to America.”

  “We will all go together.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to make it, Ammie.”

  My heart turned over. “Don’t say that. Don’t you even think that!” If she thought it, it could happen. I could not allow the possibility to exist. “Elise needs you to get well.”

  “We have always been . . .” Her chest rattled as she struggled to inhale. “. . . honest with each other. I don’t have the strength to pretend. I need to know you will care for her—that you will get her to my family. Promise me.”

  “But . . .”

  Her gaze cut through the protest on the tip of my tongue. “Promise me.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Of course I promise. I will love her as if she were my own.”

  Her face relaxed. “Say a prayer for me.”

  “Yes.” I bowed my head and said an Our Father. At the end of the prayer, she didn’t open her eyes.

  When Nora returned with Father Gaudet, they found me sitting on the bed beside Yvette, holding Elise and weeping. Somewhere between Thine is the glory and forever, Yvette had gone.

  36

  KAT

  2016

  Amélie sits quietly for a long, long moment, gazing at her hands.

  I sit quietly, too, until I can stand the silence no longer. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “Thank you.”

  “After she died—that is when you went to the church and overheard Jack?”

  She gives a single nod. “That happened a couple of weeks later. First I arranged for Yvette’s burial. I had her interred in my family churchyard plot under the name Yvette Chaussant Michaud.”

  “Did the church know you lied about her name?”

  She shoots me a withering glance. “The name was as true as anything ever was. She was my sister, in every sense of the word that matters. She was my family, and I was hers.”

  I don’t think that Catholic officials, who seem very strict about rules, would accept this explanation. I decide not to point it out. Instead, I bring up what seems to be a bigger transgression of Catholic doctrine. “So she died without a final confession?”

  “God and I knew all of her sins.”

  “But according to the Catholic faith . . .”

  “I believe—and I think Yvette did, too, although we never talked about it—that if you have one person truly know you and love you and accept you anyway . . .” She looks thoughtfully at the wall. I follow her gaze to a carved wooden cross that I hadn’t noticed before, placed among all her paintings and pictures. “Well, if you are fortunate enough to experience that, yo
u have experienced God’s grace. And you if know his grace, then you know his forgiveness.”

  “Hmmm.” It has the ring of truth, but I don’t like it. I don’t like for anyone to break or bend the rules, especially when it comes to matters of religion. I resent hearing people say that God is larger than the confines of their denomination, because I feel as though they have a better deal than me. It’s the spiritual equivalent of not wanting anyone to be smarter or more knowledgeable or prettier.

  I realize this is probably one of those character defects my hospice counselor says I should address, but I don’t care to examine it too closely. My counselor also says I should just let things go. This, I decide, will be one of those things. I turn my thoughts back to Jack and the story that Amélie is finally—finally!—about to tell.

  “When you first started talking yesterday, you told me that you went to a church and heard Jack tell the priest the medic’s confession. Is this what happened next?”

  Amélie nods. “After Yvette’s death, I was crushed—just devastated. Thank God for Nora. Elise and I moved in with her, and she helped me care for the baby. She urged me to turn to God. Her faith was very strong; mine—well, I wasn’t sure I had any left.

  “It was at her urging that I went to the church. I knelt low and prayed to God. I did not know if he was still there. I couldn’t imagine why he would take Yvette now, when she had a child to raise, after helping her all the way through the war. I did not understand. I still do not.

  “I prayed for guidance. I asked God to show me what to do, to help me find a way. And then I heard Jack telling the priest how the young medic had died in his arms and how he had confessed that he might have left a girl pregnant. And it seemed to me that it was a sign.”

  “A sign?”

  She nods. “I had Jack’s name—I’d read it on his bag. He’d told the priest the name of the hospital where he was working. He’d mentioned the name of the boy who’d saved his life—Doug Claiborne from Whitefish, Montana. Thanks to my work for the Resistance, I was skilled at remembering names and details. I had entered the church hopeless and helpless, and now I had information and an idea.”

  My eyebrows rise nearly to my hairline. “So you decided God was telling you to seduce Jack?”

  “No. That is not what happened.” Her voice holds an impatient edge that does not bode well.

  “But . . .”

  She leans forward. “I know that you are going to want to interrupt me. My story will not fit your preconceived notion of what happened. You are likely to be displeased or even shocked. But if you want to hear the truth, I suggest you just sit and listen and let me speak.”

  “All right.” I nod. “All right.”

  37

  AMÉLIE

  October 1945

  I put the baby in a pink dress with white smocking, and tied a pink bow in her hair. I put her in a secondhand boiled wool coat. She looked adorable—and then, on the Métro, she had a horribly malodorous diaper explosion. I had a terrible time figuring out where I could change her—it was too cold to go to a park. I finally disembarked near a department store and changed her in the ladies’ room. I debated what to do with the diaper; I couldn’t really afford to just throw it away, but neither could I afford to meet the man whom I hoped would change my life smelling of poo. I decided to sacrifice the diaper, and tossed it in the trash.

  I got back on the Métro and rode it all the way to Neuilly-sur-Seine. Elise was fussy, so I put the rubber nipple in her mouth and let her suckle herself to sleep. She was heavy in my arms.

  I was wearing a rose-colored dress—one of Yvette’s that I had cut down to fit me—and I had on my winter coat, as well. I wore a little rose hat at a saucy angle.

  I entered the 365th army hospital—it had been the American Hospital of Paris before the U.S. Army took it over—and went to the information desk, which was manned by two women wearing army uniforms, complete with smart little pointed caps. “Excuse me,” I said in French, thinking I should keep my ability to speak English under wraps. A farm girl from Normandy was unlikely speak a foreign language. “I am looking for Dr. Jack O’Connor.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No. I—I want to see him for a personal reason.”

  “Don’t we all,” sighed the second woman in the military uniform.

  The one who was helping me shot her a sidelong smile. “May I tell him your name?”

  “Yes, of course.” I had thought long and hard about this. There was no reason, I’d decided, not to give him my real name. It would certainly simplify a passport or visa. “Amélie Michaud.”

  “And may I tell him the reason for your visit?”

  “Yes. Please tell him that I am the fiancée of Doug Claiborne of Whitefish, Montana.”

  She asked me to wait. The fact I had a baby made the other woman at the desk smile at me. I smiled back. At length, the first woman told me to go to a waiting room at the end of the hall on the second floor.

  I went upstairs and took a seat. After a several minutes, a nurse came and escorted me into an office with a metal desk and two chairs opposite it. I sat down. My stomach was a hard knot of nerves.

  After a few moments, the door opened. A young man with black hair and blue eyes walked in, wearing a heavily starched, immaculately white coat. “Mademoiselle Michaud?”

  I rose to my feet, holding the sleeping Elise. “Yes.”

  “Bonjour. I am Jack O’Connor.”

  I was practically struck dumb. I had not seen him in the confessional; I had only heard his voice. I was unprepared for him to be so tall, or so good-looking. He was movie-star handsome—the kind of handsome that is universal, that anyone from any country would find handsome—and yet he was distinctly American. He had a wide American smile, and his eyes were kind. I could tell he had bad news to tell me and that it troubled him greatly to do so.

  He held out his hand. I lifted one from around Elise and gave him a handshake—something Frenchwomen normally do not do. His hand completely engulfed mine in a firm hold, and he pumped my arm two times. So strange, these American customs!

  He sat down beside me in the other chair in front of his desk. “I understand that you knew Doug Claiborne.” Oh, there was something so sexy about a man speaking French with an American accent! He spoke it much better than most Americans I had met.

  “Yes. We . . . he . . .” I looked down. I suddenly felt very shy in front of this man, and terrified about what I was about to do. “We were in love. Elise is his child.”

  “I see,” he said. “She is very beautiful.”

  “Yes, she is, isn’t she?” I had not yet grasped all that it meant to pretend that Elise was my child. As soon as the words left my mouth, it occurred to me that from a mother, they sounded, well, boastful. “I mean, thank you.”

  Flustered, I rushed ahead. “Doug mentioned you in a letter. He said he was serving with you and he spoke very highly of you. I figured that if anyone could tell me anything about Doug, it would be you. I do not know what happened to him, and I have tried to find out for a very long time. Many calls to many army personnel . . .”

  He nodded somberly. “It’s hard to get information through the army’s bureaucracy in peacetime, much less in times of war. It’s even harder if you don’t speak English.”

  He was more sympathetic than I had dared hope. “Yes. The concierge at the hotel where I work—she speaks English and she knew someone with the Medical Corps. He looked up your posting, so here I am.”

  His eyes were somber. “I see.”

  I leaned forward. “M. O’Connor, I lost my family, my home—everything, really—in the war. Doug’s baby—she is all I have. I am now living and working in Paris, but it is extremely hard, as an unmarried mother.”

  “I imagine it is.”

  “So, can you tell me . . . where is Doug? We were going to b
e married.” I brushed my suddenly wet cheek.

  The tears weren’t an act; in talking to him, I felt my own loss and desperation. The loss of Yvette was a still-bleeding wound, and tears were always near my eyes. The circumstances I was relating were different, yes, but the story of a young woman alone with a baby, a woman who had lost all her family and the man she loved . . . it was my story, too.

  Jack’s eyes were full of bad news and empathy. His Adam’s apple moved. “I am afraid I have something difficult to tell you.”

  I drew a deep breath.

  “Doug is gone.”

  I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. “Are you sure?”

  He solemnly nodded. “I was with him when he died. He was very brave. He had gotten separated from his platoon . . .”

  “Yes,” I broke in. “We hid him at our farmhouse, my parents and I.”

  “For how long?” he asked.

  I felt as though I were stepping in a minefield. Did he know the answer? I did not. If he did not, what would make the most sense? Too brief a time, I would look like a loose woman. Too much time, it might not seem believable. “Well, it was just a short while, but it felt like longer.”

  He nodded. “Under tense circumstances, people bond very quickly.”

  I nodded, grateful.

  “When he showed up at the evacuation hospital, he said his life had been saved by a French family. He intended to rejoin his platoon, but they’d headed in another direction while he stayed behind to tend a dying soldier.”

  “Oui,” I said, although this, of course, was new information to me. “He was so devoted to his fellow soldiers. So very kind.”

  “Yes. He was.”

  “So . . . how did he end up with you?”

  He looked at me strangely. “Your friends with the Resistance brought him to the Sainte-Mère-Église evacuation hospital.”

  “Oh, right, right,” I said. Oh, la—I couldn’t afford to make a mistake. I needed to memorize the information in case I needed it in the future. Sainte-Mère-Église, Sainte-Mère-Église. I wiped my eyes. “I meant how did you first meet him?”