The Seven Turns of the Snail's Shell: A Novel

by Mj Roë

  Gasping for air, Stu Ellis managed to tell his beloved grand-daughter the whole story. Anna was later to remember how time seemed to stand still as he related the details. Diamanté and he had exchanged letters for years after the war ended. They were about the same age. Both of them had returned to their homelands and married. Diamanté had a son, Diamanté fils. When Junior was of age, he joined the French military, as was required. One day, Anna’s grandfather received a letter from Diamanté that Diamanté fils was coming to California to attend an exchange training school with the American Navy in San Diego. Would he entertain him occasionally on weekends, Diamanté asked, so that he wouldn’t get homesick for family? Stu Ellis wrote back that, of course, his son was welcome in their home and they looked forward to the young man’s coming. As it turned out, their beautiful daughter, Anna’s mother, was seventeen at the time of Diamanté fils’ visit to California. He was there just long enough to sweep her off her feet; when he left, she was pregnant with Anna. Her grandfather told Anna that he didn’t believe that her father ever knew because the next letter he had received from Diamanté was several months later. It bore the terrible news that his son had been killed in the war in Algeria and that Diamanté was heartbroken. Stu didn’t hear from him again, and he never told him about Anna.

  “You must have been born right about the time of your father’s death.” The old man closed his eyes, exhausted.

  Anna sat in stunned silence. Why hadn’t she been told this before?

  “Grandpa?” When he didn’t open his eyes, she panicked. “Grandpa, I can’t lose you. Not now.”

  His eyes opened. “I’m awake, Anna.”

  “Didn’t this Diamanté ever try to contact you?”

  “No.” His voice faded to a whisper. “I heard from another of the old Résistance leaders that he had moved to the south of France. I had no more news after that.”

  “What was Diamanté’s last name?”

  He thought for a moment, holding her hand tightly. “It’s funny, Anna. I always just called him Diamanté, but I recall that his last name was Wolf or Tiger, or something like that, in French. The maquis…that was the name they all called themselves… I think that the word had something to do with Corsica… They all called him “the wolf “for short. He had such eyes, like those of a wolf.” He patted her hand. “His son was very handsome. I see his features in you. It gives you a very European beauty.”

  Anna sobbed. She was angry with the old man for not telling her all these years, for being in a car accident now, for giving her so much love over the years that it hurt to bear the thought of losing him now. She laid her head on his heaving chest and stayed with him, holding his hand. She told him how much she loved him, that he was safe, that the doctors would take care of him—everything she could think of to comfort him. Sometime during the night, he slipped into a coma, and two days later he quietly passed away.

  CHAPTER 10

  Anna and Monique strolled through Laguna Beach’s Heisler park overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Anna’s thoughts went back to her childhood and the good times she had spent in her grandparents’ care.

  “Tell us a story, Anna.” She was eight years old. Her grandfather was smiling at her. He and her grandmother were sitting next to each other in their seaside chairs under a big, purple and orange umbrella. It was August. As a child, she had first exhibited the gift of storytelling when she was in preschool. She would make up stories about her stuffed animals. Grandfather never tired of hearing her stories.

  “You have such a gift, Anna. No one else in the family has this gift, sweetie. You will use this to your great advantage someday.”

  Of course she had, and he had always been so proud of her successes as a novelist. Her story at eight was about how a blue and beige horse named Handee became a sculpture in the park near her grandparents’ home.

  “Okay, Grandpa.” She had hesitated a minute to think up her story. Then the little girl had begun her fable in earnest.

  “This is the story of Handee. Handee was a blue horse with tan spots on his back. He also had a tan spot over one eye, which made him look like he had a patch on it. He had big, really big feet, so his horseshoes were huge. He had white patches on his legs all around his knees, which made him look like he had white socks on. Handee enjoyed singing tunes every day as he trotted along the beach. He was a singing horse! He sang horse songs! One day, as he was trotting happily along singing a favorite horse song, he saw a perfectly circular hula hoop standing up between two trees in the park on the hill right in front of him. That hula hoop is bigger than I am, he thought, as he cocked his head this way and that to get a better view of it. Just then, he decided to have some fun. He pawed the sand with his big, horseshoed feet and began galloping upward toward the hoop. As he picked up speed, he made a huge leap with his back feet in the air, and he jumped right through that hoop. The weather was so beautiful, like today, and he had such perfect form that he turned around and jumped through the hoop again and again. It was like he was dancing. He was having such a good time that he didn’t see a fairy appear. It was a park fairy. The fairy watched him jumping and singing for a while, and she was so delighted at what she saw that she decided that she should cast a magic charm on him. Right then and there, just as he was midway through the big hoop, his hind feet in the air, his tail pointed skyward, his eyes closed in perfect happiness, and his mouth open in song, she froze him for all to enjoy forever after. That is how Handee became one of the beautiful sculptures in the park near our house. The lesson to the story is to jump and sing with all your heart in whatever you do, and you will be rewarded because people will like you forever. The end.”

  “BRAVO! BRAVO!” Her grandfather and grandmother had clapped, and her grandfather had slapped his knee in appreciation. Anna bowed in front of them and kissed them each softly on the cheek.

  “Can I have an ice cream cone, Mama?” A small voice behind her brought Anna back to reality. Her grandparents were gone. Only their seaside chairs stared at the Pacific now, locked arm in arm like the companions they had been and would be forever in heaven. Anna turned to look back.

  “Not now, baby,” was the woman’s response as she walked along, holding the hand of a little boy. “It’s too close to dinner time.”

  “Can I have a puppy like that one?” was the little boy’s next request. Anna’s golden retriever, Paris, was sauntering along beside her. The dog gave a lick at the chubby finger as they passed in front of them. The mother smiled at Anna and hurried her little boy along.

  “Seems like everything is pink in California,” Monique pondered aloud.

  The late September sun was setting over the Pacific, shedding a pinkish light over everything in Laguna Beach—the white sand, the tile roofs, sprawling white driveways, and wide sidewalks. Everywhere, pink roses and pink bougainvillea looked as if they had chosen their colors from the sky. A gentle breeze off the ocean whipped the two women’s hair.

  “Monique, I really appreciate your staying for a while. It has helped with all the sorting out I have to do.”

  “I’m glad to be here. Unfortunately, I can stay only a few more days. What exactly will you do now?”

  “I don’t know. I have some unanswered questions in my life.” She hadn’t told Monique about Diamanté yet.

  “Oh, we aren’t over that yet, then?” Monique rolled her warm brown eyes, thinking it was C-C to whom Anna was referring.

  Anna looked at her directly. Monique’s impeccably made-up, fine-boned face and shell-like ears were glowing in the pinkish light. “It’s like when I was a little child and I dreamt that I found another room in our house by just opening a door. I have a door in front of me that, when I open it, will lead me into an unfamiliar room in my life.”

  “And what if that room, as you call it, brings still more pain?”

  “Then so be it, Monique.”

  “What about Mark, chérie? You should give him a chance. Besides, I like him. I think he’s very handsome and so
personable.”

  “Mark? He’s comfortable, but I’m not in love with him, remember?” She took off her dark glasses and looked at her friend. “Come on, Monique, you and I both know that until I see C-C again, I won’t be able to set up house with someone else. If I find out that he is married, or has a life of his own, I won’t interfere. I just need to know for sure.”

  Monique shrugged her shoulders. “My advice to you, my friend, is this: get C-C out of your system, once and for all. Forget him. Seize a life, as you Americans like to say.” She seemed to take a subtle pride in her new command of American slang.

  “You mean get a life, Monique,” Anna gently corrected her friend, smiling.

  They walked past several pieces of public art on display. The light had turned more bronze now, and the sun was right at the point where the smooth line of the water delineated the western horizon. In a moment it would drop below the surface and seem to disappear forever. Anna contemplated a garden snail chomping its way through a hibiscus plant. She was reminded of the Parisian waiter, his drawing of the arrondissements of Paris and the seven turns of the snail’s shell.

  “You are probably right, Monique. I’ll work on it.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Monique flew back to Paris at the end of the week.

  CHAPTER 11

  With her grandparents gone, Anna felt alone, truly alone, for the first time in her life. The day following Monique’s departure, she and Paris took a long, rambling walk along the beach.

  She sat down on a wooden bench, took off her straw hat, and watched the clouds billowing over the ocean. A seagull swooped down and landed next to her bench. The graceful bird balanced on one webbed foot as it looked at her first with one sharp eye and then the other. The two of them stared at each other until the bird flew off. She watched it as it took wing directly into the wind, soaring far out over the ocean, gliding in a wide circle with its wings spread, then flapping wildly in ascent, to be carried along on a second cross-wind. Chee! Chee! Chee! She heard its cries rise and fall across the water as she finally lost sight of it in the haze over the long stretch of coastline. She tried to imagine the absolute feeling of freedom it would be to be able to take to the air like that.

  Rejected by her mother as a baby, Anna had grown up to be tough and self-reliant. Her grandparents had raised her. When she was five, her mother had died of a drug overdose, and she never was told anything about who her father was, despite the many times that she had asked her grandparents. Now, because of a terrible accident, she had some information that haunted her. She knew her father was dead, but was there a family somewhere? She had a name, Diamanté, and a nationality, Corsican. A grandfather. Where are you?

  Anna had grown up longing to do something interesting with her life. Creative and talented, she had further developed her storytelling ability through her high school years. Her first short story was published when she was a senior in high school. She published a short novel while studying English and French at UCLA. Once she had completed her undergraduate studies, she flew off to study for her graduate degree in Paris, a move that would transform her and profoundly affect how she lived her adult life. She adapted to the easygoing nonchalance of the French and lived a relatively carefree life as a student and writer in Paris in the 1980s. It was during that time that she had met and fallen in love with a young medical student whom she nicknamed C-C. She had not intended for the affair to be serious; he certainly had not, or she would have had a response to her letters. Anna closed her eyes as she leaned back and held her face up to absorb the warmth of the sun. She was back in Paris, standing for a moment looking up and down the rue Saint-Jacques. A sudden and deep feeling of loss flooded her entire being. C-C. Where are you?

  “Where are you?” Mark’s voice, eerily echoing her thoughts, brought her back to the present. She opened her eyes.

  “So, what’s the answer? What were you thinking so hard about just now?” Breathless and sweating from jogging along the shore-line, he flung a towel around his neck and plunked his appealing muscular frame down beside her. He stretched his powerful legs straight out in front of him, crossed his arms, and smiled. He had a handsome, boyish face, and his sandy hair was in disarray.

  “My latest novel, I guess…” she lied.

  “Hi, boy.” Mark tousled Paris’ big floppy ears. The man had definitely won over her dog. The golden retriever was up on his feet and responding with a wild wag of the tail.

  “How about we go get a latte at Starbucks?”

  “Okay…sure,” she nodded, smiling.

  “By the way, there’s a package waiting for you at your door. I saw it when I was leaving.”

  “Hmmm. I wasn’t expecting anything.”

  “Ah well, then we have a mystery.” He leaned over, grinning, and nudged her with his arm. “Let’s go get that coffee first.”

  An attorney in his midthirties, raised in Pacific Palisades in a wealthy Hollywood filmmaking family, Mark was what Anna referred to in her novels as the quintessential “Mister Perfect.” He had done his undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, then attended Stanford Law School, passed the California bar, and immediately moved to Laguna Beach where he had found a small office above an antique store on Glenneyre Street and opened his own practice. The sign on the side of the building read: “LAW OFFICES M. A. Zennelli, Attorney at Law.” He didn’t have a lot of clients, but the ones he had seemed to keep him busy processing mostly real estate litigation. He drove a new navy blue BMW convertible, worked out daily, and liked to eat out a lot. Anna had thought that he was a sweet guy the day she had literally run into him jogging on the beach near her condo. They had started dating and, she had to admit, they had fun together, but the relationship had never blossomed, despite Mark’s occasional suggestion that it might.

  Since she had returned from France, he had been trying to understand what was going on with her. She had been indifferent, aloof. He liked her enough to be patient, telling himself that it was her grief over her grandparents that had caused her to become more distant. So he had come up with a plan. The package sitting at her door represented the initial effort.

  CHAPTER 12

  Mark and Anna stood in front of the open French doors of her condo. Outside, the shimmering blue-green Pacific Ocean sent sparkling waves crashing to the beach. Mark’s hazel eyes reflected the ocean as he watched her open the mysterious package that had arrived that afternoon on her doorstep. It was a large oil painting—one of those Paris street paintings.

  “I found it on consignment in one of those small galleries just down the highway. I thought you’d like it,” he said. “I guess some old lady had bought it on a trip to Europe decades ago and didn’t want it anymore. I know how much you like Paris, and it sort of, ah, reminded me of you.” He shifted his weight to his other foot and waited for her reaction.

  The painting was a cliché. In the impressionistic style of Paris street artists, it was the often-painted scene of the place du Tertre in Montmartre, the artists’ square, with the white dome of Sacré-Coeur visible in the background. In the foreground was the Café Gascogne, with a blurry assortment of people seated at tables under a green awning. A couple walked in the square, the woman clothed in a bright, tulip red. It appeared to be a cloudy day, and the artist had given the street a mirrored effect as if it were wet from a recent rain.

  “You know, it’s odd, but I’ve never purchased one of these paintings in Paris, Mark. All the time I’ve spent there, I’ve admired lots of the artists’ work. I always thought it would be too much trouble to get through customs. This one is rather nice. Thank you.” Anna was touched by Mark’s thoughtfulness. Her brown eyes glistened. She looked up. “I have the perfect spot for it—over there, on that wall.” She pointed to an empty space above the persimmon-colored couch. “It will go perfectly with the colors of the room.”

  “Anna…” Mark hesitated a moment and then dropped what he was going to say.
“I…I’m glad you like it.” He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her to him. Without pulling back, she let him kiss her. He was warm and smelled of musk. His strong arms enveloped her small frame. “How about dinner tonight? My place. I’m cooking for a change. Spaghetti alla Bolognese. It’s a family specialty.”

  “That should be a treat. Sure.”

  That evening, after dinner, with Paris at their feet, they lay wrapped in a large beach blanket on the chaise lounge on Mark’s balcony. He listened with his arms around her as Anna shared with him the story that her grandfather had told her before he died in the hospital. She told him about the Corsican father she hadn’t known who had died as a soldier in Algeria, and about the mother who hadn’t cared to know her. She poured out her heart to him about losing her grandparents, all the questions she had now about whether there was a relative, a grandfather, somewhere in the world. The only thing she didn’t tell him about was C-C. They sat for a long time in silence, listening to the waves and enjoying the smell of the fresh, salt air.

  “Have you ever been in love, Anna?” he asked her as he nuzzled her ear.

  The question took her by surprise. She pulled back slightly and looked at him.

  “Yes…maybe…I don’t know. What is real love, anyway? I write about it all the time. I write passionate love scenes in my books. But do I really know what love is? I don’t know.”

  “If I read one of your books, would I get a clue as to how to make passionate love to you?”

  She laughed. “Wait. You mean, like reading one of your law textbooks?”

  “Sorta…” His eyes twinkled in the moonlight as he played with her hair. He kissed her neck.