Sarah's Key (29 page)

“You’ve never noticed, have you, what I’ve been going through. Have you?”

His voice was flat, toneless. I sat down next to him, stroked his hand. How could I ever admit I had not noticed? How could I ever explain how guilty I felt?

“Why didn’t you tell me, Bertrand?”

The corners of his mouth turned down.

“I tried. It never worked.” “Why?”

Then his face went hard. He let out a small, dry laugh.

“You don’t listen to me, Julia.”

And I knew he was right. That awful night, when his voice had become hoarse. When he had expressed his greatest fear, growing old. When I realized he was fragile. Much more fragile than I had ever imagined. And I had looked away. It had disturbed me. It had repelled me. And he had sensed it. And he had not dared tell me how bad that had made him feel.

I said nothing, sitting next to him, holding his hand. The irony of the situation dawned upon me. A depressed husband. A failing marriage. A baby on the way.

“Why don’t we go out for a bite to eat, down to the Select, or the Rotonde?” I said gently. “We can talk things over.”

He heaved himself up.

“Another time, maybe. I’m tired.”

It occurred to me that he had often been tired in the past months. Too tired to go to the movies, too tired to go jogging around the Luxembourg Garden, too tired to take Zoë to Versailles on a Sunday afternoon. Too tired to make love. Make love . . . When was the last time? Weeks ago. I watched him lumber across the room, his gait heavy. He had put on weight. I hadn’t noticed that either. Bertrand was so careful about his appearance.
“You’ve been wrapped up in your job, your friends, your daughter, you haven’t even noticed. . . . You don’t listen to me, Julia.”
I felt shame race through me. Didn’t I need to face up to the truth? Bertrand had not been part of my life in the past weeks, even if we shared the same bed, lived under the same roof. I hadn’t told him about Sarah Starzynski. About my new relationship with Edouard. Hadn’t I left Bertrand out of everything important to me? I had cut him out of my life, and the irony was that I was carrying his child.

From the kitchen, I heard him opening the fridge, caught the rustle of tinfoil. He came back to the living room, a chicken leg in one hand, foil in the other.

“Just one thing, Julia.”

“Yes?” I said.

“When I told you I couldn’t face this child, I meant it. You’ve made up your mind. Fine. Now this is my decision. I need time to myself. I need time off. You and Zoë will move into the rue de Saintonge after the summer. I’ll find another place to live, nearby. Then we’ll see how things go. Maybe by then, I can come to terms with this pregnancy. If not, we’ll get a divorce.”

This was no surprise. I had expected it all along. I got up, smoothed out my dress. I said, calmly, “The only thing that matters now is Zoë. Whatever happens, we will have to talk to her, you and I. We will have to prepare her. We have to do this right.”

He put the chicken leg back into the foil.

“Why are you so tough, Julia?” he said. There was no sarcasm in his tone. Only bitterness. “You sound just like your sister.”

I did not reply, heading out of the room. I went to the bathroom and turned on the water. Then it hit me: Hadn’t I made my choice? I had chosen the baby over Bertrand. I had not been softened by his point of view, his inner fears, I had not been scared of his moving out for a couple of months, or indefinitely. Bertrand could not disappear. He was the father of my daughter, of the child within me. He could never completely walk out of our lives.

But as I looked at myself in the mirror, steam slowly filling the room, erasing my reflection with its misty breath, I felt everything had changed drastically. Did I still love Bertrand? Did I still need him? How could I want his child and not him?

I wanted to cry, but the tears did not come.

I

WAS STILL IN the bath when he came in. He was holding the red Sarah file I had left in my bag.

“What is this?” he said, brandishing the file.

Startled, I moved abruptly, making the water slop over one side of the bath. His face was confused, flushed. He promptly sat down on the closed toilet. At any other time, I would have laughed outright at the ludicrousness of his position.

“Let me explain—,” I began.

He raised his hand.

“You just can’t help it, can you? You just can’t leave the past alone.” He glanced through the file, leafed through the letters from Jules Dufaure to André Tézac, examined the photographs of Sarah.

“What is all this? Who gave this to you?”

“Your father,” I answered quietly.

He stared at me.

“What does my father have to do with this?”

I stepped out of the bath, grabbed a towel, turned my back on him as I dried myself. Somehow I did not want his eyes on my naked skin.

“It’s a long story, Bertrand.”

“Why did you have to bring all this back? This stuff happened sixty years ago! It’s all dead, it’s all forgotten.”

I swung around to face him.

“No, it isn’t. Sixty years ago something happened to your family. Something you don’t know about. You and your sisters don’t know anything. Neither does Mamé.”

His mouth fell open. He seemed astounded.

“What happened? You tell me!” he demanded.

I snatched the file away from him, holding it against me.

“
You
tell me what you were doing going through my bag.”

We sounded like kids fighting it out at recess. He rolled his eyes.

“I saw the file in your bag. I wondered what it was. That’s all.”

“I often have files in my bag. You’ve never looked at them before.”

“That is not the issue. You tell me what all this is about. You tell me right now.”

I shook my head.

“Bertrand, call your father. Tell him you found the file. Ask him.”

“You don’t trust me, is that it?”

His face sagged. I felt sudden pity for him. He seemed hurt, incredulous.

“Your father begged me not to tell you,” I said gently.

Bertrand got up wearily from the toilet seat and reached over to put his hand on the doorknob. He looked beaten, spent.

He stepped back to stroke my cheek softly. His fingers were warm against my face.

“Julia, what happened to us? Where did it all go?”

Then he left the room.

The tears came, and I let them run down my face. He heard me sobbing, but he did not come back.

D

URING SUMMER OF 2002, with the knowledge that Sarah Starzynski had left Paris for New York City fifty years ago, I felt propelled back across the Atlantic like a piece of steel pulled by a powerful magnet. I could not wait to leave town. I could not wait to see Zoë, and to search for Richard J. Rainsferd. I could not wait to board that plane.

I wondered if Bertrand called his father to find out what had happened in the rue de Saintonge apartment all those years ago. Bertrand said nothing. He remained cordial, but aloof. I felt he, too, was impatient for me to leave. So that he could think things over? See Amélie? I did not know. I did not care. I told myself I did not care.

A couple of hours before my departure to New York, I called my father-in-law to say good-bye. He did not mention having a conversation with Bertrand, and I did not ask him.

“Why did Sarah stop writing to the Dufaures?” Edouard asked. “What do you think happened, Julia?”

“I don’t know, Edouard. But I am going to do my best to find out.”

Those very questions haunted me night and day. When I boarded the plane a few hours later, I was still asking myself the same thing.

Was Sarah Starzynski still alive?

M

Y SISTER. HER SHINY chestnut hair, her dimples, her beautiful blue eyes. Her strong, athletic build, so like our mom’s.
Les soeurs
Jarmond. Towering above all the other women on the Tézac side. The puzzled, bright smiles. A twinge of envy. Why are you
américaines
so tall, is it something in your food, vitamins, hormones? Charla was even taller than me. A couple of pregnancies had done nothing to add padding to her powerful, sleek frame.

The minute she saw my face at the airport, Charla knew something was on my mind, and that it had nothing to do with the baby I had decided to keep, or with marital difficulties. As we drove into the city, her cell phone rang incessantly. Her assistant, her boss, her clients, her kids, the babysitter; Ben, her ex-husband from Long Island; Barry, her present husband on a business trip to Atlanta—the calls never seemed to stop. I was so happy to see her I did not care. Just being next to her, our shoulders brushing, made me happy.

Once we were alone in her narrow brownstone on East 81st Street, in her spotless, chromed kitchen, and once she had poured out white wine for her and apple juice for me (on account of my pregnancy), out the entire story came. Charla knew little about France. She did not speak much French, Spanish being the only other language she was fluent in. Occupied France meant little to her. She sat in silence as I explained the roundup, the camps, the trains to Poland. Paris in July 1942. The rue de Saintonge apartment. Sarah. Michel, her brother.

I watched her lovely face grow pale with horror. The glass of white wine remained untouched. She pressed her fingers hard upon her mouth, shook her head. I went right to the end of the story, to Sarah’s last card, dated 1955, from New York City.

Then she said:

“Oh, my God.” She took a quick sip of the wine. “You’ve come here for her, right?”

I nodded.

“How on earth are you going to start?”

“That name I called you about, remember? Richard J. Rainsferd. That’s her husband’s name.”

“Rainsferd?” she said.

I spelled it.

Charla got up swiftly, took the cordless phone.

“What are you doing?” I said.

She held up her hand, motioning for me to keep quiet.

“Hi, operator, I’m looking for a Richard J. Rainsferd. New York State. That’s right, R.A.I.N.S.F.E.R.D. Nothing? OK, can you check New Jersey please? . . . Nothing. . . . Connecticut? . . . Great. Yes, thank you. Just a minute.”

She wrote something down on a scrap of paper. Then she handed it to me with a flourish.

“We got her,” she said triumphantly.

Incredulous, I read the number and the address.

Mr. and Mrs. R. J. Rainsferd, 2299 Shepaug Drive, Roxbury, Connecticut.

“It can’t be them,” I muttered. “It’s just not that easy.”

“Roxbury,” Charla mused. “Isn’t that in Litchfield County? I used to have a beau there. You were gone by then. Greg Tanner. A real cutie. His dad was a doctor. Pretty place, Roxbury. About a hundred miles from Manhattan.”

I sat on my high stool, flabbergasted. I simply could not believe that finding Sarah Starzynski had been so easy, so swift. I had barely landed. I hadn’t even talked to my daughter. And I had already located Sarah. She was still alive. It seemed impossible, unreal.

“Listen,” I said, “how do we know it’s her, for sure?”

Charla was sitting at the table, busy powering up her laptop. She fished around in her bag for her glasses, and slid them over her nose.