Sarah's Key (34 page)

Edouard came to visit every Friday, with a bouquet of pink roses. He would sit in the armchair next to the bed, and again and again, he would ask me to describe the conversation that took place between William and me in Lucca. He would shake his head and sigh. He said, over and over, that he should have anticipated William’s reaction, how was it that neither himself, nor I, could possibly have imagined that William never knew, that Sarah had never breathed a word?

“Can we not call him?” he would say, his eyes hopeful. “Can I not telephone him and explain?” Then he would look at me and mumble, “No, of course, I can’t do that, how stupid of me. How ridiculous of me.”

I asked my doctor if I could host a small gathering, lying down on my living-room sofa. She accepted and made me promise not to carry anything heavy and to remain horizontal, à la Récamier. One evening in late summer, Gaspard and Nicolas Dufaure came to meet Edouard. Nathalie Dufaure was there as well. And I had invited Guillaume. It was a moving, magical moment. Three elderly men who had an unforgettable little girl in common. I watched them pore over the old photos of Sarah, the letters. Gaspard and Nicolas asked us about William, Nathalie listened, helping Zoë pass around drinks and food.

Nicolas, a slightly younger version of Gaspard, with the same round face and wispy white hair, spoke of his particular relationship with Sarah, how he used to tease her because her silence pained him so, and how any reaction, albeit a shrug, an insult, or a kick, was a triumph because she had for one instant emerged from her secrecy, her isolation. He told us about the first time she had bathed in the sea, at Trouville, in the beginning of the fifties. She had stared out at the ocean in absolute wonder, and then she had stretched out her arms, whooped with delight, and rushed to the water on her nimble, skinny legs, and dashed into the cool, blue waves with screeches of joy. And they had followed her, hollering just as loud, entranced by a new Sarah they had never seen.

“She was beautiful,” Nicolas recalled, “a beautiful eighteen-year-old glowing with life and energy, and I felt that day for the first time that there was happiness within her, that there was hope for her ahead.”

Two years later, I thought, Sarah was out of the Dufaures’ lives, forever, carrying her secret past to America. And twenty years later she was dead. What had those twenty years in America been like, I mused. Her marriage, the birth of her son. Had she been happy in Roxbury? Only William had those answers, I thought. Only William could tell us. My eyes met Edouard’s, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing.

I heard Bertrand’s key in the lock and my husband appeared, tanned, handsome, exuding Habit Rouge, smiling breezily, shaking hands smoothly, and I couldn’t help remembering the lyrics of that Carly Simon song that reminded Charla of Bertrand: “You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht.”

B

ERTRAND HAD DECIDED TO postpone the move to the rue de Saintonge because of the problems with my pregnancy. In this odd, new life I still couldn’t get used to, he was physically present in a friendly, useful way, but not there spiritually. He traveled more than usual, came home late, left early. We still shared a bed, but it was no longer a marital bed. The Berlin wall had sprouted in its middle.

Zoë seemed to take all this in her stride. She often talked about the baby, how much it meant to her, how excited she was. She had been shopping with my mother during my parents’ stay, and they had gone crazy at Bonpoint, the outrageously expensive and exquisite baby-wear boutique on the rue de l’Université.

Most people reacted like my daughter, my parents and sister, and my in-laws and Mamé: they were thrilled by the upcoming birth. Even Joshua, infamous for his scorn toward babies and sick leaves, seemed interested. “I didn’t know one could have kids at middle age,” he had said snidely. No one ever mentioned the crisis my marriage was going through. No one seemed to notice it. Did they all secretly believe that Bertrand, once the child was born, would come to his senses? That he would welcome this child with open arms?

I realized that both Bertrand and I had locked each other into a state of numbness, of not talking, of not telling. We were both waiting for the baby to be born. Then we’d see. Then we’d have to move on. Then decisions would have to be made.

One morning, I felt the baby start to move deep within me, to give those first tiny kicks one mistakes for gas. I wanted the baby out of me, into my arms. I hated this state of silent lethargy, this waiting. I felt trapped. I wanted to zoom to winter, to early next year, to the birth.

I hated the end of summer that lingered on, the fading heat, the dust, the stealthy minutes that oozed by with the laziness of molasses. I hated the French word for the beginning of September, back to school, and the new start after summer:
la rentrée
, repeated over and over again on the radio, on television, in the newspapers. I hated people asking me what the baby was going to be called. The amniocentesis had revealed its sex, but I had not wanted to be told. The baby did not have a name, yet. Which did not mean I wasn’t ready for it.

I crossed out every day on my calendar. September merged into October. My stomach rounded out nicely. I could get up now, go back to the office, pick Zoë up at school, go to the movies with Isabelle, meet Guillaume at the Select for lunch.

But although my days felt fuller, busier, the emptiness and the ache remained.

William Rainsferd. His face. His eyes. His expression when he had looked down at the little girl with the star. “
Jesus
.” His voice when he had said that.

What was his life like now? Had he erased everything from his mind the moment he turned his back on Zoë and me? Had he already forgotten once he had reached home?

Or was it different? Was it hell for him because he could not stop thinking about what I had said, because my revelations had changed his entire life? His mother had become a stranger. Somebody with a past he knew nothing about.

I wondered whether he had said anything to his wife, his daughters. Anything about an American woman turning up in Lucca with a kid, showing him a photo, telling him his mother was a Jew, that she had been rounded up during the war, that she had suffered, lost a brother, parents he’d never heard of.

I wondered if he had researched information concerning the Vel’ d’Hiv’, if he had read articles, books about what took place in July 1942 in the heart of Paris.

I wondered if he lay awake in bed at night and thought of his mother, of her past, of the truth of it, of what remained secret, unspoken, shrouded in darkness.

T

HE RUE DE SAINTONGE apartment was nearly ready. Bertrand had arranged for Zoë and me to move in just after the baby’s birth, in February. It looked beautiful, different. His team had done a wonderful job. It no longer bore Mamé’s imprint, and I imagined it was a far cry from what Sarah had known.

But as I wandered through the freshly painted, empty rooms, the new kitchen, my private office, I asked myself if I could bear living here. Living where Sarah’s little brother had died. The secret cupboard did not exist anymore, it had been destroyed when two rooms had been made into one, but somehow that changed nothing for me.

This is where it had happened. And I could not erase that from my mind. I had not told my daughter about the tragedy that had taken place here. But she sensed it, in her particular, emotional way.

On a damp November morning, I went to the apartment to start working on curtains, wallpaper, carpeting. Isabelle had been particularly helpful and had escorted me around shops and department stores. To Zoë’s delight, I had decided to ignore the quiet, placid tones I had resorted to in the past, and make a wild go at new, bold colors. Bertrand had waved a careless hand: “You and Zoë make the decisions, it’s your home, after all.” Zoë had decided on lime green and pale purple for her bedroom. It was so reminiscent of Charla’s taste that I had to smile.

A cluster of catalogues awaited me on the bare, polished floorboards. I was leafing through them studiously when my cell phone rang. I recognized the number: Mamé’s nursing home. Mamé had been tired lately, irritable, sometimes unbearable. It was difficult to make her smile, even Zoë had a hard time doing so. She was impatient with everybody. Going to see her recently had almost become a chore.

“Miss Jarmond? This is Véronique, at the nursing home. I’m afraid I don’t have good news. Madame Tézac is not well, she has had a stroke.”

I sat up straight, shock reeling through me.

“A stroke?”

“She is a bit better, with Docteur Roche now, but you must come. We have reached your father-in-law. But we cannot get hold of your husband.”

I hung up feeling flustered, panicky. Outside, I heard rain pattering against the windowpanes. Where was Bertrand? I dialed his number and got his voice mail. At his office near the Madeleine, nobody seemed to know where he was, not even Antoine. I told Antoine I was at the rue de Saintonge, and could he have Bertrand call me ASAP. I said it was very urgent.

“
Mon dieu
, the baby?” he stammered.

“No, Antoine, not the
bébé
, the
grand-mère
,” I replied and hung up.

I glanced outside. The rain was falling thickly now, a gray, glistening curtain. I’d get wet. Too bad, I thought. Who cared. Mamé. Wonderful, darling Mamé. My Mamé. No, Mamé could not possibly go now, I needed her. This was too soon, I was unprepared. But how could I ever be prepared for her death, I thought. I looked around me, at the living room, remembering that this had been the very place where I had met her for the first time. And once again I felt overwhelmed by the weight of all the events that had taken place here, and that seemed to be coming back to haunt me.

I decided to call Cécile and Laure to make sure they knew and were on their way. Laure sounded businesslike and curt, she was already in her car. She’d see me there, she said. Cécile appeared more emotional, fragile, a hint of tears in her voice.

“Oh, Julia, I can’t bear the idea of Mamé . . . You know . . . It’s too awful. . . .”

I told her I couldn’t get hold of Bertrand. She sounded surprised.

“But I just spoke to him,” she said.

“Did you reach him on his cell phone?”

“No,” she replied, her voice hesitant.

“At the office, then?”

“He’s coming to pick me up any minute. He’s taking me to the nursing home.”

“I wasn’t able to contact him.”

“Oh?” she said carefully. “I see.”

Then I got it. I felt anger surge through me.

“He was at Amélie’s, right?”

“Amélie’s?” she repeated blandly.

I stamped impatiently.

“Oh, come on, Cécile. You know exactly who I’m talking about.”

“The buzzer’s going, that’s Bertrand,” she breathed, rushed.

And she hung up. I stood in the middle of the empty room, cell phone clenched in my hand like a weapon. I pressed my forehead against the coolness of the windowpane. I wanted to hit Bertrand. It was no longer his never-ending affair with Amélie that got to me. It was the fact his sisters had that woman’s number and knew where to reach him in case of an emergency like this one. And I did not. It was the fact that even if our marriage was dying, he still did not have the courage to tell me he was still seeing this woman. As usual, I was the last to know. The eternal,
vaudevillesque
wronged spouse.

I stood there for a long time, motionless, feeling the baby kick within me. I did not know whether to laugh or to cry.

Did I still care for Bertrand, was this why it still hurt? Or was it just a question of wounded pride? Amélie and her Parisian glamour and perfection, her daringly modern apartment overlooking the Trocadéro, her well-mannered children—“
Bonjour, Madame
”—and her powerful perfume that lingered in Bertrand’s hair and his clothes. If he loved her, and no longer me, why was he afraid of telling me? Was he afraid of hurting me? Hurting Zoë? What made him so frightened? When would he realize that it wasn’t his infidelity I couldn’t bear, but his cowardice?