The Paris Key (33 page)

I
n the Village Saint-Paul, a pair of teenagers rode through the cobblestone courtyard on old bikes, their baskets full of baguettes and flowers. Several people milled around, poking their heads into La Terre Perdue and the other quaint shops that lined the village. Genevieve waved to Jacques across the way, but then closed the lace curtains.

She sat alone at the big table, spreading open the old newspaper, yellowed and crinkly with age. August 1983. That was, indeed, when Angela was here in Paris. Her “last hurrah,” she used to call it. Genevieve always thought her mother had been here for a week or two, but from what Philippe said it was more like a couple of months. A long time to be away from your family.

“I love you, a bushel and a peck . . .”

Genevieve worked her way through the article with her French dictionary. The Spanish embassy had been bombed. Three people killed, ten wounded.

One of the casualties was an American woman who had been carried to the hospital by a man later sought in connection to the bombing. A Basque man named Xabier Etxepare.
“Xabier, with an X,”
Philippe had said.

Her mother's melted arm.
Paris.

•   •   •

G
enevieve checked her uncle's watch: In an hour she was supposed to meet up with Sylviane at Catharine's office for another attempt at a shopping makeover. She really wasn't in the mood, but it was too late to back out. And besides . . . she could try pumping her cousin for more information. Maybe she could jog Catharine's memory with a few specifics.

Jogging a memory
 . . . perhaps Pasquale would talk to her as well.

In the master bedroom, Genevieve pawed through Pasquale's scarf drawer until she unearthed the blue-and-yellow floral scarf Angela wore in the photo taken at the cabaret. She put her hair up and applied more makeup than she usually wore, approximating her mother's look in that picture.

And then she took the Métro to rue Blanche and went to visit Tante Pasquale.

Probably it was a rotten thing to do, to try to fool someone suffering from Alzheimer's, to allow them to think you are your own mother. But Genevieve felt desperate. She needed some answers. Catharine and Philippe claimed not to know the whole story. But perhaps Pasquale, who lived in the past much of the time anyway, did. Genevieve had nowhere else to turn.

Pasquale

T
he woman looked so much like Angela. But . . . it wasn't Angela, was it?

Pasquale had been watching something on TV, but she couldn't remember what it was. A singing show? She liked music, always had. Dave with his record collection of American crooners, as he called them. They would dance in the living room; sometimes he would distract her so long that she forgot what she was cooking, would burn the meal.

Dave laughing. His thick wrists, his pipe.

“Do you remember Angela, Pasquale?” said the woman.

Angela.
Eyes bright, besotted, watching Xabi. The cabaret, music, wine, laughter. The singer climbing atop the table and singing directly to them; he could sense the passion as they all could, radiating off of the couple.

“Pasquale, can you tell me: Was it my mother, was she the American who was carried to the hospital? Is that how she hurt her arm?”

“Your mother?”

“Angela. Dave's sister. Do you remember?”

Pasquale's heart breaks for her sister-in-law. Angela is in an impossible situation: married to a good man (the father of her son) but in love with another. Who knows why some people bring out our passion, our life?

“
Écoute-moi
, Angela, listen to me,” she tried to tell her: “You are not so much in love with the man, but with who you
become
when you are around him. In his arms. His lips upon yours. He has helped you to find yourself, but you must create this for yourself, not in relation to another.
Écoute-moi
,
please listen to me.”

Angela won't take the time to sit and listen, to think the words through. When first she arrived in Paris she slept half the day away, but now they cannot keep her still for more than a few minutes; she flits this way and that. Angela says she is helping Delphine with the packing, but Pasquale knows that much of the time Angela disappears somewhere on the streets of Paris. It is easy to imagine with whom: Xabier.

They must hide it from Dave. But he is no fool; anger and sadness creep into those usually happy eyes. So upset with his sister. He cannot understand. And Angela, bless her, does not take pains to keep the adoration from her countenance. She is a woman in love. And a woman in love can be as deadly and unpredictable as a tornado.
C'est tout.
That's all.

At the cabaret, Xabi sat, brooding. His intensity, his smoldering silence, is seductive, sexy. Dangerously alluring. When he dances with Angela . . . the sparks fly off of them, a fireworks show right there on the dance floor.

In French, fireworks are called
feu d'artifice
. Artificial fire. They are fake, manufactured. Yet more than dangerous enough to burn.

“Et le feu brûle.”

“What did you say?” the woman asked. The hair looked like Angela's, but . . . was it really her?

“I said, fire burns.”

The woman nodded. Pasquale tried to remember why she was talking about fire. She had been cooking and forgot the pan on the stove; it caught fire. This was why she lived in this place now, with the silk flowers and the acoustic tiles overhead. She wasn't in the Village Saint-Paul anymore. Not in her home. Never again.

They were walking in the garden. It was nice here. In the Village Saint-Paul they had only a few window boxes, no real garden. Still, Dave insisted on growing tomatoes in the window boxes, even though the neighbors would have preferred proper flowers.
He laughs:
“We will see who complains when they have fat ripe tomatoes for their salad!”

Dave always shares his tomatoes, as he does everything else. He loves his neighbors. Dave wants to help. He wants to do the right thing, no matter the cost. But after World War II, and then Algeria, he didn't want any more of that. Not with his in-laws, or his own sister.

“No more. Do you hear me? No more violence! What does it get any of us, Pasquale? Tell me that. What has it gotten anyone?”

He sends his sister the Syrian key. She had left it on his workbench when she went back to America; it was a silent apology, her leaving it behind. It is ancient, one of his favorites. But now he has used it to lock up her secrets, and then sent it to her. It is his way of saying he loves her, no matter what. Even after everything.

“Pasquale?” the woman asked. She had that hair like Angela. She spoke English, like Angela. “Do you have any advice for Angela, Pasquale?”

“For Angela?”

“My mother. I am Genevieve, Tante Pasquale. Your niece.”

Pasquale studied the woman for a long time. She was crying, and Pasquale realized that she was crying, too.

But why? It would all be all right. Jim Martin was a good man. A safe man. Angela could tell him the truth. She
must
tell him the truth.

“
Écoute-moi
, Angela: It will be very hard, but you must tell Jim about the baby.”

W
hat
baby?

Genevieve hadn't been able to get any more information from her aunt. Pasquale became agitated, started crying in earnest. Pia fluttered out to the garden, frowning at Genevieve and clucking over Pasquale, offering to take her back to bed, to bring her a hot-water bottle.

Now Genevieve was left with yet more questions as she headed to Catharine's apartment, a ten-minute walk away.

What baby?
Could Angela have been pregnant with Genevieve when she came to France? Had she been unsure about the pregnancy, wondering whether she wanted to have another child? It was the eighties; it wasn't as though Angela didn't have a choice. But then, it would be unusual for a happily married woman to want to terminate a pregnancy, wouldn't it?

But then . . . Angela hadn't been happily married.

“
Ça va
, Genevieve?” asked Sylviane when they met in front of Catharine's apartment building.
“
You are okay?”

“Yes. I was just visiting with my aunt.”

“You look a little gray.” Sylviane squeezed Genevieve's arm. “Your aunt, she is well?”

“Yes, thanks. She's fine. It's just . . . she told me something surprising. I want to ask Catharine about it.”

“You want me to go away so you can talk alone?”

“No, no, of course not.”
I've had about enough of secrets.

But when Genevieve told her cousin what Pasquale had said about the baby, Catharine just shrugged.

“My mother is living a dream now,” said Catharine. “Her whole life is a dream, I think, the reality mixing with memories, images, symbols we cannot understand. Things we are only vaguely aware of. Just as in a dream, we cannot understand the full meaning. Only she knows this.”

“But what she said about the baby—did you know anything about that? What can you tell me about the time my mother came to visit?”

She blew out a long stream of smoke. “Angela—your mother—was lovely. She was not pregnant that I remember; I mean, she was not showing. She never said anything to me, but then, she probably wouldn't have. We did not have that kind of relationship.”

“It takes many months to get fat with a baby,” said Sylviane. “Maybe she was early.”

“You know, to dream of a baby is, in general, a search for security,” added Catharine. “But to dream of carrying an unborn baby might be about difficulties, having to work hard to face challenges, but in the end, to succeed. Perhaps my mother is thinking about facing the hard work of dealing with this disease, which will end, eventually, in her final rest.”

As was so often the case when speaking with Catharine, Genevieve felt put off. But perhaps she was right. Was Pasquale's statement lucid, or merely the disjointed ramblings of an addled brain? After all, when Genevieve arrived, Pasquale had been talking about chewing bark, apparently dredging up memories from the war when she had nearly starved to death on a farm in the Franche-Comté.

Genevieve was roused by her thoughts when a man let himself into the apartment. He couldn't have been more than thirty; tall and rangy, with a full head of dark hair, longish and wild. Handsome, lanky, reminiscent of a poet. Adoration shone in his dark eyes, which were focused solely on Catharine.

He excused himself for interrupting, then whispered something in Catharine's ear, making her blush and smile.

Sylviane raised her eyebrows and looked over at Genevieve, whose eyes widened in response. They shared a smile.

After a brief discussion in hushed tones, the young man kissed Catharine on the lips, nodded to the other women, and left.

Catharine turned back to find Genevieve and Sylviane staring at her. “What?”

“He seems like a very nice . . . friend,” said Sylviane.

Genevieve could barely believe her eyes, but Catharine's cheeks flushed even more.

“His name is Arturo.”

“
Really
 . . . and what is Arturo's story, exactly?” asked Sylviane.

“He is a very sweet boy.”

“Apparently.”

“Yes, he is my lover,” Catharine said in clipped tones, raising her chin defiantly. “Is this what you're asking?”

“That is . . . most excellent.”

Sylviane and Genevieve looked at each other and started to laugh. After a brief moment, Catharine joined in.

“I have an idea, Catharine,” said Sylviane. “Perhaps you do not need my help after all. Maybe
I
need to learn
your
secrets! Let's all go out for
pastis
, and you will tell us all about this man Arturo.”