Authors: Michelle Gable
“Sounds like an entertaining woman. Maybe I would’ve enjoyed her almost as much as I enjoy you.” He winked.
“I’ve been writing it all down, these stories, our memories. I’d forgotten how great she was. She was stuck in my head as this stern, teetotaling, rule-following kind of housewife, but now I wonder. Had she been born a little later perhaps she would’ve ended up one of those free-spirited hippie types. Or maybe if she hadn’t married a naval officer.”
“And what if you’d not married a financier?” Luc said.
“I was long since me when he came along. Moving on! Doesn’t this car have a radio? An iPod?”
April reached down and turned whichever knob her hand first found.
“That is the air-conditioning,” Luc noted as a blast of air shot her in the face.
“Make yourself useful and put on some music.” April leaned back into the headrest and closed her eyes. “I need to think.”
Within seconds April fell into that slip of space between dream and reality, where the outside mixes with the inside. April smelled Luc’s cigarette at the same time she saw her mother, at the same time Marthe slid absinthe down the bar toward a man who looked like Troy.
When April next opened her eyes, thinking she took a ten-minute nap, the clock told her it was closer to an hour. Luc was jiggling her leg.
“We’re in Sarlat,” he said. “In case you want to freshen up before we arrive.”
“Why?” April scooted into an upright position. Her mouth felt tacky. “Do I need to freshen up?”
April flipped down the visor and searched her purse for something that qualified as “makeup.” Unless Marthe time-traveled and swapped handbags, there was zero chance of finding anything capable of freshening up in that particular pit of loose paper and excess pens.
“Ah! Eight-year-old lip gloss from some unnamed source!” April announced, producing a mangled pink and sparkly tube. “Fingers crossed whoever dropped it in here didn’t have herpes.”
“Did you just say the word ‘
herpes
’?!”
Before April devised an appropriate retort she was struck by the view outside.
“Wow! This is Sarlat?” she said. “Is this place for real?”
It was amazing, this village. A time capsule, perfectly medieval with its yellow sandstone buildings, steeply pitched roofs, and cobblestone streets. It was almost offensive in its quaintness, like it belonged in an amusement park.
“Did they rebuild it or something?” April asked, still stunned. “Or has it been this way all along?”
“All along, I suppose.”
Luc swung around a corner and proceeded down an alley that looked better suited for a secondhand
moto
. April gripped the sides of the car as Luc deftly navigated trash cans and people and goats.
Soon they shot through one last alley-street and out onto a dirt road. The path was long and straight, surrounded by green fields. At the end of the road stood a square stone house. April let out a small gasp. It had to be Agnès Vannier’s. There was no other place for the road to go.
Chapitre LXXIV
Even though it was warm outside, Agnès Vannier sat before a crackling fireplace with a velvet blanket draped over her lap. A large upholstered box was at her feet.
There was no questioning the woman’s age and recent ill health. Her shoulders were slight, bones poking through her sweater like fingers, wispy arms folded like grasshopper legs. She had a fluff of white-blond hair through which April could see her pink-marbled scalp. Her eyes were ice blue, the color of a glacier, almost transparent.
“Welcome to my home,” she said in French after a maid or household assistant of some sort let them through.
“Thank you for having us,” April replied, unsure whether to approach the woman in the rosewood chair or remain several yards back. “It is a pleasure to be here.”
Madame Vannier looked her squarely in the face.
“I will not speak any English,” she said.
“Ce n’est pas un problème.” April inched herself closer to Luc, suddenly seized by the urge to grab on to some part of him: his sleeve, his belt, the outer edge of his right pocket. She felt loose, unsecured.
“May we sit down?” Luc asked in French and pointed to a narrow white-upholstered loveseat made in the days when people were not quite so large.
“Please do.” Agnès tilted her head as a small smile formed at the corners of her mouth.
“Again, we appreciate you taking the time to speak with us,” April said, reminding herself to talk slowly, to count the breaths between her words. When it came to speaking French in nervous fashion, April had to be sure she kept inhaling. “My name is April Vogt, and of course you know Monsieur Thébault.”
“Yes, Luc.” She touched the small sapphire pendant that sat in the pool of gaunt space beneath her neck. “The handsome solicitor. So, Madame Vogt, why you have come all this way?”
“To begin.” April cleared her throat. She extracted the diary pages from her bag. “I wanted to return these in person. Thank you for loaning them to our auction house. They were of great assistance in determining provenance.”
April handed the papers to Madame Vannier, who then threw them onto the coffee table and chuckled. The sound came not from her throat but somewhere deeper, moister, perhaps a pair of lungs besieged by pleurisy.
“Luc told me you would say this,” Madame Vannier said. “About the provenance.”
“Yes, well.” April brushed a piece of hair from her face. “It is true. So thank you, again.”
“You have said ‘thank you’ quite a lot.” She lightly touched her temples. “Please stop.”
“Yes, ma’am, I only wanted to express—”
“What did you think of the journals?”
“I, uh, well … I loved them,” April said. “I absolutely loved them. I wished there were more entries. Marthe de Florian was a fascinating person.”
“‘Fascinating.’ That is one word to use.” Madame Vannier chuckled again. The sound made April tremble. She moved closer to the fire. “I do not have much time, today or on this earth. So let’s get to it, shall we? What is it you would like to know? So you can determine your … provenance.”
April dived back into her purse to locate a pen. She tested three on her yellow legal pad before finally finding one that worked.
“My questions are many,” April said and looked to Luc for help. He shrugged. This was her show, he seemed to say. He only bought her the ticket. “But the first is how you fit into the story.”
“Madame Vogt, did you come to ask about me? Or would you like to know about Marthe and Lisette?”
“I came to learn about all of it, really.”
“We’ll get to me. I do not feel like answering this. Not yet.”
“Um, all right,” April said, momentarily reverting to English while her brain spun. What was it April
really
wanted to ask? Did she even know?
“Madame Vogt?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Trying to formulate my thoughts. You see, I understand quite a bit thanks to the journals.” She nodded toward the table. “I suppose I’m trying to fill in the missing pieces.”
Luc coughed. April snapped her head in his direction. Was he issuing a warning? Or suffering the ill effects of his tobacco habit?
“I’m curious,” Madame Vannier said. “What is it you think you understand?”
“Not everything, of course, but I do have better comprehension of the personal relationships, of Marthe’s love of Giovanni Boldini and why she was so angry with Jeanne Hugo. I also now see why Lisette—sorry, Madame Quatremer—left the apartment behind.”
“And why was that?” Madame Vannier asked.
“Well, despite everything, despite how very much Marthe loved Béatrice, I am sure Madame Quatremer felt a certain sense of disconnection since she was put up for adoption at such a young age.”
Put up for adoption. It sounded so much better than abandoned at a home for idiots and imbeciles. But at least, in the end, Marthe considered Lisette part of her family. She felt some duty toward her. Otherwise Marthe never would’ve left Lisette Quatremer the apartment and its treasures.
“‘Put up for adoption’?” Madame Vannier said. “This is not true.”
“But the journals—” April pointed to the table. She glanced toward Luc. He shrugged again. She looked back at Madame Vannier, who continued to bore into her with that eerie fluorescent stare. “Marthe said she was taking her granddaughter to a home. She couldn’t care for her on her own.”
“Well, that second part is certainly true,” Madame Vannier said with a little snicker. “But no, she never took her to the home in the end. She planned to but her good friend convinced her otherwise.”
“‘Good friend’? Do you mean Marguérite?”
Madame Vannier nodded, and a wide grin erupted across April’s face.
“Well, of course Marguérite would step in,” April said, goofy with the thought of it. Leave it to Marguérite to help Marthe do the right thing.
“So you’ve come to appreciate dear Marguérite.”
“Yes! Absolutely. She was a great friend, wasn’t she?”
“Indeed. Frankly I don’t know why she put up with the illustrious Madame de Florian,” Madame Vannier said, rolling her tongue theatrically. “Luckily for Béa, luckily for Lisette, Marguérite made it her personal mission to look after her.”
“Look after whom? Lisette? Or Béa?”
“Both in their way. But I was referring to Marthe.”
“What do you mean, ‘Marthe’? No one looked after her. Of course, yes, she had ‘clients’ and they provided material things, but Marthe was remarkably self-sufficient, don’t you think? She came to Paris without a dime, without knowing a soul, and made a life for herself. Just look at all the items in her apartment! It was a rich woman’s flat. She did quite well, don’t you think?”
April glanced toward Luc for what felt like the tenth time. How many times would she say the words “don’t you think” until someone finally agreed with her?
“If one can judge a life by personal possessions then I suppose you are right,” Madame Vannier said at last. “I care to judge it in another manner. Marthe was a terrible mother, utterly selfish.”
“Excuse me?” A flash of heat rose to April’s cheeks. “Don’t you think that’s a little harsh?”
“Or not harsh enough. By today’s standards she would be considered abusive, neglectful at the very least. Especially by your American standards.”
“You’re wrong!” April cried and leaped from the couch.
Luc tried to grab her arm but missed completely. She snatched the journals from the table.
“I read these,” she said, shaking the papers. “Not all the days, not even all the years were here, but I know this woman. It may sound crazy but I feel as though I know her.”
“Do you?” Madame Vannier’s voice was rough, like sandpaper. April felt like a scolded child. “Tell me, why do you think only some journal entries were found in the apartment? What happened to the rest?”
April shrugged. “I suppose the same thing that’s happened to most documents from a hundred years ago. They were lost or destroyed or thrown away.”
A devilish smile slithered across Madame Vannier’s face.
“Destroyed, yes. They were destroyed. By Lisette. After Marthe died.”
“What do you mean?” April asked, almost coughing out the words. “I thought she’d not been to the apartment in seventy years?”
“She hadn’t. Marthe de Florian died in 1935. Lisette left Paris in 1940. In between were enough years to go through the woman’s things, to rid of herself of that which she did not want to see. You think these letters and words were important to you? Well, they were everything to Lisette. Like you, she was trying to piece together a story, to understand things she could not.”
“Wasn’t she there? She had all these people around—her grandmother, Marguérite. Didn’t she already know the story?”
“Oh, Madame Vogt,” Agnès said and started to laugh.
The laugh turned into a cough that morphed into a hack that brought four previously unseen household workers running. Someone prepared honey tea. April sat frozen as Luc rubbed her back. People fussed and swirled around the old woman.
“Pardon me,” Madame Vannier said once the commotion died down and her assistants disappeared into the woodwork from which they’d come. “I am quite on my last legs. Where were we?”
“I said something that sent you into a fit of hysterics. But if you can’t continue, I understand.”
“Ah. Yes. ‘Hysterics.’ Madame Vogt, surely you know there is always more to a person than what you see, or what they decide to show you.”
“But—”
“Shush. Enough. You came to find the missing pieces? Well, the missing piece was Lisette. Did you not figure? She has a story, too.”
Chapitre LXXV
Agnès Vannier, Prewar Paris
Elisabetta de Florian looked exactly like her grandmother. They shared similar dark, curled hair, matching black eyes, and the same long, proud nose. Lisette hated it.
She did not want to be like the woman who raised her, all wild-eyed and desperate.
Grand-mère
was frightening, unpredictable, a kitten one second, a ferocious wildcat the next. More than her moods, Lisette feared the endless stream of men who pounded into and out of their flat. These so-called gentlemen were usually rude and often violent and almost always drunk. Whenever one came to call while
Grand-mère
was out, Lisette hid the calling card behind a painting or tucked it up inside a bureau.
“Did anyone stop by while I was away?”
Grand-mère
might ask.
“No,” Lisette would tell her. “It was quiet as a morgue.”
There was never much to eat.
Grand-mère
would dine at restaurants with the men, these interlopers, and come home smelling of chicken grease and something more acrid. As the years moved on,
Grand-mère’s
belly went from flat to puffy to distended. It took her longer to get dressed in the mornings as she attempted to wheedle her sausage arms into dresses that went out of style years before.
“I am rather hungry,” Lisette often told her.
“I’ll see what I can do,”
Grand-mère
always replied. “But money is hard to come by these days. We must do our best with what little we have and continue to prepare for the worst.”