I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This (19 page)

In the French edition, my quote reads, “
Lorsqu'il est mort, elle a été tenue pour responsable de ce qu'il avait fait et jetée en prison comme sympathisante nazie.
” This translates back as “After he died, she was held responsible for what he'd done, and thrown in jail for being a Nazi sympathizer.” It was the word “thrown” (which I had not used in English) that gave Josée the most trouble.

“She wasn't
thrown
in jail!” she said vehemently. “She was
put
in jail! She wasn't even put in jail. She was imprisoned! How could you publish these lies?”

What was this about,
I wondered coolly. Was it easier for Josée to get angry than to thank my mother for buying her an apartment? Was she jealous of the attention my long-dead paternal grandparents had received? Or was this simply a manifestation of the general French attitude toward World War II, which made discussion of anything but the Resistance taboo? I began to feel the stirrings of my own anger. I defended myself. I told her I was not ashamed of Mina's story. I told Josée I was proud of it, proud of how my great-grandmother had lived her life so far outside of society's rules for women.

“What if my friends read this?” Josée asked. “I cannot see my friends anymore. I'm embarrassed to leave my house.”

“But Nadja,” my mother cut in, in a conciliatory voice that crept under my skin, “listen to what Josée is telling you.”

“I'm listening,” I said testily. “And trying to respond.”

“She only wants to tell you more about Mina's story,” my mother said.

“No I don't,” Josée said. “Not if she's going to twist it all into lies.”

“Really, at the heart of it, we can all agree,” my mother said. “We all loved Mina.”

Josée snorted angrily. “If
this
is how she shows love . . .”

“I'm sorry I hurt you,” I said stiffly. “That was never my intention.”

Josée's blue eyes turned sharp and cold as icicles. “The only blessing is that Mina is no longer alive to see this,” she said. “Just go ahead and forget your mother's side of the family entirely. You never had a great-grandmother! Erase her from your mind. If this is how you remember her, it's best you don't remember her at all.”

I sighed and sat in silence for a moment. Then I stood.

“I'm leaving,” I announced. “I'm sorry that I hurt you. I don't know what else I can say.” Leaving was the way my father ended (and often won) arguments. It seemed to me both a mature and an effective thing to do. I went to put on my shoes.

My mother stopped me on the wood stairs that led from the belly of the boat to the drawbridge.

“Don't go,” she said. She spoke quietly, though she'd closed the foyer door behind her.

“Why not?” I asked. “It's fine. I just don't want to listen to this.”

“Just . . . please don't go,” she said. I stood perfectly still, waiting. She sighed and said, “Don't force me to choose between my mother and my daughter.”

“Oh,” I said, turning. “You don't have to choose. Stay. I know how to get home.”

“But why are you leaving?” my mother asked. “What is it that's making you so angry?”

The question caught me off guard. I sat down on the steps as if I had been pushed.

“I just want a grandmother who sees me,” I blurted, surprised by the sob that rose up in my throat and nearly escaped.

“You're not going to be the one to change her,” my mother said.

“I don't want to change her,” I replied, shaking my head to clear it. I rose again to leave. “I just don't want to eat lunch with her.”

Josée stepped out into the stairwell. She looked me in the eyes, her face gentle now.

“I love you, you know,” she said softly. My breath caught. I had never once considered that possibility.

“But you've hurt me so deeply, oh if only you knew how badly you've hurt me!” She burst into tears. I'd never seen her cry before, but there was something strange about how familiar it felt, as if I'd always known how it would be. I went back inside.

Josée dried her tears.

“You've disgraced my mother's memory,” she told me. “I'm so ashamed.” I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. My mother got up to go to the bathroom. I watched her leave, eyes wide and anxious. I wanted to ask her to stay but knew how weak that would make me look. Josée shuffled around the kitchen, rinsing dishes and putting things away, as she continued explaining to me how wrong I had been.

I dug through my purse and pulled out my red notebook. I began to write down everything Josée was saying. I wrote, as
always, in English, translating her words in my head as soon as they were spoken, and so, as usual, none of my quotes were exact.

I wrote: “I know it's
useful
to you to have your whole life in perfect balance. But I hate to break it to you, girl—no one in this family was a Nazi.”

I wrote: “They didn't have
dealings
with the Nazis. They occasionally traded goods with the Nazis.”

Josée saw me writing and became calmer. She began dictating to me, speaking slowly, glancing over my shoulder to the paper. She sat down across from me.

“Those were the happiest years of my life,” she said softly. I glanced up at her. For an instant her eyes allowed me into their depths. I was struck by the feeling that this, at last, was true. But it contradicted everything I thought I knew about her past.

“Beppo, the Italian . . . he was the only father I ever really knew,” she said, and was about to say more when my mother reentered the room.

“So! Let's go see Nadja's apartment!” my mother said cheerily. She clapped her hands together, picked up her coat.

Josée and I shared a look. The broken moment shimmered in the air between us. We gathered our things and followed my mother out. I put a hand on Josée's shoulder.

“I
would,
” I said quietly, just to her. “I would like to hear the whole story.” She jerked away from me, shrugging off my touch. But her anger felt halfhearted now. Something had opened between us.

“Nadja will be happy in this new apartment, I think,” Josée said as we drove over in the car.

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

“It's very conveniently located,” she said.

“Is it near the subway?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “But I never take the subway anymore.”

My mother had been baffled when Josée sent her the listing. The apartment Josée had chosen was the opposite of the houseboat in every way. The houseboat was open water and open skies, new rules made only to be broken, Josée's distinctive taste in every detail. Close as it was, the new apartment was in the heart of the staid upper-class suburb of Neuilly. Boxy concrete balconies climbed the building's façade. Heavy glass double doors in the lobby instilled a sense of hush. There was a small clean elevator, a concierge, plain brown doormats in front of each door. It felt like a building for an old woman with well-coiffed gray hair and a small white dog, the kind who might carry school photos of her grandchildren in her wallet. It was difficult to imagine Josée living here.

Josée was proud of the space. She showed us the electric metal blinds that descended like storefront grates, the same kind Paul had had in his bachelor pad years ago. She demonstrated the modern light switches she'd had installed, panels of touch-sensitive concentric circles that proved impossible to control. She showed us the luxurious tiled shower, with its sliding mirrored door.

“The shower is mirrored on the inside as well,” she said mischievously.

I stepped out onto the balcony. In the distance, a toy-sized Eiffel Tower marked the skyline, the way it seemed to from nearly every vantage point in Paris. Close by and yet out of sight, I could hear a playground. How strange that the sound of children playing was so universal, I thought, uninflected by language or culture.

Josée joined me. “I used to attend the school next door,” she told me.

“When you were how old?” I asked.

“Oh, I don't know,” she said. “Until I was six? And then of course there was the war.”

I nodded, realizing how little I knew of her life. “Do you keep good memories of it?”

“Oh, only,” she said. “I only keep good memories of everything.”

She went back inside, but I stood there a moment longer. A little girl's high-pitched shriek sliced through the still air.

—

O
N THE PLANE
back to New York, my mother repeated a negative comment Josée had made about one of her sisters. “Poor thing,” my mother said, but I could hear the guilty delight that danced under her words.

“Well, but,” I said, “Josée was a bit rude to you as well.”

“What do you mean?” There was the hint of a challenge, the beginnings of a defiant smile.

“When she said daughters were good for something after all, though it may as well be a secretary or a housekeeper. Don't you think she meant that to hurt you? I mean, after everything you've done?”

“Oh, Nadja!” my mother said. “You're still stuck in your black-and-white phase of good and evil. The world is more complicated than that.”

I became defensive. “It's not that I care whether Josée is good or evil in any objective sense,” I said. “It's just about whether or not I can love her, or even whether I have to. She's only ever been cold to me, and so cruel to you.”

“Well, what about Josée's own mother?” my mother said. “Mina was cruel to Josée, you know. Can you forgive her?”

I blew air through my lips,
pfff,
the French equivalent of
I don't know, whatever.
We'd only been in France for a few days, but I always picked up the mannerisms quickly.

“I haven't even thought about Mina yet,” I said.

“Josée had a difficult life,” my mother said.

“So did many people,” I replied. “It's not a perfect excuse. You had a difficult life, too.”

My mother rustled her newspaper, shifted in her seat.

“I suppose that in learning about your life,” I continued, “I've learned to forgive certain things. I understand how problematic your relationship with your own mother was, and how that's influenced ours. I see now that no matter how it felt at the time, you were always at least trying to do what you thought was best. But you . . . you? How did you forgive Josée?”

“It's not about forgiveness,” my mother said. “I just stopped needing her to love me. And I don't need you to forgive me, either.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I do, as I get older.”

“For what?” my mother asked, her tone undeniably tense.

I mentioned how she'd favored my brother. Though in a way, I said, it was a good thing. “In the end, I think, it made me stronger.”

I felt proud of myself for speaking so clearly. I was cool and rational and mature.

“I hope you don't see that as a justification,” my mother said. “You can't hang things in a balance like that—this hurt, but in the end good came out of it.” It wasn't an apology, but it wasn't a denial, either. It was as close as we'd ever come. I should have let the matter lie, but I pressed on.

“You were tough on me, and it made me tough,” I said. “In the end, I think there
is
a balance. I like who I am, more or less. I feel strong, capable, and confident. And that came from you, one way
or another. As a kid, I was jealous of the attention you gave my brother—but honestly, I don't think you did him any favors.”

My mother pulled away from the armrest we shared.

“Did I ever tell you about the moment when I decided to have a second child?” she asked. She looked at me sharply. I saw the hard metal glint in her eyes and knew that I did not want to hear what she had to say next. But I kept my voice light and said no, she had not told me. It had been so long now since we had fought.

“You were three and a half years old and it was your bath time. I loved your bath. It was the only moment I had to myself. And you loved your bath, too; you've always loved water. I left you to play while I had a cigarette, read a book, I don't know what. But this day, when I got up to leave, you said, ‘Maman, stay with me in the bathroom!' I felt so trapped. I stayed for a minute, and then I tried to leave again. And you said, ‘No, Maman! Stay with me longer!' You were on the verge of tears. I sat back down. But the violence of my emotions—being made prisoner by you, my hatred for you—it scared me. So I left. I slammed the door behind me and let you cry.
That's
when I decided to have a second child. It was to break something between you and me.”

“Oh,” I said. The back of my throat burned hot with shame. She picked up her newspaper and began to read. I turned toward the window. Tears pricked at my eyes. I sniffed loudly but she did not turn. We barely spoke for the rest of the flight.

—

T
HE TRIP L
INGERED
with me. Back in New York, I felt that I contained something new. For weeks it sat inside me and then it emerged, like sea glass shifting upward through sand. It was the first
time I had entertained this thought, and yet somehow, also, I had always known it would come to this: I needed to know Josée's story.

I knew so much of my mother that I felt I could inhabit all the years before my birth almost as if I had lived them myself—every strand of emotion that vibrated along the five-pointed cat's cradle that tied the Mouly family together. And yet at the very center of my mother, a mystery remained. Perhaps I understood my mother's adolescence only because I had lived those years of my own life. My mother and I had never been closer. Yet I worried that I did not understand how she had forgiven her mother because I hadn't fully forgiven my own. Or maybe I had not yet understood how to not need her to love me. Either way, I wanted to know what my mother had done. And I wanted to be able to forgive Josée myself, for my mother's sake and my own.