A Paris Apartment (45 page)

“Fine!” I said, surprised by the word. I did not mean to confess. “You are not the one who impregnated me. But make no mistake, you
are
her father.”

“Not anymore!”

Boldini pushed back his chair, which then toppled over and landed with a thud against the wall. He grabbed for his coat and made a fast path to the front door.

I tried to chase after him, but he shook me off. He said we were done and he would support us no longer. It took years, and then it took Béatrice, to persuade Boldini to throw a few francs our way. The man is not our sole source of income. There are a few other contributors, not the least of whom is Clem, the statesman known as “the Walrus.” Nevertheless, the financial hole into which Boldini flung us is deep indeed, to speak nothing of the emotional one. I slept not once last night as I scrambled to devise a plan.

I could locate Jean-Baptiste, I reasoned, and threaten to go public with Béatrice’s parentage, which was no kind of solution at all. First I would have to find him. The world-famous “Polar Gentleman” spent the last two years in Antarctica and is allegedly missing at sea. Even if he weren’t missing, he would have to care. His divorce with Jeanne is to be finalized any day. He is a beloved adventurer, and citizens forgive him any indiscretion. Therefore, when it comes to my accusations he has very little to lose. I suppose that’s what happens when you live on a boat.

Utterly distraught by the time dawn came, I did the only thing I could. Oh, God, I hate to think of it now! I packed Béatrice’s pink suitcase with her favorite frocks and dolls, hired a hack, and together we took the long, bumpy road out of town.

We arrived at the Home for Idiots and Imbeciles shortly before one o’clock. My face was wet with tears, little rivulets cutting through my whitening mask, and I could not speak through the sobs. Béa, blessed Béa, simply looked up at me with those dark eyes, clear and trusting. She smiled and squeezed my hand.

“Darling,” I said before we exited the coach. “This is a wonderful school. Maman will miss you terribly but you will learn so much! Here they will train and educate you to speak and, eventually, teach you a trade. Perhaps shoemaking or carpentry or gardening. When you’re grown you can return to Paris with your maman and take up a post as a clerk or laborer. We’ll live together for the rest of our days. What do you think, my love?”

She blinked at me happily like she always did. Oh, my heart!

We got out of the cab and walked into the main office, where I filled out scores of forms. The director showed me the living quarters. My eyes stung with the bleakness, the metal, the urine-stained mattress. Already my resolve dwindled.

The last stop was the playground. Here was the place I would let go of Béa’s hand and send her into the world without me. It was supposed to give me comfort, all these smiling, happy, giggling children playing in the sunshine. Instead it nearly made me vomit.

Kids climbed amongst the equipment, tripping over their own feet, drool spilling from the sides of their mouths. They might try the same thing once, twice, thrice, or more, always failing, always failing, never getting it right. Not a single person stepped forward to help them.

It was too much to take.

“All right, Madame de Florian,” the director said. “It is time to let your daughter go. Allow her to be free and learn amongst others like her.”

I loosened my grip for half a second.

Then I closed it tight again.

Sweeping Béa up into my arms, I turned and ran to the coach, leaving everyone and everything behind, even her pink suitcase. The truth was I could not have kept it. Every time I saw it I would’ve hated myself.

We returned to Paris by nightfall, me hugging my girl for the entire trip, over every bump, around every turn. I didn’t know what we would do then, I certainly don’t know now. I only know I need Béatrice by my side. The rest I can figure out in time.

Chapitre LXXI

Paris, 14 August 1914

It is as though all the pressure built over the past few months, the past year even, has finally released in a pop heard around the world. Yes the pop is messy and loud and a bit terrifying, but throughout Paris there is an enormous sense of relief.

Germany has finally declared war. This is good news because the war, we knew, was coming. German troops already invaded French territory twice. As the papers say, the declaration forced them to take a formal stance of aggression. This will not be looked kindly upon by our neighboring countries or even those across the seas.

More than this, hope comes in the form of retribution. We might finally avenge the Franco-Prussian War! The minute the news hit the wires people were dancing in the streets. Parties erupted in every café, every dance hall, and nearly every public square. The crowds were enormous. People rode in carriages and atop white horses. They wept for joy. People kissed strangers or family members to whom they were not speaking. Flowers were sold on every street corner. It was a wedding party in which we were all the brides.

Caught up in this sweep of good feelings is Giovanni Boldini himself. When not toiling away at portraiture, including way too many of the rich Italian Donna Franca Florio, he comes to see us. No matter how many times he’s renounced Béatrice he cannot keep himself away more than a few weeks at a time. In our years together as (almost) husband and wife he grew quite fond of the girl.

At least Boldini outright admits he misses Béatrice. However he cannot extend the same platitude my way. I suppose there are too many things between us. What can I do about it now? Though I apologize for everything, I am sorry for nothing.

My Béatrice, she is such a lovely young lady. She has recently taught herself to read and to write! An amazing feat! Her musings do read more like those of a girl of six than a woman approaching sixteen, but I truly never thought we would get to this point. Though she will never be a scholar she will remain, forever, my Béatrice.

There is more I want to write, but I cannot remember the words I’d come to tell. Plus, my hands! My hands are worse than ever, and the deadening is now starting to travel to my face. A so-called doctor diagnosed me with Phossy jaw, a condition of the factory girls. As I never had to resort to such occupational measures, the only reasonable conclusion is that the doctor is a quack.

According to Boldini, the numbness at times extends to my mind. Two weeks ago he slashed his latest round of Donna Franca Florio portraits in a fit of self-loathing, but blamed it on me. I broke into his flat, he said, and went mad, claiming they were portraits of Jeanne Hugo. The gall of the accusation! As if I would do that! As if I could even confuse the two women! They look nothing alike. Perhaps Boldini has Phossy
brain
from those paints he uses.

Nonetheless I feel the years encroaching. I am not old, though not young either (ha!). But as I turned forty this year it’s time to increase the henna and facial whitening agents. There are still men to charm and bills to pay. It all makes me so very tired sometimes, so very, very tired.

Chapitre LXXII

Paris, 10 February 1919

The weather is cold and damp. I could not afford to put coal in my fire today, to heat this apartment filled with my things. My hand cramps as I scratch out these words. I fear my fingers might stick to the pen.

This city is dead. The trees, the animals, even the war that once looked so promising is done, thousands of bodies still being shipped home, families hoping for this one last glimpse of loved ones, even if all they get is a corpse. What happened to the Paris I once loved? The one filled with gilt and satin? As much as Paris is dead, its soul is gone too.

And so is my own heart, my daughter, my Béatrice. She is also dead. It is either ironic or fitting or completely unfair that a girl who struggled through childbirth to enter the world left it in the exact same fashion. There was blood, so much blood, and in the end they could not save her. If only Dr. Pozzi were still alive perhaps my Béatrice, my soul, would still be here. Instead she is gone, and I am left with a different baby girl, Elisabetta. Lisette is what Béa wanted to call her when she was sure—so sure!—this baby she carried was a girl.

I raised my child. I am not prepared to be a mother again. I do not have the means or a way to get them. As much as this world is crumbling my looks are, too. I will have to lower my standards or begin selling off the beautiful pieces given to me by Clemenceau, by
Le Comte
, by Giovanni Boldini.

Boldini. I can hardly write his name. This, the man I loved for most of my life, the man who reentered the fairy world created by Béatrice and me. He saved my life once only to ruin it later. I thought when Giovanni came back it was for the both of us. Alas, Giovanni didn’t miss me but Béa, and he missed her in the most inappropriate manner. Boldini got her pregnant. He killed her.

He said it was a misunderstanding. Marguérite says I’ve concocted something out of thin air. But what is there to possibly misunderstand? To make up? Nothing he can say will make it right. He tried to make amends by giving me the portrait he painted of me all those years (decades!) ago. It was his final parting gift, which I promptly attempted to sell to the French government. They would give me nothing for it. That’s how unimportant the man has become.

In sum, the wretch left me with three things: a useless painting, a dead daughter, and a baby I do not want and cannot take care of. Thus I must do what I couldn’t before. Tomorrow it is off to the idiot’s home. It may be a harsh sentence for this young child, but I cannot keep her. My feelings are something lower and darker than indifference. It is not her fault but, like Boldini, she killed my Béa.

The director of the asylum, if he’s still there, was a kind man. They teach their students trades, ways to become productive members of society. It is more than I could give her. After all, if I’d left Béa there she would still be alive.

As I pack Lisette’s few things for the journey, the tears come hard. No, I tell them, stay away. This is not the moment for regrets. Marguérite is on her way. She will join me on the journey. With her help I will be brave enough to leave the child. This time I will not look back.

Chapitre LXXIII

They traveled the long road to Sarlat-la-Canéda, the windows of Luc’s BMW M6 down, the wind pitching April’s hair into hedgelike proportions. She thought more than once the distance was long enough that, had they been in the United States, she would’ve insisted on flying. Yet somehow April was glad of the length of the trip.

Lisette’s desertion of the flat finally made sense. If April’s own grandmother had ditched her at the local Home for Idiots, she would’ve eschewed the woman’s knickknacks and paintings too. Still, as brutal as the action was, April felt sorry for Marthe. She was so full of love for her daughter that it must’ve taken the severest kind of depression to force her to abandon Lisette. The one man Marthe trusted betrayed her in a most egregious fashion, her favorite person dead at his hand.

“Even in an automobile you work furiously,” Luc noted as they eased off the highway and onto a twisted road surrounded by purples, surrounded by yellows, surrounded by greens, all of it beneath a turquoise sky. Even compared to California the effect was almost too much for April’s eyes.

“I’m trying to write interview questions,” April said. “But failing miserably.”

“Why don’t you—how do you call it? Float by the seat of your pants?”

“Fly. It’s ‘fly.’ And considering I hounded the ailing woman into seeing us I need to be prepared. I don’t really know where to start. At first I only cared about the furniture, the paintings, all the amazing pieces in the apartment. I wanted to find out why Madame Quatremer would leave it all behind. Now it doesn’t seem to matter.”

She patted the stack of journals on her lap.

“This is what I care about,” she said. “The rest of Marthe’s story. The journals told me so much, but they’re incredibly sparse at the end, such massive gaps of time. I need the filler, the in-between. I’m hoping Madame Vannier has it.”

“Well,” Luc said and smiled. “As always, I hope you get what you want.”

As they twisted deeper into the countryside, April closed her eyes and leaned back into the seat. Like a crooked country road, her mind started to turn and wander. She found herself thinking about her mom. April pictured her face: those green eyes, the wide, flat nose, and the sprinkle of freckles across her cheeks. By the time she died those freckles were long gone, institutional fluorescents a sad downgrade from California sunshine.

April very nearly nodded off to sleep.

“You’re smiling,” Luc said suddenly. He reached over and patted April’s arm, interrupting her waking dream. “What is so amusing to you?”

“Not amusing.” April rolled her head to the side. She gave a tired little smile. “I was thinking—dreaming? About my mom.”

“What about your mom?”

“I was thinking about animals.”

“Animals? Why? Did you have a lot of pets growing up?”

“No, the Potter household was no-feather, no-fur. No-fin, even! Brian once brought a goldfish home from the county fair, and Mom made him take it back. To the fair! You know you’re in a sorry state if carnies think you’re weird.” April laughed. “Yet my mom
loved
animals. If there was a crippled dog or cat in the neighborhood she’d fix it right up. I’ve seen her tape a cat’s tail and create a makeshift brace on a dog’s leg using hacked-up rulers and duct tape. Once she tried to administer CPR to a bird that flew into the living-room window.”

“Did it work?”

“I think she blew up its lungs. I remember sobbing at the screen door.”

“Poor little Avril,” Luc said.

“Poor April is right! She was blunt too, to an almost indecorous extent. A woman in the neighborhood had a miscarriage, and my mother proceeded to tell us, at Sunday dinner, that the neighbor gave birth not to a baby but to a giant hairball with teeth. I thought my father was going to pass out.”