A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (2 page)

Many family members and friends found their way into his novels. But my father was always making composites—a little of this person, a little of that person—changing the facts to fit the story. The story comes first, he always said. His loyalty was to a higher truth, which, as he saw it, was not always best represented in fiction by the facts.

Why did I call
A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries
a novel? Because it is not a memoir. None of the facts match up to the reality. Every person in my family remembers the events differently, from his or her own point of view. What in reality may have happened over a period of years, might happen in the novel very quickly, because to make a point, sometimes facts need to be boiled down to their bare essence.

“The Suitcase,” the first chapter in the novel, was a story my father wanted to write, one that he’d told me. In reality, I don’t remember the events surrounding my brother’s arrival in our home, only my father’s retelling of them. His version, of course, was already colored by his vivid imagination, and his loyalty to the story and its higher truth. So “The Suitcase” is not even really my own story, but my interpretation of a story my father intended to write, but never got the chance.

A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries
is in every way a work of fiction. My father would certainly agree with me.

THE SUITCASE

I remember the day my brother was brought to our house from the children’s home, and everything is tinted a lemony yellow. This is not unusual, for I see my momentous childhood memories as though through colored lenses. Red, I identify with illnesses, high fevers, and summer heat. I learned to ride a bicycle on a winter day, and our little street, my clothes, the cobblestones, and the surrounding buildings are tinted steely blue. At four I fell in love with Mathieu, a boy of five who smiled at me and then stuck his hand in my turtle aquarium. My turtles, Mathieu’s eyes, his sweater with sleeves pulled up past his elbows, live on in cool shades of green.

My fevers still seem red to me, and happy winter days steely blue. But I do not have other yellow memories, not even of the brightest summer afternoon. Yellow is the day my brother arrived from the children’s home.

It might be the fear and jealousy I felt—my parents never remembered the day as having been particularly yellow—but the sunlight seemed blinding outside our long French windows. We lived on a quai above the Seine in Paris, and the sun glinted so brightly on the river you could not look at it for long or without squinting.

My father stood on the balcony leaning on the railing with a Scotch and soda in his hand. I was restless. I did not have the patience to stand in one place for long, and ran to and from the balcony. Joining my father for the twentieth time, I pushed my head into his hip and tugged at his back pocket. But he was not in the mood to pay attention to me.

“DADDY-Y-Y-Y. Is the little brother coming soon?”

“Any minute now,” my father said, not looking at me. He was watching the taxis crossing the wide cement bridge.

“DADDY-Y-Y-Y. I changed my mind. Tell him not to come today.”

“Will you behave yourself?” he said, annoyed. “I mean, you really do have to behave yourself. He’s going to be scared to death.”

“Jesus, Bill,” my mother said from the other side of the long, cream-colored living room which was bathed in yellow light. She had gotten all dressed up in a pale Chanel suit with matching shoes and she could not sit still, like me. “You want to go to the park with Candida, Channe? Maybe she should go to the—”

“She’s got to be here, Marcella,” my father said in a completely calm voice. When he said something in that calm, even tone, no one had the courage to contradict him. I ran off toward the kitchen to bother my nurse for a glass of water. She had been told to stay in the kitchen so that the little brother would not be confused by too many strangers all at once. The waiting seemed interminable and everyone, including Candida, was tense and not in the mood to baby me.

“Here. Come here, Channe. Look,” my father called from the balcony. I ran to him and stuck my face between two iron bars decorated with iron leaves. A taxi had stopped before the house. The door flew open and a heavy shoe stepped out and landed on the pavement. It was followed by a gray skirt and then a gray head. The woman looked around for a moment and leaned into the taxi and tugged at something still hidden in the car. A little bare leg appeared on the edge of the seat, then another. The woman pulled at one of the knees and a blond head popped out.

My father moved away from the window, removing my hand from his back pocket. Feeling completely abandoned I went, dragging my feet, over to the fireplace and hid beneath the jutting wooden mantle.

For
ever,
I thought. He was coming to live with us forever and the thought was as confusing to me as the idea of the universe going on forever.

The little brother’s story had been explained to me in careful detail. I was three when the decision to adopt him had been made, and a year had passed since then. His natural parents had died in a car accident right after his birth. This was not true but I have never blamed my parents for withholding the truth, as it would have been too much for my intellect and the little brother’s as well.

He had spent his first three years with a French couple who had only fostered him, not adopted him, and when the foster mother had killed herself by taking sleeping pills, the father, unable to cope, had put the little boy in a children’s home. The couple had been acquaintances of my parents. One day the man called my father and said, “Bill, remember that little boy your wife thought was so adorable? As I remember, she said there was nothing in the world she wanted more than a boy like that—well, I can’t keep him, Bill. He’s in a children’s home right now and I can’t stand it.”

But it was illegal for Americans to adopt French children, and my parents had bribed and pleaded and paid thousands and thousands of dollars to some official to have my brother’s birth papers disappear. My mother had even had a private audience with Madame de Gaulle (my father’s position as a celebrated American writer living in Paris opened up all sorts of influential doors) and she, the wife of the President of France, had pushed the whole thing through by writing a letter of recommendation. Even with Madame de Gaulle’s recommendation, the deal was tenuous—I did not know this either until many years later: Once a month for the next several years a person from the social service agency came to check on us. One bad word from that person could have sent the little brother back to the children’s home. My parents lived in terror from the moment the little brother walked in the door.

“No two people ever fought harder to have a kid in the world,” my father had told me over and over again, during the year it took them to get through the bureaucracy.

“Didn’t you fight hard to have me?”

“Yes, we sure did. But it was a different kind of fight. Your mommy was sick. She can’t have any more babies and you always say you’re so lonely. Now you’ll have someone to play with all the time.”

Someone to play with
all the time!
Someone to share
every
thing with, I thought. Someone who would be sleeping next door, in my old playroom!

I heard the doorbell ring and then some French being spoken. My parents spoke French badly, while I spoke almost fluently; I’d been such a terror they’d sent me off to school at the age of two. I heard my father ask the woman if she wanted a cup of tea or coffee or a cold drink. She said
non, merci
in a grave voice.

“Channe,” my father called out in the calm voice that everyone listened to, “come here.”

Out I came from under the fireplace mantle and there was the little brother. He stood as though frozen, his arms crossed over a small, battered black suitcase he kept pressed to his chest. He wore a plaid suit which must have fit him when he was two. My mother says it was blue, but I remember it was yellow with orange lines. The sleeves were too short and the shorts were stretched so that the front pockets bulged out. He would not look up from the floor. His knuckles were white from gripping the suitcase. He had a round head and juicy pink cheeks and a mouth like a rosebud. Every now and then a sigh escaped from his nose and his nostrils flared.

The woman’s head turned left and right, scrutinizing everything. She had purple wormlike blood vessels on her cheeks and a lipless mouth.

“
Presentez-vous
, Benoit,” she said softly to the little brother, giving him a slight push at the shoulder. He tottered, but kept his ground and his arms around the suitcase.

“It’s all right,” my father said in a gentle voice. He got down on one knee in front of the little brother and put out his hand.

“
Je suis ton père
,” he said in his awful American accent, making the little brother frown. I am your father, he said. He’s not his father! I thought, outraged.

“Et voici ton mère et ton soeur.”

Ton
mère! I thought, it’s not
ton
mère, it’s
ta
mère. I came forward, not too close, and said in French to the strange woman and the little brother, “Please forgive my father, he doesn’t speak French very well, he’s a foreigner.”

“What does he have in the suitcase?” my mother asked the woman, trying to sound relaxed but her voice was too high, too enthusiastic.

“A pair of underwear, a pair of socks, and another shirt.” “Channe,” my father said, stretching his arm out and encircling me conspiratorially. “Listen, sweetheart, do me a favor, will you? You know where the toys are we got for him. Will you bring the box up here? You can give them to him yourself.”

“No,” I said flatly.

The look my father gave me made me feel like the Wicked Witch of the West when the bucket of water is thrown at her.

“Excuse us a moment, please,” he said, and nodded sideways toward the hallway that led down to the kitchen, the playroom, my room, and my nanny Candida’s room. I knew I had to go or there would be
serious trouble
later on.

The old playroom had a red tile floor. My mother had brought in a little rug and a bed. I kicked the box with the new toys in it and it skidded across the floor and hit my father’s feet. He kicked the box out of the way, lifted me up, and sat me down on the little brother’s new bed.

“I want you to pick up that box and take it down the hall and give it to him,” he said calmly, slowly. “Right now. You are being awful and I’m embarrassed. Just look at that poor, terrified little boy and look at you. I’m horrified. He’s scared to death of us. You’re the only person his age around here. Maybe he’ll talk to you. Can’t you try to be nice?” He paused a moment, seeing that I was about to cry.

More gently, he said, “What if Mama and I were gone forever? Wouldn’t you want someone to be nice to you?”

I began to heave deep sighs and my face contorted completely. I jumped off the bed and threw myself around his thighs.

“Daddy-y-y, Daddy-y-y, don’t say that.”

“Please, baby. Please, for me, please go give him the box.”

I dragged the box down the long hall to the living room. My father helped a little by pushing it along with his foot. I left it in front of the little brother indifferently, as though I were abandoning something worthless.

“Tiens
,” I said. “
C’est pour toi
.”

“P-pardon?”
he said.

“C’EST POUR TOI!”

“Pour moi?”
He frowned, pointing a finger inward, toward his chest, which was somewhere behind the suitcase. His eyes were round and blue and he had a little space between his front teeth.

“Open it,” I said.

He pinned the suitcase up under his left arm and with his free hand opened the box.

“Put your suitcase down,” I said. He shook his head.

“MAIS POSE TA VALISE!”
I yelled.

My mother looked at my father and her mouth twitched.

“Darling, you’re too abrupt. Please don’t be so bossy,” she suggested to me. “Bill, darling, say something.” Tiny drops of sweat appeared above her eyebrows.

“Channe,” my father said, clearing his throat, “don’t be so bossy.”

The little brother pulled the red fire engine out of the box and held it up with difficulty. “Oh, the pretty truck,” he sighed. He looked toward the woman and then put the fire engine down on the carpet, resigned to giving it up.

“No, no, it’s for you,” my father insisted.

“They are not used to such expensive gifts, Madame,” the woman said in a quiet, disapproving tone.

The little brother placed the suitcase flat on the carpet and sat on it, admiring the fire engine from a distance.

“But look, silly!” I said, becoming enthusiastic. “I won’t take it from you, I just want to show you, see! It runs by itself and goes
pin-pon-pin!”
I turned it over and wound the key. The fire engine took off, a blaring yellow light flashing on top. Yellow, yellow, yellow! the light flashed. The siren made a terrible racket and I was thrilled because toys weren’t allowed in the living room.

The fire engine banged into an antique wooden chair at the other end of the room, turned around by itself, and headed back. It went straight to the little brother, as though it knew its rightful owner, and banged into the suitcase between his spread legs. He lifted it off the floor and hugged it as though it were a small dog. His face was so red it almost matched the truck.

“SEE! I told you.
Pin-pon-pin!”
I shouted.

He wound the toy, put it back on the floor, and after a moment of deliberation, left his suitcase to chase it around the room. He started to laugh then, his face all red and his eyes round, and I started to laugh too because I had never seen anybody get so excited over a toy.

The woman said she was leaving then, and the little brother immediately abandoned the fire truck and headed toward the door, grabbing his suitcase on the way.

“Non,
Benoit,” she said, “you are staying here.”

“B-by myself?” he asked in a shaky voice.

“You’ll be very happy,” she said, patting his shoulder lightly. My father shook hands with the woman at the door and then closed it behind her. Benoit stood before the door and stared at it for a long time with the suitcase pressed once again to his chest. His rose lips curved downward and his face went completely white. He looked bereft, in pain, aghast. I mustn’t cry, his eyes said bravely, and I felt a pain I had never known before. I did not like myself at all and became furious at him for making me feel that way.