B0092XNA2Q EBOK (26 page)

T
he night was dark. No moon. She walked out of the ballroom and to the front door. I followed. She wrapped herself in a scarf, put glasses on her face, and looked at me. She was trembling. No disguise. Woman laid bare. She had no script for this role. No exit stage left. She asked. “Will you walk with me—please?”

The tortured look on her face told me this was the reason we’d come to France. “Yes.”

We walked down the drive, past the old church and into Langeais, and started up the hill on the far side.

We followed dark streets, turning left and right, following no apparent pattern until I saw the signs that led to the convent. The large iron sign said that the Lady Mary Convent had been built several centuries prior. It started out as caves in the high walls above the river. Napoleon had lived here for a time. Later he sent prisoners here. The nuns took over after that. The buildings grew out from the cave and had been added onto several times. The complex was quite large. Orphanage. School. Indigent hospital.

We turned one last corner and the single light above the doors to the convent shone orange in the distance. She stumbled and I caught her. She was leaning heavier now. As if a gut-level ache had returned. Two oaken doors faced us. The door on the right was a large wooden door that had seen centuries of traffic. Maybe twelve feet, crossed with iron straps, a large knob. Whoever opened it would have to put their weight into it. The second door sat to the left. It was maybe five feet tall and more like a revolving, two-sided lazy Susan than an actual swinging door. The door revolved, or spun on an axis. A shelf had been built into the side facing us. The only way to get inside was to sit on that shelf while someone on the inside rotated the door. The wall on the right curved around the axis of the door making it impossible to see inside while the door was turning. The walls seemed to protect each side from the eyes on the other side. I ran my finger along the shelf. It was well worn and just large enough for a laundry basket.

She was clinging to me. Leaning heavily. Hiding behind me as we approached. She said, “Father was so ashamed, as was the countess. In America, it may not have been such a big deal, but this small village was not America, and everybody knew. The countess was of another generation, and because she’d done so much, had introduced me to everyone she knew… Feeling disgraced and ashamed, she fired him and told him to get off her property. I wanted to talk to her, to explain, but she wouldn’t see me so I dropped out of school and we lived in a rented house in the country not far from here. Father worked three jobs, contracted pneumonia, and died three months before the baby was born. Six months pregnant, I didn’t have enough money to bury him, so I snuck into the countess’s house, and stole whatever I could find. I lived alone for three months, and then my water broke. I thought I could deliver at home, but—” She shook her head. “I made my way to the hospital, collapsed in the emergency room, and delivered a few hours later. Given the difficult delivery and the fact that I was a young girl with no family, they kept me a few days trying to figure
out what to do with me. Four days after delivery, I walked out of the hospital, and wandered around town until almost midnight. Finally, I walked down here, wrapped him in a blanket I’d made, and placed him on that shelf. I had a piece of paper from the hospital that wasn’t a birth certificate but more like a statement of live birth. It had his name, date of birth, weight… I tore off the section that gave my name and stuffed the statement inside his blanket. Then I rang that bell and walked to the shadows. The door turned from the inside, counterclockwise. Sometimes, when I hear a door squeak, I—The door turned and I watched my son disappear. He was crying and reaching upward. I remember my milk was letting down and I didn’t have a nursing bra. The door closed as my milk trickled down my stomach. That was March first, 1993.” She paused, closing her eyes. “I walked to the train station, rode the train to Paris, used some of the money I’d stolen from the countess to buy a ticket to the U.S., landed in New York with the passport my father had given me for my twelfth birthday, bought one last ticket to Miami—because it was cheap—and walked off the plane with three dollars, one severely crossed eye, and the name of Katie Quinn. I lied about my age, my history… I lied about everything. I took three jobs, saved up enough money to straighten my eye, and then did the only thing I knew to do to help ease the pain… to help me pretend that I wasn’t who I was.” She looked at me. “I walked up on a local stage, pointed my voice and talent at the back row, and acted my way out of the hole I’d dug. It took a few years, but when I had enough money, I moved to L.A. I got a lucky break. An independent film that turned out to be the role of a lifetime. My career took off. I could do nothing wrong. I could barely keep up with it all. Everybody wanted me.” She turned again to the door. “Quinn. Quinn was my son’s name.

“I was twenty-two when I was able to come back here the first time. He was seven years old. I saw him once, out with some children in the village. He looked happy. Had my eyes.” A pause. “For the next three years, I came back here every chance I had, always
hoping to learn something about him, or better yet to see him again. I couldn’t be Katie Quinn, so I became other people who had reasons to interact with the people around him. I almost touched him once. He sipped water from a fountain next to me where I was spying.” A pause. “Given what I’d done, I couldn’t bring myself to claim him. I thought he was better off… I blamed the exposure of the paparazzi. The truth is I was ashamed and afraid of the consequences, of what people would think. Any strength I had was an act. I wasn’t the person I pretended to be. Katie Quinn was just another role. But I had time to make it right. Or—thought I had time…” She closed her eyes and stood behind me. Speaking over my shoulder. “One day, he stopped appearing in the playground so I hired an investigator.” Her voice cracked. Her finger trembled. She held the rising wave at bay. “I know when—I just don’t know how.” She stared at the door. “I’ve been here a hundred times. Stood right here, but I’ve never rung that bell.” She held my hand and looked at me.

I walked to the bell and softly rang it. She followed behind, wrapping her face in the scarf and putting her glasses on. When no one answered after five minutes, I rang it again. This time louder. Moments later, we heard shuffling behind the door to our right where people entered and exited the convent.

The huge door opened and an older woman, maybe in her late seventies, stepped out. She wore a habit and the residue of deep, content, now disturbed sleep. She was tall and slender—not what I was expecting. She looked at me. “
Puis-je vous aider?
”

Katie hid her face behind my shoulder, her arm hooked inside mine. I answered, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak—”

She stepped closer. Her voice was kind. Not bothered. “I speak English.”

I stepped into the light. “Ma’am, a long time ago a boy was dropped off at this door here. I’d like to know what happened to him.”

She stared at me. “Please understand, we don’t give out that information.”

“I realize that, but if I could give you a date and time, could you just tell me anything?”

“You have a date?”

“March first, 1993. About this time of night.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Boy.”

She stared at me, then Katie. She stared at Katie a long time. The corners of her eyes rolled down. Empathy without words. Katie turned, hiding more of her face. The woman half bowed and said, “Please, follow me.”

We followed her inside, where she leaned against the door and locked it behind us. We walked down a long arch-covered path lined with large, well-worn wooden doors. She touched one of the doors and waved at the others, speaking softly. “Our school.”

We crossed through a courtyard, then began climbing a long series of winding steps numbering more than a hundred. When we reached the top, the steps ended beneath towering trees with leaves the size of a sheet of paper and carpet like grass. She took off her shoes, and held open an iron gate, motioning us to follow. We slipped off our shoes and stepped through the gate, following her through the grass.

The grass of the cemetery.

Katie wrapped her arms around herself and her steps slowed. We weaved between several tombstones. Some old. Some not. The woman opened another gate, this one smaller, and led us through. A glance around told me that this portion was for smaller people. The length of the graves was less, as was the space between the stones. The color left Katie’s face.

Finally, our guide stopped, clicked on a flashlight, and shined it in a section of grass beneath us. The grass was green and had been freshly cut. The yard was immaculate, empty of cuttings. Each stone perfectly manicured. She spoke softly. “I had only been here a few years. I was in the chapel when I heard the bell.” I looked at her in disbelief. She stared at the stone and told the story as it
returned. “I pulled the rope, turning the door. This beautiful baby boy appeared, wrapped in what looked like a handmade blanket. I picked him up and the certificate of live birth had been tucked alongside his chest.” She motioned with her fingers. “The name of the mother had been torn off.” She stared upward. “He would be almost twenty now.” The words “would be” echoed off the underside of the trees. Katie stepped up alongside me, looking down. The woman paused, choosing her words. “I took him in. Fed him. We—all of us—raised him along with the others.” She shook her head, a slight smile. “He had the most beautiful aqua-blue eyes I’d ever seen. Almost not natural—” She brushed off the top of the stone with her palm. “He was fine until the age of two when he developed asthma. A rather severe case. There were times when”—she touched her throat with her hand—“his throat would swell up, and his lungs would spasm, rendering him unable to breathe.” She fell quiet. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Katie’s hands had begun shaking. The woman continued, “I moved him into my room, so I could keep an eye on him. We tried everything. I tried everything. Doctors, medicines, remedies. I used to lie awake nights asking God why he didn’t let this poor child breathe. Why he didn’t pour air into his life. Open his throat. Open his lungs. I’d never seen a child suffer the way he suffered. As he got older, he fell in love with football. Or, soccer as you call it. Reluctantly, I let him play. He was sick a lot. Often, pneumonia. So, he played little.”

She stopped talking, and waved her light on a small tombstone below us. Katie froze. The nun stepped back. Her light flashed across the stone. I read the word “Quinn” as did Katie because she sucked in deeply, covered her mouth, and began to moan. Katie fell to her knees; her index finger had a barely perceptible tremble as it traced the dates. He had been ten.

The woman stepped back into the shadows, clicked off her light, and continued, “He died”—she closed her eyes—“alone in his bed. Unable to breathe.”

Katie crumbled. She ripped off her scarf and glasses, clung to
the stone. There was a long moment when she did not breathe and made no sound. The woman watched, head bowed, unmoved, and unmoving. Katie rocked back and forth.

When she did breathe, it brought with it a sound I’d only heard once in my life. It was deep, primordial, and laden with pain.

I stood behind her, listening to her soul empty itself. Tears, cries, decades of pain. After several minutes, she retched to the side and vomited. Then again. Then a third time. When empty, she dry-heaved. Katie had no persona for this. No wig. No makeup. No act. Clinging to the marble, her fingers tracing the letters of her son’s name, a lifetime of torment exited her body. And it did so violently.

The woman disappeared behind us.

I knelt, placing my arms around her. Katie’s body was drenched in sweat, torquing in spasm. She collapsed. Breaking. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could never put her back together again.

After an hour, I lifted Katie to her feet. A spent ragdoll. She clung to me as we descended the steps. Every few minutes, a sound would exit her body. Part moan, part wail, all torment, unsurpassed pain.

I walked her through the columned courtyard and past the school. Candlelight caught my eye. A stained-glass chapel sat in a corner of the courtyard. It was small. Maybe a prayer chapel. The woman who’d let us in was kneeling at the railing. Hands folded. Head bowed. Katie stopped me, took off her watch, her diamond ring, and diamond necklace and piled them all in my hand.

I walked to the chapel and cleared my throat. The woman turned but said nothing. I walked forward and held out my hand. She extended hers. I emptied mine. She stared at it and was about to speak when I turned and left.

We exited through the same door and back into the shadows of the street. Halfway home, Katie fell. I caught her, lifted her, and carried her up the street to the château.

I set her on the bed, wet a hand towel, and wiped her face and mouth. I did that a couple of times, rinsing the rag each time. Finally, I wrapped ice inside the rag and placed it on her forehead. Her head shook and her lips moved but she never spoke. She lay still, staring at some object beyond the window. When the ice had melted, I replaced it, and placed another rag on her head. She touched my hand and whispered, “I want to die now.”