The Light of Paris(45)

I had made an awful mistake. And the stupid thing was, I had known. Standing in the vestibule of the church outside the sanctuary, I had looked at the scene inside—that’s what it had felt like, a scene. A red carpet ran down the center aisle from the altar to the door, lolling like an obscene and thirsty red tongue. Walking down the aisle, I had been uncomfortably aware of the audience. Should I be smiling? Or should I be solemn? Should I look at Phillip? Or at the guests?

Looking at the photos, I had been horrified to see my own expression. There was not a single photo in which I looked happy. Instead, I stood, unsmiling, eyes wide and frozen. It was the expression of a woman who had done something terrible and had no idea how she might get out of it.

Phillip didn’t notice. He was entranced by his own appearance. His bachelor weekend had been by the pools in Las Vegas, and he had been slightly, gorgeously tan for the wedding, sun-kissed and healthy. Already unforgivingly pale, I had been encouraged (and by encouraged, I mean forced) into a dress of pure, icy white that washed me out, turning me as frozen and blue as though I were winter itself, even though our wedding had been in June. Phillip didn’t seem to notice. “Look at me,” he had crowed, turning page after page, while I grew more and more shocked and horrified by my appearance in each photo. “I look so tan. These are great pictures,” he said, running a finger along his own face in a portrait of both of our families.

I looked at him, the narcissistic man I had married, so in love with his own reflection he could not see me at all. Beside him in those pictures, I looked like a ghost, as though it was a mourning photograph taken long ago, a family gathered together around the body of a cold, dead bride.

That night, as I looked at myself in the mirror, I had seen the same wide-eyed terror that I had seen in the photos. “What have I done?” I whispered to myself, reaching out a tentative, trembling hand to the woman reflected back at me. “What have I done?”





twelve





MARGIE


   1924




Margie’s parents, as she had known they would be, were furious. Even if cables weren’t written in all capital letters, she swore she would have been able to hear them yelling from clear across the Atlantic.

LETTER UNACCEPTABLE STOP

PASSAGE BOOKED CHERBOURG 5/22 FOR NYC STOP

AUNT EDITH HEARTBROKEN STOP FATHER FURIOUS STOP COME HOME IMMEDIATELY STOP

She hadn’t even bothered to reply to the last one, because the only answer she could think of was no. No, she wasn’t leaving Paris. No, she wasn’t coming home. Not now, and maybe not ever.

Because in the meantime, my grandmother had fallen hopelessly in love with Paris, with the city that had had enough of war and sadness and had promised itself it had reached la der des ders—that the Great War would be the last war, and they would not think on their grief and the empty bellies and the wounded and lost husbands and fathers and brothers. They would rebuild from the rubble and drink and celebrate. Margie went to the top of the Eiffel Tower and looked at the city spread out beneath her feet, and she walked endless miles along the sidewalks, past lovers, past arguments, past families, past drunks reeling their crooked way home, past joy and heartbreak and rages and passions that would not be denied. She went to Napoleon’s tomb, which she found both ghastly and awe-inspiring, and she went to see the Panthéon de la Guerre, a panoramic painting which she knew she ought to object to, as it went against all her pacifistic beliefs, but was so wonderful she couldn’t contain herself from weeping a little bit, for the glory and pain of war and its endless bitter romance. She walked along streets of worn stones, and she stumbled into silent churches full of dust and the flicker of candles she never saw anyone light, and she walked through the galleries at the Jeu de Paume, thinking of when it wasn’t a museum and instead was where Napoleon played tennis, and she wrote a story about an art theft and a daring girl detective and fell asleep in the Tuileries under a tree and when she awoke there was a guard shooing her away, and she ate a crêpe noisette et chocolat on the steps of the H?tel de Ville and licked her sticky fingers as she walked back home.

She never, never wanted to leave.

The place Sebastien had suggested she stay was the American Girls’ Club, a large building sprawling lazily down a side street off the Boulevard du Montparnasse. When she turned off the wide boulevard and saw it sitting there on the narrow street, leaning forward as though it were eager to make her acquaintance, she wanted to gasp and clasp her hands together in joy, like a character in a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. The buildings on the street were old and whitewashed, rather than the creamy gold of so much of the city, beautiful but exhaustingly repetitive, and the Club had green shutters and flower boxes filled with an explosion of purple and pink and blue. It looked more like a country cottage than a building only steps from one of the busiest streets in Paris.

She knocked but there was no answer, and when she turned the handle, the door swung open easily. She stepped into the foyer, deliciously dark and cool after the brightness of the day outside. A woman sat in an office, a window open to the foyer, and Margie stepped over, waiting politely for her to take a break in her typing and notice Margie was there.

When the woman finally looked up and saw Margie, her expression hardly changed. “Yes?” she boomed.

Margie jumped. “Ah, yes?” she echoed, and then felt silly. “Er, bonjour?” Wait, she was in the American Girls’ Club. Why was she speaking French? “I mean, hello?”