Forgiving Paris: A Novel
Karen Kingsbury
Dedicated to Donald, the love of my life, my husband of 33 years, and to our beautiful children and grandchildren. The journey of life is breathtaking surrounded by each of you, and each minute together is time borrowed from eternity. I love you with every breath, every heartbeat. And to God, Almighty, who has—for now—blessed me with these.
1998 1
The incessant pounding rattled the living room window and shook the walls in the small Parisian flat where Marie Michel was trying to sleep. She folded the pillow over her head and squeezed her eyes shut. She was a terrible mother. How could she have raised a daughter who ran with drug dealers? An addict who had stolen from Marie… from her own mother.
“Change the locks,” the police officer had told her last time it happened. “You’re not helping by giving her a way to keep using.”
More pounding.
Marie’s heartbeat skipped and jumped and raced inside her chest. It was after midnight. What was her daughter thinking? Why wouldn’t she get help? Marie threw the pillow on the floor and swung herself out of bed.
As she did, the pounding stopped. Marie held her breath. Ten seconds.… Fifteen. Still nothing. Silence. Marie exhaled. Alice must’ve moved on, scurried off through the dark of night to find the place where she slept—under some bridge or in a shelter in the most dank and undesirable part of Paris. Wherever the drugs were easy.
Marie lay back down and stared at the ceiling. Baby girl, I’m sorry… I never wanted it to come to this. A chill ran down her arms and she pulled the blanket over her thin body. She hadn’t paid her gas bill again and this was the coldest night in May.
Life was eroding like the beach at high tide.
If her own mother were still alive, Marie knew what the woman would say. Pray, Marie. Pray. God has all the wisdom in the world. Talk to Him… ask Him. He loves you, Marie.
But what would it matter, praying to God now? Alice had been gone long before tonight. Marie’s precious baby girl was eighteen and a child of the streets, running with derelicts and drug dealers. Marie wasn’t even sure when she’d lost Alice. Three years ago, maybe. Sometime between shifts, when Marie was out working two jobs to keep food on the table. They would’ve been better off starving.
Then she might still have Alice.
Marie leaned over and clicked on the lamp by her bedside. A yellow haze filled the cramped room. Marie let her eyes adjust. She stood and pushed herself to the dresser by the window. Every step stirred the ache in her bones, the ache that always came with twelve hours of cleaning hospital floors.
Don’t look at it, she told herself. You need to sleep. Morning comes quickly.
But her hands had a mind of their own.
They pulled open the second drawer and there, sitting atop a heap of worn T-shirts, was the photo album. The one Marie had put together for Alice’s sixteenth birthday. An attempt to win her back and pull her from the seedy world she’d fallen into.
The effort failed, but the photo book remained. Proof that their time together hadn’t been all bad. Marie picked it up and ran her thumb over the cheap cloth cover. At the center was a photo of Marie and Alice, cheek to cheek. In the picture, her precious girl was maybe ten or eleven. Before the streets had gotten her.
Marie stared at the image. “What happened to you, baby girl? Why aren’t you here? Down the hall?” Her voice fell. “Your mama still loves you, Alice.” A rush of tears came and Marie shut her eyes again. “I’ll always love you, Alice.”
Sleep wasn’t going to come anyway. Marie took the album to the edge of her bed and settled in.
The first few pages were full of baby Alice, as if she’d come into the world like any other child. Alice on her blanket and in her crib, crying in her first bath and laughing at her favorite toy bunny. And Marie, a much younger version of herself holding baby Alice and walking her along the streets of Paris in the pram Alice’s grandmother had given her.
But there were other moments the pages didn’t show. Her mother’s warning in the beginning, when Marie came home pregnant after her first year of college.
“You’ll keep the baby, of course.” M’man had pulled her into a hug. “I will help you.” Then she had stepped back and looked deep into Marie’s eyes. “But mark my words, Marie. Being a single mother will be the hardest job you’ve ever had. I should know.”
Marie’s father had left when she was six. That was the year her mother refused to go along with her father’s affairs. “It’s a Parisian thing,” Marie could still hear him saying. “French men need more than one woman.”
Finally, her mother had sent him on his way. “You can have all the women you want,” she had told him. “Just not this one.”
Whenever Marie had asked about her father, her mama would stand a little straighter and her eyes would cool. “We don’t need him, Marie. We have each other… that’s enough.”
And it was. For Marie’s mother.
But no one ever asked Marie if having only a mother was enough for her. She remembered her first day of third grade and her classmates talking about their fathers. My papa works in sanitation. Mine works at the hospital.… My papa is taking me to Normandy.… My papa is taking me to the Seine.