The Postmistress of Paris(19)

Nanée looked from T’s pleading face back to Dagobert, and pulled on his ears. He shook his head that way he did.

“We’ll be okay, T,” she said. “We’ll get a ship from Bordeaux to England. We’ll just lose your papers. No one can doubt you’re British. No one can doubt Peterkin is your son.”

EVEN COASTING DOWNHILL to conserve gas, they arrived at Brive on fumes, and waited an hour in line at a station only to have one of the cars ahead of them take the last of the fuel. It was early in the afternoon. There was, at least, a decent hotel where, at dinner that same night—all of Brive by then choking with refugees—T said she had bumped into someone she knew. “A rather vile woman Danny once nearly came to blows with. An archreactionary. Her husband has probably already settled into a high place in Pétain’s defeatist government. But she has a car, and she has gas, and she’s trying to get to her beast of a fascist husband in Bordeaux.”

“Surely it hasn’t come to that, all of us crowding into a car with a fascist,” Nanée said. “We’ll just buy some of her gas.”

“She won’t sell a drop, and she can’t take all of us, or won’t. She has room only for one more. And she’s agreed to take you.”

“Me? She doesn’t even know me!”

“She sees an advantage to having an American passport in her car. There’s room for you, and for Peterkin on your lap. Take him for me, Nan. For Danny and me. Take him to America with you.”

“But . . . but we don’t even have a passport for him.”

“It will be chaos. With the French government falling, the Americans will be loading ships to get their citizens to safety.”

“But T—”

“I’ll take Dagobert with me back to La Bourboule,” T insisted. “The children there already love him. We’ll all take good care of him.”

She hugged Nanée fiercely, as if Nanée had already agreed.

“Thank you, Nanée, for saving my son.”





Monday, June 17, 1940





A ROAD SOMEWHERE IN BRITTANY


Luki sat right up next to Tante Berthe in the car, which felt a little less scary; Tante Berthe was driving very fast. Luki was wearing Brigitte’s white dress that she wore for her first communion, and Tante Berthe was saying again that Luki was to say she was Catholic, and yes, Pemmy too, Pemmy was a Catholic kangaroo professor.

“You’re not going to be a Jewish girl, you understand that, right?”

Luki nodded even though she didn’t understand at all, except that she knew it was important because Tante Berthe kept repeating it. Only Luki and Pemmy were moving this time, to live with Tante Berthe’s sister, or all her sisters, at a church where Luki would kneel even though Papa didn’t kneel. She was afraid if she said she didn’t understand again, it would make Tante Berthe cry, but she didn’t want to lie either. Papa said she was never to lie. So she just nodded, which she didn’t think was a lie because a lie was words.

The car hurried along. Outside the window, cows ate the grass.

“If Pemmy was a cow,” Luki said, “she would eat grass. But Pemmy isn’t a cow.”

“If Pemmy ran out of other things to eat, she could eat grass. Sometimes we have to pretend we’re a little different than we are.”

Luki giggled, imagining Pemmy eating grass right from the ground. Pemmy did not think this was very funny, but Flat Joey Letters giggled with her.

“Luki,” Tante Berthe said, “if anyone asks you, you can tell them your papa kneels. He would want you to. It will keep you safer.”

“Pemmy wishes Papa would come get us.”

Tante Berthe hugged her close with one arm, her other hand still on the steering wheel.

“I tell Pemmy it’s okay even though we can’t take Papa’s letters,” Luki said, “because still he wrote them. He’s not with the angels, because he wrote us letters, even if we had to put them all in the fire.”

Tante Berthe was quiet for a long time. Luki wondered if she knew about Flat Joey Letters and the photograph Luki wasn’t supposed to have either. Luki made Flat Joey Letters before she put Flat Joey Numbers in the fire. She told Pemmy it was okay because Flat Joeys were pretend; they were just a way to remember that Joey was safe with Papa, wherever Papa was.

“Luki,” Tante Berthe said, “your papa is still writing to you. I know he is. Just like Brigitte’s papa is writing to her. The letters can’t get to us right now. But I promise you, your papa is writing to you.”





Tuesday, June 18, 1940





BRIVE


Nanée dressed that morning in her favorite gray flannel slacks and some of her best jewelry—a diamond ring and her emerald earrings—but with her grandmother’s pearls underneath her blouse and the diamond brooch that had belonged to generations of her father’s family pinned inside her trouser pocket, the Schiaparelli fur bracelet that had only ever been hers there too. She packed nothing but a few toiletries, saving the space in the small satchel she could have at her feet for Peterkin’s bunny and his clothes, while T moved through the motions of getting him ready, her voice, which had been so steady, now flat and toneless, necessary words and nothing more. T couldn’t let any feeling creep in, or she would not be able to do this, and she had to do this; Nanée understood that.