The Postmistress of Paris(8)

“I wrote Danny every day from London,” T said.

“But that’s different—an advantage of an overseas love.” Nanée remembered Danny hurrying home each day in hopes that an envelope from England waited on the little blue plate by the door. “He wants to be with you, but he can’t. That’s the ticket. Make him want something he can’t quite reach.”

“And certainly don’t risk living happily ever after when there might be a truly horrible fellow out there whose sole attraction is that he won’t cause a scandal in Evanston.”

“I’m not the snob you imagine me,” Nanée protested.

“Of course you are,” T said, but with affection.

She slid the Exquisite Corpse drawing closer to Nanée as another cork popped behind them, laughter bubbling up with the champagne. The knobby knees might be forgiven, but the baby kangaroo—Nanée could see that through T’s eyes now. She could see it looked carelessly cruel, although that wasn’t how she’d meant it.

“He reminded me of Daddy.” The confession surprised her more, apparently, than it did T. “The way Edouard Moss got down to his daughter’s level. The way he spoke so gently.”

“That’s a gauzier view of your father than even your mother would claim.”

“At Marigold Lodge, though,” Nanée said, remembering the manicured peninsula of lawn and weeping willows stretching down to the waters of Pine Creek Bay and Lake Macatawa. To my brave girl, her father had written in his will, surprising everyone with his bequest of the family summer home to Nanée. “Daddy was a different person in Michigan.”

“Even so, Nan, you need to let go of this quest for a man you imagine would have made him proud.”

“I don’t—”

“You do, though. You’re so anxious not to be taken in by one of your ‘terrific louts’ that you won’t pause to consider what might please you.”

Nanée studied the birdcage head again, the knobby knees and the kangaroo she’d drawn herself, the much-loved creature abandoned on the floor lest her need for love reflect badly on her father. “The push-up man photograph—why do you suppose he made André take it down?” Thinking she might inquire about it at the gallery, she might buy it if she could. It too left her feeling understood in some way she couldn’t begin to describe.

“He’s leaving for Sanary-sur-Mer tomorrow,” T said gently. “Edouard is.”

They both looked out the window, to the broad, empty avenue and the lightening sky.

Nanée folded the Exquisite Corps back into thirds, then into thirds again, and closed it in her palm.

“Later today,” T amended. “Tonight. On the overnight train.”

“Sanary-sur-Mer,” Nanée repeated. It was one of the sunniest places in all of France.





Wednesday, January 19, 1938





SANARY-SUR-MER


The train banked around a curve, and there in the dawn light the sea stretched endlessly blue and foamy white. Edouard opened the window to the smell of the train’s coal smoke and, underneath it, the briny sea and pungent pines, and a hint of wild thyme. He fingered his Rollei as the train conductor called out, “Gare d’Ollioules, Sanary-sur-Mer.” The little fishing village in Provence was a collecting place for writers and artists. Aldous Huxley had written A Brave New World there, joined by D. H. Lawrence and Edith Wharton, and anti-Nazi and refugee writers and artists had taken it up so enthusiastically in the last few years that it was being called “the new capital of German literature and art.” André Breton had arranged a cottage for Luki and Edouard here at the edge of the Mediterranean, promising that sales from the exposition would cover the purchase price. Perhaps in the company of other artists, Edouard would photograph again.

“We’re here, Luki,” he said, jostling her awake as the train slowed into a little shed of a station, where a public bus waited to take them and their luggage to the cottage.

Luki looked up at him with a sleepy smile so like Elza’s that he thought he would cry.

“Where’s Mutti?” she asked.

He grabbed his Rollei and stood, then lifted Luki into his arms and folded them into the few passengers waiting to disembark, the weight of her sorrow so heavy to carry. How did you make a child understand that the mother who taught her to dance before she could walk would never dance with her again? How did you make a child understand that the loss wasn’t her fault, that she’d done nothing wrong and no better behavior would bring her mother back?

“Mutti loves you more than anyone,” he said, “but she has to stay with the angels. She’s left me to take care of you. We’re going to our new house now, remember?”

Luki said, “And I’m going to take care of you?”

Edouard blinked back tears. “Can you smell that, Luki? That’s the smell of wild thyme.”

Chanel N°5. That was the scent of that fur bracelet. The scent Elza wore, but then so many women did.

“But how will they find us?” Luki asked.

Edouard studied her expectant face, trying to understand what she was asking. “The angels?”

“Yes. How will they find us to bring Mutti to our new home?”