Paris by the Book(66)

Then Eleanor opened her eyes and looked at me, and with a tiny, imperceptible shake of her head, told me that I’d won, too. We wouldn’t discuss Robert today.



* * *



—



First things first. Eleanor didn’t even bother following her bags up to her room. You just know what it will look like, Eleanor said, small, a poster of Chaplin’s Great Dictator, but in French. (As it turned out, she was wrong: there was a poster, but of Le Magicien d’Oz.) Instead, she marched out of the hotel, arm in arm with Ellie, and walked two doors up to see the rest of the family. And the bookstore.

Eleanor admired the store from outside first. She craned her neck to see the sign, and then walked across the street, narrowly avoiding a slaloming Vespa that would have killed her. Ellie went across to join her and I looked at the two of them, godmother and goddaughter, as they pointed to various floors: this is where we sleep, this is where we eat, this is where the landlady lives. Arm in arm, the two crossed back—looking both ways this time—and went inside.

Ellie had left Daphne in charge of the register, and Daphne wavered there like a ghost, worn-out from school, her stay in the hospital. She should have been resting upstairs in bed, but she’d tried that and didn’t like it. She insisted the store, on the other hand, calmed her. And the reliable absence of customers meant it was almost as quiet as her bedroom. Nevertheless, seeing Daphne through Eleanor’s eyes, I winced. Daphne was better, but not completely better. It was one reason I’d not been answering Declan, who’d been texting. I wanted to be able to say everything was fine. It wasn’t.

“Tante Eleanor! Bienvenue!” Daphne said, and let herself be swept up in a hug.

“My, my,” Eleanor said into Daphne’s hair, which, to me, still smelled of hospital. I worried my brain would ensure it always would. “A French welcome! So fancy.”

“Les jumeaux sont où?” I said. Because I wanted to demonstrate some competency, too, in some tiny area of my life. French would do.

“Peter and Annabelle are up in the children’s section,” Daphne said. The twins had rejoined us at Daphne’s express request, and since I wasn’t in a position to deny anything Daphne wanted, request them I did. I would be lying if I said I didn’t like having them around, too. Their love was easy, powerful, general.

“Ah, yes,” Eleanor said. “The foundlings. I’m so curious to meet them.”

“Daphne,” I said, “you left them up there tous seuls?”

“Ma mère,” Ellie said, “just because we live in a nineteenth-century building doesn’t mean we can’t have us some twenty-first-century technology.”

“Qu’est-ce que c’est?” I said.

Daphne held up a little tablet, an iPad knockoff that I was using to forestall her acquisition of an actual phone. Previously, Daphne had prized an iPod hand-me-down of Ellie’s, but this tablet was actually quite nice; I’d bought a model with a spiffier camera, quietly thinking that while Daphne was at school, I could explore its filmmaking capabilities. Back in my own school days, filmmaking had meant borrowing loaner equipment that was always missing a key piece or due back before you were done. Now everyone had the equipment (because now everything, including one’s phone, was equipment). Anyone could use it. Even me. Especially me. I’d finally make my film.

Except I’d first learn that someone was making films of me. Of us all.

“Asif rigged a camera up there,” Ellie said, “for just this reason.”

Eleanor looked at me with raised eyebrows. I thought she was alarmed about the camera—that’s what was panicking me now—but then I realized it was the mention of Asif.

“Asif rigged a what?” I said.

“Asif is her petit ami,” Daphne said to Eleanor.

“He’s not so petit,” I said to Eleanor. “Taller than me. Handsome.”

“He’s a good friend,” Ellie said. (She even blushed, which alarmed Eleanor and relieved me; I’d been worried that Ellie no longer blushed about anything.)

“But wait—what’s he doing with cameras in my house?” I said.

Ellie sighed. “You know we always lose more books from the children’s section because we don’t have someone up there. So now we don’t have to worry. You just click and watch. On anything. Even your phone.”

“That’s fascinating,” Eleanor said.

Everyone looked to me. I imagined a camera swinging my way. Wide shot, close-up, silence.

No one said anything then, until Daphne, my linguist, my wise younger child, said, “un ange passe,” an angel is passing, the expression one deploys during awkward pauses in a conversation. It wasn’t perfectly deployed here, but I was grateful for it all the same, at least until Annabelle, who’d chosen that exact moment to descend the stairs, shot a startled look at Daphne.

“Un ange?” Annabelle asked. “Is it your papa?”



* * *



—

Non.

Eleanor could not believe it. All the food before us was cooked from frozen?

Oh, but oui.

We were introduced to Chef Picard by Molly, who “cooked” a meal or two for us early on. I thought at the time that she had quite outdone herself: sliced duck breast with marinated mushrooms; pork tenderloin in a mustard sauce; monkfish; delicate green beans in butter; flaky, crisp apple tarts, more savory than sweet. But as we were soon to learn, all she—and every other woman and man in Paris, and not a few restaurants—had done was remove some packaging and turn on an oven.