The Paris Library(54)

We returned to Maman. Papa knelt beside her and gently wiped her tears. He and I tucked our arms around her waist and helped her to bed. In their room, Papa paced, and Maman continued to weep.

“Shall I call Dr. Thomas?” I asked.

“All the medicine in the world won’t help,” Papa said. “I’ll stay with her. You should rest.”

For once, I didn’t argue. I felt guilty about leaving Maman in her grief, yet relieved to contend with my own. Stalag. A new word in the vocabulary of loss. Until today, we’d been able to tell ourselves that Rémy was making his way back to us. What would we tell ourselves now?

At my desk, with his fountain pen, I wrote:


Dear Rémy,

We hate that you’re a prisoner, hate that you’re hurt and far from home. We’re so worried.



Pouring out my feelings brought relief, but the letter would offer Rémy no comfort. I opened the pen and let the ink drip over the page. I began again.


Dear Rémy,



Dear Rémy was as far as I got.

In the morning, I dressed and went to my parents’ room. Maman was tucked under the duvet. Eyes closed, she whimpered as if she were unable to wake from a nightmare. In front of the armoire, Papa buttoned his shirt.

“I’ll stay with her,” I said.

“Maman wouldn’t want you to see her like this.” He escorted me to the front door. “I know of someone who can look after her.”

Outside, there were few people on the pavement, and no cars on the cobbles. The Library was strangely calm, too. I missed Margaret. I missed Paul. I even missed the sound of stern Mrs. Turnbull shushing students.

“I heard about Rémy. I’m so sorry.” Professor Cohen proffered a novel by Laura Ingalls Wilder called The Long Winter. “I’ve marked a particularly memorable passage. During a snowstorm, a pioneer family huddles together in their shack, unable to get warm. Pa begins to play the fiddle and tells his three daughters to dance. They giggle and prance, and this keeps them from freezing to death. Later, Pa must tend the livestock, or the animals will die. When he steps outside, he can’t see six centimeters in front of him. He holds on to the clothesline to make it to the barn. Inside, Ma holds her breath, waiting.” When I took the novel, Professor Cohen covered my hands with her own. “We can’t see what’s coming. All we can do is hold the line.”



* * *




BEFORE DINNER, I peeked into my parents’ room, where Maman was sleeping. A nurse was seated near the bed. Thinning brown hair framed a ruddy face. She looked familiar. A subscriber? A volunteer at the hospital?

“I’m Odile.”

“Eugénie,” she said.

“How is she?”

“Your mother hasn’t stirred. I’m afraid she’s in shock.”

Days went by. After work, Bitsi and I tramped around the Tuileries.

“How’s your mother?” I asked.

“She waits at the door like my brother will come home any minute.”



* * *




PARISIANS GOT USED to the Occupiers. Some did business with them, selling film for their cameras or beer to quench their thirst. Others refused to acknowledge them, pretending they weren’t there. Some women accepted compliments and invitations to dinner. Others pursed their lips in distaste. In the metro, I scowled at a skinny German soldier until he lowered his gaze.



* * *




IT WAS REASSURING to know that Eugénie was at home, one eye on Maman, the other on her knitting. Still, I wondered how I knew her. Someone who’d helped with the Soldiers’ Service? The mother of a school friend?

Then one evening, as Papa and I saw her off, he helped her don her jacket and proposed seeing her home, an offer he’d never made to the charwoman. Eugénie gave a rabbity huff and scurried down the stairs. Suddenly I knew—this “nurse” was the harlot with him at the hotel.

“How could you bring her here?” I hissed.

For a second, he appeared taken aback. Then with a calculating glint in his eye, he added up what I might know, subtracted his own guilt, and hypothesized how he could divide the attention between his mistress and my mother. After considering the elements of this chaotic equation, he chose his argument as well as Rémy did at one of his law school debates.

“What choice is there? Ask your aunt Janine to come back from the Free Zone? Bring in some stranger?”

“Maybe we could try to find Aunt Caro. She would want to know. Would want to help.”

“Your mother would have a conniption if we talked to Caroline behind her back.”

“But, Papa—”

“Perhaps you’d like to tend Maman?”

I was afraid of drowning in the bottomless depth of her grief. “Can’t we hire a nurse?”

“The ones who didn’t have the good sense to flee are working ten-hour shifts in hospitals. Eugénie’s doing a fine job.”

I snorted. “I’m sure you’ve enjoyed her bedside manner.”

“Don’t discuss matters you know nothing about! Besides, Eugénie’s practically a nurse.”

“Working in a library doesn’t make me practically a book. Maman needs a real nurse.”