The Paris Library(96)

“Has anyone seen Mrs. Gustafson?” Mrs. Ivers murmured.

“I tried to check on her,” old Mrs. Murdoch replied. “I could hear her moving around, but she didn’t come to the door.”

“Like before.”

“I wish we’d been kinder back then.”

“So do I.”

“Something terrible must have happened. Even when her son died, she never missed Mass.”



* * *




ELEANOR DECIDED THE silent treatment had gone on long enough and marched over to Odile’s. “Lily knows she did wrong,” she pleaded my case on the porch. “She’s a young girl who made a mistake. A girl who loves and misses you.”

Odile let Eleanor say her piece, then gently closed the door.

In need of divine intervention, I carried Joe to church and lit all the candles I could find. “We pway,” he said.

I gave God two days. When he didn’t respond, I tried a more direct approach. At the rectory, Father invited me into the kitchen. Without his robes, he resembled someone’s grandpa. He scooted a plate of Oreos in my direction, but for once I wasn’t hungry. Figuring that half-truths were better than no truth at all, I crafted a story, careful not to say anything about my accusations.

“That’s all?” Iron-Collar asked skeptically.

For so long, I’d wanted to hold a secret close to my heart. Something that only I knew. Now I had one, but the secret wasn’t exciting, it was pathetic.

“She caught me snooping. It’s a pretty big deal.”

“Enough for her to stop coming to church?”

“Why won’t she let me say I’m sorry?”

“Sometimes, when people have gone through tough times, or been betrayed, the only way for them to survive is to cut off the person who hurt them.”

She’d never gone back to France, never mentioned her parents or aunts and uncles or cousins. Odile had forsaken her whole family—it wouldn’t be hard to leave me behind.

On Saturday afternoon, Iron-Collar’s car pulled up to the curb. I opened my window and ducked down so no one would see me spying. He and Odile spoke amiably on her porch about the food-pantry fund-raiser. The minute he mentioned me, she backed into her house.



* * *




LIFE WENT ON without Odile. I began my junior year without our French lessons. I hadn’t suffered such a loss since my mother had died. But Mom hadn’t had a choice. Odile chose to stay away. Trudging home from school, I passed her house. The curtains were closed. I knew if I tried the door, it would be locked.



* * *




AT LUNCHTIME, Mary Louise and Keith made out under the bleachers, which left me alone in the cafeteria. Tiffany Ivers slithered over. “Bet your stepmother can’t wait until you graduate and you’re out of her hair.”

Tiffany picked on John Brady because his father was the custodian; she got everyone to call Mary Matthews “Pepperoni Pizza” because of her acne. I was the only kid at school with a stepmom. Divorce was a big-city problem, and the death of a mother so young was thankfully rare. I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what I had.

“Know how to say ‘stepmom’ in French?” I asked.

She stared at me, dull eyes half-hidden by her foofy bangs. Why had I spent years comparing my luck to hers, my looks to hers? I remembered the sweater Mom had crocheted, how I’d cared more about Tiffany Ivers’s opinion than I had about my mother’s feelings.

“Belle mère,” I said. “It means beautiful mother.”

“Is that supposed to be French? Sounds like you have some kind of speech impediment.”

A few years ago, this would have made me bawl. Now I knew that people who said cruel things should be cut from your life. I walked out. Away from her bitchy comments, from her narrow mind, I felt stronger.

Even in her silence, Odile taught me.



* * *




AT 7:33 A.M. on Saturday, I awoke to the screech of Scooby-Doo. “People are trying to sleep,” I yelled down the hall.

“Okee-dokey,” Joe yelled back, and lowered the volume half a notch.

Joe and Benjy, Benjy and Joe. I loved them, but they drove me crazy. Every time I sat down, Benjy grabbed at my waist and hoisted himself onto my lap. If our house had a chorus, it was “Joe, sweetie, will you get your finger out of your nose? Joe, take that finger out of your nose this minute. Get that finger out! Right now!” God, I missed Odile. There wasn’t a moment that I wasn’t aware of what I’d lost, what I’d thrown away by being reckless and selfish.

Eleanor peeked in my room. “Why don’t you and I take a drive?” she said. “We’ll put that learner’s permit to use.”

“What about the boys?” We never went anywhere without them. We never went anywhere, period.

“It won’t kill your father to watch them. Just us girls today. We’ll go to Good Hope.”

I loved the feel of the steering wheel gripped in my hands, the purr of the car as I hit the gas, the long stretches of pasture, the cows that watched us fly by. I loved that as we approached the city there was more than one radio station. I loved getting away from school, from the boys, from how I’d hurt Odile.

Good Hope had thirty thousand inhabitants. Right before we hit the city limits, I eased onto the shoulder so Eleanor could drive. We passed a Dairy Queen and a Best Western, chains that existed in the rest of the world. Froid had stop signs that no one stopped at; Good Hope had actual red lights. The sidewalks were twice as wide as ours, and drivers had to pay to park. We stopped right in front of the grandest department store in Montana, The Bon. That’s French for “good.” Five stories of blond bricks glimmered in the sun. Even the doors were grand, brass and glass without a single smudge. Inside, we were met by the scent of Wind Song. Islands of cosmetics beckoned. Eleanor guided me to the Clinique counter, where the saleswoman wore a long white jacket, like a doctor, like someone we could trust. She drew several shades of lipstick on her wrist. They resembled swatches of silk. The three of us considered them carefully, as if we were selecting drapes for the governor’s mansion.