The Room on Rue Amélie(17)

“Oh, dear,” Madame Dacher said, kneeling beside Ruby and squeezing her hand. “I’m afraid your baby might be coming just now. My husband has gone for a doctor.”

“Coming now?” Ruby repeated in disbelief, struggling to sit up. “No, no, it’s too early. Far too early. I’m only six months along. And what about Marcel? Marcel should be here.”

“Shhhh,” Madame Dacher whispered, her voice soft and songlike. “We’ll find Monsieur Benoit, dear. Everything is going to be all right. You just relax.”

Ruby was about to answer, but this time, when the pain in her belly returned, it was so blinding that she lost consciousness, slipping into a silent, jagged darkness.



WHEN RUBY AWOKE, THERE WAS sunlight streaming through the window. It took her a few seconds to get her bearings, to remember the terror and the pain that had brought her here. The baby!

“Madame Dacher!” she cried out, sitting up with great effort. Her whole body ached, and she was still on the couch, covered in a white sheet and a faded blue blanket someone had knitted. “Madame Dacher?”

It was Charlotte who emerged from the kitchen instead, her face pale. “Ruby! Are you all right?”

“I—I don’t know. What happened?”

“I—” Charlotte seemed at a loss for words. “I’m going to go get my mother, okay?”

“Charlotte?” Ruby felt suddenly shaky, unsure. “Is everything okay with the baby?” She began to reach for her belly, but Charlotte thrust a cup of tea into her hands instead.

“Here, drink this. I’ll go get Maman.”

By the time Charlotte returned with her mother in tow, Ruby already knew. She had felt the contours of her deflated belly through the blanket, sensed the emptiness in the space where life had grown. “I lost the baby, didn’t I?” she asked in a whisper, her vision blurred by tears.

Madame Dacher waved Charlotte away, and as the girl disappeared down the hall, Madame Dacher sat down beside Ruby and took her hands. “My dear, I am so sorry. The baby was stillborn.”

“No,” Ruby whispered.

“The doctor arrived soon after you lost consciousness and gave you something for the pain. The baby was already coming. He—he never breathed. He didn’t cry. He didn’t feel a thing.”

“It was a boy,” Ruby said dully. It was just like she’d imagined, a boy in Marcel’s image. He was gone before he’d ever lived.

Madame Dacher nodded, squeezing Ruby’s hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“May I see him?”

Madame Dacher looked surprised. “Oh, I’m sure you don’t want to—”

Ruby cut her off. “Please. I must see my baby.”

Madame Dacher looked at her before nodding slowly and rising. She returned clutching something swaddled that looked far too small to be a baby. When she put the bundle in Ruby’s arms, Ruby gasped. Here, no larger than a child’s doll, was her own son, his tiny face blue-tinged and still.

“No,” she breathed. She bent to kiss his forehead, startled, despite herself, to find it so cold. “No,” she whispered again. “You must come back.” The baby had Marcel’s nose, the shape of his mouth. Ruby wondered what his eyes looked like, but they were already closed forever. His ears were tiny and freezing; his hair was downy, his chin no wider than the tip of Ruby’s thumb. “How did I let you die?”

“My dear,” Madame Dacher said, gently taking the baby from Ruby’s grasp when her tears had finally stopped falling. “It is not your fault. Sometimes all the love in the world can’t protect a person against his fate.”





CHAPTER TEN


April 1941

Marcel didn’t come home the night of the stillbirth or the next. Ruby couldn’t get out of bed; she knew she would never forgive herself for not protecting her child, though the Dachers’ kindly doctor friend had told her she wasn’t to blame, that these things sometimes simply happen for no reason at all.

Charlotte checked on her thrice a day, each time bringing food, which Ruby had no appetite for. “You mustn’t worry, Ruby,” Charlotte said on the second night, when she delivered a watery soup of potatoes and beef. “You will have another baby one day. I know you will.”

And though Ruby nodded and tried to smile, her heart was breaking. She knew with a dull certainty that there would be no more babies. She’d been deluding herself into thinking that a child would have fixed what was broken in her marriage. Even if Marcel was working for a good cause, he had abandoned her long ago.

On the third night, Marcel came home just before midnight and found Ruby propped up on pillows on the living room sofa, staring at the wall. “What are you doing awake?” he asked.

“Where have you been?” she asked, instead of replying.

“I had work to do. I told you, Ruby, this isn’t something I can talk about.”

“Were you out with your British friend? Feeling that you were making some sort of difference in this goddamned war?”

He looked startled. “I am making a difference, Ruby. What are you going on about?”

She stared at him for a long time. What had she seen in him when their eyes first met across that café in New York? What had made her so sure that he was worth giving up her life for? She could hardly remember anymore. “I lost the baby,” she said.