The Paris Key Page 11

  The woman in front of her, with Angela’s hair. Her niece. Genevieve.

  “It is so good to see you, Genevieve. All grown up! You are beautiful.”

  “You are the beautiful one, as always, Tante Pasquale,” Genevieve said. “Catharine sends her love. She’ll be back on Thursday.”

  “I wish I could cook for you.”

  Genevieve smiled. “Me too! I have dreamed of your couscous over the years. And do you remember when you used to make me chocolat chaud—hot chocolate?”

  “Catharine won’t let me cook anymore. Where is the milk?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Outside the Alzheimer’s facility, the streets were lined with traditional cream-colored stone and brick buildings. Fanciful black wrought-iron balconies, elaborate corbels under the eaves, carved shields over each doorway added grace to the blocky forms.

  Genevieve walked down rue Blanche, past a long row of Vespas and motorcycles, noting a pizzeria and a couscous diner, a couple of dress shops, a cute bright red bar called Blabla (what a great name for a bar).

  Though Genevieve had steeled herself against profound changes in her aunt, it was still a shock to see what the years, and Alzheimer’s, had wrought. Why had she let Jason talk her into a honeymoon in Hawaii? She was one of those weird people who didn’t particularly like sun or sand, much less resorts full of tourists. She should have insisted on coming to Paris, except that Jason said he had a friend with a condo where they could stay for free, and her aunt and uncle didn’t have much room for them, and a hotel would have been expensive. And Parisians were snooty, weren’t they? And Jason had a client in Hawaii; he could do a little schmoozing and then write off the whole trip; it would be a win-win.

  But the truth was that Genevieve hadn’t pushed the idea of Paris. Her time with Uncle Dave and Aunt Pasquale had saved her after the death of her mother. But . . . it was also an unwelcome reminder of such raw vulnerability, such a painful time, that to relive it was too grueling even to contemplate. Marrying Jason was the start to a new life, one without regrets, without dwelling on the losses of the past. Or so she had imagined at the time.

  What had Pasquale been telling Angela to do, in her reverie? What did she think Angela should tell Jim?

  Probably it was some inconsequential confidence that the sisters-in-law had traded. Spending too much on a dress, drinking a little too much, losing a precious piece of jewelry. And what would it matter at this point, anyway? All the players were long gone, existing only in the memories of those who had known them. Still alive in Pasquale’s mind more than in most, in that odd, Zen-like state of here and now (and very long ago) that afflicted so many with dementia.

  Genevieve wondered how Catharine dealt with her mother looking through her, not recognizing her, answering questions that had not been asked. Since it had been so long, it was possible that even a healthy Pasquale would not have recognized her niece Genevieve after all these years . . . but what must it be like to have your mother’s familiar eyes rest upon you with that unsettling emptiness, that lack of recognition? At the worst, even when Angela went into hospice, she had always recognized her children.

  But . . . could Pasquale’s admonition have been about something more? Could Angela have been troubled when she came to Paris? To Genevieve she had always referred to it as a carefree trip before having a second child; a visit to see her brother, Dave, in the City of Lights.

  The brother she adored. Though . . . she had never returned to Paris, and Dave had never come to visit them in California. Genevieve hadn’t wondered much about it as a kid; it was simply the way it was. It was an expensive trip, and neither family had much discretionary income. But still . . .

  Genevieve remembered one night, sitting on the floor with her uncle, hunched over a rusted lock they were putting back together. When she leaned forward, the strange old piece of metal she wore as a talisman fell out of the neckline of her shirt.

  Dave’s hands went still as he stared at it. Normally Genevieve didn’t see much family resemblance between Uncle Dave and her much younger mother, but in that moment their eyes had the same cast: about a thousand years old.

  “Um . . . I found this in my mom’s drawer, after she died.” Genevieve reached up to stroke the necklace. “It was in a package from Paris. Was it from you?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you think she would mind that I took it?” she asked, made nervous by his continued silence. “Or . . . do you want it back?”

  “No, of course not,” he said with a sad smile. “It’s just as it should be. It looks good on you. It’s a key. Originally from Syria.”

  “It’s a key?” she held it up to look at it. It didn’t look like a key.

  He nodded. “Very ancient. Very special. Keep it safe.”

  She nodded. “You know, my mother always told me stories about you. She loved you so much. And Paris, too.”

  After a long pause he said, simply, “Did she, now?”

  Genevieve tried to conjure memories of Angela—of the woman she had been, not just as a mother—but the truth was that her recollections were a vague jumble. Soft, capable hands. The sadness in her dark eyes. The quiet, stubborn insistence with which she stared down the neighbors at the city council meeting. Her sweet voice singing: “I love you, a bushel and a peck . . .”

  Memory was a tricky thing. Not long after their mother had died, Genevieve had an argument with her brother over a huge pile of snapshots they were sorting through. Genevieve had a distinct memory of the family road trip to Yosemite, but Nick told her she hadn’t been born yet; it was right after Angela came home from Paris. “The only way you were there was in utero,” he’d said. Genevieve must have manufactured the memory from the familiar photos, kept on the mantel.

  Toward the end, when Angela was in hospice, she had long talks with Nick and Jim. But not with Genevieve; Angela would just hug her daughter as hard as she could, and cry. Genevieve wished she could forget the odd stench of the room, the stinging tang of rubbing alcohol and the unpleasant stewed-food aroma that wafted down the hall from the cafeteria. At home, her mother had always smelled of baking spices: vanilla and cinnamon, yeast, sometimes citrus. That scent was gone, masked by the cloying, disturbing sourness of imminent death and, worse, the doomed efforts to keep it at bay. She had felt suffocated by those smells and by the tightness of her mother’s grip.

  As always, Genevieve’s mind overflowed with questions she wished she could ask Angela, not as child to mother, but as woman to woman.

  Genevieve looked up to see that she was in front of the Moulin Rouge. Outside, a swollen line of people waited for the doors to open. They had the harried, annoyed, yet determinedly cheerful demeanor of tourists. It felt surreal, slightly dreamlike, to walk out of a state-of-the-art medical facility and stroll past such a famous club, a place that looked like a movie set. But that’s the way it was in Paris: everywhere she looked were sights so iconic as to seem like tourist clichés. The Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame, the Arc de Triumph, the Louvre. Adorable florist shops and cheese shops and chocolate shops. Historic fountains and the bridges over the Seine and plazas chock-full of outdoor café tables under colorful umbrellas.

  She considered trying to walk all the way home instead of taking the Métro, but the day had turned gray and rain looked imminent. Also, though the lunch at the Alzheimer’s center hadn’t looked very appetizing, it reminded Genevieve that she hadn’t eaten much for breakfast.

  There were plenty of restaurant dining options, but she wasn’t up to lingering over a meal, alone, in a Parisian restaurant. Not yet.

  So she zoomed back on the Métro, easily reversing her steps. It began to sprinkle as she made her way from the Métro stop to the Village Saint-Paul and was truly raining by the time she arrived back at the shop. She fitted the key in the front door and pushed it open to the sound of the ticking clocks. The dusty confines of the shop and apar
tment were warm and dry and felt like home.

  She brought the cheese dome out of the fridge and laid it on the table beside a rather pathetic heel of stale baguette. Then she took out a small cutting board and sliced the remaining pear, which was already going soft.

  Genevieve polished off the last of the cheese and ham just as she finished her novel. She would have to go grocery shopping tomorrow. Not to mention book shopping. Like most readers, she felt nervous without a stack of novels at her disposal. In fact, she sometimes wondered: What did people do if they couldn’t read? On the other hand, maybe without those hours lost to novels she would have become a championship knitter, or a rock climber.

  Luckily, Paris was, hearteningly, still a city of books. Across the street and a few doors down was a bookstore called the Red Wheelbarrow—surely, given their name, they would carry books in English?—and of course there was the famous Shakespeare and Company, not far from Notre-Dame.

  Then it dawned on her that Uncle Dave used to keep a small bookshelf full of novels in English. He lent them out only to his closest friends and even had a personalized stamp, a hefty metal object with his name in a bold, blocky script that reminded Genevieve of something from the Cold War era, like pictures from a history book about the Soviet Union:

  DAVE MACKENZIE

  Under Lock and Key, Serrurier,

  Rue Saint-Paul, Village Saint-Paul

  Dave had handed her the stamp and a big ink pad. “Could you go through the books and make sure they’re all stamped? That way they’re sure to make their way back to me.”

  Genevieve had been avoiding the master bedroom since she’d arrived, hesitant to face those ghosts. But now she opened the heavy wooden door at the end of the hall to reveal a simple chamber, virtually unchanged. The small double bed was neatly made, covered (as always) in a wedding-ring quilt made by Pasquale’s mother and aunts and given to the young couple as a present upon their marriage. Tante Pasquale’s dressing table was topped (as ever) with a lace-edged linen runner and several dainty bottles of expensive perfume, a rare luxury. There were a series of baby and school pictures of Catharine on one wall, a few other family members. And two framed photos of Genevieve: one, standing with Dave and Pasquale and Catharine in front of Notre-Dame; the other a high school graduation photo she didn’t remember sending. Perhaps her father had done so.

  Uncle Dave’s highboy still held a little pewter dish full of coins—they used to be francs; now they were euros. Every night he emptied the coins from his jingling pockets; in the morning he would hand a few to Genevieve and send her to buy baguettes.

  “The government pays a subsidy to bakers, to keep baguettes affordable. There were too many hungry people during the war; now at least one can always buy baguettes!”

  Along one sidewall was a low bookcase jammed with English-language novels and collected essays: Ernest Hemingway. Mark Twain. Henry Miller. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Henry James. Gertrude Stein. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Americans, all, who had found their way to Paris and left behind a bit of their hearts.

  Genevieve pulled out The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein.

  It dawned on her that she shared her hometown of Oakland, California, with the American expat, who had set up a celebrated salon in Paris not far from the Luxembourg Gardens, where she entertained the likes of Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway. Stein had, in fact, given Oakland one of its few claims to fame, famously remarking: “There is no there, there.”

  Genevieve took the book into her bedroom and set it on the nightstand, but she didn’t feel like reading at the moment; in fact, she was alert to the point of fidgety. It must be jet lag: tired at the wrong time, wide-awake at odd moments.

  Should she go out for another walk? It was raining in earnest now, a steady beat of droplets drumming loudly against the casement windows. There was probably an umbrella here somewhere, shoved behind holiday ornaments in one of the few overstuffed closets. Catharine had encouraged her not to be shy, to help herself to whatever she wanted. Still . . . while Paris in the rain sounded romantic, it also sounded cold and dreary.

  She had noticed rags and a mop and bucket in the closet where she found the pilot light for the water heater. But if she was going to clean, first she needed music.

  Genevieve flipped through the albums by the old phonograph, hoping to find Edith Piaf or Jacques Brel or something else typically French. The sort of music that would be on the soundtrack of a Hollywood movie set in Paris. But to a record they were American, probably music for a homesick Dave: Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett. Finally she chose an album and put it on the turntable, clumsily setting the needle in the groove as Dave had taught her so long ago.

  The apartment filled with Patsy Cline’s voice singing “Crazy for feeling so lonely . . .” as Genevieve dusted and swept and washed the floors, every stroke of her arms making the apartment feel more like hers, like home. For real.

  It would be an exaggeration for Genevieve to suggest she liked housework. But she was enough of a farm girl, she supposed, to feel uncomfortable having people doing the work for her. Jason had tried to hire a housecleaner many times. Most of her friends would have loved the idea of their husbands suggesting such a thing. But Genevieve felt it beyond awkward: What was she supposed to do while they cleaned, when she felt compelled to pick up a mop and work beside them? Should she kick back and read a book, lifting her feet while they swept under her? Or should she hand over the keys and take a walk, allowing virtual strangers access to her things?

  Jason insisted she was being paranoid. But Genevieve had walked through people’s private spaces when she was young. She had peeked through drawers, shattered the invisible barriers that protected their privacy. She hadn’t hurt or stolen anything, but she had seen. And even though she didn’t really have any secrets worth protecting, the thought made her feel too . . . exposed.

  Genevieve was dusting the front room when she remembered her promise to Philippe D’Artavel. His dossier must be hidden somewhere on Dave’s crowded desk. After looking through a couple of messy stacks of bills (some with notations in Catharine’s upright French-style hand, evidence that she had gone through his papers), she finally found the current job files, piled on a side table in one dim corner of the apartment.

  They were labeled in Dave’s spidery, all-caps script:

  MLLE CORRINE GERARD, 35 RUE DE VENISE

  M JEAN-PAUL ANGELINI, 1134 RUE SAINT-SAËNS

  M PHILIPPE D’ARTAVEL, 283 1/2 RUE DE TRACY

  MME MICHELLE VELAIN, 6P RUE EGINHARD

  The files were full of receipts and photos and notes:

  Husband passed away, charge half price

  Yale or Corbin Ironclad locks, take photos for book

  Install modern security at points of entry but maintain antique locks throughout—replace master bedroom lock with salvaged pancake lock or push-key lever lock

  Genevieve brought Philippe’s file over to the dining room table, then filled the electric kettle and put the water on for tea.

  Wind and rain batted at the windows. A man ran by holding a newspaper over his head, then ducked into the shelter of one of the arches. A cat yowled piteously until a little red door opened and it dashed inside.

  Genevieve returned to the table, spread open the dossier, and thumbed through the notes and pictures. Whenever Dave encountered antique locks and keys, he documented them by photographing them and drawing a schema of each, along with historical notes. He had planned to include all of these in his book: Love Laughs at Locksmiths. There were captioned photos of the different items. But the quality was terrible; they were grainy, amateurish. Probably taken by Dave himself with an impossibly old camera he had salvaged.

  Genevieve picked up Philippe’s dossier and out fell a hand-drawn map. She studied it from several angles before she realized it was of the souterrain, the catacombs.

  What wa
s that doing in the file?

  The kettle whistled. She took a bag of Earl Grey out of an old tin and placed it in the coffee mug she had brought with her, the only souvenir (besides clothes and toiletries) she had brought from America, from her past life. A life that already felt eons ago, although it had been only a couple of days. If she were to return to the U.S. tomorrow, almost no one would have noticed she’d gone, and yet she already felt as though she’d lived a lifetime in Paris.

  There was nothing quite so useful as travel, she decided, to illustrate Einstein’s theory that time could shrink or lengthen relative to one’s situation.

  Though Dave was messy, he had his own method of organization. He had kept a page or two for each room in a house, documenting its lock or sets of locks, and on each was a letter and a number: E-7, W-4. These corresponded to bins under his workbench in the shop, with some overflowing onto shelves in the living room.

  Genevieve found the bins corresponding to Philippe D’Artavel’s house and brought them back to the kitchen table. She spread out several pages of Le Monde newspaper she’d found in a tall stack in the living room, then set out the old locks.

  She took her time, cleaning and putting them back together with Patsy Cline crooning in the background, getting her hands dirty with oil and grunge, loving the smell and the motor memory.

  “Your mind is concentrating and yet not, which is a neat trick. When you give yourself over to a lock, you don’t need meditation,” Dave would say, laughing. “One day some Zen master is going to figure this out and create a whole new craze, learning to meditate while working as a locksmith!”

  But as Genevieve focused on the antique lock in her hands (beautiful, shaped like a lion’s head), taking it apart, cleaning and oiling the parts, then putting it back together, her mind wandered back to her encounter with Tante Pasquale.