The Paris Key Page 4

  She wishes she could tell Dave what is wrong. She wishes she knew herself. Since arriving in Paris she has been sleeping fourteen hours a day, waking only when Pasquale or Dave drags her from bed, insisting she shower and sit at the table. She has no interest in food or conversation, no interest in anything. She wants nothingness.

  “Did Jim . . . ? Did he hit you?” had been Dave’s first question, before they even got on the thruway from the airport. The natural query of a protective older brother, a brother old enough to be her father. There are snapshots, faded by now to yellow and blue, of Dave visiting from France, always with a young Angela astride his wide shoulders. So many photos that Dave once joked that he used to have a strange sort of growth on his back, but he’d had it removed when Angela was five so she could go to kindergarten without him.

  Now he asks again: “Did Jim do something to hurt you?”

  “No, Jim would never hurt me,” Angela answers with a firm shake of her head. Her auburn hair gleams in the light streaming through the café windows; her hands shake as she brings the coffee to her lips. The cup is tiny, holding a café au lait about half the size of one typically served in the States. The pain au chocolat, on the other hand, is easily twice the size of the typical American concoction. It is bigger than her hand, the hand still wearing the simple gold band Jim had placed upon it ten years ago, only six months after they had met at a peace rally in Washington, DC.

  She bites into the pastry. It is huge, yet unlike most overlarge things, it does not lack in taste. The flaky layers are soaked in rich French butter, chewy and crumbly at the same time. The chocolate is soft and creamy, a dark and sensuous experiment in cocoa.

  Angela’s eyes flutter closed as she loses herself to the sensual experience of caffeine and chocolate and butter, a memory of the last time she visited Dave, with Jim on their honeymoon.

  “Did he have an affair?” Dave asks.

  Angela understands why her brother is persisting. In his mind, it makes no sense. Dave adores his wife and always has; he forsook his country for hers, falling in love with Paris just as he did with Pasquale. In Dave’s mind, you built a life upon everyday pleasures, reveling in time spent with family and friends. He had been a neighborhood locksmith for more than thirty years, packing his little black bag and walking or bicycling all over Paris, happily letting people into their houses, opening old boxes and safes, installing safety equipment. He probably owns keys to half the homes and businesses in the city, and yet there is no question of trust with a man like Dave.

  In the middle of the day he would take a leisurely lunch at a café with a friend, and at night he would return to a lavish dinner prepared by the apparently ever-patient and pleasant Pasquale, often shared with extended family; on weekends he played pétanque with his friends in the Jardin des Tuileries. It is a good life, a steady life.

  What about Pasquale? Angela wonders. Does Pasquale ever wish to simply turn and walk away from her husband and child? To leave the cloying embrace of her big extended family, the ones who drop in for dinner, asking for help with child care and finding jobs and making rent?

  “No, no affair,” Angela answers simply.

  Dave gazes at her across the table, and she knows he wants her to say whatever it is she needs to say. But she has nothing for him. After so many years of tamping them down, swallowing her words whole, she doesn’t know how to explain the things that she is feeling.

  “I’ll go back,” Angela finally utters with as much conviction as she can summon. “I’m going back soon. I just . . . I just needed a little breathing room.”

  “Ah yes, of course,” says Dave, and Angela sees relief in his blue eyes. “Just a little vacation in the City of Lights, and you’ll be back to your old self!”

  The pain au chocolat sits heavy in her gut; the coffee churns.

  She is suffocating.

  She is gasping for breath.

  She is a terrible person.

  Chapter Five

  Catharine had been full of apologies to Genevieve for not being in Paris to greet her “little American cousin” at the airport, but Genevieve was just as glad. She liked the idea of taking an anonymous cab for the long ride into the city, experiencing the trip in silence, by herself. She wanted to be free to let the memories flood her mind, to sate her nostalgia, untainted by the presence of another, by the need for catching up or innocuous questions about the flight.

  Still, Genevieve hadn’t anticipated the effects of lack of sleep and the overwhelming, awkward strangeness of arriving, alone and unable to speak the language, in a foreign city.

  Her eyes were gritty and sore. Every part of her felt sticky with the funk of travel.

  Upon disembarking from the airplane, she found herself unaccountably irritated that all the signs were in French. Embarrassment washed over her when she couldn’t figure out which line to stand in for immigration, and when it was finally her turn at the kiosk she had a panicked moment when she couldn’t locate her passport. By the time Genevieve made her way to baggage claim, found her bags, and wandered through customs, she began to feel famished: a deep, sickly hunger.

  She emerged from the air-conditioned terminal into an unseasonably warm and muggy day under overcast skies. Her leggings stuck to her skin; her jacket was far too warm, but she couldn’t take it off—one arm was holding her purse and her carry-on; the other was pulling her suitcase, which was so heavy she’d had to pay an exorbitant overage charge at check-in in San Francisco.

  She fought the urge to calculate what time it “really” was (middle of the night? dawn?), reminding herself instead that this was it: Paris was the new reality.

  Paris. Where she didn’t speak the language and knew almost no one.

  By the time Genevieve made it to the taxi stand she was covered in a sheen of perspiration and wondered if she smelled as bad as she feared. She could feel a drop of sweat rolling down the center of her back. She had practiced a few lines in French and made a token stab at negotiating the cost of the trip into Paris with the supervisor at the taxi stand, but who was she kidding? At this point she would pay a small ransom to be dropped off in the Village Saint-Paul.

  All she wanted was to hide and regroup. To drop her luggage and peel off her clothes and take a shower. To pull herself together, far from chicly dressed strangers speaking their lyrical, unintelligible language.

  The cabdriver was North African, and French appeared to be his second language as well, so there was no attempt at small talk as they zoomed down the thruway in the blessedly air-conditioned cab. As her clamminess subsided, Genevieve looked out the window and started to relax. This is what she had remembered: ugly gray blocks of apartments and factories. She could be on the outskirts of Detroit, she thought, happiness suddenly bubbling up. The ordinariness of this approach to Paris seemed almost ludicrous, hiding as it did such a spectacular city. Like a winning sweepstakes ticket presented in a ripped and stained manila envelope, the kind usually tossed directly into the recycling.

  Once they escaped the thruway and made their way through thick city traffic to the Village Saint-Paul, Genevieve started to feel fluttery with excitement. She had an inkling of imminent victory, not unlike the feeling of being close to defeating a frustrating lock.

  True, she didn’t speak the language. And she hardly knew a soul in France. As Jason had tried his best to convince her, moving to Paris was a foolish, impulsive thing to do.

  Still. The last time Genevieve felt this kind of excitement was when she found out her husband had slept with another woman.

  That sounded terrible. She knew it did.

  And of course it had been wrenching, devastating, painful. She could still recall the nausea, the otherworldly sensation of the world falling away beneath her feet, like being on the Santa Cruz Big Dipper roller coaster with her brother when she was a kid: that queasy, thrilling rush as the cars whooshed down the first tall hill a
nd you weren’t sure whether you were about to throw up or were having fun or just wanted everything to stop so you could get off.

  But the truth was, Jason’s infidelity had cracked open the dark, cramped cell that her marriage had become.

  It was a glimmer of hope: her way out.

  A new start.

  Chapter Six

  The cobblestones were uneven beneath her feet, making the suitcase impossible to roll, and the air seemed even muggier than at the airport. But Genevieve was elated to see the neighborhood looked exactly as she remembered from the last time she was here, when she was fourteen.

  Nothing had changed.

  Of course it hadn’t. Given the scale of French history, nineteen years was a blink of an eye, the passing of a dust mote, a single tick of a clock.

  The rue Saint-Paul, main street of the fairy-tale-like Village Saint-Paul, dated back to the medieval period. Its minuscule antiques shops, art galleries, and restaurants looked nearly as ancient. The city of Paris was founded by the Romans; Notre-Dame itself was built upon the stone remnants of a Roman temple dedicated to Jupiter. There were catacombs below her feet, still in use, dug centuries before Europeans would ever set foot on what was later dubbed California.

  And unlike in America, Genevieve thought, people here would never bulldoze a centuries-old building to construct a 7-Eleven, even if such a convenience store were bound to make a fortune in a place where many shops—even in the capital city—were closed on Sundays and holidays, and in the middle of the day for the long lunch-hour sieste.

  The big sign on the front of the building still declared: UNDER LOCK AND KEY; DAVE MACKENZIE, PROPRIÉTAIRE. And under it, in French:

  SERRURIER: OUVERTURE PORTES BLINDÉES, DÉPANNAGE SERRURE, REFAIRE DES COPIES DES CLÉS, TARIFS COMPÉTITIFS.

  As ever, the big bay window displayed ancient keys—not unlike the one she wore around her neck—as well as metal lock plates and padlocks, from the antique to the new. A thick layer of dust muted and unified the inventory.

  For a delicious moment Genevieve was tempted to try picking the lock on the shop door, just to see if she could. But there were half a dozen people milling about rue Saint-Paul, window-shopping and ducking in and out of antiques stores. It wouldn’t do to get arrested for breaking and entering on her first day in Paris. So instead she used the key Catharine had sent her in the mail.

  She pushed the door wide, stepped in, and paused.

  This. This was what Genevieve had wanted. Ever since she’d learned of Dave’s passing, ever since Catharine had urged her to come to Paris, ever since she’d found the e-mails and confronted Jason about his affair with Quiana and realized her marriage was over. Ever since then, Genevieve had wanted to return to this place. Alone. All by herself. To breathe in the mingled aromas of stale pipe smoke and rusty metal and the oil Dave used to maintain his instruments.

  As a fourteen-year-old all she had seen were the old keys and locks, the charmingly antiquated world of the locksmith.

  But now, Genevieve recognized the contemporary tools of the trade: A relatively new machine for cutting keys sat on the back counter next to a rotating stand full of metal blanks (she remembered Dave teaching her to grind the keys by hand first, then with the machine); on one side wall, new hardware in molded plastic cases—dead bolts, hinges, padlocks—hung from hooks in regimented rows. These concessions to modern life were limited, however: Catharine had warned Genevieve that there was no Internet at the house, nothing more technologically sophisticated than an old broadcast TV, a record player, and plenty of LPs.

  Genevieve didn’t even have a cell phone she could use here. It was like being cast back into the 1950s.

  The shop shelves cradled a jumble of dusty door hardware, from locks and bolts to knockers and hinges and shutter stops. Many of the shutter stops were molded to look like flowers or what Genevieve, as a girl, thought were little Dutch people. As she picked one up now, feeling its solid weight in her hand, she realized why: Their old-fashioned hats made them look like characters out of a children’s book. Door knockers featured ornate scrollwork or took the form of hands holding balls, or fanciful fish; the old metal was spotted with rust or covered in layers of chipped paint; multiple colors peeked through, hinting at other times, other lives, other fashions.

  Genevieve slid open the “special” drawer. It was full of ancient keys, many of which, like her necklace, bore little resemblance to keys today. She smiled as she picked up a black iron ring, from which jangled a dozen different skeleton keys: She remembered her uncle explaining that this was a Victorian-era thief’s ring. Dave had always intended to write a book about such historic hardware.

  “Complete with photos, Genevieve. What do you think? C’est super, n’est-ce pas? I am going to call it Love Laughs at Locksmiths. Or maybe The Paris Key, because really, Paris is the key to happiness! What do you think?”

  More than a dozen clocks crowded the back wall of the shop, a few with their shoulders touching, as though trying to edge one another out. Their hands marched through the hours, filling the compact space with their frenetic ticktocking. Only two indicated anything approximating the current time; Genevieve remembered how the three Bavarian cuckoo clocks used to make their raucous announcements at random moments throughout the day.

  “They are as accurate with time as you are, old man!” Tante Pasquale would say.

  “Ah, but there’s always time for a kiss, old woman,” Dave would respond, nuzzling her neck and making her laugh.

  Genevieve heard their laughing voices, ghostlike, as real as the ticking of the clocks that surrounded her. They seemed as much a part of the building as the smell of pipe tobacco and the occasional whiffs of damp emanating from the plaster-covered stone walls. Had Pasquale and Dave left bits of themselves here, gossamer traces of their love lodged in the crevices of the tile floors, in the grain of the oak beams overhead?

  More likely it was simply jet lag, the otherworldly, out-of-time sensations that resulted from international travel.

  Genevieve hesitated, steeling herself for a moment before finally unlocking the little door at the back of the shop. It opened directly onto Dave and Pasquale’s salon—their living room.

  The apartment was smaller than she remembered. A cramped, old-style Parisian haunt made up of a main room, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. The toilet was in its own tiny closet (not even large enough for a sink) off the hallway; the shower was in a small room attached to the master bedroom. Throughout, the floor was tiled, decorated with a muted design of terra-cotta, ochre, and green; the finish was matte, unlike any tiles she’d seen in the U.S. Threadbare rugs warmed the bedrooms, but otherwise the bare floor made sweeping easy. The beamed ceilings were at least ten feet tall, and the lace-curtained casement windows were embellished with flower boxes, their contents now long dead.

  The windows and front door, trimmed in a chalky green paint, opened onto one of a series of interconnected cobblestone courtyards: the heart of the Village Saint-Paul. Ivy-covered walls, tiny wrought-iron balconies with colorful flowers spilling over the edges, spindly tables and chairs set outside for morning coffee. Two old bicycles leaned up against a stone pillar, as though awaiting riders.

  It was as charming as she remembered, a picture-postcard neighborhood.

  The apartment itself was crammed with the collection of a lifetime. Clearly, no one had gone through the clutter since Dave’s death and Pasquale’s relocation. Seeing it now brought home the grim, quotidian logistics of death and dying, of boxing things up and selling things off. Genevieve remembered coming upon her father as he was cleaning out her mother’s closet: He was sitting on the bed, tears in his eyes. Jim didn’t say anything (he never said very much) as Genevieve took the pink negligee from his calloused farmer’s hands and folded it on top of the pile in the big black plastic garbage bag, then continued until all that remained were empty hangers. Nick joined them, wordl
essly taking down shoe boxes full of family photos and old letters, the bag of half-finished knitting projects, the fancy maroon satin heels none of them remembered ever seeing her wear.

  Poor Catharine had been saddled with dealing with her father’s death, alone. And now she was watching her mother slip away as well.

  A small, never-to-be-given-voice part of Genevieve was glad she’d gotten the whole “parents’ dying” thing out of the way already. Now, at least, the dread of loss no longer loomed over her. Her father’s passing last year had been a long, drawn-out battle with congestive heart failure, but to be fair, her brother, Nick, had taken the brunt of those doctor visits and hospital stays.

  Jason had been exceedingly kind through the whole ordeal. He’d played the devoted husband to perfection, and Genevieve had been grateful to have his easygoing presence by her side to support her through her father’s final days and the memorial service.

  Later she would discover that this was when Jason had started sleeping with Quiana.

  But she had been blissfully ignorant of his infidelity at the time. And when her mother passed she’d had her father, however silent, and her brother, however annoying. But at least they had shared the sorrow. And when she came to spend the summer in Paris, of course, she’d had Uncle Dave and Aunt Pasquale, who had mourned with her and held her and shown her she wasn’t alone.

  Catharine had no one.

  On the other hand, Genevieve thought as she opened the windows to air out the stuffy apartment, Catharine had grown up in the Village Saint-Paul. Surely she had friends, and there were plenty of relatives on her mother’s side of the family. Right now she was visiting her godmother in Provence, so she wasn’t alone. Or so Genevieve hoped.

  Not for the first time, Genevieve admonished herself for not remaining closer to her Parisian family. She had been furious, and hurt, when Dave had put her on the plane, sending her back to California, when all she wanted was to stay with them, in the village. Every birthday she received a card signed by all of them, and every Christmas a present. But as a teenager she had refused to write in return, holding her resentment close to her chest, a shield over her heart.