He laughed and pulled me closer.
“I miss you, C.” His heavenly scent surrounded us, cocooned in that jacket, his fingers interlocked at the small of my back. I’d missed that musky essence of pine and leather. He brushed his lips against my cheek.
“Come and get something to eat,” he said. “Even over that terrible band, I can hear your stomach growling. A friend of mine has a place in the Latin Quarter you’ll love. He’s made an apple tart. With real crème fra?che.”
How wonderful it would be to slide into a bistro booth with Paul, the leather seat allowing us to sit hip to hip as so many lovers before us had done. The offerings would be meager, but there would at least be warm bread and wine. We’d talk about everything. Which crème fra?che is best? From southeast or southwest France? Which new play should he do? How much he loved me. But then what? He’d go home to his family and leave me worse than before.
“I’ll come to New York,” Paul said, his lips soft against my ear. “It will be like before.”
I felt his chest against me, only the silk of my dress and the cotton of his T-shirt between us.
“You can’t just leave here, Paul.”
Even if he didn’t have a family, it could never be like before. The world was so different now.
Paul stood back, held me at arm’s length, and smiled his most dangerous smile. “I need to get back to New York. Broadway’s rebounding, you know.”
I pulled away and shivered as the wind ballooned the skirt of my dress. Was he using me to escape his new responsibilities? Did he want me or just relief from family life?
“C’mon, C. We could do something together. I’d consider Shakespeare. Let’s talk about it at dinner.”
I felt a drop of cold rain on my hand. I would have to move the coats under the overhang of the store.
“You need to get back to your family, Paul.”
Paul stepped back. “You’re infuriating.”
“You’re a father.”
“But I love you—”
“Love your daughter. If you don’t, I’ll have given you up for nothing. So act if you have to, and soon you’ll find you mean it.” I touched his sleeve. “It’s not that hard. Just be there. When she wakes in the night afraid. If she stumbles at school.”
“Rena doesn’t want me there—”
“Your daughter does. She wants you to teach her to sail a boat, show her off in the park. You don’t know how powerful your love is, Paul. Without it she’ll fall for the first boy who says he loves her, and he’ll shatter her for good.”
“Why throw away everything we have? It’s ridiculous, your pilgrim ethics.”
“Puritan,” I said.
“I don’t think I can do it.”
“You can. Funny thing about grief: It gets easier with practice.”
I held out a white package.
“This coat’s perfect,” I said. “A bit large, but she’ll grow into it.”
“I love you, C. And I’m stubborn too, you know.”
“Love her, Paul. If not for you, then do it for me.”
“You’re going to wake up one morning and know you’ve made a terrible mistake.”
I suppressed a smile. Like every morning?
Paul stared at me for a long moment, then slipped off his jacket and draped it across my shoulders. He wore only an old white T-shirt underneath, threadbare in parts. It was a prewar shirt, no doubt, for it hung somewhat loosely, but the sight of Paul in it, even thin as he was, caused more than one woman in the booth to stare.
“This always looked better on you,” he said.
The satin lining of his jacket felt good against my skin, still warm from him.
Paul kissed me on both cheeks and took the white package. I smoothed the flap of one velvet pocket in my fingers, soft as a cat’s ear.
I looked up just in time to watch Paul’s beautiful back as he retreated through the crowd, and then I turned and pushed the racks out of the rain.
—
IN THE MONTHS THAT FOLLOWED, Paul sent a few more letters, and I tried to distract myself with volunteering. At least I had Mother, though she would not be with me forever. Our life became reduced to a routine well known to those in homes for the aged—tea with Mother’s friends, the conversation revolving around inflamed sacroiliacs; the odd errand at the embassy for Roger; and church choral concerts.
They were pale days, one indistinguishable from the next, so a visit from a friend of Mother’s one morning threw me for a loop. Mother had told me a friend of hers named Anise Postel-Vinay, who’d been arrested while working for the French underground during the war and held at Ravensbrück concentration camp, was stopping by our apartment. Anise and friends had founded the ADIR. Though Mother was uncharacteristically evasive when I asked for details, I agreed to this favor, expecting Anise to appear at our apartment asking for gently used clothing or canned goods.
That day, Mother, midway through her unfortunate poncho phase, was sporting a red-checked, caftanesque affair she’d resurrected from somewhere when Anise arrived. Parisians stared when Mother wore that poncho, as if picturing it where it belonged, flung over a café table under a plate of good cheese.
The doorbell buzzed, and Mother showed Anise in. Two men followed behind carrying a canvas stretcher on which a woman lay wrapped in a white cotton blanket.
“Dear God,” I said.
Anise, a handsome, no-nonsense woman, planted herself on our living room Aubusson and ran the fingers of one hand through her cropped hair.
“Good morning, Mme Ferriday. Where should the men take her?”
I took a step back. “She’s staying? Here? We knew nothing of this.”
Mother went to the stretcher. “Anise asked if we could help this Polish friend of hers,” she said to me. “She’s unconscious, Anise?”
Anise laid her hand on the woman’s blanketed leg. “Heavily sedated. Just flew her from Warsaw.”
“She needs a hospital, Mme Vinay,” I said.
“Her name is Janina Grabowski. I knew her at Ravensbrück concentration camp. Operated on by Nazi doctors.” Anise felt the woman’s forehead. “We need to handle this privately. She was brought out of Poland, well…without the knowledge of the authorities.”
We were to take in a sick Polish fugitive?
“Could she get no help in Warsaw?”
“Most of Warsaw has been reduced to rubble, Miss Ferriday. Their healthcare system is a mess. Antibiotics in short supply.” Anise threw back the blanket to show us the woman’s leg. Under the gauze, an angry infection raged.
“Take her to my room right away,” Mother said. “I’ll cut some fresh bandages.” At last, Mother could relive the nursing days of the Woolseys on the Civil War battlefield. “We’ll call our personal doctor for her.”
I held one hand to the stretcher. “Wait. I listened to the trial on the BBC. The Germans are supposed to be providing reparations—”
“None, Miss Ferriday. Germany decided they do not recognize Communist Poland as a country. They consider it part of Russia.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Janina is a charming person who once gave me the medicine she could have used to save herself, allowing me to stand here now. She has suffered more this morning than you will in your lifetime and could quite possibly be dying as we speak.”
I waved the men along. “We are happy to have her,” I said.
“Good. Thank you, Mademoiselle.”
I walked to the window. “Put her in my bed. First door on the left.”
The men carried the stretcher down the hall to my bedroom and Mother followed. As they passed, I saw that blood from Janina’s leg had seeped through the blanket. What had we gotten ourselves into?
“We are at your service, Mme Vinay,” I said.
Anise walked to the door. “Your mother told me you’d help.” She turned and almost smiled. “That’s good. Because there are sixty-two more where she came from.”