“I don’t think I’d be that brave.” But it did make me miss the feeling of arriving in a foreign country with nothing but the unknown awaiting me. It’d been so long since I’d done that.
“Well, deep down, I knew it was my last hurrah, so to speak.” The sparkle in Claudia’s eyes weakened. “At the end of that summer, I was due to come home and get married, and I knew my short photography career would be coming to an end. So I figured, what the hell?”
“How old were you?”
“I turned twenty-five that August, which, in those days, was old to be getting married. My husband proposed when I was twenty-three, but I told him I wanted two years to pursue my photography. And if he let me have that, I’d promise to be the faithful society wife he wanted from then onward.”
“And you kept your word.”
Claudia nodded. “I knew I wanted a child and I wanted them to grow up in a stable environment. So my only choice was to get married. Not like you women these days, freezing your eggs and going it alone in your thirties and forties if you want to. If that had been an option back then, I’d have strongly considered it.”
I’d never thought about freezing my eggs. I should probably at least google it since I was nearing forty.
“I needed those two years for my sanity,” Claudia continued. “I told myself that I’d pack as many experiences and memories into those years as possible so that they could last me the rest of my life.” A wry look. “Of course, I wasn’t expecting to live this long.”
As we flipped through the piles of photos, Claudia’s shrewd photographic vision shone through. A rawness radiated from each of her human subjects, as if they were being seen for the first time. Endearing shyness manifested in slightly bowed heads but hopeful expressions. Others were more life-weary, their eyes betraying deep sadness. Emotion resonated from every image—delight, yearning, pain, bitterness—and I felt each one keenly.
The Tunisian vignettes moved on to more staid portraits of the French Riviera. Children splashing in the shallows of a waveless Mediterranean. An old man napping under an olive tree. A dog stealing a baguette. Basically the analog version of a Francophile’s Pinterest board.
“The subject matter was less compelling in the South of France,” Claudia said, as if reading my thoughts.
I paused on a photo of a young curly-haired man in a Breton striped shirt standing stoically on the bow of a boat. “I don’t know,” I said, handing the photo to Claudia. “This swarthy gentleman looks pretty compelling.”
The pithy response I anticipated never came. Instead, Claudia had her hand to her chest as she stared at the photo.
“Are you okay, Claudia?” I stood, ready to act. “Should I call Selma? Do you need a doctor?”
Claudia reached for my forearm. “No, darling, I’m perfectly fine.” Her breathing steadied. “It’s just, well, I haven’t seen a picture of him in more than sixty years.”
“Who is he?”
Claudia’s voice was an uncharacteristic whisper. “His name was Hugo Beaufort.”
32
“So, I was telling someone at work yesterday about how cool your job is,” Sylvie said while we waited in line at a minimalist SoHo lunch spot known for its deconstructed meals and communal seating. “And I realized I still have all these questions.”
“Like what?” I said, flattered that Sylvie was so interested.
“Like, is it true that people talk about how they’re going on a trip right before they die?”
“Sometimes.”
“So do you try to talk them out of it?”
“No, usually I offer to help them pack.”
Sylvie looked skeptical. “Really?”
“Of course—and besides, they kind of are going on a trip. Who knows where, but it’s better to let them be excited for the journey and feel like they’re prepared for it.”
“I guess that makes sense.” Sylvie waited for the obnoxious grinding of a passing truck to stop. “And is it true that people can still hear everything that’s being said, even when they’re unconscious?”
“I can’t say for sure, but I’ve had clients who have been in comas and heard their family members reveal secrets about them.”
“Oh, my God, you have to tell me about that.”
I realized that I liked having a captive audience—maybe Leo and I weren’t so different after all.
“Well, there was one guy who was in a coma and his wife was telling her sister about how she’d never told him that their daughter was another man’s child. She thought her husband wasn’t going to wake up, but when he did, he remembered every detail of the conversation and got his lawyer to change his will to cut the woman and her daughter out of it. He died the next day, completely bitter.”
Sylvie winced. “That sucks for everyone involved. I bet it was awkward for you being in that room.”
“Yeah, it was pretty horrible.” I’d gotten a little more caught up in that situation than I should have, but the man did have the right to change his will. And I’d mistakenly thought helping make it happen would bring him some peace. I still regretted not encouraging him to discuss it with his family first—instead of softening his bitterness before he died, I worried I’d helped him cement it.
“I read about a woman once who asked for a divorce on her deathbed because she didn’t want to meet her death while unhappily married.”
I nodded. “That happens more often than you’d think,” I said. “Actually, Claudia told me something interesting yesterday. She said she regrets not marrying a guy she met while she was living in France in her twenties.”
“That’s so romantic,” Sylvie said. “But also super sad that she was miserable with the guy she did marry.”
“I don’t think she was miserable, exactly. Women had less freedom of choice in those days, so she went with the more sensible option.”
Sylvie linked her arm through mine as we moved forward in the line. “Tell me everything.”
I felt a twinge of guilt at revealing Claudia’s closely held secret, but I couldn’t resist the urge to impress Sylvie, to live up to her perceptions of me. And it’s not like she’d ever meet Claudia.
“Okay,” I said, high on the dopamine rush of having Sylvie’s attention. “I’ll tell you the story exactly as she told it to me.”
* * *
Even though it had been more than sixty years since she’d met Hugo Beaufort, Claudia had described the day to me with such vivid nuance that it could’ve been last week. It was clearly a memory that had been replayed thousands of times over the years.
It began with a three-legged dog tied up outside a bookstore in Marseille, France, in 1956.
The absence of any kind of breeze had made the heat of the already-sweltering July day nearly unbearable. Even the vainest of souls had relinquished any concern about their appearance. Everyone wore the same gleaming layer of sweat, so there was no choice but to embrace it.
Claudia regretted her decision to wear trousers that day. Since arriving in Europe to work as a photojournalist, she’d taken to wearing them out of practicality. This was no time to fuss with dresses; a white button-up shirt and linen slacks were far more dependable and easier to pack. Besides, the disapproving comments from male colleagues about the inappropriateness of her attire meant she also wore them out of rebellion. With every brow that creased with censure, she’d slide her hands into her pockets and saunter by with happy defiance.