The bookshop was quiet that afternoon, the autumn light outside the color of honey. Then again, it was always quiet here, which was the way Juliette preferred it. At the beginning, when Arthur had first indulged her desire to rebuild La Librairie des Rêves, she had looked forward to his visits, and even to Lucie’s incessant questions. But now, Arthur rarely came at all, and Lucie was grown and hardly said anything to Juliette anymore.
“Perhaps I’m being too hard on her,” she said aloud as she reshelved a French-language Babar book that had been difficult to get after the war. It was a first edition, and when a portly, middle-aged woman had walked in that morning, just after the store opened, and manhandled the book, flipping through its pages so roughly that Juliette feared they would rip, it was all Juliette could do to stop herself from snatching it out of the woman’s hands. This was, after all, a bookstore, and customers had the right to look through the books if they wanted to. In France, she had been happy to have those who loved words thumbing through pages; it was why bookstores existed, wasn’t it? Still, when the woman had set Babar down and walked out, Juliette had been relieved.
“Perhaps you are,” came Paul’s answer as she reverently slid the book into its spot, aligning its spine with the others in the series and stepping back to make sure the angles were perfectly straight. Reshelving had been Paul’s job in the old store, and Juliette knew she wasn’t as adept at it as he was.
“It is just that she seems to have no appreciation of how lucky she is,” she said, lovingly running her fingers over the spines. She had a sudden flash of Claude in the children’s section, dramatically reading Le Roi Babar to Alphonse and Lucie, and she had to reach out to steady herself against the shelf. Snippets of memory, as clear and frozen as still photographs, whisked by now and then, nearly knocking Juliette over with the strange blend of grief and nostalgic joy they brought with them. “Perhaps it’s my fault. I spend so much time with you, Paul, that I’m afraid I neglect Lucie. I should do better.”
“You’re doing your best, my love.” Paul’s voice was deep and soothing. She knew logically that he wasn’t here at all, but she could still feel him, could still hear him whispering through the shelves, the very essence of him seeping out of the books he had helped her choose so long ago. That had been one of the reasons she had been so intent on building not only the bookstore of her memory, but a collection of books that mirrored those of the shattered store on rue Goblet. As long as those books were here, Paul was here, too. Arthur couldn’t know that she didn’t actually want to sell the books in her store, but it was better that he believe her to be a bad businesswoman. If he knew she was here each day talking to her husband, he would likely be upset. Perhaps he would even leave her, and then where would she be? That was why it was so important to keep up the pretense of being a dutiful wife, why she never missed a dinner at home with him, why she let him hold her at night before he fell into a state of snoring oblivion.
“It isn’t fair,” she said as she picked up a copy of Les Petits Voyageurs, which another customer had callously abandoned on a table in the children’s section. She ran her fingers lovingly over the cover; the book had been Alphonse’s favorite when he was a baby, and it was nearly impossible to find here in the States. In fact, Juliette had paid a pretty penny to the stout French art dealer on the corner, who had offered to help her obtain some of the rarer books from France.
“In a fair world, I would still be there with you,” Paul agreed.
“And the children,” Juliette said, her eyes suddenly damp. “The children would be here, too. Or rather, I would still be in France with all of you, not in this godforsaken city an ocean away.”
“You used to love New York,” Paul pointed out. “You told me on our first date how much you’d loved going into the city as a girl with your mother. Remember seeing Animal Crackers at the Forty-Fourth Street Theater? Or Fifty Million Frenchmen at the Lyric?”
“Of course I do.” It was just like Paul to hold her memories so dear. “I knew after I saw that musical that I would one day go to Paris, too.”
“I know.” She could hear the smile in Paul’s voice. He knew all her stories, perhaps better than she did. “I owe Cole Porter a thank-you for that, I suppose.” The suave composer and lyricist had come into their store twice, and both times, Juliette had found herself starstruck and speechless. “But, my love, you are there now, and you must make the best of it. You must go on, for all of us.”
Juliette knew this, of course, but it was so easy for Paul to say. He didn’t have to get up each day and face an empty world. “I wish I knew how to stop being angry,” she said, tears welling in her eyes again as she moved on to the travel section, filled with French-language 1930s guidebooks. She had paid a great deal of money to the art dealer for these, too, but it had been worth it. Her hand lingered on the book about the C?te d’Azur, where she and Paul had honeymooned, and for a second, she was too choked up to speak. She could see that idyllic time in her mind, another frozen snapshot, the two of them lying side by side in the sand, warm skin turned amber by the sun, the sound of waves lapping. They’d had no idea what life had in store for them or that their time together would be far too short.
“Who are you angry with?” Paul asked, though he knew the answer to the question. They’d had this conversation before.
“Myself,” Juliette said. “With you, for not saving all of them, for not saving yourself. With Mathilde, just for being there. And sometimes even with Lucie, for being the one to live so that I had to go on, too.” She couldn’t believe she’d said the words aloud. How could she still be so angry with Lucie? But if Lucie, too, had perished, Juliette could have closed her eyes in the midst of that rubble and joined her family. Her daughter’s survival had forced her into this life she never wanted.
“Oh, Juliette.” She could hear the sadness in Paul’s voice. “There’s no use living with anger like that. How can you be happy?”
“I don’t deserve to be. Neither does Lucie.” She said the words before she could think about them, and as soon as they were out in the open, she clapped her hands over her mouth in horror. What would Paul think of her? She was wishing unhappiness on their child. “It is just that she isn’t who I imagined she would be,” she added quickly, trying to explain. “She doesn’t think of the other children at all. She is perfectly happy to forget them, Paul, and she asks too many questions about the LeClairs, as if they didn’t play a role in ruining our lives.”
“It isn’t the LeClairs’ fault,” he reminded her.
But just because Paul was dead didn’t mean that he knew everything. Of course it was the LeClairs’ fault. Olivier LeClair with his foolish ideals and Elise LeClair with her complete disregard for Juliette’s children as she flounced away to the countryside, leaving her own child behind. Certainly the LeClairs hadn’t dropped the bomb themselves, but if Mathilde hadn’t been with Juliette and Paul, who knew how things would have turned out? “She’s obsessed with Olivier LeClair,” Juliette said bitterly. “Like he’s some sort of god of the art world.”
“Martyrdom tends to do that for mediocre artists.” Paul sounded amused.
“He’s no martyr,” Juliette snorted. “And Lucie is a fool to think otherwise.”
Paul didn’t respond to that, and after a moment’s hesitation, Juliette asked, “Paul? Are you still there?”
But there was no answer, and suddenly her head ached as much as her heart did. When Paul came to her now, he didn’t stay as long as he used to, and she hardly ever saw the children anymore. What if they were forgetting her, drifting further away from the boundary separating her world from theirs? She couldn’t bear it. Or perhaps Paul was simply trying to force her to spend more time with the child left behind rather than the ones who had been taken from her. She wanted to scream at him that he didn’t understand, that it was impossible having to carry on day after day without him, but he never seemed to quite grasp how difficult it was for her.
The bell above the door chimed then, and Juliette hurriedly wiped her tears away, then cleared her throat and gathered herself. She forced a smile as she turned the corner from the travel section toward the front of the store; after all, it wouldn’t do to have customers seeing her weep.
But it wasn’t a customer standing there. It was Lucie, her dark hair falling over her right shoulder like a river, obscuring one of her eyes. Juliette meant to say hello, but what came out instead was, “Don’t slouch,” and she hated herself a bit more as some of the light went out of her daughter’s eyes. Still, the girl straightened her posture, throwing her shoulders back, and as her hair cascaded out of her face, she held Juliette’s gaze.
“I’ve come to talk with you.” Lucie’s voice was high-pitched but firm, a girl on the cusp of womanhood. One would hardly know she’d started her life in France; the accent had all but vanished.
“Did your father send you?” Juliette asked before realizing how foolish that sounded.
“Arthur?” Lucie asked, looking confused.