So she couldn’t blame Juliette for her coldness. Juliette hadn’t made a mistake, as Elise had. She had simply continued to live her life in a place that she’d been told was safe. And she had lost nearly everything.
But Juliette still had Lucie—and she had the answers to many of the questions Elise had been asking God for the past sixteen years. Since returning to New York, Ruth had written several letters to Elise, explaining that she dropped by the bookstore to check on Juliette and Lucie every few weeks, and that the few times she had run into Lucie, the girl had looked miserable.
“I’m coming,” Elise had declared two weeks earlier when Ruth had placed a transatlantic call to her to express her concern. It still felt like a miracle to be able to hear her voice crackling across the ocean. “I need to hear the story from Juliette’s lips. And if there’s anything I can do to help her and her daughter, it’s time.”
“Juliette may not be happy to see you,” Ruth had responded. “But it cannot hurt to try.”
Actually, it could. Seeing Juliette would wound Elise to the core, and laying eyes on Lucie, her daughter’s best friend and playmate, all grown up now, would be a painfully visceral reminder of all that Elise had lost. “I think I must. I’ll see you soon,” Elise had said, and when she’d hung up, her hand was shaking so hard she knocked the telephone from its place on Olivier’s old desk.
She had silently packed a suitcase and bought the earliest ticket available, and here she was, looking west across a seemingly endless sea, knowing that in just two days’ time, the ship would dock in New York Harbor, bringing her home to the United States, and, at last, face-to-face with her past.
* * *
Ruth had suggested that Elise stay on the couch in her apartment on the Lower East Side, but Elise knew herself well enough to know that if she was going to summon the courage to do what she’d come to do, she would need some time and space to herself. She would also need to stay close enough to the bookstore on Fifty-Sixth Street so that she couldn’t chicken out.
The cab from the harbor took her through Times Square, past billboards for The Mouse That Roared with Peter Sellers and Cinderfella with Jerry Lewis, past Elvis Presley smoldering beneath a cowboy hat on a poster for his latest movie, past Lucille Ball’s face looking down at her from a big sign advertising previews of a new musical called Wildcat just down Fifty-Second Street at the Alvin. She remembered seeing Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the Alvin in ’33 when she’d first arrived in the city, wide-eyed and optimistic, just a girl. She’d seen Anything Goes there the next year, too, her last show before she met Olivier and left for Paris. The city had changed so much since then that it was almost unrecognizable to her. Then again, Elise herself was nearly unrecognizable, too, an empty husk of the hopeful young woman she’d once been. Part of her felt strangely let down that New York had continued evolving without her while she’d remained frozen in time.
She checked into the Hotel Dorset on West Fifty-Fourth and tried to convince herself to walk the six blocks to the address Ruth had given her for La Librairie des Rêves, but even after crossing an ocean to be here, she couldn’t bring herself to do it right away. Instead, she opened her suitcase, withdrew the block of wood and the five chisels and two gouges she’d brought with her, and began to work, coaxing from the limewood the face of her daughter, the face she had imagined so many times, the face Mathilde would have had if she’d lived. She sank into the work, stroking here, chipping there, until the light outside began to fade away. Sweaty and covered in wood shavings, she set down her tools and gazed at what she’d made.
She had carved an adult Mathilde’s face a thousand times, but this piece, created much more quickly than usual and with a rudimentary assortment of instruments, seemed to be alive in a way the others hadn’t. As Elise sat back, breathless, and stared at what she’d done, she felt a tidal wave of regret over the loss of her daughter’s whole life. It wasn’t just that Elise had to go on without her; it was all the things Mathilde could have been, could have done, all lost to a single instant.
“Welcome to New York, Mathilde,” she whispered.
It was dark outside when she made herself stop staring at the face of her lost child. The truth was that Elise had no way of knowing what or who Mathilde would have turned out to be, how she would have looked, whether she would have tilted her head left or right, whether her eyes would have sparkled with joy or mischief, what her laughter would have sounded like. She would never know, and continuing to coax the ghost of her child from wood, well, it was a fool’s errand, wasn’t it?
There was a knock on her hotel door then. Elise jumped, hastily wiping the tears from her eyes. She had almost forgotten that she’d made plans to meet Ruth in the lobby at six for dinner. She stood, and then, on second thought, picked up the bust of Mathilde and slid it under the bed. She had the sense that Ruth would not approve, and the last thing she wanted right now was pity.
When she swung open the door to her room, it was indeed Ruth standing there, her hair shorter than the last time Elise had seen her. Ruth took a step over the threshold, and without a word, embraced Elise. “I was worried,” she said.
It had been a long time since anyone had held Elise this way, and it was so unfamiliar that she stiffened before forcing herself to relax into Ruth’s arms. “I’m sorry I didn’t meet you downstairs,” she said. “Time got away from me.”
“As long as you’re all right.” Ruth stepped back and studied her. “Are you all right?”
“I think so. It’s hard being back here. Like a reminder of the life I had so long ago.” It had been unexpected, the difficulty of being in New York again. The last time she’d been here, she had just married Olivier after a whirlwind romance, and Mathilde hadn’t yet been born. Now she found herself alone again, right where she’d begun, more than twenty years later, and what did she have to show for it? “I had such big dreams once,” she said, and Ruth seemed to understand, for she hugged her again.
“You’re young, Elise,” Ruth said. “And you’re so very talented. It’s not too late for those dreams.”
“Of course it is.” Elise wiped her eyes and pulled away. Her friend was being kind, but she didn’t understand how the art world worked. If Elise’s talent had been real, she would have found her way into galleries by now. She was forty-eight, after all, and she’d been carving for two decades. Thanks to Monsieur Vasseur’s compassion—or, to call it what she knew it was, pity—she made enough to get by, but only just. She was a fool for once having believed she could be something special.
“Well,” Ruth said. “It’s wonderful to see you, and I know we have much to talk about. Shall we go have dinner?”
Elise gathered herself and smiled. Despite the miles between them, Ruth was her family, and one of the few people in the world who had once known Mathilde. It was a comforting thought. “I’d like that,” she agreed, and together they walked out the door.
* * *
Snow fell as Ruth and Elise made their way to a diner two blocks away, and they watched the flakes drift down outside the window as they ordered patty melts and Coca-Colas and caught up on the past several weeks while a jukebox hummed Elvis and Brenda Lee, the Everly Brothers and Bobby Rydell.
“I worry about you,” Ruth said haltingly, her German accent still strong despite the fact that she’d left her home country twenty-five years ago. “Won’t you think about moving from Paris, Elise? I worry that being surrounded by ghosts is holding you back, as is the case with Juliette.”
At the mention of her old friend’s name, Elise felt her heart skip. “It’s not the same, Ruth.”
“I know. Still, perhaps it’s time for a fresh start.”
How easy it would be to truly believe in that possibility of new beginnings. “Perhaps,” Elise said, and when Ruth smiled at her with pity, she smiled back with pain, and she had the feeling they both knew she wasn’t ready to make any sort of change.
After dinner, as they stepped into the snow, which had begun to accumulate, Ruth gently suggested that they stroll by Juliette’s bookstore on the way back to Elise’s hotel.
“Oh,” Elise replied. “I’m not ready for that yet.”
“She won’t be there,” Ruth assured her. “The store is closed. But it might be a good idea to see it, from the outside at least, so it isn’t a complete shock when you go tomorrow.”
Elise hesitated. “Yes, all right.”
Together they walked a few more blocks, turning left on Park Avenue and right on Fifty-Sixth Street. Elise spotted the shingle immediately, hanging just ahead to the right. “La Librairie des Rêves,” she read aloud, stunned to see the familiar script hanging over a sidewalk in Manhattan, though Ruth had forewarned her. “But… the sign is just the same.”