“You look very fancy,” he said, which made Elise laugh.
“I promise you, I am not fancy at all. You are a very good storyteller, by the way.”
He waved her words away. “Do you live in a grand apartment, then?” he asked. “You look like you live in a grand apartment with lots of fancy dishes and maybe even a maid.”
“Georges!” Ruth chided. “That’s quite an impolite question!”
“It’s perfectly all right,” Elise said with a laugh. “My apartment is large, Georges, but not especially grand, and to be honest, I tend to drop fancy dishes when I’m washing them. It’s my curse.”
Georges regarded her suspiciously. “So you don’t have a maid to do your washing up, then?”
“Georges!” Ruth chided again, color rising in her cheeks, but Elise brushed the protest away.
“No, we haven’t a maid,” she said. “And the only reason our apartment is large is that my husband and I are artists. We both have studios there.”
“You’re an artist?” Georges echoed, his eyes wide now. Juliette was looking at Elise in surprise, too. “What do you paint?”
“Actually, my husband is a painter, but I carve things from wood.”
“You said your last name is LeClair?” Ruth was staring at Elise, too, something in her expression having shifted. “You’re not the wife of Olivier LeClair, are you?”
Elise went pink, and her smile wobbled a bit. “Yes, in fact, I am. You know of him?”
“Yes, of course.” Ruth looked impressed. “My husband—who died when the children were small—was an art collector. Olivier LeClair was one of his favorites. He would have loved to meet you.”
“I’m very sorry to hear about your husband, Madame Levy,” Elise said.
“Thank you. But to be honest, sometimes I think that if we were going to lose him anyhow, it’s good that he was gone before the world entered into another war. He fought for France in the Great War, you see, and when we first married, he told me he was frightened that our countries would once again be at odds. I fear what will happen now that they are.”
Elise didn’t seem to know what to say to that, and neither did Juliette, but finally, she said, “Please, Ruth, try not to worry. France will not go the way of Germany. You are safe here.”
“For now, Juliette.” Ruth held her gaze. “For now. But the Germans are coming for all of us, no matter what the newspapers say.”
* * *
That evening after closing up the bookshop, Juliette stood at the stove of their small kitchen, absently stirring leek soup. She couldn’t stop thinking about Madame Levy’s words.
“You look as though you are carrying the weight of the world,” Paul said, entering the kitchen with Alphonse in his arms and Claude trailing behind. He set Alphonse down gently in his wooden high chair and came up behind Juliette, putting his hands on her shoulders and squeezing her tensed muscles. He nuzzled her ear, sending a shiver of pleasure down her spine. “What is it, my love? Are you all right?”
Juliette glanced at the children; Claude was scribbling stick figures on a sheet of paper and showing his creations to Alphonse. “Ruth Levy came in today. She’s very worried about the war.”
Paul’s hands on her shoulders stilled, and he was silent for a few seconds. “I am, too.”
Juliette turned and locked gazes with her husband. Paul’s brown eyes always darkened, the pupils dilating, when he was concerned, and now, they looked black as night. “But surely our soldiers will turn the Germans back,” she said.
“What if they don’t? We will survive. But Madame Levy…” His voice trailed off in anguish. “I don’t know, Juliette. I don’t know. I fear she is in a bad position.”
Later, after Paul and the children had gone to bed, Juliette sat in the kitchen, her battered copy of Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise opened in front of her. Reading usually brought her comfort, but tonight, she couldn’t focus. Ruth’s words continued to march through her head. The Germans are coming for all of us, no matter what the newspapers say. What if she was right? What if this quiet, this normalcy, this stability they took for granted now was simply the calm before the storm?
“Maman?” Claude’s little voice came from the doorway, and Juliette turned to see her oldest standing there, his worn, brown mohair teddy bear clutched protectively under one arm. “Maman, are you all right?”
She set the book down and stood up, crossing the kitchen and kneeling down so that they were eye to eye. “My darling, why aren’t you asleep?”
“I heard you.” He sniffled and wiped his nose with the back of his free hand. “Maman, what’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing, sweet boy.” She pulled him into her arms, feeling his heartbeat against hers. “There is nothing you should worry about. Go back to sleep, my love.”
He let her hold him for a few seconds, but then he pulled away. “Maman, I am big. You don’t have to protect me anymore. Is it Madame Levy? Is she in danger?”
Claude seemed to see everything. “Not right now, my love. Not right now.”
“But I heard you and Papa talking…”
Juliette felt a pang of guilt. She knew better than to speak of worrisome things in front of the children; Claude was always listening, even when he seemed to be occupied with something else. He would grow up one day to be a kind, thoughtful man, like Paul. “My darling boy, everything is fine just now. We are safe, all of us.”
She could feel him tense, and then relax as he leaned into her shoulder. “Do you promise me, Maman?”
“I promise. Now, let’s get back to bed, shall we?” But as she picked him up, his body heavy in her arms, she felt a chill.
She sat beside him on the edge of his bed, rubbing his back until he fell asleep, but in the silence, with his heavy breathing and an occasional sleep-soaked mumble from Alphonse the only sounds, her skin prickled with the sense of something terrible coming their way. She put her hand on her belly, trying to comfort the baby, who was kicking now, as if she wanted to get out. “It’s okay, my love,” she whispered into the darkness. “I will protect you.” But when the words went nowhere, impotent in the stillness, she wondered whether she could really promise anything when the future was unknowable, the storm clouds rolling in.
CHAPTER FIVE
Now that the war was on, Olivier had become a new man whose eyes always glittered, who barely slept, and who rarely inhabited the bed he shared with Elise anymore.
“You must be careful,” she told him over dinner one night in early October, the first night he had deigned to make an appearance at their table in weeks. Each day, she prepared a meal, hoping he would talk to her, and each night, he came in the door later and later, usually past midnight, often mumbling about Communist Party meetings he’d attended in secret. Sitting across from him now, over a roasted chicken nestled on a bed of greens, she could practically feel him vibrating, humming with anger.
“Careful?” He looked up at her, his eyes glinting. He brandished the knife in his hand and then sliced through one of the juicy legs of the bird without moving his gaze from her face. “Careful, Elise? Do you hear yourself?” He looked down at the steaming chicken, pulled the leg onto his own plate, and then, after a pause, sliced a small piece of the breast meat for her. “Daladier is going to roll right over, the old bastard. Don’t you see it? We’re all that’s left. People like me, we’re the only ones standing up to what’s coming! You want me to be careful rather than doing my duty to France? To mankind?”
“No,” she said quietly as he pushed her plate across the table to her and dove into his own chicken leg, not bothering with a knife and fork, eating like a caveman gnawing on a bone. He looked wild, his hair askew, his whole body jittery, as if he wanted to jump out of his own skin. “I want you to remember that you’re about to be a father. That your duty isn’t only to France. It is to this baby. And to me.”
He paused, the chicken leg suspended in air, as he glanced first at Elise’s belly, then at her face. She couldn’t quite read his expression, but then he blinked a few times, and when he looked up again, there was something softer in his eyes. “I know, Elise. I know.”
She waited for him to say more, but that seemed to be it. He ate the rest of his chicken leg in silence, then he reached for the other leg, sliced it cleanly off, and ate that one, too. She took a few bites of the breast on her plate, not because she was hungry, but because she knew she needed to feed the growing baby. She rubbed her belly, feeling a strange blend of emptiness and fullness at the same time.
That night, Olivier finished his work early; he had vanished into his studio to paint, so she had assumed she wouldn’t see him again, but as she nervously cleaned the kitchen top to bottom, the clock ticking past ten, he appeared in the doorway, the sharp scent of turpentine clinging to him like a layer of armor.