And if I’m right about that, then things begin to fit. My memory of my mother’s shoes is clearer than it ought to be because I saw them when Inga Beart was already in Paris; I was five, not three. It wasn’t Aunt Cat’s kitchen table I remember hiding under, of course it wasn’t: The tablecloth was made of lace. And what Bristol and all the others say is true. My mother never came to see me.
Well, I might be feeling the influence of an especially long dawn as we fly with the sun from east to west, more time than I’ve ever had before to watch the beginning of a day, or it might be my unfamiliar vantage point above the clouds. It isn’t often that one sees the world from way up here. But it seems as good a place as any to let an old idea go.
Instead, I imagine a long-distance telephone call from Paris, the comtesse arguing with Aunt Cat, telling her a boy ought to be with his mother. My Aunt Cat agreeing, in the end, to make the long trip with me to Paris. And when it was all over and we boarded the ship back to America together, I’d like to think that maybe Aunt Cat forgot for a moment that I was one more mouth to feed and felt half-glad that the comtesse’s plan had gone so wrong and she hadn’t gotten rid of me.
As for the red shoes, I guess I’ll never know. It’s likely that they were taken off sometime before my mother reached the hospital. Along with the catalog of ocular lacerations that, even without knowing French, I can’t manage to read without feeling a little ill, the doctor’s notes show that Inga Beart was also treated for an oblique fracture to the fifth metatarsal: a broken little toe. That kind of break most commonly occurs when a toe meets with axial force, for example, when it is stubbed against the corner of a step or a curb. And because it implies that the toe has been wrenched from the foot, it almost always happens barefoot. It’s possible that Inga Beart’s shoes were removed during the ambulance ride, but it’s more likely, to my mind, that Aunt Cat took them off of her before she went about getting her sister down the stairs, and left them there on the floor of the apartment.
Without a bit of evidence to back it up, I imagine the comtesse waking from her faint a few moments later, perhaps with the sound of sirens on the street below. Finding herself alone on the scene of what the police and reporters were sure to recognize was the final act of a bizarre and gruesome drama, I imagine her slipping quietly away. But the comtesse was a woman who saved the drafts of her love letters; she had an eye for posterity. So maybe on her way out she picked up those red shoes from where they lay in a jumble on the floor and kept them—for her records. And yet even as I imagine this—the comtesse hurrying through the courtyard with my mother’s shoes clutched in her handbag—I can hardly fault her. I hung on to those shoes as my single memory of Inga Beart, why shouldn’t the comtesse have felt she had a right to do the same? Aunt Cat, with her practical tastes and the way she felt about her sister, wouldn’t have cared a thing about them, and the gawkers and scavengers who were sure to arrive hardly deserved them. But for the comtesse, and for me too, it was different. We’d come as close as we ever would to something bright and rare. I suppose we both wanted a souvenir.
I haven’t made up my mind just yet about what do with the information in those medical files. I could make quite a splash with an article in the American Literary Review or one of the other journals, a brand-new chapter in the life of Inga Beart. The knowledge of her sister’s visit, the comtesse’s plan, and, of course, who it was she was so desperate not to see would add a new layer to the debate over why she blinded herself. It would certainly prove Carter Bristol’s theory wrong; with a scene like the one that must have taken place in Inga Beart’s Paris apartment brought to light, Bristol would hardly be able to go on claiming that Inga Beart’s child meant nothing to her, that she was pathologically short on emotion.
On the other hand, I’m not sure I want to be in the business of telling my mother’s secrets to the world. Bristol and the others will conclude that, whatever my mother felt for me, it was a far cry from maternal affection. A woman who couldn’t stand the sight of her own child, that’s how Bristol will put it. He’ll say she tore her eyes out in a rage after she was forced to look at me. I may just let those documents continue their slow progression into dust in the archives of the Assistance Publique-H?pitaux de Paris, and keep my mouth shut.
But there is one person I will tell. This was a family affair, after all, and as Inga Beart’s grandson, it’s Neil’s story as much as mine. I’ll call him up when I get home and let him know what I’ve found. He’s got a head for this kind of thing, and I’d like to hear what he makes of it. But knowing me, I’ll mix up the important points, I’ll forget to say how it was that I happened to open that Hirondelle file, or that I thought of him as I watched the young kids sitting along the Seine. I’ve loved words all my life, but when it’s mattered most, I’ve never been too good with them. I’ll mess it up when I try to tell him that I hope he never has to piece together old documents and scraps of memory to figure out what he meant to his father.
The captain says we’ve hit a bumpy patch just over Nova Scotia, and my tomato juice is rippling in its plastic cup. I’ll take these notes and type them up when I get home, to give to Neil when I see him next. I’ve gone on longer than I meant to and let all sorts of extra bits creep in, and when it comes to Inga Beart and what exactly happened that day in August a good half-century ago, he’ll have to draw his own conclusions.