J.C. and Libitz sat on a couch across from the older lady, who sat in a large, comfortable-looking chair, her tiny feet barely touching the floor.
“So? Are you getting married?”
They both gasped, looking at each other in unison.
“That’s why you’re here?” asked Bubbe.
“No!” said Libitz. “No. We haven’t…that is…”
“We’re not engaged, ma’am,” said J.C. Yet.
Mrs. Metz looked surprised. “Well, Libby, dahling, I’m happy to see you, but…”
“Bubbe,” said Libitz, leaning forward, one elbow resting on her knee, “what do you remember about your mother? About her childhood? About how she came over to the United States?”
“Well…” said her grandmother, sitting back in the chair, then looking suddenly like she’d remembered something. She turned her attention to J.C. “You want some coffee?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Metz.”
“Bubbe,” she said. “You’re the first man Libby’s ever brought over to my apartment, dahling. You call me Bubbe.”
He grinned at her. “No thank you, Bubbe.”
She nodded once in satisfaction, then looked at her granddaughter. “Maman didn’t talk about France. She didn’t tell me stories about her childhood. She didn’t share memories of her parents or brother, so everything I know about her I learned by mistake.”
“By…mistake?”
“By watching her. I learned that she must have had madeleines at Chanukah because she made them every year. I learned that she spoke French fluently because she talked in her sleep. I learned that she loved art because any afternoon that she wasn’t balancing the books for my father’s butcher shop, we would visit the Brooklyn Museum or take the subway into Manhattan and check out the new exhibits at the Met. She took me to the Guggenheim in 1959, the year it opened.”
“She loved art…,” murmured Libitz, grabbing J.C.’s hand.
“She did.” Mrs. Metz nodded. “She had no family here. Her brother was killed in the War, I think. Her parents…” Her voice drifted off, and her face grew cool. “They died.”
“Cousins? Aunts? Uncles?”
She shook her head. “No one, dahling. Just her and my father.”
Libitz’s fingers slackened. “Anything else, Bubbe? Anything—any little thing—about France?”
“Hmm,” she sighed. “Yes. One other thing. Wait here.”
Slipping from her chair, she walked through the room and padded down a back hallway. J.C. turned to Libitz. “She loved art. It’s the same Camille.”
Libitz face was uncertain. “I just want to be sure.”
“Your grandmother told me to call her ‘Bubbe,’” he said, grinning. “She likes me.”
Libitz smiled back, leaning forward to kiss his lips quickly. “Then don’t let her down.”
I don’t intend to, he thought, looking up when Mrs. Metz shuffled back into the room, holding a framed needlepoint that she handed to Libitz before returning to her chair.
“That was my mother’s.”
Looking down at the old piece of handiwork, J.C. realized that the words sewn into the cloth were French, and his breath caught and held as he quickly translated their meaning.
“It was so strange,” said Bubbe, “for her to have that because she never, ever spoke French. Even when the sommelier at the wine store tried to speak French to her, she answered in English. But that? She kept. I guess she brought it over from Europe with her, but I’m not sure.”
Libitz shifted slightly to look up at J.C. “Do you know what it says? Can you read it?”
He nodded, swallowing over the lump in his throat. “It says…Promettez-moi que vous aurez une bonne vie. Promise me that you’ll have a good life.”
Libitz gasped, her lips parting in shock as her eyes widened. “Oh, my God!”
He nodded again. “A good life.”
“L’chaim tovim,” whispered Libitz.
“Yes!” said Bubbe, somewhat oblivious to their massive revelation. “L’chaim tovim. She said it all the time when we complained. She promised someone that she’d have a good life and told us that we must do the same.”
He knew what Libitz was thinking about because he was thinking of it too: life.
Life. The Hebrew letter in the signature. Have a good life. The French inscription on the back of the portrait. Pierre had wanted Camille to choose life…and somehow, she did.
“Now dahlings,” said Mrs. Metz. “Tell me what all this is about.”
They explained all about Les Bijoux Jolis, and Libitz promised to bring the portrait to her bubbe as soon as possible.
“My maman,” said Bubbe, with tears in her eyes. “You’ll give her back to me.”
Libitz looked at J.C. with pleading eyes, and he nodded at her.
“Of course, Mrs. M—Bubbe,” he said. “It’s all yours.”
Because after all, thought J.C., watching Libitz hug her grandmother good-bye, the real thing is already mine. Or…almost mine.
They held hands in the elevator, staring at each other with silly grins, each processing the magnitude of fate and forever, of magic and miracles, and the ways in which their families were entwined.