I stood for a moment and searched the air for her perfume. I half believed that if I looked into one of the gilt mirrors, I would see her standing beside me. I could hear her voice in my ears, the throaty sound of her laugh. Slowly, as though pulled by an invisible string, I made my way into the parlor to sit beside her portrait.
***
If ever a painting seemed to possess a life of its own, such was the case with Marthe’s. And, although I had always been aware of its pull, with Marthe now gone, its power seemed even more formidable. When I walked into the parlor, I could feel her presence pulsing from the canvas.
I sat on the sofa, where I knew that Charles had positioned himself when he gazed at the portrait with Grandmother’s hand laced through his own, and looked up at its massive frame. Marthe was as she hoped to be, eternal in her beauty. As her spirit flowed through the room, the painting remained the heartbeat of the apartment.
Even if she had not asked, I could never have taken the painting down from the mantel or sold the apartment to new owners. It would have felt not only like a betrayal for all that she had done for Alex and me; it would have felt like a crime.
At night, I stayed tucked inside my tiny room that was cluttered with my essential belongings: my clothes, my notebooks, and my novels. Even the old Mickey Mouse doll from my father, I brought closer to my bed. I felt that if I were to live in the apartment any longer, it would be best to essentially barricade myself in this little room. That way I wouldn’t feel as though I was trespassing amongst all of Marthe’s things. While I no longer felt that I was Marthe’s guest, I was still not the mistress of the apartment, even if Marthe wished me to own it in part after her death and my father was nowhere to be found.
I pulled the edge of the sheets closer to my chin, as outside the sound of airplane engines rattled through the sky.
51.
May 1940
In the days that followed Marthe’s funeral, I continued to worry that I had yet to receive any response from my father. The radio, which Marthe had never touched while she was alive, I now used more than ever. I carried it with me in and out of every room, to receive the latest news.
I kept the apartment dark, rarely pulling back the heavy curtains in the rooms that Marthe had always ensured were filled with sunlight. I stayed in my nightgown and robe, believing it wasn’t necessary to get dressed.
Alex, concerned that he hadn’t heard from me, surprised me with a visit. “Where is Giselle?” he asked. “You shouldn’t be living here all alone.”
“I told her to take the week off so we could both grieve,” I muttered.
“You look terrible.” He took his jacket off and draped it over a chair.
“I’ve been searching for news about my father. I never heard back from him after I telegrammed about Marthe.”
“With all that’s going on with the war, any communication would be difficult now...” He reached over to brush a strand of hair from my face.
“You look like you haven’t slept.”
I nodded. It was true. It had been impossible to sleep in the apartment all by myself. I felt Marthe’s ghost everywhere. Wherever I looked, I felt her presence, whether it was in her collections, her painting, or even in the empty vases that in better days were always filled with colorful blooms.
My tiny room was the only place that didn’t have her fingerprints all over it. But the radio reception was poor in that part of the apartment, so as much as I wanted to cocoon myself in that room with my notebooks and novels, my thirst to hear the news broadcasts took me into the rest of the apartment.
“I think you should come live with Papa and me... I’m worried.” Alex’s concern was written all over his face. “And this is really not your home.”
A memory flickered through my head of my childhood apartment. The wooden kitchen table, my mother’s bookcases. My bedroom with its flower coverlet.
“I could go back home, to our old apartment. Papa wanted me to live here because he thought I shouldn’t be alone...”
“Exactly. And that’s why you shouldn’t return home either, but should instead come with me, to a place where people can watch over you.” He touched my wrist. “Please,” he said. “Please, come.”
***
And so I packed my suitcase yet again. I folded the dresses, placed my journals on top, and wrapped the photograph of my parents in a wool scarf.
“I suppose I should bring the Haggadah andZemirotbook, too?” I said, seeking Alex’s guidance. “It wouldn’t be safe to leave them here unattended.”
“No, you should take them with you.”
“If you can carry my valise, I’ll carry the books,” I offered. I had not looked at them since I showed them to Marthe before our dinner with the Armels. At their suggestion, I had kept them out of sunlight, always wrapped in several layers of brown paper, in a box underneath my bed.
“It would be my honor,” said Alex as he snapped my suitcase closed.
I followed him out of the apartment, guarding my mother’s precious books close to my chest.
