Crossing on the Paris Page 4

  She took a last sentimental glance at her portrait, at her former self, then looked out the window, which, she noted with approval, was larger than the portholes she was used to. Although they were already surrounded by water, having left the coast behind, to her mind, they were not yet “at sea.” They would still be stopping in Britain before truly beginning the crossing. Le Havre, Southampton . . . how provincial it sounds! Really, it should be called the Paris, London, New York Line, which would be every bit as accurate.

  Vera continued unpacking. She pulled out her toiletry kit, opened it, and peered inside. She had half a mind to apply some Ferrol’s Magic Skin Food (“for filling out wasted necks!”) but knew it was pointless. With a slight snort, she stashed the toiletries away in the drawer and looked back inside her bag.

  Here was the book Charles had given her for the voyage, a slim volume of poems by a Greek acquaintance of his. She noticed with a smile that he had taken the liberty of turning down a corner to mark a page. Ah, a poem not to be missed. Well, she would save it for the last day, then send Charles a wire saying she had just seen it. Or, perhaps she would use this telephone! Chuckling to herself, she tried to imagine what could possibly be so urgent that one would need to telephone from the middle of the sea.

  Finally, Vera took out her journals, three heavy volumes, and lay them neatly on the small writing table. Then, from a pocket in the side of the bag, she brought out her fountain pen, placing it carefully on top of the pile. She had written every word with that pen; in fact, it was the pen itself that had given her the idea of writing her memoirs some seven years ago.

  It had happened just a few months before the war. She was on the train returning from a dreary weekend at Deauville, the de rigueur holiday resort on Normandy’s flat, gray coast, which had deviously slipped its way into the itineraries of the fashionable set. That particular weekend had been especially dull, as the horse races had been rained out.

  They had settled into their first-class compartment for the six-hour journey back to Paris; a drowsy lot even then, Amandine was asleep on her shoulder, and Bibi on her lap. She herself was feeling very relaxed—an English nanny couldn’t rock one to sleep any better than a French train—when, an hour into their journey, a distinguished-looking gentleman came into their compartment. He sat down on the empty seat in front of them, took off his hat, and smiled, bowing his head politely in her direction. He then rustled in his bag until he found a book, put on his glasses, and began to read.

  Feigning sleep, she watched him through half-closed eyes. She could see from his clothes that he was not French and his skin was darker than those pale Europeans of the north. His hair was turning silver, there was a bit of white in his neatly trimmed beard, but over his deep brown eyes, his thick, perfectly arched eyebrows were still black.

  Vera liked watching him read, his eyes flickering back and forth under his gold-rimmed glasses, his tapered fingers waiting expectantly for the next page. She glanced down at the cover of the book and read:

  VALLE-INCLÁN

  TEATRO

  The name seemed so exotic, a pre-Columbian god. She thought the dark stranger must be in the world of theater: a playwright, a director, or perhaps an actor? She imagined him reading out loud to her (plays were meant to be performed, were they not?), his voice turning the Spanish prose into music, operetta.

  She watched him take out a pipe, consider it, put it back in his bag, to find a notebook and pen. As he sat writing on crossed knee, Vera was suddenly aware of the warmth in the compartment, she who was always cold. She smiled to herself, allowing herself a rare moment of reverie: she was no longer traveling with her old servant and dog, but with this intriguing gentleman, and out the windows there were no gray-blue fields, but castle-topped hills in the sun.

  Eyes closed (had she fallen asleep?), she suddenly heard him repacking his things, readying himself to leave. The train was pulling into Saint Germaine, she knew; they were almost to Paris. Vera decided against opening her eyes, only to see the disappointing tip of the Spaniard’s hat accompanied by a polite smile. She preferred to imagine him bidding her farewell with a long, regretful gaze and hesitating at the door.

  The whistle blew and the train begrudgingly recommenced, pulling its vast weight, slowly, rhythmically. Finally she opened her eyes to look at the empty hollow of the cushion where the man had been sitting. And, between the velvet cracks she could see the tip of a fountain pen. Holding Bibi carefully in one arm, she reached over for it, with a small laugh. A love offering, she said to herself.

  Vera had many fine writing instruments: two desk sets, a collection of dip pens, a half dozen fountain pens from the best houses in Europe. But this one was truly exquisite. It had a mother-of-pearl cap, a rich brown resin barrel, and a silver clip. She fingered its lines, then slowly unscrewed the top. The nib was decorated with a stylized cross. Charles, who knew such things, told her later that it was the Cross of Santiago, the one Velázquez had painted on his own chest in his monumental canvas Las Meninas.

  Perhaps the pen had been specially made for the Spanish traveler? At any rate, there was very little chance of seeing him again to return it. The best she could do was to write something worthy of it. She decided to write—with this pen and only this pen—the only story she really knew: her own.

  She contemplated at length the right way to approach her memoirs. Vera could not imagine beginning with “I was born” and following along with several years’ worth of information that she herself could not remember. Instead of writing her story chronologically, she decided to write it alphabetically. She chose to describe emblematic moments, funny anecdotes, running themes, all categorized by letters, from A for Appendix (the tragicomedy of suffering from appendicitis while visiting her grandmother, who was then senile) to Z for Zeppelin (the terror of watching the deadly, silent balloons stalking Paris during the Great War).

  She reveled in the choice making for each letter, some obvious selections, others more obscure. When two years had passed, she had finished writing her alphabet memoirs with her fetish pen, always in indigo ink. However, after she had finished that volume, she wanted to continue writing: tales that had not fit into the original twenty-six, had been forgotten, or those she had not been ready to tell. She then decided to write vignettes which involved a significant number, giving herself infinite possibilities. Of course, it was impossible (and did not appeal to her) to start from one and go on from there; rather, she chose important, symbolic numbers, in whatever order they occurred to her. She began with 1057, her parents’ address on Fifth Avenue.

  In these volumes, the margins, and sometimes a full page, were scattered with line drawings—comic sketches, portraits leaning toward caricature, illustrations for the text—also made with the pen, but occasionally shaded in later with pencils or pastels. Although Vera had never liked needlework, she loved drawing. In fact, when she’d first arrived in Paris, she attended the Académie Vitti, a private art school for women, but she soon tired of the routine of live models and weekly critiques. Preferring to work on her own, she visited the Louvre often and copied works in pencil or pen, simplifying Greek or Egyptian sculptures into a few sharp lines. Writing and drawing came together to make up her journals, the disjointed story of her life.

  Now, thumbing through her alphabet journal in a luxury cabin on an enormous ship, she thought again of the Spaniard from the train. Just yesterday she had absentmindedly looked for him, as she had for years in train stations. Passing through the Gare Saint Lazare with Charles, she wondered whether she could recognize him, whether he were still in France. Had he fought in the war, lost a limb, or was he even alive? He had taken on that mythic quality only truly attainable with total strangers. For years, Charles had teased her about him playfully, occasionally nudging her, pointing out unlikely candidates, asking her if perchance that was he? But her old friend had also been very encouraging of her writing, and had been, so far, her only reader.

  She suddenly put the pen down
.

  “Damn it,” Vera muttered, realizing that she had forgotten to tell Amandine to reserve her deck chair.

  As she roused herself to knock on her maid’s door, she frowned. She was becoming more and more forgetful.

  Constance stood in line at the steward’s desk, waiting her turn. She was behind a slow-moving, gray-haired woman; the graying dog at her feet had already lain down, preparing itself for a nap.

  “Oui, je voudrais une chaise longue de première classe pour Madame Vera Sinclair,” she requested.

  Constance, idly eavesdropping but understanding almost nothing, decided that “Sinclair” did not sound like a terribly French surname. As the old woman turned to leave, animating the dog with a gentle pull on the leash, she nodded to Constance.

  “Au revoir,” she murmured as she shuffled off down the corridor.

  Constance took her place at the desk.

  “Yes, a deck chair, please, on the second-class deck,” she articulated well, in case the steward’s English was below par. “My name is Mrs. Stone, Mrs. Constance Stone. Please make sure it’s on the port side. The port,” she repeated for emphasis.

  As a novice traveler on the way to France, she hadn’t known how important it was to order a chair on the sunny side of the ship. With the Atlantic breezes, it had been bitter cold on the shady side and she hadn’t been able to enjoy the deck at all.

  When an acceptable deck chair had been assigned to her, Constance made her way back to her room. Sitting on the bed, she took off her hat, unbuckled her boots, then looked around her cabin.

  Ah, a new ocean liner on its maiden voyage . . . It was not the celebration that appealed to her, but this cleanliness. To be the first person to ever use this room, the first person to lie on this bed. The faucet and washbasin, the inviting armchair with its bright upholstery: it was all so pristine! She breathed in the honey-laden smell of beeswax given off by the wood paneling, then rubbed her face along the bedspread. This newness was an especially welcome change after spending a fortnight in a Paris hotel. Supposedly a high-quality establishment, it had been musty and damp, with worn sheets and a medieval toilet down the hall. In such a sickly environment, it was a miracle she hadn’t caught pneumonia.

  She picked up her purse and brought out two studio photographs printed on thick card stock. The first showed her three young daughters—ages two, four, and six—holding hands and smiling at the camera, large bows in their thick hair. Constance smiled back at them, longing to kiss them, to let her lips linger on their smooth, round cheeks. She wondered how they were, whether they had managed to grow or change in just a few short weeks. The other photograph was of her husband, George, standing in a formal pose, eyeing the camera suspiciously. He had given it to her before they’d married. In it, he was as stiff and serious as he was now, though he looked much younger; he was not yet wearing glasses, his hair was still dark. Now, what was left of it was gray, and his beard was that of a neatly trimmed Father Christmas.

  She stood both photographs up on her dresser, her eyes trailing from one to the other. What would she and George have to talk about in twenty years’ time, when their girls were gone, married, and raising families of their own? She couldn’t bear a middle age filled with pained silences and unnatural politeness; she’d had a lifetime’s worth during childhood. Constance flicked her husband’s picture over with her finger, letting it fall facedown.

  She propped open her new steamer trunk, specially purchased for this trip, and opened its drawers, checking that everything was there, intact. She picked up the fine lace shawl she’d bought for herself in Paris, brought it gently to her cheek, then put it back. She examined the gifts for her girls—porcelain dolls decked out in the finest French fashions—and made sure they were not cracked or chipped. She saw that the present she’d gotten her parents—a bottle of Veuve Clicquot—was also unbroken. Wrapping it back in its tissue paper, Constance chided herself: when would her parents have the occasion to celebrate with fine champagne? She stored it next to the dolls, then closed the trunk, aware that she hadn’t bought anything for George. Nothing she’d seen on her trip had seemed a fitting token of affection or reconciliation or even an appropriate souvenir. Perhaps that was because she’d just as soon he forgot her trip entirely.

  Leaving her trunk in the corner, she plopped down in the little armchair, stretched, and glanced out the porthole. Funny, how quickly one becomes used to traveling. On her eastbound voyage, her first Atlantic crossing, she had been nervous and, unaccustomed to being alone, was unable to settle down. She supposed that was why she had spent so much time with Gladys Pelham, the fellow traveler assigned to share her cabin.

  Gladys, a terribly shy old maid of about forty-five, and her friends, an uneven number of matrons, widows, and spinsters from St. Louis, were keen to take Constance under their wing. Those gregarious ladies were intrigued why a young woman should be traveling all alone.

  Constance found herself telling them quite a bit of her story, in fact, more than she had told any of her friends back in Worcester. It was almost a giddy experience to speak freely, here alone, where no one knew her family. She was able to talk undisturbed, without her father quickly quieting her with a disapproving huff or her husband interrupting her, to take on her story as his own. Back home, she was viewed as quiet, responsible, and perhaps a bit too formal (though hopefully not dull like George!), but on the ship, with these women’s rapt attention, she was able to say what she pleased and paint herself to her own liking: selfless, devoted, worldly even.

  She explained to the ladies that her father was sending her to Paris to retrieve her younger sister, Faith, who had run away from their aunt while touring Europe the previous year. Constance told them that her sister had been living with a painter and modeling—nude! Now their mother had become gravely ill (“Who wouldn’t, with such a daughter?”) and her father felt she was the only one capable of convincing Faith to leave that sordid life behind and come back home. And she had left her dear husband and three darling daughters behind to do this small service for her loving parents.

  Constance was aware that this select version of the events made her family seem almost normal. She had, of course, left out all of the unpleasant details, including the fact that she was the last person her sister would listen to. Bitter rivals since childhood, Constance thought Faith an insufferable brat and knew that her sister considered her a prude. She had also failed to mention that her mother would probably not care whether her daughter returned to Worcester or not.

  High-strung and prone to fits of hysteria, her mother, Lydia Browne, had once been their father’s patient. Gerald Watson had met her as a case study and, although he was old enough to know better, he had fallen in love with her fragile beauty and vulnerability. Although it caused quite a scandal within the psychology department at Clark University, his colleagues utterly disapproving, they were married after a short, intense courtship. Constance was born within the year, then Faith, some five years later. Their mother, despite her engulfing dependence on Gerald, was never able to divide her affections to include her children. Lydia neglected them both completely, leaving her girls to servants, aunts, and grandmothers. Their only clear childhood memories of their mother consisted in long, cold silences, frightening bouts of laughter or tears, wide-eyed shaking, and, once or twice, their father restoring her senses with a slap. Constance supposed that their mother’s abandonment could have brought the sisters together, made them close, but it had had quite the opposite effect.

  At any rate, on the crossing over, Constance’s company was widely in demand. When she and the other ladies weren’t discussing her “mission,” as they called it, they indulged in the ship’s many pleasures: shuffleboard games and table tennis, high tea and hands of cribbage. Constance parted ways with them in Southampton—Gladys and her friends were traveling to London—with hugs and tears, and promises to write.

  This time around, however, she couldn’t stand the idea of socializing. She had even pa
id the supplement for a private room, ignoring the steward’s disapproving look as she was given one of the cabins typically reserved for bachelors. Not only had her mission failed, but she felt like a failure herself. When Constance thought of the poignant conversations (nothing more than gossip, really) she’d had with those ladies from Missouri (who were all rather drab, in retrospect), she felt like a fraud, not to mention boring.

  Boring and conventional. After this trip, Constance, who knew herself to be beautiful, had never felt so old and dull. She remembered overhearing Faith laughing at her wedding, saying that if “a rolling stone gathers no moss, what will happen to a Constant Stone? It’ll be covered in thick green bracken before the year’s out! A right bog it’ll be!” Constance frowned at the memory. She had been married now for eight years, and Faith’s prediction had come true.

  Not that she would trade her staid life for what her sister had chosen. “Fée,” as she now called herself (Constance had assumed it was French for “faith” and couldn’t believe it when she found out her sister was going by the name of “fairy”) was living in truly appalling conditions: no hot water, no indoor plumbing, no maids or help. Living on the fourth floor of an old building, they had to walk up steep steps, nearly always with bags and parcels, to reach the small, moldy flat, where the best room—the large one with French windows—was given over to Michel’s studio.

  Although it was small and their possessions were few, the place was not only dirty but in complete disarray. There were piles of books and papers on the floor, two divans covered in rumpled blankets and dirty clothes, footstools, broken lamps, tabletops jammed full of colored glass, small tools, beads, bottles of wine, coffee cups, and pipe tobacco.

  Among this squalor, Faith, Michel, and their friends and acquaintances—a steady stream was constantly coming and going, stopping for a minute then staying for hours, with someone inevitably producing some strange bauble they would all gawk over—were bewilderingly content. And so busy!