Jestine came to stand beside me. “They want me to stay here with them.”
“Are you sure you’ll be comfortable?”
Lyddie overheard and called out, “Of course she’ll stay here. The girls are moving into one room, and Mama will have the room with the view of the river.”
I went to see Jestine’s room. Perhaps I hoped it would not be good enough, and I would then encourage her to stay with me.
“She has to approve,” Jestine told her daughter, nodding toward me. “She’s always been the bossy one.”
True enough, but even I had nothing to complain about. Although quite small, the chamber was lovely, with moss-green silk wallpaper flocked with gold and creamy decorative woodwork. There was a high bed with many pillows in shades of jade and scarlet and a bureau on which there was a vase of pale pink peonies, clearly placed there to welcome Jestine. Iron grillwork covered the lower half of the window, and there were damask drapes in an apricot color. The Seine was right outside. I peered out at the still green water and the rain falling down. I knew this was where Jestine wanted to be.
“I approve,” I said.
I left before Lyddie opened her present, the moon dress Jestine had sewn. She had taken my mother’s necklace apart and tacked the pearls to the bodice. She’d used silk thread from China and dyes made of lavender and guava berries. That exchange was private, between mother and daughter. Jestine and I kissed each other in farewell. We had done what we’d set out to do, and we were both exhausted. Then Monsieur Cohen took me to what would now be my home. “Don’t worry about your friend,” he said to me. “She was loved before she came to Paris, and will be even more loved now that she is here.”
I thanked him for his kind help. He and I were kindred spirits after all, willing to do anything for love.
OUR APARTMENT IN PASSY on the Rue de la Pompe was too large for us, but there was no time to look for another. Delphine was extremely ill, and I hadn’t realized how serious her condition was. She was one of the twins, as we called them, for she and Emma had been born so close together they formed their own society. Delphine had been Frédéric’s favorite, a flower he called her, and he gave in to her whims whenever she wanted dogs or tamed birds. “She has a kind heart,” he always said to me. “Like yours.” I smiled when he spoke these words, knowing full well he was likely the only person on earth who thought I had a heart at all.
I hired a nurse immediately, but Delphine did not improve. I watched her sleep in a fever, fading more each day. Perhaps I hadn’t been a good enough mother to my daughters. We had company, my niece and her five children came for weekends to cheer us up, and Lydia was often a guest. But the apartment was too quiet even with visitors. I got lost in the rooms. The kitchen was vast, and my bedroom was the largest I’d ever seen, with a bed so high I was afraid I would fall off in the middle of the night without Frédéric to hold on to. I did not walk in the park or shop on the Rue de Rivoli. Haussmann’s rebuilding had demolished entire neighborhoods. I did not recognize the city, for it was brand new, and when I did venture out, I often found myself lost. When Jestine came to call we had green tea and studied the leaves in our cups to see what our children’s futures might be.
I had the best doctors come and still Delphine coughed up blood. I thought about the herb man in the countryside and the cures he had given me. None of the ingredients could be found in Paris, not even in the African markets in Montmartre, where I went with Lydia on Saturdays to search the stalls. We found nothing from our island, no flowers, no herbs. At night I heard birdsongs I didn’t recognize. I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and gazed out the tall leaded windows while Delphine slept uneasily. In bad weather it was not possible to get warm here in Paris. Frédéric had told me that. He’d said he always worn socks to bed. He was never warm until he came to St. Thomas. Now it was my turn to know the chill of this city. I could feel my blood growing colder and thinner, a pale ribbon of red. The vines outside had lost their leaves, and what only twisted gray stalks were left.
Being inside of a dream was beautiful and sad. I liked to hear about Jestine’s life, her mischievous grandson, Leo, who was growing taller each day. She recounted her days spent with her granddaughters, whom she brought to dance classes and then to have hot chocolate at a sweet shop across from the Tuileries. They, too, would soon be women, on to their own lives. Best of all, Jestine said, were the evenings she spent with Lydia, for after all these years apart, they simply couldn’t stop talking. On Sundays, the entire family went to the Bois de Boulogne, the huge park Monsieur Haussmann, soon to be titled Baron, had constructed, where it was said there were werewolves at night, just as there had been in Charlotte Amalie, when the old corrupt families came out of their houses to drink blood for pleasure. Jestine’s grandchildren begged for stories about our island as we had longed to hear about Paris. Sometimes she brought them to my house and they sat on the carpet, enthralled, while I read to them from my notebooks. They thought St. Thomas was a fairyland, and asked if I could collect magic and call spirits to me as their grand-mère said I could.