The Story Sisters

Since she’d moved to Paris there had been men who were interested in her, but Claire ignored them. She thought that love ruined people. She kept her distance. Once a man had come up and kissed her as she was searching for shallots in a vegetable bin in the market. He’d grabbed her and pulled her close before she could react, then had blurted out something about her being too beautiful to ignore. Claire abandoned her groceries and left the shop. She’d never returned to that market, although it was the one closest to her grandmother’s apartment.

She no longer cared about the many colors of sunlight in Paris. She remembered making lists with Meg about that, too. There were times when the light had been pink or pale lemon, dusty violet or gray as smoke. Then there had been the day when it was orange. Claire preferred the dark. Paris was good for that. People said it was the city of light, but not if you went out on rainy days, coat collar turned up. Not if you waited for twilight before emerging onto the street. There were many things Claire had no interest in anymore besides light. Friendship, food, conversation, men, love, school, work, dreams. She shut herself away in her room and slept most of the day. When she came out for dinner, merely a bowl of soup or some crackers, her face looked crumpled. Sometimes her grandmother feared that Claire was evaporating. What would be left of her if she kept disappearing into a smaller and smaller world of her own? Her shoes, her hat, her coat, nothing more. Claire spoke only when the need arose, but the need for speech is arbitrary. When neighbors greeted her, she looked startled, as though she’d pricked her finger with a pin. Sometimes she had terrible dreams. That was something even Claire couldn’t avoid with sleep. Several times Natalia heard her call out in the gibberish language the Story sisters used to speak.

WHEN CLAIRE WENT on her nighttime walks, she was looking for stones, one for every day she had not visited her sister’s and mother’s graves. Stones piled up under her bed, in the closet, and in dresser drawers. Her favorites were the glassy ones gathered with a fishing net from the shallows of the Seine, but she also liked the round white ones from the Tuilleries. Her collection grew so large that the apartment rattled on windy days. The downstairs neighbors, unnerved, began to complain. Tenants in the building dreamed of earthquakes and landslides. Before long, such dreams were common even among the littlest children. A young couple moved out, believing the building to be cursed, which was perfectly fine with the landlord, who quickly found new tenants and doubled the rent.

Claire often wondered if she herself was a demon. Long ago, Elv had taught her how to recognize one; she’d whispered the telltale signs as they’d lain side by side in bed. Demons were marked by black stars, pale eyes. When one walked through a room, ice formed on the windowpanes; plants withered. At the moment of disaster, when you turned to them, when you needed them most, they were gone. That was Claire; that was what she’d done.

Meg would have been a grown woman with a life of her own if Claire hadn’t called for her to get in the car. She had loved books. Perhaps she would have been a writer by now, living in London or Manhattan. She would have had a lover or a husband. A child, perhaps several. There was no consolation for what Claire had done. The yellow lamplight, the gargoyles with their crooked faces, the cobblestones that clattered as she walked along, the parks ringed with black iron fences were invisible as she walked through Paris in the dark. She no longer cared about human concerns such as love and happiness. She believed in punishments, reprisals, fate. She believed she and Elv were two of a kind. On several occasions she had found herself poised at the edge of the river, boots caked with mud, the gusting wind pushing her onward. What difference would it make if she never returned?

ONE AFTERNOON NATALIA discovered her granddaughter perched on the window ledge gazing down at the white flowers that cluttered the chestnut tree in the courtyard below. It was the terrible season, the one they hated, the time of violets and pollen and green light. It was spring. Time had passed, but in many ways Claire had remained the same. She’d never gone to a university, never held a job or been in love, never cooked a meal for anyone or kissed someone until she was dizzy. She thought it was best for her to be apart from the rest of humanity. Ever since the bad day she thought she might be dangerous.

When Natalia found her swaying on the ledge she called out to her granddaughter, but Claire didn’t answer. The world was closing down. Some people might have said it was a nervous breakdown, a mental collapse brought on by trauma and stress. Natalia wondered if it was the philosophy of doom that held Claire in thrall. If you believed in something strongly and gave it enough credence, it could appear right in front of you. Though it had been created in your mind, it would claim a presence in the real world, a monster at your door, a demon pulling at your coat sleeve.

Natalia grabbed her granddaughter back through the window. It was like wresting a sleeper from a dream. She tugged so hard she wrenched her shoulder. She wasn’t the sort to let go. Secretly she wrote to Elv every week, chatty letters about her neighbors, stories about the Marais. She jotted down the histories of local people, how long they’d lived in their apartments, the names of husbands and wives, homey facts—what was eaten for dinner, how it was cooked, what the weather had been. She didn’t give up, even though she hadn’t heard back. For all she knew, her granddaughter threw her letters away, unread. She didn’t realize how much Elv looked forward to these letters until Natalia came down with the flu and missed a few weeks of writing. A letter from the States arrived soon after, the very first she’d received from Elv. Did Madame Michelle marry the man who’d been courting her? What happened to the Maltese puppy he’d brought her as a gift? Did she ever have the heart to tell him she was allergic to dogs? Did the café around the corner dismiss the waiter everyone loved, but who was so tired from working two jobs, he often fell asleep on his feet, tray in hand? Were the chestnut flowers in bloom? Did the air smell like almonds? What color was the light? When will I hear from you again?