The Story Sisters

ELV’S LITTLE GIRL had black hair, like all the Story sisters. Her eyes, however, were dark, like her father’s. Even as a newborn she could easily be comforted as soon as she heard the words Once upon a time. The nurses in the maternity ward had been amazed. They all declared her to be the most beautiful child ever seen in a New York City hospital, and her mother couldn’t have agreed more. Elv named her Megann, for her mother and sister, but she called her Mimi, which was the name Lorry had favored.

Natalia flew to New York the week after the baby was born. She checked into her hotel in Manhattan, then took a taxi to Queens. She hadn’t been back to New York for a long time, and she felt overwhelmed. She stood outside the apartment building in Forest Hills for a while, collecting herself, before she went in. She thought it would perhaps be an awkward meeting after all this time, but when Elv opened the door, she quickly embraced her grandmother. They both blinked back tears and studied each other, then laughed and studied each other again. Elv brought Natalia inside. It was a small apartment, sparsely furnished, but tidy. They went into the room where the baby was sleeping.

“Gorgeous,” Natalia breathed.

“This is your ama,” Elv said to the baby. She leaned over the crib and stroked Mimi’s hair. “She’s here to welcome you to the world.”

Natalia spent a week entranced by the child. She spent so much time with Mimi that she checked out of her hotel and moved into the apartment, sleeping on the couch. One night they invited Elise and Mary Fox over. Elv was a nervous wreck. The visit went better than she might have expected. Mary worked in the ER at St. Vincent’s. She had been such a studious, well-behaved girl, but as an adult she craved the excitement and chaos of the emergency room. She shook Elv’s hand and said, “Long time no see,” just as corny and smart as ever. Mary’s mother, Elise, hugged Elv and told her she couldn’t believe how strongly she’d come to resemble her mother.

“Just as pretty. And that’s saying a lot.”

Elv was flattered. Even when Annie was in the garden, muddy, wearing her old black jacket, she seemed more beautiful than any movie star.

They all oohed and aahed over the baby, who had turned out to be a good sleeper, something Elise assured Elv was the most important attribute of any newborn.

When the time came for Natalia to leave later in the week, it seemed too soon. Pete picked her up at Elv’s apartment to drive her to the airport.

“I think our girl’s holding her own,” Pete said.

When he asked after Claire, who rarely answered his letters, Natalia sadly could not say the same. “She’s doing the best she can, considering the circumstances.”

As Pete was carrying her suitcase out to the car, Natalia embraced her granddaughter. “Now, you come see us,” Natalia said. She handed Elv an envelope. Elv looked at her quizzically. “Two tickets to Paris.”

“Of course,” Elv said. She thanked her ama and they both wept, but Elv knew it was unlikely she would come. Every year she planned on going to Paris and every year her plan dissolved. She and Lorry had always talked about it. She’d wanted him to see the Île de la Cité, Berthillon’s ice cream shop, the chestnut tree in the courtyard. She had wanted to sit outside Notre Dame with him and let him guess which were the happy families. She wanted to take him down to the riverbank where she’d found the kitten someone had once tried to drown. After her ama left, she gazed out the window, then went to stash the envelope in a dresser drawer, beneath the sweaters that were stored away until winter.

MADAME COHEN NOTICED that something had happened to Claire after Shiloh’s death. She seemed wary, like the stray dogs that gathered in the Bois de Boulogne at night. People said they were werewolves, but they were nothing of the sort. They were uncared for and abandoned, dogs left on street corners and in empty lots that gathered in packs deep inside the park. You only saw them at night, if you were foolish enough to walk along the dark paths. Their eyes glinted yellow from behind the lindens.

A year had come and gone, and then another. Claire had begun to drink alone at a café on her way home from work and once or twice had become so inebriated she hadn’t been able to find her key and slept in the courtyard, under the chestnut tree.

Madame Cohen had not given up on her. She had plans for Claire even if Claire had none for herself. She still hung long strips of flypaper from the ceiling. So far she had caught forty-two demons. She was watchful, ready for those that might be lingering nearby. She had sent her grandson to the Rosens’ several times to complete a series of tasks: He was to change the lightbulbs, open windows that had been shut for the winter and were now stuck, carry Martin’s old armchair down for the trashman. But each time he appeared, Claire made herself scarce, hiding out in her room behind her locked door.

“I have a different job for you,” Madame Cohen told Claire one day. This was part of her plan. Jeanne and Lucie were shrugging on their coats as they got ready to leave the shop, but Madame Cohen grabbed Claire and told her to wait. She scrawled down an address. “Be there tomorrow at nine.”

When Madame Cohen’s husband had been alive, he’d designed and crafted the jewelry in the shop, but for the past twenty years his brother, Samuel, who was called the deuxième Monsieur Cohen, had taken his place. His were extraordinary pieces, necklaces and rings that looked like gumdrops, or clouds, or slices of tangerine. He could no longer leave his apartment on the top floor of his building. He was eighty-eight and his legs had given out. Although he could get around in his flat with the help of two canes, the steep, circular staircase to the lobby of his apartment building was impossible.