“Who are you?” It was a clear statement.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” I said with a laugh.
“An angel?”
I smiled. An angel was the furthest thing from truth, it seemed. “Yes.” My hand was hot, like I had placed it on an open flame, but I didn’t remove it. The longer I held it, the clearer I could see the old woman’s gaze become. When I couldn’t hold on any longer, I pulled my hand away. “Goodbye, Marielle.”
As I left her room, I could see her looking around the unfamiliar furnishings, wondering where her apartment had gone.
“About time,” said Mickey as I brushed past him into the hall. “I thought we were having a family reunion.”
“Oh shut up.”
I had the vial hidden in my hand as we left through the front door, walking slowly past the concierge desk like people who hadn’t just stolen a vial of blood from an old woman.
Once we were outside, Mickey sped up. “We’re like outlaws.”
“You’re enjoying this way too much. I think you can slow down,” I said. “No one is coming after us.”
He slowed. “What happened back there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t be cute, Helen.”
“My brain tumor now seems to be able to bend the wills of others… oh, and heal, too.”
“Really?” Mickey touched his forehead. “I’ve had a slight headache since we landed. Can you heal that?”
I glared at him.
Then he spied a café. “Let’s see if you’re right.”
He took me by the hand like a child in trouble with its mother and marched me into the café. “Order me a coffee with cream and that delicious-looking pastry.” He pointed to an almond croissant.
I frowned, tapped on the glass at the pastry, and ordered two café au laits. As the woman prepared them, Mickey whispered behind me, “Now tell her you have no money to pay for them, but that you’re hoping she won’t mind if we just take them.”
“Pardon, mademoiselle. Je n’ai pas d’argent… mais… je voudrais un café au lait et croissant, s’il vous plaît.”
The woman looked relieved, like she’d longed to have an unpaying customer standing before her. “Mais oui,” she exclaimed, pushing the pastry to me, almost insisting I take it, like it was her idea.
“I love this,” sighed Mickey.
“Well, you only get about two more weeks of it before I’m dead, so enjoy it.” I handed him the bag with the pasty. “What was it you were saying about an MRI?”
“Don’t be using this mind-bending shit on me!” He pointed a finger and began digging in the bag. “Do you think we need to refrigerate the vial?”
“No,” I said. “It’s being used for a curse, Mickey, not a transfusion.”
I tucked the vial safely in my bag wrapped in a piece of bubble wrap that I’d had the foresight to bring.
“Mickey,” I began, “could we do something? I mean… since we’re here.” I walked over to the cab stand near the train. I asked the driver if he was local, and he said that he had lived in Challans all his life. I asked if he knew how to get to La Garnache. He nodded and we were soon out of the commune of Challans and into the countryside. In one hundred years, the immediate outskirts of the city had changed, but as we moved farther into the country, the white stone houses that had stood for generations began to resemble what I had seen through Juliet’s eyes. The roads were different, having been carved out of what had been farmland. I asked the driver if he knew the Fonteclose manor, and he nodded. “I am from La Garnache,” he responded.
“Maybe you can suggest we not pay,” whispered Mickey.
I ignored him and focused on the driver. “Did you know the Busson family?”
“Oui,” said the driver with little interest. “They are an unpleasant bunch. Madness runs in that family.” I suspected that he was offering up more than he normally would in a casual ride, and the poor man had no idea why he was doing so.
“They lived near the Fonteclose estate, didn’t they?”
“Oui,” he said. “I know it well. They sold the house when I was around twenty.” He paused. “I am sixty now.”
“Can we go to the Busson house? I just want a glimpse of it.”
We drove swiftly through the valleys, the ripe greens and wheat-colored hills. When he turned right on the road, I had an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. I had, literally, been here in my dreams last week, but it was no dream. It was like a bottled memory, a little like Through the Looking-Glass. I’d walked these roads when they were dusty. My feet had been dirty and I had been brown from being in the sun and the sweet sweaty scent of a child in the summer was something I could still smell remnant traces of, like yesterday’s perfume lingering on your pulse points.
He drove up the road about half a mile and pointed down the hill. The Busson house was still standing, but it had a different paint color now. The porch where Michel Busson had grabbed and pinched my arm. I looked up the hill and I could spy it: my old stone house. To my surprise, it remained unchanged.
“Would you wait here for us?”
“But of course,” the driver said, nodding.
As if I were in a spell myself, I stepped out of the cab and walked up the hill toward my old house. There were signs of life in it: wash hanging on the line, and a terribly odd sight: power lines connecting to the road. There were toys scattered throughout the yard in the primary colors of children. As we walked closer, I could hear the familiar sounds of chickens. I smiled.
Mickey was close behind me. “We’ll probably have some angry Frenchman with a shotgun after us.”
“Not if I can talk to him first,” I said. Truth be told, I liked my new suggestive power and I was so comfortable with it, like an old shirt, that I knew it wasn’t the first time I’d been given a gift such as this.
I saw an overgrown patch of grass. Clearing away some of it, I uncovered the stone well where I went daily to draw water. Instinctively, I looked around for a bucket. The house was not well kept; farm equipment and junk littered the grass in haphazard piles. Five yards from the well, I knew the exact spot where Michel Busson and his friend had held Juliet down and raped her in the night. And that left only one more hill to climb. Trekking up, I could see Marchant’s roof peeking out. Seeing that house again stole my breath away. I came to the beginning of the stone wall and touched it. It was not as tall as I remembered. Memories and images came flooding back like old home movies in my mind. Not the key memories that I’d been shown, but the entire flood of them: my feet on the cool stones, the sound of my mother’s voice, the soft drape of the fabric in Marchant’s studio, and of course Marchant himself. The door to the gate was held open with a plant in a badly broken pot. I walked through the courtyard to the outdoor studio. It was empty. Somehow this detail made the space bearable. It needed to be empty. My Auguste Marchant was long gone.
I understood in a flash how tricky time can be. It’s unnatural to witness so much sweeping change brought on by time. People were meant to live in their small pockets of time with events proceeding in digestible intervals. To see so many lifetimes of progress unfurled before us is far too jarring—almost incomprehensible. It makes us doubt our significance in the world. And a feeling of significance is so important to our survival.