Her story is so much a mirror of my own that it was hard to sit across from her and listen. Like Anson, her Hux was trying to do good, volunteering to do work most aren’t brave enough to undertake. And like Anson, he appears to have paid a price for his courage. Perhaps the ultimate price.
I pick up my wineglass and swallow the rest, waiting for the slow wash of warmth to bloom in my belly, my chest, but it isn’t enough. I refill the glass and abandon my salad, no longer hungry. Instead, I take both glass and bottle to my study and sit down at my desk, fumbling through the middle drawer for the engraved cigarette case and lighter I keep there—gifts from an old friend.
It takes several tries to get the thing to light—my hands are a little shaky tonight—but finally the cigarette is lit. I pull in a lungful of smoke, holding it there until I feel dizzy. It’s been a while since I felt the need to smoke. It’s been a while since I felt a lot of things.
Erich Freede stares back at me from an enameled frame on the desk. Father, stranger, lover of Esmée Roussel. Fate unknown. I’ve had the photo from Maman’s locket enlarged and look at it often, because I promised her I would. And today, I told Aurore—no, she prefers Rory—to do the same with Hux, to hold him in her heart. I hope it will help. I have no photograph of Anson. No image to cherish. But I do have something.
My eyes slide to the dress box, still sitting where I left it that first night. I can feel the pull of it, the whisper of its contents coaxing me to revisit the old sorrows. I’ve resisted until now, like a wound I can’t bear to reawaken. But the wine and cigarettes are like old friends, reminding me of the many nights spent weeping over the remnants of my dreams. Holding his shaving kit, savoring the smell of him. Untying the packet of letters and reading them one by one. I’d fancied myself a kind of historian—le gardien des fins heureuses—the keeper of happy endings. Except for my own, of course. But I was happy for a while—we both were—at a time when there was very little happiness to go around.
The war ground on, until all of Paris felt gray and dead. My days at the hospital were long and taxing, a blur of haunted faces and broken lives that seemed to go on forever. But through it all, there was Anson.
He was forever making excuses to hang around the mess, hoping to catch me on a break or at lunch. I confess, I made a few unnecessary trips there myself, particularly after new casualties arrived and he was likely to be about. We would sip terrible coffee and make small talk about music and movies, until the mess finally emptied and his hand would steal across the table and find mine.
We fancied ourselves discreet, convinced that no one else knew of our blooming affection. There were rules about fraternization, but in those days, when life felt so precious and precarious, no one had the heart to come between young lovers.
Eventually, we became more brazen, slipping away whenever we could for a quick bite or a walk. We took turns telling our stories. I couldn’t tell him everything, of course—Maman had brought me up to be careful of our gifts—but I told him what I could, how brides would come from miles away for a Roussel gown, about the letters people left when she died. And I talked about having my own salon when the war was over and the beautiful dresses I would make.
Anson talked about growing up as Newport royalty, about parties at the yacht club, boarding school in Boston, endless summers spent sailing with friends. And he talked about his family, about his father, who came home a hero after being wounded in World War I and promptly seized the reins of the family business from his older brother; his mother, Lydia, who died after a harrowing battle with pneumonia; his little sister, who painted and wrote songs and wanted to be famous one day and live in a garret in Paris; the boats his family had built for generations, sailboats famous for winning something called the America’s Cup.
But my favorite topic that summer was Anson himself, hearing how he grew up, how he’d been packed off to boarding school at the age of eight, how he learned to race himself and became the captain of his own team, then gave up sailing entirely after an ugly fight with his father—and the argument he and his father had the day he announced he was leaving school to join the AFS.
I could listen to him talk for hours, but we never had hours. Our duties meant we had to settle for stolen moments when our shifts happened to allow, and it seemed petty to complain when so many were sacrificing so much.
Then one day, he told me he had arranged a night off for us both. I didn’t ask how or whom he had spoken to. I didn’t care. He took me to a café. Not one of the noisy places frequented by the boche but a quaint brasserie on Rue Saint-Beno?t that had music and candles on the table. We were shown to a booth in one of the back corners. Anson ordered a bottle of good red wine, which went to his head after only one glass. And we ate such food, no doubt procured through the black market. There was a velvety pink soup with bits of lobster, roasted pork with apples and onions, and for dessert, an almond merengue torte. It was the grandest meal I’d ever eaten and must have cost Anson a fortune, but for those few brief hours, we could forget the war and simply be together.