She looks so distressed that I worry she doesn’t like it, and I begin to babble. “I thought . . . I hoped . . . given Vichy’s emphasis on motherhood and Catholicism, this might strike the right note.” As her silence stretches on, I realize that whatever the reason I started these sketches of Adrienne, they mean something to me now, and my stomach hollows out in anticipation of the baroness’s disappointment.
Then she says, “I expected inspiration, but it’s a reflection. As if Adrienne could be almost any woman in France today . . .”
“I’m sorry—I—”
“Don’t apologize. I think you’ve captured the truth of the matter. That those who came before us weren’t so different. It just serves certain ends to pretend they were. This is marvelous work. A real leap forward for you, Marthe.”
Heaving a sigh of relief, I try to brush off the praise, even though this is more attention than I’ve had for my art since the showing at the castle more than a year ago. Who were those people at that party? I suddenly wonder. When I think of that night—jazz, champagne, pastry puffs, Henri’s jacket around my shoulders—I don’t recognize anyone. Least of all myself. How could so many people—a nation, even—change so much? One night, we were dancing under crystal chandeliers, dreaming of a future. Now we’re all afraid of the past.
As proud as I am of the sketches I’ve shown the baroness, I’m not brave enough to show her my sketch of Voltaire kneeling at Adrienne Lafayette’s feet, because it’s just the sort of truth we’re trying to bury: that however much she might have been like any woman in France—grieving, lonely, trying to find faith—Lafayette’s wife was, in her way, a Revolutionary too.
“We’ll frame these and put them up in the entryway,” the baroness says with satisfaction. “Beatrice would be so very proud . . . I had the chance to see her briefly in New York for my daughter’s wedding, you know. Unfortunately, she’s landed herself in the hospital with a flare-up of an old medical condition; she’s worked herself nearly half to death reviving the old Committee of Mercy to send assistance to France and wants us all to know how it pains her not to be with us in these trying times . . .”
I swallow, unable to imagine a woman as vibrant as Madame Beatrice in a hospital bed. “She’ll be all right, won’t she?”
“With some rest—if they can get her to rest.”
“I’ve been wanting to write her,” I say, remembering those precious airmail sheets Madame Simon offered. “But . . . well . . . I want to talk to you first.”
The baroness eyes me with a faint whiff of impatience—she always has so many things to do—but curiosity gets the better of her, and she sits on a damasked sofa, crosses her legs, and pats the seat beside her.
I take the invitation to sit. “I’ve recently learned Madame Beatrice found me when I was a child.”
The baroness nods. “Beatrice brought you to us, anyway. A dreadful winter in the midst of the last war. Nary a chunk of coal to be had, and we were hoping for a Christmas truce.”
Screwing up my courage, I show her my file. “I’ve always been told that no one knew who my parents were, but this record lists my mother’s name.”
She leans over to look, and then I’m sure I see a flicker of recognition in her eyes. “How curious . . .”
My excitement is palpable. “Did you know my mother? Do you know Minerva Furlaud?”
She seems to hesitate, and my fingers tingle with anticipation, but in the end, she says, “I’m afraid not.”
The disappointment is crushing. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“But it seemed—well, it seemed as if this brought back a memory. Maybe even a sad one.”
The baroness wraps her arms around herself. “Oh, I’m reminded of that year. How I was pregnant with Anna while nursing soldiers near the front, how the bombs kept falling and I wondered what kind of mother I was to bring a child into such a world. The things I risked in that war . . . it makes me sad that it was all for nothing.”
I don’t know what she risked in that war, but I want to tell her it wasn’t for nothing. I’ve been taught to thank the men who fought in that war, but I’m starting to realize how many women I have to thank too. Because of them, my generation grew up in peacetime, as free French people. That’s worth something, isn’t it?