Adieu

Hummingbird on our WI deck

Why couldn't she die in the spring, she thinks guiltily, shivering in her wintercoat and hurrying along Rue Guynemer where she grew up. The short, quiet street borders the Jardins du Luxembourg, one of the prettiest parks in Paris.

Her older sister picked her up earlier that day at the Charles de Gaulle Airport where she arrived from Los Angeles for their mother's funeral the day after to-morrow. She lives less than a mile away and is cooking dinner for the two of them. But first, there is, of course, the matter of saying au revoir (good-bye) -- or is it adieu (farewell)? -- to the apartment where she and her sister grew up. Not quite ready for the ghosts she knows will be lurking about, she keeps walking around the neighborhood aimlessly.

Slowing down, she lets her gloved fingers drag along the stone ledge which runs along the fence surrounding the Luxembourg. Her memory is flooded with flashbacks of herself and her best friend -- who lived four buildings away down the same street -- sitting there after school every day, some 40 years ago, earnestly trying to solve the problems of their own teenage world. Would they, filled as they were like all adolescents with the presumption they would live for ever, have believed then that breast cancer would bring their friendship to an abrupt end twenty years later, she reflects sadly.

The piercing November wind is angrily ripping the leaves off the trees. The Paris sky looks as mean and depressing and the timid winter light filtering through it as gloomy as she remembers them.

Not one of the stores looks familiar. No longer in business are all of the shops which, all those years ago, lined Rue Vavin, the narrow street connecting her own to Boulevard Montparnasse and the train station of the same name. The bakery -- that haven with its tantalizing smells always luring her after school for  traditional treats like pain au chocolat or palmier -- is now a shoe store. The sweater shop where she earned her first money as a teenager learning to fold and stack sweaters neatly, is a photographer's studio. Her cherished bookstore -- where she and her friends used to "hang out," although the word had not yet been invented -- has been turned into a small restaurant with a minuscule outdoor cafe. Its tables are fighting with pedestrians for space on a sidewalk already made narrower than in her days, to allow for more curb parking as well as increased traffic.

Unsettled by the disappearance of so much that was familiar, she is groping for some sense of permanence or continuity. Well, at least, the Luxembourg hasn't changed. Entering the park, she finds the instant connection she’s yearning: the closely cropped lawns, with their Défense de marcher sur les pelouses (Keep off the grass) signs; the black-topped walkways for pedestrians and children on bicycles; the clouds of dust rising from children's feet pounding the open areas spreading under the towering oak and plane trees.

On the pond in front of the Senate Building, still surrounded by skillful arrays of seasonal flowers and sculpted trees, small -- and not so small -- children still gather excitedly to sail small power boats with remote controls.  People of all ages lazily watch, or doze or read in chairs placed for that very purpose all around the many grassy areas, content to bask in the late afternoon sunshine. Thank God some things still are the same as they used to be.

 She knows, however, that what is waiting for her on the second floor of number 38 Rue Guynemer, will not be. Her mother won't be there, as she was on her last visit, four Christmases ago. Her father died so many years ago that his memory isn't as closely linked to the apartment in her mind. What she dreads the most is having to face alone the absolute emptiness of the apartment, an empty shell void of the soul which was her childhood. Her sister has already disposed of all the furniture and furnishings after their mother went into a nursing home a few months ago, keeping, giving, or auctioning all of it, including their father's impressive and very old book collection.

 Because of my living 11,000 miles away, she thinks guiltily, I wasn’t the one who had to handle that dreadful clearing process alone. When asked what she wanted for herself, she named just the few knickknacks she remembered, but all she really wanted was their mother's blue velvet lounge chair with the matching ottoman, and her antique sewing guéridon. And so they were all shipped to the United States, and are now part of her own bedroom.

She suddenly realizes the importance of the very few things now in her possession that decorated her life as she was growing up. Including the elegant cup and saucer set, of delicate midnight blue china with gilded edges, that her mother had given her on her last visit. The family legend has it that one of her ancestors had stolen it during the pillage of the Tuileries Palace during the revolution of 1848. Thanks to her unscrupulous distant relative, this prized souvenir was now displayed in the lighted glass curio in her living-room.

On her way up the spiraling stairs, her stomach is complaining from both jetlag and stress. It's been hours since the meager airline breakfast at the end of her long transatlantic flight.  The thought of food makes her wonder whether the cooking odors will still be floating around inside the apartment. They used to permeate their coats hanging on the rack in the front hall by the kitchen. God, how I used to hate that my coat always smelled of last night's dinner, she thinks, remembering the faces she made while sniffing her coat every morning before leaving for school.

Readying herself with a deep breath, she turns the key and slowly opens the front door. With the anticipated shock, the reality of the empty shell hits her all at once in her stomach, her heart and her mind. She feels under siege from a collage of 30 to 40-year old images scrambling to fill the vacuum created by two very dead parents and six very empty rooms.

 She stands motionless, reeling from the impact. Her mind's eye sees all that's missing, and sensory memories are fighting for first place: her mother singing her favorite aria from Puccini's opera "La Bohème"; the taste of the pâté-en-croûte her father used to bring home at night so often from the local charcuterie (delicatessen); the traffic noise, even worse nowadays but muffled by the closed windows; the smooth and cool feel of the big red leather chair in her father's study; the clanging of the metal shutters being slammed shut as soon as it was dark ("We don't want to be in the street," her mother used to say); the pigeons' cooing in the courtyard; but, most of all, the cooking odors. Cheese soufflé, boeuf bourguignon, apple pie, gratin Dauphinois, cassoulet, even cauliflower-and-cheese casserole. She loved eating them all but hated the residual odors that stubbornly lingered overnight.

 An unexpected realization startles her: she's never lived here as an adult. When she left at 21, all she knew was this apartment, this neighborhood, this city. She wonders what it's like for someone to learn to function as an adult in the same context and country as one lived as a child. This makes her suddenly feel awkwardly disconnected from her present life on another continent. Time warp or displacement syndrome?

Slowly coming out of her rêverie, she finds her way through the empty rooms, mentally stumbling on old images triggered by the squeaking of the old parquet floor as she now steps by the radiator in the bedroom she shared with her sister; and by the faded squares or ovals on the sitting room walls, telltales of where her great-grandparents' portraits and her grandfather's paintings used to hang.

No place to sit in her bedroom now, so she opens the tall French window and just sits on the floor in front of it, facing the building across the courtyard. She looks up at the sky and listens to the pigeons cooing in the trees, as she used to years ago, her back against her bed, while a 33rpm record played Mozart, Beethoven, Rackmaninoff or Tchaikovsky. Or military marches! She giggles to herself remembering her parents could never understand why she was so fond of them, considering her open aversion to the military. Neither could she!

A vivid detail suddenly pops into her conscious: She’s fluffing her pillow to the exact and desired volume and consistency for her bedtime ritual; and just as she drops her head on it, her sister sneakily yanks it away from under her head. God, how mad she used to get!

Unaware of how long she's been engrossed in her daydreams, she finally checks her watch. She's due at her sister's for dinner in about 30 minutes. Time for the last walk-through. She moves slowly through her parents' bedroom: Her sister wound up with the massive oak armoire, but where did the clawfoot bathtub and the bidet in the bathroom wind up? In the tiny kitchen, never remodeled in all those years, she learned to cook and bake by just watching her mother. She can still see the aproned figure, mixing, chopping, whipping and slicing.

Finally she enters their father's study. She can still hear her mother's voice in the sitting room, admonishing him: "If you insist on smoking these despicable cigars, you're going to have to do it in your study. I don't want them in here!" The clouds of smoke which engulfed him and his red leather chair are still dense in her mind's eye, and remembering the stench makes her gag even today.

Her absent-mindedly closing the door from the study to the sitting room reveals something hanging on the side of the now empty casing bookcase.

"What on earth...?" she mutters to herself as she reaches for the small frame. Instantly recognizing it, she feels tears filling her eyes. What is it doing here? Why was it left behind? Oh my God, she thinks, how can her sister have overlooked it? Le bonheur de ce monde, The Happiness of this World, their father's favorite sonnet. It tells, in old French, of the ways to attain happiness by seeking the values of the heart, and not falling into the traps of greed, revenge and envy.

She softly and slowly reads a few lines out loud to the silence around her: Avoir une maison commode, propre et belle. N'avoir de partage à faire avec personne. Vivre avec franchise et se contenter de peu.Conserver l'esprit libre et le jugement fort...  To have a pretty, clean and practical house. To owe nothing to anyone. To live honestly and be satisfied with little. To keep a free mind and a strong spirit... She squeezes her eyes to force out the tears. I'll bet the door to the sitting room was left open while everything was removed and taken away, and no one saw it, she thinks, struck by the serendipity of it all. What if I hadn't come back today to say good-bye? It would have merely wound up in the hands of some stranger, as a meaningless old relic of times past. Or even possibly thrown out.|

Hugging the small frame protectively against her chest, she’s ready to say Adieu to her childhood. As she hurries to the front door, she reminds herself it’s time to call her husband and rejoin her sister for dinner.