A Letter and a Broach

A Letter and a Broach

I was two weeks away from a career-altering move to France, where a job at an outdoor school awaited. I was part of a pilot project introducing the concept of plein-air learning to high school students and my job was to teach them English.

I sat on the floor of my living room, going through papers hurriedly rammed into random drawers or tossed into forgotten spaces in a former time, this, in preparation for the move. I thought of stuffing the lot into a garbage bag and throwing it down the chute. But, as promised, I was separating, grouping, and discarding ancient statements, canceled policies, forgotten letters from my mother, and other dreary documents, a fatiguing chore. My husband Ian, meanwhile, was in his office, sorting and packing his own papers. He worked from home as an editor, and this move was not going to disrupt his work or inconvenience him. He looked forward to the change, in fact, une aventure, he called it, rehearsing his new words. “We will love it, Carine ma chérie”, rolling his r’s like a Frenchman.

The aromas wafting from the kitchen lured me into the warm room just as Ian decanted Beaujolais into wine glasses, “practicing for later,” he said. I devoured my food, barely chewing or breathing, while Ian methodically masticated every morsel, washing the food down with red wine. I could not escape my eating disorder; my body was a paquet de nerfs, as they called it in France. I burned calories faster than I consumed them, leaving me always famished. Fortunately, Ian was a great cook, he worshipped the kitchen like a chef in a five-star restaurant, and he looked forward to taking cooking classes when overseas. Soupe à l’oignon, Coq au vin, tarte Tatin, my mouth watered, and his fingers grew itchy as the list of repas principaux grew in his head.

Most of the furniture in the apartment had, by now, either been donated to charity, sold, or forced onto friends. Ian and I had accumulated so much in our fifteen years together, and before my mother passed, she insisted on leaving us her best pieces, which, I remember, we did not want but could not refuse. Today I was pulling boxes out of closets, the contents of which had not been looked at in years, when I came upon a smaller box, left to me by my mother.

 After reading out her will, the lawyer had gingerly handed the package over as if it was made of glass; why my mother had not just left it in her antiquated apartment, along with all the other stuff I had inherited, puzzled me. I reluctantly took home the furnishings, and the box, duty-bound to do so. Curious and somewhat excited upon my return from the funeral, I removed the lid from my mother's mysterious box hoping for secrets, enlightenment, perhaps some justifications, anything that would shed light on our strained relationship. There was a picture of my father, Donald, taken when he was a soldier about to be deployed to Vietnam in the seventies, and there was my christening gown, thirty-five years old, wrapped in yellowed tissue paper, dry and brittle; I found a teacup that Dad had brought back from a trip to Wyoming. At the bottom of the box was a flat white package with Crucifix written on the lid. I did not open it; religion stood between my mom and I, and I was not ready to go there. This was an assortment of souvenirs that meant more to her than they did to me, packed next to a crocodile of disappointments inside an ordinary box. Despite its small size, I did not look, that day, at all the items it contained, putting it aside with an inner promise to get to it later.

Our relationship, my mother and I, was awkward. “As a baby,” she confessed one rare day when I was small, “I was left on the steps of a church in southern Nova Scotia and taken to the orphanage run by catholic nuns. That is where I grew up.” Which suddenly explained why we had no relatives on her side of the family, but when I prodded, she closed like a clam shell. On a different occasion, when I was even younger, she showed me a broach that she kept in a velvet, covered box. It was beautiful to my young eyes, delicate gold-plated filigree speckled with small jade flowers. She told me my father need not know about it, and I thought she had bought it without his permission or something! I asked her if I could have it, but she said, “maybe when you are older.” I never saw the broach again, but I thought about it often because it was our secret, and we shared so little! She was full of mysteries, secrets, and silences, and that kept my father and me at bay.

Dad was a soldier in the Vietnam war before I was born. Why he even joined the American army in the first place was, to my mother, curious and pointless. His parents had immigrated to Canada when he was eight years old; there had never been a desire or a reason to return. “When your father gets something in his head,” Mom used to say, “there is nothing one can say to change his mind.” Like that was a bad thing. Dad, in his defense, argued that he owed it to the country of his birth, he wished to support his comrades, and he sided with the citizens of Vietnam. He had been gone for three years and had returned damaged, with shrapnel in one leg, his nerves crushed. In my childish mind, their marriage was an enigma, a chasm between things not said and words later regretted, happy one week, heated the next, and me caught in the middle. For reasons unknown, neither would talk to me for days, like I wasn’t there.

Then, when I was away at a high school track and field event one day, my mother found my father hanging from a post in the garage. A shocking and painful time for those of us left behind. If Mom was reticent before, she was now the living embodiment of silence and stillness. And I, of rebellion.

My mother’s staunch and rigorous catholic faith, and my revolt, created a rift between us after the suicide. We never grew back what intimacy we might have had, but I knew that she loved me dearly. When I grew older and wiser, I understood how an unmothered child, unloved and forsaken, might not have known, in turn, how to demonstrate motherly love. Would I know? As the question rolled through my mind, I reached for the box in the closet, now eager to go through the contents and touch each item, feel the warmth, and mourn the loss.

Each object brought a memory that permeated my brain, moments of joy, tenderness, and sorrow. I reached for the white box with the word Crucifix scrawled in Mom’s handwriting. I remembered that cross hanging on my bedroom wall at home, just a plain, silver thing, inconspicuous, like a fly on a wall. I pulled off the lid and stared, surprised, at the golden broach I had admired as a child, set upon a thick-looking letter with my name on it, and no crucifix. I was conflicted suddenly, of two minds, ambivalence clouding my thinking. The broach I wanted; I had pined for it as a little girl because it was a measure of the first and only secret shared between my mother and me. The letter, I worried, would be about God, how fulfilling he was in her life, how much, by denying him, I was missing in my life. When she found Jesus after Dad died, she and I had grown apart, never to reconnect. Thick envelopes with sheets of paper scribbled with babble about religion, salvation, and redemption routinely arrived in the mail; I could never read them in full, instead stuffing them inside drawers or dark corners with a promise to myself to read them at another time.

I went to Ian, letter in hand. I did not want to be alone when I opened it because it might contain depressing, religious monologues, which would be upsetting and disappointing, or deliver content for which I was not ready. Either way, I needed a solid and reliable presence by my side who would soothe me if necessary. “You have to trust,” he reminded me, “that your mother loved you. She wanted you to be happy and to enjoy your life. Whatever is in this letter was written with love, for you to interpret as you wish.” Such a wise man, my Ian; I felt calmed and heartened already. I opened the letter.

October 10, 2008

My dearest Carine,

I suppose there is no ‘right’ time to part with shocking, and perhaps, for you, very upsetting news. This information I am about to share, I should have imparted years ago after your father passed away. But I was a coward, afraid the only person left in the world who still loves me might turn away when she learned the dark truth. Now that I, too, have gone, I will have Jesus to comfort and love me and perhaps absolve me of my transgression. I never thought of my action (to follow) as sinful because the outcome led to the most precious gift.

There have been two men in my life. One who loved me, that was your father, and one whom I loved. He is your biological father.

There, I have said it. Not out loud, because you are not with me to hear my confession, but in writing, because, Carine, my words are a statement acknowledging the truth of who you are.

I put the letter down, my hands shaking, my skin cold and brailling. I needed space to clear my head, to catch my breath, and I walked out to the balcony, the night air warm and soothing. “l will give you room to process this,” said Ian, handing me a glass of water, ever protective and generous. I took deep breaths and inhaled the night into my lungs as my eyes rested on the oncoming lights from the traffic below. I was paralyzed, numb, and unsure where to go, my mother’s words stammering in my brain like piano hammers hitting the strings. ‘I must know more,’ I spoke out loud, “I want to know.” I stepped back inside, vaporous, and weightless.

She wrote:

His name was René, and he had come from France. I was young and lonely, unaware of the fun and games of courting in which the youth partake. I had met Donald when I graduated high school, and we had dated for a year. He was the first man I kissed, the first to whom I divulged my past and revealed parts of my inner self. I felt bound to him because of this, and when he asked me to wait for him before he left for Vietnam, I agreed, unsuspecting of opportunities and prospects lurking in the universe of merriment and lightness. Donald and I had been modest and prudish, insecure people hoping to go through life unseen. A closed and secure absence of notice.

But René, he noticed me. 

I had gone to the movies with a girlfriend, and afterward, strolling down the boulevard, we had entered a pub. I had never done that, never had alcohol, never tasted beer. We were giddy and giggling, conscious of the guys staring and deliberating while our bodies swayed to the sound of the music. That’s when our eyes locked, René and me.

He worked his way to our table, tall, olive-skinned, and handsome. His fiery eyes fixed on mine, his dark hair tied back in a ponytail, and his lips full and smiling. “Voulez-vous danser Mademoiselle?” he asked as he extended his arm. I felt his hand tremble, resting on the small of my back, as we slow danced to a Bob Seger song. The heat from his body so close sent me in a spin, and I almost fainted. René whispered something in my ear; French words, I thought, but I could hear nothing for the noise of my beating heart.

We could not keep away after our encounter in the pub; we fell for each other, hard and intense. René was hitchhiking through Canada and was on the last leg of his trip but would postpone going home so we could be together for longer. He came from royalty, he said, removed by many generations, but he carried the name proudly, and his family was, by association, financially secure. Upon his return to France, a job awaited him at the family estate winery in Lyons-la-Forêt. 

We were together for three blissful months. The attraction was powerful, like a moth drawn to a bright light. René was the light, of course. He was playful, young at heart, and cheerful, qualities I admired but lacked. My years in the orphanage had left me timid and self-effacing. He had traveled to exotic places, had savoured strange foods, and listened to live symphony orchestras in various European countries. We were the city mouse and the country mouse, I could not help but think. My feelings for him, so unlike my feelings for George, frightened me and kept me from sleeping. So, I pushed away all thoughts of George and the promise that I had made to him. 

René, of course, seduced me without effort. I am sorry, Carine if these words upset you, but I do not wish to tell half-truths or to dither like a child caught in a sin. It is my one chance to come clean and show you my human edge, replete with yearnings, emotions, and heartfelt cravings. A body with foreign but feverish passions and desires, a heart utterly shattered when the fairy tale ended.

 Knowing we were on borrowed time, René and I aimed to cram a lifetime into a calendar of only three pages. Our love was real, make no mistake, as tangible and solid as the ocean, the sky, and the air that I breathe. But our circumstances were greater than us; René, bound to his obligations, and I, promised to another. He could no more take me with him than I could keep him here.

 He left on a cold, rainy day in October, the raindrops melding with our tears as we stood among rushing travelers and boisterous children at the airport. He gave me the broach you so liked, with the jade flowers, and I gave him a lock of my red hair held together with a pink ribbon.

It feels comforting on this day when death loiters in the dark alleys of my small world, to relive that fervency of my youth. I am an ailing woman now, with little to show for my time on the planet, but I go to my end having known love and sorrow, life and mourning, duty and surrender, and a few regrets.

I was two or three weeks pregnant but was unaware of it when George came home. I had planned to break it off with him, to make a life somewhere far away. How could I not? I had breathed and lived the exuberance of love; how could I now live without it? But George was a broken man, both in body and mind and my guilt when I saw him assailed me like a vengeful storm. I took him to my bed when I missed my first period, and, within a month, we had married. When you were born, I named you Carine, after René's mother.

George was a good man and a good father to you. When he died, my guilt returned in full force because I had it in my head that now, he knew about me, and about René, about you. I needed the sanctuary of absolution so my life did not fall apart, so I knocked on heaven’s door, when I should have knocked on yours. That was my mistake, my beautiful girl. I am so sorry.

So, go and find your father, Carine; I will be there next to you, I will whisper in your ear. He will recognize you because he unknowingly waits for you.

I love you always,

Mom

P.S. Your father’s name is:

René-Armand de Garnet

Lyons-la-Forêt, – in Normandy

P.S.S. I have enclosed a photo burst of René and me that was taken in a booth in a department store thirty-five years ago. He has the top three pictures. Join the two halves when you come together. I see him in you, always have.

This letter, with so much weight…

And there it was, two black and white photos of my parents. As Mom had written, René’s eyes were fiery, his skin dark, just like mine.

Ian and I stood outside the airport in Paris, waiting for the train to take us to Gisors, our new home in the heart of Normandy. There was much work to do before the start of the school year, but we had allotted plenty of time. We had secured a small apartment, and once settled, we would purchase a car and trek through our new country. In my bag, my mother’s letter was securely tucked between my passport and a map of Normandy, the towns of Gisors and Lyons-la-Forêt circled in thick ink. Ian squeezed my hand as the train approached, and I smiled, feeling loved, knowing that good things were coming.