The Paris Library(6)

The edges of her mouth turned down. She didn’t respond.

The silence made me nervous. “It looks like a library in here.” I gestured to her shelves, which were full of names I didn’t know—Madame de Sta?l, Madame Bovary, Simone de Beauvoir.

Maybe this was a bad idea. I turned to go.

“When?” she asked.

I looked back. “How about now?”

“I was in the middle of something.” She spoke the words briskly, as if she were president and needed to get back to running the domain of her bedroom.

“I’m writing a report,” I reminded her, since school came right after God, country, and football.

Mrs. Gustafson slipped into her high heels and grabbed her keys. I followed her onto the porch, where she locked the door. She was the only person in Froid who did.

“Do you always barge into people’s homes?” she asked as we crossed the lawn.

I shrugged. “They usually answer the door.”

In our dining room, she clasped her hands, then let them go limp at her side. Her eyes flitted to the carpet, the window seat, the family photos on the wall. Her mouth moved to say something, possibly “Isn’t this nice?” like the other ladies would, then her jaw clamped shut.

“Welcome,” Mom said as she set a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the table.

I gestured for our neighbor to take a seat. Mom set mugs in front of her own plate and mine; in front of Mrs. Gustafson’s, she placed her teacup. I knew its story by heart. Years ago, when Mrs. Ivers had gone on a “castle tour” of England, Dad gave her money to buy a fancy tea set for Mom. But porcelain is pricey, and Mrs. Ivers returned with just one cup and saucer. Terrified the china would break, she kept it on her lap the entire transatlantic flight. In my mind, the slender cup covered in dainty blue flowers came from somewhere better. Finer. Like Mrs. Gustafson.

Mom served the tea; I broke the silence. “What’s the best thing about Paris? Is it really the most beautiful city in the world? What was it like growing up there?”

Mrs. Gustafson didn’t answer right away.

“I hope we’re not bothering you,” Mom told her.

“The last time I was interviewed like this was for a job back in France.”

“Were you nervous?” I asked.

“Yes, but I’d memorized entire books to prepare.”

“Did it help?”

She smiled ruefully. “There are always questions one is unprepared to answer.”

“Lily won’t be asking those kinds of questions.” Mom addressed Mrs. Gustafson, but her warning was meant for me.

“The best thing about Paris? It’s a city of readers,” our neighbor said.

She said that in friends’ homes, books were as important as the furniture. She spent her summers reading in the city’s lush parks, then like the potted palmettos in the Tuileries Garden, sent to the greenhouse at the first sign of frost, she spent winters at the library, curled up near the window with a book in her lap.

“You like to read?” For me, the classics assigned in English were a chore.

“I live to read,” she replied. “Mostly books on history and current events.”

That sounded about as fun as watching snow melt. “What about when you were my age?”

“I loved novels like The Secret Garden. My twin brother was the one interested in the news.”

A twin. I wanted to ask what his name was, but she’d moved on. Parisians revel in food almost as much as in literature, she said. It had been more than forty years, but she still remembered the pastry that her father brought her after her first day of work, a cake called a financier. Closing her eyes, she said the buttery almond powder made her mouth feel like heaven. Her mother adored opéras, swathes of deep, dark chocolate enveloped in layers of cake soaked in coffee… Fee-nahn-see-yay. Oh-pay-rah. I tasted the words and loved how they felt on my tongue.

“Paris is a place that talks to you,” she continued. “A city that hums along to its own song. In the summer Parisians keep their windows open, and one hears the tinkling of a neighbor’s piano, the snap of playing cards being shuffled, static as someone fiddles with the radio knob. There’s always a child laughing, someone arguing, a clarinetist playing in the square.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Mom said dreamily.

Usually, on Sundays after church, Mrs. Gustafson’s shoulders slumped, and her eyes were like the neon sign of the Oasis bar on Monday—unplugged. But now, her eyes were bright. As she spoke of Paris, the angular lines of her face softened, and so did her voice. I wondered why she’d ever left.

Mom surprised me by asking a question. “What was life like during the war?”

“Hard.” Mrs. Gustafson’s fingers tightened around the teacup. When air-raid sirens screeched, her family hid in the cellar. With food rationing, each person received one egg per month. Everyone grew skinnier until she thought they’d just disappear. On the streets, Nazis forced Parisians through random checkpoints. Like wolves, they stayed in packs. People were arrested for no reason. Or small reasons, like staying out past curfew.

Weren’t curfews for teenagers? Mary Louise’s sister, Angel, had one.

“What do you miss most about Paris?” I asked.

“Family and friends.” Mrs. Gustafson’s brown eyes grew wistful. “People who understand me. I miss speaking French. Feeling like I’m home.”