Amandine (10 page)

Paul stays silent.

“This is what I think will be best for Amandine, Mater. I will tell her that her parents, her mother, at least, is alive. I will tell her that I don’t know who her parents are or where they are or why, exactly, they left her here with us, with you. I will tell her that one day her mother will come to take her home.”

“You would give the child hope? Cruelty I did not expect of you. Better you tell her that you are her mother. I’ve always thought, should she live long enough to question her parentage, that you would claim motherhood. Natural enough, wouldn’t you say? And truer than your fantasy since motherhood has more to do with fidelity than with blood. Certainly you have been faithful to her, Solange.”

“I’ve thought of telling her that I’m her mother. I admit that. And if I was certain that her own mother would never come forth to claim her, that is what I would do. But under these conditions, that would be fair neither to Amandine nor to her mother.”

“Conditions? There are no conditions. Amandine shall never know her parents. Her mother. Dead or alive, neither do
I
know the state of their being. What I
do
know is that Amandine does not exist for them.”

Paul looks away from Solange. Sotto voce she says,
Essentially, the child shall no longer exist once you leave this room
. She turns back to Solange. “Yes, I think those were my lines.”

“Pardon me, Mater. Your lines?”

“Be certain of this, Solange, that the child’s life began on the day she was brought here. Left here. Be certain of that and save yourself and the child at least some part of the suffering already allotted to her. I admit the strangeness of it, but nevertheless it is all the truth we have.”

“You thought she was going to die, didn’t you, Mater? You and the bishop, you thought it would be a few weeks, a few months, and she would be gone. She was taken on as a short-term investment of sorts, I understand that.”

“Do you?”

“I think I do. I understand it quite enough.”

“Just what do you propose to do should this child, should she—”

“Grow up? Is that what you’re asking? Not so difficult to contemplate. Once her schooling here is complete, I shall help her to find her way, to proceed with a higher education if,
should
that seem indicated or to take the veil if she’s inclined, to find good work out in the world. I would help her, guide her as best I can. Surely you would help her, too, Mater.”

“She is not my charge.”

“No. Not your charge. Your mortification. That’s how you treat her, Mater, yet you see, you
know
how she’s drawn to you, how she longs for your affection. And you speak to me of cruelty?”

Head bowed to her papers, the strokes of her pen sepulchral whispers, Paul says nothing.

“Was it a woman who brought Amandine here? A foreign woman. Beautiful.”

“I know nothing of a
foreign woman
.”

“You can tell me, Mater. I met her, you know. Saw her once. She
came to our home to speak with my grandmother. I handed her tea and she pulled down her kerchief and I saw her. Amandine’s eyes are like her eyes, don’t you think, Mater?”

Paul stands, her fists cudgels upon the desk. She screams, “How dare you? Inventions, fool inventions, which can only leave the child in greater pain than her birthright has already dictated. How dare you? Follow your instructions, Solange. Should you choose not to, count on His Eminence to support my promise, the promise that I make to you now. You will be humiliated and sent away.”

“And I make two promises to you, Mater. It is I who shall decide what to tell Amandine about her life. And should I be sent away, I will take Amandine with me.”

Solange curtsies, turns, walks slowly to the door. Over her shoulder, she looks back at Paul, nods her head as though to say,
Count on it
. Softly, she closes the door behind her.

“A
MANDINE, YESTERDAY WHEN I ASKED YOU WHO YOUR MOTHER
was, you thought I was joking, didn’t you?”

Red leaves fluttering to the ground, Amandine rushes among them, trying to catch them as they fall. She makes a pile of those she’s captured, reaches up for another as the wind scatters the gathered ones, which she then chases, retrieves. Solange stands a few meters distant from the leaping and screeching.

“Amandine, Paul is not your mother, she’s not the mother of any of us. Not mine, not Josephine’s or Marie-Albert’s or Suzette’s or … She is our spiritual mother, the person who is responsible for the well-being of all of us who live here in the convent. Can you understand that?”

Clutching leaves to her breast, Amandine walks closer to Solange. “Do you mean that she’s a spirit? Is Paul a ghost?”

“No. Not a ghost. She is very real, and she cares for all of us as a mother would care, but she is not our
real
mother.”

The two move to sit under the tree then, inside the red whirring of the leaves.

“Is she our fake mother?”

“No. It’s only that each one of us has our
birth
mother. Our
own
mother. And Paul is not that kind of mother to any of us.”

“Not to any of us?”

“No.”

“Do you have your
own
mother?”

“Yes. I have a mother. And a father. I have two sisters and a grandmother, aunts and uncles and, last time I counted, eighteen cousins.”

“Where are they? Why don’t you live with them?”

“They live in another part of France. In the north. And I don’t live with them because I chose to live with you.”

“But why?”

“Because I wanted to. My choice to come here to be with you does not mean that I don’t love my family. I love them and I love you. You are also my family.”

“But I’m not your ‘own’ family. Am I?”

“No.”

“Do I have my
own
mother? Who is she? Who is my
own
mother?”

“I don’t know, darling. I don’t know exactly who she is, but I do know that she loves you very much.”

“You don’t know who she is? Are you sure that no one here is my own mother?”

“No one here.”

“Shouldn’t we be going to find her then? I’ve been here for so long, won’t she be worried by now? That I haven’t come home?”

“She knows that you’re well and safe here. She knows that you’re with me, with Paul and Philippe and all the rest of us. She knows that, and so she’s not worried.”

“Oh. But can I just see her for a while? I want to see my own mother. I’m sure she would like to see me, don’t you think she would?”

“Of course I do, but right now that simply isn’t possible. She wants you to grow up to be a beautiful, strong girl, to learn your lessons, to be kind and good, to be obedient to me and to the sisters, to—”

“How do you know that she loves me?”

“I know because, because she cared so much about you that she—”

“Did she tell you? Did she tell you that she loved me?”

“In her way, she did.”

“What way?”

“She sent a lady to tell me about you.”

“She did? What did the lady say?”

“She said that there was this precious little baby whose mother wasn’t able to care for her and that the mother didn’t want the baby to be alone. She asked me if I would take care of the baby. For her mother. She asked me if I would give her all the love in the world in her mother’s name. Just as though the mother, herself, was giving her that love. Do you understand?”

“I don’t know. Who was the lady?”

“She was a woman with beautiful eyes, eyes like a deer and skin white like the moon. And she was very sad. I saw her only for a moment, a half moment.”

“Why was she sad?”

“I think it was because she knew that your mother would miss you. That she would miss you, too.”

“Then let’s go to find the lady. She’ll know where my own mother is and then we can all be together. The lady and you and my mother and me. And your own mother, too, and we can take Philippe and his own mother and Paul and all the sisters. And everybody’s own mother.”

Should I have explained it in another way? Should I not have explained it at all? Was Paul right? Was my telling her that her mother couldn’t care for her more cruel than my telling her that her mother was dead? Would it have been better to wait until she was older, more able to…? I would have waited, I would gladly have put off such discourse, had the incident at the park not brought me face-to-face with her misconceptions. I had no choice. I couldn’t allow her to go on thinking that Paul was her mother. Philippe, her father. How much
more cruel would it have been if I’d not told her, if I’d simply let her wander about in that
nebbia
, that puerile rationale? On the first day of school, her classmates would have pitilessly dispelled her delusions. She would have come running to me for solace. “Is it true? Why didn’t you tell me? Then who is my mother?” So well have I taught my little girl, she would call my omission, my silence a broken trust. She would be right. No, it’s better this way. I will console her, and she will become accustomed to the truth. The truth. But is what I told her the truth, or have I corrected her misconceptions only to propose mine? An ambiguity exchanged for an abstraction. God help me. I try to forget my mother while she begins to long for hers
.

“Do you know what, Père Philippe?”

“Tell me, beauty.”

“When I was younger, I mean last week when I was younger, I used to think that you were my own father. Isn’t that silly?”

“Not silly.”

“Do you have your own father?”

“I did once, but he, long ago he went to live in heaven. You know, with God.”

Soft rain chimes on the stones under the eaves of the washhouse windows. Inside Amandine sits with Philippe in the old parlor chair amid the smells of soap and steam. Marie-Albert whispers the beads while she cranks the wringer.

“Do you have a mother, Père?”

“Yes. Yes, I do. I did. She has also gone to heaven. I had a grandmother, too.”

“Also in heaven?”

“Yes
.”

“What was she like? Your grandmother.”

“Do you mean what did she look like?”

“Yes.”

“She was tall, or so she seemed, since I was barely eight when she went away. Yes, I would say that she was tall. She always smelled like
sugar. She wore a yellow dress with red roses all over it. And on Sundays she wore a brown dress, very soft. And a brown hat, I think. And she liked to kiss me, she was always kissing me. A four-kiss kiss. Just the way Solange kisses you.”

“Right cheek, left cheek, right cheek, lips.”

“Yes, like that.”

“Look over there, do you see how the creek looks in the rain? That was the way her hair looked, barely blue, like thin blue silk, and pinched into tight waves just like the creek water.”

“I’d like to have blue hair someday.”

“And perhaps someday you shall.”

“I wish you were my own father.”

Tears catching in the ruts in his cheeks, Philippe says, “I have the same wish.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Good.”

“In fact, before God and the angels, right now, right here, I choose you as my child.”

“I choose you as my father. Before God and the angels. Is it real now?”

“Absolutely real.”

“It is not. I know it isn’t. It isn’t real, but I think it’s true. Between us, it’s true.”

“Between us and God and the angels. Maybe it’s as true as anything can be.”

“Maybe. I love you, Père.”

M
ORE OFTEN THAN WAS HIS FORMER HABIT, BISHOP FABRICE VISITS
the convent. The ostensible motive is that Philippe seems less inclined to visit him at the curia in Montpellier, and though it’s true that the bishop misses his old friend’s company, perhaps there is yet another reason for this change in his routine.

Unannounced, His Eminence,
en entourage
, arrives just before vespers, prays with the sisterhood, and then, in a parlor off the kitchen, dines alone with Philippe, their schoolboy laughter seeping out from under the closed doors, pouring in upon the household. In visceral response, the sisters, even Paul, grow flushed and chirping, glide about the place.
The masters are at home and dining in the parlor
.