Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Madeline
September 2025
T he Paris apartment in the eleventh arrondissement was three blocks from the jazz bar where Madeline was set to perform five nights per week at a rate of ten thousand euros a month. Although Madeline hadn’t made money from piano in years, she knew making that much as a relatively newcomer musician was unheard of and still more proof of how good it was to know Bernard and Greta Copperfield and their many connections. Madeline arrived at the new apartment at seven thirty in the morning the day after she’d left Boston, and her body thrummed with jet lag and excitement. David’s friend René was the apartment owner and was waiting for her with keys and fresh croissants. Because there was no elevator, René hauled Madeline’s suitcase up to the third floor and gave her a brief tour of the kitchen, bathroom, music room, and bedroom. The music room had only an upright piano, but it was in tune and enough for at-home practice. Madeline already knew she wouldn’t spend as much time at that piano as she had the other pianos in her life. Improvisation required practice, of course, but never as much as the classical world. And she’d decided to start living her life rather than cooping herself up inside and waiting for it to happen. She hoped it would work. She hoped engaging with the beautiful things in the world would invigorate her improvisation.
A few minutes after René left, Madeline lay strewn across her new bed and considered how to spend her first day before her welcome dinner later tonight. Before she could put together a coherent thought, her phone buzzed beside her, and she reached for it to find Henry’s name and face on her screen. She answered it immediately. “Henry! Hi! What time is it there?” she cried.
Henry cackled. “It’s eleven at night in California!”
“I’m speaking with the past,” Madeline teased, rolling onto her stomach. “How is that possible?”
“I’ll never understand it.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing your voice,” Madeline said, surprising herself with how sensitive she sounded. She gazed around the room at the strange mahogany desk and the beautiful vases on the end table and felt a level of foreignness she couldn’t shake for as long as she was in Paris. “I can’t believe you’re so far away!”
“I know. I know. But I’m so excited for you,” Henry said. “You know, a part of me hoped you’d come out to LA? A part of me hoped you’d wait for me at home while I worked all day? Now I recognize how silly that idea was. You’re an artist. You’re meant to be out there working, just like me.”
Madeline’s heart thumped with sorrow. She’d wanted that, too—to go out to LA and love him and wait, but she didn’t want to say it aloud. “Your grandmother thinks we’re silly for talking to each other so much, I think. I think she’d prefer we dropped it.”
Henry laughed. “She’s the most driven person I know. But you have to remember, she’s a softy, too. She loves my grandfather. I’m sure she stops editing for a few minutes every day just to talk to him.”
Madeline laughed. “Maybe she stops for thirty seconds.”
Suddenly, Henry yawned in a way that made Madeline picture his handsome face, drawn and pale after long days on set.
“Where are you right now?” Madeline asked.
“The director and I are staying up late,” Henry said. “I told him I want to, you know, direct one day, so he’s showing me a few things before I head home. He took a call from his wife, so I figured I’d call and see if you made it in okay.”
Madeline was pleased he’d thought of her first. But she didn’t want to steal him away from the director for too long. Her stomach sank. “You’d better get back in there, Kid.”
Henry laughed. “I never should have told you they call me that.”
Madeline pressed her lips together. Exhaustion and travel and fear of the unknown brewed in her like a storm, and she closed her eyes and said, “I do love you, Henry.”
Henry’s tone was dark and formal. “I love you, too. Good luck out there. Send me pictures. Paris is one of the best places in the world. And you get to live there!”
“For a little while,” Madeline said.
“I’m sure it’ll work out. Everyone my grandparents know has tricks up their sleeves.”
Madeline and Henry hung up, leaving Madeline to pad around the quiet and shadowy apartment, removing things from her suitcase and making coffee in an Italian moka pot. She’d never used one before, but it wasn’t so difficult, and very soon, piping-hot coffee sputtered from the top. She poured it into a mug and ate a croissant, watching two sparrows twittering outside. She knew that birds like that would leave the city; that Paris would be cast in the same shadows and dark clouds as Nantucket had been last winter.
Out loud, she said, “This is my new home.” But still, she felt so alone and frightened.
After a brief nap, Madeline went for a walk through her neighborhood. It was in the mid-sixties, and it seemed everyone was outside, showing off their exquisite wardrobes, their flowing hair, their little cigarettes and taut bodies. Madeline got another coffee at a round table and people watched all morning, taking brief breaks to read her book or write in her journal. She remembered that, many years ago, she’d wanted to come to a junior piano competition in Paris. Diana had fought hard to make enough money for the plane tickets, but it just hadn’t come together. They’d opted only for things within the United States—contests they could afford to enter and travel to. But Madeline had always known her mother wanted to return to Europe. Everything had changed since Diana had left Poland. Madeline was sure that Diana would like to roam the village where she’d grown up and eat real Polish food again. She was sure she wanted to bump into strangers and speak the language she’d learned as a baby.
Sometimes it was hard for Madeline to fathom how much her mother had gone through as a young girl. She was pretty sure Diana had only told her the highlights: that her father had taken her out of Poland to pursue the capital he thought awaited him in the United States, that she hadn’t been able to speak English when they’d arrived in Manhattan, and that they’d moved to Detroit a year or so after that. Diana had never mentioned her own mother, and Madeline assumed she was dead. Diana hadn’t told Madeline much about Madeline’s father, only that he’d left shortly after Madeline was born. Madeline hadn’t given him much thought over the years and had only googled him a handful of times. There were too many Allen Willises to know which one was hers.
The server came by with the bill and a flurry of French language that Madeline couldn’t understand. When she asked for English, he explained he had to close up the café for the afternoon, and she needed to go. Madeline paid and walked around the neighborhood, thrumming with shock and fear and excitement. She wanted to call Henry and tell him everything she’d seen so far but knew he was either fast asleep or staying up all night with the director. In her heart of hearts, she hoped he was having a good time.
That night, David and the other musicians welcomed her to Paris with a feast at the Royal Brass—a French restaurant down the street from their jazz club. Sandy, the woman who played trombone, handed Madeline a bouquet of roses, and David, the drummer Jerry, the bassist Polly, and the trumpet player Steve got up to shake her hand and say they were so excited to play with her. Madeline sat down and cupped her knees, looking at their faces, searching for some sense that she’d already disappointed them. But they only looked and talked about her as though they were tickled pink that she was there.
Was this what it was like to make friends?
They ordered a feast: French cuisine slathered in sauces and dense with flavor, a fresh baguette that crunched when you broke it with your hands, bottles of wine, and chocolate tarte and ice cream with berries and cream for dessert. It was the most decadent meal Madeline had ever had. What surprised her most of all was the fluid way that David paid for it with a card, waving everyone else’s hands away. “I’ll pay, but only if all of you promise you’ll be at rehearsal right on time tomorrow!” he said, pausing to look Madeline in the eye. “We have a brand-new member and a performance in three days. We have to mesh.”
Madeline was suddenly frightened. She’d played wonderfully with David, but she’d never improvised with such a big group before. As her heart fluttered, she fixed her face and told herself it would be all right. If it wasn’t, she could always fly to Los Angeles and hide herself in Henry’s place until he got sick of her. Ugh!
But there was no reason for Madeline to be frightened of performing with her new friends. The following day’s rehearsal and the one after that were fluid, dynamic, and emotional. Madeline watched herself make creative risks that she hadn’t thought she was capable of, and she popped out several solos that had the others applauding until they had to come back in with their instruments. When their rehearsals were over, they dragged Madeline out to little bars around the area, ordering her red wine and begging her for details about her musical career.
“You’re so young!” Polly cried.
“She started when she was three,” David boasted. “She was going to go to Juilliard but decided not to audition and dropped out and moved to LA!’
Madeline grimaced. She’d forgotten she’d lied to David about this pivotal fact. But she supposed it didn’t matter either way. She hadn’t gone to Juilliard, and David liked that about her.
“I wonder how long we’ll be able to keep you until you decide to head somewhere else,” Sandy said, rolling a cigarette and arching her eyebrow.
“Let’s not get carried away,” David said, waving his hand. “We’re going to have Madeline for as long as Madeline can stand us. I’m sure questions like that won’t help at all.”
Sandy laughed and winked.
Madeline struggled to know when to call Henry. She tried nights; she tried mornings. But impossibly, Henry’s work had ramped up a great deal, so much so that he usually passed out the minute he got home. Throughout the workday, he texted her, but by then, Madeline was often asleep. Over coffee, she responded to his texts as best as she could, feeling like a brokenhearted pen pal. But what other option did she have? She didn’t want to prove Greta right and give up on this. And her heart still beat boldly with her love for Henry.
HENRY: I miss you, I miss you, I can’t wait till Christmas when we can be together again.
MADELINE: Come to Paris with your grandparents and see me play?
HENRY: If only I could. I’ll be working here till the very last second before my flight.
MADELINE: Of course. I’m so proud of you.
HENRY: And I’m so proud of you, my love.
It went like that through September and October and finally through the doldrums of November and early December—months so dark that it felt like ink was spilled across the night sky over Paris. But although Madeline was sorrowful and missing Henry like crazy, she wasn’t bored in the least. Just as Greta had suspected she would, she had fully fallen in love with Paris. She had a favorite bakery and cheese place. Her French was getting better and better—going beyond hello and good morning to talking about weekend plans and what the jazz five-piece was working on for the show that night. Her piano playing at the jazz club was very well received, so much so that they sold tickets out weeks in advance. David said, “This didn't happen before we had Miss Madeline. She’s knocking their socks off!”
Madeline was initially frightened that the other musicians in the jazz band would be cagey and competitive with her, especially now that she’d come and stolen their thunder. But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Unlike the pianists she’d competed against as a teenager, her current musician colleagues were floored by her talent, egging her on. They knew that the beautiful things she wrought on the keys involved them, called them to action, and they answered in kind, improvising and bringing the audience to their knees.
Madeline was written up in every Parisian newspaper, and in early December, she got a call from a Manhattan-based journalist wanting to interview her for a feature they sought to print by Christmas. Madeline was floored and agreed. She hadn’t been interviewed since she was seventeen, the last time she’d won a piano competition, and prior to that, her mother had demanded that they see all the questions the journalist wanted to ask beforehand. This time, Madeline wanted to go in blind and see what she came up with to say. It was improvisation and conversation combined.
The journalist was only a few years older than Madeline and based full-time in Manhattan. She appeared on Madeline’s computer wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, seated in a quaint Manhattan apartment. They exchanged pleasantries, and then the journalist said, “Shall we dive in?”
Madeline agreed and braced herself.
The first few questions were easy to answer. “How old were you when you started playing? When did someone first use the word ‘prodigy’ to describe you? Would you say that being a prodigy is a gift or a curse?”
Madeline thought for a moment before answering that last question. “I’ve never thought of it as anything but who I am,” she said. “But it’s true that it sort of cursed me later on. I blame the piano for my mother’s death.”
The journalist’s eyes bugged out of her head for just a split second as though she hadn’t expected such insights for a puff piece. “Why do you say that?”
“It’s a long story,” Madeline said, suddenly cursing herself for being so forthright. “Basically, my mother and I were completely entwined. Everything she did was for my career. I don’t even think she dated or had many friends, which makes me really sad in retrospect. Anyway, it was almost over for her. It was up to me to get through my Juilliard audition.”
Madeline had started to sweat.
The journalist tipped forward in her chair, nodding so as to push Madeline along. But it was only then that Madeline bit her tongue to stop herself. Was she really going to talk about the worst incident in her life for the first time with a woman she didn’t know? It felt morbid.
“Anyway, she passed away, and I moved to LA instead,” Madeline said, jumping to the end as quickly as she could. “I miss her all the time.”
The journalist looked deflated, as though she’d expected far more from Madeline’s story. Finally, she managed, “Do you think your mother would be proud of where you are now?”
Madeline’s eyes filled with tears that she blinked away. Would her mother be proud that she was a jazz musician in a speakeasy in Paris rather than playing a major stage with a symphony? She knew the answer to that. She knew it wasn’t anything that would feel comfortable to hear.
“I think she’d feel complicated about the directions my life has taken,” Madeline said. “But I wish I could tell her all my reasons.”
“Why don’t you tell me?” the journalist said sweetly.
But Madeline couldn’t go on. She had to cut the interview early. Afterward, she promptly poured herself a glass of water and went to the bathroom to cry. When she thought she would never stop, she bustled around her apartment, looking for her phone. She needed to talk to Henry so desperately. But it rang and rang and rang, and Henry didn’t pick up. She couldn’t stop shaking, so she drew a bath and sat in the water until it was cold.
After that, she did her makeup and walked to the jazz club. It was time for another performance.