Chapter Ten
Henry walked into the assisted-living home just after it opened for the day, his spirits buoyed as he imagined encountering a more lucid Celeste.
He knew all too well about dementia—it had claimed several of his friends over the years in addition to his wife—and he understood that those suffering from it tended to be foggier as the day went on.
Maybe she would know him this morning, before her reality began to cloud over.
The same young woman he’d seen yesterday was seated behind the check-in desk, and she looked up with a smile as he entered.
“Hello, sir,” she said in English, clearly remembering him. “You are here again to see Celeste Didier?”
“Oui,” Henry said, returning her smile.
“I’ll buzz you in.”
Henry nodded his thanks and then walked through the door into the hall, as he’d done the day before, and let his feet carry him to apartment 0-B. He took a deep breath and knocked.
Celeste answered the door a moment later, her white hair long and loose, her blue eyes bright, and it took all of Henry’s self-restraint not to pull her immediately into his arms.
“Celeste,” he whispered, when she didn’t say anything. She was peering at him, her gaze penetrating and unsettling. “It’s me. Henry.” He held his breath, hoping.
Something that looked like recognition flitted across her face for a split second, and then it was gone, replaced by a blank stare. “Do I know you?” she asked, and he had to force a smile to hide the hurt.
“You do. Or rather, you did. A very long time ago. You saved my life, here in Paris, during the war.”
“Did I?” She sounded interested now. “And how did I do that?”
“I stayed with you in your apartment for nearly a month while I was waiting to get out of Paris along an Allied escape line.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Well, that sounds quite improper.”
“It wasn’t.” He cleared his throat. “Well, not at first, anyhow.”
She cracked a small smile. “I see. But once you’d been there for a while?”
He didn’t know what he could say except for the truth. “I fell in love with you. And…” He hesitated. “You loved me, too, Celeste.”
She blinked a few times. “Well, in that case, I suppose you’d better come in.” She didn’t wait for an answer before turning and walking back into her apartment. Henry followed, closing the door behind him, before she could change her mind.
She led the way into a sitting room with a set of French doors that opened onto the building’s interior garden.
Red roses and something soft and white that Henry didn’t recognize bloomed just outside.
There was a television in the room, but Celeste’s chair, which she settled into now, didn’t face it; it was turned to look at the world outside.
“Tell me,” she said, gesturing for Henry to sit on the couch across from her, “is it warm out today?”
It wasn’t the question he’d expected, but he was determined to meet her where she was. “There’s a chill in the air. Just like there was the first time I was here in Paris. This is my first time back in many years, and it’s astounding to me that the air itself smells the same as it did then.”
She gazed out through the French doors. “Those don’t open more than a crack, you know. I suppose they’re worried I’ll wander away.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t reply.
“I just might,” she said under her breath. “What did you say your name is?”
“Henry.” He was already thinking of how he might sneak her out to bask in the spring sunshine.
“Henry,” she repeated slowly, as if turning the word over in her mouth, seeing if it fit. “I’m very sorry, but I don’t know any Henry. You’re certain you haven’t confused me with someone else?”
“No,” he said, blinking back tears. “I have thought of you every day for the past eighty years, Celeste. I would know you anywhere.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I see.”
They were at an impasse. “I wrote you a song,” he blurted out, and her eyebrows went up farther.
“You wrote a song for me?”
“I did.”
“Well, sing it, then.” She leaned back in her chair as if she was one of the judges on that singing reality show that young people liked to watch.
“I—I can’t sing anymore.”
She stared at him. “It isn’t as if I’m expecting Serge Gainsbourg. Go on, then.”
“How about if I play you a recording instead?”
“A recording?” Her eyebrows arched. “But that wouldn’t be the same, would it?”
He swallowed hard. He knew his vocal cords would betray him, but she was right; he had to try.
“A moment in time, a brush of your hand,” he choked out, but he couldn’t quite hit the notes.
The years stripped so much of a person. “The sound of your voice, now I understand,” he continued feebly, but he trailed off as she scrunched her nose up.
“That’s terrible,” she said.
“I know,” he reported miserably. “I told you. I can’t sing anymore.”
“I was never a very good singer myself.”
“You once told me that your mother described your singing voice as cats fighting in the alley.”
She stared at him. “I told you that?”
“You told me about many things, Celeste. The way you could roll a cigarette for your father in three seconds flat. The way your mother taught you to make tartes from whatever was in season. The birthmark shaped like a star on the inside of your right elbow.” He blinked back tears.
She gaped for a moment and then slowly rolled up her right sleeve, showing him the star-shaped mark nestled into the tender white skin of the inner bend. How many times had he kissed that very spot as his lips had begun their journey over her body? Not nearly enough.
“How did you know?” she whispered.
“I told you,” he said. “We were in love, Celeste.”
They were interrupted by a knock on her door. Giving him a teary look of uncertainty, Celeste rose to answer it. It was the care worker from yesterday, the American named Kayla.
“Bonjour, Madame Didier,” Kayla said, and then she glanced past Celeste and saw Henry. Her eyes lit up. “Oh, hello again, sir. Have you returned to play the song for Madame Didier?”
“I have.” He pulled out his phone and fumbled with it for a moment.
“I’m sorry. I don’t use my phone for music very often.
” It was an embarrassing admission, he supposed, but he couldn’t understand the world of streaming music; he’d take a vinyl or even a CD over electronic nonsense any day of the week.
“I’m not certain how to find it. Do you have Apple Music on your phone? ”
Kayla looked surprised. “Your song is on Apple Music? I thought you meant you had a recording of yourself singing it.”
Henry chuckled. “Believe me, no one would want to hear that.”
Kayla looked unconvinced, but she pulled out her phone and swiped to the music app. “What’s the name of the song, sir? Maybe I can find it.”
“ ‘City of Light,’ ” he said, shooting a look at Celeste, who was following the exchange.
When he glanced back at Kayla, he found her staring at him. “ ‘City of Light’?” she repeated. “Like… the Jackson Quick song?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Have you found it?”
She nodded slowly, but still she didn’t press play. “You’re telling me that you wrote Jackson Quick’s biggest hit song?”
“You know it?”
She looked at her phone and to Henry, and then back at her phone.
“I think everyone knows this song, sir.” She tapped something on her screen, and her eyes widened.
“This is you?” she asked, turning the phone around to show him the credits page.
There, beneath Jackson Quick’s name as the Performing Artist, was the name Henry McGee under Composition he was just the old man who’d written a hit song for a pop star decades ago.
“You know what?” Kayla said after a few seconds. “Never mind. Forget I said anything. I mean, even if she can hear the song better, bringing someone with dementia to a big rock concert could be a terrible idea. It might be really scary for her.”
But Henry’s mind was already spinning. “But if I could find seats close to the stage so she wouldn’t feel lost in the crowd…” He trailed off. Yes, that was it. He would buy tickets as soon as he left here today. He would invite her grandson along, too, so she’d have someone familiar there with her.
But what if the concert made things worse?
He knew it was a possibility, but he also had the feeling this could be his only chance.
What if hearing the song live—surrounded by people who knew the words, as the rhythm pulsed through their bodies—was the key to unlocking Celeste’s memory?
Henry knew it was a long shot, but so, too, was all of this.
He wasn’t meant to be here, with Celeste, eighty years after he’d last seen her.
He wasn’t meant to be in possession of his full mental faculties at this age.
He wasn’t supposed to be fit enough to fly across an ocean to reunite with the woman he loved.
This was all impossible. So why not hang his hopes on the most impossible piece of all?
“Sir?” Kayla said gently, interrupting his train of thought. “Are you all right?”
“Right as rain,” he murmured, giving her a quick smile. “Thanks for telling me about the concert. I’ll see about getting some tickets right away.”
As Piper and her mom walked out of the Musée d’Orsay into the early afternoon sunshine, Piper put an arm around her mother, whose shoulders, which had once been broad enough to carry all the weight of their little family, felt tiny and sparrow-like now.
It always surprised her how much of her mother had already disappeared.
“You look like you’re ready for that nap,” Piper said softly.
“I could definitely use some rest,” Piper’s mom said, her eyes bloodshot. “Besides, aren’t you going to see the cute waiter?”
“Only if you don’t want me to stay with you.”
“You’re in Paris! Go. Have fun. We’ll meet up later and go to dinner at that restaurant near the Eiffel Tower tonight, okay?”
They got in line for the cab stand outside the museum, both of them knowing without discussing it that the mile-long walk back to the hotel was out of the question by this point in the day. “Which was your favorite painting, Mom?” Piper asked as they waited.
“I think I liked Starry Night Over the Rh?ne,” her mom said after a moment. “I would have liked to see Arles, the place where Van Gogh painted.”
Piper glanced at her mom and looked quickly away before her mom could see the wave of emotion that had just rolled over her.
There were so many things her mother wouldn’t get to see and do.
“At least we’re here, seeing the painting,” she said, forcing a smile.
“We get to see Arles through Van Gogh’s eyes. ”
“True, honey,” her mom said. “Which painting did you like best?”
Piper had been astounded at how connected she felt to the vast collection of impressionist works, from Monet’s jubilant and patriotic La Rue Montorgueil to Renoir’s famed Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette and Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass.
They were all paintings she’d seen in textbooks, but to experience them up close was more emotional than she could have imagined; leaning in to see the brushstrokes made her imagine the artists themselves, moved by the world around them as they did their best to commit what they saw to canvas.
In a way, they would all live forever, wouldn’t they?
These pieces of art they’d created were still here, even hundreds of years after the artists themselves were gone.
“The Church at Auvers, I think,” she said.
“The violet sky was so beautiful, and the way the windows of the church seemed to be bathed in the same light…” She trailed off.
“I liked that one, too,” her mom said, reaching for her hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze.
Back at their hotel twenty minutes later, Piper’s mom changed into her pajamas and crawled into bed. “I’m really sorry, honey,” she said, yawning. “I realize this isn’t how you envisioned spending our time in Paris.”
“Mom, I’m just glad to be here with you.”
“I just—I want to see you happy, honey. Before I go.”
“I am happy.” But the tears in her eyes betrayed her. Damn it, this was supposed to be a trip where she and her mom forgot about the fact that death was stalking them; instead, it was all she could think about.
Her mom held out her arms, and Piper allowed herself to be folded into them. “Go see the boy, sweetie,” her mom said. “I’ll see you tonight.”