A sadness to her face that made Elena reach out to her. Her mother was a butterfly, colorful and bright and happy. She smelled like flowers. She didn’t get sad, didn’t cry.
Smiling, her mother leaned in to kiss Elena’s cheek, the familiar scent of gardenias swirling around her. “Ah, chérie, you and your sisters make my life a joy.”
The tight thing inside Elena’s chest melted away. “Why did the nun keep your photo?”
“She knew that such treasures get lost when a child is passed from hand to hand.” Marguerite paused. “Sister Constance, she had kind eyes—I think she would’ve raised me as her own if only she was able. But she watched over me from a distance, and found me the day I moved into my own tiny apartment, gave me that photo and another one that she’d taken the day I saw my mother for the last time.”
A smile. “I was wearing such a pretty dress and coat, and clean, shining shoes. Sister Constance told me I had a bag of snacks and toys with me.” Laughing, she added, “I was maybe a little spoiled, I think, but sweet girls should be spoiled, non?”
“That was the day your mama died?” Elena didn’t like thinking about that, didn’t like to imagine that maybe, one day, her mother would die, too.
“Oui,” Marguerite said, her attention on the pattern for Belle’s skirt. “She asked Sister Constance to watch me while she went out of town for a work interview, but her bus, it crashed off a jagged ravine. Sister Constance did not know anything about us except that we lived in Paris, were alone in the world but for one another, and came often to her church.”
Elena’s mother looked up when Elena didn’t respond.
Touching her hand to Elena’s hair, she shook her head. “My strong baby, with such a heart. Do not be sad—it was so long ago, in another life.” Marguerite gave Elena a piece of the sparkly fabric to touch. “My mother’s eyes were the same color as Ariel’s and her skin was darker than yours—like she had soaked in more of the sun, but other than that, you are a pretty little copy of her.”
“That’s why my name is Elena.” It wasn’t her real name, but it was the name she liked best other than Ellie. Elieanora was so long and complicated.
“Yes, just like my maman. Elena was her home name, too.” Lines forming between her eyebrows, Marguerite said, “I know it was not her true name, but I cannot remember people calling her anything but Elena.” A smile, a shake of her shoulders. “No bébé knows her mama’s true name.”
“Beth is too small but I know. It’s Marguerite Deveraux,” Elena said proudly from where she sat atop the bench attached to the old-fashioned sewing machine her mother preferred over the new one Elena’s father wanted to buy her; she kicked her legs as she watched her mother while Beth played with her toys on the blanket Marguerite had spread out on the floor.
Belle and Ariel were at school but Elena had been allowed to stay home because she had a cough. Actually, she could’ve gone to school, but Marguerite had smiled and cuddled her and said, “So, my chérie wants her maman today. We will be naughty and let you play hooky, oui?”
Elena loved her mother’s accent, loved the lyrical beauty of it, loved how gentle Marguerite always sounded. She tried to speak that way sometimes, but her accent was plain old American, her voice that of a child, not Marguerite’s husky gentleness. Now her mother laughed. “You are smart, my baby.”
Smiles filled her insides. “Can I see the photo?” Elena asked, excited to know something about her grandmother.
Marguerite’s smile was soft, a little sad again. “It was lost in a fire that burned my apartment building not long before I met your papa.” She moved the scissors with a graceful hand, the fabric falling cleanly away on either side.
Belle was going to wear the skirt with a white shirt she’d got for Christmas. Elena had helped pick the shirt and her papa had bought it. It made her happy her big sister liked it so much.
“Oh,” she said, really sad for her mama that she didn’t have a picture of her own mama. “Do you remember the photo?”
“Oui, of course.” Sparkly eyes met Elena’s, so much delight in them that she felt as if the bubbles of happiness would lift her right up.
Her mother was full of sparkles, full of happiness. When Elena was around her, she just wanted to dance, wanted to laugh. Clapping her hands today, she held out her arms. Marguerite laughed and came over to lift her up and smack a kiss on her mouth. “You are a petite monkey, Elena,” she said when Elena wrapped her arms and legs around her and refused to let go.
Then Beth got up on her plump little legs, held up her own arms.
“I think this little bébé wants a kiss, too.” Going down to the blanket after Elena released her, Marguerite picked up Beth and sat with her in her lap.
Elena took a cross-legged position across from her and made funny faces at Beth.
Her baby sister giggled, tiny hands pressed to her mouth.
“When I see you, Elena, I see my mother,” Marguerite said. “The same hair”—she ran the strands through the fingers of one hand—“the same kind of bones in the face, the same smile.” A deep smile of her own, though the sparkles were gone. “You carry my Jeffrey in you, too. His expression, so serious at times.”
Laughter again, bubbling out of Marguerite as if it simply could not be contained. “I had to teach your papa to laugh, chérie. He was such a solemn man when I met him—but I could see the goodness in his heart, and I knew he was mine, this quiet American who sat in one corner of the café where I waitressed.”
A secret light in her face that made Elena want to smile, too, this story one of her favorites to hear her mother tell. “He never ordered anything until I came to take his order, your papa. It used to annoy the other waitstaff until they decided to find it romantic, and then of course, it was all right. A man can be foolish in Paris if he is being romantic also.”
Elena didn’t quite understand all of what her mother was telling her, but she could feel the joy radiating through her mother’s words and that was enough. “What did Papa order?”
“Always the same.” Marguerite shook her head, putting Beth back down on the blanket when she started to wriggle. “A black coffee and toast.” She threw up her hands. “I started ignoring him and bringing him whatever I felt like. Croissants fresh from the oven, eggs so exquisitely flavored, bacon smoked with apples, special cereals that we created fresh every morning. And he ate each thing.”
Marguerite laughed. “Until one day, he ordered for two—black coffee and a frothy chocolat with hazelnut. My favorite, you see.”
Her mother cupped Elena’s face in her hands, her expression oddly solemn all at once. “I remember—in the photograph, my mother is holding me and I’m a bébé wrapped up in a soft blanket.” A sudden frown between her eyebrows. “There was a mark on one edge, azeeztee. A monogram it is called in English, I think: M.E.” A sudden smile. “So perhaps my last name was an E word.”