Vivi didn’t say anything to that, and Charlotte didn’t tell her the rest of the story. It was true that Laurent would have been thrilled and proud and hopeful, but he hadn’t had the opportunity. By the time Vivi was born, he was dead, though she didn’t know it until later. The army, which, like the country, was in disarray and disgrace, had taken almost two months to notify her. These were not details she wanted to pass on to Vivi. The hole left by Laurent’s absence yawned wide enough. The chasm left by his never knowing of her existence would be unbridgeable.
“Do you mind if I ask what brought this on?”
Vivi shrugged. “I was just thinking.”
Charlotte didn’t believe that for a minute. She took a sip of wine and waited.
“We had to go around the class today,” Vivi said finally, “saying what our fathers did.”
Charlotte could kill them, she really could. The insensitivity. The stupidity.
“Barbara Sinclair’s father is something at the UN. Kitty Foster’s is a doctor who invented an operation. I forget what kind. Camilla Brower’s father owns a magazine.”
“Your grandfather owned a publishing house.”
“They didn’t ask about grandfathers.”
“They should have.”
“It’s okay, Mom. I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t answer.” The solicitude in her voice was like a nail going down the blackboard of Charlotte’s heart. She was supposed to take care of her daughter, not the other way around. “Pru McCabe’s father died in the war, too. Only…” Her voice drifted off.
“Only what?”
“She has a picture of him in his uniform on her dresser.”
“You’d have one of your father, too, if both of your grandfathers’ apartments hadn’t been appropriated by the Germans, and ours hadn’t been looted by the French when we were taken away. We never went back after the camp. There was no point. It wasn’t as if we had good memories to return to.”
“I know. I didn’t mean it was your fault I don’t have one. What did he look like?”
Charlotte poured more wine into her glass. Surely she could remember what the man she’d fallen in love with looked like, but no matter how hard she tried, no face came into focus, only fragments. A tanned throat disappearing into the open neck of a shirt as she lay with her head in his lap, looking up at him, on the beach where they’d gone for two days after the wedding. Eyes narrowed against the smoke as he lit a cigarette. A way of holding his head to make him look taller. He was sensitive about his height. Long fingers, moving incessantly, practicing surgical knots when he had thread, imaginary knots when he didn’t, a doctor’s trick. No, those weren’t his hands.
“He was dark. Dark hair. Dark eyes.”
“Do I look like him?”
“You have his eyes. Not just the color, but the shape,” she said, though she couldn’t remember that either. She was ashamed of herself. This really was willful amnesia. “And his long lashes and brows. He had beautifully shaped eyebrows. I used to joke that the lashes and brows were unfair on a man.”
“I wish I had a picture.”
Charlotte sat looking at her daughter. “So do I, sweetheart, so do I.”
She did, she really did. She’d even thought of trying to get her hands on one. How hard would it be? A few letters, some anodyne requests. Not everyone’s apartment had been appropriated or looted. Surely some friend or relative had a photograph of Laurent. All she had to do was write. Sometimes she thought it was the least she could do for Vivi. Sometimes she thought it was the most foolish thing she could do for her.
* * *
It was after ten when Charlotte looked up from the manuscript she’d propped against her knees and found Vivi standing in the doorway to the bedroom, her pink pajamas a pale glow against the background of the shadowy hallway.
“I thought you were asleep.”
Vivi took the few steps into the room and sat on the side of the bed. Charlotte moved over to make room for her. She slept in a single bed. The room wasn’t large, and there was no need for anything more accommodating.
“You know what you said before, about doing the right thing?” Vivi asked.
Charlotte waited.
“And how sometimes it’s hard to know what the right thing is?”
“I have a feeling we’re not talking about hypothetical situations anymore. I have a feeling we’re talking about you.”
Vivi nodded.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“I’d be tattling.”
“My lips are sealed.”
“What if you have to choose between what the rules say and something your best friend did?”
Charlotte decided this was not the time to quote E. M. Forster about having the courage to betray his country rather than his friend. “You mean Alice?”
Vivi nodded.
“Which rules did she break?”
“The school honor code.”
“Alice cheated?”
“On a Latin test.”
“Are you sure?”
“She had some declensions written on the inside of her blouse cuffs. She showed them to me before the test.”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t have a chance to say anything. The teacher was handing out the questions.”
“Did you say anything to her after class?”
She shook her head. “I can’t tell on her. She’s my best friend. But when you were talking about my dad”—she almost never used the word, and now she pronounced it hesitantly, as if she weren’t quite entitled to it—“being moral, I started thinking maybe I had to do something. I just don’t know what.”
Charlotte put the manuscript aside and reached for her daughter’s hand. It was soft and damp from the cream she’d begun slathering on at night. “It’s a moral conundrum, all right.”
“That makes it sound even worse.”
“Okay, let’s look at the alternatives. You can turn her in.”
“She’ll never speak to me again. No one in the whole class will.”
“Or you can say nothing and just try to forget about it.”
“But what if she does it again? I mean, if she got away with it this time and thinks it’s okay, won’t she do it again?”
“I think you just found your solution.”
“I did?”
“What if you tell her you’re not going to say anything this time, but it’s not right, and if she does it again, you’ll have to report her.”
Vivi thought about that for a moment. “I don’t know. That feels as if I’m trying to get away with something myself. I’m not really following the honor code, but I’m not being such a good friend either.”
“I think you’re being a very good friend. You’re trying to save her from a life of crime. And what you’re getting away with is a compromise. That’s what most of life is, unfortunately. Or perhaps fortunately. The world isn’t black and white. It’s a gray and shadowy landscape out there.”
“I guess,” Vivi said, but she didn’t look persuaded. She stood and started for the door. When she reached it, she turned back. “Technicolor.”