Montmartre.
A few months before Emilie died, she gave me the entire record of her correspondence with my mother, an old Dior shoe box crammed with yellowed paper. It was a gesture of reconciliation on my aunt’s part, I know that. But to this day, I have not been able to bring myself to read the letters.
We all carry the dead within us, as we wish them to be. To my aunt, my mother was never anything other than the one who’d stood up to their father and won. To her father, my mother remained a slightly serious girl on the stage of the recital hall at the American University, her hair bound in a tight bun, her chin and shoulder curled around her violin, her whole body swaying with the effort of a Dvorak concerto.
And to me? The person I’ve carried for so many years is yet another incarnation of the woman we all knew. My mother was a breathtaking skier, as fearless as her compatriots but with a certain grace that transcended the characteristic Lebanese recklessness. It is this version of my mother I try to hold on to now: her black hair flying loose behind her, her skis carving effortlessly through the snow at Faraya-Mzaar, her body not wrecked as it was at the end, but whole, powering its way down the mountain. The only reconciliation I need.
“A milkmaid,” the old man said, his false teeth sliding in and out of place as he contemplated my question. Then he put his finger to the side of his head. “Yes! Yes! The old dairy.” He smiled and turned, gesturing out the café’s front window toward the bus station across the street and a narrow lane that disappeared behind it. “Down there and take your first right.”
“Thank you.” I slid a ten-euro note onto the counter and waved the barman over, adding another of the pensioner’s medronhos to my bill before gathering my things to go.
It was a wretched afternoon in Cacilhas, sodden and gray, the air above the waterfront thick with yellow smoke from the factories below. Beneath the beneficent arms of the Cristo Rei, tugboats shuffled back and forth across the harbor, their red and white hulls bright as songbirds against the dark river.
At night, well-heeled Lisbonites crossed the Tagus to visit the seafood restaurants clustered along the riverfront, but during the day, unless you lived or worked in Cacilhas, there wasn’t much reason to make the trip. It was a hardscrabble little town, made more so by the rain and chill, the dull patina of wet mud and soot that glazed the streets and sidewalks.
To my surprise, the man’s directions proved to be accurate, and I found the old dairy easily, about halfway down a dead-end alley. The azulejo that had served as the dairy’s billboard had seen better days. Some of the tiles were cracked or missing, and those that were left were scarred and stained, but the milkmaid, sketched in delicate blue, was as lovely as ever, her ample bosom and coquettish smile perfectly intact.
Other than a black-and-white cat curled in the shelter of a nearby doorway, the alley showed no signs of life. The ramshackle buildings were closed up tight, windows shuttered and locked. The dairy itself had obviously been vacant for some time.
I started into the overgrown passage on the building’s left side, and the cat climbed out of her doorway and bounded ahead of me, meowing loudly as she scaled the rust-pocked iron stairway that led to a small landing and windowless door on the dairy’s second floor.
Searching the ground for something to get me past the padlock that I could see hanging just above the door’s knob, I picked up a broken piece of iron railing and started upward.
The cat mewled again and scratched impatiently at the door. Waiting for something, food, water, affection, or all three, something she’d gotten here in the past. She looked well fed, but in a strange way, all belly. Pregnant, I thought.
Nudging her gently aside, I wedged the tip of the broken rail beneath the hasp and pulled, praying the corroded iron would
A few months before Emilie died, she gave me the entire record of her correspondence with my mother, an old Dior shoe box crammed with yellowed paper. It was a gesture of reconciliation on my aunt’s part, I know that. But to this day, I have not been able to bring myself to read the letters.
We all carry the dead within us, as we wish them to be. To my aunt, my mother was never anything other than the one who’d stood up to their father and won. To her father, my mother remained a slightly serious girl on the stage of the recital hall at the American University, her hair bound in a tight bun, her chin and shoulder curled around her violin, her whole body swaying with the effort of a Dvorak concerto.
And to me? The person I’ve carried for so many years is yet another incarnation of the woman we all knew. My mother was a breathtaking skier, as fearless as her compatriots but with a certain grace that transcended the characteristic Lebanese recklessness. It is this version of my mother I try to hold on to now: her black hair flying loose behind her, her skis carving effortlessly through the snow at Faraya-Mzaar, her body not wrecked as it was at the end, but whole, powering its way down the mountain. The only reconciliation I need.
“A milkmaid,” the old man said, his false teeth sliding in and out of place as he contemplated my question. Then he put his finger to the side of his head. “Yes! Yes! The old dairy.” He smiled and turned, gesturing out the café’s front window toward the bus station across the street and a narrow lane that disappeared behind it. “Down there and take your first right.”
“Thank you.” I slid a ten-euro note onto the counter and waved the barman over, adding another of the pensioner’s medronhos to my bill before gathering my things to go.
It was a wretched afternoon in Cacilhas, sodden and gray, the air above the waterfront thick with yellow smoke from the factories below. Beneath the beneficent arms of the Cristo Rei, tugboats shuffled back and forth across the harbor, their red and white hulls bright as songbirds against the dark river.
At night, well-heeled Lisbonites crossed the Tagus to visit the seafood restaurants clustered along the riverfront, but during the day, unless you lived or worked in Cacilhas, there wasn’t much reason to make the trip. It was a hardscrabble little town, made more so by the rain and chill, the dull patina of wet mud and soot that glazed the streets and sidewalks.
To my surprise, the man’s directions proved to be accurate, and I found the old dairy easily, about halfway down a dead-end alley. The azulejo that had served as the dairy’s billboard had seen better days. Some of the tiles were cracked or missing, and those that were left were scarred and stained, but the milkmaid, sketched in delicate blue, was as lovely as ever, her ample bosom and coquettish smile perfectly intact.
Other than a black-and-white cat curled in the shelter of a nearby doorway, the alley showed no signs of life. The ramshackle buildings were closed up tight, windows shuttered and locked. The dairy itself had obviously been vacant for some time.
I started into the overgrown passage on the building’s left side, and the cat climbed out of her doorway and bounded ahead of me, meowing loudly as she scaled the rust-pocked iron stairway that led to a small landing and windowless door on the dairy’s second floor.
Searching the ground for something to get me past the padlock that I could see hanging just above the door’s knob, I picked up a broken piece of iron railing and started upward.
The cat mewled again and scratched impatiently at the door. Waiting for something, food, water, affection, or all three, something she’d gotten here in the past. She looked well fed, but in a strange way, all belly. Pregnant, I thought.
Nudging her gently aside, I wedged the tip of the broken rail beneath the hasp and pulled, praying the corroded iron would
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