Needless to say, Estella was delighted when Fabienne telephoned and told her she was going to Hawaii to meet Will. And she didn’t mince words. “Good,” Estella said. “Young people are so arrogant about time. You seem to think there’s an infinite amount, an excess, that age will never come for you. It will. And you also think that love…” She stopped abruptly.
“What?” Fabienne asked.
There was a long pause. Fabienne almost asked again, but then she heard Estella sigh.
“You think that love is an emotion created and sold in movies,” Estella said. “It’s not. It’s the most real thing of all. And it deserves more reverence than it gets. You have all the freedom in the world to love these days but nobody seems to grasp that. Generations past would shake their heads at you, not taking advantage of the things they couldn’t. Loving can hurt spectacularly, but it can also heal. So I hope you’re sharing a room with him.”
“Mamie!”
Estella laughed and Fabienne couldn’t help laughing too. How many ninety-seven-year-old women would say that to their granddaughters?
“I had the nurse find me a picture of him on the internet,” Estella said and Fabienne knew her eyes were twinkling with mischief. “He’s very handsome. I certainly wouldn’t book my own room if I was going to Hawaii with him.”
“Okay, I’m sharing his room. That’s enough about me and Will.” Fabienne paused, not wanting to spoil the moment, but knowing she had to say something. “I started reading Evelyn Nesbit’s memoir.”
“And I suppose you have more questions than ever?” The mischief was gone from Estella’s voice.
“I do.”
“Evelyn Nesbit,” Estella began, then stopped. She sighed. “I suppose there’s no way to say it that won’t be surprising. Evelyn Nesbit and John Barrymore are my grandparents.”
“Your grandparents?” Fabienne repeated, trying to work out how on earth a showgirl and an actor, both from America, could possibly be Estella’s grandparents.
“They were in love, before Evelyn was taken under the abhorrent wings of Stanford White and then Harry Thaw. She fell pregnant to John twice: the first time she had an abortion, disguised as an appendectomy. It made her so ill that, the second time, she had the baby in France, away from newspapers and prying eyes. She gave the baby, my mother, to the nuns to raise. The house on the Rue de Sévigné was Evelyn’s; she bought it with the money men bestowed on her. It was her love nest, the place where she and John were at their happiest. Until Evelyn’s mother decided that John’s pockets were too empty and, with Stanford White’s persuasion, that she could sell her daughter to a higher bidder. Evelyn gifted the house to my mother but something happened to her there and she could never live in it. I thought I could break the curse but…” Estella stopped.
“I don’t even know what to say,” Fabienne stuttered. “I had no idea why you gave me the memoir to read but I certainly wasn’t expecting that. I suppose I should be grateful, given everything it says about Harry Thaw, that he isn’t your grandfather.”
A long silence extended through the phone, Fabienne’s mind working to understand the fact that her great-great-grandmother was someone so notorious, that her great-grandmother had been abandoned to be raised by nuns and that, out of it all, had come Estella. That if the house in Paris had been Evelyn’s, who had built the replica in which Estella had always lived in Manhattan? And none of it explained the names on her father’s birth certificate.
“Are you all right?” Fabienne suddenly asked, aware that Estella hadn’t spoken for some time.
“Just a little tired,” her grandmother said. “Anyway, that’s where the story starts. If Evelyn and John hadn’t happened, then…” Estella paused. “I’ll tell you more of the story when you’re back from Hawaii. Hopefully you’ll be in so blissful a mood that whatever I have to say won’t upset you too much.”
“Why would it upset me?” Fabienne asked warily. “And what does any of that have to do with Dad?”
Her grandmother yawned. “As I said, I’ll explain everything after your romantic rendezvous. I promise.”
Then she hung up the phone and that was that.
Fabienne’s bags were packed, her body waxed and fake-tanned, and her bikini purchased as the taxi drove to the airport, so slowly that Fabienne wanted to leap into the front seat and drive herself. Instead she reminded herself that it didn’t matter how slowly he drove, the plane would still take off at the same time and it would still be about twelve hours until she saw Will and Melissa again. Until she was able to close a door behind her and Will and kiss him. She forced herself to look out of the window and at the black walls of the tunnel. Fantasies in the back of a cab were not helpful.
She thought instead of Melissa; Will had wondered if it would be the last trip he’d be able to take her on, had said that the last month had been hard and she knew in his understatement lay a truth that would be difficult to face when she saw Melissa again. They’d been corresponding by text and e-mail most days and it broke Fabienne’s heart to see what a spirited woman Melissa was, to think of the life she could have had, to think of what it would do to Will when her body shut down.
Her phone rang, surprising her when she saw Estella’s number on the screen. “Mamie?” she said.
“Sorry, Fabienne, it’s Kate.”
Mamie’s nurse. Fabienne’s heart contracted. “What is it?” she asked.
“Estella’s just been taken to the hospital. When I came in this morning she was unresponsive. I think she may have had a stroke.”
“Oh no!” Fabienne squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m coming. I’m on my way to the airport now in fact. I’ll change my flight and I’ll be there as soon as I can. Is she all right?” Please God let her be all right. I know she’s old but you don’t need her. You have enough people. You have my father. You’re taking Melissa. Leave my grandmother alone.
“She’s alive,” Kate said simply.
She’s alive. Fabienne would focus on that, would pray to God that Estella hung on long enough for Fabienne to get there.
She rang the airline and changed her flight. Then she called Unity at work and told her she needed a few more days off. Unity wasn’t pleased but Fabienne assured her that she’d work while she was away, that she’d be in e-mail and phone contact, that it’d be just like she was still there. She could tell Unity didn’t believe her but Fabienne didn’t care. She wasn’t going to leave her grandmother in a hospital on the other side of the world all by herself.
She checked her watch. Will and Melissa would be in the air. She texted them both, explaining what had happened and apologized. To Will she said, I’m so, so sorry. I wanted this weekend so much. I hope that we can make it work another time. I really do. Then she hesitated and wrote, Love Fabienne.
Fabienne sobbed as she sat by Estella’s bed, holding her hand and doing all of the other pointless things that people did at hospital bedsides, including telling her grandmother, like she’d told her father only two months ago, that she wasn’t allowed to die. Even as she’d said it to her father, she’d known she couldn’t make it true, that nobody would ever recover from the pallor of his skin. And now her grandmother looked the same as he had, or worse even, because her body was already so desiccated.
The doctors told her that her grandmother had had a stroke. They would have to wait and see how much damage it had done. She would be kept sedated for another twenty-four hours. Fabienne should come back then.
What if she dies while I’m not here? Fabienne wanted to ask. But after much persuasion from the nurses, and their reassurance that they’d call if there was even the slightest change, Fabienne dragged herself back to her grandmother’s house to shower, put on fresh clothes and eat. She changed the sheets on her grandmother’s bed, bought peonies for a vase by the bedside table, plumped the pillows and made the room look so inviting that Estella would have no choice but to return.
Then she read the message Will had left: I’m sorry too. I hope your grandmother is doing okay. Call me if you can. Love Will.
Love Will. Yesterday the words would have been enough for her to laugh with delight. Today they hurt. Love and hurt, hurt and love. The two seemed to go together far too well. What was the good in loving Will when she lived so far away? What was the good in loving her grandmother if it hurt this much to face the thought of losing her?
Not long after Fabienne returned to the hospital, a nurse touched her shoulder. “Here are your grandmother’s things.”
Fabienne opened the bag. Estella’s nightgown sat neatly folded at the bottom. On top was her watch and the Tiffany key Fabienne’s grandfather had given Estella on her seventieth birthday, which she’d always worn around her neck. But there was also another chain, with a medallion or a pendant attached to it. Fabienne recalled always seeing a glimpse of another silver chain glinting beneath Estella’s collar and she reached into the bag for it. The medallion was made of silver, crudely carved with three witches on broomsticks. Fabienne turned it over. There was nothing written on the back. It was the strangest thing. Not lovely at all, and clearly of no monetary value, unlike the diamond-studded Tiffany key it had sat beside. Why would her grandmother have worn it every day of her life?
A memory stabbed through the confusion. She’d seen a cloth patch bearing those same witches at the exhibition at the Musée de l’Armée in Paris. What had the plaque beside it said? She closed her eyes, straining to remember something she’d paid little attention to at the time.
Then Estella stirred. Her hand clutched Fabienne’s. Her eyes jerked open, not delicately flickering, not gradually moving from death to life.
“Mamie!” Fabienne moved to press the buzzer to summon the doctor.
Her grandmother shook her head. “Love,” she whispered.
“You don’t need to talk,” Fabienne said. “Let me talk.”
“So much to say.”
And so little time. The unspoken words echoed in the room.
“Two kinds of love,” Estella said, her voice almost transparent in its thinness. Fabienne couldn’t quite make out the rest of what she said; it sounded like, “…had both…lucky…”
“Grandpa loved you so much,” Fabienne said, remembering the way Mamie had looked at Fabienne’s grandfather when he lay dying. Fabienne had seen her heart breaking, not in shards, not piece by piece, but in one long rent, too large to ever stitch back together.
Estella smiled, her words stronger now, rushing over Fabienne who tried to shape them into some kind of sense. “Love like a toile,” Estella said. “The pattern on which one’s whole life is shaped. But nobody sees the toile, or knows it ever existed. Nobody understands that, without it, nothing can be fashioned.”
“Mamie…” Fabienne began but her grandmother spoke again.
“And love like a spool of thread, running on, strong enough to pull everything together.” Estella studied Fabienne. “You don’t understand, do you?”
“I’m not sure,” Fabienne said slowly. She opened her hand, in which the medallion lay. “What is this?”
Estella reached out for it and closed her hand tightly around it. “Don’t wait for anything, Fabienne. It all goes so fast.” Then Estella fell asleep, hand embracing the silver pendant, face a tracery of longing.