Tatiana de Rosnay: A Secret Kept

I go back to Google, scroll down the page. Then I see it.

June Henrietta Ashby died in May 1989 of respiratory failure at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. She was 64 years old. Her renowned art gallery on 57th Street, founded in 1966, focuses on modern European art by women, which she introduced to American art lovers. It is now run by her associate, Donna W. Rogers. Miss Ashby was a gay rights activist, cofounder of the New York lesbian social club and advocacy group Daughters of Hope.

I feel a piercing sadness learning that June Ashby is dead. I would have liked to know this woman, the woman my mother loved, whom she had met in Noirmoutier in the summer of 1972. The woman she had loved in secret for more than a year. The woman my mother was ready to face the world with, the woman she wanted to raise us with. I am too late. Nineteen years too late.

I print out the entry and clip it to the other documents in the envelope. I look up Donna W. Rogers and Daughters of Hope on Google. Donna is a weathered-looking woman in her seventies, with an astute face and cropped copper hair. The lesbian social club has a rich and interesting website. I surf through it, reading about meetings, concerts, gatherings. Cooking lessons, yoga, poetry seminars, political conferences. I forward the link to Mathilde, an architect I worked with a couple of years ago. Her girlfriend, Milèna, has a hip bar I often go to in the Latin Quarter. Despite the lateness of the hour, Mathilde is in front of her computer and e-mails me right back. She is curious as to why I sent her that link. I explain that the social club was cofounded by a woman who had been my mother’s lover. Then my cell phone rings. It is Mathilde.

“Hey! I didn’t know your mother was a goudou,” she says.

“Neither did I.”

A silence, but not an uncomfortable one.

“When did you find out?”

“Not long ago.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Odd, to say the least.”

“And does she know you know? Did she tell you?”

I sigh. “My mother died in 1974, Mathilde. I was ten years old.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “Forgive me.”

“Forget it.”

“The fact that she was a lesbian-did your father know?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what my father knows.”

“Do you want to pop over to the bar so we can have a drink and chat?”

I’m half tempted. I enjoy Mathilde’s company, and her girlfriend’s bar is an amusing nightspot. But exhaustion weighs me down tonight and I tell her so. She makes me promise to come by soon. I do.

Later, in bed, I call Angèle. I get her voice mail. I don’t leave a message. I try the home number. No answer. I struggle not to let this annoy me, but it does. I know she sees other men. She is discreet about it. I want to tell her not to. I decide to tell her soon. But what will she come back with? That we are not married? That she’s allergic to fidelity? That she lives in Clisson and I live in Paris, and how are we going to work that one out? Yes, how? There is no way she would ever move to Paris. She hates its pollution, its noise, and do I see myself being buried in that small provincial town? And she might even ask me (for she has probably guessed it) if I had slept with Astrid recently and not told her.

I miss her tonight as I lie there in my empty bed, so many questions whirling around in my head. I miss her astuteness, the fast way her brain works. I miss her body, the scent of her skin. I close my eyes and quickly make myself come, thinking of her. It gives me some sort of release, but it doesn’t make me feel any happier. I feel lonelier than ever. I get up to smoke a cigarette in the dark silence.

June Ashby’s fine features come back to me. I can see her ringing the Rey doorbell, tall and formidable in her fury, her grief. She and Blanche, face-to-face. The New World versus la vieille Europe, embodied by Paris’s sixteenth arrondissement.

You better tell me how Clarisse died, right now.

I have never heard her voice and I never will, but it seems to me that I can hear it tonight, a deep, strong voice, the American accent coming out thick and strong through the polished French. I can hear her pronouncing “Clarisse” the way Americans say it, emphasizing the final syllable, softening the r.

You better tell me how Clarisse died, right now.

Later, when I finally fall asleep, the disquieting vision of seawater closing hermetically over the Gois never leaves my troubled dreams.

It is done. Blanche lies in the Rey family grave at the Trocadéro cemetery. We stand by the tomb under a surprisingly blue sky, a small group of us-my children, Astrid, Mélanie, Solange, Régine, Joséphine, close friends, faithful servants, and my frail father, leaning on a cane I have never seen him use. I notice how his illness has gradually taken over. His skin, sickly and yellow, has a waxlike consistency. He has lost most of his hair, even his lashes and brows. Mélanie is at his side, and I observe how she never leaves him, holding his arm, looking across at him with solace like a mother comforting a child. I know my sister has a new boyfriend, Eric, a young journalist I have not yet met, but despite this new man in her life, she now appears to be thoroughly taken up by our father and his well-being. During the ceremony in the cold and dark church, her hand was always on our father’s shoulder. I can tell how concerned she is, how he moves her. Why is it that I am not moved? Why is it that my father’s vulnerability triggers only pity? As I stand there, it is not my father I think of. Nor my grandmother. I think of my mother, whose coffin lies in that grave a few feet below me. Did June Ashby ever come here? Did she ever stand where I am standing now, looking down at the tombstone that bears Clarisse’s name? And if she did, was she overcome by the same questions that are now tormenting me?

After the burial we gather at the avenue Henri-Martin for a party in Blanche’s honor. Several of Solange’s friends turn up. The same elegant, well-to-do throng that was here the night Blanche died. Solange asks me to help her carry flowers into the grand salon, which has been opened especially for the occasion. Gaspard and a couple of employees have laid out a tasty buffet, and I observe Régine, cheeks caked with rouge, starting on the champagne. Joséphine is too busy chatting up a rubicund, oily gentleman to notice. My father, very quiet, sits in a corner with Mélanie.

I am alone with Solange in the office, helping her find vases for the sickly sweet-smelling lilies that keep pouring in every time the doorbell chimes. On the spur of the moment I tackle her as she is concentrating on arranging the flowers.

“Do you remember a woman called June Ashby?” I ask point-blank.

Her carefully made-up face does not move a muscle.

“Very vaguely,” she murmurs.

“An American woman, blond, tall-she had an art gallery in New York.”

“Rings a bell.”

I watch her hands hovering over the white petals, her pudgy, bejeweled fingers, her scarlet nail varnish. She was never a pretty woman, Solange. It could not have been easy for her, having a sister-in-law who had Clarisse’s looks.

“June Ashby spent a couple of summers in Noirmoutier at the Hotel Saint-Pierre. While we were there.”

“I see.”

“Do you remember she was friendly with my mother?”

She finally looks at me. Nothing warm in those brown eyes.

“No. I don’t remember.”

A waiter comes in carrying a tray of glasses. I wait till he leaves.

“What do you remember about her and my mother?”

Again the stony look.

“Nothing. I remember nothing about her and your mother.”