Tatiana Rosnay - Sarah’s Key

Central Park and the first tantalizing promise of spring. I stretched my legs out, tilted my face back to the sun.

The man at my side caressed my cheek.

Neil. My boyfriend. A trifle older than me. A lawyer. Divorced. Lived in the Flatiron district with his teenage sons. Introduced to me by my sister. I liked him. I wasn’t in love with him, but I enjoyed his company. He was an intelligent, cultivated man. He had no intention of marrying me, thank God, and he put up with my daughters from time to time.

There had been a couple of boyfriends since we had come to live here. Nothing serious. Nothing important. Zoë called them my suitors, Charla, my beaux, in Scarlett-like fashion. Before Neil, the latest suitor was called Peter, he had an art gallery, a bald spot on the back of his head that pained him, and a drafty loft in Tribeca. They were decent, slightly boring, all-American middle-aged men. Polite, earnest, and meticulous. They had good jobs, they were well-educated, cultivated, and generally divorced. They came to pick me up, they dropped me off, they offered their arm and their umbrella. They took me out to lunch, to the Met, MoMA, the City Opera, the NYCB, to shows on Broadway, out to dinner, and sometimes to bed. I endured it. Sex was something I now did because I felt I had to. It was mechanical and dull. There, too, something had vanished. The passion. The excitement. The heat. All gone.

I felt like someone-me?-had fast-forwarded the film of my life, and there I appeared like a wooden Charlie Chaplin character, doing everything in a hasty and awkward way, as if I had no other choice, a stiff grin pasted on my face, acting like I was happy with my new life.

Sometimes Charla would steal a look at me and say, “Hey, you OK?”

She would nudge me and I’d mumble, “Oh, sure, fine.” She did not seem convinced, but for the moment she let me be.

My mother, too, would let her eyes roam over my face and purse her lips with worry. “Everything all right, sugar?”

I’d shrug away her anxiety with a careless smile.

A GLORIOUS, CRISP NEW YORK morning. The kind you never get in Paris. Sharp fresh air. Stark blue sky. The city’s skyline hemming us in above the trees. The Dakota’s pale mass, facing us. The smell of hotdogs and pretzels wafting through the breeze.

I reached out my hand and stroked Neil’s knee, eyes still closed against the sun’s increasing heat. New York and its fierce, contrasted weather. Sizzling summers. Freezing white winters. And the light that fell over the city, a hard, bright silvery light that I had grown to love. Paris and its damp gray drizzle seemed to come from another world.

I opened my eyes and watched my daughters cavort. Overnight, or so it seemed, Zoë had sprouted into a spectacular teenager, towering over me with lissome strong limbs. She looked like Charla and Bertrand, she’d inherited their class, their allure, their charm, that feisty, powerful combination of Jarmond and Tézac that enchanted me.

The little one was something else. Softer, rounder, more fragile. She needed cuddling, kissing, more fuss and attention than Zoë had demanded at her age. Was it because her father was not around? Because Zoë, the baby, and I had left France for New York, not long after the birth? I did not know. I did not question myself too much.

It had been strange, coming back to live in America, after many years in Paris. It still felt strange, sometimes. It did not yet feel like home. I wondered how long that would take. But it had happened. There had been difficulty. It had not been an easy decision to make.

The baby’s birth had been premature, a cause for panic and pain. She was born just after Christmas, two months before her due date. I underwent a gruesomely long C-section in the emergency room at Saint-Vincent de Paul Hospital. Bertrand had been there, oddly tense, moved, despite himself. A tiny, perfect little girl. Had he been disappointed? I wondered. I wasn’t. This child meant so much to me. I had fought for her. I had not given in. She was my victory.

Shortly after the birth, and just before the move to the rue de Saintonge, Bertrand summoned up the courage to tell me he loved Amélie, that he wanted to live with her from now on, that he wanted to move into the Trocadéro apartment with her, that he could no longer lie to me, to Zoë, that there would have to be a divorce, but it could be quick, and easy. It was then, watching him go through with his longwinded, complicated confession, watching him pace the room up and down, his hands behind his back, his eyes downcast, that the first idea of moving to America dawned upon me. I listened to Bertrand till the end. He looked drained, wrecked, but he had done it. He had been honest with me, at last. And honest with himself. And I had looked back at my handsome, sensual husband and thanked him. He had seemed surprised. He admitted he had expected a stronger, more bitter reaction. Shouts, insults, a fuss. The baby in my arms had moaned, waving her tiny fists.

“No fuss,” I said. “No shouts, no insults. All right?”

“All right,” he said. And he kissed me, and the baby.

He already felt like he was out of my life. Like he had already left.

That night, every time I rose to feed the hungry child, I thought of the States. Boston? No, I hated the idea of going back to the past, to my childhood city.

And then I knew.

New York. Zoë, the baby, and I could go to New York. Charla was there, my parents not far. New York. Why not? I didn’t know the city all that well, I had never lived there for a long spell, apart from my annual visits to my sister’s.

New York. Perhaps the only city that could rival Paris because of its complete and utter difference. The more I thought about it, the more the idea secretly appealed to me. I didn’t talk it over with my friends. I knew Hervé, Christophe, Guillaume, Susannah, Holly, Jan, and Isabelle would be upset at the idea of my departure. But I knew they would understand and accept it, too.

And then Mamé had died. She had lingered on since her stroke in November, she had never been able to speak again, although she had regained consciousness. She had been moved to the intensive care unit, at the Cochin hospital. I was expecting her death, gearing myself up to face it, but it still came as a shock.

It was after the funeral, which took place in Burgundy, in the sad little graveyard, that Zoë had said to me, “Mom, do we have to go live in the rue de Saintonge?”

“I think your father expects us to.”

“But do you want to go live there?” she asked.

“No,” I said truthfully. “Ever since I’ve known what happened there, I don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to either.”

Then she said, “But where could we move to then, Mom?”

And I replied, lightly, jokingly, expecting her to snort with disapproval, “Well, how about New York City?”

IT HAD BEEN AS easy as that, with Zoë. Bertrand had not been happy about our decision. About his daughter moving so far away. But Zoë was firm about leaving. She said she’d come back every couple of months, and Bertrand could come over, too, to see her, and the baby. I explained to Bertrand that there was nothing set, nothing definitive about the move. It wasn’t forever. It was just for a couple of years. To let Zoë grasp the American side of her. To help me move on. To start something new. He had now established himself with Amélie. They formed a couple, an official one. Amélie’s children were nearly adults. They lived away from home and also spent time with their father. Was Bertrand tempted by the prospect of a new life without the everyday responsibility of children-his, or hers-to raise on a daily basis? Perhaps. He finally said yes. And then I got things going.