“He may not wake up tomorrow as it is. You must let him recover.”
“I am sorry, Doctor—”
“A young man was set to go home last week—vital signs good—and he died of cardiac failure the morning he was to leave. Who knows when we can consider these patients cured?”
“I’m just eager to—”
“He must not exert himself in any way—no cooking, extended walks, and certainly no, well—”
“What, Doctor?”
“Certainly no extracurricular activities…”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Complete bed rest.”
With Paul alone in the bed, he wanted to say.
After the doctor left, I sat at Paul’s bedside, watching his chest rise and fall under the blanket.
“Don’t leave,” Paul said.
I smoothed the back of my hand across his cheek.
“Never,” I said.
—
I SAW PAUL EVERY DAY and decamped to Mother’s apartment each night. I was relieved the old place had survived the war relatively unscathed thanks to our caretaker’s wife, Mme Solange. The apartment was surprisingly untouched, not a crack in the floor-to-ceiling casement windows or the hornbeam parquet floors, though fine white powder covered every surface, the silver-topped jars on my mahogany vanity table now two inches deep in silty dust. The carriage clock in Father’s study had stopped at 9:25, and there’d been a leak in Mother’s bedroom. A section of damask wallpaper curled down off the wall there like a stained sow’s ear.
Paul slept for much of those first two weeks, but soon asked to go home to the house he and Rena had shared in Rouen. Dr. Bedreaux reluctantly agreed, with additional vague references to a ban on lovemaking that made Paul smile. Dr. Bedreaux insisted a doctor had to visit Paul every day, for Rena’s house was several miles outside of Paris, with limited access to hospital care. I agreed, happy to pay whatever it took to make Paul happy, and with the help of three strong nurses, we managed to get him into the front seat of the Peugeot.
On the road to Rouen, fresh evidence of combat was everywhere, and many buildings were nothing more than façades. The imposing Rouen Cathedral, made famous by Monet’s paintings, was one of the few buildings left intact. Paul directed me to a bunker-like house on a side street in Rouen, not at all what I’d expected.
I helped Paul up the front walk and considered the house, which resembled a military pillbox, cold and standoffish. It was designed in the Bauhaus style, another abhorrent thing Germany had foisted on France.
Would the neighbors come out to greet him? Would they think me an interloper? After all, Rena had grown up in the house and she and Paul had lived there together. Did they have friends, couples on the street who missed her?
Paul and I walked into the front hallway and inched our way across the living room. It was a dark house, but the rooms were done in the bright prints of Provence. I considered asking Paul if we could live at Mother’s apartment with its lovely morning light and pastel boiseried walls, filled with the pieces Mother and I had found at the Marché aux Puces and other antiquaires. My Louis Seize commode. The fin de siècle metal garden table in the kitchen. Mother had gone a bit toile crazy, but it was nicely done. All it needed was a good dusting.
I helped Paul up the stairs and past a snug little room with yellow, fabric-upholstered walls and on to the master bedroom, where Paul and Rena once slept. The bed was small for a man as tall as Paul and wore a white matelassé bedcover and blue-and-white ticking pillows.
I pulled a chair next to Paul’s bed and watched him sleep well into the night. Eventually I moved to the padded window seat and slept for a bit. Before dawn, Paul spoke.
“Rena?”
“No, Paul, it’s Caroline.”
“Caroline? I am so cold.”
I brought my blanket to the bed and smoothed it over him.
“I thought I was in the hospital,” he said.
“No, you’re home, dear.”
He was back asleep before I finished the sentence.
It was strange to cook in Rena’s kitchen, the copper pots still burnished bright, her drawers filled with pressed cotton napkins folded in neat stacks. There was little food to cook, for all over France, meat and vegetables were hard to come by. At first, I improvised. With a ration card, a lucky sort could hunt down some potatoes and bread, perhaps some anemic carrots, but most of the country existed on thin soups and toast. Then I raided Mother’s pantry at her apartment and