Flashback

TWO

What is the first thing you remember? The taste of the ocean, the cold shock of snow, or the face of your mother, young as she was and is no more? The first memory I have is of the hour I came into this world. Before that, there are just the ghosts of what I’ve forgotten.

I arrived on All Saints’ Day, a little over a year ago, to a busload of aging virgins on a muddy roadside in Burgundy. How I got there is a mystery to all of us. What I remember is the smell of cattle, the rain-blurred outlines of twelve dark heads against the gray sky, and an unrelenting pain in the left side of my head. What they remember is a scraped-up body in a ditch, a face clouded by blood and bruises, and a young woman who fought them off in gutter English.

Later, the doctors would use the word miracle when referring to the single bullet that had pierced the bones of my skull. The tiny piece of lead that by all rights should have killed me had instead navigated the folds of my brain as deftly as a surgeon’s blade, sparing my life, sparing my eyesight, sparing everything but the most mysterious of connections, the tender filament of memory.

What little I know about myself is only what the living body can tell, and that is not much. Not surprisingly, it’s the mouth that says the most, and mine reveals that I was once loved, or at least well cared for. I have three fillings, no wisdom teeth, and a neat patina of decay preventative sealant on my molars. Someone paid for braces in my adolescence. On my upper left incisor is a cosmetic bond, and beneath it, a yellow scar in the enamel from a fall I took as a child. I have envisioned this mishap so many times now-a summer day, blue sky, green grass, the cool metal of the monkey bars, and a faceless father on a bench in the distance-that it has come to seem like a truth. And who’s to say it isn’t?

A very American set of teeth, a dentist in Lyon remarked, and given all the other evidence, my North American English, and the U.S. labels in my clothes, it would seem that he was right.

Except for the catastrophe that birthed me, I’ve come through life so far relatively unscathed. On the outside of my right ankle is a simple birthmark, three black dots that, if connected, might form a lopsided triangle. The skin on my upper arm is smooth, unblemished by the circular scar of a smallpox vaccination, confirming the fact that I was born no earlier than 1971. I do have one old scar, the healed remnants of a laceration that is at once my body’s greatest mystery and its biggest clue. It’s a small mark, unseeable unless one is looking, from a cut that was made on my perineum to allow a baby to pass through.

A child! Think of all the things you’ve forgotten and wish you hadn’t: the exact weight and shape of your first kiss; the last time you saw your father, your grandfather, loved ones who aren’t coming back. And yet, how could you forget your own child? How could you not remember such a thing? When they told me in the hospital, I insisted there had been a mistake.

The doctor who examined me was a woman, small and slightly round, with a spattering of fading freckles. Finally, she brought a mirror and held it so that I could see the scar, the faint, pale line of the episiotomy.

Whether my appearance in that field was accident or design has so far been impossible to determine. In the beginning it seemed inevitable that someone would come looking for me, and the violence of my arrival suggested that someone might not have the best intentions. Better not to advertise, the police had said, and so, other than a discreet correspondence with the U.S. Embassy in Paris, the nuns’ discovery was kept quiet.

Don’t worry, the U.S. consul told me confidently. People don’t just disappear without someone wondering where they’ve gone to. Especially not people with children, people who have been so obviously cared for. Yes, I thought, hoping he was wrong, not knowing this past year would prove him so, and that in the end I’d wish him to have been right.

All I could feel then toward the dark life behind me was a flush of fear, a dread not just of those who might hurt me but of my own capacity for rage. Though I needn’t have worried. In the thirteen months since that All Saints’ Day no one has come forward to claim me. Not a soul has inquired about a brown-haired, blue-eyed, young American with a scarred front tooth.

The life I have now, and everything in it, including my name, has been given to me by the sisters. It took them some time, but in the end they settled on Eve. The first, they told me, the name given by God. It seems fitting to me, this moniker of one so irreparably divided from the life she once knew. Though often my own separation seems far more powerful than sin.

It was snowing in Lyon, a weak effort, flakes sputtering down from a low blanket of clouds, but snowing nonetheless, with the promise of more to come. Out the window of Dr. Delpay’s office I could see the city’s rooftops in their various shades of gray, flannel and slate, ash and charcoal.

“You’re still planning on going?” Delpay asked from across the room.

I nodded, turning away from the window to face him. “I spoke to the consul last week. He’s making arrangements.”

“Do you know where they’ll be sending you?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t given the idea much thought. Somewhere quiet, I thought now, with mountains and pine trees, and the earnest and honorable people you see in movies about the American West. “It’ll take some time. There was talk of finding me a sponsor. It’s all a little tricky, the bureaucratic side of things.”

“You seem relieved by that.”

Yes, I thought, though I didn’t say it. It had been my decision, my idea to go to America, and yet I was guiltily happy to put it off.

Delpay settled into his chair. He was a kind man, fatherly in a no-nonsense way, not coddling, just always quietly there, and I didn’t want to disappoint him.

“You know, you don’t have to leave,” he offered.

I thought of the few Americans I’d known, the consul and his red-haired secretary, a group of Benedictine sisters from Michigan who’d spent two weeks at the abbey. They were all foreigners to me, loud and overly friendly, and yet somehow suspicious at the same time. I couldn’t imagine a country full of these people, could not imagine this place as my home. But it was, and somewhere in it, among those strange people, was a child. Mine.

“Yes,” I said, “I know.”

Delpay nodded, as if understanding some deep and complex problem. “What are you afraid of?”

I turned back to the window, touched my forehead to the glass, and peered straight down into the street toward the glazed hoods of the cars below, the pale pedestrians huddled against the wet December chill. I could taste Delpay’s vasopressin in the back of my throat, the bitter pungency of the drug.

The doctor waited patiently for my answer. I heard him shift in his chair. The old radiators came on, clunking and hissing. Down below, a woman emerged from the front door of the hospital and climbed into a waiting cab.

“I had the dream again last night,” I said, “the old one.”

“The warehouse?” Delpay asked.

I nodded. It had been months since I’d last had the nightmare, and Delpay and I had chalked it up to the piracetam he’d prescribed when we had first begun to meet. I’d had the dream almost nightly then, a terrible, suffocating vision in which I was trapped in a deserted warehouse, running from someone or something.

“And the ending,” Delpay prodded. “Still the same?”

“Yes.” Instinctively, I touched my hand to my throat and felt the unblemished skin there. In the dream it was not so. In the last panicked seconds of my nightmare a blade flashed in the warehouse’s dim light, then arced toward me, slicing across my neck. Again and again I woke to the great gaping throat of death, my fingers scrabbling to stanch the flow of blood.

In the end, we’d stopped the piracetam, and the dream had stopped as well. Now it was back, and I shuddered at the memory.

“And the man?” Delpay asked. “Are you still seeing him?”

“Yes,” I told him. The man was a newer vision, no less persistent than the warehouse had been, and almost as disturbing.

“Tell me about him.”

“I have,” I said, turning once more from the window.

Delpay smiled. “Tell me again.”

“It’s the same as it always is,” I explained. “We’re up high, on a roof, I think. There are mountains around us.”

“And the writing?”

“Yes. On the hillside. There’s something written on the hillside.”

“Can you read it?”

I shook my head. “It’s not a language I know.”

“But the letters? You can read the letters.”

“No,” I said, the frustration showing in my voice.

“It’s okay. Tell me about the man. Is he young? Old?”

“He’s young, close to my age, I think.”

“He’s an American?”

“I don’t know.”

“What else?”

I turned back to the window.

“What else, Eve?”

“He’s dying.”

“Why?”

“He’s been shot. There’s blood everywhere.” I swallowed hard, trying to clear my throat of the vasopressin tang, trying to rid my head of this memory I didn’t want.

“What else, Eve?”

“I’m holding a gun in my hand, a pistol. I’m the one who has done this.”

“You don’t know that.”

I turned to face Delpay once again. As much as I wanted to believe him, there was a part of me that was certain I was right. “It’s the only thing I do know,” I said.

I was late leaving the city. A theater near the hospital was showing a new American movie, and I went after my appointment, as I often did, hoping to catch a glimpse of something familiar on the big screen. My first few months at the convent I’d spent much of my time watching Sister Claire’s collection of American movies, trying to kindle a spark of recognition. Occasionally, I saw places I knew, or at least thought I knew: parts of New York City, the desolate landscapes of the old westerns, or Sleepless in Seattle’s rain-washed waterfront. But the rest of America, from the apocalyptic sprawl of Los Angeles to the arctic landscape of Fargo’s Upper Midwest, seemed completely alien to me.

The matinee let out at four, and by the time I picked up the Miles Davis CD Heloise had asked for and stopped at Sister Theresa’s favorite chocolatier, it was rush hour, the streets clogged with evening commuters. I had to battle my way out of the city in the convent’s rusty old Renault.

I was still hungover from my meeting with Dr. Delpay. My throat was dry, and there was a black hole of pain in the back of my skull. It had been several months since we’d introduced the “miracle drug” into our sessions, and so far there had been no miracles, none of the sudden breakthroughs we’d hoped for. Just this same bloody memory, one I wished I could send back to the oblivion from which it had emerged. And now the piracetam dream was back as well.

It was dark when I got off the highway and headed for Cluny and the little hill towns beyond. The Renault’s heater rattled and shook beneath the dash. I brightened my headlights and careened north on the narrow road, past sprawling vineyards, the grape wood bare and gnarled, each plant clipped and tied neatly for winter, limbs spread out, like bodies crucified.

The road dipped through a small village, a handful of stone houses huddled together around a café. I slowed slightly and watched the settlement slip by. The few windows that were lit shone like stage sets: a woman at her stove, a man smoking, a dozen green bottles on a shelf. It was six-thirty by my watch. If I pushed it, I could be at the convent well before seven. I shifted and punched the gas pedal, coaxing what speed I could out of the old engine, and turned onto the even narrower road that led up to the abbey.

As I neared the Tanes’ farmhouse, I eased my foot off the gas and peered past the Renault’s headlights, watching for the two retrievers. They were good dogs, but suicidally stupid, and had the bad habit of darting out of nowhere. There was no sign of the creatures tonight. The Tanes’ house was ablaze with lights, each window shining with an uncanny force. Two large spots on the old carriage house illuminated the yard and the driveway. A party, perhaps? Though there was nothing festive about the glare. Monsieur Tane’s white Peugeot was the only car in the drive. I blinked, heading back into the darkness toward the convent.

As I came around the last curve, I could see the stone priory and the chapel beyond. Something was wrong there as well. The abbey’s grounds were bathed in light, the winter trees casting stark shadows on the frozen ground. Half a dozen cars and several police vans were parked on the gravel apron outside the priory. A handful of figures lingered in the cold, all men as far as I could see, some smoking, some talking on cell phones. I recognized most of them as local police.

There was an air of tired catastrophe to the scene, the drama long since over and the players waiting for their next move. I parked the Renault behind one of the vans and got out, my heart beating in panic. It was Sister Magda, I told myself, finally succumbed to all those cigarettes and the goose fat she liked to spread on her toast, but even as I thought it I knew what had happened was far worse.

One of the men, an inspector named Lelu, started toward me. He had on a parka and, beneath it, a rumpled coat and tie.

“What’s happened?” I asked.

“There has been a terrible tragedy,” he explained. “I’m so sorry.” Shaking his head, he pulled a pack of Gauloises from his coat. “I can find no easy way to say this.” He tapped the cigarettes against his left palm, worrying the pack like a string of prayer beads. “There has been a massacre.”

It was a funny choice of words, the meaning so insane I had trouble processing it. “I don’t understand,” I said.

“A massacre,” he repeated, “here at the abbey. The sisters…” He paused.

“The sisters?” I asked stupidly. My legs felt like rubber bands.

Nodding, he put his hand on my arm. “Please,” he said gently. “You cannot stay here tonight. Madame Tane is expecting you. Sister Heloise is there as well. I will have someone take you down the road, and if you are capable, we will need to ask you some questions.”

“Yes. Of course.” I felt nauseous, dizzy, and off balance. I took a step toward the Renault and put my hand on the hood, trying to keep myself upright. “And the others?” I asked. “Where are they?”

Lelu glanced behind him and motioned for one of the other men to join us. “Mademoiselle,” he said, turning back to me, “I don’t think you understand. You and the sister are the only survivors.”

One of the inspector’s assistants drove me down to the Tanes’. He was young and nervous, more a farm boy than a cop. He seemed slightly stupefied, crippled by whatever he’d seen at the convent. We sat in the Tanes’ kitchen, and I answered what questions I could.

No, I could think of no one who might have had a reason to do something like this. I could not even think of a reason. Yes, I went to Lyon twice a month to see my doctor. Yes, I always spent the night before my appointment. There were certain medications that needed to be taken. Delpay could vouch for me. No, I was not a Benedictine myself. I’d been with the sisters a year, running things in the kitchen. And before that? I’d lived in the States.

Where? The young man wanted to know. He had spent some time in Florida, he explained, brightening, I supposed, at the thought of beaches and sunshine.

Around, I told him, my usual cover. I smiled weakly. Never Florida, though.

He looked up at me, suddenly understanding, finally hearing whatever slight tic it was in my accent that still betrayed me. “Oh,” he said, “you’re the one, the American.”

I nodded and smiled.

When we finished, he excused himself to go back up to the convent, saying there would likely be more questions, but for now I should try to rest.

Madame Tane brought me a glass of Armagnac. She was a sweet woman, in her own rough way, round and hard from years of farm living. Her children were grown and gone, scattered to desk jobs in Paris or Toulouse. She sometimes came to the priory kitchen when I was working, more, I thought, for conversation than for the sugar or yeast she would borrow.

She sat down across from me at the kitchen table, took my hand in her coarse paw, and watched me take a sip of the brandy.

“Where’s Heloise?” I asked.

“Upstairs,” Madame Tane said. “She’s sleeping.”

“Do you know what happened? How she managed to get away?”

“She escaped into the woods.” The old woman lifted her hand and crossed herself. “She must have hidden there all night. It wasn’t till late this morning that she came to us. That’s when we called the police.”

I shivered, thinking of the damp swath of forest behind the abbey, how cold the last few nights had been. “She’s all right, though?”

Madame Tane nodded. “Bruised and badly shaken, but not hurt, thank God.”

I took another sip of the Armagnac. It was warm and thick, and I could feel it in my belly. “May I go up?” I asked.

“Of course.” Madame Tane stood, and I followed her out into the old farmhouse’s front room and up the stairs to the second floor. At the end of a narrow hallway she stopped and put her hand to her lips.

“Here,” she whispered, indicating a closed door. “I’ve made a bed up for you as well and left some towels. There’s a bathroom next door. Monsieur Tane and I will have dinner soon. We hope you’ll join us if you’re not too tired.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry,” the woman said; then she turned and started back toward the stairs.

I put my hand on the knob and quietly opened the door. The bedside lamp was on, casting a warm circle of light on the room’s two twin beds. In the bed on the right, her legs curled protectively into her stomach, was Heloise. She woke at the sound of my footsteps and opened her eyes, staring at me through the fog of sleep.

“Eve?” she said.

“Yes.” I crossed to the bed and bent down beside her. “Sorry to wake you.”

She sat up, propping her shoulders on the headboard, resting her hands on top of the quilt. There was a long red welt on her right cheek, and the backs of her hands were raw and scratched. She’d been the dearest to me of all the sisters, and though I felt guilty thinking it, I was relieved that she was the one who had been spared.

I put my hand gently on hers. “You all right?”

She nodded, and I could tell she was fighting back tears. “There was a man,” she said. “I left compline early. I was going to the kitchen.”

Her hair was loose around her face. I reached up and brushed a stray strand from her cheek. Normally, we took that walk together each night, from the chapel to the kitchen to finish the next day’s baking.

“I don’t know how I did it.” She looked away from me, out the bedroom’s window toward the floodlit yard and the darkness beyond. “I just ran, Eve, as hard as I could. I could hear them, you know, the others. At first I thought they were singing. It sounded like they were singing, but they were screaming.”

“Shush,” I told her. “We can talk about this later.”

She shook her head, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “One of the men, he had me in his hands.”

“It’s okay,” I said, feebly trying to reassure her.

“No,” she insisted. “Listen.” She hardened her face, as if this was something she had to get through, as if she couldn’t rest until she did. “They were looking for something, someone. The American, he said.”

I straightened slightly, the hairs along the back of my neck bristling.

Heloise looked up at me. Her eyes were huge and dark. “They came for you, Eve.”