Between the Shadow and the Soul - 38
AN: I don't usually put these on LJ, but I just wanted to say that fairmostfatal should be pleased with one specific detail on a certain bathroom counter in this chapter...that's all! Resume your lives/reading! =]
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Postcards From Far Away
When I saw Paris again, from my comfortable position in my own cushy seat aboard the Bass jet, I silently apologized for the way we had left things. After all, it had not slighted me; it had never turned its back on me, lied, cheated, used, or abused me. It had simply been.
I had adjusted so marvelously in Manhattan, grown used to the sights and smells and the ebb and flow of obnoxious traffic, become tolerant of the company of exuberant Americans (and I begrudgingly forgave them their continent-wide misunderstanding of the word 'civilized'); perhaps because I had been born there, because maman had always been a New York City darling and daddy owned practically the whole island, or possibly because it did remind me a little bit of home.
In that it was nothing like it, bien sûr.
Je suis français. I had been raised by le Parisien ultime. A woman who had been born on the shores of America, but bred to live in Paris. L'âme de la France.
Just as I had not been made to live there, perhaps she had. But we were there to convince her of exactly the opposite: that Manhattan needed her.
That we needed her.
And we were not going back empty-handed.
24 hours earlier...
My heart swelled so much when that key slid into the pin tumbler lock, I felt as though I might be experiencing that oft-preached about coronary artery aneurysm Dorota had always warned me might strike me dead if I kept jumping on maman's mattress. If I had been unfortunate enough to be born with green furry skin, I could have been the Grinch - because the heartbeats were so loud as I pressed down on the door handle, it was very possible that my ribs might be in the way of a classic cartoon moment. The thought of my old Polish nanny berating my behavior broadened my smile and urged me forward.
For all her banding about, she would be proud of me for coming this far. For accomplishing my goals.
Daddy's bedroom door opened easily. It was almost anticlimactic, especially when I slipped through the available space between it and the doorjamb and actually saw how it looked on the inside. A king sized bed with attached nightstands on a platform, draped in cream covers and white pillows. Sleek, stylish, clean lines and a smooth finish in a rich wenge veneer, durable, beautiful. The wall it was anchored against was adorned with three black-and-white photographs that I would recognize anywhere, because they were...
Le Baiser de l’Hotel de Ville, Un Regard Oblique, et Le velo du Printemps.
All three of them hung in maman's blue bedroom in Paris.
This was enough to convince me my quest had not been in vain. They were connected by much more than the archives of an internet stalker, the existence of Teddy and I, their friends that interwove and were also their family. The room was spartan, it served its purpose; utilitarian, a dresser with two drawers and windows that framed another spectacular view of the city. It wasn't at all what I had imagined.
The walls were white, for one. I had expected something in a dark oak brown.
His cologne was arranged on top of the dresser, next an odd circular sculpture, reflected in the oval-shaped mirror.
Obviously, I was confused. What was so secret about this room? It was boring. Stylish! But not anything other than a single father's bedroom.
As it turned out, the only thing of interest was in the master bathroom, sitting on the sink next to the towels and pomade. It was a long counter with two taps, and an empty corner where I imagined many things must have once been stored; cleansing gel, skin tonic, lotion, eye cream, facial masks, buffing beads, moisturizer, face wash, mousse, hairspray, parfum... the things you would expect to see littered near the woman's towels, opposite a rather barren side of aftershave and razorblades for their husbands.
Of course, daddy's side had no aftershave. ...It had cleansing gel, skin tonic, lotion, eye cream, facial masks, buffing beads, moisturizer, face wash, mousse, and hairspray.
And, a mostly full vial of No. 5.
Radiant, fresh, slightly metallic-waxy-smokey scent; waxy rose petals and orange peel. Blair Waldorf started wearing Chanel perfume when she turned 20, because that is what sophisticated women do. They move on from Dior and D&G and Vera Wang, and they channel Gabrielle. I had been raised on Chance and Coco Mademoiselle, Allure and Cristalle. Audrey and Chanel, little black dresses and big sunglasses.
I smiled again and picked the bottle up, noted how heavy it was with liquid. Had papa bought it to remind him of her scent?
Her smooth skin would flood my senses with Quelques Fleur when I hugged her after a terrible nightmare, kept my nose buried in the crook of her neck to inhale her essence and be calmed by it; jasmin, rose, lily of the valley, orris butter, ylang-ylang oil. Sandalwood on her wrists, patchouli oil behind her ears, oak moss and cinnamon bark.
There was something different about the space where it had been. Untouched. When I spritzed some on my left wrist, it smelled different under my nose. Time had corrupted it.
There was no hidden compartment in the closet behind daddy's suits. No box of treasures, no diary to spell things out. Only jackets, ties, trousers, suspenders, fine shirts.
I had wanted rows and rows of pictures, to see maman's ivory face broadcast from every available surface. Evidence. A letter she had sent confessing her undying love, an explanation for why she was a world away and could not bear to hear his name spoken at the lunch table. A tangible tidbit that would justify my weeks of searching, a thing to grasp between my fingers and know that I had done the right thing - that she could come back and that I could be the one to convince her to do it.
But there was only a bed. A dresser. A closet.
A dead end.
Daddy was still in his office when I went back to my room; I could hear him moving around behind the walls, but I did not stop to return the key. Why should he keep something so unremarkable locked up? It was a place for him to sleep and get dressed, nothing more or less, no more personal than any hotel room I had ever stayed in. Cold and empty, it displayed none of the careful details I had poured into the creation of my own chambre, which Lily Bass (as I had pledged to start calling her in my head) had helped me design. Pale walls, like daddy's own, delicate white details on the wallpaper, large windows with sweeping views hidden behind breezy white curtains. Sleek and uncluttered, special wood floors flown in from South America in a painstakingly selected shade that perfectly off-set my furniture.
It was pretty.
But I realized as I paused in the doorway, it was also empty.
There were no pictures of me and my friends to liven up the petit desk, no pretty painting of a mysterious and obviously French noblewoman to oversee my beauty rituals with an upturned nose. I had somehow neglected artwork, and therefore had nothing to define me socially. Maybe because I had no social definition, and therefore, had nothing to hang on my walls. Where was my film noir world, black and white, enchanting and doleful? 'Ma photo, c’est le monde tel que je souhaite qu’il soit.'
I did not want to be like my room. I wanted my pictures from home. I wanted them on my new walls, so I could remember who I was. 'J’l’adore celle-là, elle est trop bien.'
I shed my robe, tired of the fact that it was pretty and really useless at providing heat, and let it drop. I would need to invest in something fluffier.
The unopened box from Serena was at my feet as I shimmied into a festive pleated black romper covered with pink and white heart-shaped confetti; it wasn't particularly warm or practical either, but it was adorable and reminded me of New Year's celebrations and midnight kisses, and that sent my heart back into a tizzy. Besides, I could always bundle up in a blanket if the heat failed to erase the chilling wind from my skin.
I nudged the present a bit with my toes, hoping the lid on the wrapping box would come undone and allow the gift to come tumbling out. If there was nothing of use in daddy's room (which I sorely thought he could have told me in the first place and saved me all the sleepless nights and trouble!), perhaps I could find some entertainment in whatever my godmother had deemed worthy to gift me.
Ten minutes later, after the present had indeed come tumbling out of its wrapping and I had knelt down to examine its contents, I was ready to fully renounce my newly acquired reign over Constance Billard, and cast myself instead as the lead in an original tragicomedy about the most clueless person on the planet. Critics would rave about my realistic performance, praise my ability to bring a raving moron to life for thousands of adoring, mocking fans to throw tomatoes and other trade goods at.
To be fair, I never claimed I was a trained PI with detective skills worthy of Chuck Bass's speed dial; I had never aspired to be the emotionally detached Sherlock Holmes, to smoke his pipe as I analytically mulled over clues and then brilliantly solved them with infallible deductive reasoning. For one, smoking really bothered my lungs; for two, Sherlock Holmes had mauvais goût vestimentaire. I would never wear that silly checkered hat (unflattering much?) or his weird trench coat or even brown slacks, because slacks had never worked for me. Besides, I didn't even want to be a detective.
Pretending to be one was much more in line with my future plans. So, really, I could not fault myself for overlooking the ardent way Serena had urged me to open her gift. It was a rookie mistake, or something plausible like that; and besides, wasn't having The Big Answer right in front of you but ignoring it until the very last moment and solving the case at the end of the hour the crux of all prime time crime dramas? I was only following formula, like a good little gumshoe! My godmother's Christmas present had been the least likely suspect! Daddy's bedroom, the false one, and the fact that I had confused them, a final plot twist!
When I was through justifying my stupidity to myself, I sat on my ankles and stared at the collection of knowledge that stained the thick, cream-colored pages that had once been bound together in a thicket between fine Italian leather. The ink bled in black streaks and sprawled in looping cursive from margin to margin, top to bottom, in a careful calligraphy I had come to know and recognize as well as my own.
Maman's diary had always been incomplete, from the first time I had deciphered its foreign code and seen that its first page had been ripped out. Peppered between the pages detailing the annoyances of pregnancy, the terrific boredom that came with her arduous recovery in the hospital, the pain that sprang bittersweet at her departure from Manhattan, and the necessity of settling in with her father and his gay lover at their chateau in Lyon, there had been missing pages.
Literally. I had seen the evidence in the form of their tattered remains. I had only been able to guess at what insights they might have provided, how much deeper those entries must have gone into Blair Waldorf's feelings or even the turn of events I had yet to riddle together. No phrases jumped out at me like they do in the movies when the heroine finds what she has been looking for all along; I could not hear la voix de ma mère calling to me from the past, narrating her life to make understanding it easier on me.
There was only paper. Paper, wood, and of course, photographs.
With maman, it was always photographs. High resolution stills from the major studio production that was her glossy movie life.
I gathered them into a pile and rifled through them, surprised to see not a succession of images from Teddy's childhood, or more snapshots from her own youth. These were pictures I could remember, because I had been beaming for the glistening lens when its light flared and popped and captured us together in Dorota's gardens at the house in Marnes-la-Coquette; on the beach in red bathing suits and big sunglasses, dark hair streaked with highlights that maman had called sun kisses; with papère, grand-père, grandmamma, et saba in Rotisserie du Beaujolais for my fifth family Thanksgiving dinner; me riding on Nate's shoulders at the Van der Bilt estate while maman stood nearby, shading her eyes as the wind whipped her hair beneath a cloche hat; the two of us sipping tea from my miniature set, surrounded my porcelain dolls.
Everything I treasured about my childhood was cataloged in those images.
A note had landed on top of the pile of assorted diary entries, written on pale, thin paper, in fresh hand.
Ellie, it read in blue, not black, ink. Tu es mon plus cher trésor. Je suis désolé pour ma peur. Lire et comprendre. Je t'aime.
Read and understand. Read, and understand.
So far, 2028 was shaping up to be a highly emotional year.
From that hour on, I became very methodical about everything I did. When piecing together a time line did not work within the confines of my own head, I fished the diary out of its hiding place and marked the places where there were obvious gaps between entries. Then, I went to pull a sheaf of paper out of my desolate book bag so I could compose a list of everything I knew; as a Parisian, this task should have been much easier to accomplish than making a list of things to do.
But, it was not. Being in Teddy's presence had not improved my list-making abilities in the least.
When all seemed hopeless and the sun was peeking at me from over the hidden horizon, I was ready to give up. My bed seemed to actually be speaking to me from across the room, which I took as a sign of sleep deprivation and therefore insanity. The heat being generated by my little fireplace had become both stifling and soothing; intoxicating, it transported me to warm winter nights beneath enormous fleece blankets, my head resting on maman's shoulder while her chin settled comfortably atop my hair. Roman Holiday faded from the screen, and somewhere in the back of my mind I sensed the music stop and felt Dorota's footsteps fall lightly on the floor as she bustled about and tidied up after us.
Maman had the softest skin of anyone I knew. Like feather down on the most delicate silk charmeuse, it cradled my cheek and brushed aside my bangs when they fell in front of my eyes. I was getting over a scarring bout of varicella zoster virus (la varicelle, or in English, chicken pox) which to me then had sounded like a great villain from one of my fairy stories. This was because maman had done as she always did and dressed up the matter in a pretty tale to soothe the blow:
I was Thumbelina, seeded in a barleycorn and hatched from the folds of a tulip, and was married to my perfect flower-fairy prince. We flitted from bud to bud on gossamer wings and tripped across beams of light, our dark hair fluttering behind us on tendrils of satin wind.
The fiery beast La Varicelle, dressed all in red and bearing a nasty, crooked nose and beady, watering eyes, had attacked our peaceful kingdom and demanded tribute in the form of me, the fairy princess. A kingless queen from the West saved my life by casting a spell on La Varicelle's wand; I would suffer in place of my subjects for seven days and nights, and on the eighth day, I would rise back up stronger than before and eradicate La Varicelle from my kingdom forever more.
Maman herself put salve on my pockmarks and tied gloves to my hands to make sure I did not scratch and mar my pretty little doll's face. Then she stayed up with me through the feverish, aching, cranky nights and forced me to eat Dorota's best chicken noodle broth while we watched movies and read books and sang songs. She did not go out with friends to gala events or allow those same women to set her up on dates with handsome bachelors; instead, she stayed in her pajamas and took baths with me, brushed out my hair, dabbed the salve back on the spots and gave me ibuprofen. Told me I was the prettiest little girl afflicted by la varicelle that she had ever seen.
That picture of us sipping tea had been taken by Dorota. My porcelain dolls sat untouched in the background, but maman was more beautiful and porcelain than any of them. I was a gracious hostess, greeting her with a perfunctory kiss on both cheeks, chatting with her like a real grown up lady about the weather, the petit fours, my stuffed animal collection, and my opinion on the state of European politics (my take on which she had found to be quite amusing, since I had compiled it by eavesdropping on conversations in many bistros and boutiques). She taught me that the lady always leaves the table with a little bit of an appetite, to take little bites and tiny sips.
“Une dame ne laisse jamais les gens voient son plaisir.”
I asked her to tell me a new bedtime adventure, when the stories of fictional princesses and their heroic knights grew stale. She hid a smile in the right corner of her mouth and sipped her tea for an extra long time, to make me think she was mulling the idea over. I tried to sit up tall, my hands perched in my lap, and not fidget, but the anticipation rose with every little quirk I saw or imagined dancing across her lips.
“Maman!” I implored, and she weaved the tale out of twinkling pixie dust and piping hot chocolate.
A queen with dark hair and red lips, who ruled her subjects with a well-clad iron fist: a comely golden sun sprite, a dashing and handsome knight, an insolent servant girl who tried to usurp the throne but became a seamstress instead, a gaggle of handmaidens who did her will in the light of day and plotted her downfall in the shadows of her own castle, an array of princes who danced across her field of vision but never seemed capable of keeping up with her.
That day, instead of inquiring about a prince, I asked after her king. “After all,” I said, well informed on the issue, “every queen needs a king at her side to help her rule.”
Maman pursed her lips, her doe eyes wide and thoughtful as she crafted her response. “The queen had a king, and they helped each other.”
“Did they love each other very much?” I wondered. She reached out to keep me from itching and threaded my fingers between her own.
“Oui, of course they did.” Her lips cradled one of those smiles that I had been able to count on one hand at the age of six. “They were madly in love and everyone knew it, even if some did not approve. Their love was not like other people's, you see; it was not quiet, or friendly, or beautiful like the kind you read about in the storybooks. Their subjects looked at them in fear and reverence, and sometimes it was said that the king and queen seemed to be on fire.”
“On fire?” I breathed in awe.
Maman put my head on her lap and buried her fingers between my limp tresses. “Not literally, ma petite. But they were so madly in love that it consumed them. And during their reign, they surprised the whole kingdom when the queen announced that le petit prince et la petite princesse would soon be moving into the castle nursery. The king and queen were very young, but madly in love, and forged ahead through the many months they had to prepare before their son and daughter joined them. It was not long, however, before the queen became very ill, and she was soon bedridden.”
“Like me?” I wondered, giddy at the thought that a queen could get sick just like me.
“Not exactly like you, chérie.” She pulled my right hand up to her lips and peppered tickling kisses across my glove-covered knuckles. “But she too had someone to feed her when she did not want to be fed, to stroke her hair out of her face when she was feverish in the darkest parts of the night, to hold her and soothe her and assure her that everything was going to be all right.”
“She did? Oh good.” My eyes lit up and I turned on my back to gaze up at maman's face. “Who was it?”
“Her king, of course. He never left her side. He was so faithful and vigilant, that even the most persistent of his naysayers began to think he had changed his ways. For you see,” maman adjusted her legs beneath me, clearly easing into the unfolding yarn. “The king had not always been a good man. In fact, he had started as a dark, ominous presence in the kingdom. Many thought he was destined to be a villain, cloaked in black and dallying in the shadows. But the queen was his perfect match in every way, and he hers, and they came together to scheme against -- ” here, she paused to clear her throat and shake her head a little, “to fight off their enemies.”
I gasped and gripped her left hand, which I still held within my grasp. “Like who?”
“Oh, they had many enemies, for people are always envious of their betters. They will always scheme amongst themselves and try to take over.”
My lips fell open again as I related her words to my own experiences. “Is that why Marie pulls my hair all the time?”
“Mais oui, ange précieux. She is green with jealousy, and so is her tramp of a mother. The queen had to contend with many such loathsome, covetous fiends who sought her downfall, and her grave illness was their chance to strike. Luckily, the knight and the serving girl, who had become an ally after much tribulation, along with a scribe and the golden sprite were with the monarchy, and aided the king as he strove to find a cure for his beloved. He called upon the best physicians in the land, and they traveled from far and wide to inspect the queen; they prescribed many tonics and remedies, but none were safe for her. The king was, above all, most concerned for her safety.”
I sighed and closed my eyes against her stomach. “Tellement romantique...”
“It was not so romantic for him. He was frantic, but he hid it well. The king was the bravest man the queen had ever known, and he suffered silently for her. And when the little prince and his sister came, the queen grew even worse. The physicians had her put in a facility, and the prince and princess were forced to stay there with her, for her sickness had infected them and made them weak. The king was at the end of his rope, fraught with worry for his little family. The subjects waited outside to hear the news, because the public loves a good tragedy. The sprite alighted from the sun and bore the twins gifts: a teddy bear, a little doll, because they reminded her of them. The knight brought the prince a toy sailboat, the princess a plush horse, because they would grow to ride the wind and sea and see the wide world. The seamstress brought clothes, to keep them warm because they were separated. The scribe came with the sprite to read to them. A loyal subject and his partner arrived to watch over them all. The queen's mother and the rest of her family set up vigil nearby.”
My lids were heavy, maman's words rocking me to sleep, but I could not miss the end. “What about the king's maman et papa? Where was his family?”
“The king's whole family was there with him, slipping away into nothing.” Maman's answer was sadder than it ought to have been. “He himself almost wasted away at their bedsides.”
“What happened?” I asked, worried, as always, that the story would not have a happy ending.
Ma mère squeezed my hands and lowered her voice to a whisper. “And the queen got better, and so did the prince and princess. And they all lived... Elle?”
I had fallen asleep.
“Elle, wake up.” A hand shook my shoulder in an effort to stir me from my comfortable slumber. “Come on, Elle. You're on the floor. And I think you're drooling a little bit.”
That statement was just preposterous to pry my eyes apart; I sat up as soon as they passed through my ears, mouth open to argue and insult whoever had dared to utter them, when I realized whoever it was had been telling the truth. Then, I blinked and sat up, noting that the sun was a blinding beacon just on the other side of my window, my neck was quite sore from being bent against the frame of my bed for however long I had been dreaming, and that my twin brother was squatting next to me and looking way too amused. At least he didn't have a camera; if he had been Cedric Humphrey, my unflattering portrait might have been polluting the internet in seconds.
“Shut up,” I ordered, dabbing my mouth with the back of my fingers and muzzling a huge yawn by clamping my teeth together. “What time is it?”
“Just after seven,” Teddy answered.
I arched my eyebrows at him, and he took on the appearance of an overzealous sunbather in moments. “You're just getting in.”
He tugged on the collar of his Gucci suit and shrugged, joining me on my hardwood floor, a significant part of which was still cluttered with the pages I had yet to actually read. He shed the jacket and tossed it carelessly over his shoulder so that it landed somewhere on my fluffy rug, and picked up the note maman had sent along with the little box. While he read it and tried to figure out exactly who it was supposed to be from, I instead examined the vessel it had traveled across the Atlantic in. Handcrafted, engraved with brass work, a stunning design of etched flower and pearly leaf, 8 inches deep and more than capable of holding all of maman's secrets.
I didn’t stop running until I appeared in maman’s bedroom doorway, and saw her snap shut an old box and lock it in her bedside drawer.
“This is...” I looked back to Teddy, whose face was puckered and drawn. “This is from...?”
“Maman.” I nodded and looked down at the pathetic list I had been trying to compose. “Can I have your help?”
He took the pen and paper when I handed them to him, and wordlessly agreed to jot down a sequence of events as I read the diary entries aloud. It was as emotionally detached as we could make it, even though occasionally I tripped over a sentence or stumbled over the name Charlie, but we made it through in two pieces. The task of rereading all of the facts we had already managed come to uneasy grips with had been easy, though, compared to the mission we needed to undertake: Sorting the new pages and pasting them in their proper places.
It would not due to read everything out of order. I might misconstrue something maman had written, and I never wanted to do that again.
The pages that were headed with dates were easy to sort, but it was the entries she had cut off and ripped in half that were difficult to piece back in. And when luck finally struck its claim with us, and everything began to unravel in front of our eyes with such clarity that we could almost see the events physically unfolding, little shiny bits and dusty baubles were clasped together and linked with chains I had never even imagined.
The first was 'Then there’s my mother, pestering me to know who the father is. I’ve just been telling her that I don’t know, which is true.' As an eleven-year-old girl I had assumed that was the end, never once registering that her name was not signed at the bottom of the page. The entry she had ripped out had been precisely penned, a heart-wrenching account of how far away she felt from Chuck Bass sometimes - 'it's like he doesn't even see me in the doctor's office, but an apparition of his mother haunting us in the corner.'
'He is a different person in those moments, so gaunt and lifeless that it reminds me of that day in the courtyard at school. I gripped his chin and looked into his eyes and saw nothing in them - and I asked him who he was, and he just stared at me. He wasn't mine, anymore, he didn't belong to me; he belonged to the ghosts.'
The outrageous and graphic condemnation of mon papa and his reproductive organ concluded with 'That made me feel better. I hate hormones. I wonder when he'll be home tonight? I miss him.' At seven, I had been too mentally scarred to continue reading, but if I had, I would have read a concise summary of maman's deep and all-consuming love for père. 'When he is holed up in his office poring over paperwork or the board kidnaps him for one of those forever long business meetings, I feel like I'm wasting away and nothing will be right again until he comes back. It's awful and unhealthy, but I love that heartless son-of-a-Bass evil Basshole Basstard mother Chucking spawn of Satan. When he walks through the door, his heart comes back and the sunset becomes sunrise.
Tell anyone I said that, diary, and I will deny it. I am a Waldorf and no man defines me.
(Except Chuck. UGH!)'
Teddy was the one to locate a home for:
'Teddy was. It is so difficult to write his name, even now, even when Chuck and Serena and Nate have all assured me that he has become the picture of health. Chuck offered to send me pictures of him as I have assured him I will do with Ellie, but to see his little face would just be a stabbing reminder of what I gave up. I told Chuck that I don't want to steal any piece of that little boy until I can call him mine again. Chuck and I aren't going to talk on the phone anymore until he can say the same about me. I changed my cell number, and so has he. I felt like vomiting when we hung up, but I promised him that I have given up that vice for good. That was what this diary was for in the first place, wasn't it?
I know the doctors said it was nothing I did. I know that, but God if it didn't all feel like my fault. And that I put Chuck through that... That he sat there for months and months and blamed himself, and his father, and the Bass name, and not once did he ever blame me... He told me he loved me when he hung up the phone, and I wanted to vomit and die, and then I looked at myself in the mirror and saw Ellie's crib in the reflection, and I realized his is the smartest man in the world, really. I am not worthless or unworthy. I have my little girl, and she is mine no matter how much she feels like Chuck's.
No, that is wrong. She is ours, and so is Teddy. But he isn't mine, not yet. I wonder if I'll regret these lost years in the future, but I doubt it. I am not a good mother for him yet. I refuse to ruin him the way Bart ruined Chuck. But Ellie... maybe Chuck was right, perhaps it will help that she is my little Eleanor Waldorf and the chance to make amends for all those dysfunctional years on 5th Avenue.
Mother thinks I'm being ridiculous, and she has said so very loudly any time I am around to hear her. Cyrus doesn't agree either, but he respects my decision, even though his unsolicited advice has succeeded in making me feel like a raging bitch on more than one occasion. Everyone disapproves, really. But at least Serena understands and Nate is supportive, and Ellie is here. So little. So dependent on me.
I will not let her down. And someday, I will hold Teddy again and look into those big brown eyes that are so much like my own and tell him he is mine. My Teddy. My Teddy bear.'
With suspiciously glassy eyes, he tucked that page between 'I love this little girl so much, I want to watch everything. Her little toes, her chubby little elbows, the wrinkles in her fingers, the angel softness of her pale little stomach. She's just so little. Even more little than - ' and 'We should call her ma petite all the time. It can be her nickname. Ellie, ma petite. Petite Ellie.'
The sun filtered through the windows, then it vanished overhead and our business was illuminated only by the lamp on my desk across the room. By the time our stomachs began rumbling and the smell of lunch would usually have wafted up from the kitchens and pervaded my candle scented air with whiffs of promising assiette de crudités, bitter coffee, and tantalizing tartes, we sat together in the gray-blue light and looked at our 20-year-old mother's thoughts, feelings, and scathing commentaries all tidied up and tucked away inside a cover and a back, and marveled silently at how so much information could be packaged in so small a journal.
“Wow,” Teddy breathed, and I silently agreed. Wow.
“She loves him,” I said after we had stewed together in silence for quite some time. “Or she wouldn't have sent me this. She wants to come home.”
“I don't know, Elle,” Teddy was uncertain, fidgeting with his white sleeves until they were rolled back over his elbows. “Maybe she was just trying to - ”
“No offense,” I interrupted without thinking, “but I think I know her a little better than you do.”
He sucked in a breath and even I, through empathy or some odd twin osmosis, felt as if I had been punched in the gut.
“I am so sorry,” I amended, not too proud to admit that I had been out of line. Had our places been reversed, had he been sitting in my room in Passy while maman sat in her bedroom a few doors down as we worked diligently at helping each other understand the past that had led Chuck Bass to be absent from our lives, had we gone through all of that together and had he still taunted me with the fact that I did not know my father while he did... I would have probably thrown vases and screamed accusations and made an enormous scene.
Teddy was much more graceful than that. His throat worked violently and all the words he wanted to say thrust against his tongue for permission to burst out, but he just nodded curtly and we moved on.
Moved on to form a plan that would lead us, a mere day later, to maman's doorstep in the 16th arrondissement, our fists poised and ready to knock.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Postcards From Far Away
When I saw Paris again, from my comfortable position in my own cushy seat aboard the Bass jet, I silently apologized for the way we had left things. After all, it had not slighted me; it had never turned its back on me, lied, cheated, used, or abused me. It had simply been.
I had adjusted so marvelously in Manhattan, grown used to the sights and smells and the ebb and flow of obnoxious traffic, become tolerant of the company of exuberant Americans (and I begrudgingly forgave them their continent-wide misunderstanding of the word 'civilized'); perhaps because I had been born there, because maman had always been a New York City darling and daddy owned practically the whole island, or possibly because it did remind me a little bit of home.
In that it was nothing like it, bien sûr.
Je suis français. I had been raised by le Parisien ultime. A woman who had been born on the shores of America, but bred to live in Paris. L'âme de la France.
Just as I had not been made to live there, perhaps she had. But we were there to convince her of exactly the opposite: that Manhattan needed her.
That we needed her.
And we were not going back empty-handed.
24 hours earlier...
My heart swelled so much when that key slid into the pin tumbler lock, I felt as though I might be experiencing that oft-preached about coronary artery aneurysm Dorota had always warned me might strike me dead if I kept jumping on maman's mattress. If I had been unfortunate enough to be born with green furry skin, I could have been the Grinch - because the heartbeats were so loud as I pressed down on the door handle, it was very possible that my ribs might be in the way of a classic cartoon moment. The thought of my old Polish nanny berating my behavior broadened my smile and urged me forward.
For all her banding about, she would be proud of me for coming this far. For accomplishing my goals.
Daddy's bedroom door opened easily. It was almost anticlimactic, especially when I slipped through the available space between it and the doorjamb and actually saw how it looked on the inside. A king sized bed with attached nightstands on a platform, draped in cream covers and white pillows. Sleek, stylish, clean lines and a smooth finish in a rich wenge veneer, durable, beautiful. The wall it was anchored against was adorned with three black-and-white photographs that I would recognize anywhere, because they were...
Le Baiser de l’Hotel de Ville, Un Regard Oblique, et Le velo du Printemps.
All three of them hung in maman's blue bedroom in Paris.
This was enough to convince me my quest had not been in vain. They were connected by much more than the archives of an internet stalker, the existence of Teddy and I, their friends that interwove and were also their family. The room was spartan, it served its purpose; utilitarian, a dresser with two drawers and windows that framed another spectacular view of the city. It wasn't at all what I had imagined.
The walls were white, for one. I had expected something in a dark oak brown.
His cologne was arranged on top of the dresser, next an odd circular sculpture, reflected in the oval-shaped mirror.
Obviously, I was confused. What was so secret about this room? It was boring. Stylish! But not anything other than a single father's bedroom.
As it turned out, the only thing of interest was in the master bathroom, sitting on the sink next to the towels and pomade. It was a long counter with two taps, and an empty corner where I imagined many things must have once been stored; cleansing gel, skin tonic, lotion, eye cream, facial masks, buffing beads, moisturizer, face wash, mousse, hairspray, parfum... the things you would expect to see littered near the woman's towels, opposite a rather barren side of aftershave and razorblades for their husbands.
Of course, daddy's side had no aftershave. ...It had cleansing gel, skin tonic, lotion, eye cream, facial masks, buffing beads, moisturizer, face wash, mousse, and hairspray.
And, a mostly full vial of No. 5.
Radiant, fresh, slightly metallic-waxy-smokey scent; waxy rose petals and orange peel. Blair Waldorf started wearing Chanel perfume when she turned 20, because that is what sophisticated women do. They move on from Dior and D&G and Vera Wang, and they channel Gabrielle. I had been raised on Chance and Coco Mademoiselle, Allure and Cristalle. Audrey and Chanel, little black dresses and big sunglasses.
I smiled again and picked the bottle up, noted how heavy it was with liquid. Had papa bought it to remind him of her scent?
Her smooth skin would flood my senses with Quelques Fleur when I hugged her after a terrible nightmare, kept my nose buried in the crook of her neck to inhale her essence and be calmed by it; jasmin, rose, lily of the valley, orris butter, ylang-ylang oil. Sandalwood on her wrists, patchouli oil behind her ears, oak moss and cinnamon bark.
There was something different about the space where it had been. Untouched. When I spritzed some on my left wrist, it smelled different under my nose. Time had corrupted it.
There was no hidden compartment in the closet behind daddy's suits. No box of treasures, no diary to spell things out. Only jackets, ties, trousers, suspenders, fine shirts.
I had wanted rows and rows of pictures, to see maman's ivory face broadcast from every available surface. Evidence. A letter she had sent confessing her undying love, an explanation for why she was a world away and could not bear to hear his name spoken at the lunch table. A tangible tidbit that would justify my weeks of searching, a thing to grasp between my fingers and know that I had done the right thing - that she could come back and that I could be the one to convince her to do it.
But there was only a bed. A dresser. A closet.
A dead end.
Daddy was still in his office when I went back to my room; I could hear him moving around behind the walls, but I did not stop to return the key. Why should he keep something so unremarkable locked up? It was a place for him to sleep and get dressed, nothing more or less, no more personal than any hotel room I had ever stayed in. Cold and empty, it displayed none of the careful details I had poured into the creation of my own chambre, which Lily Bass (as I had pledged to start calling her in my head) had helped me design. Pale walls, like daddy's own, delicate white details on the wallpaper, large windows with sweeping views hidden behind breezy white curtains. Sleek and uncluttered, special wood floors flown in from South America in a painstakingly selected shade that perfectly off-set my furniture.
It was pretty.
But I realized as I paused in the doorway, it was also empty.
There were no pictures of me and my friends to liven up the petit desk, no pretty painting of a mysterious and obviously French noblewoman to oversee my beauty rituals with an upturned nose. I had somehow neglected artwork, and therefore had nothing to define me socially. Maybe because I had no social definition, and therefore, had nothing to hang on my walls. Where was my film noir world, black and white, enchanting and doleful? 'Ma photo, c’est le monde tel que je souhaite qu’il soit.'
I did not want to be like my room. I wanted my pictures from home. I wanted them on my new walls, so I could remember who I was. 'J’l’adore celle-là, elle est trop bien.'
I shed my robe, tired of the fact that it was pretty and really useless at providing heat, and let it drop. I would need to invest in something fluffier.
The unopened box from Serena was at my feet as I shimmied into a festive pleated black romper covered with pink and white heart-shaped confetti; it wasn't particularly warm or practical either, but it was adorable and reminded me of New Year's celebrations and midnight kisses, and that sent my heart back into a tizzy. Besides, I could always bundle up in a blanket if the heat failed to erase the chilling wind from my skin.
I nudged the present a bit with my toes, hoping the lid on the wrapping box would come undone and allow the gift to come tumbling out. If there was nothing of use in daddy's room (which I sorely thought he could have told me in the first place and saved me all the sleepless nights and trouble!), perhaps I could find some entertainment in whatever my godmother had deemed worthy to gift me.
Ten minutes later, after the present had indeed come tumbling out of its wrapping and I had knelt down to examine its contents, I was ready to fully renounce my newly acquired reign over Constance Billard, and cast myself instead as the lead in an original tragicomedy about the most clueless person on the planet. Critics would rave about my realistic performance, praise my ability to bring a raving moron to life for thousands of adoring, mocking fans to throw tomatoes and other trade goods at.
To be fair, I never claimed I was a trained PI with detective skills worthy of Chuck Bass's speed dial; I had never aspired to be the emotionally detached Sherlock Holmes, to smoke his pipe as I analytically mulled over clues and then brilliantly solved them with infallible deductive reasoning. For one, smoking really bothered my lungs; for two, Sherlock Holmes had mauvais goût vestimentaire. I would never wear that silly checkered hat (unflattering much?) or his weird trench coat or even brown slacks, because slacks had never worked for me. Besides, I didn't even want to be a detective.
Pretending to be one was much more in line with my future plans. So, really, I could not fault myself for overlooking the ardent way Serena had urged me to open her gift. It was a rookie mistake, or something plausible like that; and besides, wasn't having The Big Answer right in front of you but ignoring it until the very last moment and solving the case at the end of the hour the crux of all prime time crime dramas? I was only following formula, like a good little gumshoe! My godmother's Christmas present had been the least likely suspect! Daddy's bedroom, the false one, and the fact that I had confused them, a final plot twist!
When I was through justifying my stupidity to myself, I sat on my ankles and stared at the collection of knowledge that stained the thick, cream-colored pages that had once been bound together in a thicket between fine Italian leather. The ink bled in black streaks and sprawled in looping cursive from margin to margin, top to bottom, in a careful calligraphy I had come to know and recognize as well as my own.
Maman's diary had always been incomplete, from the first time I had deciphered its foreign code and seen that its first page had been ripped out. Peppered between the pages detailing the annoyances of pregnancy, the terrific boredom that came with her arduous recovery in the hospital, the pain that sprang bittersweet at her departure from Manhattan, and the necessity of settling in with her father and his gay lover at their chateau in Lyon, there had been missing pages.
Literally. I had seen the evidence in the form of their tattered remains. I had only been able to guess at what insights they might have provided, how much deeper those entries must have gone into Blair Waldorf's feelings or even the turn of events I had yet to riddle together. No phrases jumped out at me like they do in the movies when the heroine finds what she has been looking for all along; I could not hear la voix de ma mère calling to me from the past, narrating her life to make understanding it easier on me.
There was only paper. Paper, wood, and of course, photographs.
With maman, it was always photographs. High resolution stills from the major studio production that was her glossy movie life.
I gathered them into a pile and rifled through them, surprised to see not a succession of images from Teddy's childhood, or more snapshots from her own youth. These were pictures I could remember, because I had been beaming for the glistening lens when its light flared and popped and captured us together in Dorota's gardens at the house in Marnes-la-Coquette; on the beach in red bathing suits and big sunglasses, dark hair streaked with highlights that maman had called sun kisses; with papère, grand-père, grandmamma, et saba in Rotisserie du Beaujolais for my fifth family Thanksgiving dinner; me riding on Nate's shoulders at the Van der Bilt estate while maman stood nearby, shading her eyes as the wind whipped her hair beneath a cloche hat; the two of us sipping tea from my miniature set, surrounded my porcelain dolls.
Everything I treasured about my childhood was cataloged in those images.
A note had landed on top of the pile of assorted diary entries, written on pale, thin paper, in fresh hand.
Ellie, it read in blue, not black, ink. Tu es mon plus cher trésor. Je suis désolé pour ma peur. Lire et comprendre. Je t'aime.
Read and understand. Read, and understand.
So far, 2028 was shaping up to be a highly emotional year.
From that hour on, I became very methodical about everything I did. When piecing together a time line did not work within the confines of my own head, I fished the diary out of its hiding place and marked the places where there were obvious gaps between entries. Then, I went to pull a sheaf of paper out of my desolate book bag so I could compose a list of everything I knew; as a Parisian, this task should have been much easier to accomplish than making a list of things to do.
But, it was not. Being in Teddy's presence had not improved my list-making abilities in the least.
When all seemed hopeless and the sun was peeking at me from over the hidden horizon, I was ready to give up. My bed seemed to actually be speaking to me from across the room, which I took as a sign of sleep deprivation and therefore insanity. The heat being generated by my little fireplace had become both stifling and soothing; intoxicating, it transported me to warm winter nights beneath enormous fleece blankets, my head resting on maman's shoulder while her chin settled comfortably atop my hair. Roman Holiday faded from the screen, and somewhere in the back of my mind I sensed the music stop and felt Dorota's footsteps fall lightly on the floor as she bustled about and tidied up after us.
Maman had the softest skin of anyone I knew. Like feather down on the most delicate silk charmeuse, it cradled my cheek and brushed aside my bangs when they fell in front of my eyes. I was getting over a scarring bout of varicella zoster virus (la varicelle, or in English, chicken pox) which to me then had sounded like a great villain from one of my fairy stories. This was because maman had done as she always did and dressed up the matter in a pretty tale to soothe the blow:
I was Thumbelina, seeded in a barleycorn and hatched from the folds of a tulip, and was married to my perfect flower-fairy prince. We flitted from bud to bud on gossamer wings and tripped across beams of light, our dark hair fluttering behind us on tendrils of satin wind.
The fiery beast La Varicelle, dressed all in red and bearing a nasty, crooked nose and beady, watering eyes, had attacked our peaceful kingdom and demanded tribute in the form of me, the fairy princess. A kingless queen from the West saved my life by casting a spell on La Varicelle's wand; I would suffer in place of my subjects for seven days and nights, and on the eighth day, I would rise back up stronger than before and eradicate La Varicelle from my kingdom forever more.
Maman herself put salve on my pockmarks and tied gloves to my hands to make sure I did not scratch and mar my pretty little doll's face. Then she stayed up with me through the feverish, aching, cranky nights and forced me to eat Dorota's best chicken noodle broth while we watched movies and read books and sang songs. She did not go out with friends to gala events or allow those same women to set her up on dates with handsome bachelors; instead, she stayed in her pajamas and took baths with me, brushed out my hair, dabbed the salve back on the spots and gave me ibuprofen. Told me I was the prettiest little girl afflicted by la varicelle that she had ever seen.
That picture of us sipping tea had been taken by Dorota. My porcelain dolls sat untouched in the background, but maman was more beautiful and porcelain than any of them. I was a gracious hostess, greeting her with a perfunctory kiss on both cheeks, chatting with her like a real grown up lady about the weather, the petit fours, my stuffed animal collection, and my opinion on the state of European politics (my take on which she had found to be quite amusing, since I had compiled it by eavesdropping on conversations in many bistros and boutiques). She taught me that the lady always leaves the table with a little bit of an appetite, to take little bites and tiny sips.
“Une dame ne laisse jamais les gens voient son plaisir.”
I asked her to tell me a new bedtime adventure, when the stories of fictional princesses and their heroic knights grew stale. She hid a smile in the right corner of her mouth and sipped her tea for an extra long time, to make me think she was mulling the idea over. I tried to sit up tall, my hands perched in my lap, and not fidget, but the anticipation rose with every little quirk I saw or imagined dancing across her lips.
“Maman!” I implored, and she weaved the tale out of twinkling pixie dust and piping hot chocolate.
A queen with dark hair and red lips, who ruled her subjects with a well-clad iron fist: a comely golden sun sprite, a dashing and handsome knight, an insolent servant girl who tried to usurp the throne but became a seamstress instead, a gaggle of handmaidens who did her will in the light of day and plotted her downfall in the shadows of her own castle, an array of princes who danced across her field of vision but never seemed capable of keeping up with her.
That day, instead of inquiring about a prince, I asked after her king. “After all,” I said, well informed on the issue, “every queen needs a king at her side to help her rule.”
Maman pursed her lips, her doe eyes wide and thoughtful as she crafted her response. “The queen had a king, and they helped each other.”
“Did they love each other very much?” I wondered. She reached out to keep me from itching and threaded my fingers between her own.
“Oui, of course they did.” Her lips cradled one of those smiles that I had been able to count on one hand at the age of six. “They were madly in love and everyone knew it, even if some did not approve. Their love was not like other people's, you see; it was not quiet, or friendly, or beautiful like the kind you read about in the storybooks. Their subjects looked at them in fear and reverence, and sometimes it was said that the king and queen seemed to be on fire.”
“On fire?” I breathed in awe.
Maman put my head on her lap and buried her fingers between my limp tresses. “Not literally, ma petite. But they were so madly in love that it consumed them. And during their reign, they surprised the whole kingdom when the queen announced that le petit prince et la petite princesse would soon be moving into the castle nursery. The king and queen were very young, but madly in love, and forged ahead through the many months they had to prepare before their son and daughter joined them. It was not long, however, before the queen became very ill, and she was soon bedridden.”
“Like me?” I wondered, giddy at the thought that a queen could get sick just like me.
“Not exactly like you, chérie.” She pulled my right hand up to her lips and peppered tickling kisses across my glove-covered knuckles. “But she too had someone to feed her when she did not want to be fed, to stroke her hair out of her face when she was feverish in the darkest parts of the night, to hold her and soothe her and assure her that everything was going to be all right.”
“She did? Oh good.” My eyes lit up and I turned on my back to gaze up at maman's face. “Who was it?”
“Her king, of course. He never left her side. He was so faithful and vigilant, that even the most persistent of his naysayers began to think he had changed his ways. For you see,” maman adjusted her legs beneath me, clearly easing into the unfolding yarn. “The king had not always been a good man. In fact, he had started as a dark, ominous presence in the kingdom. Many thought he was destined to be a villain, cloaked in black and dallying in the shadows. But the queen was his perfect match in every way, and he hers, and they came together to scheme against -- ” here, she paused to clear her throat and shake her head a little, “to fight off their enemies.”
I gasped and gripped her left hand, which I still held within my grasp. “Like who?”
“Oh, they had many enemies, for people are always envious of their betters. They will always scheme amongst themselves and try to take over.”
My lips fell open again as I related her words to my own experiences. “Is that why Marie pulls my hair all the time?”
“Mais oui, ange précieux. She is green with jealousy, and so is her tramp of a mother. The queen had to contend with many such loathsome, covetous fiends who sought her downfall, and her grave illness was their chance to strike. Luckily, the knight and the serving girl, who had become an ally after much tribulation, along with a scribe and the golden sprite were with the monarchy, and aided the king as he strove to find a cure for his beloved. He called upon the best physicians in the land, and they traveled from far and wide to inspect the queen; they prescribed many tonics and remedies, but none were safe for her. The king was, above all, most concerned for her safety.”
I sighed and closed my eyes against her stomach. “Tellement romantique...”
“It was not so romantic for him. He was frantic, but he hid it well. The king was the bravest man the queen had ever known, and he suffered silently for her. And when the little prince and his sister came, the queen grew even worse. The physicians had her put in a facility, and the prince and princess were forced to stay there with her, for her sickness had infected them and made them weak. The king was at the end of his rope, fraught with worry for his little family. The subjects waited outside to hear the news, because the public loves a good tragedy. The sprite alighted from the sun and bore the twins gifts: a teddy bear, a little doll, because they reminded her of them. The knight brought the prince a toy sailboat, the princess a plush horse, because they would grow to ride the wind and sea and see the wide world. The seamstress brought clothes, to keep them warm because they were separated. The scribe came with the sprite to read to them. A loyal subject and his partner arrived to watch over them all. The queen's mother and the rest of her family set up vigil nearby.”
My lids were heavy, maman's words rocking me to sleep, but I could not miss the end. “What about the king's maman et papa? Where was his family?”
“The king's whole family was there with him, slipping away into nothing.” Maman's answer was sadder than it ought to have been. “He himself almost wasted away at their bedsides.”
“What happened?” I asked, worried, as always, that the story would not have a happy ending.
Ma mère squeezed my hands and lowered her voice to a whisper. “And the queen got better, and so did the prince and princess. And they all lived... Elle?”
I had fallen asleep.
“Elle, wake up.” A hand shook my shoulder in an effort to stir me from my comfortable slumber. “Come on, Elle. You're on the floor. And I think you're drooling a little bit.”
That statement was just preposterous to pry my eyes apart; I sat up as soon as they passed through my ears, mouth open to argue and insult whoever had dared to utter them, when I realized whoever it was had been telling the truth. Then, I blinked and sat up, noting that the sun was a blinding beacon just on the other side of my window, my neck was quite sore from being bent against the frame of my bed for however long I had been dreaming, and that my twin brother was squatting next to me and looking way too amused. At least he didn't have a camera; if he had been Cedric Humphrey, my unflattering portrait might have been polluting the internet in seconds.
“Shut up,” I ordered, dabbing my mouth with the back of my fingers and muzzling a huge yawn by clamping my teeth together. “What time is it?”
“Just after seven,” Teddy answered.
I arched my eyebrows at him, and he took on the appearance of an overzealous sunbather in moments. “You're just getting in.”
He tugged on the collar of his Gucci suit and shrugged, joining me on my hardwood floor, a significant part of which was still cluttered with the pages I had yet to actually read. He shed the jacket and tossed it carelessly over his shoulder so that it landed somewhere on my fluffy rug, and picked up the note maman had sent along with the little box. While he read it and tried to figure out exactly who it was supposed to be from, I instead examined the vessel it had traveled across the Atlantic in. Handcrafted, engraved with brass work, a stunning design of etched flower and pearly leaf, 8 inches deep and more than capable of holding all of maman's secrets.
I didn’t stop running until I appeared in maman’s bedroom doorway, and saw her snap shut an old box and lock it in her bedside drawer.
“This is...” I looked back to Teddy, whose face was puckered and drawn. “This is from...?”
“Maman.” I nodded and looked down at the pathetic list I had been trying to compose. “Can I have your help?”
He took the pen and paper when I handed them to him, and wordlessly agreed to jot down a sequence of events as I read the diary entries aloud. It was as emotionally detached as we could make it, even though occasionally I tripped over a sentence or stumbled over the name Charlie, but we made it through in two pieces. The task of rereading all of the facts we had already managed come to uneasy grips with had been easy, though, compared to the mission we needed to undertake: Sorting the new pages and pasting them in their proper places.
It would not due to read everything out of order. I might misconstrue something maman had written, and I never wanted to do that again.
The pages that were headed with dates were easy to sort, but it was the entries she had cut off and ripped in half that were difficult to piece back in. And when luck finally struck its claim with us, and everything began to unravel in front of our eyes with such clarity that we could almost see the events physically unfolding, little shiny bits and dusty baubles were clasped together and linked with chains I had never even imagined.
The first was 'Then there’s my mother, pestering me to know who the father is. I’ve just been telling her that I don’t know, which is true.' As an eleven-year-old girl I had assumed that was the end, never once registering that her name was not signed at the bottom of the page. The entry she had ripped out had been precisely penned, a heart-wrenching account of how far away she felt from Chuck Bass sometimes - 'it's like he doesn't even see me in the doctor's office, but an apparition of his mother haunting us in the corner.'
'He is a different person in those moments, so gaunt and lifeless that it reminds me of that day in the courtyard at school. I gripped his chin and looked into his eyes and saw nothing in them - and I asked him who he was, and he just stared at me. He wasn't mine, anymore, he didn't belong to me; he belonged to the ghosts.'
The outrageous and graphic condemnation of mon papa and his reproductive organ concluded with 'That made me feel better. I hate hormones. I wonder when he'll be home tonight? I miss him.' At seven, I had been too mentally scarred to continue reading, but if I had, I would have read a concise summary of maman's deep and all-consuming love for père. 'When he is holed up in his office poring over paperwork or the board kidnaps him for one of those forever long business meetings, I feel like I'm wasting away and nothing will be right again until he comes back. It's awful and unhealthy, but I love that heartless son-of-a-Bass evil Basshole Basstard mother Chucking spawn of Satan. When he walks through the door, his heart comes back and the sunset becomes sunrise.
Tell anyone I said that, diary, and I will deny it. I am a Waldorf and no man defines me.
(Except Chuck. UGH!)'
Teddy was the one to locate a home for:
'Teddy was. It is so difficult to write his name, even now, even when Chuck and Serena and Nate have all assured me that he has become the picture of health. Chuck offered to send me pictures of him as I have assured him I will do with Ellie, but to see his little face would just be a stabbing reminder of what I gave up. I told Chuck that I don't want to steal any piece of that little boy until I can call him mine again. Chuck and I aren't going to talk on the phone anymore until he can say the same about me. I changed my cell number, and so has he. I felt like vomiting when we hung up, but I promised him that I have given up that vice for good. That was what this diary was for in the first place, wasn't it?
I know the doctors said it was nothing I did. I know that, but God if it didn't all feel like my fault. And that I put Chuck through that... That he sat there for months and months and blamed himself, and his father, and the Bass name, and not once did he ever blame me... He told me he loved me when he hung up the phone, and I wanted to vomit and die, and then I looked at myself in the mirror and saw Ellie's crib in the reflection, and I realized his is the smartest man in the world, really. I am not worthless or unworthy. I have my little girl, and she is mine no matter how much she feels like Chuck's.
No, that is wrong. She is ours, and so is Teddy. But he isn't mine, not yet. I wonder if I'll regret these lost years in the future, but I doubt it. I am not a good mother for him yet. I refuse to ruin him the way Bart ruined Chuck. But Ellie... maybe Chuck was right, perhaps it will help that she is my little Eleanor Waldorf and the chance to make amends for all those dysfunctional years on 5th Avenue.
Mother thinks I'm being ridiculous, and she has said so very loudly any time I am around to hear her. Cyrus doesn't agree either, but he respects my decision, even though his unsolicited advice has succeeded in making me feel like a raging bitch on more than one occasion. Everyone disapproves, really. But at least Serena understands and Nate is supportive, and Ellie is here. So little. So dependent on me.
I will not let her down. And someday, I will hold Teddy again and look into those big brown eyes that are so much like my own and tell him he is mine. My Teddy. My Teddy bear.'
With suspiciously glassy eyes, he tucked that page between 'I love this little girl so much, I want to watch everything. Her little toes, her chubby little elbows, the wrinkles in her fingers, the angel softness of her pale little stomach. She's just so little. Even more little than - ' and 'We should call her ma petite all the time. It can be her nickname. Ellie, ma petite. Petite Ellie.'
The sun filtered through the windows, then it vanished overhead and our business was illuminated only by the lamp on my desk across the room. By the time our stomachs began rumbling and the smell of lunch would usually have wafted up from the kitchens and pervaded my candle scented air with whiffs of promising assiette de crudités, bitter coffee, and tantalizing tartes, we sat together in the gray-blue light and looked at our 20-year-old mother's thoughts, feelings, and scathing commentaries all tidied up and tucked away inside a cover and a back, and marveled silently at how so much information could be packaged in so small a journal.
“Wow,” Teddy breathed, and I silently agreed. Wow.
“She loves him,” I said after we had stewed together in silence for quite some time. “Or she wouldn't have sent me this. She wants to come home.”
“I don't know, Elle,” Teddy was uncertain, fidgeting with his white sleeves until they were rolled back over his elbows. “Maybe she was just trying to - ”
“No offense,” I interrupted without thinking, “but I think I know her a little better than you do.”
He sucked in a breath and even I, through empathy or some odd twin osmosis, felt as if I had been punched in the gut.
“I am so sorry,” I amended, not too proud to admit that I had been out of line. Had our places been reversed, had he been sitting in my room in Passy while maman sat in her bedroom a few doors down as we worked diligently at helping each other understand the past that had led Chuck Bass to be absent from our lives, had we gone through all of that together and had he still taunted me with the fact that I did not know my father while he did... I would have probably thrown vases and screamed accusations and made an enormous scene.
Teddy was much more graceful than that. His throat worked violently and all the words he wanted to say thrust against his tongue for permission to burst out, but he just nodded curtly and we moved on.
Moved on to form a plan that would lead us, a mere day later, to maman's doorstep in the 16th arrondissement, our fists poised and ready to knock.