Page 28 of One of Them

“Exactly where we want to be.” Anne remembered what Delia had told her about shopping here with her mother.

“Come on.” Nancy didn’t move for a moment, so Anne took her arm.

How unusual that she, for once, was the leader.

She made her way methodically through the mounds of clothing—a billowing cape, silk blouses in shreds, cashmere sweaters sporting holes small and large, embellished with beads or sequins, dresses in styles popular ten, twenty, forty years ago.

Nancy was happy to follow in her wake, even though she clearly thought that some of what caught Anne’s eye was peculiar at best.

“You’d wear that?” she asked as Anne held up a paisley silk robe.

“Why not?” Anne thought the colors—garnet, shot through with bits of orange, black, and lapis—were beautiful.

“Well, for one thing it’s a man’s robe.”

“So what?” Anne slipped the robe on over her dress and jacket, just as Delia had done on that day when they shopped together.

“You know, it looks good on you.” Nancy was nodding her head approvingly.

“It really does.” She picked up another silk robe, this one a deep burgundy enlivened by a pattern of small white dots.

“Who’d have thought a man’s robe would look so good on a girl?

” She slipped on the robe; the dark color flattered her complexion.

“Let’s get both of them. We can wear them together in the dorm.

The other girls will be very impressed!” They bought the robes, as well as pairs of tight-fitting gloves, shiny black satin for Anne and brown suede for Nancy.

They also tried on over a dozen hats each, and Nancy chose one of black felt with a jaunty red bow while Anne came away with one made of pale pink straw, embellished by an even paler pink ribbon held in place by a cluster of blue silk hydrangeas.

“Are you sure you want that one?” Nancy asked. “You won’t wear it for months.”

“It’s worth the wait,” Anne said. By this time the light was fading and the wind had picked up.

They stopped at a patisserie where they bought a box of éclairs and devoured all of them, sticky and delicious, on the Métro ride back to the dorm.

It was the best day Anne had spent in Paris since arriving.

It poured for almost a solid week after their excursion, one soggy, rain-soaked day following another.

It was late September, a month Anne had always associated with bright, crisp days, but here in Paris the weather was gloomy and depressing, engendering a wave of homesickness she hadn’t expected to feel.

But after five days, the skies finally cleared.

Or at least it was no longer raining, and when Nancy suggested a day trip to Chartres, Anne was more than ready to join her.

They took an early train from the Gare Montparnasse, eating the buttered tartines they had bought at the station along the way.

Anne thought back to the photographs of the cathedral she’d seen in Art 105–106, the light streaming down from above, illuminating—and transforming—whatever it touched.

There was a ten-minute walk from the train station.

Chartres Cathedral, with its two mismatched towers, was the tallest structure she could see.

Soon the carved facade came into view. Up close, the stone was gray, like the sky, and sooty.

Would it be too gray to appreciate the brilliance of the cathedral’s windows?

Maybe they should have waited for a better day.

But once they entered, Anne’s concern dissolved.

The drabness of the day could not dull the blazing effect inside.

The architecture of the cathedral, with its daring combination of ribbed vaults and flying buttresses, coupled with the windows made Anne feel she’d stepped into a glowing glass palace.

Cobalt and red, a lighter, celestial blue, emerald green, and a rich egg-yolk yellow—the intricate patterns seemed animate, as if the panels might begin to shift and move, like the pieces in a kaleidoscope.

They walked around the interior in silence, stopping when Nancy wanted to place a coin in a small box and light a candle.

“For my grandmother,” she explained. Anne lit no candles, offered no prayers.

She was put off by much of the sculpture; the tall, gaunt figures seemed so mournful, even grim.

But the combination of glass, light, color, and pattern was a miraculous contrast. The experience was nothing she could have anticipated.

And then Anne understood. The tortured, tragic figures rendered in stone were just the support for this—the light, which was the real exaltation, the reason the cathedral had been built.

The light was forgiving, healing, and glorious.

To her surprise, she found that being a Jewish girl in this splendid Christian place did not make her uncomfortable.

What mattered was the feeling she had when she walked through those doors.

Here was a place for everyone, not just those who adhered to a particular set of beliefs.

That was what the light seemed to say, the light so enveloping and palpable that Anne felt it like a warm cloak around her.

The two girls were both quiet on the walk back to the station, and Nancy dozed for most of the ride home, giving Anne time to be alone with her thoughts.

Even if the visit to the cathedral hadn’t been a religious experience for her, it was nevertheless spiritual in some inchoate way, and she was touched by it.

Changed, somehow. Delia might have understood.

Delia. Just thinking of her made Anne feel small, even despicable.

As they pulled into the Gare Montparnasse, Nancy woke up and was her usual chatty, cheerful self all the way back to the dorm.

Anne was glad; it was a welcome distraction from her own troubled thoughts.

When they arrived at their dormitory, a young man wearing a thick cable-knit sweater and a bright red scarf called Nancy’s name.

She whirled around, and then flung herself into his arms. Anne stood back, watching.

He was dark-haired, and dark-eyed too. Also handsome—the nose, the jaw.

He seemed a bit older than Nancy; was he her boyfriend? If so, she’d never mentioned it.

Finally Nancy released him and started peppering him with questions. In English. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell me? I thought you weren’t coming for another week at least.”

“You didn’t get my letter?”

“Letter? What letter?”

“I wrote to say that my plans had changed and I’d be here today. I was disappointed when I didn’t find you. No one seemed to know when you’d be back.”

“We went to Chartres today, and it was”—she turned to Anne—“how would you describe it? Are there even words? But where are my manners?” She turned back to the man. “You startled them right out of me.” She squeezed his shoulder affectionately. “Drew, meet Anne.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Drew extended his hand, and when he smiled, Anne saw just a single dimple, on the right side of his face. Like Nancy’s. What was it about that dimple that was so, well, adorable?

“Andrew’s my brother,” Nancy said. “He’s a photographer, well, a photojournalist with the New York Herald Tribune , and he’s just arrived. He’s going to be here for the next few months. Isn’t that grand?”

“Pleased to meet you, too.” Anne now noticed the camera he had slung on his shoulder. It was compact and easy to overlook; he kept a hand on it protectively.

“Have you had dinner yet?” Nancy asked.

“No, and I’m starved! Let me take you to my favorite place—my treat.”

“You have a favorite place already?” Anne was confused; hadn’t Nancy said he’d just gotten there?

“Oh, I’ve been to Paris before. Several times, actually,” said Drew. “So I know my way around a bit.”

Drew led them confidently to Le Petit Saint Ben?it, a bistro on the street of the same name in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

There were people at every single one of the tightly packed tables in the long, narrow room, and they had to wait a few minutes to get one.

Anne watched as waiters hurried by, carrying three plates on each arm and setting them down before the diners; they also poured wine, whisked away dirty dishes, and adroitly managed to avoid colliding with one another.

When the three of them sat down, Drew ordered for all of them; to Anne, his accent sounded flawless.

Their waiter—gruff, frowning, and with the bushiest eyebrows Anne had ever seen—wrote down the order not on a pad but right on a corner of the white paper covering the table.

“He’ll tear that off and total it up at the end of the meal,” Drew explained.

He wasn’t that much older than she was—twenty-six to her twenty—but he seemed so much more sophisticated and at ease in the world.

The food arrived quickly, and everything—the roast chicken, the beef bourguignon, the apple clafouti—was uncommonly good.

Was the food that good, or was it Drew? He’d been to the Soviet Union to photograph Stalin, to Dresden to photograph the ruins of the bombed-out city, to India to photograph Gandhi.

“While I was there, I got sidetracked and took pictures of an elephant giving birth. You should have seen it. All the other elephants were gathered around her, like they were cheering her on. It was such an amazing thing to watch, but I thought I would get in trouble—it wasn’t what I was sent to do.

But my editor went crazy for the pictures and ran them as a sidebar. I was lucky he saw it that way.”

“Did you always know you wanted to be a photographer?” Anne was loving all his stories; he was so widely traveled.

“I didn’t even know that it was a profession, at least not the way I’m doing it. No, I went to art school in Boston. I wanted to be a painter.”

“He was really good!” said Nancy. “We have his paintings and his drawings hanging all over our house.”

“So what happened?” Anne asked.

“I was too restless. I just wanted to be out—outside. Looking. Seeing. One day I passed this pawnshop that was near the art school, and I saw a camera in the window but didn’t go in. It was there the next time I passed, and the time after that, almost like it was waiting for me.”

“Is this it?” She gestured to the camera she’d noticed when they met earlier; it was a combination of brushed metal and something black and pebbly. There were tiny numbers etched around the lens and the word Leica , in script, at the top.

“This?” He touched it lightly but lovingly. “No. It was a Canon. Not as sleek but still a good camera. I finally went into the shop to have a look at it, and because it was cheap, I bought it. I thought I’d just fool around, have some fun. But it turned out to be the thing I wanted to do most.”

Anne drank in every word. She also drank the wine he poured without asking, and she was soon feeling tipsy. “Your French is really good,” she said. “And mine is really terrible. I cringe every time I hear myself.”

“It’s just a matter of practice.”

Anne shook her head. “No, it’s more than that. You have the ear. I don’t, and I never will.”

Drew seemed to consider that. “You may be right. We all have our qualities, don’t you think? Some special talent or trait that sets us apart?” He looked straight at her. “What’s yours, Anne?”

“I haven’t found it yet. It’s waiting for me to unlock it.” The wine had erased any shyness she might have felt, and she held Drew’s gaze.

“I’d like to be around when you do.”

That was certainly bold, Anne thought. He continued to gaze at her with a look both curious and interested.

She liked the way he seemed to be assessing her, trying to figure her out.

It made her feel as if he saw something special in her.

But what? She yearned to know, and even more, to see herself as he saw her—whatever that turned out to be.