Page 76 of The Paris Agent
He sighs as he nods, but after that, the silence is tender.
I’ve grown to like and admire Theo. I see him as a man who has spent his whole life searching for a family he knew he would likely never find—and he’s used that unresolved desire to do good in other people’s lives. Over the past few weeks he’s told me about that family history group, and all of the joy his members find in digging deep into their own pasts.
I think about that in the context of my grief for my mother. If there was some tenuous link that might make me feel reconnected to her...some tenuous link that might help me understand her, I’d chase it down hard. A burst of pure empathy washes over me.
“Let’s drive over,” I say, reaching for my handbag. “Together. Now.”
Theo looks at me in surprise.
“Why did you change your mind?” he asks.
A vivid image of my mother flashes to mind and I’m not sure I can explain myself without crying, so I just shrug and push myself into a standing position.
“It’s summer holidays and we’re both teachers. What else do we have to do with our spare time?”
The jittery, uneven tone of Theo’s breathing betrays his anxiety as he drives toward the house, but we don’t speak. We turn into Drusilla Sallow’s street and Theo starts tapping his thigh with his fingertips to a manic, frantic rhythm.
Not quite eight minutes after we left Theo’s apartment, we are parked right opposite the cottage.
“When I was younger I used to daydream about inadvertently walking past a blood relative, but it’s always been a kind of fantasy. It feels strange to acknowledge to myself that perhaps it was a real possibility at least for the last few years since I moved here.”
The cottage is quiet and still, the curtains drawn and the front door closed despite the oppressive heat. The expansive garden is lovingly tended, hedges trimmed into careful shapes to frame beds of colorful petunias.
We sit staring at the cottage for a long time. Every now and again I draw a breath, intending to ask Theo what he’s thinking, but when I look at the expression on his face I fall silent again. He is staring at that house, a lifetime of hope and longing in his blue eyes, and I feel like an intruder on the moment even though he invited me to be there.
But every attempt I have made to help my father seems to have gone awry. He’s abandoned his project and he seems to be plodding along as he was before, focusing on work and spoiling Wrigley at every available moment. I don’t think I helped Dad at all in the end, and I’m starting to worry that I’ve just led Theo to disappointment too.
“Josie might—I’m just saying Josie might not even be your mother,” I blurt. Still staring at the cottage, Theo nods.
“I know that.”
It’s so hot in the car that I have sweated through my nylon blouse, and every now and again, a rivulet of moisture runs down my forehead or down the gap between my shoulder blades. The windows are open but that’s not enough, and just when I think I can bear it no more and I’m about to suggest that we leave, a taxicab pulls into the driveway. Theo sucks in a harsh breath.
The driver steps out of the car and rushes around to the front passenger side, where he helps a diminutive woman from her seat. She appears to be in her seventies or eighties. She stands awkwardly, leaning on a cane and pressing a hand to her back as if she’s in pain, but even from a distance it is clear that her conversation with the driver is not a happy one. The woman is pointing fiercely toward the back of the cab, and the man is pointing at his watch, and for a minute or two they just squabble like this. But then the man throws his hands into the air and walks to the back of the car. He opens the trunk and pulls out a collection of paper bags of groceries. One by one, he sets the bags down hard on the lawn in front of the house, until he reaches for the final bag, this time spilling some of the items onto the ground as he drops it.
The woman shouts and waves her cane at him as he drives away, then she looks down at the groceries on her lawn and her shoulders droop.
Theo is out of the car before I can even stop him. I leap from my own side and follow him as he rushes toward the mess of groceries on the ground. The woman looks at us warily as we approach, her chin high and her gaze haughty. We’ve not exchanged a single word, but I already know this is not a woman who is comfortable asking for help.
But if we don’t help her, she’s going to have to make a dozen separate trips from the drive to her house, leaning on that cane. I tell myself that we’re not actually meddling, but rather helping a woman in need.
“Sorry. S-sorry,” Theo stammers, as he exposes his palms to the woman and slows his steps as he nears her. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but we were sitting in our car chatting over there and I saw what just happened and wanted to come and offer you some help.”
“I appreciate that, young man, but I’ll be quite fine on my own,” the woman says stiffly. But then she looks down at her cane, and the groceries, and her shoulders slump again. “Actually...”
She unlocks her door and then holds the screen open while we take the bags into her kitchen. There are framed photographs all along her hall table. There’s a black-and-white photo of a young girl, frail and sickly looking, smiling bravely into the camera. Around it, there are photos of two women together through various stages of life. At the back of the table, there’s a photo that is unmistakably the woman we’ve been helping. She’s younger, dressed in a lab coat and standing out front of what I suspect is a hospital. I catch Theo’s eye and nod as subtly as I can manage toward the photos. I watch his shoulders rise and lock somewhere near his ears as he surveys them.
“Thank you,” the woman says. “I recently injured my hip and I’m not yet able to drive. I got into a disagreement with that dreadful taxi driver about the fare.”
“Are you a doctor?” I ask her, pointing to the photo in the frame.
“Yes, I was a doctor. I retired only a few years ago.” She sighs wistfully. “That was a terrible mistake. The human spirit is not designed to stop.”
“Are you Drusilla Miller?” Theo asks. I gasp, and he gives me a panicked look, as if he’d suck the words back in if he could. So much for taking this slow and just “driving past.” The woman’s eyes widen then narrow. Her grip on the cane tightens. I have no doubt she’ll use that thing to drive us from her house if we make one wrong move, so I step toward Theo and slip my hand into his elbow, intending to tug him back toward the door.
“Who are you? Who are you really?” the woman asks sharply.
“My name is Theo Sinclair,” Theo says, but then he pauses and repeats, “Theo. My name isTheo.” Clearly he was hoping that Drusilla Sallow was somehow aware of a lost grandchild and would react with joy at the sound of his name, but her face remains perfectly blank. He clears his throat and pushes his glasses up his nose. “I...the thing is, I...”
