Deborah was half-French, but after having spent her entire life in Utah, except for a handful of vacations, coming to live in France didn’t feel “like coming home to the other half.” It felt like being forced to live with a stranger you had only met in passing on the street.

Streets… her new street was also nowhere near “home,” not even after a month. It was called Rue Longchamp. Salt Lake City had sky, lots of it—this place had none.

Today was her first expedition alone. The tedious task was to find fresh baguettes for Mother, but Deborah would rather find the next line of the poem she was working on. She had to think about it, or try to, while scouring this new and strange street, and let the cream-colored colossi tower over her without being bothered by their aging indifference. Houses in SLC felt like they saw you, waited for you. Even the temples. Especially the temples. She was a bit intimidated by them when she was little, but now she was fifteen. And apparently old enough to leave everything behind… friends, high school, Caleb Jameson… who knows what could have happened if they’d stayed. But Father’s decision—

She shook it off. She had to. It would not help.

Deborah sighed and looked up and down the street, feeling an odd pull of the empty bag in her hand. Left or right? The broad sidewalks she had seen elsewhere in Paris weren’t quite as broad on their street, and she felt she had to make a decision as people kept pushing past her.

She turned left.

The first line of stores seemed haphazard, as if they had simply lurked as potential within the Haussmannian blocks before bursting forth by lucky chance rather than design—a tobacconist wedged beside a parfumerie, a narrow bookstore of sorts. She made a mental note to check it out later. It was squeezed between a café and a charcuterie.

Her mother had said the épicerie “probably has something,” though in the past four weeks they’d barely had anything useful. It seemed chronically understocked. Deborah regretted she hadn’t been more adventurous and turned right. Now she was obliged to check with the slightly ominous owner, who seemed like he had descended from some distant penal colony which France was still supposed to have—or so her American father claimed.

She got it over with quickly. Then she could say she had tried.

The shopkeeper did have a few baguettes, but as usual they were very dry. She decided she had done her duty. I should have turned right.

But then she got out and stopped. There was a good stretch of blocks beyond this motley selection. She could head that way, maybe all the way to Trocadéro. Or…

The “bookstore,” if it could be called such, had been closed all the weeks they had been here. But you could see through the window what was in there. It was more like a container-sized storage room with two walls lined with shelves, probably secondhand books on them, and then at the end, where the room was darkest, a desk. She tried to put her head all the way to the dark glass and see if she could spot what was on the shelves. She’d only ever walked by with Father or Mother before, so stopping to look hadn’t been an option. Now that she was finally alone, the window felt magnetic.

Ulysses. That was the first one. There were others, of course, mostly in French. But this was the first she recognized.

“Trash,” Father had said when she once asked about it. No, he had only read about it but there was no other way to describe it. Brother Peterson, the BYU librarian, had also told him about the novel once for reasons Deborah couldn’t quite recall. But Joyce wasn’t just flirting with pornography—she’d had to look that word up and blushed when she did—he was also writing rubbish. “Unintelligible, pretentious rubbish.”

Deborah wondered…

---

Then there was a clatter behind her. An older lady had just come out of the épicerie and somehow managed to drop all her groceries on the pavement. The reason was simple: the paper bags she had been carrying were simply not strong enough and had burst. Now there was lettuce and smashed bottles of milk on the sidewalk and a newspaper whose pages were scattering in the wind.

“I will help you,” Deborah said in French. She quickly bent down to gather what she could. “Here, have my bag.”

“Oh, that is very nice of you,” the elderly lady said. She had silver hair, blue eyes and a red-brown woolen overcoat that made her look like one of the Wasatch foxes from home. No, not home. Not anymore. “Thank you, thank you so much.”

The fox lady was profuse but also still rattled, Deborah reckoned. She glanced back into the épicerie… Monsieur Penal had gone to the backroom.

“No problem, madame,” Deborah said. “Can I carry this for you—do you live close by?”

“Yes, yes, then you can have your bag again. That would be lovely. It is just over there.”

Deborah looked at where the woman was pointing. Across the street were another set of big similar-looking blocks but with iron fences at the ground, no shops.

“I haven’t seen you in the neighborhood before,” Fox lady said.

“We moved in last month, in no. 104.”

“Oh, that’s the old Dujardin apartment!”

“You know the floor?”

“It had been empty for a year,” she smiled. “And no one else had moved out recently. I have been ill, though, so I might have missed something.”

“It’s on the top floor,” Deborah said helpfully.

“I knew it. That’s the one,” the lady said, smiling. “What was your name, chérie? I am Charlotte Misoux, I live over there in 113.”

“Deborah Sawyer,” Deborah said, also smiling now. “113. What a coincidence.”

“Where are you going, Deborah?” Madame Misoux asked, putting the last of the groceries in the bag. She looked at the milk and glass as someone stepped around it, a man with a briefcase hurrying on. “Pity,” she said. “But it can’t be helped.”

People streamed past them still. Nobody came out of the épicerie. A young woman with a poodle in tow went in. After hesitating for a moment, looking at the broken bottle, Deborah followed Madame Misoux across the street with her bag full of the salvaged groceries.

The elderly lady unlocked a gate in the fence guarding the building on the other side of Rue de Longchamp directly opposite her family’s new apartment and the variegated assortment of shops. The door was made of dark brown wood like most of the heavy doors to the innards of the labyrinth of ancient Haussmannian cream color that was now her not-home. A place she lived. And this one looked like her building only more somber and gated.

“Were you going shopping, dear?” Madame Misoux asked as they waited for the clanking elevator.

“Yes, my mother said to get some bread, but to go down to the one at the corner of La Pompe.”

“Oh, the boulangerie there, it is dreadful,” Madame surmised, as the elevator came.

“The ones the épicerie has are worse,” Deborah said, almost automatically.

“Says who? I kind of like them.” Madame Misoux chuckled. “Got crust.”

“Well…”

“But if you were going to Rue de la Pompe, why linger here?”

Deborah shrugged. “I guess I was just looking.”

They came to the third floor where Madame Misoux apparently had her apartment. She put the key in the lock. “Well, thank you very much, Mademoiselle Deborah.” She chuckled. “Youth nowadays—they aren’t as selfish as some would have you believe.”

“In my faith,” Deborah dared say, “we believe in the virtue of helping others.”

Madame Misoux opened the door slowly, like it was too heavy for her. The inside smelled of old carpets and some perfume or other. “You can put the groceries there, chérie. Do you want something to drink? What did you say your faith was?”

Deborah was uneasy but she had to remember they were here to be proud of who they were, not to hide away. And she had given a little bit away, like she wanted to, hadn’t she? But why did she want to tell Madame Misoux? Before she could delve further on it, Deborah did what was the least awkward and answered truthfully.

“We are Latter-day Saints, Madame. My father is from Salt Lake City in America and my mother is from Honfleur.”

“A faithful bond across oceans, eh?” Madame Misoux blinked. “I assume your mother is a convert, neh?”

“She is a saint, yes.” Deborah cleared her throat. “That’s what we call them.”

The tiny hallway was becoming cramped, she felt—there was barely room for her and the groceries and the madame all at once, and the old woman just stood there, glancing at her like she was trying to read a mystery book. Deborah began to regret that she had been forthright.

“Oh, but I know of the Saints! Come in, come in.”

The old woman beckoned Deborah toward the stale-smelling living room. It looked like a cross between a library and a safari park: shelves of old books covered the walls, punctuated by three prominent trophy heads. A deer, a gazelle or some similar African animal, and atop one shelf, a stuffed bird of prey spreading its wings to nearly touch the ceiling.

“Sit, sit,” Madame Misoux urged. “Do you like hot chocolate?”

“Madame, I should really be going—”

“Tut tut, won’t you allow me to repay you for your kindness?”

“It’s my mother. She—”

“Chocolate?”

Deborah sat down carefully on the couch, a big brown slab with a sprawled blanket covering half. “Okay…”

Mrs. Misoux rummaged around in the kitchen. Deborah heard pots clanking. “Do you want sugar in it?”

“Er, no thanks.”

“Suit yourself, chérie.”

It took only five more minutes and then Madame Misoux quietly brought in two steaming mugs and placed them on the small sofa table. Deborah had been more than a little absorbed in her surroundings, especially the bookshelves, so there was a brief moment when she didn’t notice the serving. But then of course she quickly said, “Thank you.”

“So,” Madame Misoux said, slowly sitting down in the armchair opposite the sofa. “It’s always nice to meet new people in the neighborhood. You would have thought we were tired of each other but the fact is, although we are stacked like sardines, people here rarely talk… with others, I mean.”

“…How long have you lived here?” Deborah asked politely, glancing at the big clock beside the gazelle head.

“Oh, since… 1934.”

Deborah’s eyes widened briefly. She was born in 1952. 1934 seemed impossibly long ago. Before the war…

“My mother was six years old in that year,” she quipped and blushed at the same time. It seemed the most awkward thing to say… but the truth was she’d rather get on with it and find those “fresh” baguettes before long. Maybe other things…

“Well,” the old lady sighed. “It’s nice to have some young people around. Youth is very helpful like I said. I think people generally don’t appreciate youth enough.”

“So, tell me,” Madame Misoux said. “Tell me again, why did you not go down the street to La Pompe?”

“Well,” Deborah said. “It’s this… do you know the, well, bookstore, I think? It’s just this shop, but it seems to have been closed all the months we’ve been here.”

“Ah, yes,” Madame Misoux said. “That would be Monsieur Fournier’s. That is his shop, but he is very old now and in a home. And he is… well… his heirs presumed he would be at his end, but these things… they take their time.” She looked wistful. “He has been there for over a year.”

“Oh. So it’s his shop?” Deborah asked.

“Yes, it was something of a hobby project for him. A secondhand bookshop.”

Deborah’s gaze drifted to the shelves covering the walls of this very room. Were these all just a hobby, too?

“He was, in fact, a real estate developer. He retired quite wealthy.”

Deborah took a deep breath. “Oh. So if he dies, will his heirs open the shop again, do you think, or…?”

“No, no. They want his apartment, and with it, the business tenancy for that little shop. That is all they are interested in,” Madame Misoux said and gazed into her mug. She looked thoughtful. “Quite. They are very greedy. They cannot wait for him to die, the poor man.”

Deborah shifted uncomfortably on the couch. The thought was so nakedly morbid, so different from the hushed tones people used back home when talking about the sick or elderly.

“And in the meantime… I have the keys to his apartment. We have known one another for some time.” Her lips thinned slightly. “He asked me, when he first went to the hospital, to look after his flowers, and I have done so. But most did not survive the winter, I am afraid. I have no gift for plants, even though I grew up in Africa.” She gestured with her chin toward the gazelle.

Deborah’s eyes followed, tracing the elegant curve of its horns. The animal looked permanently startled, frozen in a moment of surprise from a life lived decades ago on another continent.

“That trophy… that was from before the Great War.”

“Oh, really?”

“I am actually German, you see. Indeed. We lived there, in Tanganyika, until the English forced us out. My maiden name is Tanner.”

“Oh,” Deborah said. “That’s very interesting.”

“Yes, yes. But you must be going,” the old lady said, her eyes twinkling again.

Madame Misoux stood up. “It was nice talking to you, Mademoiselle Sawyer. Say hello to those Saint parents of yours and bid them welcome to our little part of the 16th from old Madame Misoux.”

“I will.” Deborah’s shoulders sank. She also got up. She hesitated for a moment, then held out her hand. “It was good meeting you, too, Madame.”

“Yes, yes…” She took Deborah’s hand. Her grip was frail but tender. “You know, I visited my sister—now dearly departed—in Rennes a few years back. There were some of those very nice young missionaries. Do you know one … Richard Anderson, I think his name was?”

“Er, no.” Deborah smiled, still not entirely at ease, but then she pulled herself together. “Utah is a big place, if he was from Utah. But I will ask my father. He knows everybody in SLC—Salt Lake City—and its environs.”

“Do that.”

They went to the door, but now Deborah hesitated. “So… did they visit your sister, or…?”

The question was a reflex, and she would never have done it at home, but here… She’d remember the roar of unfamiliar French in the hallways between classes, a current of chatter and laughter she was swept along in, but never part of, utterly invisible. Perhaps she wasn’t?

Madame Misoux smiled briefly. “They tried – knocked at my sister’s door. She chased them away, with more than a few threats. She was a staunch Catholic. And a bit of a hussy.”

Deborah whitened. “T-threats?”

“I tried to dissuade her,” Madame Misoux said. “It was not very polite.”

“So you know of the restored gospel?” Deborah asked, trying to follow.

“Oh, I read the book.” Madame grinned. “Pure rubbish—but don’t take it personally. It is beautiful and strangely compelling rubbish.”

Deborah did not know what to say. She had never heard anyone speak like that. Well, maybe the Thompson boy from Provo, but his family… good Lord, what a mess.

“I must be going,” she said. “I will tell my father of your welcome.”

“Do that. Here in France, all are welcome.” She opened the door for Deborah and led her into the foyer. A single lightbulb hung too low from the ceiling, its cord bare and uncovered. “But watch your head.”

Deborah nodded, ducked under the lightbulb, and heard the heavy door click shut behind her, the sound echoing in the stairwell.

---

The air outside felt sharp and clean against her face. She walked briskly down the street, away from Madame Misoux’s building and toward the corner of Rue de la Pompe. The boulangerie was, as Madame had surmised, dreadful, but the baguettes were at least fresh and warm.

With two of them tucked into her bag, she started the walk back, her mind replaying the conversation. As she passed the row of shops, she found her pace slowing until she came to a complete stop.

The bookstore.

It looked different now. It was no longer just a closed shop; it was Monsieur Fournier’s hobby, a room full of stories held in limbo, waiting for a man to die.

She pressed her face to the glass, her breath fogging a small circle on the pane. Her eyes found the spine of Ulysses again. A slow smile spread across her lips, a secret, private thing. She leaned in closer to the dark glass, the warmth of the bread against her arm, and whispered to her reflection, “Rubbish.”

*

Photo: by Dave McSpadden, Wikipedia