“And will she return to the States with her papa?” asked portly Sister Yvonne from Cameroon, in sloping sub-Saharan cadence.
I said I supposed that would depend very heavily on who the adoptive parents were.
“Non, mais, Monsieur Daniel, it must be you!” Sister Yvonne said. “Nothing else would be fair.” This, at least, was the opinion of Sister Yvonne—and evidently that of the other sisters. Each day when I arrived at the Maison Nôtre Dame, they greeted me with a hearty “Bonjour, Papa!” and presented me with Clementine, still groggy, her cheek flushed and creased from her morning nap. It was not, however, the opinion of French law. It was one thing to be awarded guardianship of an abandoned child, quite another to win full legal parenthood. From the first day I made my inquiries, I was informed—and frequently—that the likelihood of an American adopting a French baby in good health was infinitesimal at best.
“But you must fight for it, then!” said Sister Yvonne. “Do you think God brought her out of a disgusting basement to put her in foster care all her life?” Whatever I might have replied, Sister Yvonne in her indignation stampeded ahead. “What good are lawyers, what good are the courts, if they cannot keep you and your daughter together! I ask you that! Franchement, on se demande!”
My daughter! At times, in the years after our return to New York, I would lie awake at night wondering when it was that Clementine became, definitively, my daughter. Was it when the shift supervisor had asked me in that impromptu ceremony to pick a name? Was it when the nuns decided, spontaneously, to declare me Papa? Was it when Clementine herself, a little more than a year old and fattening rapidly in the bustle of the Maison Nôtre Dame, addressed me for the first time as “Pa-po-pa” to the clucking delight of the nuns? Or was it when at the nuns’ insistence she was baptized, the priest taking her from my arms and pouring water from a silver dish over her head? After the service, Yvonne crushed me in her colossal embrace: “Now she is truly yours.” Would you, Father, have agreed with her? Would you maintain that in the brief sacrament, a power of some sort had gone forth and made us each other’s? Would you say, further, that such a power accounted for the surge of joy I felt when Clementine, drenched and wide-eyed, was returned to my arms?
But enough. Let it be enough that when the priest said, “Name this child,” he looked to me. Let it be enough that I was the one who replied, “Clementine Levaux Abend.”
—
After I was declared the guardian, anxious weeks passed, then anxious months, before I received another favorable ruling. Clementine had just celebrated her first birthday. The magistrate let it be known that the court affirmed the statutory particularity of Clementine’s case, ruling in effect that I had assumed the role of Clementine’s guardian prior to the intervention of the state. This august decree in fact concluded nothing, but once made, it meant that all procedural and bureaucratic delays could only work in my favor. With each passing month my case strengthened; no relative had appeared, and my participation in Clementine’s care continued as it always had, “faithfully and devotedly,” as the nuns attested in their affidavits.
On the day of the decisive ruling, the magistrate pronounced that enforcement of customary procedure would obstruct the state’s primary obligation to seek the child’s best interest and that the court acknowledged Daniel Abend of New York, États-Unis, as legitimate claimant for full adoptive custody of Clementine Abend, née Jeanne DuPont and formerly ward of the state, should the said Daniel Abend pursue such custody.
In the end, after twenty-eight months, when all orders and releases had been drafted, signed, and entered, I was awarded adoption of Clementine Levaux Abend on the exceptional grounds that the adoption had, in all but name, already occurred. Clementine was now mine because I had always been hers.
—
Her first passport picture was taken in the American embassy. By then Clementine was a rangy two-year-old with a tousle of black hair. The young clerk with the camera lent us a rubber band to tie her hair back from her face. “You better tell Mommy,” said the clerk, “it’s time for a haircut.” Clementine’s response—“My mommy is him”—earned me a look of confusion from the clerk.
—
The clinic directorship I’d planned to assume upon my return two years earlier had long before been assigned to someone else, but because so many of my patients in Paris had been not only American but from New York, once back in the States I had little trouble building a full practice, stacking my morning hours with brief, lucrative medication consultations, reserving my evenings for analytic sessions. Sometime during Clementine’s seventh or eighth year, it occurred to me that my practice was now indistinguishable from the practice I would have developed had I returned from Paris when I’d originally intended—indeed, had I never left New York in the first place. At times I could even believe—or almost believe—that we had always been here. After all, over the intervening years, had I not disguised myself perfectly as myself?
FORTY-THREE
À chacun son billet.
Even now, I can hear her, feel her say it, her breath on my lips.
My ticket has found me, or rather, my tickets, one for a flight, another for a train, and a photograph of the final destination. In the envelope, each is separated from the other by a little square of tissue paper. Having looked at the times of departure, I note that I will have a day, or the better part of a day, in Paris. Time enough for a walk over the Pont de Bercy, perhaps through the Jardin des Plantes and into
