The Body In the Vestibule by Katherine Hall Page Page A

there’s a Soupe Populaire in rue Millet. Although Paul would scold me for calling it that, even though everyone does. Soupes Populaires existed in the twenties and after the war for poverty-stricken and jobless people, not clochards. ”
    A soup kitchen was a soup kitchen as far as Faith was concerned and she was sure she could find out more there about the two clochards —if indeed the man sitting outside St. Nizier now was a clochard. It wasn’t certain, but it seemed logical that whoever they were, they would go to the nearest place for free food.
    The dishes were all dried and they joined the other women around the table, who seemed in no hurry to get back to their respective mates. Faith settled in comfortably and listened to the gossip, talk of offspring, and speculation on hemlines with a familiar feeling—the company of women.
    One femme was busy stitching together small triangles of bright calico, and seeing Faith’s glance, she said, “Le patchwork. Just like you American women do. It is quite the rage here. We are all busy making—what is your word?—quilts.” Faith did not want to disillusion the woman, but her own forays into quilt making had consisted of getting others to do it for her, especially in the case of a quilt top
she’d purchased at a house auction in Maine, which had led to a treasure hunt and more. “Oh yes, it’s very popular where I live, also,” she said. Her friend and neighbor Pix Miller, whose car sported a bumper sticker that read I’M A QUILTER AND MY HOUSE IS IN PIECES, kept telling Faith that if she could do a running stitch, she could quilt. But it was the number of running stitches one had to do, Faith reminded her. She was glad to meet a French quilt maker and it would be something to write to Pix about. Perhaps the two women could start to exchange patterns and eventually their children would meet and marry, and all because of a few scraps of cloth. Life could be like that, Faith believed.
    â€œHow is Dominique?” Michèle asked a woman across the table. “Is she worried about the bac?” She turned to Faith in explanation. “The baccalauréat is a very difficult, perhaps even ridiculous, exam French teenagers must take to get their diplomas.”
    The woman sighed and put her cup down. “Who can tell? Whenever we ask her, she just says not to nag so much and everything is fine. That is her answer for everything. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Where were you?’ It is as if she has a secret life. And the way she dresses—like the circus!”
    Everyone laughed and Michèle reassured her, “They are all like her, these adolescentes, secretive and so very serious. Not like us. We were perfect.”
    A slight feeling of nausea came over Faith, which she knew had nothing to do with either food or fetus. It arrived whenever she contemplated “Ben, the Teenage Years.” And now, foolishly, she had signed up for a sequel.
    Ghislaine was talking. “We are never satisfied. I get worried because Stéphanie seems too good. The only thing she ever criticizes is my accent when I speak English to Faith!”
    Faith loved Ghislaine’s delightfully accented English and much preferred it to Stephanie’s more correct British version, learned at school. She doubted that her own attempts
at speaking French carried the same charm as Ghislaine’s phrases: “You have learned me so much,” she had told Faith and Tom Saturday night.
    She continued to extol her daughter’s virtues with a mixture of pride and concern. “She still talks to us, is polite, and does what we ask. It’s not natural. When I think of what my poor mother endured!”
    â€œYes, I know all this,” said Dominique’s mother. “And”—she looked skeptically at Ghislaine—“Stéphanie is only thirteen, yes? Wait, chérie, a few more years. It’s so hard