All the Broken Places

Going back in time to 1946, Gretel is 15 years old, and she’s in Paris with her mother. They escaped Germany due to “true believers” who gave them false papers. They have a new last name, Guéymard, and Gretel’s mother has a new first name, Nathalie, but Gretel’s first name is the same.

Her father idolized the Führer (Hitler), and he worked in “the camps,” so Gretel’s father is synonymous with evil. One day, Gretel’s father took her into the camp to show her what was happening. Gretel tells herself she’s still a “bystander,” yet her conscience isn’t clear. Like every young girl in Nazi Germany, she had to be a member of the Hitler Youth, but the Nazi ideology didn’t interest her.

In France, Gretel and her mother live in Île de la Cité, an island in the middle of Paris. They share a bed, and Nathalie is constantly drunk and cares less about her appearance.  

The strange city makes Gretel not want to venture outside, but she thinks of her brother. He wanted to be an explorer, and he’d explore the city. Eventually, Gretel gets the conviction to visit the Luxembourg Garden. One day, Gretel cries due to guilt and grief. A 17-year-old boy shows her empathy, but he spits in her face after he detects her German accent. She chases him and invites him to hurt her. He looks at her breasts, and she takes his hand, but he calls her a “whore” and runs away.

Returning to 2022, Gretel visits her neighbor across the hallway, Heidi Hargrave. She’s 69 and has lived in Winterville Court her entire life. Her parents adopted her, and she had a daughter who died from cancer. She has plantar fasciitis and a degenerative mental condition, less severe than dementia or Alzheimer’s. She confuses Edgar with Mr. Robertson, and she admires how Edgar always wore a shirt and tie. She admits she tried to kiss Edgar once, but Edgar declared his loyalty to Gretel.

Gretel only displays two photos: She and Edgar on their wedding day and Caden when he graduated college. In a Seugnet jewelry box that she bought in Paris in 1946, she keeps a photo that a crush, Kurt, took of her when she was 12. She also has photo albums, and Heidi flips through them and identifies a Russian spy, Billy Sprat.

Heidi brings up World War II, but Gretel stays out of politics. They discuss who might move in, and Heidi mentions Jewish people. For a while, buildings like Winterville Court didn’t let Jewish people live there. Heidi isn’t antisemitic. Her mental condition can make her say politically incorrect things, but she embraces all kinds of people. Gretel doesn’t reply to Heidi’s speculation about Jewish people potentially moving in.

Back in 1946, Gretel’s mother has a boyfriend, Rémy Toussaint, who dresses nicely, sports a family crest on his collar, and wears a French flag eye patch over his right eye, which he lost during World War II. Gretel is jealous. She wants a love affair. She has a crush on the boy who works in the haberdashery store across the street. He reminds her of Kurt. The boy drops several boxes outside, and the store owner, Monsieur Vannier, hits him.

Edgar was a historian who liked to read modern fiction for pleasure, but Gretel likes nonfiction—though she avoids history about the “period” from her childhood. She goes to the library and gets a book about Marie Antoinette—powerful women and men fascinate her.

Her brother also liked to read. She remembers hearing her brother talk to a domestic worker, Pavel, in their “other place” house about their Berlin home, which was great for exploring. Her parents didn’t allow her brother to explore their “other place” surroundings, but Pavel encouraged him to go beyond the fence of his “other place” house.

Gretel meets Alison Small, an interior designer hired by the new occupants of the flat. Gretel tells Alison she’s lived in Winterville Court for over 60 years. She presses Alison for details about her neighbors, but Alison maintains confidentiality. Whoever moves in, Gretel hopes there’s no child.

In 1946, Gretel’s brother died three years ago, and her father’s hanging was six months ago. She’s starting to comprehend what she and her family took part in. She thinks of her father as two different people, and she tries to think of herself as innocent—she was only a child—but if she’s guiltless, she and her mother wouldn’t have changed their names.

Gretel meets Toussaint, and she tells him he sounds like an author of cheap romance novels. He asks her if she’s feeling guilty over her rude behavior. Gretel wants to get away from him, but he touches her cheek and tells her she’s not like other teen girls.

Edgar and Gretel gave Caden money to start a company, but neither his business nor his health are flourishing in 2022. Caden visits his mother to tell her someone has offered £3.1 million (around $3.75 million) for her flat. Gretel doesn’t want to sell her place, and she doesn’t care about collecting extra money. Caden says Edgar didn’t like the apartment and that Gretel made him use his aunt’s money to buy it. Gretel verifies Caden’s account, but she had unnamed reasons for buying the places.

Caden worries about Gretel falling down the stairs, and Gretel worries about her son pushing her down the stairs. Caden suggests a “retirement village,” and Gretel quips that such a place would kill her within a year.

Caden confesses: He needs money. COVID-19, Brexit, and his alimony payments make it hard to keep his business solvent. Gretel asks about his first wife, Amanda, and Caden says that she has ovarian cancer. Gretel expresses shock that Caden only tells her this now. As Caden leaves, Heidi spots him and notes that he’s become “fat.”

In 1946, after M. Vannier leaves his shop at noon for his two-hour lunch break, Gretel goes to the store and sees a middle-aged man possibly making sexual advances to the boy she has a crush on. The boy shakes his head, the man leaves, and Gretel enters, asking for buttons.

The boy is Émile Vannier, whose name makes Gretel think of Erich Kästner’s German novel for young readers, Emil and the Detectives (1929). Gretel’s brother liked the book, and Émile read it when he was younger, but his father, M. Vannier, threw it out—he doesn’t want German books in his home. Gretel says the war is over, and people need to move on. Émile thinks people should punish “the guilty.”

Gretel tells Émile she’s from Nantes, and Émile says he’s 16 and doesn’t want to work in his father’s store. They agree to meet at a coffee shop. Gretel kisses him and gives him a theatrical wave like the 20th-century German actress Marlene Dietrich. Émile reminds Gretel about her buttons, but Gretel tells Émile she didn’t come into the store for the buttons.

Gretel’s new neighbor in 2022 is Madelyn Darcy-Witt—she’s blonde, in her thirties, and she could be a model. Alison Small decorated the flat to reflect its multi-million-dollar value, and Gretel thinks the posh furniture looks uncomfortable, but it’s in fact comfortable—Madelyn calls it “deceitful.”

Madelyn likes light—her mother kept the curtains closed to protect the furniture. Madelyn’s father was mean to her mother, and her father’s father was mean to his mother, and so on. Madelyn doesn’t think a person can be different from their parents. Gretel disagrees.

Gretel tells Madelyn she’s lived in Winterville Court since 1960, and Madelyn laughs—she laughs randomly. Gretel tells Madelyn the building is great: People keep to themselves, but they can depend on others for help. Madelyn doesn’t work and wants quiet. She wanted to move to the country, but Alex, her husband, must be in London for his job.

At the coffee shop in 1946, Émile tells Gretel he’ll work at his father’s haberdashery shop forever—he doesn’t want to disappoint him. His older brother, Louis, should have inherited the shop, but he was a member of the Resistance. The first day the Nazis entered Paris, Louis killed one of them. Nazis apprehended him twice and tortured him. Eventually, they killed him. They tossed his corpse into the street, and the dogs tore it apart. If Émile was older, he would have joined the Resistance and brutally stabbed every German soldier he could.

Gretel doesn’t think there’s a cause worth dying over, but Émile disagrees. Gretel grabs his hand and tells him the war is over. Émile disagrees again. He reads articles about the “camps” and can’t fathom how people could create such atrocious sites.

Gretel goes to the bathroom, and when she looks in the mirror, she sees her father’s shadow and remembers her brother asking him who the people were on the other side of the fence. Her father’s reply: The people on the other side aren’t people.

Returning to the table, Gretel tells a series of lies: Her father died when she was a kid, her mother was a seamstress, and she left three dear friends behind. They discuss the kiss. Émile likes that she did it, but he also calls her “shameless.” They then discuss siblings. Gretel lies again: She says she doesn’t have any. Émile says she is fortunate—losing a brother is worse than losing a parent. The former haunts a person forever.

As of 2022, Madelyn and Alex have been married for 11 years. He’s 10 years older than her, and he’s a famous movie producer. Madelyn used to be an actress—they met when she was in one of his movies.

Gretel tries to go, but Madelyn keeps her. Due to acting school, she detects Gretel’s German accent. Gretel admits she was born in Berlin, and Madelyn loves Berlin. She once played Sally Bowles—the fictional German cabaret icon created by the English American writer Christopher Isherwood in the 1930s. Madelyn wanted to stay in the theater, but Alex pushed her to films. She thinks she’s too old to act now.

Madelyn changes the subject, and Gretel tells her how Edgar died. During the 2008 hay fever season, her asthmatic husband started to sneeze. Gretel laughed it off, but then he couldn’t breathe, and he died in the living room. Madelyn asks if she loved her husband, and Gretel says she did. Madelyn’s husband is in LA, but her nine-year-old son, Henry, will be home from school shortly. The mention of the child makes Gretel panic.