All the Broken Places

In 2022, outside Fortnum & Mason, a pricey food/department store, Gretel runs into Oberon. He’s moving to Australia, and he wants to take his grandma—Heidi— with him. He asks Gretel to persuade Heidi to sell her flat—the space she’s lived in for her entire life—and join him. He could use the money from the sale. He wants to buy a place in Mosman, an affluent part of Sydney. Having lived in Australia, Gretel knows about Mosman. Oberon calls her a “dark horse,” and Gretel wonders how many men are trying to turn their parents or grandparents into income streams.

Oberon claims he’s not trying to cheat his grandma. He admits that he spoke to Caden, but they’re not scheming together—their conversation occurred by chance. Gretel agrees to speak to Heidi but not to persuade her to go or not to go.

In 1946, Toussaint picks up Gretel and her mother in a flamboyant red car. Émile inspects it, and Toussaint tells Émile he’ll have to wash it if he gets it dirty. After they leave, Nathalie tells Toussaint that Gretel is falling in love with Émile, and Toussaint acts like he doesn’t know who he is, though he scolded him earlier. Toussaint also claims he’s never patronized Vannier’s shop.

Before they go boating, Toussaint takes them to a park. Gretel wonders if it’s safe, and Toussaint says he’d lose a limb to protect Gretel and her mother. When Nathalie goes to the bathroom, Toussaint recaps an Émile Zola novel, Thérèse Raquin (1868), about a married woman and her lover—also the husband’s best friend—who take the husband boating to drown him. Gretel asks if their plan works, but Toussaint won’t reveal spoilers.

In Winterville Court’s idyllic garden during 2022, Gretel reads her Marie Antoinette biography and meets Henry. Much to her relief, Caden didn’t remind her of her brother, but Henry does. He’s also small for his age, bookish, and polite. He insists on calling Gretel Mrs. Fernsby and connects her name to the “Hansel and Gretel” (1812) fairy tale published by the Brothers Grimm. Henry recaps the plot to “Hansel and Gretel,” and Gretel tells Henry about Marie Antoinette. She was the queen of France during the French Revolution. The masses took power and cut off her head.

Henry says he lives in Flat One, and Gretel says she lives above him in Flat Two. Henry is a big fan of the Harry Potter franchise, and he’s read all 11 books twice. His mother, Madelyn, makes him read a different book before he can return to Harry Potter, so he reads Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure novel Treasure Island (1882), and Gretel feels like someone hit her. Henry asks if she’s okay because her face is “all funny.” Gretel blames age. She tells him she’s 126. Henry says he’s nine.

Henry hurt his arm—it’s in a cast and a sling. Gretel asks him how he injured his arm, but his mother calls him inside, so Henry can’t explain.

Back in 1946, M. Vannier tells Gretel that she and his son can’t be friends—romantic feelings will get in the way. He also doesn’t want Gretel distracting his son from his job.

Émile arrives, and his father leaves for lunch. They kiss, and Gretel reminds Émile that he hasn’t seen her since Sunday when Toussaint took them punting. Toussaint drank too much and almost crashed the boat. Émile wishes he was there, and so does Gretel, but she thinks Toussaint is in love with her—older men want “innocent” girls like Gretel. Émile wouldn’t label Gretel “innocent,” but when Gretel gets upset, he claims to be joking.

Gretel gets Émile to agree to let her come over on Thursday night when his father will be out with a romantic partner. Gretel asks about Émile’s sexual history—he’s only had sex once. They kiss more, and Gretel brings up Toussaint again. Émile says Toussaint falls in love with every girl. He has known Toussaint since he was little. Louis and he were close friends. Louis joined the Resistance because of him. Gretel wonders why Toussaint acted like Émile was a stranger.

Gretel sits with Heidi as a man fixes her oven in 2022. Decades earlier, someone claiming to be a “gas board” representative tricked Heidi out of almost $250, so when someone comes to her house to fix something, Gretel is there.

Heidi gushes over Alexander Darcy-Witt—he looks like the American actor Richard Gere, smells like sandalwood, and has remarkably white teeth. Gretel isn’t as enthusiastic about Madelyn. She doesn’t seem happy, and she doesn’t work. Heidi says that looking after Henry requires work, but Gretel says Henry is in school most of the day, proposing that maybe Madelyn is the type of woman who works out in the morning, has lunch with friends, and then is drunk by “teatime” (late afternoon).

Gretel mentions Oberon’s Australia plan, and Heidi thinks the idea is ridiculous. She’ll be dead within a month if she moves. She might as well move to Mars.

In the hallway, Gretel runs into the oven repair person. She notices his accent, and he tells her he’s from Poland. The man asks Gretel what she knows about Poland, and Gretel covers the part of her arm where the Nazis tattooed numbers on concentration camp inmates. The repair person mentions his grandmother, but Gretel cuts him off and runs into her apartment, where she sees Henry reading Treasure Island in the garden.

Before Gretel meets up with Émile on Thursday night, she bathes and puts on her best dress. Her mother warns her about having sex before marriage, though these same standards do not apply to men, and Gretel thinks having sex with Émile will separate her from her family.

In Émile’s house, she sees a picture of his father and departed mother on their wedding night. They looked miserable, but they loved each other—they were just nervous. She also sees a picture of Louis, who looks strong and defiant.

Before they have sex, Gretel promises to meet Émile outside the shop at six o’clock in the evening. The sex is aggressive and doesn’t pleasure Gretel. She thinks she hears Louis encouraging his brother to be rougher.

Back in 2022, a slammed door and shouting wake Gretel at one o’clock in the morning. She sees Madelyn outside on the curb in her underwear. Madelyn takes a rock and drags it across her forehead, bruising herself. Gretel prepares to go outside and stop her from further self-harm, but she hears a man scream, and then she sees a man go outside, pick up the cursing and kicking Madelyn, and bring her inside.

After 20 minutes, Gretel thinks she can return to bed, but then she hears the man from Flat One scream again. She sees Henry hiding in the garden, and then she watches the man—Alexander Darcy-Witt—pick him up and press too hard on Henry’s injured arm. Henry cries, his father drops him, and Gretel thinks he might kick his son—instead, he picks him up less harshly. Alex senses Gretel watching him and makes a face that reminds her of a ferocious soldier.

Soon, Gretel hears footsteps on the stairs: Alex is outside her door, and his thumb covers the peephole. She retreats into the living room and freezes. After 10 minutes, she looks out the peephole: Alex is gone.

Gretel’s mother is hopeful. Tonight—Sunday—Toussaint is taking her to dinner. He tells Nathalie it will be a night she’ll never forget, and Nathalie thinks he’ll ask her to marry him. She can be a respectable woman again. Gretel reminds her mother what happened last time she was a lauded woman.

Gretel suggests leaving Paris and starting over with their real names. Nathalie believes that’ll lead to Nuremberg and infamy. Her mother doesn’t think they should be guilty of the crimes committed by Gretel’s father. Nathalie insists that neither she nor Gretel knew anything. Nathalie was a wife who obeyed her husband, and Gretel was a kid.

Gretel thinks they’re guilty, so Nathalie smacks her and blames Jewish people for causing unrest before and after the war. Distraught, Gretel says she wishes she was dead.

Émile leads Gretel through side streets and tells her she’ll remember this night for the rest of her life. Gretel realizes Toussaint told her mother the same thing, and Gretel tells Émile that Toussaint said he didn’t know him, despite Émile saying he’d known Toussaint for years. She thinks Émile lied, and Émile thinks Gretel is a “whore,” and he pushes her inside a warehouse filled with people of different ages and economic statuses. She sees her bloodied mother, and a man kicks her into a chair.

Rémy Toussaint appears and declares that Nazis hanged his brother, Victor, from a tree. Émile and his father then speak about Louis. Others share what Nazis did to their loved ones. Toussaint calls Gretel the “devil’s daughter” and labels her and her mother “monsters.” They rip off their dresses and confront them about their Nazi pasts. Toussaint asks Gretel if she wants to burn forever with her father, and, much to Toussaint’s surprise, Gretel replies yes.

Émile announces that they don’t kill women. Instead, they brutally slice off their hair. Blood drips into Gretel’s eyes, and she urinates on herself. Her mother faints, and a woman slaps her awake. Nathalie makes a sound that’s neither human nor animal. Gretel feels like her scalp is on fire. She whispers for help and wonders if people in the “other place” begged similarly. She sees her brother carrying a copy of Treasure Island and goes toward him.

It’s 1970, and Gretel is in a psychiatric hospital in London. She and Edgar have a young son, though Gretel waited four months to tell a doctor or Edgar that she was pregnant. She also considered an abortion and prayed for a miscarriage.

Gretel didn’t breastfeed her son, and she avoided taking him out in the stroller, so Edgar’s mother, Jennifer, helped raise Caden. He was becoming more like Gretel’s brother and exploring. One day, he went under the fence put up by the people building up the land behind Winterville Court. After a few moments of panic and terror, Gretel found Caden wearing a hard hat and having a good time with the foreman. For the first and only time in her life, she “laid hands” on Caden, slapping him so hard that he fell. She doesn’t remember much of the rest of how she ended up in the hospital.

Dr. Allenby works with Gretel over guilt. At first, Gretel tells Dr. Allenby the story her mother invented. The shearing in France pushed her mother to embrace Nazi rhetoric. Gretel didn’t push back—she didn’t want her mother to hit her again. Gretel feels guilty, and she thinks of guilt as an all-consuming presence. Eventually, she tells Dr. Allenby the truth and, after a year, gets to go home.