At the Edge of Summer (26 page)

“Monsieur?” a voice asked, quite close.

It was a woman, older, dressed neatly in a deep blue coat and hat. She stood behind me on the street. Over an arm she carried a shopping basket filled with paper-wrapped parcels and little brown pears. “Can I help you?” She straightened a pair of spectacles but didn't look away. “Are you here to see Madame Ladd?”

I took a step back, and caught my foot on a stone. “No.”

“Are you sure? I can walk you in, if you'd like.” She nodded down at her basket. “Or if you'd just like to come in and warm up? I have fresh coffee, real coffee.”

“My apologies.” I straightened my collar, tucked my face down towards it. “This was a mistake.”

She touched my arm. “Monsieur, I don't believe you are one to make mistakes.”

I pulled away. “Then you do not know me, Madame.”

And I hurried away.

I
couldn't keep still all the next morning, watching the door, wondering if he'd walk back through. For years I thought I'd never see him again, and now, I hopefully counted seconds.

“You can't keep your mind on anything today.” Pascalle, one of the other artists, reached across me for the tin of white enamel. “I've never seen you so restless.”

“There's just a lot to do,” I said.

“Then why have you been spending so much time on that one drawing?”

Beneath my fingertips, Luc's face took shape again and again. I drew, smudged, erased, and tried again. Trying to convince myself that I'd made a mistake, that the man who'd been in here, broken and tense, wasn't the same boy who sang jazz songs as he hiked through the Fairy Woods. Even when Mrs. Ladd showed me the letter, the handwriting familiar, the
Luc René Rieulle Crépet
written as plain as anything, I was still sure I had it wrong. My Luc, the Luc who sent me pictures, who told me fairy tales, who sketched in the woods when he thought no one was looking, he wasn't here, he
couldn't
be here.

All of these years, as I tried to ignore the news articles about each fresh battle, to ignore the too-long casualty lists, to ignore the stories the men on leave told in whispers, I had to think that Luc was somewhere else. Walking the grounds of Mille Mots on his mother's arm. Eating mushroom soup with his father in the rose garden. Leaning beneath the old chestnut tree with sketchbook in hand and a smile on his face. I had to tell myself he was there, safe and whole. Because, oh God, I couldn't picture him anywhere else.

Pascalle leaned over my shoulder. “He was a looker, wasn't he?”

Unexpected tears filled my eyes.

“Clare?”

“It's all a mistake.”

“Oh, no.” She hauled me to my feet. “Out with you.” Holding tight to my arm, she steered me out of the studio, down the stairs, and into the courtyard.

It was icy cold out there. Pascalle made sure the door was closed tight and pulled me across the yard near the fence.

“Okay, go,” she directed.

I swallowed back the tears. I'd had so many years to practice. “No, I'm fine.”

“You are not. And the one thing you can't do in there is cry. Not in front of those soldiers. You know that.” She pulled a blue package of Gauloises from the pocket of her smock.

I glanced around, but the brown branches of wild rose twined around the fence and kept us from view. I took an offered cigarette. “No, really, I'm fine. I wasn't going to cry.”

“What did you mean, it was all a mistake?” She tucked a strand of her bobbed hair behind her ear and lit one for herself. “You said that in there.”

“I…” I exhaled. “The soldier in the picture. I know him.”

She leaned forward. “Really? The looker?”

“That's the mistake. It can't be him,
must not
be him.”

Smoke curled around Pascalle's face. “But you have proof, no?”

“The letter he sent to Mrs. Ladd. It's his handwriting, his name. His face looking up from my sketchbook.” The cigarette burned, but I didn't bring it to my lips. “Pascalle, I know it's him.”

“Then there is no mistake.”

“I wish there was.” I leaned back against the fence, ignoring the thorns and the icy metal bars. “It's been years since we've written and even longer since we've seen each other.” I pulled my sweater tighter. “He grew up surrounded by so much beauty. A romantic château, roses, art, parents who loved him to overflowing. For one summer, he shared all of that with me. He doesn't know how to deal with all of this ugliness. Not his face—you know I don't mean that—but the war, the death, the mud, the grief. He's not made for any of that.” My eyes stupidly filled again. “He won't come back!”

With a cluck of her tongue, Pascalle took the cigarette from me. “You're going to burn your fingers. Off for a walk with you.” One-handed, she draped her scarf around my neck. “If he remembers you like you remember him, he'll come back.” And she gently pushed me through the gate onto the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.

I did remember him. But how did he remember me? That summer, I was fifteen and naive, unwilling to accept that my mother was never returning, unwilling to acknowledge that my father had loved me. What had Luc seen? A girl hiding tears, hiding everything. A girl who crept at the edges of friendship. A girl who didn't even know herself.

I wasn't the same, of that I was sure. All morning, looking down at my sketch, I saw the boy in him, but the girl in me—she'd grown up. I'd been across the world. I'd lost family and found family. I'd redefined “home” a dozen times. I wanted to be an artist so badly that, in Glasgow, I played it like an expected role. I wore my bright skirts and paisley head scarves like some bohemian uniform, I lived alone in a chilly garret, I lived on tea and wine. In Paris, though, I truly
became
an artist.

Grandfather had come with me to Paris. He was compiling all those years of research into a book, a book that surely wouldn't be read by more than a handful of enthusiastic old linguists in the world. “I can write in France as well as Scotland,” he said hopefully. “And the coffee is significantly better.” So he came along with crates of books and notebooks filled with his Alizarine scrawl. We rented a first-floor flat with big windows and an easy walk to Café Aleppo, where he could get cups of thick, bitter coffee to fuel his early morning frenzies of writing.

And I, I had a purpose. Every day, I walked to the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs and had a sliver of a role in changing a man's life. After years of following Grandfather around, of filling his pens and overseeing his recordings, I was the one with something to do. Something that mattered. In the Studio for Portrait Masks, I felt like I belonged, more than I ever did at the School of Art.

Seeing Luc sent my heart spinning and wrenching, all at the same time. Once, I dreamt of fairy-tale endings, of castles and white horses. But I'd grown up since then. Whether in Iberia, Africa, Scotland, or France, I built my own castles. I never again waited in tower windows. There was too much of the world to see.

But I saw Luc and suddenly I thought of towers and sunsets. The blush and flutter that came with that kiss under the poplar, they returned. Again, I felt a starry-eyed fifteen. I wondered at Madame and Monsieur and the way she used to touch his face and call him
“cher.”
I wondered if what she gave up was worth it.

“No,” I said aloud, squaring my shoulders. I'd come too far to stop now, to give up all this. For what? To run a household? To take care of one person when I could work to help dozens?

When Pascalle pushed me and her scarf through the gate, I walked home. I would wash my face and eat lunch with Grandfather. He was already home from his morning coffee, engrossed in a book as he attempted to unlock the door.

“Oh, dear.” I hurried over. “Wrong door again, Grandfather.”

The door in front of him swung open to reveal a portly bearded man with a string of expletives. Grandfather looked up from his book and blinked.

I took his elbow and steered him to our apartment down the hall.

“Is it already half past six?” he asked. “I've misplaced my watch.”

“It's only noon and you misplaced your watch three weeks ago when you gave it to an old soldier in the Gare du Nord.” I unlocked the door.

“He was worried he might miss his train.” Grandfather set his book and his hat down on the sofa. “Then why are you home so early?”

“Making you lunch.”

He held up a finger. “Ah!” From the briefcase tucked under his arm, he extracted a paper sack with five
bichon au citron,
not squashed too flat. “Lunch!”

“Is that real sugar on top?” I asked as I put the teakettle on.

“Marie puts them aside for me.”

“Marie?”

“I've mentioned her.” He wiped lemon cream off the books in the briefcase. “Owns the bakery next to Café Aleppo?”

There always seemed to be generous widows and sweets despite food shortages. I didn't remember this one. “Of course.”

“You've been distracted,” he said, stacking the cleaned books on the kitchen table. “I've noticed.”

This, coming from a man who had, on more than one occasion, worn his pajama shirt beneath his jacket. “It's nothing.” I measured tea leaves. “I've been thoughtful at work.”

“It is difficult, I'm sure, to work with these men.” He folded up the towel. “But you've never been distracted before over them. Last night it sounded like you didn't sleep a wink.”

All I'd wanted to do was help the men who came into the studio. When each soldier was brought in, that first time they looked us in the eye and realized that we weren't going to glance away, in that moment it became personal.

But that wasn't what he meant. That wasn't what kept me sleepless last night. It was those blushing dreams I hadn't had in years, the ones where I woke with my arms wrapped tight around my pillow.

“A soldier came in yesterday,” I finally said. I weighed how much to tell him. “But he left before I could finish my sketch.” I inhaled. “I don't know if he'll return.”

Grandfather sat and pulled a pastry from the bag. “Is that all? You've had
mutilés
leave before. Some aren't ready for masks, you said.”

“It's true.” I brought the pot to the table. “Some haven't yet accepted the face they wear already. They aren't prepared to accept a new one.”

He shrugged. “I'm sure this soldier is no different. He'll return when he's ready.”

Without telling him, I didn't know how to explain. I knew Luc, knew how stubborn he was. I knew he might risk much to avoid me. “Not this one.” If he stayed away, it would be my fault. “I can't let him go.” I poured out his tea and missed the glass. I swore in Arabic.

“I was going to ask what made this soldier different from the rest, but you've answered that.” Grandfather handed me the towel he'd used to wipe his books. “When I last saw you this furiously impatient, you were in the Laghouat post office, waiting to see if that Crépet boy had written you.”

I shouldn't have been surprised that Grandfather knew. Though he often lost track of time, he never lost track of me.

He leaned forward in his chair and rested his elbows on the table, eyes bright. “You found him again, didn't you?”

I bit my lip, then nodded. “I almost didn't recognize him.” I pushed away the wet glass and sank into the seat across the table.

The last time I'd seen Luc's face, the face that appeared under my fingertips on the sketch pad, was the day Grandfather came to Mille Mots and told me that he was taking me away. I'd fled to my room and sat on my bed, ignoring the knocking on my door and the pleas to just come out. The window was pushed open and it was Luc. He came over to the bed and said, “You're strong enough for this,” and I finally let myself cry. I'd left Paris and Stefan Bauer for the safety of Mille Mots, only to find a grandfather I hardly knew, ready to take me away from that safety. The ground beneath me kept shifting, but this boy came to find me, to hold me up, and to tell me I was strong enough to do it on my own. He didn't shush my tears or murmur “It will be okay,” because it wouldn't. He held me until I stopped crying, until my shoulders stopped shaking, until I was as drained as a raisin, and he lay me down on the bed.

I fell asleep, but I knew he was still there. Through my hot, flushed sleep, I heard him talking with his mother at the door and I heard him moving around the room, packing up my trunk for me. He fumbled with my wardrobe, dropping boots and rattling drawers, though I'd never seen him anything less than completely sure about everything. When I woke, in a velvety black night, he was curled up on the floor next to my bed.

The door opened and Madame came in to take me down. Grandfather was waiting; he wanted to leave before dawn if we were to catch the boat at Le Havre. From the light coming in the open doorway, Luc stirred. “Luc, she's leaving,” Madame said, then stepped from the room. He sat up on his knees, suddenly alert, his eyes on me. The light from the hall cast one half of his face orange, the other left in angles and shadows.