At the Edge of Summer (31 page)

I
woke to a room smelling warm and light, something like summer. Next to me, wearing nothing but my old brown sweater, Clare curled against my side, asleep. In a rush I remembered last night, in little snatches like photographs. The candlelight on her bare shoulders, that smile that tipped up to her eyes, her curls spread out on my chest, the way I could feel her breathing, watching, waiting while I fell asleep. She'd kicked the blanket down in the night and my gaze traced the curve of her hip and leg beneath the sweater. I tried not to breathe. Her feet were tucked up against my knee. I didn't want them to leave.

I edged out from under the blankets. Twenty-four hours ago I'd woken up alone, the apartment feeling too dark and too close. I'd dressed thinking of her, of those few hours in the studio where I could steal glances she'd never miss and tuck away the lilts of her voice like forgotten bread crumbs.

But this morning it was as though I'd let the sun straight into my room. It glowed, and it was all because of Clare.

Clare.

On the floor was a bundle of cloth. A pale brown coat, bright red scarf, striped dress, layers of white that could only be what had been under the dress. I didn't even remember sliding them off. Had I done that?

On the bed, she sighed and toed the blankets.

Yesterday I thought I had nothing in my life but settling. A replacement face. A pamphlet full of replacement careers. Now, I had Clare, at least for a night. For longer? She had come to me.

On the bed, she settled into a rhythm of breathing.

I lifted the edge of the cloth covering the bird cage. Lysander regarded me curiously and I tipped in a flat handful of nuts. “I'll be back with breakfast,” I promised. I tugged the cover back over the cage and hoped they'd stay quiet.

I pulled on my trousers, stiff and wrinkled from a night on the floor next to her clothes. I found a clean shirt in the drawer. My jacket was on the back of the door, where I'd left it yesterday. The water in the basin was tepid. It was the same I'd washed in after coming back from the studio. I slipped my hands quietly in the water.

From the drawer in my desk, I took out a sheet of paper and my gold fountain pen, that too-ornate pen Papa gave me for my thirteenth birthday. I brought that ridiculous pen with me to the trenches. Because, as absurd as it was out there in the middle of war, it was the thing that made me feel like an adult. It made me feel somehow above the muck and playing soldier.

I think often of that summer, of our summer. Last night we were there again. I woke this morning and it was the shade of the trees and the roses and the river below. With your touch, you erased my nightmares. Don't leave, Clare, not now and not tomorrow. You're my happily ever after
.

In the drawer was also Chaffre's little lead Madonna in her case. I'd always before hidden her away, hoping to hide my memories of that night. Today, though, I tucked her in my pocket.

I leaned toward Clare, smelling warm and loved, and kissed her ear. “Don't leave,” I whispered into it, though she didn't wake. I slipped on my mask and caught up her red scarf. Tossing it around my neck, I left the apartment.

Madame Girard was in the hallway buttoning up her coat. “I'll be out when you return. Bringing my sister fish, though I don't know why,” she grumbled. “If she had the gout I do, she wouldn't ask me to come out.” She eyed the mask. “What's that? Did that woman bring it yesterday?”

“This?” I touched the metal. Today it didn't feel so cold. “It's a fresh start.”

I went to Les Halles to find the things I remembered her eating, things that I could find at the end of winter, in a city still caught in food shortages. Grapes, dates, a basket of late brown medlars. A loaf of crusty
ficelle
bought at an exorbitant price. I tucked it into my coat. Chestnuts, of course, a pocketful. It took a while longer to find oranges in the middle of winter, but I found a vendor with small, bruised Spanish oranges.

The old flower seller was waiting on her corner. “Flowers for your sweetheart?”

I dug into my pocket for my usual change and my usual line. In her basket were small bunches of wood violets, just like the ones that grew beneath the chestnut tree. So I smiled, the one half of my mouth matching the other on my mask. I smiled and said, “Yes, I think I will.”

She laughed, toothlessly. “I knew you'd find one.”

“She found me.” I took the flowers, the fragile stems damp.

The last thing I bought, from a narrow shop on the other side of the market, was a dozen soft Conté pencils. Eight years before, I'd bought pencils for Clare. I'd wanted her to know then that someone believed in her.

I'd spent weeks watching her head bent in concentration as she made my mask. Her face had been serene, satisfied. And, when she looked at her drawings hanging on my wall, exultant. I didn't want her to lose that the way my own
maman
had.

Last time, I hadn't given Clare the pencils. It was that young girl's dress and that hopeful expression she wore when she ran up to me at Mille Mots. Then, I was afraid of letting her get too close. The shopkeeper wrapped the pencils in paper and I tucked them carefully at the bottom of my haversack. This time, I wouldn't be afraid.

I wondered if Clare would still be in bed when I returned, wearing nothing but that brown sweater. I pictured her tangled in the blankets, smiling when she opened her eyes. I'd give her flowers. I'd kiss her one more time.

But I turned onto the Rue de Louvre. And I didn't go home.

I
thought I'd wake to a sleepy repetition of the night before, or at least to awkward yawns and blushes. I was already blushing before my eyes were open. I didn't expect to wake to an empty apartment.

Maybe he was down the hall at the toilet or talking to the concierge. Maybe he'd stepped out so that he wouldn't disturb me with his pipe. Maybe he'd gone in search of breakfast.

I stretched and waited. And waited. From the street below came the sounds of Paris waking up. Carts rattled, horses snorted, the rare engine from an automobile growled.

I stood and straightened the sweater. The window was cracked and the room chilly. My arms wrapped around my chest, I walked the length of it. I hadn't even heard him get up. I tried to picture him soundlessly moving around the room, quietly pulling on his clothes. His blue shirt and tie were kicked to the corner, but his jacket and trousers were gone. I picked up the shirt, shook it out, folded it, found his drawer with a few others.

The room looked smaller, dingier than I'd thought yesterday. Was this really where Luc lived? On the desk he'd left a small stack of paper and a fancy gold pen. That one little reminder of his château life.

But that wasn't all on the desk. He'd left a note, written in a morning-after haze.
You're my happily ever after.
I let the note fall back down to the desk and leaned against the chair. Happily ever after.

The night I'd gone with Finlay, I'd stopped myself before anything had happened that I'd regret. I'd remembered my plans. I didn't need anything beyond a good friend. I didn't need anyone to take care of, anyone to disappoint, anyone to make me disappoint myself. But last night, when I stepped into Luc's apartment and remembered that long-ago kiss, I'd stopped thinking. Plans, worries, expectations; I thought of nothing but how perfect it felt to be near him.

His note hinted at a promise I hadn't made. My words, my kisses, my stepping into his apartment, his bed, his heart—maybe I had made one without realizing it. Maybe I wanted to.

“No,” I said aloud. I pushed through the romantic haze of the night before. I could be pregnant right now, I realized. In that moment of impulse, I might have changed everything.

I lowered the basin of water to the floor and washed, squatting over it. My teeth chattered. No one had ever told me what to do the morning after. I hoped it was enough. I hoped it wasn't too late. I scrubbed and worried and thought about how quickly plans could change. I poured the water out of the window onto the roof. The morning suddenly seemed too glaring bright.

I didn't want that. Did I? With a house, a husband, a child, I couldn't have anything else. The women at the School of Art left when they married. They left or they convinced themselves that art as a hobby, in between planning meals and arranging vases, was enough. I wanted more. I wanted everything I had now.

But I also wanted Luc.

The whole walk home, I tried to pretend that I was simply another Parisian taking the morning air. That I hadn't just spent the night, alone, with a man. That I didn't stand on the edge of my future, not knowing how many steps to take before I fell.

When I walked in, Grandfather was sitting hunched at his desk in his shirtsleeves, surrounded by balls of paper and empty teacups. The curtains were shut tight and the kerosene lamp was smoking. The way he turned, blinking, when I opened the door—he hadn't even realized it was morning.

I waited for him to say something about me appearing well after breakfast, about my skirt wrinkled from a night on the floor, about my hair knotted and pinned without benefit of either mirror or brush.

He didn't look me up and down, didn't do more than scratch his nose and say, “Is it suppertime already?” and “Where's your scarf?”

I went across the room, slipping off my coat, and kissed him on the forehead. “It's morning, Grandfather. When did you last eat?”

“Noon.” He yawned. “Is that right?”

“That was yesterday.” He'd been using his left cuff as a pen wiper again. “Change your shirt, dear, and I'll make you a cheese sandwich.”

Though bread was still hard to come by, his baker friend kept us supplied. When he wandered out of the bedroom, it was in a sweater that the laundress had shrunk. The knobs of his wrists poked from the sleeves. He picked up a sandwich, looking faintly puzzled.

“Were you just arriving?” he asked around a mouthful of cheese.

“No, leaving. I have to be to work.”

He nodded and chewed, but wasn't satisfied. “But then why are you humming? You haven't hummed in years.”

“I wasn't humming.” I gathered up the empty cups. “Tea?”

“I'll make it.” He set down his sandwich. “You think I can't take care of myself?”

I slipped into my room to change into a fresh blouse and skirt. “Why else are you in Paris?” I called through the door.

“Patricia Clare, you give yourself too much credit.”

I pulled open the door. “Clare.” I brought my comb and hairpins out into the large room while he made tea. “I was only teasing.”

“And see, that's why I came to Paris.” Between haphazard measuring of tea and water, he ate the rest of his sandwich. “Because I enjoy your company.”

“And my sandwiches.”

He grinned. “Mostly your company. Marie makes better sandwiches.”

“Marie?”

“The baker. You've
met
her.”

I shrugged and attacked the knots in my hair.

“You take care of me, it's true, but you let me take care of you in between. Alice, she taught me that.”

“Grandmother did?”

“We didn't have much time together, but in the time we did have, it was a privilege to take care of her.” He set down the spoon, scattering tea on the table. “I loved her so.”

I set aside the comb. “Grandfather, did she plan to give up her art? When Mother was born?”

He swept up the spilled tea leaves onto his palm. “She was painting up until the day the baby came. She wouldn't have stopped even if I'd asked her. And I never would have. Her passion for art, it awed me.” He brushed his hands over the wastebasket. “It's like yours. You glow with it, Patricia Clare.”

“I still don't feel I've accomplished it all.”

He poured out the water. “You have the years your grandmother didn't. You have the talent and the stubbornness and the compassion to accomplish even more. I'm honored to have been part of your journey.”

I left the pile of hairpins on the end table and crossed to where he stood by the kitchen table. “I'm happy I didn't have to do it alone.”

“You never have to, you know.” He wiped out a mug. “Be alone.”

I inhaled.
Those who love us don't ask us to mask our true selves.