At the Edge of Summer (28 page)

I squeezed her hand.

“And all of the cicadas! Their song was our symphony that summer.” Her hands were warm. “Remember the fable of the cicada who spent all summer singing rather than storing food? La Fontaine, wasn't it? You told me that's why you never hear cicadas singing in the city. Parisian cicadas would never forget their larder.” She laughed. I'd forgotten her little peal of a laugh, so rare. “I understand that now.

“And do you remember the time Bede went missing? Marthe packed us a bag with oranges and brown bread and cheese, and we hiked all day through the pines looking for his footprints. And when I fell and bumped my head, you ran to the stream and carried back the water in your two hands for me to drink. Hardly a few drops by the time you found me again. Did I ever tell you how vile that water was? Muddy and dank. But I drank those palmfuls of water because you brought them.”

My lips moved against the inside of the cast. I wanted to tell her that, yes, I remembered. That I would've gone to the Amazon and back for water if it would've made her feel better.

“Here we go,” she said, and I felt other hands on the side of my face, easing the plaster cast off. When it lifted, my eyes found Clare's. “Do you remember what you said to me the day we met?” she asked.

I remembered her standing in the front hall of Mille Mots like a lost fairy queen. She looked so sad and scared and defiant, all at the same time. I'd offered my hand and ended up giving up my heart.

“You are safe with me,” she said.

M
rs. Ladd had urged a morning off. “You are tireless, Miss Ross.”

“These men have given so much,” I told her. “My time is the least I can give.”

“Miss Bernard did express some concern.” She folded her hands. “She said there was a guest the other day who…affected you.”

Mrs. Ladd had the ability to make suggestions sound like privileges,
mays
instead of
shoulds.
While Pascalle nodded and made shooing motions behind Mrs. Ladd's back, I said, “Thank you,” and stayed home the next day.

I'd taken to watching for the post anyway. I kept hoping that the Crépets would write to me, tell me they were wrong, tell me that they wanted to help. I sat by the window of the apartment, letting my artist's imagination conjure up scenes of happy family reunions. In all of them, I hovered along the edges of the embraces.

I kept myself busy that morning off. After a slow breakfast of tea and a newspaper I wasn't really reading, I bundled up in my coat and cherry-red scarf. I walked to Les Halles through a hesitant snow. I'd make Grandfather a
flamiche,
if I could find leeks.

The market in Les Halles wasn't as bright as any in Africa or Spain. No woven rugs or baskets of couscous or cones of ground spices. The produce wasn't as shiny, the fish not as fresh, the flowers not as plentiful as the other markets I knew. Pascalle promised that it once was and that it would return to that as soon as France recovered. In the meantime, the market was crowded with housewives and cooks doing their shopping quickly with downcast eyes and half-empty bags. American soldiers, ruddy and clean, brushed past the old poilus, faded after four years of war. Those refugees who had nothing to return to, they crouched on corners, waiting patiently for the charity of strangers. My heart ached for them, always, but I couldn't buy enough bread to feed every lost one in the city.

The flower seller, in her spotted head scarf and layers of bright-dyed skirts, waited on her usual corner. “Flowers,
ma chère
?” She held out a small, fragrant bunch of violets.
“
Ask your sweetheart to buy you flowers?”

I gave her a few coins, like I always did, but left the flowers for the next customer. “No sweetheart yet, mademoiselle.”

And there hadn't been. I had my easy friendship with Finlay, but both of us knew it could never be more than that. There'd been a boy in Lagos who tried to kiss me, and one in Seville whom I'd let. There'd been one in Marrakesh, an American artist, who sketched me nude when Grandfather was gone. But none that I'd call “sweetheart.”

I told myself it was because I didn't want to compromise. What good was gaining a sweetheart if it meant losing everything else?

What are you waiting for?
Finlay had asked me once.
Who are you waiting for?
I always answered,
No one,
because I wanted that to be the answer. And because any other admission would break my heart. I didn't want to confess that, even then, even not knowing, I was always waiting for Luc.

I went back to the apartment with my shopping, unpacked my groceries, arranged and rearranged the few stores on my shelves. While I was out, Grandfather had come back from his morning coffee at Café Aleppo, and he'd fallen asleep on the sofa still in his shoes. I paced. I washed my hair. I tried out my new marcel iron. I paced.
Who are you waiting for?

I wished I'd brought Luc's old letters with me from Perthshire, so that I could spread them all out on the bed the way I used to, so I could try to remember a time when he would meet my eyes instead of looking away. But the letters were tucked in my dresser drawer at Fairbridge, wrapped in a silk scarf. Memories, however, weren't so easy to tuck away.

I had a letter that morning, from Finlay. His letters lately had been infused with regret. They'd been doing life drawing, which always made him think of his sister. His letters were filled with lines like,
Stubbornness is no excuse for loss,
and
I'd give up my other leg to go back in time,
and
Why do you still write to a miserable soul like me?
But this last letter was all about the new life model, Evelyn, an aspiring art student with, from the sound of it, the longest legs in Scotland. It held an uncharacteristic note of hope.

I thought to write him back. Tell him about Luc. If I went to post a letter, it surely wouldn't hurt anything if I stopped by the studio for a moment. A quick moment. I'd be passing by and, anyway, I needed to give Pascalle her scarf back. I could even bring her a spot of supper. She'd appreciate it, to be sure. Bread was hard to come by, but I had half a loaf and cut her off an end. As I buttered bread, sliced cheese, scrubbed a pear, and packed it all in a basket with a half bottle of wine, I managed to convince myself that this had been the plan all along. If it so happened that a letter had come to the studio from Monsieur Luc Crépet, so much the better. I brewed mint tea for Grandfather to have when he woke from his nap. I forgot all about Finlay's letter. I caught up my basket, spread a blanket over Grandfather, and headed to the studio.

I heard Pascalle's shout when I was halfway up the stairs. I dropped the basket of food and ran the rest of the way up.

Inside the studio, Luc leaned back on a stack of pillows, his face covered in a thick layer of wet, white plaster. But he was kicking and twisting between strangled cries. Pascalle held him firmly. Across the room the waiting
mutilés
craned their necks over their checkerboards.

I didn't even pause to take off my coat. I hurried across the room and took his hand. “Luc,” I said, “I have you.”

He quieted at my voice, so I knew I had to keep talking. I pulled out memories and long-forgotten adventures. “Do you remember when” and “there was that time” until the sentences ran together. But at each word, the tension left his hand a little bit more. I hoped he wouldn't hear the quaver in my voice, the hitch of worry that made me breathless. When the mask was lifted, he stared straight up at me, not a hint of that guardedness. “You are safe with me,” I said. I hoped he believed me.

Luc's eyes stayed on me as I took the cast to the drying table, as I helped him sit up, as I carefully sponged the plaster and Vaseline from the edges of his face with warm water. I didn't rush, though it was the end of the day and the sun slanted low through the windows. I let those precious still seconds with Luc last.

“Clare,” he said. The first time he'd said my name in years. “Clare, will you?”

The question hung in the air. Behind me, the room quieted as artists and
mutilés
gradually filtered out, headed to suppers and homes and dreams still to come. Mine was right here.

“Luc.” I felt his name against the roof of my mouth. It tasted like summer. “I'll help. Of course I'll help.” I combed down his damp hair with my fingers. “But not only for the mask.” I hated the words as they came out of my mouth. “You have to do more than walk the streets again; you have to walk through life.”

He broke my gaze at last and put his face to a towel. “You make it sound so easy.” His voice muffled through the thick fabric.

“I know it won't be.” I thought of Finlay, of his ups and downs, of his estrangement from his family, of those days when he had to fight with himself just to leave his flat. But also of his classes, Evelyn the model, and his newly hopeful letter. “But the mask is a bandage. To heal, there must be more.”

“Is there more?”

There had to be. Luc walked through the door of that studio, and suddenly the future stretched out, past the battlefields and shells. If he couldn't step beyond all that, then what use was seeing the future at all?

I squeezed the wet sponge, leaving drops of water on my skirt. “Have you found employment?”

He shook his head. “Who would hire someone like me?”

“A hero of France?” My voice echoed in the room. Even Mrs. Ladd had gone down to the courtyard, to rinse the bowls and plaster brushes. “Plenty.”

That old guarded look was coming up again. “Wounds and medals don't make a hero.”

“I'm sure you could take up your old place at the university. Finish your studies. War interrupted that.”

“But then what? I studied to be a teacher.” He wiped the corners of his eyes with a thumb. “I wouldn't inflict myself on a roomful of students now.”

“You'll have your mask.”

He stayed quiet. I didn't know if he was considering or ignoring.

“Tennis?”

He reached to his shoulder in response. I wondered what old wound hid there. “Those days are past.”

“You could coach, I'd think. Couldn't you?”

“Clare.” He sighed. “Don't.”

“Maybe you need something new.” Water dripped into the basin. “I have a pamphlet I'll send with you. There's an institute now, you know.”

“To teach
invalides
and
mutilés
a trade. I know.”

I tried to push a brightness into my voice. “You can learn just about anything. Tailoring, shoemaking, tinsmithing. Clockmaking, I think. Typesetting, binding…oh, all sorts of things.” I blotted along the curve of his cheek. “I had one fellow who trained to be a bookkeeper. He thought of industrial design—that's a choice, too—but decided—”

“Please stop.”

“Close your eyes again.” I moved the sponge to the skin beneath his brow. “Why not art, then?” I said quietly.

“Art?” Behind his lids his eyes moved. “I was never that good.”

“At teaching, you were.” Like at that lesson under the chestnut tree, my fingers were on his face. “I don't know how you would have been at history or philosophy or whatever you were studying to teach, but as an art tutor, you were—” My voice caught. “You were very good.”

He exhaled against my wrist. I knew he was remembering the same scene. “And did it work?” he asked.

“Did what?”

“The lesson.”

“I ended up at the School of Art, after all.” I couldn't keep the pride from my voice.

He smiled, the first one I'd seen in eight years. “See, you were too busy to miss me.”

“But I did,” I said without thinking. “Miss you.”

I expected more of that smile, but his face tensed. “Still so teasing, are you?”

“You once said you were always at my service.” The sponge reached the edges of his scar. “There were days I wished for a knight.”

“That night you spent in Paris,” he said. “You could have used one then.”

He had to be guessing. He didn't know about the taxi ride to that house, about Stefan in the mirror, about the night huddled in the cemetery of a little white-stoned church. My fingers tightened on the sponge. “What do you mean?”

“What happened that evening.”

How could it be more than guessing? I didn't tell him. I'd never told a soul. “I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about.” Water dribbled between my fingers.

“You didn't travel with—”

“No,” I said, too quickly. The taste of Suze rose on my tongue, and it made me flush. I'd gone with Stefan. I'd taken the drink from him. I hadn't locked the door. “I told you, nothing happened.” I dropped the sponge in the bucket with a splash.

He opened his eyes. “Please don't. I'm…sorry.” He was saying it for now and for all those years ago. “Clare, I'm sorry.” Maybe even for Stefan and the night in Paris. “Don't go.” He reached up and touched the knob of my wrist, just once.

Everyone else had left, but I had stayed by his side. And I would, as long as he'd let me.

I turned my hand. Our palms brushed. “I promise.”

T
he mask took me a month to complete. It wasn't because I wasn't diligent. No, it took me so much longer because I wanted it to be perfect. It was Luc. I couldn't give him any less.