Bridal Chair (42 page)

They parted tearfully, agreeing that Charles could not miss his appointment to show Marc the photos he had taken at Ida’s wedding. Their relationship would have to remain a secret until they came to a decision about their future.

Virginia returned to Les Collines. She was surprised when Marc called and asked with false solicitude about her friend’s health and about the weather in Menton. His questions unnerved her. It occurred to her that he might have discovered her deception, but she immediately dismissed the thought. When Marc was with Ida, he thought of no one else, least of all Virginia.

“When will you come to Paris?” he asked more urgently.

“As soon as the ceramics are ready,” she replied. “The kiln has promised them for the late afternoon of next Monday, and I will leave as soon as they crate them and put them in the car. But of course, I cannot drive through the night. It will be too exhausting. I will stay over somewhere, perhaps in Dijon.”

“If you must,” he agreed sullenly.

“I must.”

She hung up elated. She and Charles would have yet another night together.

She called him, and his excitement matched her own. They met in Auxerre, and once again, their night together commingled passion and tenderness. As dawn broke, they spoke with great sadness of what they had to do. They could not and would not be illicit lovers forever.

She wept at the thought of hurting Marc. She trembled at the thought of Ida’s fierce anger. And the possibility of losing David loosed a torrent of wild grief.

“And what of David, my David?” she asked.

“David is still David McNeil. Marc has no legal claim to him,” Charles said firmly. “You are not married. His biological paternity is irrelevant. You will not lose your son.”

He explained that he had consulted a lawyer friend who had given him that assurance. Virginia stared at him.
A
lawyer
. That he had taken such a step gave their situation a new and frightening reality.

She wept again. Charles wiped away her tears and held her close.

“We cannot part,” he said. “We must not part. Not ever.”

He held her close and gave her a sealed envelope.

“My letter to you,” he said. “My pledge. Do not open it until you are in Paris.”

She nodded her agreement.

* * *

The letter was still in her purse when she reached Ida’s home on the Quai de l’Horloge.

Neither Marc nor Ida embraced her. They did not even rise from their seats to greet her.

“We are exhausted,” Marc claimed. “We have been working hard, very hard. There have been many meetings with collectors and dealers. Endless negotiations. Marc Chagall, it seems, has become an industry.”

“But that is your choice,” Virginia responded. “No one forces you to sell your work, to negotiate for the best venues, the best prices. You are an artist, not a business.”

Ida wheeled about, her face frozen in anger.

“But those very negotiations you hold in such contempt pay for your life at Les Collines, for your children’s tuitions, for your automobile. My father’s work, and my own, subsidize your freedom,” she retorted.

“What freedom?” Virginia asked bitterly. “The freedom to be at his beck and call—and yours? The freedom to account to you for my every move?” She stood defiantly before Ida, her hands on her hips, her eyes ablaze with anger.

Ida was seized by a sudden fear. It was a new Virginia who confronted her, a woman whose passive acquiescence had dissipated, a woman who was drawing from a new source of strength. She knew, with a sinking heart, that her suspicions had become a certainty. Virginia had not been caring for a friend in Menton. Clearly, there was another man in Virginia’s life. Despite her previous fears, she did not believe that it was Charles Leirens. After all, he had come to Quai de l’Horloge during Virginia’s absence from Les Collines, exuding avuncular good will as he showed them the wedding photographs. He was, Ida thought, incapable of such artful deception.

She thought of what she might say to Virginia, of the questions she might ask, and decided at once that she would say nothing, ask nothing. Virginia’s fidelity was irrelevant. It was selfish, perhaps, but it was important to her that Virginia and her father remain together. Virginia and the children guaranteed him companionship. Marc was incapable of living alone. He would sink back into the quagmire of depression that had engulfed him after Bella’s death, a depression that had swallowed up Ida’s own life until Virginia’s arrival. If Virginia left him, he would once again be dependent on Ida. That inevitable dependency would impact on her own life and on her new and as yet untested marriage.

She turned to Virginia.

“I misspoke,” she said apologetically. “Certainly I recognize and appreciate all that you do for my father. As does he. Isn’t that true,
Papochka
?”

He shrugged and did not reply. Their exchange had unnerved and angered him. How dared Virginia complain about her life with him? He had rescued her from poverty, given her a home, a son. Her ingratitude astonished. Who knew what else she was capable of?

He continued to unpack the ceramics, his back to her. Virginia recognized his punishment by silence. He and Ida ignored her as they studied the pieces, discussed their placement at the vernissage and speculated about the prices they might command. Ida had visited the galleries that had Picasso’s ceramics on offer and had been startled to see the large sums that were demanded for the smallest works.

“And I think the work of Marc Chagall is as good as the work of the Spaniard,” he said, once again in the mode of referring to himself in the third person.

“Of course it is,” Ida agreed.

At last, the ceramics were safely stored, and Marc and Virginia left for their hotel. Ida had made it clear that the separate apartment in her home was for her father’s use only. Virginia was not welcome, an arrangement that suited Virginia, who preferred the privacy of the small hotel. They entered their room in silence and Marc immediately drew the blinds, blocking out the invasive lights of the Quai Voltaire. They sat briefly in the darkness and then Virginia lit the bedside lamp, opened her case, and removed her floral-patterned dressing gown.

“I am exhausted,” she said. “I am just going to shower and go to bed.”

He watched as she draped the dressing gown over her arm, picked up her purse, and walked toward the bathroom. Suddenly he sprang from the bed, leapt across the room, and wrenched the purse from her hand.

“Why would you take your purse into the bathroom?” he asked harshly.

He opened it and dumped the contents on the floor. Her wallet, the photos of the children, a battered compact, a comb missing several teeth, lozenges wrapped in cellophane, fell into a pathetic heap, topped by a sealed white envelope. She rushed to seize it, tears streaking her cheeks, but he grabbed it and waved it triumphantly.

“Now we shall know the truth,” he shouted.

“Give that to me. It’s mine,” she pleaded.

“Nothing is yours. You have nothing but what I’ve given you. The clothes you wear, the shoes you stand in—it is I who paid for them.” He kicked at the contents of her purse, lifted her wallet, and shook out the franc notes. “Did you earn these?” he shouted. He waved the envelope, ripped it open, and removed the letter.

“You have no right.” She lunged toward him, but he thrust her away.

“I have every right. But do not fear. I will read it to you,” he said. “My darling.” His voice quivered, but he continued. “How wonderful our nights together have been. You are part of my life. We cannot ever part. We are both free. We must marry and live together for the rest of our lives. No matter what it takes.
Je
t’aime
.
Votre
Charles.” Marc’s voice escalated to a shriek. “
Votre
Charles,” he repeated, his face mottled with fury. “This Charles of yours, this miserable Leirens, he is a monster. A liar and a deceiver. And you are a whore, worse than a whore, a mother who abandons her children to be with her lover, a woman who lies to me, her protector, a woman who lies to my Ida who has been a friend to you.”

He shredded the letter and tossed the scraps of paper at Virginia, who crouched on the floor. They fell onto her hair, covered her shoulders. He thrust her onto her back and struck her across one cheek and then the other. He pounded her mouth with his clenched fist. She moaned softly, too weak to scream. He gripped her wrists and held her prisoner.

“Tell me. Tell me everything. For how long has this been going on? For how long have you been deceiving me?” he hissed.

She struggled to find her voice, aware of the strength of his body, of the closeness of his face to her own. His blue eyes blazed, and his breath was soured by fury.

She spoke. She told him of how she and Charles had been drawn to each other, that they had shared two wonderful nights together.

“You were lovers?” He thrust her away as though the sight and touch of her were repulsive.

“We are lovers,” she replied. “We will remain lovers.”

“You dare to tell me, after all our years together, after all that I have done for you and your children, that you have been with this liar, this hypocrite. He came to Ida’s house and pretended to be an innocent friend of the family. He had the nerve to sit with me, I who am the father of your child. He spoke, that charlatan, as though nothing had happened, although he must have come to us only hours after being with you. How could you have deceived me so cruelly? When did you intend to tell me about him? Did you intend to ever tell me about him?”

“Yes. I intended to tell you. I needed to find the right time, the right place. I did not want it to be like this,” she replied.

Her mouth tasted of blood. She patted it with her handkerchief and she saw that he was staring down at the scarlet stains on the white linen square. It occurred to her that he was memorizing the color, that he was already translating their confrontation into a painting.

“I am going to Ida,” he said. “I must speak with her.”

He turned then and left the room, slamming the door behind him. She remembered his quarrel with Ida, all those years ago, when infuriated by her demand for money, he had lifted a chair then and would have bludgeoned her with it had not Virginia intervened.

There had been no one in this hotel room at the Hôtel du Quai Voltaire to intervene for her. She wept then because her life with Marc, a life that for so many years had been infused with beauty and adventure, had come to such a bitter end. She wept for her small son who might lose his father, and for her daughter who would surely lose her home. She hugged herself and swayed back and forth, her bruised body racked with sobs, and then she reached for the phone and called Charles Leirens. In a trembling voice, she told him that Marc knew they were lovers. She did not tell him of the violence of his reaction. She did not want Charles to hate Marc. She herself did not want to hate him.

Charles rushed to meet her, and they walked at a funereal pace along the Seine. It had snowed earlier in the day and the silvered frost that carpeted the river path crackled beneath their feet. Icicles, like frozen tears, dangled from the low branches of trees. Charles wore a heavy jacket, but in his haste to meet her, he had forgotten his scarf. She removed her own and tied it around his neck.

“I don’t want you to be cold,” he said.

“But I’m not cold,” she assured him. “In fact, I am too warm.”

She felt as though she were in the grip of a fever, so soaked with sweat that her clothing adhered to her skin. And then suddenly a chill ambushed her. She shivered and pressed her body against his for warmth. They reached the Champ-de-Mars and went into a café.

“All will be well, Virginia,” Charles assured her softly. “We love each other and we will be married. Your children will be my children. I have savings. I have work. You have nothing to fear. Marc will soon realize that he must accept what has happened between us.”

“Strangely enough,” she said, stirring her café au lait, “it is not Marc whom I fear. It is Ida.”

He nodded.

“I understand,” he said.

He knew Ida to be a formidable woman, as ferocious when she was angered as she was passionately generous when she was pleased. He had photographed her often enough to understand the complexity of her moods, the depths of her affection.

“I must go back to the hotel,” Virginia said. “I must find out how the children are. They were to have called this evening.”

“Will Marc return?” he asked.

“I imagine so. But it will be all right. He will be calmer.”

He had, after all, been quiescent after his fierce quarrel with Ida. His violence, even unrealized, had drained his fury. So it would be with her now, she told herself.

She was not wrong. He returned, his face still frozen in anger, but he was restrained. He paced the room, now spewing bitter words, now weeping, now accusatory, now pleading.

“How could you have betrayed me? Don’t you recall all I did for you? I rescued you from poverty. I educated your daughter and gave her a home. Ah, you are cruel. You are a cruel and ungrateful woman. A harlot.”

He muttered in Yiddish, went to the window, pulled the shades up and down. Minutes later, he wept, fell to his knees.

“What am I to do? Am I to be alone? Will you leave me?”

His bright blue eyes were red-rimmed, his shoulders bowed, his hair a tangle of uncombed, steel gray curls. She sat very still. She could not comfort him. Such comfort demanded words she could not say, promises she could not make.

“You must go to Ida with me tomorrow,” he commanded. “Will you do that?” The command became a plea.

They went together the next day to Ida’s home. Ida, regal in a black velvet dress offset by a heavy silver necklace, her hair in a severe bun, directed them into her living room. Seated in a large chair upholstered in a gold fabric, she motioned Virginia to the low seat opposite her. Her living room was a court room. She was the judge and Virginia was the defendant. Virginia shrugged and sat down. She stared up at the painting of
The
Bridal
Chair
, surprised that Ida had not yet moved it to her home in Switzerland. But then perhaps she did not want her home with Franz to be haunted by this relic of her first marriage.