At the Edge of Summer (27 page)

I'd wanted then to tell him thank-you. I'd wanted to tell him that, yes, sometimes I wasn't as strong as I thought. I'd wanted, with some small part of me, to cling to him and never leave. At Mille Mots, the rest of the world could be forgotten.

But I didn't. I nodded, only once, hoping I could put all of that into my eyes.

Luc, I think he understood. He reached out, took my hand and kissed it. “Always at your service,” he whispered. Then he was out through the bedroom window, across the roof. I went to the window and watched him disappear into the dark. Overhead, Perseus and Andromeda shone. It was the last time I saw him.

Sitting across from Grandfather over a table of pastries and spilled tea, I shook my head. “If nothing else, I owe him my help.”

Back then, all of those years ago, he'd been at my service. Now it was my turn. I could help him get his face back. I could help him reclaim himself.

T
he casualties of war I saw every day were the men who came into the studio. But they weren't the only ones. As I sped from Paris, I saw from the train window the ruin that the war had spread across the countryside. The colors of that first trip to France, those brilliant greens and yellows and oranges and reds, they faded to memory. All I saw around me now were fields burnt brown, blackened stumps of trees, gray piles of rubble.

I got off at Railleuse, my handbag held tight. The station was deserted but still standing. It had been hastily shored up with new lengths of wood at some point, crooked planks that smelled of sap. I called up a mental map and stepped onto the road to Mille Mots.

The dirt was dusted with new snow. Deep tracks cut through the mud, old tracks. I wondered if they were from armies advancing or armies retreating. Maybe both. Littered along the sides of the road were discarded wheels, torn shoes, scraps of cloth fluttering colorlessly against the rocks. I hurried on. Up ahead was Enété—the little cluster of white houses on the road to Mille Mots, the village where Luc and I had stopped on the way home from Paris.

Enété was no more.

Low piles of white stone marked where the buildings had been. The high street was a slick of churned mud. Here, that outline marked the shop where he'd bought me a cool drink. There, those were the walls of the smithy. I could still see the outlines of the blacksmith's anvil, though the rest of the tools were gone. And, here, the charred remains of the bench where I'd sat while the accordion played. Enété had no music anymore. Holding my handbag tight against my chest, I walked from one end of the village to the other. The skeletons of houses and stores and stables, the crumbled mounds of stone, all were still.

The war had been closer than I thought. It had reached across the river to touch the village, to hurl shells and reduce my memories to rubble. The war had ended, but what was left?

I walked on, faster and faster. I passed more scarred landscape, more fields twisted brown and barren, more empty orchards, more ruins of houses and barns, more scraps of lives discarded. This, this here, was what Luc brought home with him, worn across his cheek. The wreckage of the life he used to know. This landscape of loss. Even the poplar tree was nothing but a splintered stump. I walked quickly past so I wouldn't cry. After four years of war, I wouldn't cry anymore.

Night was painting the sky violet around the edges when I turned down the long road between the trees. I held my breath until I passed the last tree. Château de Mille Mots still stood.

But it was dark, so dark inside. No light, not even candlelight, shone behind the windows lining the front. Maybe all of this was a fool's errand. The long train ride, the even longer hike. I should have written first. I should have just sent a telegram.

I set my handbag on the porch step and slipped from my shoes. Stretching my toes, I leaned against the door, to summon up an ounce of energy. The wind sang through the few dry leaves left on the trees, and, below, the Aisne burbled. With my eyes closed, I caught the scent of roses on the air. February, and yet I swore I could smell them. Despite myself, I smiled. Even here, even in the middle of all this, it was summer.

I straightened and rang the bell.

I counted out a minute, then counted out a minute more, before I tried the bell again.
Please oh please.
It echoed in an empty hallway. I waited. Then I slumped against the door.

But, from inside, faintly, movement. And the rattle of bolts being thrown and locks being undone.
“Oui?”
a rich voice asked.

I spun around. “It's me!” I said, lips close to the wood of the door. “It's Clare Ross, returned. Do you remember me?”

Those unlocking hands stopped at my words. Inside, it was silent. My heart pounded.

The door swung open.

Madame stood in the doorway, a sputtering oil lamp in her hand. Behind her, the house was dark and shrouded.

As though she hadn't heard me, she said, “Maud.” The lamp in her hand began to tremble. “How have you returned?”

I reached up to touch my own face. Over the years, without me having any kind of a say in it, it had grown into my mother's. “Clare, Madame Crépet. It's your mademoiselle, your guest, Clare Ross.”

She inhaled. “You're the very image of Maud.”

Suddenly, standing in the doorway of Mille Mots, hearing my mother's name, I was brought back to that day all of those years ago, when I'd arrived, sad and scared and wishing for a friend.

Madame nodded. She must have seen that all slip across my face. “
Chère
Clare. I'm…oh, I'm so sorry.”

It was then that I noticed her plain black dress.

“Oh!” My hand covered my mouth. I knew it couldn't be Luc. “Monsieur…”

She waved her hand, suddenly looking like the brisk Madame I remember. “He's back in the kitchen, cooking me an omelette. My dear child, he's quite all right.”

“Then…”

“Child, I mourn for France.”

T
he Crépets had been living in a corner of the west wing of the château, just the library, a converted bedroom next to it, and the kitchen.

“There's been no electricity for years and, these days, not enough coal to heat the whole château.”

Monsieur Crépet looked up from the pan on the stove. “And that wall in the east hallway. We do not have that either.”

“Ah, yes.” Madame filled a cracked mug with
vin chaud.
“I'm sorry, there's no sugar. But I can grate some cinnamon.”

“It's fine, thank you.” I settled onto a stool at the table.

“And in two minutes, mademoiselle, an omelette.” Monsieur tossed on a handful of crumbled cheese, looking as sure as he ever did with color and canvas. “I can work with pan as well as palette, eh?”

Madame touched his cheek.

The kitchen was dim and cluttered. It had none of the haphazard order it once had. Also, the line of birdcages was missing. “Marthe?”

“She's well. She's gone to stay with her sister in Brittany.” Madame dipped her head to the pan and inhaled the egg and garlic and tang of cheese. “Ah, but even without her, we eat like kings!”

Monsieur quickly kissed her cheek, earning a blush. “
Ma minette,
I will take care of you.”

I cradled the mug of hot wine. “Madame, Monsieur, I came here today to talk about Luc.”

The air in the room turned brittle. “Luc?” she repeated in a thin voice. “Oh, he's fine. He was lucky, really.” She busied herself wiping out two more mugs. “Did you know he's living in Paris, the way he always wanted?”

Monsieur silently slid a plate with a wedge of omelette in front of me.

“I do know.” I inhaled. “I saw him.”

She froze. “You did?” She set the mugs on the table, suddenly animated. “Please, where is he? Where is my boy?”

“He doesn't write to you?” I asked. He always had before, every day he was in Paris as a student.
Maman, I ate ratatouille. Maman, I read Tacitus. I thought of you, Maman, at the pink sunrise.
She'd read them aloud to me at the breakfast table.

She shook her head. Monsieur Crépet came up behind with a handkerchief, which she took. He sat across from me. “Every once in a while a package will arrive with bread or salt or tinned oysters—something we can't get here,” he said. “Once it had a bottle of
La Rose Jacqueminot
wrapped in sheets of
Le Figaro.
” He reached behind for his wife's wrist. It was always her scent.

“And once in the package?” Madame said. “My old sculpting tools that he carried with him into war.” She leaned against her husband's chair. “We know he's alive and in Paris. Anything beyond that, he doesn't want us to know.”

I took a swallow of my wine. No sugar, but there was a swirl of honey. “He was wounded. Did you know?”

Madame hesitated. “Yes.”

From his seat, Monsieur closed his eyes.

“I told him it doesn't matter,” she said. “I saw him after he was discharged a few years ago. I told him none of it mattered. I just wanted him to come home.”

“Madame, I want that too. I came to ask for your help.”

Monsieur stood and took her arm. “Rowena.” He pulled her into his chair. “Clare, please eat.”

They watched while I took a sip of wine, while I cut my omelette. Monsieur nodded encouragingly as he served up the rest. Madame bit her lip. After I'd eaten half—the cheese cooling, the edges going limp—he finally said, “Tell us.”

“I work in a studio on the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs,” I said. “We make masks for
mutilés.
” At the word, Madame flinched. “He needs help, please. I want him to come in, for a mask, for our other resources.” I took a deep breath. “I want to help him the way he once helped me.”

“And you want us to convince Luc that he should come to your studio,” Monsieur said, setting down his own fork.

Madame had a forefinger pressed to her mouth. Eyes distant, she shook her head. “No.”

“Madame?” I sat up.

“We can't. We don't know where he is, and even if we did, we couldn't go and plead. He'd never come home then.” She turned to her husband. “Don't you see, Claude? He said he needed time to know himself. If we go to push him towards a mask rather than—”

“Don't you want him here,
ma minette
?” He pushed aside the plates and mugs to sit right on the table in front of her.

“Of course. I want you both here, the way things were before. But I scared him off once. I don't want to do it again.”

He put his hands on either side of her face. She brought hers up to his shoulders. They made their own little circle.

“He won't be content with any absolution we give him. With any face,” she said. “He has to find both on his own.”

Monsieur looked searchingly into her eyes. She nodded and, finally, so did he. “Mademoiselle,” he said, dropping his hands. “I am sorry, but we cannot help you.”

“You must,” I pleaded. “This is what he needs.” I slid a scrap of paper across the table. “I copied it from our registry book. His address. And, below that, mine. Please, we've helped many
mutilés.
”

Madame flinched again at the word. “No more.” She pushed the address back towards me. “We've always taught Luc by just leaving him be. He learns through his own mistakes and successes.”

It was no different than the way Grandfather had raised me, letting me get lost in the maze of Seville's streets, cheated in the Djemma el Fna, heartbroken thinking of Luc on a beach along the Mediterranean. “When I was here,” I said, “broken in two after my father died, Luc didn't leave me be. I won't abandon him either.”

I
stood before the gate of 70 bis Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, a package in my hand. It had arrived Monday, wrapped in brown paper, addressed to my apartment. The only person who had ever written me there before was Mabel.

It was a
santon,
made from red Picardy clay. He was shaped and painted with loving care. But he wasn't a shepherd or a water bearer or one of the usual
santons
Maman put in the Christmas
crèche.
This one, with palette and brush, was a painter. A painter wearing my old face.

On the back, written in gold with a feather-fine brush, were the words,
An artist must see beyond the shadows to the colors hiding there.
When I opened it, when I traced the script on the back, I felt something strange. For the first time in years, I felt hope.

I wrapped the statuette and went through the gate. The courtyard, with the crooked tree and basin of rainwater, was quiet.

The studio wasn't as bustling as my first visit. Two women, dressed sensibly alike in crisp white blouses, dark skirts, and neckties, smoothed clay over cast molds. One woman, in a gray smock, with a paintbrush tucked behind one ear, stood near the window and squinted at a mask in her hand. It was the older woman, who I'd met at the gate with the basket of pears. I couldn't see the mask, but it glowed with enamel, the colors of flesh stretched across bone, of shadows and ridges. I began to see why the waiting
mutilés
looked so hopeful.

Madame Ladd, I spotted right away, in careful consultation with a small bearded man who looked so French and provincial and artistic. Papa would've felt at home in this studio, with its airy sunlight and the sounds of Paris through the windows. If he ever traded the tranquility of the countryside for a studio, it would be one like this.

Under the flags, soldiers were grouped in a cluster of horizon blue, smoking and laughing. Tumblers of wine and dishes of chocolates were scattered between checkerboards and playing cards. One young man, in an apron and narrow spectacles, refilled glasses almost overeagerly, wiping down tables after each pour. One half of the room a studio, smelling of clay and turpentine and the sharp tang of galvanized copper, and the other half practically a café.

I didn't even realize I was looking for her, searching every face in the room, until a pert woman stepped up. “You are Monsieur Crépet? Monsieur Luc Crépet?” She tucked bobbed hair behind her ears.

It still felt odd to hear my name, as though I were the same person I was in the past. The same Luc. “Yes. I have an appointment.”

“I'm Pascalle Bernard.” She tightened the sash on her apron. “Today, I will be taking a cast of your face.”

“Mademoiselle, you?” I glanced around. “I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude.”

“You're not,” she said, though with an edge to her voice. “Is there something the matter?”

“No, but the artist who sketched me the other day…” I stepped farther into the room, wondering if she was tucked into a corner. “She…”

“Mademoiselle Ross?” She drew her lips into a bow. “She is not in today. I will be beginning your mask.”

I took a step backwards. “I don't know.”

“Please, monsieur.” She waved to the young man with the apron and bottle of wine. “Évrard! Come, bring a glass.”

The man filled one and bounded across the room, sloshing wine as he went. He wiped the edge of the glass with his towel and then offered it to me.

“I might not—”

“Just a glass of wine.”

I took it. The glass shook in my hand.

“Don't be nervous,” Mademoiselle Bernard said.

“I'm not nervous.” I straightened. “There should be nothing to be nervous about, correct?”

“Nothing.” She nodded to the young man. “You know, Évrard here came to the studio thirteen times before he stayed long enough for a mask.”

Évrard hung his head, but the smile didn't leave his face.

“And see what it's done for him.” She gestured.

Tucking the towel into his waistband, Évrard reached behind his ears and unhooked the temples of his glasses. But when the glasses pulled away from his face, they brought a mask away with them, a mask I hadn't noticed until now.

The smile that didn't leave his face, it was painted on. The eye, the nose, the cheek, all replaced what was missing below. He had lost so much more than I had, yet, when he slid the mask back on, I realized what he had gained.

The paint was smooth, and the pale color of his skin, even down to the shades of dark stubble on his cheek. So thin that, when it was on, I saw no seam. It must have been a glass eye, but it sparkled the same pale blue as his other, surrounded even by curls of eyelashes. He raised his hand in a salute. Without thinking, I saluted back.

“Do you see, monsieur?”

Hands still shaking, I drained the glass. “Where do I sit?”

Mademoiselle Bernard led me to a chair in the corner. “We will make many casts of your face. We need both positive and negative casts…positive means that—”

“If you please,” I said softly. “I grew up surrounded by artists. I understand positive and negative.”

She looked delighted. “Then you have nothing to worry about. You are safe in my hands.”

“I'm not nervous,” I said for the second time that day. This time, though, it wasn't said to convince her. I was trying to convince myself.

“As I said, we'll need to have positive and negative casts of your face as it is now, and then, from these, we'll build up your face as it was then. We'll cast it in copper and then an electric deposit of silver.”

Despite myself, I was interested. “Why in silver?”

“It will add to the mask's durability.” She smiled. “We'll paint it, fit it with the attachments that will secure it to your face, and
voilà
! You, monsieur, will have a new face.”

Although I tried to avoid it, my fingers flew to my cheek, to the rough pits and gouges. “And the old face?”

“It's still yours, monsieur,” she said quietly. “A memory of a time when you were stronger than what you were fighting. A reminder that you came home.”

I exhaled. “I think I'm ready to begin.”

With a quick smile and a nod, she led me over to a low chair, backed against a table. “If you'll sit, please, I'll make you comfortable.” She brought a stack of bed pillows to the table and covered them with a spotted sheet. “Lean back against these.”

I settled back as she draped me with another sheet, from the neck down. “I feel like I'm at the barber for a shave.”

She picked up a bowl of something pale and creamy. “Nearly.” She scooped up a fingerful. “It's Vaseline. I'll rub it on your face and—”

“Please…” Suddenly my jokes didn't feel so funny. Just nervous conversation, as they often were. “May I?”

“What, rub on the Vaseline?”

I held out my hand for the bowl.

Instead she set it down and leaned against the table. “Monsieur, I know you are sensitive to your condition, but, to help you, we must touch your face at times. Please let us.”

“No one does.”

Of course, the doctors in the hospital had touched my face, when it was still raw and oozing. Surgeons had cut it and stitched it up again. Mabel had washed it and changed the dressings. But since leaving the hospital, since it had begun healing, pink and tight and itchy, that all stopped. Even I avoided touching what had become of me.

Until the first day I came in the studio, and Clare so unexpectedly put her fingers to each side of my face, feeling the scars of the last four years, feeling everything she'd missed, no one had touched me with such gentleness. I didn't trust that anyone else could.

“I'll do it.” I took the bowl and, closing my eyes, began smearing the Vaseline onto my face.

“Be sure you get plenty in your mustache and brows. And along your hairline, if you please.” I kept rubbing until I heard her say, “That's enough.”

I opened my eyes to lashes stuck together.

“You can keep them closed if you'd like. I'll prepare the rest of your face for the plaster.” She pulled a wad of cotton wool to stuff each ear. “We don't want any plaster to drip in there.” And a soft, thin piece of fabric twisted into a rope, snaked along my hairline and was tucked behind each ear.

“Is this how it feels to be packaged in a crate, I wonder?”

“I see your humor has returned.”

“At least until you start.” Through my gummy eyelashes, I saw a bowl on the table, filled with a thick white soup of plaster. “That's what you'll put on my face?”

“Yes, but quickly, before it begins hardening.” She gave it a few more stirs as I settled back deeper into the stack of pillows. “There. That should be ready. The quills and then you can close your eyes.”

“Quills?”

She held up two hollow sections of quill, cut short. “Now this will only be uncomfortable for a moment.”

The two quills went in my nostrils, so it was more than a little uncomfortable, and it definitely was longer than a moment.

“Close your eyes now.”

The first few drops of plaster hit me as heavy and cold as mud. She dripped it across my face, then up over my forehead. I felt it spatter on my eyelids, and squeezed them shut even further. “Relax,” she said firmly, and I tried to oblige. Wet plaster slid along each side of my nose and I inhaled sharply through the quills. “Relax.”

“Easy for you to say,” I mumbled, but she pressed a damp finger to my lips. I flinched.

“Still, now. Please.”

Plaster covered my mouth. If I tried to scream, it would fill my mouth, roll down my throat. I dug my fingernails into my legs.

I wasn't getting air. Those two quills in my nose, I knew they weren't enough. I breathed so fast I could feel them quivering. I need…I need…I couldn't even tell her.

“You're fine, monsieur,” she said calmly. With the cotton in my ears, her voice was wavy, like I was underwater. Or maybe I was faint. I was blacking out, hurtling into the void, going to die. All of those stones in the old well were falling down on me. The ceiling of the quarry was closing in. I'd be buried alive.

And still she wasn't stopping. I could feel the layers on my face getting heavier and heavier. Surely the weight would crack right through my skin and seep into my blood. I wanted to tell her to stop, to tell her that was enough, that surely she could make a mask with what she had right now, but when I tried, my lips tasted like plaster.

So heavy, and hot. How long did she say it needed to stay on? It had been at least a few minutes, more than a few, many agonizing minutes. So hot; was I burning?

“You're fine,” she said again, and I tried to shake my head. “No!” I said. Or maybe it was her, because she was pinning me down, holding my head still. “You mustn't move. Monsieur Crépet, no!”

But I had to move, I had to escape, I had to find a place to breathe. How could they do this to a man and say it was for his own good? My throat tightened. Oh, God, it was closing up. I was dying. I reached up, to touch the mask, to tear it away. I had to.

Then through the fog, a voice broke through, “Pascalle, no!” Commanding. “You can't hold him down like that.” The weight on my chest eased, let go. “He's terrified of small spaces. Oh, Luc.”

Like an angel, Clare was there. “Louise, open the window.” Light fingers unbuttoned the top of my shirt. Cool air reached my chest. “Pascalle, that wet cloth.” She was speaking English, in a tumbled rush. “Luc,” she said in a low voice, “I have you.” Quickly, quietly, she repeated that over and over until my breathing slowed. She took my hands, sticky with plaster, in hers. “I have you.”

A chair squeaked and she sat next to me, still holding my hands. “Do you remember, Luc, all of the wood violets that grew around the chestnut tree? We'd step right over them and the air always smelled sweeter. I was so silly, but I used to take a handful up to my room and pretend that you picked them for me.”