Girl in the Afternoon Page 3

  Madame Savaray dropped her rag in the bucket. “Of course I did.” She heaved herself up with a grunt, her knees taking a minute to straighten. “I dusted all around those.” She nodded at the objects Colette was scrutinizing.

  Sunlight settled on the tubes of paint laid out on a console table next to a row of brushes and an empty wooden palette, the neatness sadly expectant.

  “He’s not coming back,” Madame Savaray said, and Colette stiffened. “I knew it when I saw his face before he walked out, but I didn’t really believe it until I came in here.”

  The light from the window cast a glow, and the flecks of gold in Colette’s eyes jumped like sparks under the low slant of her lids. She was much too beautiful a woman, Madame Savaray thought. There was always trouble to be found in women who were so beautiful.

  “You had better take that thing off by the time this war is over,” Colette said, watching Madame Savaray wipe her hands down the front of her apron. “There will be no end to the gossip.”

  Madame Savaray ignored her. “I suppose if he loves Aimée enough he might come back for her.”

  Heat leaped into Colette’s cheeks, and she tilted her head with a look of subtle confusion. “What, exactly, do you mean?”

  “Goodness.” Madame Savaray raised a single eyebrow. “You and Auguste are fools if you haven’t seen it. Aimée and Henri are quite in love, and you can’t blame them. Putting them in such proximity all these years. What did you expect? I thought you’d have had more sense.”

  Colette’s lower jaw bulged as she clenched her teeth. Lifting her shoulders in a graceful but deliberate shrug, she said, “I do believe you’ve mistaken love for boredom. If Henri cared about any of us, he’d come back. At the very least he would let us know what’s become of him. It’s the benevolent thing to do, after all we’ve done for him.” She moved to the door, flicking her hand as if shooing a fly. “You’ll stop this foolishness soon enough,” she said, walking out.

  In the corridor, Colette scraped her teeth together as she steadied herself against the wall, the sound reverberating in her head.

  Henri simply could not come back. Not now. Not for Aimée, not for any of them.

  * * *

  As her maman made her way down the hallway, Aimée stood at her bedroom window watching a bloody soldier crawl across the street, snow glittering around him in the sunlight. Another soldier leaned against a building smoking a cigarette. Aimée thought the man on his knees was going to ask for help, but he crawled right past as if he had somewhere important to go, as if crawling on one’s knees was a perfectly acceptable thing to do.

  Aimée dug her nails into her sunken cheeks. She wanted to rip out her hair, to scream, to throw something that would smash and fly apart in a million pieces.

  She slammed her fist into the frozen window latch and pushed the window open, letting the cold wash over her. A satisfying line of red blood rode across her knuckle. The soldiers were gone, and a thin cloud cover had swept across the sky, turning it as white as the snow. Holding on to the windowsill, Aimée braced herself against that cold, empty, colorless world.

  For weeks, Henri’s departure had altered the shape of things. Furniture, windows, rooms. Nothing felt certain, not even solid things like oak chairs. Now, the fragility Aimée had felt since Henri left, the tremor under her skin and the loose detached way she moved through her days, had disappeared. She felt shaken awake.

  The extraordinary effort of that soldier crawling along in the bitter cold made the dreadful weight of her own life feel worthless and insignificant. Maybe Henri had felt the same way. Maybe he had left because he needed a way to feel as if he were worth something.

  For the first time since Henri’s disappearance, Aimée forced herself to picture a life without him. She tried to remember who she had been before he’d arrived on that bleak day in April 1860 when she was just eight years old.

  Chapter 3

  There was a light spring drizzle the day Aimée was forced to wear her best dress with the too-tight bodice and ruffles.

  She had been storming around the house since breakfast while everyone ignored her. No one would tell her why they were getting a grown boy from England instead of another baby brother. She assumed it was because the babies kept dying, but children died at all ages, so she didn’t see how this was any guarantee.

  The first baby had only lived for two months, and Aimée, who was three at the time, thought she had killed him because she had poked her finger in his mouth and he screamed the most terrific scream. The nurse whisked him away, and the next day her grand-mère told her that the baby had died suddenly, and they were not to speak of him again. Her maman wouldn’t come out of her room, and her papa went away for a long time, so Aimée assumed they thought it was her fault too.

  The second baby boy was born in the middle of the night. When Aimée asked to see him her grand-mère looked very grave and told her to hush up. There was never any mention of him again.

  Then little Léon came. He lived for two whole years, and Aimée loved him dearly. The first time he slipped his small, fat hand inside of hers, she was startled at how warm and soft he felt. No one ever touched Aimée with that kind of tenderness. Some children were propped on laps, caressed, and kissed. Some held their mamans’ hands in the street, hugged their papas good night. Aimée was not that child. Her papa kept a solid distance between them. If he looked at her at all, it was with a confused, startled expression, as if not sure how she’d gotten into the room with him. Sometimes, her grand-mère would pat the top of her hair, but all Aimée felt was a rattling sensation in her head. Then there was her maman’s bedtime kiss. Colette would swoop in like a bird diving for food and plant a kiss on Aimée’s forehead. But Aimée was certain her maman was just kissing the air up there because she never felt a thing.

  It was Léon who touched Aimée. He curled in her lap and wrapped his hands around her fingers. He kissed her, tugged on her clothes, and grabbed her hair. She didn’t mind the sting of a scratch down her cheek or the accidental poke of an eye. She would pinch Léon’s arms and suck on his plump fingers that tasted of sour milk. He never swatted at her or pushed her away, and she would rub his cheeks and stroke his head, feeling that she could never get enough of him.

  Then he turned red with fever, and his hands became hot as fire. Long after Léon’s face faded from her memory, Aimée could feel the heat of his hand that last time she touched him.

  She didn’t know that a body grew stiff and cold after it died. When they laid his tiny coffin in the ground, she hated her parents for leaving her soft, warm brother down in the dark earth all alone. She wanted to lie down there with him and hold him and tell him not to be afraid. It was her papa who dragged her out of the graveyard.

  Now, some strange boy was coming to live with them. No one was calling him her brother, and yet everyone was behaving in the same way they did when a new baby was expected. A room was made up for him, new clothes were purchased and laid out in the armoire, an elaborate dinner had been prepared, and Colette was glowing with anticipation.

  When Henri arrived, Aimée refused to greet him. Instead, from behind the parlor door, she watched the short, timid boy step into the vestibule. He had hair the color of dirty straw and eyes as blue as the ones on her porcelain doll. An elegant woman wearing a blue traveling dress and an enormous blue hat stepped in behind him. Under the hat, Aimée could see that the lady’s hair was the exact color of the boy’s.

  With one hand held to her mouth, the lady spoke to Aimée’s papa. Aimée couldn’t hear what she said, but her papa looked very solemn, and he kept shaking his head. Colette wasn’t paying any attention. Probably because the woman was exceptionally pretty and her maman didn’t pay attention to anyone who was prettier than she was. Colette crouched in front of the boy, smiling widely, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she brushed his hair from his forehead. After a few minutes the woman in the hat turned to leave, and then turned back, placing her gloved hand on top of t
he boy’s head and giving him an uncomfortable little pat before she was gone.

  Aimée’s parents gazed at Henri as if he had dropped from heaven. Aimée thought he looked rather sickly, although he was richly clothed, and he’d come with a number of large trunks so at least he wasn’t from an orphanage. Maybe his real parents would want him back.

  At dinner her maman told her to speak English so Henri would feel at home. Aimée spoke clear, beautiful French all through the meal, and Colette gave her an icy look and Auguste ignored her, directing all of his attention to the boy.

  Though Aimée promised herself she would stay away, later that night she walked into Henri’s room without knocking and sat down at the foot of the bed. Henri was standing in the middle of the room holding a piece of paper, which he quickly tucked into his pocket. His breeches had shiny brass buttons on the cuffs that glinted in the lamplight as he brushed his foot over the rug.

  “Well,” Aimée said, in English. “You needn’t bother to be nice to me because I have already decided I am not going to like you.”

  Henri smiled. He had a beautiful smile. It made him look like an entirely different boy. “That’s all right,” he said in poor French. “I’m rather used to not being liked.”

  Aimée pressed her lips together. She desperately wanted to ask why he hadn’t been liked, but then it might look as if she wanted to be friends, which she did not, so she said nothing.

  Henri sat down next to her. Color had risen to his cheeks. “I studied French, but I haven’t had much opportunity to speak it. I’d prefer you not speak English to me so I might improve.”

  Aimée turned her head away. He was annoyingly agreeable.

  Sounding very grown-up, he said, “I’ve never been around other children.”

  “Well, I’ve been around far too many.” Aimée glanced sideways at him. “Maman loves having guests, so there are always children in the house. The boys are the worst. I have three boy cousins. They’re horrid, always running about. I can never wear ribbons in my hair because they pull them out.”

  The truth was she envied their freedom. She’d tried to run about and had been slapped so many times that, eventually, it hadn’t been worth the trouble.

  She shifted her whole body so she could look at Henri straight on. “They’ll like you more than they like me because you’re a boy. They always like the boys more.”

  Henri wasn’t sure if she meant her parents or her cousins.

  After a few minutes, Aimée said, “You don’t look like a boy who runs about.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Or one who pulls ribbons?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s good.” She was starting to think a boy she could actually speak with might not be so bad. “Why were you sent away?”

  Henri walked to the other end of the room, gazing up at a large portrait of a great, dead Savaray uncle on the wall. “There was trouble in my family.”

  “What trouble?” This sounded good.

  Henri looked around his new bedroom, his face pale again. “I can’t speak of it,” he said quietly. For some reason he felt as if he were letting Aimée down. “I’m sorry,” he added.

  “You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone,” she pleaded.

  Henri felt her watching him intensely. “I don’t want to.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “Please, don’t ask me to.”

  There was so much sadness in his voice that Aimée, who was persistent and usually got what she wanted, just said, “Well, then, at least make up an interesting lie.”

  Henri looked so relieved that she never asked him again, and now, ten years later, Aimée stood in front of her window imagining Henri had gone back to where he’d come from. She envisioned him walking away with that lovely woman in the big blue hat, holding her hand.

  PARIS 1873

  Chapter 4

  Postwar Paris flourished under the new republic. Streets were rebuilt, renamed. Picture dealers restyled their shops as galleries. Storefronts expanded, windows widened, displays became lavish, indulgent even. Dresses became sleeker and tighter, necklines lower, sleeves shorter, and gloves longer.

  The biggest change for Auguste and Colette Savaray was the birth of their son Jacques, who was born into a house that begged for the distraction of a baby, a boy, a replacement.

  The pregnancy surprised everyone. Colette was nearly forty years old. It was Aimée who should be married and having children. All the Savarays had hoped for was a grandson one day. A boy of their own, after all this time, was like being handed a gift too precious and terrifying to open. They held their breath after Jacques’s birth. For months no one spoke above a whisper. Everyone tiptoed. Even as the boy grew into a fat, healthy baby, no one could quite trust he wasn’t going to disappear.

  That first year, Aimée was afraid to touch him. Watching his wrinkled newborn skin fill into lumps of soft flesh made her uncomfortable. His fists flailing in the air, and the sour smell of milk at the corner of his pink mouth, brought memories of Léon, filled with warmth and comfort and sadness.

  It was only when Jacques came crawling to her one day that Aimée finally picked him up. At first, he just buried his head into the hem of her dress, then, clutching fistfuls of her skirt, he yanked himself to his feet. Aimée stared down at the boy’s crown of fuzzy, blond hair, and waited for him to drop back onto his knees. Instead, he let go, wobbling on unstable legs for the first time. Aimée felt a rush of pride, as if somehow responsible for this triumphant moment. In an instant, Jacques fell backward, and Aimée screamed when his head smacked the wood floor. A scream quickly rivaled by Jacques’s own tremendous wail. Swooping down, Aimée lifted him in her arms, rocking him until he quieted.

  After that she didn’t mind the warmth of his legs wrapped around her middle or his arms around her neck.

  When Jacques was two years old Aimée let him into her studio. She sat him on a sheet of paper in the middle of the floor with sticks of pastels that he quickly ground into piles of dust. When Colette came in she found him covered in pale pink powder.

  “Good gracious, Aimée,” she said, lifting him off the floor and holding him at arm’s length. “He will asphyxiate himself.”

  “Would you rather I give him paints?” Aimée said, and Colette rolled her eyes.

  “Crayons would do, a pencil. Why do you have to be so unreasonable?” she said, walking out with Jacques hanging limply in front of her.

  Aimée spent most of her time in the studio. Becoming educated and honing her talent were her only options aside from marriage. So she filled her studio in the Savarays’ new apartment on the rue l’Ampère with books, splitting her time between reading and painting. She immersed herself in Roman history, French, and Greek, read Livy, Michelet, Aristophanes, Plutarch, Homer, and Plato. She spent hours at the Louvre copying the old masters, and hours outdoors painting the changing light.

  It was only in the silence of painting that she brought Henri back to life. She would listen for his steady breath beside her. Hear the rustle of his shirtsleeve and the shuffle of his shoes. She did not believe he was dead, but she had stopped believing he was coming back for her.

  She became obsessed with drawing hands. Touch, she decided, was what made a person real. At night she’d lie in bed and stroke her fingers up her thighs, imagining the hands of whatever model she’d painted that day pressed against the walls of her skin, trying to feel herself into her own life.

  After a while, hands did not satisfy her. Nudes were what she wanted. Ripe nipples, plump breasts, muscular thighs, taut arms, and full, rippled stomachs.

  She enrolled at the Académie Julian. It was crowded and loud and horribly competitive, but it was the only school open to women, and the only place where she could paint her nudes, turn the bristles of her brush into hundreds of tiny fingers brushing the models to life.

  The noise was frightening—all that snickering, coughing, shuffling, sighing, and general chaotic din that comes with a roomful of people. Bu
t Aimée had never liked painting alone in the three years since Henri had left. At least at the académie she was surrounded by real artists all struggling for the same end. Which, of course, was to get into the Salon de Paris, the official art exhibit of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

  Aimée’s instructor, Rodolphe Julian, told her there was no hope. Her work was too bright. She used far too much blue. Tone it down, he would say. But he didn’t have the faintest notion of values, so his criticism did not deter her. Aimée spent fourteen hours at a stretch at her canvas, took lessons in anatomy, endured hours of life classes. She started keeping real vertebrae in her bureau drawer next to her perfumed paper and visiting cards, which she’d study in the late hours of the night.

  The mistake she made was in thinking that this would be enough, filling her canvases, filling her mind, filling up time. It wasn’t. A part of her was restless and unsettled, expectant. Waiting, always, for something to happen.

  And then it did. At first, the moment appeared insignificant, a passing encounter, hardly enough to change the course of everything.

  It was a mild evening in late November, nothing too cold. The sky was clear with bright flecks of stars and the cool light of a half moon. Already the snow lay thick on the roofs, and the sparrows alighted on the eaves, balancing on twiggy legs.

  Colette Savaray was throwing one of her soirées, and everyone appeared in high spirits as they shed their coats and hats, smiling at Colette and Auguste, who stood side by side, opulent as ever.

  Aimée hovered behind her maman, self-conscious in her green shot silk dress with its low, round neck. Colette had picked out the fabric, much darker than her own pink and white stripes, but a color that suited Aimée.

  A tall man walked through the door, and Colette lowered her chin, keeping her eyes on the man as she whispered to Aimée, “Arnaud Gaudet,” whom they all knew as the wealthy owner of a porcelain factory.