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.
