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.”
