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.”
I squeezed her hand.
“And all of the cicadas! Their song was our symphony that summer.” Her hands were warm. “Remember the fable of the cicada who spent all summer singing rather than storing food? La Fontaine, wasn’t it? You told me that’s why you never hear cicadas singing in the city. Parisian cicadas would never forget their larder.” She laughed. I’d forgotten her little peal of a laugh, so rare. “I understand that now.
“And do you remember the time Bede went missing? Marthe packed us a bag with oranges and brown bread and cheese, and we hiked all day through the pines looking for his footprints. And when I fell and bumped my head, you ran to the stream and carried back the water in your two hands for me to drink. Hardly a few drops by the time you found me again. Did I ever tell you how vile that water was? Muddy and dank. But I drank those palmfuls of water because you brought them.”
My lips moved against the inside of the cast. I wanted to tell her that, yes, I remembered. That I would’ve gone to the Amazon and back for water if it would’ve made her feel better.
“Here we go,” she said, and I felt other hands on the side of my face, easing the plaster cast off. When it lifted, my eyes found Clare’s. “Do you remember what you said to me the day we met?” she asked.
I remembered her standing in the front hall of Mille Mots like a lost fairy queen. She looked so sad and scared and defiant, all at the same time. I’d offered my hand and ended up giving up my heart.
“You are safe with me,” she said.
Mrs. Ladd had urged a morning off. “You are tireless, Miss Ross.”
“These men have given so much,” I told her. “My time is the least I can give.”
“Miss Bernard did express some concern.” She folded her hands. “She said there was a guest the other day who…affected you.”
Mrs. Ladd had the ability to make suggestions sound like privileges, mays instead of shoulds. While Pascalle nodded and made shooing motions behind Mrs. Ladd’s back, I said, “Thank you,” and stayed home the next day.
I’d taken to watching for the post anyway. I kept hoping that the Crépets would write to me, tell me they were wrong, tell me that they wanted to help. I sat by the window of the apartment, letting my artist’s imagination conjure up scenes of happy family reunions. In all of them, I hovered along the edges of the embraces.
I kept myself busy that morning off. After a slow breakfast of tea and a newspaper I wasn’t really reading, I bundled up in my coat and cherry-red scarf. I walked to Les Halles through a hesitant snow. I’d make Grandfather a flamiche, if I could find leeks.
The market in Les Halles wasn’t as bright as any in Africa or Spain. No woven rugs or baskets of couscous or cones of ground spices. The produce wasn’t as shiny, the fish not as fresh, the flowers not as plentiful as the other markets I knew. Pascalle promised that it once was and that it would return to that as soon as France recovered. In the meantime, the market was crowded with housewives and cooks doing their shopping quickly with downcast eyes and half-empty bags. American soldiers, ruddy and clean, brushed past the old poilus, faded after four years of war. Those refugees who had nothing to return to, they crouched on corners, waiting patiently for the charity of strangers. My heart ached for them, always, but I couldn’t buy enough bread to feed every lost one in the city.
The flower seller, in her spotted head scarf and layers of bright-dyed skirts, waited on her usual corner. “Flowers, ma chère?” She held out a small, fragrant bunch of violets. “Ask your sweetheart to buy you flowers?”
I gave her a few coins, like I always did, but left the flowers for the next customer. “No sweetheart yet, mademoiselle.”
And there hadn’t been. I had my easy friendship with Finlay, but both of us knew it could never be more than that. There’d been a boy in Lagos who tried to kiss me, and one in Seville whom I’d let. There’d been one in Marrakesh, an American artist, who sketched me nude when Grandfather was gone. But none that I’d call “sweetheart.”
I told myself it was because I didn’t want to compromise. What good was gaining a sweetheart if it meant losing everything else?
What are you waiting for? Finlay had asked me once. Who are you waiting for? I always answered, No one, because I wanted that to be the answer. And because any other admission would break my heart. I didn’t want to confess that, even then, even not knowing, I was always waiting for Luc.
I went back to the apartment with my shopping, unpacked my groceries, arranged and rearranged the few stores on my shelves. While I was out, Grandfather had come back from his morning coffee at Café Aleppo, and he’d fallen asleep on the sofa still in his shoes. I paced. I washed my hair. I tried out my new marcel iron. I paced. Who are you waiting for?
I wished I’d brought Luc’s old letters with me from Perthshire, so that I could spread them all out on the bed the way I used to, so I could try to remember a time when he would meet my eyes instead of looking away. But the letters were tucked in my dresser drawer at Fairbridge, wrapped in a silk scarf. Memories, however, weren’t so easy to tuck away.
I had a letter that morning, from Finlay. His letters lately had been infused with regret. They’d been doing life drawing, which always made him think of his sister. His letters were filled with lines like, Stubbornness is no excuse for loss, and I’d give up my other leg to go back in time, and Why do you still write to a miserable soul like me? But this last letter was all about the new life model, Evelyn, an aspiring art student with, from the sound of it, the longest legs in Scotland. It held an uncharacteristic note of hope.
I thought to write him back. Tell him about Luc. If I went to post a letter, it surely wouldn’t hurt anything if I stopped by the studio for a moment. A quick moment. I’d be passing by and, anyway, I needed to give Pascalle her scarf back. I could even bring her a spot of supper. She’d appreciate it, to be sure. Bread was hard to come by, but I had half a loaf and cut her off an end. As I buttered bread, sliced cheese, scrubbed a pear, and packed it all in a basket with a half bottle of wine, I managed to convince myself that this had been the plan all along. If it so happened that a letter had come to the studio from Monsieur Luc Crépet, so much the better. I brewed mint tea for Grandfather to have when he woke from his nap. I forgot all about Finlay’s letter. I caught up my basket, spread a blanket over Grandfather, and headed to the studio.
I heard Pascalle’s shout when I was halfway up the stairs. I dropped the basket of food and ran the rest of the way up.
Inside the studio, Luc leaned back on a stack of pillows, his face covered in a thick layer of wet, white plaster. But he was kicking and twisting between strangled cries. Pascalle held him firmly. Across the room the waiting mutilés craned their necks over their checkerboards.
I didn’t even pause to take off my coat. I hurried across the room and took his hand. “Luc,” I said, “I have you.”
He quieted at my voice, so I knew I had to keep talking. I pulled out memories and long-forgotten adventures. “Do you remember when” and “there was that time” until the sentences ran together. But at each word, the tension left his hand a little bit more. I hoped he wouldn’t hear the quaver in my voice, the hitch of worry that made me breathless. When the mask was lifted, he stared straight up at me, not a hint of that guardedness. “You are safe with me,” I said. I hoped he believed me.
Luc’s eyes stayed on me as I took the cast to the drying table, as I helped him sit up, as I carefully sponged the plaster and Vaseline from the edges of his face with warm water. I didn’t rush, though it was the end of the day and the sun slanted low through the windows. I let those precious still seconds with Luc last.
