Madame Girard was in the hallway buttoning up her coat. “I’ll be out when you return. Bringing my sister fish, though I don’t know why,” she grumbled. “If she had the gout I do, she wouldn’t ask me to come out.” She eyed the mask. “What’s that? Did that woman bring it yesterday?”
“This?” I touched the metal. Today it didn’t feel so cold. “It’s a fresh start.”
I went to Les Halles to find the things I remembered her eating, things that I could find at the end of winter, in a city still caught in food shortages. Grapes, dates, a basket of late brown medlars. A loaf of crusty ficelle bought at an exorbitant price. I tucked it into my coat. Chestnuts, of course, a pocketful. It took a while longer to find oranges in the middle of winter, but I found a vendor with small, bruised Spanish oranges.
The old flower seller was waiting on her corner. “Flowers for your sweetheart?”
I dug into my pocket for my usual change and my usual line. In her basket were small bunches of wood violets, just like the ones that grew beneath the chestnut tree. So I smiled, the one half of my mouth matching the other on my mask. I smiled and said, “Yes, I think I will.”
She laughed, toothlessly. “I knew you’d find one.”
“She found me.” I took the flowers, the fragile stems damp.
The last thing I bought, from a narrow shop on the other side of the market, was a dozen soft Conté pencils. Eight years before, I’d bought pencils for Clare. I’d wanted her to know then that someone believed in her.
I’d spent weeks watching her head bent in concentration as she made my mask. Her face had been serene, satisfied. And, when she looked at her drawings hanging on my wall, exultant. I didn’t want her to lose that the way my own maman had.
Last time, I hadn’t given Clare the pencils. It was that young girl’s dress and that hopeful expression she wore when she ran up to me at Mille Mots. Then, I was afraid of letting her get too close. The shopkeeper wrapped the pencils in paper and I tucked them carefully at the bottom of my haversack. This time, I wouldn’t be afraid.
I wondered if Clare would still be in bed when I returned, wearing nothing but that brown sweater. I pictured her tangled in the blankets, smiling when she opened her eyes. I’d give her flowers. I’d kiss her one more time.
But I turned onto the Rue de Louvre. And I didn’t go home.
I thought I’d wake to a sleepy repetition of the night before, or at least to awkward yawns and blushes. I was already blushing before my eyes were open. I didn’t expect to wake to an empty apartment.
Maybe he was down the hall at the toilet or talking to the concierge. Maybe he’d stepped out so that he wouldn’t disturb me with his pipe. Maybe he’d gone in search of breakfast.
I stretched and waited. And waited. From the street below came the sounds of Paris waking up. Carts rattled, horses snorted, the rare engine from an automobile growled.
I stood and straightened the sweater. The window was cracked and the room chilly. My arms wrapped around my chest, I walked the length of it. I hadn’t even heard him get up. I tried to picture him soundlessly moving around the room, quietly pulling on his clothes. His blue shirt and tie were kicked to the corner, but his jacket and trousers were gone. I picked up the shirt, shook it out, folded it, found his drawer with a few others.
The room looked smaller, dingier than I’d thought yesterday. Was this really where Luc lived? On the desk he’d left a small stack of paper and a fancy gold pen. That one little reminder of his château life.
But that wasn’t all on the desk. He’d left a note, written in a morning-after haze. You’re my happily ever after. I let the note fall back down to the desk and leaned against the chair. Happily ever after.
The night I’d gone with Finlay, I’d stopped myself before anything had happened that I’d regret. I’d remembered my plans. I didn’t need anything beyond a good friend. I didn’t need anyone to take care of, anyone to disappoint, anyone to make me disappoint myself. But last night, when I stepped into Luc’s apartment and remembered that long-ago kiss, I’d stopped thinking. Plans, worries, expectations; I thought of nothing but how perfect it felt to be near him.
His note hinted at a promise I hadn’t made. My words, my kisses, my stepping into his apartment, his bed, his heart—maybe I had made one without realizing it. Maybe I wanted to.
“No,” I said aloud. I pushed through the romantic haze of the night before. I could be pregnant right now, I realized. In that moment of impulse, I might have changed everything.
I lowered the basin of water to the floor and washed, squatting over it. My teeth chattered. No one had ever told me what to do the morning after. I hoped it was enough. I hoped it wasn’t too late. I scrubbed and worried and thought about how quickly plans could change. I poured the water out of the window onto the roof. The morning suddenly seemed too glaring bright.
I didn’t want that. Did I? With a house, a husband, a child, I couldn’t have anything else. The women at the School of Art left when they married. They left or they convinced themselves that art as a hobby, in between planning meals and arranging vases, was enough. I wanted more. I wanted everything I had now.
But I also wanted Luc.
The whole walk home, I tried to pretend that I was simply another Parisian taking the morning air. That I hadn’t just spent the night, alone, with a man. That I didn’t stand on the edge of my future, not knowing how many steps to take before I fell.
When I walked in, Grandfather was sitting hunched at his desk in his shirtsleeves, surrounded by balls of paper and empty teacups. The curtains were shut tight and the kerosene lamp was smoking. The way he turned, blinking, when I opened the door—he hadn’t even realized it was morning.
I waited for him to say something about me appearing well after breakfast, about my skirt wrinkled from a night on the floor, about my hair knotted and pinned without benefit of either mirror or brush.
He didn’t look me up and down, didn’t do more than scratch his nose and say, “Is it suppertime already?” and “Where’s your scarf?”
I went across the room, slipping off my coat, and kissed him on the forehead. “It’s morning, Grandfather. When did you last eat?”
“Noon.” He yawned. “Is that right?”
“That was yesterday.” He’d been using his left cuff as a pen wiper again. “Change your shirt, dear, and I’ll make you a cheese sandwich.”
Though bread was still hard to come by, his baker friend kept us supplied. When he wandered out of the bedroom, it was in a sweater that the laundress had shrunk. The knobs of his wrists poked from the sleeves. He picked up a sandwich, looking faintly puzzled.
“Were you just arriving?” he asked around a mouthful of cheese.
“No, leaving. I have to be to work.”
He nodded and chewed, but wasn’t satisfied. “But then why are you humming? You haven’t hummed in years.”
“I wasn’t humming.” I gathered up the empty cups. “Tea?”
“I’ll make it.” He set down his sandwich. “You think I can’t take care of myself?”
I slipped into my room to change into a fresh blouse and skirt. “Why else are you in Paris?” I called through the door.
“Patricia Clare, you give yourself too much credit.”
