Girl in the Afternoon (11 page)

One particular morning Madame Savaray sat in the kitchen feeling worse than usual. It was hot, and she had no appetite. The cook was out getting provisions for the evening meal, and the kitchen was distressingly quiet, and unusually tidy. As if things weren't troublesome enough, she managed to catch the lace cuff of her dress on a rough piece of wood along the arm of the chair.

“Bother,” she said, turning the cuff over in order to pull the snag through to the other side. The more she pulled, the worse it got, and in an instant she saw her whole life in that lace, the delicacy of it, how easily it snagged, how totally out of her control it all was.

She let the thread go, feeling the fragility of her family in every shrinking, aged bone in her body, and the sense that they were careening toward an unforgivable end.

Once the truth came out—and she was certain now that it would—there would be nothing she could do to hold this family together.

 

Chapter 12

Boulevard Malesherbes was unusually crowded as Aimée walked toward the académie, the great dome of the l'Église Saint-Augustin like an overturned bowl in the sky, the rosette window an enormous, watchful eye at the street's divide.

She had finished her painting of Leonie, and with no specific reason to go to Henri's, she'd spent the last week painting at the académie.

The two-way traffic rumbled down the wide boulevard, shiny carriage panels flashing in the sunlight. Aimée felt a quiet dread at being packed into the studio with all those ambitious students and an instructor who gave her exasperated looks and little instruction. Already the city was a white haze of heat, and the studio would be miserably hot.

Aimée decided to change direction, making a left on the rue de Naples, heading toward the rue de Calais. She needed to see Henri.

Two weeks ago she had been standing at his table, arranging her paints, feeling slightly disoriented, as she always did when coming out of six continuous hours of painting. Leonie had left, and Henri was standing next to Aimée reading the newspaper. As she shut the lid of her paint box, her hand brushed the edge of his. Without thinking, she reached out and touched that tender place above Henri's wrist. He flinched, just slightly, but didn't pull away. Then he turned his hand over, and Aimée slipped hers, palm up, inside of his. There was no clutching or embrace, just their oil-stained hands cupped together, Henri's fingers curled over the tops of hers, his hand clammy and warm.

Without a word, Henri pulled away, folded the newspaper, and moved it to the sideboard. Aimée—heart pounding furiously—lifted her paint box, nodded good-bye, and slipped out the door.

Now, walking down the street, Aimée imagined Henri in his apartment quietly waiting for her: sleeves rolled to his elbows, the top of his shirt unbuttoned, sweat beading along his hairline.

Not wanting to arrive empty-handed, Aimée stopped at the butcher's. The woman behind the counter was as plump and pink as the meat she slapped onto the scale, the lace on her crisp white apron standing at attention over her shoulders. With dimpled hands she wrapped a pound of preserved sausage meat, aggressively suggested a slice of larded veal, and, then, a half a pound of ham.

Aimée bought all of it. It was early yet for food, hardly past breakfast, but Henri would have to ask her to stay. At first they'd discuss getting another model together, or taking a trip to Fontainebleau and painting out of doors before the summer was over. Eventually, when they were comfortably settled in each other's company, she'd ask him directly why he left, because it seemed to Aimée that the past, as much as they wanted to ignore it, was the very thing standing in their way.

*   *   *

Henri
held the door open. His lips were red and moist, hair damp at the temples, shirt untucked. His cuff links were removed, and the ends of his sleeves flapped helplessly around his wrists. Aimée could smell his sweat, and almost feel the heat pulsing off his body. His eyes rounded and filled with pity.

Before she could register Henri's expression, she noticed Leonie, sitting on the bed with bare feet, the strings of her blouse undone, her face tellingly flushed. No easel. No brushes. No paints anywhere in sight.

A tingling sensation ran up the sides of Aimée's face, and her jaw tightened as if she'd bitten into something sour. It was all she could do not to let out a wail, collapse on her knees, and beg them not to do this to her.

Flicking his eyes away from Aimée's stricken face, Henri focused on a dark stain on the wall. He could feel the flutter under his left eye start up, a rapid fire of nerves. A hot breeze blew in, and the stench of the courtyard hit him, the smell of manure sharp and pungent. His head began to throb, and he had the urge to cover his face and block it all out.

He hadn't meant for this to happen. Leonie was just a fresh, fun distraction. She was always arriving late, in a whirl of apology. “Hotter than blazes out there,” she would say, and happy to shed her clothes, flash her brazen, gap-toothed smile, uninhibited and endearing, as if she were letting him in on a secret. And, unlike other women, she asked nothing of his past. Said the past was meant to be forgotten.

Aimée's gray eyes were fixed on him, fierce like her maman's. Henri looked down, his hand shaking as he brushed an invisible speck of dirt from his trousers. He wished he had the strength to tell her that he painted
Girl in the Afternoon
because he missed her, but that he never intended to be found. He didn't want to be reminded of the Savarays, of what they had given, and what they had taken away.

When Leonie saw who was at the door she jumped from the bed and rushed over, giving Aimée a fervent kiss as she would have on any other occasion.

“We've been found out,” she said, her lips bowed in a guilty smile. She squeezed Henri's hand. “We were going to tell you, but Henri wanted to wait.” She looked at Aimée's stunned expression, dropped Henri's hand, and clasped Aimée's instead. “You look dreadful. It's really not that bad.” She glanced at Henri. “Is it?” Then back at Aimée. “Are you upset? I don't want you to be upset. I was going to tell you all along, but Henri insisted I wait.”

It felt as if a swarm of moths had flown into Aimée's mouth. There were a hundred sticky wings trapped in her throat, beating their way down to her stomach.

She pulled her hand away from Leonie's. “I was just bringing this by,” she gasped, shoving the packages of meat at her.

“Stay.” Leonie grabbed her arm.

“I'm due at Édouard's.” Aimée yanked her arm away. “I've agreed to sit for him.” She wasn't sure why she chose that particular lie. To make Henri jealous? To show him she was worth looking at?

At that she left, surprised at the overwhelming effort it took to put one foot in front of the other. She had wanted so desperately for there to be something secret between her and Henri, some promise of intimacy, that she had ignored what was right in front of her.
Girl in the Afternoon
meant nothing. He had not been sending her a message. It was just a painting. If he had ever loved her, he did not anymore. He had chosen someone else.

Without any real intention, Aimée found herself at Édouard's. His studio concierge said he wasn't in, so she waited outside, standing in the doorway under the brilliant sun.

Sparks were going off inside her, as shrill and sharp as the train wheels screeching on the tie-rods, the sound racketing through her body as she watched the steam from their funnels billow into an unforgiving sky. Something in Aimée had been set alight by the flush in Leonie's face and those marks on her neck. It wasn't passion, or even pleasure. It struck deeper, more of a wounded, furious desire.

By the time Édouard arrived, the sun was high in the sky and Aimée had wilted in the doorway. When she looked up the buildings tilted sideways.

“Goodness!” he exclaimed, grasping her arm as he fiddled with his key in the lock. “You're as red as a beet.”

“Well, that's good.” Aimée laughed. “Usually it takes a good many slaps to get any color in my cheeks.”

Édouard guided her down the cool, dark hall into the bright studio where he sat her on the divan.

Between the heat, lack of food, and smoke from the trains, she'd become increasingly light-headed. Édouard could see this and with deft fingers undid the buttons down the front of her jacket bodice. He reached around, unhooked her dress, and turned his gaze away as he pulled at the strings of her corset.

“Breathe,” he said, and Aimée felt a rush of air into her lungs.

Before Édouard could draw his hand away, Aimée closed her eyes and laid her head on the inside of his arm, the muscle beneath his starched white shirt taut and fibrous against her cheek. Édouard's hand stayed firmly pressed against the outside of her corset. No man's hand had ever been on that particular place on her body. Not even close.

Her breath came quickly. Édouard was older, practically her papa's age. Forty maybe? That was no matter. Young women frequently married men of his age. They certainly had affairs with them.

That was not Aimée's intention when she laid her head on Édouard's arm. She had not done it with any intention at all. But as the rage and pain of Henri's rejection dissipated with the warmth under her cheek, a deep pulsing between her legs made it perfectly clear that this was what she wanted.

 

Chapter 13

The atelier that Colette entered at the Académie Julian was humid and airless and choked with students. She hung back, away from the men and women crammed in beside one another as they slapped muddy hands over mounds of wet clay. Buckets of cloudy water and encrusted rags littered the floor.

Colette had never been inside an atelier before. There was a sensual, earthy smell, as if the clay had just been dug up from the river, and an exciting indecency in the sexes mixed in such close quarters, all those hands slipping over the malleable masses in front of them.

Lifting her skirt, she picked her way across the room to the
massier
who was kind enough to tell her where she might find Aimée.

She walked into a smaller room, with a skylight directly over a long oak table where a male model stood, nude, save for a cloth covering his male parts. The sun beat down on his head, and Colette wondered how any of them, students or model, could stand to be shut up in such a place.

A stately, white-haired man with thick spectacles made his way over. “May I help you?”

“I am looking for Aimée Savaray.”

The man shook his head. “Not in attendance today.”

“No?” Colette sounded surprised, but she was not. “When was she last in attendance?”

“Yesterday.”

For some reason, Colette didn't quite believe him. “In that case, I'd be grateful if you'd show me what she's been working on.”

“And who, madame, might you be?”

“Madame Savaray,” Colette answered, with unmasked annoyance.

The man grimaced. “Very well. Right this way.”

Colette followed him to a wall at the back of the room stacked with canvases. He pulled one out and handed it to her. It was a half-sketched-in picture of the model on the table.

“What else?” Colette demanded.

Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, the instructor wiped the sweat from his brow. “Nothing else.”

“What do you mean,
nothing else
?” Colette pressed her own handkerchief to the bridge of her nose, blocking the smell of body odor and turpentine.

“One cannot expect to accomplish much in a single week.” The man walked a few paces to peer over the shoulder of a young, female student. “Aimée is skilled, but not committed.” He took the charcoal from the girl's hand and with a great flourish sketched in the shadow of a chin. Wordlessly he handed the charcoal back and turned to Colette. “The greatest painters only became great after a dozen or more years of study. I, myself, exhibited nothing for seven years. Seven years!” He spat the words through a mist of saliva. “Your daughter, at the very least, must show up.”

“Has she not been here the entire summer?”

The instructor raised his thick, white brows. “No, madame. She's not been here at all. Not until a week ago.”

Colette turned from the man and waved her handkerchief over her shoulder. “Thank you,” she called, making her way out of the room, momentarily blinded as she groped her way down the dark stairwell to the clear outdoors.

She strolled up the Passage des Panoramas, curious where Aimée was this very minute. To be lied to did not please her, but to know Aimée was not to be trusted, somehow did. Her daughter's inimitable work ethic, her solitary relationship with her painting, had always made Colette feel inferior. To know that Aimée was capable of disloyalty, that her daughter might be driven by the same reckless emotions that ruled Colette, was a relief.

She slowed in front of the window displays—the fans and silks, leather and chocolate—her thin-heeled boots clicking on the flagstones. She went into one particularly extravagant perfume shop, amber and musk drawing her, and bought an exotic perfume in a crystal bottle with gold leaves pressed into the glass.

If Colette had gone straight home, she would not have discovered anything. As it happened, she stopped in a lace shop and spent almost an hour debating over the Mechlin and the black Chantilly, which put her outside the shop just as Madame Morisot's plump figure stepped out of her carriage.

“Madame Savaray!” Madame Morisot cried, her black silk rustling as she scurried over. “Have you heard? My darling Berthe is engaged to Eugène Manet!” Her round face beamed.

“Really?” Colette tried to picture the lovely, brooding Morisot girl Édouard Manet was so enamored with marrying his brother. “I suppose congratulations are in order.” She couldn't resist adding, “Is Monsieur Édouard Manet back in Paris? He must be thrilled for them.”