These Good Hands

by Carol Bruneau

  “Like Simone, I wonder?”

  “You’ve noticed, surely” — her gaze was half pitying — “how it’s a disservice, a misappropriation if you like — considering our current problems with need, overcrowding — to make this place a holding pen. For the incurable, I mean. There are better places for them.”

  “But … you found her — Simone — well enough to let go.” What tea I’d managed to down had curdled in my upper gut.

  “Indeed. But you’re missing the point. I’m saying the directeur has little grasp of things. I mean, foisting his responsibilities on us — vetting correspondence, for instance. Judging what’s acceptable for a guest and her family to be told or not told.” Her voice sounded thin, and beyond tired. Bored. “Having Simone removed was in everyone’s interests. Especially her people’s. I’m sure she’s much better off where she is.”

  With appalling familiarity, a familiarity that frankly gagged me and made it impossible to speak, she reached under her skirt, undid her garters and rolled down her stockings. If Novice had been there she’d have called it a striptease — the one thought that kept me afloat.

  Head wasn’t finished. “You’ll find, Miss Poitier, as I have, that a girl sleeps better on a clear conscience. And what’s conscience but the fruits of obedience — wouldn’t your sisters say?” Her raised brow signalled, at long last, my visit’s end. My release.

  ***

  I COULDN’T GET out of there fast enough.

  Once in my room, I found thoughts of Head, Renard, and Mademoiselle tangled in my head, so many balls of wool, a cat inside clawing and unrolling them. But it was Mademoiselle’s demand, its absurdity, that kicked and scratched and wouldn’t let go.

  I tried drafting another inquiry about the blasted statue — tried, then gave up. That a letter like Mademoiselle’s to her dead friend had got through at all, posted on such markedly non-war issue paper, was stunning. What difference, anyway, as long as Mademoiselle thinks I’ve tried? Head’s earlier advice — tainted as it was, all the more so now — came back: Let her think you take her delusions seriously enough to act on them.

  Sister’s voice, too, pestered and begged. What might I do in your place? What would Sister do? Not just regarding Mademoiselle, but Renard, and the escapee he’d mentioned, the boy in the rafle who’d somehow managed to get away.

  Faced with Renard’s request, doubtless Sister would’ve rushed to treat the boy, or whoever needed help, regardless of character or stripe. Sister, who’d catch someone’s vomit in both hands before she’d utter the slang for their privates. She’d have seen any inconvenience or obstacle as opportunity. It’s in giving that we receive, in pardoning that we’re pardoned.

  At least two weeks had passed since Sister’s card came and I had yet to reply. Instead of sleeping, I found myself scribbling:

  Dear Sister.

  I began wringing my fingers. Wringing out their foolishness? All’s well, save the usual, expected ups and downs. You have more than enough on your plate. Forgive me if this is amiss — it’s a queer thing to ask after so long. Please be sure that I mean no impropriety and no harm —

  I stopped again to shake out any stiffness.

  — but I would like to know. I need to know. Please consider my curiosity nothing more than that. It’s a little late to be asking, I admit —

  My hand moving the pen had a mind of its own. A lump was lodged between my stomach and esophagus. — but do you, would you, have any idea recollection of who took adopted my baby?

  I watched the ink set.

  I think of you often and with admiration, seemed the only way to end. But after my name I added a P.S., a proverbial dab of zinc oxide on my conscience:

  What do you know about statues?

  A silly question whose answer didn’t take an expert to anticipate. Statues of Jesus? Of Our Blessed Mother? Or the two together, mother and son, like the Pietà? I scratched it out and sealed the letter inside the envelope.

  Though writing had a sedative effect, the dreams that ensued — annoyingly vivid snippets of Head scolding us all for this and that, consulting her military beau on the methods of our punishment — did not.

  But my dreams weren’t all of Head. In one of them, a doll made of mud was ripped from the arms of a woman sporting a yellow star. The mother could’ve been Simone, all in green, except that when she flashed her ID card, whose picture did it bear but mine, my name typed below it, Mademoiselle Solange Poitier, RN.

  16

  LUNATIC ASYLUM

  ANOTHER DAY? ANOTHER MONTH? YEAR?

  DEAR C,

  I need you to know I was forthright. “Don’t deceive me anymore,” I put in a note to Monsieur — had to. But instead of leaving his hausfrau’s in Paris, he spirited me off to the Loire. To his favourite château, if you please.

  At his little rented castle there was nothing to do but swim and watch bullfrogs. The place surrounded by lily ponds, an island in a stream, and I all alone, Rapunzel in a turret, not a soul to see if I let down my hair or not.

  “Buy me a bathing costume,” I wrote him, “the one I like at Bon Marché: navy blue, size medium, top and bottom.” Might this bring a soupçon of shame to the shameless? The tiniest taste of embarrassment? What glee, picturing him ganged up on by a gaggle of salesladies. The big man making his girly purchase. Their stuck-up titters and giggles. Worse than sneaking around a pharmacy seeking French safes. If they’d been available.

  I did try to work, mind you, in a room the landlady set aside for its light. She cooked dishes like Maman’s, taking me back to our childhood at Villeneuve — when we were one, I suppose — and I was a little girl crouching on the doorstep, skirt tucked over her knees, wanting lunch. I was frightfully hungry. I missed my cat, and my lover. I missed his body, stubby as it was. Sex easily as addictive as salt.

  As my appetites grew, the days became a mirage. The scene beneath my window was like one of Monet’s beautiful paintings, a prettiness that tempted me to take up a brush. After all, people bought paintings. There was nothing I couldn’t render.

  But the test and temper of stone held me.

  Once, I dreamt the château slipped its moorings. Glided downriver all the way to the sea and washed up on Guernsey, giving me over to my old friend and her man. Asleep on the sand, I was awakened by kisses. The kisses of a svelte Monsieur with eyes only for me, the tide scouring away all blights: the hausfrau, the drunken son. Maman’s scandalized hurt, Paul’s piety.

  In the dream I paid my own way and Monsieur had no other women.

  Then he arrived one morning, on the early train, with studies in hand for another commission. And the bathing suit — he brought it! I enticed him on a stroll upstream to a willow-shaded pool. Spreading a blanket over the grass I stripped to my costume, unbuttoned his shirt. Sun haloed the leaves, its warmth moving to those female places he liked describing in pencil. The smell of trees, mud and manure was soothing, but the river’s calliope dizzying. Before I could wade to my knees it all soured.

  The suit felt a little too tight. He waded in after me. The river sucked at his pant legs, tinting his feet. “Are you all right?” Such a stupid question, his hand on my shoulder while I vomited. And just as quickly as loveliness soured, so did his mood. So much for his happy plans.

  “You’re not,” he said, disgusted. “You can’t be.”

  “Oh can’t I?” The sick in my throat, ma petite! And a feeling more raw, of a power mightier than if I’d gained an army’s faithfulness. How else to explain it to one who’ll never know it?

  “A child! A woman like you — a mother?” he spat. “A woman with your gifts. And me, a father?” As if fatherhood were a new invention. His face was perfectly bloodless as he climbed the bank, grabbed the blanket, shook it out. Strange, his not expecting me to do it.

  At lunch I could barely eat his landlady’s duck confit. Refusing to talk, he doodled — a sketch of a woman’s torso, which I longed to rip in half. When he finally spoke, his was the voice of a m
ilksop. “Mademoiselle. If it’s a family you want, I’m just not equipped —”

  Who is, I ask you, darling C?

  “Oh, but isn’t it you who thinks anything’s possible? If we imagine it — if we let ourselves. ‘Our great gift, the imagination.’ ‘I think, therefore I am.’ If you wanted, you would be.”

  “Ah. But that’s a choice. Assuming a person’s able to make it — which is different. Another thing altogether. If I were able, for chrissake, my duty would be clear.”

  To whom — me?

  The landlady hovered, coming to take the plates, and her little daughter brought dessert.

  “Don’t I deserve a kiss?” he said, unctuous and hateful. “The idea of one,” I hissed, raising my fork.

  Snatching his sketch, he scrunched it up and shook his fist. I feared he’d strike me. “Can’t you stop? Can’t you just shut up! Such bitterness!” Then he lowered his voice. “Take care of it. It’s yours to deal with. My dear — you know I’ve always done all I can for you. Yet it’s never enough.”

  With the gentlest flick of my wrist, the wine I swirled in my glass — its taste strangely un-stomachable — went flying. Little drops of red in his beard, red seeping into Madame’s creamy linen.

  He gaped at me as Madame hurried in with a cloth. “Get rid of it.” The cruellest smile was on his face, and any hint of apology was aimed at her, not me. “Be reasonable, Mademoiselle.” As if he was. “A child would make short work of you. A waste, to throw everything away, and for that.”

  Then he had the crudeness, the arrogance, to stroke the wetness from my cheeks with his thumbs.

  “And if I don’t?” For it was crystal clear now, C, how selfish he was, how greedy for his own success.

  And still he minced: “It would ruin me to see you give up your art.”

  “And stop feeding yours.”

  “Mademoiselle? You need reminding, who feeds whom — and foots the bills? You’ve never paid for a thing in your life.” His eyes were as shallow as the pond outside the window, as shallow as the light reflecting up. And I floated leagues above him, do you see? As if he were a dragonfly on a pin, to be twirled between my thumb and forefinger. Because I was alive and he was dead to me. “You inspire me — fine. But your condition makes you confused. You forget: who taught you? Every fucking thing you know.”

  When my hand hit the table the lid danced in Madame’s pretty sugar bowl. But the ghost of a flutter fluttering inside made me hold my tongue — until at its heels a sick wonder demanded to know, “Since when, Monsieur, did you or anyone have a claim on what I do?”

  ***

  ON LEAVING FOR Paris, his parting words were, “There’s a lady in rue Gabrielle who’ll help you. Some of the others have gone there.” You’ve had your fun, now pay for it. Could you have freed yourself from Maman’s voice, her judgment, had she imagined you in this situation?

  A heart beat inside me no bigger than a tadpole’s. Was it something I’d picked up in the river, a parasite, an infection? I told Madame, had her bring gin and draw a scalding bath, two liquid priests to exorcise a demon. Alone in bed, dizzy-drunk, I pictured and cracked open a kind of door to it. In my mind its gleaming eyes were two black pearls, the thing itself a barnacle, its grip fortified by Madame’s remedies.

  By dawn, dear C, I was hopelessly in love with it. For three days I gloried in its weightlessness, swimming in the river while it swam inside me. It acquired a sex, this presence only the landlady and I and Monsieur knew of, so secret it might’ve been a mere figment, triggering fantasies and other flights. Pegasus, hiding in Medusa’s neck unbeknownst to everyone, the winged horse of inspiration waiting to leap.

  I’d never wanted children. Loving you is quite enough, and my idea of hell being mother to many. But in my hot, troubled dreams voices sparred: mine, yours, Monsieur’s, and common sense.

  — Get rid of it. — But it is a child! — The sins of the father loosed on the world … — That’s the son you know about … — He is his mother’s son, not mine!

  In the dead of night these words were knives; my belly a hard, ripe squash, though despite the bathing suit’s tightness I barely showed.

  My voice screamed the loudest: — She is a girl and she is mine. The latter I knew to be true, the former a gut feeling.

  But debate dissolved when, in the dream, my heart-doors slammed shut. Double doors as imposing as those of a grand hôtel — one in the Marais, say — each carved with Medusa’s screaming face.

  Barring me from Monsieur, yes — but also, much more concerning, from the Salon, the papers, the government and all his cronies who thought with nothing more than what was in their pants.

  I don’t need to tell you it’s always been so. Penis-heads guarding advancement’s ladder, claiming the light reflected by women. Look what they did to Medusa! More to her than snake pit hair, that gaze turning the bastards to stone before Perseus arrived waving his sword, his mirrored shield. Did you know, once, she was tongue-tyingly heart-stoppingly lovely?

  ***

  A DISCREET LITTLE notice advertising Madame Lajeune’s “female renovation” ran in the paper, listing the street in Montmartre that Monsieur had named. I took myself to her narrow shuttered house, where the woman — wearing too many frills to be a doctor — dropped tablets into a bottle marked Madame’s Renovating Pills, take as directed. “No luck in a few days’ time, come back,” I was told. Lacking the heart to peek inside it first, I slipped her the envelope Monsieur left for me.

  The pills tasted of turpentine and caused only a bad case of trots, which was problematic, as I was moving out of La Folie and into a little studio down the street, which Monsieur had graciously — I choke on the word — set up for me.

  By now, alas, the pearl-eyed barnacle was a nub of coal.

  When after three days still nothing happened, I found myself behind a curtain off Madame’s parlour, in a room marked by its coldness and the smell of boiled turnips. A woman moaned nearby. I was told to lie still, shut my eyes, lift my skirt. Not so very different, maybe, from when we would play doctor.

  The pain was a piercing, tearing scream.

  “Quiet now,” rasped Madame’s assistant, stuffing something between my legs, getting me onto my feet. “Put her in a hansom cab,” said Madame, who promised to send the bill to Monsieur and that in a day or two I would pass any remnants. “Any troubles, see a doctor. Say you’ve miscarried.” The only doctor I could think of was our Maman’s papa, long gone but once the doctor in Villeneuve. Explaining to him would have equalled explaining to God.

  For days I lay in a kind of dusk. Pain in all its shades moved in and out, an ocean current carrying off this unborn one but not my thoughts of her. A petal drifting towards the dim horizon.

  Monsieur brought freesia from the market on Île de la Cité. Was he inspired after visiting Sainte-Chapelle, that dusty jewel of a church, a marvel of stained glass he called it?

  “Regret is a useless emotion,” he said, spooning soup into my mouth.

  The fever abated.

  “You only love what’s useful. Only what you can touch. You love women only for their cunts.” In his lexicon, Lajeune’s pills were pills. The twist of a wire, wire — no more. “It’s a cruel world, Mademoiselle. One gets used to it. You’ll get over this in time.”

  I’d stopped listening to what he said. His words had no more weight than floating lilies — though he was right in saying he’d be a terrible papa.

  It’s strange, isn’t it, how the briefest taste of the forbidden spawns a craving for it. A craving I squelched by diving into what was familiar and therefore safer. Perhaps my pearl-eyed one would give way to other, living children?

  In work I found comfort, though for many months I was dreadfully low.

  “What ails you?” our brother demanded, coming around now that I had a place, of my own no longer shared with the Master.

  When, out of stupid honesty and seeking absolution, I confessed to my renovation, and that if not for tha
t, he would be an uncle, Paul said, “To his bastard? I can’t imagine. But you! Is there nothing you won’t do for him? You would even be a murderer!” A certain marvel to his righteousness, his bitterness.

  I’m telling you, until the day I was ripped from my life, I never felt lonelier. You know I never liked suffering alone.

  “God might strike you dead, then, mon petit, for talking to me. So maybe you should leave.”

  ***

  CONSOLATION LAY IN work, and in sex, I found. Obtusely? I permitted Monsieur to visit once a week on Tuesdays, afternoons spread into evenings. I was jealous of my time.

  He squandered his on dinners, openings, parties. But sometimes I let him drag me along. At one such an event I again encountered Monsieur Debussy.

  “Still going around with that maker of gamey art, I see.”

  I took this as a musician’s teasing, tamed by his attacking the ivories. The rills and trills he drew from them were rushing, sun-flecked water. I had a tin ear but who cares? His movements moved me: his hands were butterflies barely lighting, the notes they summoned summoning a leafy greenness, while Monsieur limped about kissing old ladies’ jewelled, spotted hands, banknotes dancing in his eyes.

  Neither of us was groomed for the occasion, the pianist and I. The pinstripe silk Monsieur had bought for me was shiny with wear, and Debussy’s frock coat was lumpy-hemmed, as if he’d worn it too often in the rain.

  “But you have doting patrons,” I said. “Tell me your secret?” My question was only half-hearted, at least some of my blazing interest having burned away. “Forgive me — not that you shouldn’t be their darling.”

  “If you think I can fill Opéra Garnier, excuse me, think again. I compose. Performing? Bread and butter. I’d sooner play with no one watching.”

  “Everything’s better with no one watching,” I agreed, thinking of you dressing your dolls. I raised my brow at Monsieur’s hobnobbing, as another Tuesday of his grunts and his rubbery lovemaking and his leaving me alone again began to unfold in my mind. Except, touched by the pianist’s playing, I instead pictured a last dance: young lovers waltzing into that eternity that exists only in dreams.