The Saffron Gate

  ‘I don’t care to hear about it,’ I said, with a small, apologetic smile. ‘Just do what you can to minimise it.’

  He scheduled me for the operation in three weeks’ time, and on a muggy, late June day, it was done. I hardly remembered anything about the operation itself, or Dr Duverger, due to the ether I was given to put me to sleep.

  When I awoke I had a thick bandage on my cheek, and Dr Duverger told me that I must return within ten days to have the stitches removed.

  ‘This time I will definitely be back,’ I said, my tongue still thick from the ether, as he stood by my bed once I’d woken. He smiled, and I attempted to smile back, but the numbness from the medication was wearing off, and the new stitching throbbed.

  Ten days later I was at the hospital, again wearing my best dress, again asking myself why I was acting like a silly schoolgirl. Mr Barlow insisted on driving me. ‘You go on home,’ I told him, as he dropped me off. ‘I’d like to walk back. It’s a beautiful day.’

  ‘You sure? It’s a good hike,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and waved my thanks as he drove off.

  While I waited for Dr Duverger, I took out the pencil and small sketchpad I always carried in my bag, and worked on my rendition of the Karner Blue butterfly. They lived in Pine Bush, and were an endangered species, difficult to spot. And yet I had finally caught a glimpse of one last summer; it was a stunningly beautiful little butterfly with a wingspan of only an inch. It was a male, as the topside of its wings was the clearest azure blue. I knew the females were a darker, greyish hue. Their lives depended on the wild lupin, also blue, with pea-like flowers. My goal was to paint the Karner Blue perched on the wild lupin, both butterfly and flower in different and yet powerful shades of blue, but I couldn’t get the sketch quite right. When Dr Duverger entered I put the pad and pencil on the chair beside me.

  ‘Now, Miss O’Shea,’ he said, ‘we will see the result.’

  I nodded, licking my lips.

  ‘Don’t be worry. I think you will be happy.’

  He gently pulled off the gauze covering, and leaned close to remove the stitches. I didn’t know where to look with his face so close to mine. He had put on his glasses, and I could see myself reflected in them. Once he glanced from my cheek to my eyes, and I immediately looked down, embarrassed that he might think I was staring at him. And yet where was there to look with our faces so close together? This time I didn’t smell disinfectant or tobacco, but only the faint clean scent of his crisp shirt and stiff collar.

  Suddenly I realised he might be married.

  As Dr Duverger removed the stitches there were tiny clipping noises and a slightly painful jerk with each one, making, me wince occasionally. Each time I did, he murmured pardon in an unconscious way. And then, with the last stitch removed, he sat back and studied my face, moving my chin from side to side with his fingers. They were dry and warm.

  ‘Oui. C’est bien,’ he said, nodding, and I noticed his unconscious use of French.

  ‘It’s good?’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and again nodded, looking into my eyes this time. ‘It was success, Miss O’Shea. Good success. And it will continue to heal with time, and within one year it will be less; it will fade. And you can cover it with …’ he hesitated, ‘the powder, or what the woman wears on the face. Look. You see.’

  He handed me the round mirror.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ I said, looking at myself for a moment, then giving the mirror back. ‘For the surgery. And for … for suggesting it. You were right.’

  ‘I’m happy you agree to it,’ he said, standing. I also rose, and we faced each other. He stared at me then, not just at my cheek, but somehow more deeply. It was only a moment, but it was somehow awkward, and suddenly my stomach clenched. But it wasn’t the sick spasm I had experienced over initially coming back to the hospital. This was different.

  ‘Well,’ I said, needing to fill the silence that was both uncomfortable and exciting, and Dr Duverger said très bien at exactly the same time, echoing my word.

  We both smiled, and then Dr Duverger said, ‘So. Good day, mademoiselle. Please call if you have a question, but I think it will go well now.’ Almost immediately he repeated himself. ‘But please, if you have a question … or any pain … you will call, oui?’

  ‘Oui,’ I agreed.

  I left the hospital and walked home in the warm late morning sunshine, thinking about the effect the doctor had on me. I tried to understand the sensations I had felt, standing close to him in the noisy hospital. I hadn’t had a similar feeling since … I stopped. Had I ever felt this way? I thought back to my adolescence, and the fantasies I had entertained about Luke McCallister. But I had been a young and silly girl then, not a woman who lived a practical and quiet life, with no room for whimsical daydreams.

  It was all in my head. Dr Duverger hadn’t looked at me a moment too long, and he hadn’t felt the same strange confusion as I.

  It was all in my head.

  The next evening I opened the front door to let Cinnabar out, and saw a car slowly pull up in front of my house. It stopped, and Dr Duverger stepped out.

  It was so unexpected that I didn’t have time to think about how I felt. As he walked towards the house, I saw that he carried my sketchpad.

  ‘You leave this,’ he said, coming up the steps. ‘I look at your address on the file, and see that I have to drive nearby to visit a patient, so think I will return it.’ He held it out to me.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ I said, taking it. ‘Yes, yes, I looked for it this morning. I couldn’t remember where I might have left it … there’s a particular image I’ve been working on, but I can’t quite get it right, and … ‘ I was speaking too quickly, perhaps babbling. ‘Well. Thank you,’ I said again. ‘It was more than kind of you to go out of your way to return it.’

  ‘I look to your work,’ he said, glancing down suddenly. Cinnabar was twining around his legs. Then he looked up at me again. ‘It is good. The work.’

  ‘Thank you. But they’re just line drawings,’ I said, embarrassed and yet pleased at the thought of him going through the pages.

  ‘But you like this. To …’ He stopped. ‘My English,’ he said, then licked his lips. ‘To draw. The … the … talent to draw is obvious.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, feeling ridiculous repeating thank you over and over, my mind darting about for something else to say. If he spoke about my face I would have felt more at ease. But he didn’t, and I grew more and more anxious and awkward, running my fingers up and down the spine of the sketchbook.

  ‘Would you care to come in and have a cup of coffee?’ I asked, when I couldn’t bear the silence any longer. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I wanted to take them back. What was I doing? Now it would be more, uncomfortable when he found a reason to decline politely. Or … if he didn’t decline.

  ‘Yes. I would like to take le cafè. Merci’, he said, and I had little recourse but to step inside.

  After he drove away I sat on the porch, staring at the street. I was twenty-nine, and this was the first time in my life I had been alone in my own home with a man who wasn’t my father or a neighbour. As Dr Duverger had followed me through the living room into the kitchen, my heart was racing and my throat woolly. But once he sat at the kitchen table and I busied myself preparing the coffee, I realised there was something different about Dr Duverger today. It only took me a few moments to notice that while he was professional and calm in the hospital — the place where he seemed to belong — on my porch and in my kitchen he appeared slightly ill at ease, his English faltering and his face more expressive. As a doctor, with his files and stethoscope, he was in control. But away from the hospital I recognised in him an insecurity, as though he was as unsure of himself as I was when I left the safety of Juniper Road. And seeing this filled me with something I hadn’t felt before, some very small confidence.

  He’s a doctor, but he’s also just a man, I told myself.

&nb
sp; He asked more questions about the sketches in my notepad, struggling with some of the words, and I told him to please speak French if he wished. ‘It’s very different from the French my mother and I spoke,’ I told him, ‘and I haven’t used it since she died six years ago, so I’ll answer in English, but I like to hear it.’

  He nodded, smiling as he sipped his coffee. ‘Thank you,’ he said in French. ‘Even though I speak English daily, and am usually comfortable with it, sometimes … in some circumstances … it fails me,’ he said, and even that small confession gave me more confidence. Did I make him nervous, as he made me, and if so, why?

  We talked a little about my painting. I asked where he was from in France, and he told me he’d studied medicine in Paris.

  He had been living in America for over five years now, he said.

  After half an hour and two cups of black coffee, he rose. ‘Thank you for the coffee,’ he said.

  I followed him to the front door. He opened it and stood there for a moment, looking at me. Suddenly it was hard to breathe.

  ‘I’m glad you made the decision about the operation,’ he said, finally. ‘Now you will again be beautiful.’

  Before I could respond, he went out into the deepening dusk. When he opened his car door he looked back at me.

  ‘Perhaps we will take coffee again,’ he called, and I didn’t know, by his tone, whether it was a question or a statement, and just nodded in a dumb way. Later I asked myself why I didn’t smile gaily, saying yes, of course, as if I were used to being asked to have coffee with French doctors.

  I watched his tail lights until they disappeared from Juniper Road, and then sat on the top step while darkness fell around me.

  Beautiful, he had said. Now you will again be beautiful. I thought of his expression as he had told me that, and couldn’t remember it, or perhaps it was that I couldn’t interpret it.

  Surely it had simply been the doctor — not the man, but the doctor — speaking, pleased with his work on a patient. Surely, for I had never been beautiful.

  I went back into the house and turned on the light over the bathroom mirror, looking at myself, tracing the pink but smoother and narrower line of the new scar.

  Had he said perhaps we will take coffee again in a nonchalant way, knowing we never would? Or had he meant it?

  I turned out the light, my reflection in the mirror now just a shadowy oval.

  I had no idea how to interpret a man’s, words or actions.

  For the next four days I was in a state of anxiety. I didn’t want to walk to the store to buy groceries in case Dr Duverger came when I wasn’t home. Every day I wore one of my two good dresses — either my green silk or a deep plum that emphasised my waist — and periodically checked that my hair was held back securely. I put a good cutwork cloth on the dining-room table. I made a spice cake. I constantly went to the front window, thinking I heard a car door slam, thinking I heard footsteps on the walk up to the porch.

  By the fifth day I was so annoyed with myself for my stupidity — of course Dr Duverger hadn’t really meant it when he talked about having coffee again — that I cut up the drying cake and threw it out for the birds. I took off the tablecloth, snapping it a little harder than necessary as I folded it into a neat square and returned it to the linen cupboard.

  And then I put on my overalls with the muddied knees over an old shirt of my father’s, rolling up the sleeves. I braided my hair into one loose plait, and went out into the back garden and started on the weeds; in the steamy summer heat everything grew so quickly. After neglecting the garden for the last few weeks, the tangle was overwhelming. I hacked and cleared, attacking the coarse thistles and twining bindweed. The sun on my bare arms was warm, and it was satisfying to stab at the earth, the green growth yielding under my hoe. I was angry with Dr Duverger for acting as though he might really be interested enough to come again, but also angry with myself for four days wasted on daydreams.

  I shook my head to drive away the thoughts, and instead imagined the delicate wings of the Blue Karner. Of asking Mr Barlow if he would drive me out to Pine Bush one day soon. Of needing to buy more ochre paint.

  At that I stopped, leaning on my hoe. I had been thinking of things other than my father’s death. It was still there, but the overwhelming sadness had been edged out, just the tiniest bit for short periods of time.

  I went back to the weeding.

  ‘I knocked, but there was no answer.’

  I jumped, turning to see Dr Duverger standing at the edge of the garden. He had spoken in French.

  ‘I’m sorry to have startled you, Mademoiselle O’Shea. As I said, I knocked … then I heard the whistling.’

  ‘Whistling?’ I wanted to answer him in French, but didn’t. I was sure my French was rusty, and it was so different from his. So much less cultured.

  ‘I think it was Grieg. “Solveig’s Song”, wasn’t it?’

  I hadn’t realised I was whistling. I didn’t think I’d whistled since my dad’s death.

  ‘Mademoiselle O’Shea? I can see I’ve disturbed you.’

  ‘No, no, Dr Duverger. I just …’ I rolled down my sleeves, seeing smears of dirt on one forearm and palm. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’ Only a short time earlier I had been angry with him, but now that he was here, I was glad. Excited.

  ‘I know it was rude to just stop by. I had extra shifts this week, but today I unexpectedly had some time off. I did telephone your neighbour, to ask them to call you to the phone, but there was no answer. So I took a chance …’

  I swallowed, thinking of my tangled hair, and the shapeless overalls. I rubbed the back of my hand over my forehead; I was perspiring in the heat. Dr Duverger looked cool, wearing another crisp shirt under his light linen jacket.

  ‘Of course it’s all right, yes. But I must wash my hands, and change,‘I said.

  He gestured at two old Adirondack chairs in the shade under the broad leaves of a basswood tree. ‘There’s no need. We can sit out here. Please, stay as you are. You are looking very …’ he put his head on one side, ‘relaxed. Very relaxed and, if you will allow me to say, it’s a charming effect. Apart from the last time I came, I’ve only seen you in less happy circumstances. Oh,’ he added, ‘I am too forward? You appear surprised.’

  I half smiled, still aware of the tightness of my cheek. I tried to act as if men regularly came into my garden and called me charming, as if smiling was natural for me again. ‘As I said, you just caught me off guard. I … I didn’t expect …’ I stopped, knowing I was repeating myself.

  ‘Come then,’ he said, making a sweeping motion towards the chairs. ‘I’ll only stay a few moments. But it’s so glorious, this weather. And I’m glad to be out of the hospital, even for an hour.’

  I sat on the edge of the seat of one of the Adirondacks, and he sat across from me.

  ‘Do you mind if I remove my jacket?’ he asked.

  ‘No. And it is a glorious afternoon,’ I said, sitting further back. Cinnabar appeared from stalking insects in the grass, jumping rather heavily on to my lap.

  ‘What’s your cat’s name?’ he asked, draping his jacket over the arm of the chair. Without it, I noticed the breadth of his shoulders.

  ‘Cinnabar,’ I said. ‘She s deaf,’ I added, unnecessarily.

  ‘A good name,’ Dr Duverger said, smiling, and I nodded, lowering my face into Cinnabar’s fur so he couldn’t see the effect his smile had on me.

  ELEVEN

  The world became a different place. I became a different person. Over the next month I fell in love with Etienne Duverger.

  He came to see me twice a week. The day and time depended on his shifts at the hospital, but unless there was an emergency, he would arrive when he said he would.

  For the first two weeks we sat in my back yard, or on the porch, or in the living room or kitchen, and talked. Over the following two weeks we went to dinner in Albany twice, and once saw a play.

  He always left my house by ten o’clock; it was only af
ter we’d seen each other four times that he picked up my hand as he was leaving and pressed his lips to it. At the end of that first month he put his arms around me as we stood on my front step, and kissed me.

  I knew, by the look on his face, and the way he moved closer to me as we said our goodbyes, what would happen, and was trembling with both excitement and anxiety. It was the first time I had been kissed, and I was embarrassed by this fact and didn’t want him to know, but I was so overwhelmed by the feel of his lips on mine, of my body against his, that my trembling increased.

  After the kiss he simply held me. ‘It’s all right, Sidonie,’ he said, and I leaned my head against his chest. I could hear his heart thumping, a slow, steady beat, as opposed to mine, which fluttered like petals in the wind. ‘It’s all right,’ he repeated, pressing me closer against him, and I knew then that he must suspect my innocence in the matters of man and woman.

  But that one kiss awakened my body. I realised it had been asleep all these years; I had forced it into hibernation with first my adolescent prayers about my recovery and then, later, because it was easier to live a celibate life without questioning it.

  After he’d left, the night he kissed me, I sat on my bed in the dark, reliving the moment. I wanted to hold on to this feeling of wonder, but I was also troubled in a vague way.

  Dr Duverger was handsome. He was clever and witty; he laughed easily. He had an exciting career, and had lived a life out in the world.

  I didn’t understand why he wanted to spend time with me. Me, with my wild hair and dark eyes and skin. Me, with a built-up shoe and limp, with a permanent, although now less noticeable, seam down my face. Me, with my small and narrow life, lacking experience in so many areas.

  Of course I knew about the world from reading, both the daily newspaper and books, and every morning I turned on the radio to listen to the news reports. But as for actually living … I tried to hide how little I knew about this world — the world beyond Juniper Road and Albany — by making sure Etienne always talked about himself. By forcing him to talk about himself, with my endless questions and my absolute silence as he answered.