Girl in the Afternoon

by Serena Burdick

  Outside the sun was glaring, the sky a blinding sheet of white. Aimée stood blinking, the people around her shapeless, inhuman forms. Voices swarmed like hundreds of insects, and her skin tingled.

  Madame Savaray popped open her sunshade and walked them briskly down the sanded pathway, past lush greenery and rows of sculptures, the milky busts and thighs formless mounds of white behind Aimée’s blurred eyes.

  She forgot about Édouard, she forgot about her parents, she forgot about Leonie, who she was supposed to meet at three o’clock in the buffet. If it weren’t for her grand-mère’s firm grip on her arm, Aimée would have forgotten about her as well.

  Swept up in the herd of bodies pouring out from the Palais de l’Industrie, they dropped onto the Champs-Elysées and found themselves suddenly free, walking swiftly away from the silk and satin and feathers and ribbons and all that sickening perfume.

  “What we need is something to eat,” Madame Savaray said. “Not here. The restaurants will be much too crowded.”

  Madame Savaray slowed their pace, welcoming the shade of the chestnut trees that lined the boulevard. After being packed in like animals, she was grateful for the fresh air. These events took more out of her than she cared to admit, and in spite of the confusing emotions tumbling inside of her, she found herself thinking how a row of chestnuts were more valuable to her than all the art in the world.

  By the time they found a respectable café, Madame Savaray’s knee ached, and she was grateful to sit down. Aimée wasn’t hungry, but Madame Savaray—who hadn’t eaten since breakfast—ate heartily: onion soup, grilled herring with mushrooms and asparagus, which was always her favorite this time of year, followed by a large scoop of praline ice cream. After which she ordered them each a glass of champagne.

  “We’re celebrating, after all.” Madame Savaray held up the delicate flute, and Aimée followed. “To your first of many successes, my dear.”

  Aimée drank the toast stiffly. Drawing the glass from her lips, she asked, “Do you think he was there today?”

  Madame Savaray set her glass down and pushed her empty ice cream dish to the edge of the table. “I haven’t the slightest idea.” She looked around for the waiter.

  “You couldn’t have hidden it from me,” Aimée said. “I look every year.”

  Madame Savaray sighed heavily. “You know, I never realized it until today, but I believe I’ve been looking too.”

  Aimée took another sip of champagne. It tasted yeasty and sour. “Why did he do it?”

  Madame Savaray shook her head. She really didn’t know.

  “I’m not grateful or pleased.” Aimée swirled her drink into a small whirlpool. “I’m furious he had the audacity to paint me. Is that silly?”

  “No, my dear, there is nothing silly about it. He left you. He left all of us. He never came back, and now here he is, brazenly displaying you in his art.” Brazen wasn’t the half of it, Madame Savaray thought. Diffident Henri had turned out bolder than anyone could imagine. Leaning forward, she tapped a long, gloved forefinger on the table. “Anger is appropriate, but useless. Men have reasons for doing things they’ll never reveal.” She only prayed Henri would never reveal them.

  Aimée finished the champagne, liking how light and careless it made her feel.

  Madame Savaray paid for their meal, and they left the café. They were both dizzy from the champagne, and it took considerable effort getting into the cab.

  “I beg you not to mention a word of this to my parents,” Aimée said, holding on to her seat as the horses leaped forward. She pressed her hand to the stone hidden against the soft skin between her breasts, feeling, alongside her anger, a sense of anticipation. Henri was still in Paris.

  “We will not speak of it,” Madame Savaray said. “Unless, of course, your parents saw the painting, in which case we should prepare ourselves.”

  Aimée did not answer. Madame Savaray noted the rise of color in her petite-fille’s cheeks and the flash in her gray eyes. Aimée was not going to leave this alone.

  * * *

  It was after dark by the time Colette and Auguste returned home. From her bedroom window Madame Savaray watched them stumble up the path. Colette tripped and caught Auguste’s arm, her laugh stabbing the air as they disappeared into the house.

  The white thread of a new moon crested the horizon, and Madame Savaray lifted her gaze. She wondered how it was God allowed that shimmering strand so many chances to grow fat, and then thin and new again. She would have liked that chance for herself. No one would think it to look at her now, but she’d once had a fine figure. What she wouldn’t give to feel herself in that body again. She laughed out loud, a sound pinched off by something dangerously close to a sob. It was too late for any of them to begin again; she knew that.

  Bowing her head, she clasped her hands and prayed that Henri not be found.

  * * *

  Aimée sat alone in the parlor, the fire burned down to a bed of coals. Her parents startled her out of a deep quiet. They tumbled into the room laughing, full of whatever they’d had to drink, clearly unaware of her presence. Her papa pressed her maman up against the tapestry wall and kissed her hard, their hands entwined. Aimée watched. This was what she knew of passion, this dark intensity laced with a kind of danger. Whether they were actually in love was questionable, but not impossible. At times Aimée thought she saw something of it between them, before it clouded over.

  Auguste pulled away, watching his wife wipe her slightly parted lips with the back of her hand. She hadn’t given in to him in a long time, and he’d never force her. He waited for times like these, when it seemed she might almost desire him again. He took her hand and turned away, intending to lead her from the room when he saw his daughter, sitting, white faced, on the sofa.

  “Aimée?” He dropped Colette’s hand and stepped forward. After all he’d had to drink, he could be seeing things, and Aimée looked so ghostly.

  “Yes, Papa?”

  “What are you doing up?”

  “It is early yet.”

  “Is it?” He looked over at Colette.

  “I wouldn’t know.” Colette peeled herself from the wall and headed for the door, her movements languid and sloppy. “I’m going to check on Jacques, and then retire for the evening.” She kept her eyes on Auguste. He knew that look. She’d consumed more spirits than usual. He’d follow, quickly, before she changed her mind.

  “Yes, yes, me too, I’m all in.” He glanced at Aimée. “Everything all right?”

  “Perfectly,” she said.

  It was in the doorway when Auguste thought to turn and say to his daughter, “Well done today.”

  Aimée did not answer.

  * * *

  It was not because Colette had had too much to drink that she let Auguste sleep with her that night; it was because she’d seen the painting, Henri’s depiction of Aimée, and it threatened the order of things. It made her feel as if Henri was lurking on the outskirts of their lives, about to take up residence in Auguste’s heart again, about to take away what was rightfully hers.

  Chapter 9

  Kneeling on aching knees with hands latched over a fat brush, Leonie scrubbed the hearth with all her weight, waiting for Aimée—who hovered above her—to say whatever it was she’d come to say.

  Leonie had not heard from Aimée in a week, and since Aimée had not met her at the Salon de Paris as planned, Leonie assumed Aimée was unhappy with the painting and as a result came to sack her as a model, artists being exceedingly fickle and endlessly unsatisfied.

  But Aimée’s thoughts were far from painting.

  “What’s got your face all twisted?” Leonie said while scrubbing rhythmically. “Might as well have out with it.”

  A breeze came through the open window and made the hairs rise on Aimée’s arms. She looked around the damp, fireless room. Moisture collected on the walls, and she watched a single pearl of water run down the whitewash. She thought it would be easy to tell her friend the truth a
bout Henri, to describe the submerged remorse and longing that consumed her. But now she found it impossible to speak.

  “I have a brother,” she finally said, taking a seat at the table with her elbows propped on the clean gingham tablecloth. “Not Jacques, an older brother. One who left years ago.”

  In a voice soft with emotion, Aimée told Leonie that her brother left during the war. He had a falling out with her papa, she said, and they had not heard from him in three years. For some reason she didn’t try to explain that he wasn’t her real brother. Perhaps she thought it seemed more urgent, if there was actual blood between them, and it was this simple omission that she would return to, later on, as her undoing.

  Leonie rose to her feet and stood listening with the scrub brush held in the air.

  A lost brother sounded wonderfully exciting. Leonie had no siblings. Her papa ran off when she was a baby, and her maman died three years later beneath the hoofs of a mad horse. Leonie’s grand-tante raised her, a hardworking tavern maid who’d made the firm decision to remain unmarried and childless. “No need to sacrifice my life for a man who’ll drink every penny I earn away,” she’d said.

  Except for the three months when Madame Fiavre fell ill from white pox—and Leonie was sent to the workshop in order to put food on the table—her grand-tante had worked every day, making sure Leonie stayed in school until she was sixteen. By the time Madame Fiavre was too old to work in the brasserie, she had a nice stash of money tucked away on the highest shelf of the larder. “It’s the simple things that make for a decent life,” she’d always told Leonie. “Don’t go looking for more, and God will reward you for your humbleness.”

  Leonie had her doubts, but she never said a contradictory word. She’d seen children thrown into the street when there was no one to pay the rent. Drunken mamans stumbling after them, beaten by raging papas and in turn beating their own, sorry children whose starved, swollen faces haunted the avenues of Montmartre.

  No one needed to tell Leonie how lucky she was, and she did everything she could to repay her grand-tante. She took in mending from the washhouse when there was no modeling work, read scripture aloud by firelight, and bought her grand-tante’s favorite sweets and the best cuts of meat, pounding the meat into a mushy pulp since her grand-tante’s last two molars had crumbled from her mouth.

  And yet, deep down, Leonie’s life utterly bored her. She listened to Aimée now like a child to a fairy tale, grasping this bit of Savaray drama with relish, thinking how romantic it would be to have a long-lost brother, especially one clever enough to send a message through a painting.

  When Aimée finished, Leonie tossed the scrub brush into the bucket and wiped her hands over the front of her apron, two black smudges appearing down her middle.

  “His name is Henri,” Aimée said. Leonie could hear Aimée’s love for him in the tender way she said it.

  Leonie scurried over, swept her skirt aside, and sat next to Aimée.

  “The question is, how, exactly, are we going to find him?”

  Leonie’s unquestioning support made something swell in Aimée’s throat. She gripped Leonie’s hand. “I don’t know.”

  “You should ask Monsieur Manet. Isn’t he on the salon committee? They’ll know where to find him.”

  Aimée shook her head. “He’d tell Papa.”

  “You don’t want your parents to know?”

  “I don’t think Henri would want it. I’m not sure he even wants me to go digging things up.”

  “Digging him up, you mean. What was the falling out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Years ago Aimée had stopped working the events over in her mind, but now she thought of how she had stopped Henri in the corridor that night before he left. In one breath she had told him she loved him, that she’d loved him for years. First a look of confusion, or disbelief, had passed over Henri’s face, and then an embarrassed smile followed by a fervent kiss. With his hand clutched over hers, Henri had leaned down, brushed his lips over her ear, and whispered, I’ve loved you for years too.

  Leonie pitched forward, her breasts bulging. “I know lots of models. One of them must have heard of this Henri Savaray. Cafés would be the best place to start, assuming he’s still a bachelor. Surely he frequents the usual ones?”

  “It’s not likely,” Aimée said. “Otherwise, Papa would have heard.”

  Leonie squeezed Aimée’s hand. “If your brother’s in Paris,” she said with a determined smile, “we’ll find him.”

  * * *

  It was mid-May when Leonie came to the door, wet from the rain and short of breath. Aimée met her in the vestibule where they clasped hands and nearly ran down the hall and up the stairs.

  They did not notice Colette watching through the open parlor door, her white-knuckled hand latched to the doorframe. Those girls were getting much too familiar with one another. It was one thing for Leonie to model, another entirely to strike up a friendship. It would not do to have Aimée running around with a girl of that class, becoming the topic of hushed intrigue.

  Colette turned to Madame Savaray, who sat with a book splayed open in her lap. “What do you think those girls are up to?”

  The old woman’s chin was tilted so far down it looked as if her spectacles would slip right off the end of her nose.

  “How should I know?” Madame Savaray turned a page, deliberate and absorbed. She had her ideas, but she wasn’t about to share them with Colette.

  Watching Madame Savaray, Colette wished her belle-mère were one of those gossiping old ladies who spoke in low, disapproving voices, inciting scandal with raised eyebrows and knowing nods. Then they could discuss what might be taking place upstairs, why those girls were so giddy and secretive.

  “What?” Madame Savaray snapped. “What are you staring at?”

  “Nothing.” Colette sighed and left the room. Her belle-mère would never be anything but cold and pragmatic, and far too reasonable for gossip.

  * * *

  Upstairs, Jacques woke from his nap. Hearing Aimée, he jumped out of bed and barreled into the hall, running smack into Leonie. For a moment he clung to her. Then he realized his mistake, and darted to Aimée.

  “Hello, dearest,” Leonie said.

  Jacques rolled himself into Aimée’s skirt and buried his face.

  “Not now, Jacques.” Aimée unwound him so abruptly that Jacques backed away and squeezed his eyes shut, wrinkling up his face. Worried he was going to throw a fit Aimée crouched in front of him and softened her voice. “Are you hungry?” she said, brushing sweaty strands of hair off his forehead.

  Jacques nodded and stuck his thumb in his mouth, glancing suspiciously at Leonie.

  “Be a good boy, and go down to the kitchen. Tell Marie I said you could have a whole spoonful of currant jelly.”

  Jacques pulled his thumb from his mouth. “Two.”

  “Very well, two spoonfuls.”

  “Three.”

  “No, two. Now go.” Aimée planted a kiss on his forehead and turned him toward the stairs. “Hold the rail,” she called, and his small hand shot out and slid along the shiny banister.

  Safely behind the closed studio door, Aimée helped Leonie out of her wet coat and hung it on a hook next to her smock.

  Leonie whispered, “I’ve found him,” smiling triumphantly.

  A cool sensation ran along the ridge of Aimée’s collarbone. “Where?”

  “I went to Café Guerbois, and Café de la Nouvelle Athènes, just to be sure, but you were right, no one knew him.”

  Aimée studied the painting she was working on of a young girl swinging open a garden gate. Until now, Henri had remained her ghost, undisturbed beside her. She wasn’t sure she was ready for him to be real again.

  Leonie began unlacing her boots. “I was hoping,” she said, “at the very least, someone might have heard of him and would know where to direct me, but no one had. I met a writer—grim, serious fellow—who suggested a few places.” She pulled her boots o
ff and peeled her wet stockings over her feet. “I went to all of them, but there was no Henri Savaray to be found.” She stood up and laid the stockings on the back of her chair.

  Aimée picked up a palette knife and began scraping off the girl’s hands.

  “I went all over the city. Places I’d never been before, and then, wouldn’t you know it, last night I stopped in a café right off the Place de Clichy, just to get something to eat, and I asked this girl if she’d heard of him—lovely red-haired thing drinking all by herself—‘I have,’ she says in one of those husky, untrustworthy sort of voices. ‘He owe you money too?’ she says.” Leonie stood next to Aimée, watching her scrape away all her hard work.

  Aimée moved from the hands to the girl’s head, wishing she was alone in her bedroom. She would have liked to bury her head in her arms and weep.

  “She told me he dined there nightly,” Leonie went on, excited. “I stayed just to get a look at him. I had no intention of speaking with him, but when he walked through the door that girl went right up to him, demanded her money, and then pointed to me and said, ‘She wants her money too.’”

  Aimée put down her knife and studied the mutilated girl, her head gone, her hands cut off at the wrists.

  Leonie had expected excitement, delight, or at the very least, gratitude from Aimée. A look of shock would have sufficed, tears, something. But Aimée just backed away from her canvas and sat down, her expression maddeningly unaffected.