Girl in the Afternoon

by Serena Burdick

  Leonie stepped out, stripped of all her clothing. “Paint me now,” she said. “You’re paying. Might as well get your money’s worth.” She dropped onto a chair. “Although, you two are getting a bargain. I won’t charge double as long as I get supper.”

  “I told you I’d pay you,” Henri said, with a sort of desperate humility.

  Leonie shrugged, everything about her sensual and gratifying. “Might as well let Aimée pay. She can.” This was just practical, no need to be prideful. Henri could hardly afford this miserably small apartment as it was.

  Leonie’s nudity made Aimée surprisingly self-conscious. She stayed on the other side of the room, watching Leonie wipe the perspiration from under her full breasts as Henri filled his brush with the rose pink tint of her nipples and touched it to the canvas.

  Chapter 11

  Without any further discussion, Aimée began showing up at Henri’s apartment with her portable easel and paint box.

  She told her parents she was off to the académie every day. She’d never lied quite so boldly, but it felt inevitable, their relationship primed for just this kind of deception.

  Aimée would stop for a baguette on her way over, buy a hunk of firm, ripe cheese, sausage, a jar of jelly, fresh plums, or a basket of figs. Often she brought an extra canvas or two, a new brush she’d leave behind, tubes of paint. She didn’t make a show of it, but the supplies were helpful, and because Henri never said a word she knew he was grateful.

  It was strange, what was going on inside Aimée. It wasn’t happiness, but a kind of thrilling anticipation. Lying to her parents felt unexpectedly satisfying, telling them nothing of Henri.

  She started arriving at the apartment earlier than usual, hoping for a few private moments before Leonie showed up. She would hang her hat and set up her easel with a show of competence and ease. Having familiarized herself with the tiny cups and the one pot that hung on the wall, she’d grate chocolate into a saucepan of milk, pour their drinks, and rinse the pot immediately so it wouldn’t crust over. She’d scold Henri for his paltry breakfast, telling him he couldn’t work all morning on a hunk of bread.

  Henri was tolerant of all of this feminine influence, even appreciative, but he made it very clear, without words, that he wanted nothing of their old relationship. He wanted nothing of their past. He never spoke of it or her parents. He did not ask Aimée a single question about herself, and in turn she never asked how he survived the war, where he’d gone, who had helped him. Desperately she wanted to know why he left. It was the most obvious question to ask, and also the most obvious to avoid. This hole in his past was like a specter, haunting every corner of that room.

  Aimée tried to convince herself that at least they had their silence. But even that had changed. The intimacy was gone, the effortlessness of being in each other’s company. The silence made them uncomfortable now. Aimée’s stomach tensed every time Henri was near enough to smell the mix of cigar and resin that came from his clothes. When he brushed against her, her breath seized in her chest. Once, when she went to put his teacup down, he’d unintentionally put his hand over hers and they’d both pulled away, the cup shattering on the ground.

  And yet, there was something undeniable between them. Love might be too much to hope for, but something had kept Henri away all these years, an emotion worth running away from, and this was what Aimée clung to.

  * * *

  No mention of Henri came up in the Savaray household, so after a while Colette stopped worrying. She dropped Auguste as quickly as she’d picked him back up. The summer was progressing, and it was too hot to have him smother her at night, plus she needed her sleep. Her Thursday-night soirées had become a social event of note, and they took the entire week to plan.

  She also got it fixed in her mind that Aimée had to marry. There had been no buyer for the salon painting, and it was obvious that the client Édouard sent Aimée’s way was merely charity, and not generous charity at that. Monsieur Chevalier made Aimée scrape off his wife’s face four times before he was satisfied. Then he only paid two hundred francs for the portrait when he’d originally agreed to three. Aimée, stubborn as ever, vowed she wouldn’t paint another portrait, claiming it was commercial art. “I’m not going to paint what someone tells me to,” she’d said with a haughty jut of her chin.

  Colette told her she was being senseless. Portraits were a respectable way for an artist to make a living, but Aimée seemed to think she had some inimitable talent that made her exempt. Édouard probably put that thought in her head; he was much too complimentary. Now Aimée spent all of her time at that académie, honing her skills, running up bills for supplies with no more commissions in sight.

  Colette, for one, was tired of it, and there was Jacques to think about.

  * * *

  Auguste was just grateful Colette’s screaming, and the blows to the back of his head, had stopped. Of course he wanted her physical attention, even when it was reluctant. He never considered if there were tactical calculations behind Colette’s behavior. He took what he could get when he could get it. He knew she’d inevitably cool again.

  Lately, all the women in his household seemed annoyed with him. Just this morning he’d asked Aimée to see her work, and she’d rushed from the table, exasperated, saying that she was going to be late for class. His maman looked as if he’d insulted her as well, setting down her fork and leaving the table without so much as a word. Colette, in turn, offered a raised eyebrow as she spooned sugar into her coffee.

  “How am I supposed to know what’s going on around here if no one tells me?” Auguste shouted, slamming his fist on the table.

  All the silverware jumped, but Colette didn’t flinch.

  Auguste stormed out of the room. A decent breakfast ruined by unpredictable women.

  * * *

  It was her son’s inability to question anything but the most obvious and superficial that angered Madame Savaray.

  She had taken to eating pastries in the kitchen in order to avoid him and the rest of the household, settling in with the iron pots, black bottomed with soot, and the shelves of spices, knives, choppers, ladles, and crockery. The servants, as they came and went, gave her weary looks, but for the most part, ignored her. She found the bustle and clutter almost as comforting as the pastry she sank her teeth into, the sweet, chocolate icing breaking away to a slightly crunchy, buttery crust, and then onto the gooey custard center. It was a satisfaction worth the thickening of her middle.

  Little else satisfied her these days. For a month, at least, Colette had stopped raging, but Madame Savaray knew that wouldn’t last long. Colette preferred to be wildly unhappy. Tidy emotions did not suit her. Her most recent attempt to rein them in only confirmed Madame Savaray’s suspicion that Colette had seen Henri’s painting.

  If the truth came out, Colette had more to lose than any of them, and even though Madame Savaray swore she’d take the secret to her grave, watching her son lured in by Colette’s petty show of domestic normalcy was infuriating. If Auguste would just open his eyes he’d see exactly how manipulative his wife was being. And if he paid any attention at all to his daughter, he would see that Aimée was hiding something too. The girl’s serious face had given way to a lingering smile, and Aimée practically skipped off to class in the mornings. Whatever it was, Henri was at the heart of it, of that Madame Savaray was certain.

  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 w
as.

  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. Édouar
d’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.”