Girl in the Afternoon

by Serena Burdick

  * * *

  The next day, the family did nothing exceptional. Except, Leonie let Jeanne grate the chocolate into the pan over the hot stove, which she’d never allowed before, and she let her spread an extra layer of plum jelly on her breakfast roll. Later, in the garden, Jeanne was allowed to dig all she liked. Leonie watched her from behind the clothesline, pinning up the sheets, as she always did on Saturdays, not once scolding Jeanne for getting her dress dirty.

  Henri stayed close to Leonie all day. He took her hand whenever she was near, gave her shoulder a pat, her waist a squeeze. Their contact was desperate and reassuring.

  They had a picnic lunch by the river under the shade of a huge oak tree. Henri and Leonie watched Jacques and Jeanne slip down the muddy bank and splash each other in the water.

  That night, Leonie made blackberry pie and cream for dessert. Then, despite Jacques’s moaning, she gave the children their baths, which usually only happened on Sunday mornings. This, on top of the leniency and second helpings, did not go unnoticed by Jacques.

  At bedtime he asked, “What’s happening, Maman?”

  Tucking the covers to his chin and kissing the top of his head, Leonie said, “Nothing, my dear,” wondering what lie she was going to come up with in the morning, and knowing that no matter what it was, Jacques would never understand. All she could hope was that he would forgive her, but she imagined that was far too much to ask.

  Going around to Jeanne’s side of the bed, Leonie smoothed her hand over her daughter’s small forehead and sang her to sleep, remembering Jeanne as a wiggly baby who never wanted to be put down. She thought of the first time Jeanne said, I love you, Maman, and of all the times she had said it since, offering up her love so willingly, so innocently.

  Not until Jeanne and Jacques were safely asleep did she let herself weep into her daughter’s hair, rocking and humming. At three years old, Jeanne was the same age Jacques had been when he came to them. He had been too young to remember his previous life. Jeanne would forget too. As much as Leonie wanted to be remembered, it was a comfort to think that someday Jeanne would not miss her, that Jeanne might be spared that pain.

  Henri had to pull Leonie away, undress her like a child, and tuck her into bed. He smoothed her hair, as she had done Jeanne’s, and held her until she fell asleep.

  Standing over his children, he had second thoughts. They were curled together. Jeanne’s head was buried in Jacques’s chest, and Jacques had his arm around her. Protecting her, even in sleep, thought Henri, as he pulled Jeanne away.

  She slept on his shoulder as he walked down the dark road. The dry leaves crunched so loudly under his shoes he worried it might wake her. But her small body stayed limp, one arm thumping him softly in the back. It was cold, and he was glad he’d managed to get Jeanne’s coat on even if he hadn’t been so successful with her boots. Henri had no idea how he was supposed to get those tiny things on her feet, not to mention lace them up, so he’d just shoved them into the top of her suitcase and tucked Jeanne’s stockinged feet inside his coat.

  On the train, Henri stowed the bag along with Jeanne’s hatbox with the birthday hat from Jacques. Henri shifted the sleeping girl from his shoulder to his lap where she curled up with her feet on the empty seat next to him. He brushed his hand over her hair and watched dark objects rush past, his heart tied up in knots.

  When the train stopped Jeanne sat up, her eyes wide and startled. “Where are we, Papa?” she asked, and Henri told her to shush, everything was all right.

  He carried her off the train, certain she’d be fully awake now with all the banging and screeching, but as he walked through the bright, gas-lit streets, her head fell forward on his shoulder, and she slept again.

  It was a little past ten o’clock when Henri arrived at the Savaray home. Marie answered the door, anxious because of the hour, but even more so when she saw the child.

  “Please, monsieur, come in. That little one will catch her death of cold,” she said.

  “I’ll wait here.” Henri cupped the back of Jeanne’s head. “I’d be grateful if you’d fetch Auguste, straightaway.”

  Auguste was about to climb into bed but instead found himself standing on the doorstep in robe and slippers, the gas lamp casting Henri’s long, dark shadow in front of him.

  The child in Henri’s arms was startling. “You must bring that child in. The wind is biting,” Auguste said, holding his robe closed with both hands.

  Henri shifted Jeanne off his shoulder and held her like a baby against his chest, her small body curled into a ball. “This is Aimée’s child, your petite-fille, Jeanne Savaray.”

  The wind lifted Auguste’s hair, and he felt the cold against his scalp. “She is yours?” he said, astounded.

  “No,” Henri answered. “Monsieur Manet’s, but he knows nothing of her.”

  How could this be? Auguste tried to calculate the child’s age, ready to deny any responsibility, but then it hit him; Aimée, naked in Édouard’s studio, his maman coming to him at the factory insisting on Aimée’s departure. He put a hand to his head. This was why she’d gone to England. How idiotic of him not to suspect.

  “You took the child?” he said, not accusing, but awed. “You’ve raised her?”

  “Yes.”

  The irony of this, Henri standing with this child just as Auguste had stood with Jacques, did not go unnoticed by either of them. Nor did the coincidence of each of them having raised a child that did not rightfully belong to him. They looked at each other as if to say, Yes, I know how painful it is, how intimate and fragile a man’s relationship with his child can be, and how little say we have in the end.

  Henri passed Jeanne to Auguste, who held the sleeping girl effortlessly in his large arms.

  That moment of letting go, the sudden weightlessness in Henri’s arms, was disorienting and made him feel strangely unburdened, cleared of shame.

  He pulled his coat closed. “I went back to England. My father is dead.” The wind settled, and a shudder went through the trees, a soft rustle, and then silence. “It’s a wretched thing to admit, but I was grateful. I didn’t want to face him.”

  Auguste stepped forward with the child directly between them. “I must confess something to you.” He leaned closer to Henri. “A few years after you came to us—you were twelve, I believe—your father wrote and asked for you to come home.”

  Henri could smell the cigar on Auguste’s breath. He remembered walking into the Savaray dining room one night as a boy, long after he should have been in bed, to find Auguste sitting alone at the table, a glass of red wine in one hand and a cigar in the other. Instead of scolding him, Auguste had said, Pull up a chair, my boy, and keep me company.

  Henri took Jeanne’s hand and let her fist curl around his finger. The strength in that small hand was remarkable. “Why didn’t you send me home?” Henri knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from Auguste.

  “I simply couldn’t let you go.”

  Wetness touched Henri’s cheeks, and he looked down, embarrassed, peeling his finger out of Jeanne’s grip. He looked at the shadow of his legs, two dark shapes against the flat stone, cut off at the knees by Auguste’s slippers, the pointy, upward tilt of the toes like the bow of a canoe. Below his robe, Auguste’s ankles were bare. Henri wondered if he was supposed to feel some sort of comfort, or gratitude, knowing his father wanted him after all, but he only felt a deep sadness. It made no difference now. He didn’t have his father then, and he didn’t have the man he used to call Papa now.

  “I suppose I wouldn’t have gone back,” he said.

  “You might have. The point is I never gave you the chance to decide.”

  “I only went back to England because of what you said the night you brought Jacques to me, about giving him his rightful name, about his needing a place in the world.”

  “Then he is an Aubrey now.”

  “We both are.”

  “That is good,” Auguste said, but what he felt was the definitive sting
of loss that no son would carry his name.

  Jeanne stirred, and Auguste looked at her. Here was a new life. A beginning. He could tell by the weight of her that she was as hearty a child as Aimée had been, and he felt a surge of joy.

  For a few minutes the two men stood in silence. Each thought of reaching out and shaking a hand, but neither did.

  * * *

  Aimée was asleep when her papa entered her bedroom, and she did not wake up when the sheets were pulled back and her child placed next to her.

  Auguste was careful to tuck the blankets back up so neither one of them would get cold. For a few minutes he stood and watched them sleep. Jeanne looked very much like Aimée, lying on her pillow of dark curls, but Auguste could also see Colette, something about the almond shape of Jeanne’s closed lids. He imagined, when she opened them, there would be gold flecks in her eyes.

  When he closed the door, Aimée rolled over. She did not fully wake, but lingered in that space between sleep and dream. She heard the sound of Jeanne’s breath and felt the warmth of her small body, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world, dreaming her daughter beside her.

  Jeanne stirred and whimpered, and Aimée pulled her against her soft stomach. Deep down they both felt a familiarity, a remembering of those first two weeks together.

  Later, when Aimée woke, the sky a thin, shifting gray like her eyes, she would weep silently, not wanting to wake the sleeping child, not wanting to wake herself.

  * * *

  Aimée wandered over the bridge to the Île Saint-Louis and down the narrow street that runs along the Seine, the shutterless windows of the ancient houses reflecting the glinting water in their glass. Great river barges floated by, large and languid, loaded with sacks and barrels. There was a shout from a laundry boat and a reply from the shore, a man jumping and waving his arms from the narrow embankment, a quarrel breaking out behind her, and the laughter of children coming from ahead.

  September had always been Aimée’s favorite month, when the heat eased and a hint of cooler weather was in the air, a reminder of winter, but nothing too pressing, as if there was still time for something more.

  Aimée thought of Édouard Manet. A year ago she heard he was painting fog. Apparently, he managed to have all the trains delayed at the Saint-Lazare, and the engines stuffed with coal so that when they started the air would be thick with steam. At the time Aimée had thought, How arrogant of him. How pretentious. Édouard getting whatever he wanted. Stopping trains for his own convenience when there were people who actually needed to get somewhere. But now, with the dank, familiar smell of the river, and the cool fresh air in her face, old sensations came back, and Aimée thought that it was equally inventive of him, resourceful and confident.

  She looked across the water at a wide strip of beach where lean boats snaked to the shore, women and children, ankle deep in sand, unloading baskets.

  For years, all Aimée had ever been able to see was what Édouard had taken from her. Now, thinking of her time in England, of all her hours spent painting, exhausting herself beyond reason, but finding a thrill in it, she was able to see that Édouard had given her exactly what she needed to find freedom in her work. She had come to love the deceptively warm one-dimensional lives she created. Paint entirely from within yourself, Édouard had said. And she had. These past few years that was all she’d done.

  Back at the house, Aimée went to her studio for the first time since the day her papa slashed that penknife through her painting. It smelled stale, like plaster and old books.

  Through the open door she could hear Jeanne talking to Madame Savaray who was laid up in bed in the next room. Jeanne had spent the first weeks in her new home crying for her maman. Now she wouldn’t stop talking. With an earnest, slightly desperate expression she talked about her home, describing the fields and the river and garden, telling them all about her maman and papa. Only once did she speak of her brother. “He’s waiting for me,” she said with a nod. “He always waits for me, even when I’m slow.”

  Now, Jeanne’s small voice drifted down the hall, and Aimée imagined her grand-mère grimacing and trying to hide a satisfied smile.

  Aimée walked to a blank canvas that stood on an easel in the middle of the room. Propping her hands on her hips in exactly the way her grand-mère would have, she tried to see what was waiting in the empty space.

  She remembered an article she’d read by Mallarmé in London’s Art Monthly Review touting Manet as the leader of this new “school,” these “impressionists.” The article said that truth for the modern painter was to see nature and reproduce her, freely, without restraint.

  Gathering her old portable paint box and easel, Aimée headed back outside to the Île Saint-Louis. She set up her easel in the middle of the Pont Saint-Louis where she could see the smooth stone walls rising out of the water on either side of the bridge. Édouard had taught her to paint the changing light, to capture a moment and let it go, to remember, always, that nothing is fixed or absolute.

  Arranging her hat so the sharp slant of sun wasn’t in her eyes, she picked up a piece of charcoal and looked over the white peaks rising and falling in the rushing gray-green water below.

  She understood now that Édouard’s words were about so much more than painting. Seek the truth, he had said. And love it when it is found.

  ENGLAND 1878

  Epilogue

  It is gray here, and it rains a lot. I don’t mind. It fits how I feel inside, and I like the raindrops pattering on my head.

  I like being out of doors better than in, but I have always liked this, so at least not everything has changed. I do wonder if I am the same person that I was before. Most of the time I don’t feel the same, but then I get distracted, looking up into the trees, or watching the birds, and for a moment, I feel like my old self. I feel just the way I used to when standing at the edge of the Seine looking up into the trees and watching the birds.

  * * *

  I found a family of mice in the bottom drawer of my dresser this morning. There are six tiny, pink babies.

  I am not going to tell anyone because someone will clean them up. It is very important here that everything is clean, and the house is so big it takes many people to keep it that way. Any of them might sweep away my mice.

  I will have to be very careful, and secretive, and protect them.

  I brought the maman mouse a few oats and a snitch of cheese from the kitchen. The kitchen is a long way from my bedroom, and I had to hide the food in my pocket because Cook is mean. It doesn’t seem at all practical that the kitchen is so far away from everything.

  When I asked why we couldn’t eat in the kitchen like we used to, Maman said, “This is not France. It’s just the way it’s done here. We will simply have to get used to everything being so far away from everything else.”

  She says this is not France about almost everything.

  The worst is at night, when it gets dark. I am not used to sleeping by myself, and I feel afraid. I want Maman and Papa to sleep in the next room like they used to. But they are far away also.

  At least I have my mice.

  * * *

  The baby mice are no longer pink. They have ever so much gray fur, and they eat right out of my hand. I put one of my stockings in the drawer for them to crawl inside of because it is getting cold.

  Maman will be angry when she finds my stocking missing. I will know she is angry because she will bite her lower lip and get that line between her eyebrows, but she won’t scold me. She never scolds me anymore.

  Because of this I realize there are a good many, naughty things I could get away with, but I do not want Maman to be unhappy, so I am trying very hard to be good, even if I did ruin a perfectly decent stocking.

  * * *

  Maman was not mad about the stocking. She smiled when I showed her the nest the mice made inside of it with ripped-up bits of paper. She promised to keep them a secret. She said, “You’re entirely right about the cleaning; far too muc
h of it going on in this house. I’d say we could use a few mice around the place. Remind us of home, yes?”

  This made me feel how much I love my maman.

  And then the sad feeling came because it made me think how much Jeanne would love the mice too, and how Maman and I would tell her to keep them a secret, and Jeanne would hold her little finger up to her lips and close her eyes, as if she was shutting the secret up inside her.

  Whenever the sad feeling comes, I pretend Jeanne is with me.

  After Maman leaves I tell Jeanne she can’t pick the mice up because she is too little and she will squish them. Then I show her how to put the oats in the palm of her hand and lay her hand flat so the mice can climb up and nibble on them. Then I tell her to hold very still.

  I pretend the quiet in the room is because she’s doing exactly as I tell her and keeping very still. In my heart I know the quiet is because she isn’t really here, and this makes me want to cry. I don’t, because I am seven years old now and much too big to cry, but I feel the feeling of crying inside even if I don’t let the tears out.

  * * *

  Papa keeps trying to make Maman and me happy.

  He tells us of all the things he did as a boy at Abbington Hall, shows us the places in his memories. But he does it in a loud, cheerful voice, and I know he is pretending because Papa is not loud, nor particularly cheerful.

  I can see in his face that he is as sad as I am, and I know that he is just making up the good memories because I heard him tell Maman when he was a boy he hated it here. Maman told him we would make new memories. But, later, I heard her crying when she thought no one was around.

  I guess we are all pretending not to be sad for each other.

  * * *

  My mice are gone. I am not worried for them. It’s spring, and they will be warm outside.

  * * *

  I feel lonelier than ever without them, but hopeful. Hopeful because Maman laughed today, and Papa kissed her afterward.

  * * *

  Jeanne’s birthday is in four days.