by Heather Webb
“I see,” she said carefully.
“It happened about five months ago. We were getting ready for a big push on Soissons, and a German plane dropped a shell right in front of my dugout. A piece of casing spun off it. Bounced of f an iron joist and hit me in the face. You know how some people say they didn’t see it coming? Well, I did. It was the last thing I saw out of my right eye. There was a flash as the metal hit the joist, and I knew it was coming for me. I just knew it. And then it hit, and it was like someone had emptied a bucket of white paint over me. Everything went white. I woke up in hospital about a week later, but they didn’t tell me about my face for a while after that.”
“Is it still painful?” She wasn’t supposed to ask such questions, but she needed to say something, and the usual platitudes were useless when talking about such a thing.
“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “The skin pulls a bit around the edges, right where they stitched me up, but mostly it’s numb. The hard thing is seeing so little. I’m hoping I’ll be able to work once I’m out.”
“What did you do before the war?”
“I was a civil engineer. Not in the city, though. I worked in a little town upstate. Helping to plan new neighborhoods, deciding where to put the roads and water mains and sewers. That kind of thing. No idea if they’ll want me back, or if . . . if they’ll want me in the office. Hard to get used to a busted-up face like mine.”
She squeezed his hand, for there was nothing she might say to take away the sting of truth in his words. His face wasn’t hideous, not by a long stretch, but his injuries were arresting enough that others were likely to feel uncomfortable.
“Is your family still in the city?” she asked, hoping to lighten the mood.
“Yes. Both my ma and da are still alive. I’ve got two little sisters—not so little now. Both are married, with kids of their own. Haven’t met my youngest niece yet. But it won’t be long. Hoping they’ll ship me home before the end of the year. Not much more I can do for the army now.”
“It won’t take forever to make your mask,” she reassured him. “The longest stage is the painting. Mrs. Ladd is a perfectionist. She won’t let you leave until it really is perfect.”
“I know. I’ve heard about her. That’s why I asked the colonel to get me in here.”
“She is the best,” Daisy agreed. “And your mask is the easiest one to make and fit, since not much of your face is affected.”
“If you say so.”
“She may suggest we attach the mask to a pair of spectacles. They help to hold it in place, but I find they also divert people’s attention. They notice the spectacles, but that’s all.”
Mr. Vlerick approached them now. “We’re nearly ready to get started, Captain Mancuso. Perhaps you might wish to visit the lavatory first. It’s a rather long wait for the plaster to dry.”
“Oh, sure. Good point.”
When he returned Daisy was waiting for him at the casting chair, which was actually an old dentist’s chair that Mrs. Ladd had found somewhere. He sat in it, a little gingerly, and looked at her expectantly.
“I’ll be next to you the entire time, I promise. Your eye will be covered, and your mouth, so we need to settle on a signal for you to use if you really cannot bear it. Perhaps three short squeezes of my hand? I’ve a notebook, too, and a pencil. You can scribble notes to me—I know you won’t be able to see as you write, but if I can read my father’s handwriting I can read yours.”
She took Captain Mancuso’s left hand in hers, grasping it lightly as Mr. Vlerick began to work. He was very gentle as he covered their client with a draped sheet, and tucked his hair under a cotton cap. At each step, Daisy explained what was to occur.
“Mr. Vlerick is spreading petroleum jelly over your face, which will help to protect your skin from the plaster—it won’t hurt you, but it can be a bit itchy. The plaster, that is. Now he’s going to cover your face with some gauze strips that have been soaked in liquid plaster. Did you ever make papier-mâché in school? It’s a bit like this.”
Soon his good eye had vanished beneath the gauze, along with the rest of his face. Mr. Vlerick left small holes in front of his nostrils, and another, larger hole in the center of the captain’s mouth, but that was all. It took a strong man indeed to withstand the sense of suffocation the drying plaster often provoked.
As soon as the gauze had been set in place, Mr. Vlerick applied a thicker layer of plaster, smoothing on layer after layer with a palette knife. All the while she stayed at Captain Mancuso’s side, and when his grip on her hand tightened, she responded by wrapping her other hand around his wrist. He needed to know that she would not let go.
“We have to wait until the plaster is good and set,” she explained once Mr. Vlerick had finished applying the final layer. “It might be as long as forty-five minutes. Would you like me to sing to you? Squeeze my hand if you do.” His hand tightened decisively around hers.
“Oh, good. So . . . let me see. Why don’t I try this one—my mother used to sing it to me.
I’d choose to be a daisy
If I might be a flower
Closing my petals softly
At twilight’s quiet hour.
She sang the whole song through, and then embarked on “I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside,” another childhood favorite. And then she remembered a song she hadn’t sung for ages.
“How about ‘A Bicycle Built for Two’? At least, I think that’s the name of the song. I like it because my name is Daisy. I was christened Dorothy, but no one calls me that.” He squeezed her hand. “Yes, yes. Daisy Fields. Ha, ha. Someone ought to have told my parents that eighteen years ago. Let me see, now—how much of it do I remember?
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do
I’m half crazy, all for the love of you
It won’t be a stylish marriage
I can’t afford the carriage
But you’d look sweet
On the seat
Of a bicycle built for two.
She had nearly exhausted her repertoire of cheerful songs when Mr. Vlerick returned. “We’re going to take off the plaster cast now,” she explained.
As the cast was loosened, Captain Mancuso sat perfectly still, not even flinching when it pulled at his hair. The instant it was carried away, though, he took several deep breaths, as if he’d been starved for air when the plaster was covering his face.
“You stay here,” she ordered. “I’ll fetch a basin of soapy water, and we’ll wash off the petroleum jelly and get you straightened away. While I do that, I’ll tell you what’s next.”
He allowed her to wash his face, and if she lingered over the task, taking special care with the sensitive skin around his missing eye, it was only because he seemed to take comfort in her gentle touch, his rigid posture softening fractionally with every stroke of the washcloth across his skin.
“From here on in, it’s quite nice,” she told him. “The only unpleasant part of the process is the casting, and you’re done with that.”
“When am I supposed to come back?”
“One week from today. In the meantime Mrs. Ladd and her assistants will make two positive impressions using the cast. The first will show your face as it is now, and the second will become the base for the sculpture Mrs. Ladd will make of your restored face. We’ll use that for the mask.”
“So there will be one mask that shows me as I am, and another as I used to be?”
“As close as we can make it. Mrs. Ladd will want you to look at her sculpture, just so we know we’ve got it right. Once you’re happy, we’ll make the mask itself.”
“You said it won’t be big. I was worried . . . I thought I might have to wear something that covered my entire face.”
“Oh, heavens, no. Hardly any of our clients needs more than a partial mask. Yours won’t be large at al
l—just the area around your eye. We’ll fit it to your face exactly, and since the copper is only one-thirty-second of an inch thick, there’s barely any gap between it and your own skin.”
“Can a piece of metal really look like skin?”
“In the hands of an artist like Mrs. Ladd it can. You’ll wear the mask while she’s painting it, and that way it will match perfectly. She won’t let you go until it’s perfect.”
“Honestly?”
“It will be good enough for you to walk along the boulevard du Montparnasse in broad daylight and no one will take a second look at your face. And if they do, it will only be to remark on what a handsome young man you are.”
“No,” he said, disbelief shading his voice. “I don’t believe it.”
“I know it’s hard to believe, but it is possible. I wouldn’t say so if it weren’t.”
“It’s just . . . I’ve got so used to it. The look in their eyes when they see me. No one means to be cruel, but . . .”
“People are shocked by anyone who is different, and very few are able to hide that shock. It’s rather feeble of them, to be honest, but it won’t be something you have to worry about for much longer. There—all clean. Here’s a towel.”
“Thanks.”
“How are you getting home?” she asked once he had dried his face.
“I’ll walk. I’m staying in barracks at the American hospital in Clignancourt. I have a kind of patch that I wear. See?”
He pulled a wide strip of khaki cloth from the breast pocket of his uniform jacket and tied it diagonally across his face. “How’s this?”
“Very dashing. You look like a buccaneer. All you need is a parrot for your shoulder and a gold hoop in your ear.”
They both stood, and he shook her hand, and then she went to check the date and time of his return visit with Mrs. Ladd. He remained next to his chair as she did this, absolutely motionless, and she wondered if he’d always had the gift of stillness. Perhaps it was something he’d only learned in the wake of his injury, for many of the studio’s clients were equally good at blending into the woodwork.
“Mrs. Ladd says next Wednesday is fine. Does half-past nine still suit you?”
“It does.”
“Then I’ll see you next week.”
“Thanks, Miss Fields. Thanks for everything.”
DAISY WAS RARELY more than an arm’s length away from Captain Mancuso on his subsequent visits. He talked about his childhood on Orchard Street, where he’d grown up in a three-room cold-water flat on the fourth floor of a crumbling tenement building. He told her how he’d worked two jobs after school, even when he was a boy, to help out his parents and save up for college. He explained how structures like the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge had been built with the help of engineers. He described some of the work he had done since graduating from college, and the things he wanted to do with his life once he returned to America.
Daisy responded with gentle tales of her childhood—summers in Narragansett, outings to Central Park with her governess, a tour of Continental spa towns the year before her mother died. It was impossible to hide the difference in their upbringings, and it would have been insulting to Captain Mancuso even to try. Besides, they were both Americans in Paris now, with more to unite than divide them.
One afternoon they happened to leave the studio at the same time, and he was kind enough to escort her home. Afterward she could recall nothing of their conversation, for her thoughts had been entirely consumed by the man who walked beside her. His height. The breadth of his shoulders. His strong, capable hands. The rumble of his laugh. Just thinking about the way he laughed made her smile.
She had to conceal such sentiments, for Mrs. Ladd would surely have disapproved, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to affect complete disinterest in him. That would have served only to crush his confidence, or whatever shreds still remained of it. Instead she took pains to be her normal, friendly self, treating Captain Mancuso just as she would any other client who came to the studio, and if her heart began to beat a little fast when he arrived at the studio—well, no one ever needed to know.
Soon he was at the studio every other day, for his mask had been cast and silvered, and Mrs. Ladd had begun to paint it to match his complexion. Slowly but surely, the gray of the metal vanished beneath layers of enamel paint, and the mask itself seemed to disappear.
When all was complete but the iris of the mask’s single eye, Mrs. Ladd handed her brushes over to Daisy. “Miss Fields will paint your eye, Captain Mancuso. She has a fine eye for color, and your eye is a most unusual shade of green. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all, Mrs. Ladd.”
Daisy had been hoping for weeks now that Mrs. Ladd would allow her to contribute to Captain Mancuso’s mask, and with that goal in mind she had spent many hours practicing in the early morning, before leaving for the studio, on scraps of silvered copper that she’d fished out of the wastebin at the studio. It had taken some experimentation to get the striations of his iris just right, but eventually she’d discovered the trick of including minute streaks of brown to the brighter green and gold that one noticed so readily.
It took two long sessions for her to paint the iris, and as she worked she had to stare into his existing eye to ensure the two exactly matched. For the most part they didn’t talk, for he needed to stay perfectly still as she worked, and there were times she longed to set down her brush and ask him what he was thinking, for the expressions that traveled across his face had a nearly mesmerizing effect on her.
At last, and with a certain amount of regret, she set down her brush. The eye she had fashioned was perfect. The mask was perfect.
“May I see?” he asked.
“Not until Mr. Vlerick has added the spectacles. Then Mrs. Ladd will inspect it—and if she approves I will bring you a mirror. But I will tell you right now that it is perfect.”
“When should I come back?”
“Anytime tomorrow is fine. The last layer of paint needs to cure overnight, but it will be ready by the morning.”
“I’ll come around ten. Perhaps we’ll have had some news from Compiègne by then.”
“We can only hope. Until then, Captain Mancuso.”
As Daisy walked to the studio the next morning, everyone she passed was speaking of an armistice, though no one was entirely certain of the details. Maréchal Foch and the other Allied leaders had been meeting with the Germans and Austrians at a secret location near Compiègne, and the Kaiser had abdicated two days earlier. Yet nothing seemed certain, not yet, and Daisy couldn’t quite bring herself to hope.
When she arrived at work, no one there was any more certain, and without any definitive news one way or the other it seemed best to simply carry on and see what the day would bring. Captain Mancuso arrived at ten on the dot, and everyone gathered around as he sat for the final fitting of his mask, which had been attached to a pair of spectacles with clear lenses. Mrs. Ladd adjusted it minutely, and then, after a long, final look, nodded her head in approval. That was Daisy’s signal to bring forward the hand mirror, which was kept hidden at other times.
She stood before Captain Mancuso and held it so he might see his new face, and the look of wonder and delight that crept across his features was enough to bring tears to her eyes. He smiled, and nodded, and everyone burst into applause.
“Thank you, Mrs. Ladd. I think you and your colleagues may have given me my life back.”
“I earnestly hope so. Now it is time for your final test. Miss Fields will—what is that sound? Is that church bells?”
They stood there and listened to the sound of bells and car horns and cheering in the street, and presently Mr. Vlerick ran down the stairs to investigate. He was back, tears streaming down his face, only a minute or two later.
“It’s over!” he shouted. “The war is over
! The Armistice began at eleven o’clock.”
Suddenly they were all embracing one another, laughing and crying at once, and without thinking she threw her arms around Captain Mancuso and hugged him tight. She drew back a moment later, alarmed by her effrontery, and more than a little concerned that she might have dislodged his mask. But it was still in place, was still perfectly unobtrusive, and it was time for his final test.
“I think we should go down to the boulevard now,” she told him. “May we, Mrs. Ladd?”
“I can’t imagine a finer way to celebrate. Off you go.”
They ran down the stairs together, arm in arm, and were quickly swept up in the growing crowds along the boulevard du Montparnasse. Someone had brought an accordion, and as its opening drone expanded into the familiar chords of the “Marseillaise” everyone around began to sing, and Daisy thought she had never before heard such a glorious choir. The accordionist played “God Save the King,” and then “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and she and Captain Mancuso held their hands over their hearts and sang at the top of their lungs.
The final notes of the anthem died away, replaced by faster, jauntier music, and all around them couples began to dance. Captain Mancuso swept her into his arms and down the street, and after she had digested her first reaction—that he was an astonishingly good dancer—she realized that she was happy, deliriously so. Although some of her joy was certainly wrapped up in the news of the Armistice, much of it was attached to the man who held her, a man she had come to know so well, but about whom she knew so little. She didn’t even know his first name.
At last they swirled to a halt, and rather than continue to be pushed along the street by the ever-growing crowds, Captain Mancuso directed them toward one of the side streets, where it was quieter and calmer.
“Thank you, Miss Fields. You don’t know how long it’s been since I danced. That was just great.”
“Won’t you call me Daisy?” she asked.
“I will, but only if you’ll call me Daniel.”