by M. J. Rose
“You can always tell how wicked a woman’s life has been by the light in her eyes, Sandrine,” she used to tell me, and then she’d look into my eyes and say: “I see good, only good, in your honeyed eyes, mon ange. Stay like that, Sandrine. Don’t become like me. Don’t light any fires . . . Too easily the flames leap out to lick and burn you.” And then she’d smile in that coy way she had and kiss me lightly on my forehead as if blessing me.
But I never quite believed her because, as much as she admired women like Madame Ferre and my mother, I knew Grand-mère regarded their lives as boring.
“What is all the racket about, Louis? I didn’t know you—” And then, seeing me, Madame Ferre stopped talking.
“It’s Eva’s granddaughter, Sandrine,” the professor told his wife.
“Of course it is,” she said as she took me in her arms and began to fuss over me, pulling the sodden shawl off my shoulders and brushing my wet hair off my face. “You poor child, soaked to the bone. What on earth happened?”
Her kindness, the warmth of their home with the flickering fire in the hearth, and all of its familiarity brought me close to tears, but I held back. It would not do to cry in front of these two people.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Henri must be at the café again,” the professor said. “We need to do something about him. He left the porte cochère open, and that beggar who has been hanging around all week came after her. I need to go get her luggage before some other malcontent makes off with it.”
“What did he do to you, dear?” Madame Ferre asked in a low voice once her husband had left the room.
“He only grabbed my foot. I twisted my ankle getting loose.” I was still shivering, half from cold, half from shock. How had I been able to fight that man off? I’d never done anything like that before.
“You are freezing and can catch your death this way,” Madame Ferre said as she helped me to my feet. “You need a warm bath and dry clothes.”
My ankle gave way under me, but she had me by the elbow and kept me standing upright. “Can you hobble upstairs with me? How bad is the pain?”
I tested it. “As long as I’m careful, it’s all right,” I said. I wanted the bath she was offering more than I cared about the twinges.
I allowed myself to be escorted up the staircase and into the bathroom, where I sat and watched as Madame Ferre drew a bath for me, loaded it with salts, and then helped me out of my clothes.
While I soaked, she left to get me some of her things to wear, and when she came back ten minutes later, her arms full of clothes, I realized I’d fallen asleep in the warm water, which was now growing chilly.
Madame Ferre opened a large bathsheet and held it up as I stepped out of the tub. Then, wrapping me in the towel’s softness, she proceeded to rub me dry.
Her motherly kindness was very welcome but also awkward to accept.
The Ferres had three sons and a daughter. When I was fifteen, my parents took me on a tour of the continent and, when they went off to Russia, where my father had business, left me to stay in Paris with my grandmother. During that spring I met all the Ferre children. Their youngest son, Leon, was eighteen and a sculpture student at the École des Beaux-Arts. We became fast friends.
Many afternoons, Leon and I would go to the Louvre, where, as part of his schoolwork, he was modeling a copy of a sculpture by Canova of Cupid reviving Psyche, who lay unconscious on rocks. The artist had captured the moment just before the winged god kissed Psyche awake.
The eroticism in the marble masterpiece fueled the growing attraction between us. For hours at a time I would sit and watch Leon model, awed by his talent, stirred by— What was it?
What is it ever that ignites that first spark? All I knew was that I was sure there would never be anyone like him in my life again, and I wanted to soak up every minute with him that I could.
Sometimes I’d imagine feigning a faint so that Leon would stop his work . . . come to me . . . bend over me and touch me with his lips, reviving me the way Cupid was reviving Psyche. Oh, how I fantasized about his kisses.
At first my grandmother assumed our friendship was charming and innocent, but as the weeks passed, she suspected our growing passion and began to spy on us. When her suspicions were confirmed, she went to his parents.
We were forbidden to see each other alone after that, which only made us more determined.
I bribed one of my grandmother’s maids, Marie, to sleep in another servant girl’s room. Marie’s window, which was large enough for a man to crawl through, faced a narrow alley that our house and Leon’s shared. That night, after midnight, he sneaked out and came to me through the window. We met three more times that way. On the third night Grand-mère found us.
I was naked, and Leon was wearing his shirt. We were wrapped in each other’s arms, kissing, when my grandmother pulled us apart. Ignoring me, she grabbed Leon by the arm, dragging him out of our house and to his own front door. I wrapped myself in a blanket and ran after them, crying, begging my grandmother not to say anything to his parents, that it was my fault, not his.
When the professor came to the door and saw Grand-mère, eyes ablaze, holding his practically nude son, he understood exactly what had happened.
Saying nothing, he reached out and slapped Leon.
Leon accepted the blow. His head fell forward. He began to gasp for air. Within moments he dropped to his knees on the stone cold steps as he desperately tried to breathe. And then Leon fell, still gasping, onto his side.
I screamed and ran forward, but my grandmother stopped me from going to him. She held me in her arms, held me as if just holding me was going to make everything all right, but it didn’t.
The professor raced inside—to get his son’s medicine, as it turned out—but by the time he returned minutes later, there was nothing he could do.
Leon died of an asthma attack in his father’s arms. He died while I stood there, helpless, watching in horror.
I don’t remember what I did after that, but I’ve been told I was ill for days: burning up with a fever and delirious. All I could think was that if Leon hadn’t been with me, if we hadn’t sneaked off, he would never have died. It was my fault. It was because of my passion, my hunger, my joy of being with him, of wanting more of him touching my breasts and whispering behind my ear . . . It was my fault for wanting to feel his lips bruising mine, for wanting to taste his sweet mouth . . . for craving the sensations building inside of me that I’d never felt before and that were so glorious . . . feelings I couldn’t get enough of. It was my fault because I wanted his fingers teasing me . . . touching me where he shouldn’t . . . making my heart quicken . . . making magic. It was my fault for not wanting to be a girl anymore but to come to life as a woman as I lay under him. It was that desire in me, those needs, that killed the first boy I’d ever kissed . . . those cravings that were responsible for the first man I’d ever loved dying.
I vowed never to allow myself those feelings again. There was no good to come of them. In my delirium I saw myself as a succubus, one of those demon women I’d read about in the mythology books my father gave me. Evil beings I’d had nightmares about.
Now, ten years later, there I was, naked in Leon’s mother’s boudoir, and she was pulling a silken chemise over the same skin that her son had pressed his lips to.
How had her husband been able to abide bringing me into their home? How could they not hate me? How could Leon’s mother and father show me such kindness?
“There,” she said as she buttoned a dress up in the back. The fabric smelled of a fine, expensive perfume, and I felt cosseted and safer here than I had felt in weeks.
“Madame Ferre, can you tell me where my grandmother is? Why is the house dark? Why are the servants all gone? She never travels this time of year. Is she . . .” I was afraid to even say the words out
loud. “Is she all right?” My voice broke as I asked.
My father was dead. I’d left my husband. And if Grand-mère was gone . . .
“She’s fine, Sandrine,” Madame Ferre said. “Your grandmother is planning a renovation. She’s taken an apartment not far from here so she can supervise the work. Come, finish getting dressed, and I’ll get you something to eat, and then we’ll take you to her.”
“There’s no need to do that, Bridgitte.” I recognized the rich honey-toned voice and spun around.
There was my grandmother in all of her glory. Blazing orange hair, fire opals at her ears and around her throat. A burnt-orange silk dress with black lace trim swirling around her.
I expected her to greet me the same way she used to when she visited me in New York, with open arms and joy, but the woman standing in the doorway was frowning.
“Sandrine, didn’t I tell you never to come back to Paris? This city is poison for you.” Her voice was tense and tight. “Why didn’t you listen?”
And in those last four words I heard something I’d never heard in her voice before—fear.
Chapter 2
Professor Ferre carried my luggage. It was peculiar leaving the one mansion and not going next door to the other. The farther we walked away from my grandmother’s house, the more I found myself longing to go back. As if there were a magnetic force pulling me.
It must be that it was my father’s house, I thought. Because it was where he grew up, I wanted to stay there and be close to my memories of him.
Our destination was only a few blocks away, on rue de la Chaise. Inside the porte cochère was a smaller courtyard, where a classic six-story apartment building stood, its four stone steps leading up to wooden double doors ornately carved with garlands of flowers and fruits.
“But why are you living here? What’s wrong with your house?” I asked my grandmother.
“I have rented three floors here. The public rooms on this floor, bedrooms upstairs and servants’ quarters on the top,” Grand-mère said as she ushered me in and then turned and thanked the professor for helping with my luggage.
Indeed, at first glance the apartment was beautiful. There were gilded egg-and-dart moldings on the door, an elegant parquet floor, and tall ceilings. The parlor was filled with items I recognized from the mansion, but instead of these knickknacks making the suite of rooms more familiar, they only heightened the displacement I felt.
“But why are you here instead of Maison de la Lune?”
“All in time,” my grandmother said with a smile on her face but a harshness in her voice. “First we need to discuss why you are here.”
From the windows I could see a view of a charming garden, but it was not the same one where Leon and I had sat and fed the pigeons and stolen kisses when dusk fell, the shadows lengthening and dark enough to hide us. And there was no bell tower attached to the back of this building like the abandoned sixteenth-century leftover that rose out of the back of La Lune like a mystical shrine to the past. I was never allowed inside, but my bedroom in La Lune had faced the stone tower, and I used to make up stories about the princess walled up inside who was waiting to be freed. Sometimes at night, I thought I heard the ancient bells ringing softly, whispering to the stars, even though my grandmother told me the bells were long rusted and ruined.
“We’ll have chocolat chaud, Alice,” my grandmother told her maid, who’d come to help us get settled.
“Isn’t Bernadette still with you?” I asked.
“No, she married a widower who owns a restaurant in Marseille. I get letters from her all the time. She’s doing well and has two little girls.” Grand-mère smiled. “She lets them draw on the envelopes.”
All of my grandmother’s servants stayed in touch with her. She was more than fair to them, and they never forgot her. My grandmother may have been a sensualist and a businesswoman, but it was her streak of kindness and her genuine interest in people that endeared her to her friends, those in her employ, and the men she entertained.
When I’d lived with her and commented on how the help seemed so much more informal with her that ours was with us in New York, she admonished me for having haut monde mores and being a snob.
“I have more in common with them than with your mother, mon ange,” she told me. “After all, I’m not a fancy married lady, but just another working girl, toiling every day for my bread and milk.” And then she’d laugh. That throaty laugh—like her dramatic maquillage, unusual jewels, and voluptuous clothes—had always made her seem so exotic to me and did still. My grandmother inspired awe. She was like a rare jungle orchid.
My mother, on the other hand, was more like a bouquet of pretty pale pink roses in a Renoir still life. She wasn’t interested in the things my father and I were. She didn’t like to visit museums or talk about architecture or literature or esoteric philosophies. She preferred gossip to going to the opera or ballet, a visit with the dressmaker to a visit to the museum, an afternoon tea with the ladies to a spirited discussion about a recent gothic novel.
I loved her because she was my beautiful mother, and to be in her presence was to be treated to the scents of lilies and violets, to the sight of cornflower-blue eyes and skin as lustrous as pearls. I loved her, not because of how she thought or the things she said but because she cared for me and showered me with affection. But beneath her attentions I always thought she was uncomfortable around me. Once, as she brushed my hair off my face, she said, “How did I ever give birth to such a serious, dark little girl?” Unspoken was the rest of the sentence: . . . when I’m so light, so frivolous.
From her I’d learned what would be expected of me. To marry well and raise a family. To create an oasis of calm in my home, to love and support my husband and be a good mother to my children. Now it seemed I’d never follow the example she’d set.
Alice, who had riotous blond curls and a strong chin, brought in a tray of fine china cups and the silver chocolat chaud pot, with its long spout and horizontal ebony handle. There was also a plate of delicate golden madeleines dusted with powdered sugar.
“There is so much to say,” Grand-mère began as she poured me some of the aromatic brew. “But first, nourishment.” She handed me a fragile cup and saucer. I waited until she poured for herself, and then I took the first heady sip. Of all the things that meant Paris and my grandmother to me, it was our afternoon ritual of sharing this melted chocolate drink, so unlike that thin American cocoa, and talking over what I’d done that day.
Thinking of how different this conversation was going to be brought tears to my eyes. I blinked them back, but she saw and, reaching up her sleeve, withdrew a black lace handkerchief with her initials embroidered in fire orange, handing it to me.
Like the fire opals she wore, these black handkerchiefs, scented with her perfume, were part of her signature. Dabbing at my eyes, I smelled that amazing fragrance that no one wore but my grandmother: roses and lily of the valley with a hint of vanilla and spicy pepper and some magical ingredient that smoothed it out and ignited it. The scent had been created for her by the great perfumer Monsieur L’Etoile, whom Grand-mère called a “dear friend.” She called each man who visited her salon a “dear friend”—or, as she said, “mon cher ami.” L’Etoile had named the scent after her, calling it L’Incendie, and promised he’d never sell it to anyone else during her lifetime.
“When did you last eat?” my grandmother asked.
I had to think. “I had breakfast on the boat. A soft-boiled egg and toast.”
“That was practically yesterday. You are too thin, besides. I know how upset you must be, but you still have to rail against the fates, Sandrine. Never give in to sorrow. It doesn’t do your heart or your complexion any good.”
I smiled.
“So you know about Papa?”
I had come to Paris assuming I would have to be the one to tell her, but it appeared I’d b
e spared that horror.
“I received a telegram,” she said. “But there is still so much I don’t understand that I am going to need you to explain. Why didn’t you contact me? Why did you leave so soon after the funeral? Where is your husband?”
“I wanted to send you a telegram. I wrote it a dozen times. But in the end I couldn’t tell you the news that way. Once I knew I would be coming, I thought I’d tell you when I got here. Who sent you the news?”
My father had no family but me in America, and I couldn’t imagine who would have known to contact Grand-mère.
“Your father’s lawyer, Monsieur Lissauer. He is the only person outside of you and your mother whom your father ever told about me and the only one who would know to get in touch.”
I had not understood that Grand-mère was different from my friends’ grandmothers until the summer I turned thirteen and she spent the season with us in Newport.
One night she came down to dinner wearing a pearl necklace that wrapped around her throat twice and yet still reached her waist.
Even though my mother had beautiful jewels, I’d never seen anything like Grand-mère’s pearls. Lustrous against her navy silk gown, they looked like tiny moons stolen out of a midnight sky.
She saw me staring and asked if I liked them. When I said I did, she took them off and hung the rope around my neck, telling me they were mine to wear while she was visiting.
“Oh, thank you,” I said as I touched the pearls, exploring their smooth surface with my fingertips. “When I grow up, I will have a necklace just like this and never take it off,” I whispered.
“Hopefully you’ll be given it as a gift and not have to work for it,” my mother said a bit haughtily.
My grandmother smiled sadly at her daughter-in-law. “My dear, there’s no such thing as not having to work for it, even if you are a respectably married woman of leisure.”
Later I asked my father what my mother had meant and why Grand-mère had seemed insulted.