Mama and Floralie watched the family cat give birth to seven kittens. Their bodies were slimy, but small and fragile, like snowballs. Mama gave the kittens away to various neighbors, all except one, who had died within twenty minutes.
They buried her in the garden and named her Renée. Mama laid a pile of autumn leaves and a sprig of oregano over the patch of dirt.
That night, as Mama tucked Floralie into bed, Floralie asked Mama if she thought the surviving kittens would be okay. Mama said, “I don’t know. But I do know they’re home. And I do know you’re home.”
“Oh,” said Floralie.
“Home is wherever, in the morning, you are new again. And you are loved because of it.”
Four hours and another taxi ride later, Floralie, Nino, and Miss Clairoux rolled down a cobbled road walled by shops and houses more ivy than stone. At last, they pulled up to a long stretch of tulips with a narrow dirt path cut through it, leading to a house. But not just any house. This was Monet’s manor. Miss Clairoux paid the driver, and the three stepped out of the taxi and into the tulips. Floralie squinted through the sunlight to the house at the end of the field.
She took a breath. “This is it,” she said. Her heart was racing, her ears were buzzing, and her fingers were tingling. Tom would figure out where she had gone soon enough, and Grandmama could arrive within hours. And Mama wasn’t getting any younger in that asylum of hers; Floralie imagined the room, dark, dank, small. Mama was a wildflower. Mama was a viscaria flower. She needed space, and she needed freedom; she needed room to dance, and she needed Floralie. They had to find her fast.
Floralie led the way down the path. Pebbles crunched below her feet and the sunshine sunk into her skin as she made her way through the tulip field. Mama used to say that Giverny was so quiet you could hear the sky move, the clouds shift, and the stars shiver like wind chimes. “They’re still there, you know,” Mama would say. “The stars. Even in daytime. Even when you can’t see them.” And then they would listen, and Mama would say, “Hear that? It’s raining in Singapore.”
Floralie listened to the clouds as hard as she could. The closer she came to the house, the louder the clouds pulsed—or perhaps that was her heart.
The house was even larger than Floralie remembered, and she recalled neighborhood children calling it the Château de Giverny—Castle of Giverny. The front was rather unkempt, overgrown bushes and trees and vines swallowing the house, as if into another world—a wonderland, perhaps. One thing, however, was different from how Floralie remembered, and that was the bright green shutters. They had always been kept open when Floralie had lived in Giverny, but now, all were closed.
As they climbed the seven green steps to the door, Miss Clairoux whispered, “Es-tu prêt?” She flicked a bead of sweat from her forehead and smoothed back her hair, which was significantly more frizzed than when they had begun their journey.
“Oui, Miss Clairoux,” said Floralie, “I’m ready.”
Floralie clutched her bag to her chest. Her heart beat against the box inside. She knocked. The door creaked.
“Qui est là?” came a grunt from the other side.
Floralie grabbed Nino’s arm.
The door chinked open, and a man appeared. He smelled of stale coffee and mothballs. He was tall, thin—skeletal almost—and he wore a faded brown bathrobe with tattered pockets and drooping, too-long sleeves. His back was hunched and his lips chapped. But though his eyes were sunken behind a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, they held the blue of a hundred forget-me-nots; they were the only things alive about him.
Nevertheless, excitement bubbled up inside Floralie, and she spluttered, “It’s—it’s you—you’re here!”
Sylvestre Tullier gave a short hmph and then grunted in French, “Where else would I be? Live here, don’t I?” He scanned Floralie, Nino, and Miss Clairoux up and down, then narrowed his eyebrows at Miss Clairoux. “You?”
Floralie looked up to Miss Clairoux. “You know him?”
“I—I—of course I don’t know him. Don’t be silly, ma chérie!”
“Hmph,” said Mr. Tullier.
“Oh. Er—all right.” Floralie cleared her throat. “Well, then, Mr. Tullier, je m’appelle Floralie Laurel. Et c’est mon ami—ah—Norman—” said Floralie, remembering again her promise with Nino. “Et mon autre amie, Madame Delphine Clairoux.”
Mr. Tullier’s eyes widened, but for only a moment. “Floralie and Delphine. Such . . . intéressant names.”
Floralie wasn’t quite sure what Mr. Tullier was on about, but she took a breath before continuing. “I sell your flowers. In England—Whitterly End, to be precise. My brother, Tom, sells them in the shop, and I sell in the street, and I just—”
“Spit it out, mademoiselle,” said Mr. Tullier, rolling his eyes.
“Okay, I know you’re busy, but I just had a question for you. It’s about this box I found, filled with dried flowers—I want to know their meanings. But I can’t find your floriography any—”
“Get out.” Mr. Tullier’s voice froze to ice.
“What?” said Floralie.
“I said get out! Now! Go! Allez!” and he jerked to slam the door, but Floralie grabbed the edge.
“No, please,” begged Floralie, but Mr. Tullier was too strong, and the door slammed shut. The clink of a lock twisting sent invisible spiders down Floralie’s spine.
Now what do we do? wrote Nino.
Floralie bit the inside of her lip, but wrote back, I’m going to stay here, in Giverny. I’m going to find her. You both can go home. I’m sorry I wasted your time. Nino translated the words into braille for Miss Clairoux.
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Miss Clairoux. “I will have none of that, ma chérie. We’ll stay the night here, somewhere. Our Monsieur Tullier”—her voice swung up to a peculiarly melodic lilt when she said the name—“he will come around. Trust me.” But then her voice wavered on the words. “Let’s find a place to stay. Come.”
The three came upon an inn, roof sloping and red paint chipping. Shutters hung at odd angles, and window cracks were patched with sheets of gray fabric. An off-kilter sign above the door read: L’OASIS DE VIEIL HOMME, or, in English, “Old Man’s Oasis.”
“It’s not ideal. But it’s warm and it’s cheap,” said Floralie.
The innkeeper grunted something about “keeping the children under control,” then handed Miss Clairoux the room key, and the three trundled up the winding staircase to their room. It was a dank space, three skinny beds taking up the majority of the room. The walls were bare except for the lace-curtained windows that looked over to the street below.
Nino collapsed onto one of the beds immediately, and Miss Clairoux fell into the bed beside him. Floralie, however exhausted she felt, did not want to sleep. Guilt slithered through Floralie’s curls and into her ears. She felt positively stupid. She had put her friends at risk for what? A mother she didn’t even know what had happened to? And even if she knew what happened to Mama, would that truly change anything? Would Mama take her back? Of course she would, Floralie thought, trying to soothe herself, but her hands jittered with the possibility that she would never be home again. Because home was wherever Mama was.
Within minutes of leaning against the gray wall, Floralie began to feel ghosts all around her, and she wanted to learn their names . . . They were names she knew long ago, had once memorized just as well as Mama’s letter, but now were forgotten. Confused and lost and spirited away, to gardens far, far away.
Mama’s eyes were bloodshot. The footsteps pounded. Tom squeezed Floralie’s hand as they watched from the crack in the kitchen door. Mama stood from her seat at the dining table and went to open the front door. The minute she unlatched the lock, a body fell into her. It was a man, horribly, terribly familiar, yet his face ten times as red.
“Getoffome,” shouted Papa, his words slurring together. “Get off! I hate you!”
“I know, John-Paul. I know. Come lie down. Come to your bed.”
“How
could I ever’ve loved you? You’re ugly.” And he spat in Mama’s face.
Tom covered Floralie’s eyes, but she heard Mama say simply, “I know, John-Paul. I know. Come lie down. Come to your bed.”
That was how it always went at the beginning, before Papa’s shouts became contagious, and before everything began to fall apart. But Mama never did cry. No, Mama never cried.
Instead, she put a basket of spruce pine needles on the windowsill and said, “These will give us hope. These will give us light.”
Later that afternoon, the ghosts tugged at Floralie’s hair, yanking her outside to the streets of Giverny, alone. She wandered down Rue Claude Monet and into the village. The roads wound like Viscaria’s favorite pearl necklace. The buildings played a dress-up game: shopwindows draped in scarves of vines and flowers, and doors painted so bright the people paled. With each footstep Floralie took, a memory leaped into her mind as if it had just won a game of hide-and-go-seek.
The peculiarly raised cobblestone at the edge of Monsieur Géroux’s bakery: Eight years ago, Floralie had tripped over it on her way into the bakery to buy bread with Tom. She had made quite the fuss, so Tom assuaged her with a butterscotch teacake from Monsieur Géroux.
Madame Lévêque’s yellow rose garden: Floralie had passed that every day on her way to school, and each time she passed, she had wondered what made the roses yellow instead of red. Mama used to say that Madame Lévêque must have watered them with lemon juice; it was only now that Floralie realized she had been joking.
And then there was Madame “Elephant Ears” Elliard’s scarlet-shuttered window: Whenever Floralie bicycled by when she was little, Madame Elliard would poke out her head and screech at Floralie for her bicycle making too much a clatter, even though all the children rode bicycles through the village. The person Madame Elliard really didn’t like was Viscaria, who Madame Elliard saw as irresponsible, newfangled, and ridiculously untamable. Floralie supposed Mama was indeed all of those things—but those attributes were what made Mama, Mama.
It was then, as she was remembering Madame Elliard, that Miss Clairoux appeared as if out of nowhere. Earlier, both she and Nino had settled in for a nap.
“Ma chérie, it’s getting late,” she said.
“I know,” said Floralie. She wanted to say, I miss this place. I miss it even while I’m here, standing within it, I miss it. But the words caught in her throat. Instead, she said, “What do you think of Mr. Tullier?”
Miss Clairoux looped her arm through Floralie’s as Floralie led her through an archway. “What do I think of him?” said Miss Clairoux. “Well, I think he is rather disagreeable—before you get to know him.”
“But . . . you don’t know him.”
Miss Clairoux’s cheeks flushed. “I . . . I think he has the potential to be a gentleman. He has the talent for it, but uses it sparingly.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
Miss Clairoux fumbled with her hat, then turned to Floralie. “So many questions, my dear. But no, I wouldn’t say it bothers me. It’s just a skin; everyone’s got one in some way or another. We’ll peel back his, ma chérie. I promise you that.”
“Miss Clairoux?” said Floralie.
“Mmm?”
“Do you think it’s possible to like someone because of the things that are wrong with them?”
With agile fingers, Miss Clairoux plucked a lemony rose from Madame Lévêque’s garden. She ran her fingers along the petals in a spiral motion, taking in all the twists and turns of the rose from the inside out.
“People are like roses, ma chérie. They’ve got lots of layers. I think Mr. Tullier’s a bit like a rose, don’t you think?”
Miss Clairoux handed Floralie the rose, and she took it with gentle hands. She peeled off a few petals, and they fluttered to the ground. Mama was like a rose. In every way, she was like a rose—beautiful, vivacious, lovely. “D’you think Nino’s got layers?”
Miss Clairoux closed tight her eyes and nodded deeply. “Mmm, yes, I do, very much so.”
“And Tom?”
Miss Clairoux nodded again.
Floralie bit her lip. “And . . . and me? Am I like a rose?”
Miss Clairoux stopped her nodding. “Why ever would you ask that?” Her voice was incredulous.
“Just . . . do you think I am?”
“I do think so,” said Miss Clairoux. “I think people live as the outmost layer of their rose. And that outmost layer can’t see all that it’s protecting inside. It may see itself as nothing more than a shell, simply because it doesn’t have the proper angle of view. That’s why you can’t use your eyes all the time. You’ve got to feel those layers instead.”
Floralie didn’t like that answer much. Because if layers were made up of feelings, well, then certainly Floralie was nothing but hollow. That was how she felt. Hollow. Hollow as the gap in her teeth. Mama wasn’t around to fill that gap anymore, and Nino . . . Floralie just wished he would speak to her. He knew everything about her, and she wanted to know him. But he wouldn’t let her. Floralie plucked off the last petal, then dropped the stem as well.
As Floralie and Miss Clairoux passed a crumbly-stone shop, Miss Clairoux stopped short. “Ma chérie, does it smell like books to you?”
Floralie looked up to the shop sign—but it wasn’t a shop at all. Floralie’s heart pounded. In spidery script, the sign above the door read, LA BIBLIOTHÈQUE DE CLAIROUX.
“Miss Clairoux . . . is there something you haven’t told me?”
“Whatever could you—” but Miss Clairoux did not finish. Her face grew ashen, and her mouth, limp. “My father’s library.”
“What do you mean—you’ve lived here?”
Miss Clairoux half smiled.
Floralie was flabbergasted. “What—how—when were you going to tell me this? Is this why you came here?”
But Miss Clairoux was not paying attention. She slowly approached the building and ran her fingers along the stone, whispering, “I can’t believe it’s still here.”
“Miss Clairoux—answer me!” insisted Floralie, hurrying to Miss Clairoux’s side. “This is why you came here, isn’t it? To find the library. You knew it was here.”
Miss Clairoux turned to Floralie. “Yes,” she said, sighing. “Yes, in part, I came for a library. I never in a thousand dreams would have imagined my father’s would somehow still be standing, still bear our name. But in part, I came for something lost. Someone . . .”
“But who—” Floralie stopped short. She knew. “You came to see Mr. Tullier, too, didn’t you?”
Miss Clairoux closed tight her eyes and said, “I think we’d better take this inside.”
Mama filled the windows with juniper flowers “for protection.” The tiny petals became perfect shells to guard the house’s sacred insides. Those messy insides. Ugly insides that Mama came to love.
Miss Clairoux pushed open the library door, a tiny bell tinkling from above. Dimness enclosed Floralie in a hug that reminded her of one of Tom’s: familiar, comforting, yet distant. Perhaps, as Nino would have put it, melancholic. She had been to this library before—simply hadn’t realized it had a name. It had always been simply, “la bibliothèque.” Many a time as a toddler, she had sat on the threadbare rug, flipping through books she knew not how to read, but all the same pretended to. Mama would call her ever so smart, and Tom would scoff and say she was simply theatrical.
Now three boxes were stacked on the rug, the topmost one overfilled with books. In fact, the entire library was filled with boxes upon boxes of books. The shelves were half naked, stripped of everything but a few dozen faded, stained, and tattered books, and a small collection of lion-faced bookends.
“Looks like they’re closing down,” muttered Floralie.
“We are.”
Floralie spun around twice before she caught sight of the woman. Tiny, chestnut-haired, and pale-lipped, she blended in perfectly with the books and the boxes and the dimness.
Miss Clairoux’s mouth di
d jumping jacks. “But—but where shall the books live?”
The woman shrugged. “Zey will get thrown away, I suppose. Ze place is running out of money. Ze family who owned it years ago—ah, comment dit-on?—vanquished?”
“Vanished,” corrected Floralie.
“Oui, zey vanished. We ’aven’t a choice now. Ze parents are dead, and zeir little girl, well, we ’aven’t any idea where she’s gone. She must be very old, though—zis was all many years ago, before I was even born.”
“And you, Madame—ah—”
“Favreau. Édith Favreau.”
“Yes, Madame Favreau. Your family has been keeping up the library?”
Madame Favreau nodded. “Ze least we could do. Henri Clairoux was my grandmère’s best friend. ’E once paid for my father’s fever treatment, so after Henri died, we decided to keep up ’is beloved bibliothèque. I will be sad to see it go. But please, look around. We’re not closing until next week.”
“Merci, Madame Favreau,” said Miss Clairoux, and she turned to Floralie and whispered, “There should be a nook in the back for us to chat, how about that?”
Floralie nodded and followed Miss Clairoux to the back of the library, where indeed, a tiny reading space was nestled between three bookshelves. In the corner was an overstuffed armchair, big enough for the both of them (and probably a spare), and Miss Clairoux sat, patting the velvet cushion for Floralie.
Miss Clairoux let loose a hum. “When I was young, I had a boy very close to my heart, much like Nino is to yours. We grew up together. He was born blind, like me. But something changed for him. He would tell me he could see things—things that felt like joy, and things that felt like sadness. Just outlines, faint colors. I thought he was going mad, but really, he was getting better. By the time we were seventeen, his blindness had disappeared entirely. Also by then, we were in love and engaged.”
The Flourishing of Floralie Laurel Page 9