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(Lest They Leave - Chapter 6)
It all started the usual way.
The usual way meant, Claire moving through Sylvie’s shadowy room five minutes past seven, crossing over the moss green carpets soundlessly to pull the curtains from the windows and letting in the crisp spring light, the sun had definitely been up longer than her at this point; outlined by the white-washed window frames, it looked less drowsy and also, less heartbroken than Sylvie felt upon opening her eyes and slowly sitting up. Her clothes lay strewn across the floor, showing no care for the expensive designs. Her purse had been dropped somewhere near her headboard, it looked like someone had stepped on it, even. Had she? She didn’t remember. She barely remembered getting home at all.
Yet, she did remember not having slept a wink that night, but rather tossed and turned and debated everything from brutally forcing her brother to tell her where Eloisa lived, in order to seek her out on her own, hungry for one more kiss, or completely scrap all thoughts of the actress, focusing on the good guy she had, who didn’t confuse her, who didn’t scare her. Depending on the hour, she had arrived at different conclusions. There had been a full six hours since. An even number.
As such, this morning, she was still undecided. She simply had no clue. And the sun wasn’t helping.
Picking up Sylvie’s mess with a grace that should’ve made her the mistress of the household instead, Claire was quietly watching her out the corner of her eyes. “Did you enjoy yourself last night, mademoiselle?” she asked, with a polite, pleasantly neutral interest. It didn’t insist on any answers Sylvie might not want to give. In the meantime, Sylvie had pooled the duvet around her lap and legs, her nightgown hanging loose down over one shoulder.
Really, wasn’t she the real mess here?
“I danced a lot, and Josephine Baker was there,” she replied after a short while. Claire lit up in a smile.
“I’m happy for you, mademoiselle,” she murmured, walking over to crouch down in order to retrieve the purse on the floor, the rest of Sylvie’s wayward belongings already folded over her other arm. Then, Sylvie remembered. The champagne saucer! Waving her hands frantically at the maid to leave it, she crawled over to the edge of the bed and picked up her purse, hearing it jingle loudly as she pulled it up into her lap. She didn’t have a good feeling about this, not at all.
“Wait! I promised you,” Sylvie began, opening the purse and revealing her lipstick, her little powder box and a handful of big, jagged shards of crystal. Oh, no. Staring down at them, Sylvie felt herself turn seven years old again, the police officer having shown up at their door to inform them of their presumed loss, the parents that would never return, unless by some miracle, and he got kicked and bitten and screamed at for his trouble, didn’t he? No matter, he’d been patient, but firm. Like Claire was patient, but firm with her now, gently easing the purse out of her grip and putting it away on the bedside table.
How often hadn’t she waited for that miracle. Even so, no miracle had ever occurred. What had happened to her was boarding school. What had happened to her was the aunties and Marseille. No miracles.
Until last night.
And it was gone now. It was broken. She’d broken it. Horsefeathers! What a disaster. What an irredeemable mess.
Catching Claire’s hands desperately as she was about to step back, Sylvie thought to herself, don’t go, don’t leave me, closing her own hands over the maid’s chill, calloused fingers and begging, “Please, I meant to bring you that glass, I wanted to give it to you, I promised…” Followed by a sharp intake of breath, the next words coming out cracked, broken just like the coupe, “I’m sorry, Claire.”
She began crying. She wanted to shield her face, or at least her eyes, but if she were to do so, she’d have to release her hold on the other woman, and she wanted that even less than she wanted to be seen in her current state. However, Claire fixed that for her, like she fixed everything else, her room and her breakfast and her lunch and her dinner, freeing one hand and pulling the duvet up to Sylvie’s face, wiping at her eyes with the linen, shushing at her softly.
For fifteen years, Sylvie had never been closer to a mother figure than this. She cried, and she cried, and she cried. Claire held her throughout, rocking her against her own body. They weren’t maid and mistress. They weren’t even friends. It was a more profound bond.
“You’ll be okay,” the other woman kept saying.
Sylvie imagined, and she had a good imagination, didn’t she, Charles said so himself, that she could believe her. After five more minutes, before Claire gently but firmly stood up and finished preparing the room for the day, yes, Sylvie almost did. Under any circumstances, she got out of bed, allowing the maid to find her a clean, lightweight spring day dress, fabric a dusty purple.
The day would bring whatever it chose to bring anyway. Bed or no bed. Dress or no dress. So, better be up.
Better be dressed, right? Better be ready.
The townhouse in Montreuil was quiet, it was perfectly peaceful, until two in the afternoon, when Charles finally came home from business, because business was the only thing he ever stayed out for until past dawn. Not parties, not girls. Always business. Should Sylvie feel relieved about that? How he only had one love. Although it wasn’t her, it wasn’t Eloisa either.
They weren’t those kinds of lovers, she’d said.
Sylvie, in turn, had tucked herself away in the library, spending the first half hour just running her fingers along spines of books, trying to pick one, let chance rule, but whenever she’d pulled a random tome out, it had been some tragic romance with a girl and a guy, or a fairy tale book full of princes and midnight partings or worse yet, it had been a book on law, telling her what she could and couldn’t do, so she’d given up, had claimed the chair by one of the large windows and was staring out at the courtyard in front of the house, chin on her knees, legs drawn up to her chest. It was how she’d known he was home, she’d seen the taxicab arrive, she’d seen him get out of it, her tall, broad brother who not a soul would guess was her brother, if they didn’t already know.
Eloisa had known, but she had still kissed her. Sylvie unconsciously licked her lips again, all lipstick, her own or anyone else’s washed off in her morning bath. Sighing, she tugged her knees closer, head tilting to the side on top of them, she was looking at the world askew like this. It wasn’t completely straight, completely right.
Oh, the blues never did help anybody.
His footfalls disturbed the peace and quiet of the room, of the moment, and she should get up to greet him, maybe shout, you found me, arms out to either side, since the library had been one of her most favourite hide-outs as a girl. He’d always been able to find her here. When they were playing. When they weren’t.
Their father had loved this library very much, after all. Sylvie would have loved it more, if she hadn’t been sent away, she was sure. Distance didn’t actually make the heart grow fonder. Whether Charles loved it, she couldn’t tell, but as with everything else, he certainly did find a use for it, didn’t he?
Without getting out of the chair, she watched his shadow draw nearer among the bookshelves towards where she was sitting like that, curled in on herself, as small as she’d ever get again. He came to a halt some feet away, looking down at her. Dark brown eyes meeting blue. Black hair and blonde. No, not a soul would be able to tell. Sometimes, Sylvie was one of those souls as well, she thought.
“How was the party?” he asked. Not like Claire had asked; Charles’ question insisted on answers.
“It was copacetic,” she replied, finally letting her legs slip back down, feet on the ground, her dusty purple dress falling to her knees and no further. She thought of Eloisa’s legs in the dark, the naked shins of them. Her ankles in those heels. Then, she thought of Armand, telling her not to be alone all night, when he left her to go be important elsewhere. What silliness.
Because then, she hadn’t. Been alone. Rather, she’d had plenty of company, all kinds. Both men and women. Both men and women and Eloisa Paolo. I don’t see why not, she’d told Armand, after all.
“Who was there?” Charles now demanded, and she was wondering what kind of interrogation this was, had he talked to anyone, had anyone seen, had they heard? Had he heard? The Paris rumour mill was another beast than even Marguerite’s and Marceline’s. Another beast than even all of Marseille’s. She shifted in her seat and looked down, felt herself blush, like her body was the traitor here and not her. Days ago, mere hours, really, she had just wanted Charles’ approval. Now, like in some ambivalent tug-of-war, she wanted his approval as well as his actress, those two wishes pulling in each their separate direction.
She wanted to hate him, but she wanted him to love her. Like she said, silly.
“Josephine Baker,” she murmured, not looking up. She could feel Charles’ eyes on her.
“Are you one of her admirers?” His voice didn’t tell her much of anything. It was flat, matter of fact. He could’ve just as well asked whether it was storming out, it was one more thing that simply didn’t move him.
To her great dismay, Sylvie heard herself saying, “I like mademoiselle Paolo better.” Eloisa, Eloisa, Eloisa, her mind sang, and she bit her lip not to say it out loud, Eloisa, along with at least two other things that lived in her head, because they had been put there, like a fever, like some infection, passed on to her in a hot second’s careless proximity. I kissed your girlfriend last night, Charles. Your girlfriend kissed me.
He’d suggested it himself, Sylvie had been assured, that Eloisa and him wouldn’t be those kinds of lovers, hadn’t he?
Nevertheless, naturally, she called Eloisa ‘mademoiselle Paolo’ instead. And she prayed that he wouldn’t catch on to the breathlessness in her voice when she spoke. Or, if he did, that he would continue not to care, even if, at the same time, she longed to be cared for; Claire was her maid, not her mother, or her brother. You had one family, there were no spares in relation to that, and he was the only family she had left. Her lower lip quivered, so she bit it again, harder this time. If he noticed, he didn’t say anything about that either.
What he said was, “Her new play premieres in two weeks, remind me to take you. She likes to be admired.” The last sentence called forth that well-known, wry smile on his face again, and Sylvie didn’t like it, he made it sound like the other woman didn’t deserve the admiration.
Yet, her response was demure, her gaze was lowered, and she remembered to take deep breaths, because Eloisa had told her to, “I’d really like that.” Thank you, it meant. As she’d told him before.
Wordlessly, he was watching her for a long moment, but she wasn’t watching him back, so she couldn’t see what he was looking for; she could neither give it to him nor hold it back from him, he had to take what he got. In the end, it seemed to be enough, because he huffed out a breath, then turned on his heel and left, following the exact same route he’d come. His shoes disappeared around the corner of a bookshelf and were gone after that, though his footfalls were audible all the way down the hallway. He was always at a march, Charles. He was always charging.
Sylvie didn’t want him to also always be winning. That was all she knew.
And so, four days passed in relative obscurity.
By Thursday, she had spent most of her time sketching in her quarters, allowing no one inside except Claire, to clean and bring food. When Charles was home, which he was intermittently, she didn’t have dinner with him in the dining room but left him to eat alone. She didn’t know what he made of her solitude, probably nothing much, but she knew the servants whispered about heartache and a lover’s quarrel, as if Armand was to blame for any of this. Maybe the problem was the opposite, how he wasn’t.
Sylvie didn’t know who to blame, really. If there was even a blame to be placed anywhere. Blame implied something was wrong, didn’t it? Even two, three, four days later, she still didn’t think of the kiss as anything of the sort. Confusing and frustrating and madness-inducing, sure, but not wrong.
Rather, it had felt so right. Really, she could have waxed poetic about it, but instead she drew. Her strength lay in her manner, not in her vocabulary. Her sketchbook was full of hazy illustrations of Eloisa Paolo and especially, Eloisa Paolo’s mouth, the sharpness of her smile, the line of her Cupid’s bow, the perfect arch of it. She hid those drawings, even from Claire, but not because they were inherently bad; because they were inherently complicated.
Eventually, Charles came to her door and knocked. “You need to get out and see the world,” he said from the other side. She didn’t invite him in, but raised her voice from inside her room, demanding her distance, demanding he respected her claim to it:
“I’ve seen the world. I’m drawing it now.”
“Don’t get cheeky with me,” he warned. His voice was the same as always, he couldn’t even work up any real anger for her sake. She hated that. If she couldn’t get his worry or his care, could she at least get his anger? Please. Let me matter to you, she thought to herself, drawing an angry line down the side of the sketch pad, ruining the outline of Eloisa’s face number ten that day. She sighed and shut the sketchbook with a faint rustling of papers. Let me matter to you, so I can get my priorities in order, her or you, Charles. Let it be easy.
That was Wednesday.
“I’m going to the Dubois’ to paint Armand tomorrow,” she reminded him, she was scheduled to have the prince, the heir sitting for her once a week the next many months. She used to look forward to that, before. Now the thought just made her darn sad. Like her affection for him belonged to another life, another reality.
She missed it, something terrible. The good, old, simple days. A week ago.
“Good,” he replied, and she could tell from the volume of his voice, he was already moving away once more, he was leaving her with just that. Yes, wasn’t that dandy? Because she was still his business associates’ best bet for a future bride, it was satisfactory? It was fine? Her lips twisted into something hurtful.
Not until his marching steps had disappeared down the main hallway, the determination in them growing fainter and fainter, she hurled her sketch pad against the door with a loud, rageful scream, then burying her face in her now empty and slightly shaking hands.
Even crying was too difficult at this point. What would she be crying about? That she had too many options at hand to pick between them? Or that none of the options among the selection were truly attractive? Only complicated, complicated, complicated.
That wasn’t the world Sylvie had come to Paris to find, but she was beginning to question whether maybe it was the one world available.
You take what you can get, she could almost hear Eloisa say, a soft whisper in her ear, lips against her earlobe. The sharp line of her Cupid’s bow cutting through her. What the actress had actually said, she remembered clearly and therefore didn’t have to conjure up, was:
‘Everyone does, little Sylvie.’
Monsieur Dubois, of course, had insisted that Armand couldn’t just sit for her, no alcohol, and had brought them a large bottle of champagne as well as two crystal coupes, similar to the one she’d stolen at the party and proceeded to break and then, finally, cried bitter tears over, though maybe she had cried less over the glass and more over the circumstances. After all, Claire had taken it very nicely. No headshakes, no implied scolding. The crystal shards had simply vanished from Sylvie’s purse, where the maid had left it on her bed table, and been gone, disappeared into thin air. Where she might have taken the sad remains of the Dubois household’s champagne saucer, Sylvie didn’t know and neither what she might have done to it. The fate of the broken glass was a mystery; Sylvie hadn’t stopped trying to follow its traces, if only because they all led back to Eloisa Paolo. The kiss. That night.
It had all grown incredibly large in her head.
On her canvas, the portrait of Armand was sizeable, too, though mainly outlines and some overarching colour blocking at this point. His face was nothing but a faintly white-beige blot, still she recognised his high cheekbones and his proud forehead and the jut of his jawline in that spot of paint. She recognised him. Sometimes, she wondered where from. What it was she saw in his face.
Not to mention, what he saw in her. That had to be an even greater mystery than the elegant crystal coupe, taken from his home.
Currently, she was the one to see him. Because Armand was back to being seated on the stool in the ‘intersection of light’, as she’d started calling his spot, he’d laughed when she’d said it out loud, but not in any mocking way, his legs spread wide and elbows on his knees, hands folded, yet relaxed. The champagne was standing on a small table off to the side, within view, but not in any way that disturbed her. She still remembered the taller-than-a-man champagne towers at the ball. After that, she probably wouldn’t ever need to drink champagne or any other kind of alcohol again.
Nevertheless, Armand was eyeing the bottle and the two crystal glasses every now and then, when he thought she was focused on her brushwork, and she eventually put her brush down altogether to accommodate him. Really, he’d been sitting there for an hour, he could be excused. Noticing the motion, his shoulders visibly slumped, and he straightened up to stretch, languidly. Sylvie tried to watch him, the slide of his muscles beneath his shirt and the dark vest but after a second, she dropped her gaze to her hands working instead, although it was all so automatic by now. Cleaning the brush. Clearing out the resin mix for the paints, so they wouldn’t dry out. Such things. In reality, she could do it all blind, in her sleep. Just not in this reality. Here, she’d rather look away from him.
His eyes, on the other hand, were on her, Sylvie could tell. “Did you get to call anyone wonderful at the party?” he finally asked after a long moment of loaded silence, only disturbed by the sloshing of her brushes (plural, one, two, three) in water, slosh, slosh, slosh. Her hands didn’t stop working, but they were the only ones, the rest of Sylvie froze, even as she tried her hardest to appear unaffected.
He gave her time.
“I didn’t get to,” she replied after a while, putting the glass of paint-discoloured water aside where it wouldn’t get knocked over and stain everything, including herself and the painting. Armand just followed her with his eyes, until she gave up on pretending to be busy, pretending to be nonchalant on top of that, walking around the easel to stand next to the painting, facing him. It took a courage she didn’t know where came from, like Eloisa and Italy, that kind of displaced. No birthplace given.
“Weren’t there anyone around?” he wanted to know in his gentle, understanding voice, although Sylvie sure had no clue what it could be that he understood, and she didn’t.
“It wasn’t that,” she responded, hurriedly. “It’s that wonderful people tend to disappear too soon. For me to tell them these things.” Only then did she meet his eyes directly, apologetically; like you, it meant, like my parents, like Charles and like Eloisa Paolo.
“But if you found someone who didn’t,” he probed, hands slightly restless, knuckles tightening, fingers twitching, “Would you tell them, Sylvie?”
She huffed out a laugh and shook her head, drying her hands needlessly in her smock, mostly to match him, his folded hands bouncing lightly up and down at a rhythm. It didn’t mean no, and she was sure he could tell, with all that talk. “You make it sound like you want me to find another guy,” she tried to tease, but she could feel how her eyes weren’t in it. And he, from his position, could see they weren’t.
“It’s just that you seem unhappy.”
“This kind of talk would make anyone unhappy, wouldn’t it?”
He paused. “It doesn’t make me unhappy.”
“Why not?” Sylvie was done drying her hands and let them fall to her sides, simply standing there, swallowing hard and failing entirely to understand.
“Because I don’t expect you to be exclusive,” he replied, simply. She stared at him for a long, quivering moment, remembering – like something coming crashing down over her – Eloisa who’d insisted Charles and she weren’t ‘those kinds of lovers’. Maybe because she’d heard it in those words first, she wasn’t as scandalised this time. She was, however, from another part of the country and from circles completely different from his. Sylvie had never observed these habits before, not as thriving, breathing and actually liveable phenomena. They were concepts from popular songs. Or whispered rumours, judgements passed.
How she wanted to be part of his world. How she wanted him to want her there with him. Even now. With or without Eloisa Paolo. Turning away from him quickly, she swallowed harder.
“What do you expect, then?” she wanted to know. The stool creaked as he got up from it, presumably, and she could hear his careful footfalls against the raw wooden floors in this room, this room someone had made for her, most likely him, in his father’s name, in his father’s shadow. Like she lived in the shadow of her brother. Armand stopped behind her, raising his hands, bigger than hers, bigger than Eloisa’s, masculine in a different way, to her elbows and lightly held her by her arms, although he didn’t push himself up against her or anything like that, leave that kind of behaviour to the flaming youth with just enough money to flaunt themselves, but not enough manners to imitate the man in whose arms she was standing now.
“That the right girl will paint my engagement portrait whether we’re exclusive or not.”
Tears were gathering at the corners of her eyes, and she had to blink them away not to blind herself. Her vision was still wet around the edges as she beamed up at him, turning around. And when he leaned down to kiss her, she didn’t resist or try to avoid the gesture; it was just a gesture, it was an extension of the experience they shared, it was an expression of the comfort and safety he inspired in her. That Sylvie was dying to kiss Eloisa again had nothing to do with this, this was theirs, solely.
For the first time in days, she could breathe a sigh of relief. He undoubtedly felt it against his lips but didn’t ask. She liked that about him. She liked many things about him, but the way he accepted her so quietly was her favourite. Men were generally loud. Her brother wasn’t loud in terms of the volume of his voice, for certain, but he could make a whole room shut up, just by looking around. That was loud, too.
Sylvie realised she didn’t like men like that.
Armand, nevertheless, she liked. It was the lack of coarseness, the line of his jaw and the sensitivity of his eyebrows. His proud forehead and high cheekbones. She raised her hand to his face while they kissed and cupped his cheek, which he took as an invitation, and she didn’t stop him, she didn’t want him to stop. Afterwards, they were both short of breath.
Like it needed celebrating, he released her reluctantly and stepped over to the small table with the champagne put out, pouring both himself and her a glass. Part of Sylvie wanted to tell him about the broken coupe, Claire’s, thinking he’d be entertained by the whole deal, but because it had been meant as a personal gift, she held her tongue. It was a secret between Claire and her. She just took the glass when he held it out for her, balancing it on the stem. The champagne shone like liquid diamond.
“Tell me if there’s somewhere I can take you,” he commented. “I’d like to take you somewhere.”
Smiling, Sylvie rolled the glass slowly between her fingertips, wondering how she could be the little sister of one of the wealthiest men in Paris and never have heard those words before. Charles never wanted to take her anywhere except away. And away, she’d been, all right. Miles upon miles away. It made her feel even more grateful for the man standing in front of her.
It made her even more desperate for the woman that had told her off. All these strange, new encounters. So, Sylvie said, “Take me to the theatre when we’re going to see mademoiselle Paolo’s new play soon.”
His hesitation wasn’t obvious, but when you had painted someone, you got used to catching onto the otherwise unseen details, and she noticed it in his features, the slight purse of his lips, the raise of his chin. “Are you certain you want to bring me?” he asked, after she had allowed him his time, too. The way she shook her head at him meant silly, not no. Silly, silly Armand. Silly the both of them, really.
“I’d like for someone in that party not to dismiss me as a little girl,” she responded, thinking of being in the company of Charles alone or worse yet, to be in the company of him and Eloisa together, so she’d be reduced to the sister, the ward or ‘little Sylvie’ muttered in a hoarse voice, Italian accent, with only Eloisa and Sylvie knowing the truth about them, about her. What a terrible game of charades! If Armand could be there, at least she’d have a bo.
Frowning, Armand looked displeased at the thought. “Charles does that?”
“Many people do, but not you,” she said. It was a compliment. Better than wonderful. Armand seemed to think so, too, because he smiled his soft-edged smile and regarded her with a feeling she couldn’t pinpoint, but it was pleasant and she wanted to know it, she wanted to feel it as well. Putting his champagne saucer down, he crossed the distance between them again and reached up to cup her cheek, like they were mirrors, like they saw themselves in each other. Some part of themselves, at least, if not the whole layout. She grasped her glass between both hands and leaned up on her toes to peck him on the lips, his hand not leaving her, his eyes not leaving her.
“You’ll have to show them, Sylvie,” he said. In encouragement.
“I’ll show them you,” she laughed, nodding at the painting. Same thing, it meant. Because it’s you and me, baby. Armand and Sylvie and the fevered dream of Eloisa Paolo, in addition. The distant image of Charles. They were a right four-leaf clover.
Maybe, at some point, it would turn to her luck. For now, this was good enough. He was more than good enough. His hand dropped from her face, and he took her coupe of champagne, placing it on the table along with his own, returning only to kiss her.
After two more minutes, she shooed him back to his stool, and they carried on like nothing whatsoever had happened. On her canvas, his features began standing out. There was sunshine in his face, that was her surrealist touch, but she was ready to defend it with her life.
He was just golden like that.